Agglomeration and the export decisions of French firms

This paper asks whether export spillovers influence the export behavior of French manufacturers. I use a database containing export flows by firm and importing country between 1986 and 1992. The decision to start exporting to a particular country is estimated using a logit model, controlling for the specific characteristics of firms, locations, countries and years. The export spillovers identified are industry- and/or destination-specific, and are computed at a very disaggregated geographical level. The results indicate that the pool of local exporters positively affects the decision to start exporting to a country. These effects are clearly destination-specific, and are larger for firms that export to remote markets.     

High-involvement practices and performance of French firms

This article deals with the relationship between human resource practices (HRPs) and firm performances in France. It focuses on four specific HRPs that are able to involve employees: empowerment, compensation, communication and training. Each HRP taken in isolation is supposed to be positively related to performances because it is a source of motivation and commitment for employees. But there also exists a synergy between these practices: when they are combined into a bundle and are implemented all together, they should lead to better firm performances. A survey carried out among 180 human resource managers of large French companies leads to validation of most of our hypotheses. Contrary to previous research, we do not find a significant link between compensation and firm performance. The other HRPs are all indirectly related to financial performances, with social performance playing a mediating role. When they are combined into a bundle, HRPs have a stronger impact on performance than when they are studied individually. The article concludes with the importance of developing a strategic human resource policy and of implementing coherent and complementary high-involvement practices to increase firm performance.     

Oligopoly firms with quantity-price strategic decisions

An agent-based model is used to determine market equilibrium with price-setting firms in an oligopoly market. The agent-based model is designed to match the experimental rules that Brandts and Guillen (J Ind Econ 55:453–474, 2007) used with human subjects. Their model uses posted prices and advance production of a perishable good. When the marginal cost is zero, the analytical Bertrand solution is almost perfect competition. When the marginal cost is nonzero, the game does not have a theoretical equilibrium in pure strategies. The agent-based model results show that with one or two firms, prices are at or near the monopoly level, which matches the human experiments. With four firms, prices are always at the perfectly competitive level when particle swarm optimization is used. Results using a genetic algorithm, however, are noisier than those using the particle swarm optimization, and the genetic algorithm falls short of the competitive solution. The triopoly market changes from mostly monopoly to a price in between monopoly and perfect competition when a marginal cost is added. The computerized agents tend to overproduce so that profits are negative in the three- and four-firm cases when production is costly. While the prices in the simulation are close to those observed in experiments with human subjects, the inefficiency due to overproduction is much greater in the agent-based model results. This result suggests that human agents are able to reach solutions, perhaps through social norms, that are missed by the simple agent-based rules used here.     

The impact of financial and human resources on the export performance of Russian firms

This study contributes to the literature by investigating for the first time the effects of the entrepreneurial environment on export survival in Russia. Using the continuous-time Cox model and discrete-time complementary log-log and probit models, we study the effects of the availability of human and financial resources on export survival across Russian regions between 2002 and 2010. Taking into account uncertainty and time effects reveals that these effects are falling over time and are more important for larger exporters. Thus, there is evidence of a learning curve for exporters when the latter become more efficient in dealing with regional-level resources and the regulatory environment over time.     

The debt-equity financing decisions of U.S. startup firms

We examine the debt-equity decisions of startup firms using the Kauffman Firm Survey, the largest database of U.S. startups launched in 2004. To control for sample selection bias and the correlation among financing decisions, we employ a Bivariate Probit-Tobit model. Our results show that several firm characteristics such as growth prospects, firm size, tangible assets, and selling products, as well as owner characteristics such as net worth, experience, education and ethnicity explain the debt-equity decisions in the startup year. In addition, for firms that use debt, we document traits that explain the use of a particular type of business versus personal debt. Larger firms use more business debt, whereas home-based and growth firms use more personal sources of debt. Immigrants, owners who lack work experience and those who invest more time in the business tend to rely more on personal sources of debt.     

Foreign location decisions by US transnational firms: An empirical study

The paper aims at identifying the variables that are significant in determining the choice of host countries for manufacturing subsidiaries of US transnational firms. The approach that is taken is to relate variables that on the basis on a priori theoretical reasoning influence foreign location decisions, with (a) total market penetration by US firms and (b) the choice these firms make between exporting to their foreign markets and on site manufacturing. Location decisions are viewed as emerging from the interaction of characteristics typical to the industry of the transnational firm and factors specific to potential host countries. Particular attention is devoted to finding out whether locational choices and market shares are interdependent. The sample of observations under investigation consists of the activities of US majority-owned subsidiaries, classified in fourteen industry groupings and operating twenty countries. Sub-samples of countries are also studied. It is found that for the European countries, in particular EEC members, market penetration is dependent on local manufacturing.     

An empirical investigation of going private decisions of U.S. firms

According to many managers, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 caused the costs of being public to increase. Subsequently, following the Act, many firms went private rather than incur the costs. We investigate the differences in the financial characteristics of firms that went private between 1998 and 2003 and a control sample of firms which went public and did not go private Our results indicate that there are differences in the two groups, as well as differences in firms that went private prior to and following Sarbanes-Oxley. Taken together, our results are indicative of going private to avoid the higher costs of being public post Sarbanes-Oxley.     

Transaction organizations and transaction cost analysis: A theoretical investigation of the domain-expansion decisions of firms employing a mediating technology

We use the theory of network externalities in applying transaction cost economics (TCE) to inter-mediator transactions. We propose network specificity as an additional form of asset specificity associated with such transactions. Specifically, we identify and analyze two integration decisions that are distinctive to mediators and that both depend on network specificity: the network integration of nodes and the vertical integration of complement exchange activities. We derive some implications of this for managerial practice, public policy and further research.     

Financial constraints and corporate investments during the current financial and economic crisis: The credit crunch and investment decisions of Slovenian firms

We investigate the effect of financial constraints on the investment decisions of Slovenian firms during the current financial and economic crisis. By estimating the error-correction model and the Euler-equation specification, we found that corporate investments were significantly affected by financial constraints during the crisis. The effect of financial constraints intensified in 2009 and alleviated slightly in 2010, although still being significantly more intense than before the crisis hit the economy. By estimating a switching regression model with unknown sample separation that enabled us to address the problem of judgemental sample separation, we were also able to estimate the error-correction model separately for financially constrained and financially unconstrained firms. The results indicate that financial constraints have a significant effect on both financially constrained and financially unconstrained firms, although corporate investments were more severely affected in financially constrained firms.     

城市群空间结构演化趋势与空间重构——以长株潭城市群为例

随着全球化和区域经济一体化进程的不断推进,未来长株潭城市群区域空间将出现三个趋势:区域一体化、信息化与知识化、生态文明趋势。在此三个趋势的影响下,长株潭城市群必然要进行空间重构,其进行空间重构的措施主要包括:构建区域一体的流动空间体系,构建区域发展所需要的五个支撑网络;构建以生态基础设施为空间分割的组团式空间结构;实现区域等级空间结构的扁平网络化,实现要素流动的无阻隔。在上述三个趋势及措施的指引下,长株潭城市群将增强区域的综合竞争力已实现其作为中部重要增长极的历史重任。     

Employment and wage practices of Japanese firms in the Philippines: convergence with Filipino-Chinese and Western-owned firms

In foreign-owned Philippine firms, human resource approaches and practices tend to converge. Japanese-owned firms localize their human resource practices by emphasizing local standards and practices in compensation, hiring, recruitment, job assignments and the like. On the other hand, Western-owned firms tend to adopt well-known Japanese style practices. Filipino-Chinese-owned firms tend to be traditional, emphasizing both informal and hierarchical control mechanisms which put a premium upon loyalty and trust, through familistic, informal but hierarchical control mechanisms. As the owners of these firms pass on control to the next generation, they tend to hire professional managers. These managers include younger generation Filipino-Chinese educated abroad. They are torn between the rational, and traditional norms and practices insisted upon by their Confucian-oriented elders, and the demands of a competitive and ever-changing technology and economy.

It is quite meaningless to attach adjectives like ‘Japanese’, ‘Filipino-Chinese’ or ‘Western’ to universal concepts like industrial relations and human resource approaches - the search for the best approach in work relations is beyond the issue of convergence or divergence.     

经济集聚与服务业的发展

服务业的发展,不仅可以缓解我国就业压力,而且还有助于优化经济结构,有利于促进产业结构的升级.然而,我国服务业发展相对滞后.很多研究者对这一现象进行了深入地研究,并提出一些有价值的政策建议.本文研究经济集聚对服务业发展的影响.在理论分析中,我们得到了这样的结论:经济集聚程度加强可以促进服务业的发展.用广东省21个地级市2001-2007年的非平衡面板数据所做的实证研究支持了这一结论.这说明.推动经济活动在空间上的集聚可以有效地促进各个地区服务业的发展.     

Evolving corporate governance and firms performance: evidence from Japanese firms

This study is an attempt to investigate the implications of the ownership structure and control transfers in the Japanese corporate market, which are attributed mainly to the government’s liberalization policies during 1990s. It appears that institutional shareholdings—either financial or non-financial corporations—are associated with poor performance, whereas the foreign and domestic private ownerships lead to an improvement in the performance of the firms. We observe that unwinding the cross-shareholding between banks and corporations and mutual transfers among non-financial institutions allows for efficiency gain. Furthermore, the ownership transfer to private and foreign individuals is consistently associated with high market value, which implies that individuals’ transfers lead to an increase in efficiency.     

Small firms and the governance of interorganizational exchange

This article explores some new concepts concerned with the coordination of environmental exchange in small firms. The management of communicative networks is presented as a method supplementary to market steering and administrative coordination of exchange relations. The article is based on the results of in-depth studies of 20 sets of inter-organizational relations in five small firms. The results suggest that the building, maintainance and decoupling of the personal relations in a communicative network affects the costs associated with environmental exchange. Communicative networks make it possible to operate at a higher level of system complexity without increasing the transactions costs or losing any of the small-scale advantages of small firms. In this study the difference between discrete instrumental action and communicative action occupies a central place. Communicative action in networks is based on rationality norms that differ from the pure instrumental action patterns of the marketplace. The manager has to act in accordance with the different personal life spheres of the actors involved. The implications for leader competence managing this kind of relations are discussed.     

Vertical disintegration and the life-cycle of firms and industries

T0he degree of vertical integration experienced by a firm is an important managerial decision variable. It is an issue where there is a distinct lack of unanimity in studies on the economics of organizations. Moreover, studies have tended to ignore the complementary feature of vertical disintegration. This study examines the basic Stigler hypothesis that vertical disintegration is the typical development in growing industries. Using UK data on divestments, the results initially indicated some positive relationship between industry growth and vertical divestment activity; however, when different categories of asset transfer were examined, the Stigler view was rejected in favour of a null hypothesis.     

Mutually related firms and the rationality of producing nothing

This paper considers the pricing and output decisions of firms which are related by the complementary nature of their products. The paper focuses on the problems which may result from non-co-operative behaviour of such firms. At the extreme, it is shown that non-cooperative complementary firms may ‘rationally’ choose to produce nothing. The paper considers the conditions which lead to this market failure result, and whether encouragement by government for the firms to co-operate or merge is required to make the market operate more efficiently.     

Agglomeration,Agriculture, and the Perspective of the Periphery

Abstract

This paper aims at pulling everything related to ‘agriculture’ or the ‘periphery’ a little more into the focus of research. We try to achieve this through surveying the existing theoretical and empirical literature in the field of NEG (New Economic Geography) in order to elaborate its linkages to immobile factors such as land, land-intensive productive activities, agriculture, rural areas, and the periphery. The main features of the broad variety of NEG models are reviewed with a special focus on the theme of agglomeration, which turns out to be vital for rural areas. All of these contributions are then commented on, with the aim of suggesting and discussing some future lines of research in the field.

Agglomération, agriculture, et la perspective de la périphérie

RÉSUMÉ La présente communication s'efforce de placer davantage tout ce qui concerne ‘l'agriculture’ ou la ‘périphérie’ sous l'optique de la recherche. Pour ceci, nous nous efforçons d'examiner de près les ouvrages théoriques et empiriques existants dans le domaine du NEG (New Economic Geography), afin d'en examiner les rapports avec des facteurs immuables comme la terre, les activités de production à utilisation intensive de la terre, l'agriculture, les zones rurales, et la périphérie. On se penche sur les principales caractéristiques du grand nombre de modèles NEG, en mettant tout particulièrement l'accent sur le thème de l'agglomération, qui s'avère jouer un rôle d'importance primordiale pour les zones rurales. On présente ensuite des commentaires sur toutes ces contributions dans le but de proposer certaines filières de recherche futures dans ce domaine, et d'en discuter.

Aglomeración, agricultura y la perspectiva de la periferia

RÉSUMÉ Este trabajo tiene como objetivo poner todo lo relacionado con la ‘agricultura’ o la ‘periferia’ un poco más en el foco de investigación. Intentamos hacerlo a través de una inspección de la bibliografía teórica y empírica existente en el campo NEG (New Economic Geography), con objeto de elaborar sus vínculos con factores inmóviles, tales como el terreno, actividades productivas que requieren terreno, agricultura, áreas rurales y la periferia. Las principales características de la amplia variedad de modelos NEG se revisan con un enfoque especial en el tema de la aglomeración, que resulta tener una importancia vital para las áreas rurales. Seguidamente, todas estas contribuciones se comentan con el propósito de sugerir y discutir líneas futuras de investigación en el campo.

     

Exit, selection, and the value of firms

This paper studies a competitive dynamic model with firm level uncertainty and derives implications for the distribution of firm values and Tobin's q. Allowing for entry and exit, the model determines endogenously the degree of selection. A consequence of this selection is that average industry q values are biased above one. As parameters describing the technology and firm level uncertainty are changed, the equilibrium distribution for q values changes. This comparative statics is developed in the paper.