A Statistical Equilibrium Approach to the Distribution of Profit Rates

Motivated by classical political economy we detail a probabilistic, ‘statistical equilibrium’ approach to explaining why even in equilibrium, the equalization of profit rates leads to a non‐degenerate distribution. Based on this approach we investigate the empirical content of the profit rate distribution for previously unexamined annual firm level data comprising over 24,000 publicly listed North American firms for the period 1962–2014. We find strong evidence for a structural organization and equalization of profit rates on a relatively short time scale both at the economy wide and one‐ and two‐digit SIC industry levels into a Laplace or double exponential distribution. We show that the statistical equilibrium approach is consistent with economic theorizing about profit rates and discuss research questions emerging from this novel look at profit rate distributions. We also highlight the applicability of the underlying principle of maximum entropy for inference in a wide range of economic topics.     

Distribution Equity: Creating Value through Managing Knowledge Relationships with Distribution Channels

We introduce the concept of distribution equity torepresent the asset value of a distribution relationship. Distributionequity is characterized as the increase in options value ofmarketing opportunities that result when a firm effectively utilizesits knowledge relationships with an existing distribution channelpartner to create and market its products. By providing a frameworkcharacterizing various forms of knowledge in a channel partnerrelationship and the ways in which they can increase the optionsvalue of a firm's product development and marketing opportunities,we provide a framework for improving the management of distributionequity.     

Dual Distribution and the Penrose Effect

This paper develops an approach to analyzing an equilibrium in markets where firms can choose dual distribution to sell their products. Dual distribution involves a firm selling its product both through company-owned stores and through independently owned franchises. For a monopoly firm, the use of company-owned stores is assumed to play a number of roles. When the total number of markets is variable, an increase in company-owned stores can signal the quality of the product to potential franchisees, increasing the total number of markets served by the monopolist. Additional company-owned stores may also increase the royalty rate received by the franchisor, as well as increase demand in the local markets. There are limits, however, to the benefits of company ownership, called the “Penrose Effect.” For an equilibrium to exist, the monopoly firm must have no incentive to alter the the number of company-owned stores vis-à-vis franchised stores. The approach taken here yields a number of testable implications, which can form the basis of empirical tests of dual distribution.     

Distribution Channel Management in an Internet Age: Equilibrium and Social Welfare

This paper considers the conditions under which a monopoly manufacturer selling through independent retailers in a spatial market will add an Internet distribution channel (an e-channel), and analyzes the effect this would have on consumer surplus and social welfare. We find that an e-channel will be added only if consumer??s travel costs are high and the e-retailer??s delivery costs are low. Such double-channel operation will decrease consumer surplus if in the pre-entry case the market is fully covered by brick-and-mortar retailers. If instead the market is partially covered and delivery costs are sufficiently high, it will not decrease any consumer??s surplus. When delivery costs are low, social welfare will be improved by profitable double-channel operation even if consumer surplus is harmed by it. Finally, double-channel operation could be Pareto superior even if delivery costs are high.     

Entrepreneurial Judgment,Decision Procedure and the Inevitable Emergence of the Non‐optimizing Firm in a Capitalist Economy

It has been argued that understanding of entrepreneurship and firm behavior can be advanced by generalizing the static theory of the neoclassical firm so that it can deal with conditions in a dynamic economy. The paper rejects generalization and explains why such a shift causes the nature of the allocation process to change from the neoclassical pattern. Under generalization, critical information becomes prohibitively costly to obtain and entrepreneurial judgment rather than the Pareto rules decides allocation. Thus, the non‐optimizing firm becomes dominant.     

Pareto-superior trade policy

Current literature shows the welfare superiority of ad valorem over specific tariffs or domestic governments facing foreign monopolists. This note establishes the stronger result that, for any given specific tariff imposed on a foreign monopoly, there exists an ad valorem tariff that Pareto dominates it - that produces larger profit for the foreign firm as well as larger tariff revenue and consumer surplus for the domestic economy. This Pareto ranking can be extended to the case of foreign Cournot oligopoly under certain market conditions.     

Welfare gains from Foreign Direct Investment through technology transfer to local suppliers

We hypothesize that multinational firms operating in emerging markets transfer technology to local suppliers to increase their productivity and to lower input prices. To avoid hold-up by any single supplier, the foreign firm must make the technology widely available. This technology diffusion induces entry and more competition which lowers prices in the supply market. As a result, not just the foreign-owned firm, but all firms downstream of that supply market obtain lower prices. We test this hypothesis using a panel dataset of Indonesian manufacturing establishments. We find strong evidence of productivity gains, greater competition, and lower prices among local firms in markets that supply foreign entrants. The technology transfer is Pareto improving — output and profits increase for firms in both the supplier and buyer sectors. Further, the technology transfer generates an externality that benefits buyers in other sectors downstream from the supply sector as well. This externality may provide a justification for policy intervention to encourage foreign investment.     

Distribution Channel Decentralization and Strategic Durability Choice

In a simple two‐period setting we examine a decentralized distribution (marketing) channel consisting of an up‐stream durable‐goods manufacturer and down‐stream retailer. The manufacturer sets the wholesale price and the product’s durability while the retailer selects an output level. We show that in this setting, the profit‐maximizing manufacturer unambiguously selects a higher durability than the socially efficient (cost‐minimizing) level in both uncommitted sales and rental markets. We show this ‘reversed planned obsolescence’ result is due to the strategic benefit of durability in this double‐marginalization (double monopoly mark‐up) setting. This is in stark contrast to the usual integrated channel result where the profit‐maximizing manufacturer will select an efficient level of durability in rental markets and an inefficiently low durability in uncommitted sales markets (due to the selling firm’s commitment problem with potential buyers). Intuitively, with a decentralized distribution channel, the manufacturer faces potential commitment problems with both current buyers and its down‐stream retailer. We show, only in cases where both sources of commitment issues are removed (i.e. the manufacturer can credibly commit to both potential buyers and its retailer), will the profit‐maximizing durability choice be socially efficient.     

Dividend policy and capital structure of a defaultable firm

Default risk significantly affects the corporate policies of a firm. We develop a model in which a limited liability entity subject to default at an exponential random time jointly sets its dividend policy and capital structure to maximize the expected lifetime utility from consumption of risk‐averse equity investors. We give a complete characterization of the solution to the singular stochastic control problem. The optimal policy involves paying dividends to keep the ratio of firm's equity value to investors' wealth below a critical threshold. Dividend payout acts as a precautionary channel to transfer wealth from the firm to investors for mitigation of losses in the event of default. Higher the default risk, more aggressively the firm leverages and pays dividends.     

基于GPD的稳健贝叶斯压缩感知ISAR成像方法

现有贝叶斯压缩感知（Bayesian Compressed Sensing,BCS）-逆合成孔径雷达(Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar,ISAR)成像算法中先验分布模型不能很好地满足可压缩性,导致成像精度随脉冲数目的减小、高斯噪声的增强而急剧下降。为此,提出了一种基于广义Pareto分布改进BCS成像方法(Improving BCS imaging based on GPD,IGPCS)。该方法主要在BCS框架下利用广义Pareto先验分布替代传统的广义Gaussian先验分布,以增强模拟信号的稀疏先验和可压缩性。进一步地,为了克服后验概率模型计算困难等问题,采用最大后验（Maximum A Posteriori,MAP）方法对超参数进行估计。通过对Mig-25小型飞机的ISAR模拟实验表明,与传统方法相比,IGPCS方法能够获取极高的成像精度,并且对低脉冲数、强高斯噪声环境具有较强的鲁棒性。     

Entrepreneurial spawning and knowledge-based perspective: a meta-analysis

Entrepreneurial spawning is the transitory process by which employees of an existing firm leave their employment to initiate a new business venture. There is a lack of consensus regarding the predictors of entrepreneurial spawning. We used meta-analysis to analyze 28 studies (with 128 effect sizes) to examine the predictors of entrepreneurial spawning. Based on knowledge-based perspective, we hypothesize that employee characteristics (age, education, and job position) and parent firm characteristics (firm age, firm performance, and firm diversity) are significantly related to entrepreneurial spawning. We identified two inverted U-shaped relationships (age and tenure with entrepreneurial spawning) based on our meta-analytic hierarchical multiple regression analyses. Based on labor market rigidity perspectives, we also examined how country region (North America versus Europe) moderates the relationships between employee characteristics and entrepreneurial spawning and between parent firm characteristics and entrepreneurial spawning. Our paper provides theoretical and practical implications.     

中外合资企业控制权分配与绩效关系的实证研究

合资企业契约的不完备性决定了控制问题是合资企业的核心问题,合理的控制权结构可以帮助合资企业的母公司实现自己的战略目标,并且保持竞争优势。与之前研究不同的是,本文通过引入分割控制的概念,利用106家中外合资企业的数据对控制权分配与绩效之间的关系进行了实证检验。研究发现,合资企业的中方只对某些经营活动进行控制的分割控制,最有利于合资企业的中方实现战略意图。     

Foreign direct investment and customs union: Incentives for multilateral tariff cooperation over free trade

The present article examines the implications of a customs union (CU) on the pattern of tariffs, welfare and the prospects for free trade when the non-member firm has an incentive to engage in foreign direct investment (FDI). First, I show that upon the formation of a bilateral CU, the non-member firm has greater incentives to engage in FDI. However, when FDI becomes a feasible entry option for the non- member firm under a CU, member countries have incentives to strategically induce export over FDI by lowering their joint external tariff. When fixed set-up cost of FDI is sufficiently low, this tariff falls below Kemp–Wan tariff and CU leads to a Pareto improvement relative to no agreement. Moreover, using an infinite repetition of the one-shot tariff game under a CU, I show that the presence of FDI incentive of the non-member firm makes the member countries more willing to cooperate multilaterally over free trade while the opposite is true for the non-member country. Finally, I find that, unless fixed cost of having an additional plant is sufficiently low, multilateral cooperation over free trade is easier to sustain when FDI incentive is present.     

A reappraisal of strategic trade policies with the endogenous mode of competition under vertical structures

This paper examines the endogenous choice of competition mode with strategic export policies in vertically related markets when each upstream firm located in each country determines the terms of the two-part tariff contract by maximizing generalized Nash bargaining. We show that (i) choosing Cournot (Bertrand) competition is the dominant strategy for both downstream firms when goods are substitutes (complements), which leads Pareto superior regardless of the nature of goods under the optimal trade policies; (ii) irrespective of rival’s competition mode, the optimal trade policy is an export subsidy under Cournot competition and an export tax under Bertrand competition; and (iii) trade liberalization may give rise to changes of competition mode and increase of social welfare.     

Invariances and Diversities in the Patterns of Industrial Evolution: Some Evidence from Italian Manufacturing Industries

This work explores and compares some basic properties of corporate growth process at both aggregate manufacturing level and disaggregated sectoral levels. Using an extensive dataset on Italian manufacturing firms, we investigate which properties of firm growth dynamics are robust under disaggregation. We compare the results obtained with three different definitions of firm size, namely total sales, number of employees and value added. Our analysis suggests that while different sectors are characterized by significant differences in firm size distributions, in the degrees of concentration and in the autoregressive structure of the growth processes, there are also regularities which hold across all of them, such as the approximate unit root nature of the growth process and the power exponential shape of the growth rates density. Together, these “stylized facts” suggest challenging puzzles on the drivers of corporate growth and the resulting industrial structures.     

Choice of Distribution System in the New Zealand Life Insurance Industry

Using 1988–93 panel data drawn from the New Zealand life insurance industry, this paper examines empirically the notion that the choice of distribution system is an efficient contracting solution to incentive conflicts between owners, managers and sales agents in life insurance firms. Consistent with what was hypothesised, the empirical results suggest that choice of distribution system is distinguished by organisational form, firm size, and sales commission. However, contrary to expectations, the variables representing product diversity and asset specificity were found not to be statistically significant. The empirical results thus lend mixed support for prior predictions.     

Age or size? Contributions to job creation

Small firms have been identified as drivers of job creation, although the evidence on their contribution to net employment growth has been disputed. This article shows that job turnover and firm growth vary systematically across firm size groups and that smaller firms do indeed make an important contribution to new job creation. There is a significant caveat, however; we find that it is not firm size per se that is driving these results but rather firm age. We show that younger firms are consistently more dynamic than older firms. We also find a strong inverse relationship between employment growth and size for young firms, but this declines very markedly for older age groups. This provides some support for the Gibrat’s law prediction that size and growth are independent, but only once the firm has moved beyond the start-up stage.     

The Evolution of the Distribution of Plant Size: Evidence from Luxemburg

In a recent paper, [Cabral, L. M. B. and J. Mata, 2003, American Economic Review, 93, 1075–1090] using Portuguese manufacturing data have shown for the first time that the plant size distribution is significantly right-skewed at the early part of the life cycle and then changes to become more log-normal. Using a similar proxy for plant age we compare this stylised fact for both Luxembourg manufacturing and services. Use of plants’ true age, however, reveals that the size distribution reverses back towards right-skewness for very old plants. We confirm the finding that the right-skewness is likely driven by financial constraints. The first author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the National Research Fund of Luxembourg. We are grateful for comments by an anonymous referee.     

Age and firm growth: evidence from three European countries

This article provides new insights into the dependence of firm growth on age along the entire distribution of growth rates, and conditional on survival. Using data from the European firms in a global economy survey, and adopting a quantile regression approach, we uncover evidence for a sample of French, Italian and Spanish manufacturing firms with more than ten employees in the period from 2001 to 2008. We find that: (1) young firms grow faster than old firms, especially in the highest growth quantiles; (2) young firms face the same probability of declining as their older counterparts; (3) results are robust to the inclusion of other firms’ characteristics such as labor productivity, capital intensity and the financial structure; (4) high growth is associated with younger chief executive officers and other attributes that capture the attitude of the firm toward growth and change. The effect of age on firm growth is rather similar across countries.