Economic analysis and priorities of agricultural research

This response to two previous papers in Food Policy argues that cost-benefit analyses of agricultural research have not recognized the constraints on markets for farm produce, which also affect the realization of policy objectives. Policy evaluation could be assisted by economic analysis, but this should not lead to the neglect of non-economic values.     

The FTC in the 1980s

This paper reviews the antitrust activities of Federal Trade Commission during the 1980s with special emphasis on the role of economics and economists. We contrast the FTC during the 1980s to its record in the 1970s and conclude that the agency was more active during the 1980s than is popularly believed. Perhaps more significant than changes in the level of enforcement activity was the agency's move to a more economics-oriented approach to antitrust enforcement and an increased role for Commission economists. The paper also comments on what FTC economists learned about American industry during the 1980s.     

Business and national priorities for industrial development: Intersectoral consensus in Israel

This study describes a survey of experts chosen from Industry, Labour, and Government in Israel, who ranked and scored three business and four national goals in the context of industrial development. The business goals represented profitability, capital use and growth potential. The national goals involved human resource utilization, added value, foreign exchange conservation, and export of technologically advanced products. The findings support a hypothesis of consensus on goals and goal priorities between different sectors of the Israel economy, despite what might appear to be their divergent special interests. The findings also indicate overall consensus with respect to a balance between business and national goals. The study concludes that this consensus is the result of the need to respond to environmental threats and uncertainties which has created a sense of mutual interdependence among the sectors.     

The Wage Premium for Job Seniority During the 1980s and Early 1990s

In this article I use Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data to study whether the rewards for job tenure have fallen since the early 1980s. An upward-sloping seniority-wage profile is generally thought to be an important dimension of compensation during a career. However, recent interest in the incidence of layoffs and changes in the structure of firms gives rise to the possibility that employment contracts are less often being structured to reward tenure or that such contracts are more difficult to honor. Using a two-stage estimator to attempt to control unmeasured individual and job match effects on wages, I find some evidence that the wage premium paid to senior workers has declined moderately. However, I find that these results are mildly sensitive to alternative methods of handling the relatively noisy PSID tenure data.     

Library support for industrial marketing research

The literature of business and management often discusses the need for timely information as a prerequisite to decision-making and planning. The role of the corporate library in supporting management's information needs has rarely been discussed in professional management literature. This article examines the library's role in supporting industrial marketing research. Special reference is made to new technologies that enhance traditional library services.     

Successful industrial innovation: critical factors for the 1990s

Not only is technology changing rapidly, but the process of the commercialisation of technological change—the industrial innovation process—is changing also. The paper traces developments in the dominant perceived model of industrial innovation from the simple linear 'technology push' and 'need pull' models of the 1960s and early 1970s, through the 'coupling model' of the late 1970s to early 1980s, to the 'integrated' model of today. The latter (the 4th Generation innovation process) marked a shift from perceptions of innovation as a strictly sequential process to innovation perceived as a largely parallel process. This shift owed much to observations of innovation processes in leading Japanese corporations. Recent developments indicate the possibilities attainable in the proposed 'strategic integration and networking' model, elements of which are already in place. According to this 5th generation model, innovation is becoming faster; it increasingly involves inter-company networking; and it employs a new electronic toolkit (expert systems and simulation modelling).     

The great school milk conspiracies of the 1980s

Various dairy companies' allocation of school milk contracts using signalling, sham bids to honor incumbency and other devices are examined to determine whether bidding was collusive or pure oligopolistic interdependent behavior following noncooperative game theory. The schemes used to allocate contracts were found to be efficient methods for reaching agreements. Since pure interdependent (noncoorperative) behavior requires rivals to corelate signals, coordinate expectations, and resolve timing-uncertainty problems within sealed-bidding constraints, detailed analysis of the economic evidence of bidding practices requires rejection of a Nash equilibrium explanation for the behavior.     

Patterns of market research timing for new industrial products

The importance of market research to new industrial product ventures has been widely noted, and some evidence has suggested that failure of managers to carry out effective research can increase the probability of new product failure. In planning for market research, a problem facing managers is when market research should be done during the new product development process. In this study, patterns of timing of market research resource expenditures in 112 industrial new product situations were measured, and differences in these patterns related to seven major situational characteristics, marketing task similarity, distribution complexity, competitive advantage, buyer risk, development complexity, project downsides and project payoffs.
Data analysis using MDA revealed significant differences between the patterns of research timing in different new product situations, and related these differences most strongly to marketing task similarity, competitive advantage, and buyer risk. The findings have important implications for managers involved in planning market research activities and resource allocations in new industrial product situations.     

Analysis of agricultural research investment priorities for sustainable poverty reduction in Southeast Asia

Underinvestment in agricultural research remains rife across Southeast Asia, despite the remaining importance of the subregion’s agricultural sector and ample evidence of agricultural technology impact to date. To help identify specific areas where additional investment is most needed, this study compares the impact potential for the poor of alternative agricultural research foci, taking changes in production patterns, consumption patterns and environmental sustainability into account. New spatial data on the distribution of poverty and the expenditure patterns of households below international poverty lines are used to offer more detailed assessment of the poverty relevance of alternative foci than possible previously. Patterns of impact potential are evaluated against evidence of impact to date to discern probabilities of success in achieving potential impacts. Impact patterns discerned are contrasted with current relative funding allocations across research areas in the subregion by National Agricultural Research Systems (NARSs) and International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs) to identify key funding gaps.     

The Role of Principal-Agent Conflicts in the 1980s Thrift Crisis

Agency theory suggests that many of the costs incurred by the taxpayer during the 1980s thrift crisis were the result of conflicts between principals and their agents. This study models the costs associated with three distinct types of agency conflicts involved in closing an insolvent thrift—conflicts between creditors and owners, between owners and managers, and between taxpayers and government officials. Using a model that controls for sample-selection bias, the study presents strong evidence that thrift owners effected wealth transfers from creditors by undertaking high-risk investments, and that government officials pursued policies that increased losses to the thrift deposit insurance fund which ultimately were funded by the taxpayer. The results do not show that managers effected wealth transfers from owners through expense-preference behavior, but rather that inefficient management increased the losses of the deposit insurance fund.