Entrepreneur location decisions across industries

In this paper we analyse whether entrepreneur location decisions differ across industries and identify the factors determining the choice of location between rural and urban environments. Firm location is based on a new taxonomy developed over the influential three dimensions of Hayter’s (1997) approach. The paper uses data from sample of one thousand Portuguese firms. We present a stylized theoretical model to determine how these new five dimensions influence firm’s location and test the model through a logistic regression. Our results show that that the location decisions depend on the sector of activity, type of area (urban vs. rural) and the characteristics of the entrepreneur. We find that companies engaged in knowledge intensive business services prefer to locate in urban areas. From an institutional point of view, firms prefer to locate in rural areas.     

Intertemporal efficiency variations in Indian manufacturing industries

One of the important sources of growth of an economy is the efficient and productive use of existing resources. The Indian industries after three decades of protected industrial culture has produced an inefficient regime. This is supposed to be corrected by the on-going economic liberalization. An application of Time-Varying Frontier Production Function approach with both fixed and variable ranking models in Indian industries helps in testing the hypothesis of intertemporal movement of technical efficiencies (TE) on which the current globalization program is based. The results are significantly conclusive: TEs have been falling over time. This along with TFP changes helps us to understand the nature of industrial development in recent past. An inquiry into the sources of inter-industry efficiency variations shows that skill, labor productivity and profit play significantly positive role, while capital intensity works against general beliefs.     

A qualitative response analysis of UK firms' employment and output decisions

This paper investigates firms' employment and output decisions and presents some empirical evidence concerning the rationality of firms' expectations. The dymanic model is based on the assumptions of convex adjustment costs and monopolistic competition in the product market. The results are obtained using categorical information on individual firms contained in business surveys collected by the Confederation of British Industry. Ordered probit models are used to estimate the employment and output equations. We find that expected demand is a critical determinant of firms' decisions, the effect of changes in cost conditions is not as well determined, and the data are not consistent with the rational expectations hypothesis.     

The incidence of dismissals in British manufacturing industries

Although the question of unfair dismissal has received considerable attention there has been a comparative neglect of the use made by employers of the dismissal sanction per se. This article seeks to explain variations in the rate of disciplinary dismissals using a large survey of manufacturing establishments in Britain.     

Estimating capacity utilization of Chinese manufacturing industries

This study investigates the capacity utilization (CU) of Chinese manufacturing industries, using a CU indicator based on data envelopment analysis and directional distance functions (DDFs). The inputs are separated into variable inputs and a quasi-fixed input to measure the gap of DDFs, which indicated either under-utilization of inputs or overcapacity. Moreover, we define an indicator for CU change over time and introduced the corresponding decomposition. We note that, during the study time period (2007–2010), the CU of Chinese manufacturing industries improved, which implies that Chinese manufacturing industries expanded their production and got closer to their capacity during the examined period. The driving force of this improvement is technical changes. The higher average CU values of light manufacturing industries than that of the heavy industries and the extremely high CU values of two light industries reveal a severe overcapacity problem in the light industries. We also provided the methods and conduct analysis on determining optimal variable inputs and the type of the overcapacity on specific DMUs. The bootstrap regression procedures are employed to test the influence of environmental variables on CU values. Finally, we provide policy implications and suggestions for policymakers who oversee the development of Chinese manufacturing industries.     

Pricing behaviour in UK manufacturing and service industries

This paper reports the findings related to pricing behaviour of 1775 manufacturing and service firms. Its objectives were to examine the nature of pricing objectives at differing stages of market evolution and for companies of differing size and to examine the association between pricing objectives and performance. Princing objectives were found to vary with stages of market evolution and firm size. Both positive and negative relationships between pricing objectives and performance were revealed.     

Environmental management and strategic positioning of Spanish manufacturing industries

This work is based on data collected from a survey of environmental managers in 277 Spanish manufacturing industries with the objective of analysing the attitudes of companies towards the environment. The analysis determined the main indicators of these companies' environmental strategy and classified them into strategic clusters according to the accumulative or progressive scale suggested theoretically in the existing economic literature. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Analyzing China's productivity growth: Evidence from manufacturing industries

This article examines the growth attributes of manufacturing industries in China for the sample period of 1999–2007. The output growth of manufacturing industries classified under four groups and four regions is decomposed into four components of input growth, scale effect, technical progress, and technical efficiency change. A stochastic frontier model is applied to the translog production function to estimate technical efficiency. Despite the conventional argument that input growth and technical progress are important factors to output growth, the empirical findings show a significant scale effect but a weak technical efficiency change. The contribution to growth from labor has been replaced by human and physical capitals. Structural transformation in the industrial sector is evident, so as regional imbalances.     

R&D subsidies and export performance of manufacturing industries

One of the main purposes of government R&D subsidies is to give domestic enterprises a competitive edge in international trade of high technology products. The empirical evidence, however, is disappointing: cross-section regression approach for six industries and five countries yielded a negative impact of R&D subsidies on exports of research intensive goods. An analysis of the distribution of public funds suggests that this poor performance could at least partially be explained by the high concordance of national technology policies and the concentration of public funds on big science projects.     

Intraurban manufacturing location decisions and local tax differentials

This study examines the role that fiscal factors play in the intrametropolitan location decisions of manufacturing firms. Emphasis is placed on analyzing location choices of relocating firms, rather than existing patterns of economic activity or estimating changes in net employment. The results indicate that the property tax rate is a significant location factor to relocating firms selecting sites within an urban area and that income tax differentials have a negative but weak influence on those decisions. The location disincentives of property taxes are strongest for large firms and tend to decrease with firm size.     

Agglomeration economies in urban manufacturing industries: A case of Japanese cities

The effects of urban agglomeration economies on productivities in two-digit manufacturing industries is estimated using the cross section data of Japanese cities in 1979. Urbanization and localization economies, which are major forms of urban agglomeration economies, are explicitly separated. The estimates of these economies vary considerably among industries. Light industries receive more productive advantages from urbanization economies than from localization economies, but heavy industries experience these economies more from localization economies than from urbanization economies.     

Fixprice-flexprice industries among Malaysian agrobased manufacturing: An input-output approach

Industries can be classified into fixprice sectors according to their pricing behaviour. Although Hicks and Morishima have broadly classified manufacturing industries into fixprice and the rest of the economy into flexprice, using cost-based input-output models, the present paper reclassifies Malaysian agrobased manufacturing into flexprice and nonagrobased manufacturing into fixprice categories. By compiling annual sectoral price indices, both for intermediate and primary inputs, the model estimates sectoral residual profits of 1978 and 1983 vintage technologies.     

Technical efficiency in indian manufacturing industries: An analysis by establishment size

Small industrial units have been assigned a vital role in recent industrial policy pronouncement. The rationale for this emphasis is usually sought to be established in terms of their high labour intensity. This, in our view, is only a partial justification, if a justification at all. If it is shown that a high labour intensity of production does not imply a low technical efficiency, the case for promoting small industrial units would be strengthened.     

Backshoring of production activities in European manufacturing

Backshoring – the movement of manufacturing activities from locations abroad back to the home country – has gained some attention in policy discussions and in academic research in recent years. This paper presents empirical evidence on backshoring from a large sample of European manufacturing firms. The data indicate that backshoring is still uncommon among European firms. Around 4% of all firms in our sample have moved production back to the home country between 2013 and mid-2015. The most frequent reasons for backshoring are the loss of flexibility, a lack in quality of the goods produced abroad, and unemployed capacities at home. Flexibility and quality concerns are, in particular, relevant for firms that move production back from Asian countries. Backshoring is most likely for manufacturers of final products and in high-technology sectors, in particular in electrical equipment, information and communications equipment, and the Automotive industry.     

Optimal production and portfolio investment decisions

This paper takes a further step towards the integration of the theories of production and finance under uncertainty. It sets up a continuous time-diffusion process model of production by firms and portfolio investment by individuals and provides a simultaneous solution to these two decisions. The derived equilibrium conditions, being in the stockholders' interest, are specific in form, and are determined by two factors: attitudes of investors towards risk and the systematic risks of the firm.     

The determinants of foreign direct investment: An analysis of US manufacturing industries

This study explores the determinants of foreign direct investment by analyzing the variation across US manufacturing industries in the extent of outward foreign direct investment. Three types of industry characteristics are hypothesized to explain this variation. Empirical support is found for four sources of ownership-specific advantages favoring foreign direct investment, new technology created through research and development, marketing abilities, organizational techniques and capital cost advantages. Support is found for the role of production scale economies in favoring centralization and hindering foreign direct investment, but results suggest only a weak role for transport costs in favoring decentralization and foreign direct investment. Producer concentration, perhaps reflecting oligopolistic competition, is positively related to foreign direct investment.     

Integrated manufacturing/distribution planning decisions with multiple imprecise goals in an uncertain environment

This work presents a possibilistic linear programming (PLP) method for solving the integrated manufacturing/distribution planning decision (MDPD) problems with multiple imprecise goals in supply chains under an uncertain environment. The imprecise PLP model designed here aims to simultaneously minimize total net costs and total delivery time with reference to available supply, capacities, labor levels, quota flexibility and cost budget constraints at each source, as well as forecast demand and warehouse space at each destination. The proposed method achieves greater computational efficiency by employing the simplified triangular distribution to represent imprecise numbers. An industrial case is used to demonstrate the feasibility of applying the proposed method to a real MDPD problem. Overall, the proposed PLP method provides a practical means of solving the multi-objective MDPD problems in an uncertain environment, and can effectively improve manufacturer/ distributor relationships in a supply chain.     

Investment decisions in manufacturing: assessing the effects of real oil prices and their uncertainty

We investigate the effects of real oil prices and their uncertainty on investment decisions. Making use of plant‐level data, we estimate dynamic, discrete‐choice models that allow modeling investment inaction, under different assumptions related to initial conditions and unobserved heterogeneity. We find that increases in real oil price changes and in real oil price uncertainty significantly reduce the likelihood of investment action, in line with the predictions of irreversible investment theory. We also document that investment decisions exhibit strong, pure state dependence and are also significantly affected by initial conditions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The competitive determinants of a firm's environmental management activities: Evidence from US manufacturing industries

Environmental management (EM) issues have received substantial attention in operations management. While the link between EM practices and firm performance has been well studied, little is known about the competitive drivers of a firm's EM activities. In this research, a Schumpeterian economics perspective is adopted to investigate competitive interactions among leader and challenger firms in the domain of EM, with a particular focus on operational EM activities. Using econometric methods, the empirical analysis of panel data from a broad cross-section of US manufacturing firms reveals that such rivalry does exist and that the effect of a rival's past EM activity on a focal firm's EM activity is greater for more profitable and smaller firms. In addition, firm characteristics such as market leadership, firm size and firm profitability are found to significantly affect the magnitude of a firm's EM activities. This study presents theoretical and empirical evidence of rivalrous behaviors in the domains of EM and OM and, thus, has interesting implications for operations management research and practice.