The effect of environmental dynamism on returns to inventory leanness

This paper adds to the empirical inventory management literature by examining the moderating effects of environmental dynamism on the relationship between inventory leanness and financial performance. While the financial implications of inventory management practices have been extensively studied in the literature, it is clear that lean inventory strategies may not have the same payoff for all firms in all industries. Grounded in inventory theory, this study explores how firm characteristics and environmental dynamism—measured in terms of innovative intensity, demand uncertainty and competitive intensity—moderate the inventory leanness–performance link. We use hierarchical linear modeling to analyze a data set of 5749 firm-year observations from 123 U.S. manufacturing industries. In line with the hypotheses set forth, the results indicate that innovative intensity in an industry increases the effect of inventory leanness on firm performance while competitive intensity has the opposite effect. The hypothesis with respect to the moderating role of demand uncertainty is not supported. Another interesting and important finding is that inventory leanness accounts for nearly one third of the variation in firm performance after controlling for firm size and growth, thus underlining the importance of efficient and effective inventory management for overall firm success.     

Joint Ventures in the U.S. Steel Industry:

A bstract . In 1958 Daniel Fusfeld examined the role of joint ventures in the U.S. steel industry and concluded that joint ventures served as a substitute for mergers forbidden by the Justice Department. Since the Fusfeld study, things have changed drastically for integrated domestic producers. Competition from imports and domestic mini- mills have forced steel firms into bankruptcies and missive plant closings. The contemporary industry's participation in joint ventures is examined in an attempt to understand steel's restructuring. Today's integrated producers jointly may hold tighter control over raw materials, participate in growing numbers of horizontal Joint ventures , and engage in numerous cooperative enterprises with foreign competitors, particularly the Japanese. Contemporary U.S. producers are becoming increasingly absorbed in the global economy.     

Home bias and U.S. imports of processed food products

This article estimates the degree of home bias for U.S. imported food products using an Armington model (Armington, 1969), and then assesses some of its determinants. Empirical results indicate that a very strong bias toward domestic products significantly limits foreign imports of the same type of products, and that without home bias, imports would increase several-fold. The degree of home bias is found to be higher in industries with co-location of raw agricultural production, delivery of mostly finished rather than intermediate food products, protection by high non-tariff barriers, and importation from neighboring countries (Mexico and Canada).     

造船业低谷徘徊

在世界造船业供需矛盾逐步显现、新船订单不断减少、新船价格持续下跌的大背景下,我国的造船业还将面临巨大的挑战。2011航运市场的低迷表现产生了强大的传导效应,尤其是航运业上游的造船业深受影响,从目前来看,2011国内造船业全年低迷已成定局。记者从中国船舶工业行业协     

论我国大豆产业安全问题及对策

我国是大豆主产国之一。早期,我国大豆自给有余,且有大量出口。近年来,国内大豆供应严重短缺,必须扩大进口来平衡国内市场的供需矛盾。同时,外资大举进军我国大豆加工业,我国大豆产业面临严峻的产业安全问题。针对上述问题探讨实现我国大豆产业安全的对策。     

Pricing-to-market in U.S. imports and exports: A time series and cross-sessional study

This paper provides a comparative study of how U.S. imports and exports prices react to exchange rate changes. It finds, through time series analyses, that while both U.S. and foreign exporters price to market, foreign exporters in general absorb a large portion of exchange rate changes by themselves while U.S. exporters pass through most of the exchange rate change to foreign currency prices. Pricing behavior of U.S. imports and, to a lesser extent, of U.S. exports varies across industries and such variation relates to industry characteristics such as market shares, product d differentiation, and capital-to-labor ratio.     

从FCF看中国外贸均衡发展

全球经济危机迫使中国经济降低了对国外市场的依赖程度。制造业也同样必须适应国际需求的变化。外国子公司的加工出口容易受到西方需求放缓的影响,而中国的出口企业却在转型进入活跃的新兴市场中处于有利地位。同时,中国的一般进口正日益增长。亚洲国家扩大了其国内市场的份额,欧洲国家也留有强势地位,而北美国家却失去了自己的市场。中国成为了区域经济增长的动力。在中国的进口及工业生产中,外资企业起到了越来越重要的作用。中国对外国直接投资的政策与确定外国伙伴进入其国内市场的汇率政策至少是同等重要的。     

U.S.-Japan automobile trade: A Bayesian test of a product life cycle

Using Bayesian procedures for gradual switching regression models we estimate shifts in production and demand functions. We find that by 1970 the Japanese automobile industry had attained an efficient mass production process and was ready to meet the shift in the U.S. demand for Japanese cars.     

A measure of a nation's physical energy supply risk

Along with the oil price, concerns about the security of energy supply have soared once again in recent years. Yet, some 40 years after the OPEC oil embargo in 1973, there is no widely accepted statistical measure that captures the notion of energy security. Most likely, this deficit is the result of the great variety of resource economic aspects that are of potential relevance. This paper develops a statistical risk indicator that aims at characterizing the physical energy supply vulnerability of nations that are heavily dependent on energy imports. Our risk indicator condenses the empirical information on the imports of the whole range of fossil fuels, originating from a multitude of export countries, as well as data on their indigenous contribution to domestic energy supply, into a single figure. Applying the proposed concept to energy data on Germany and the U.S. (1980–2007), we find that there is a large gap in the supply risks between both countries, with Germany suffering much more from a tight energy supply situation today than the U.S.     

The impact of deviation from relative purchasing power parity equilibrium on U.S. foreign direct investment

Analyzing inbound and outbound foreign direct investment (FDI) between the U.S. and seven developed countries over the period from 1994 to 2004, this study provides strong evidence for a positive relationship between aggregate FDI flows and a strengthening of a home currency. Further, taking exchange rate disequilibrium into account, we find that an increase in U.S. inbound FDI is related to a strengthening of an undervalued and overvalued U.S. dollar, while an increase in U.S. outbound FDI (foreign inbound FDI) is mainly related to a strengthening of an overvalued foreign currency. Disaggregate FDI flow data show that these findings hold mainly for the manufacturing (food and machinery) and the wholesale industry. We argue that our findings may provide evidence for a co-existence of the wealth-effect hypothesis and a more profit and production oriented hypothesis, once the U.S. dollar is undervalued. Additionally, the results support the argument that the profit and production oriented hypothesis dominates the wealth effect in developed countries, especially in the manufacturing and wholesale industry. Moreover, the results support the view that foreign investors are interested in how overvalued or undervalued a currency is, rather than being interested only in the recent direction of change in the exchange rate. Finally, all findings are robust with respect to several estimation procedures.     

Risk aversion, generalized correlation and investment in manufacturing capacities

This study analyzes the relationship between product demand correlation and risk on the investment in dedicated and flexible manufacturing capacities. It is proved that for a risk averse (or risk neutral) decision-maker, increased generalized correlation between output demands reduces the values of both dedicated and flexible manufacturing investments for all multivariate distributions. It is shown that no such monotonic relationship generally exists for the capacities themselves because of an economic tradeoff between risk and return. It is also proved that increased generalized correlation reduces the value of flexible capacity relative to dedicated capacity for the risk-neutral decision maker. However, contrary to the extant literature, flexible capacity is still shown to be potentially valuable even if product demands are perfectly positively correlated. Finally, it is shown that increases in the risk of product demand, holding correlation (of product demand) constant, reduces the value of the investment in manufacturing capacities when output demands are either jointly normal or independent.     

The effect of exchange rate volatility on U.S. bilateral trade with Africa: A symmetric and asymmetric analysis

The impact of exchange rate volatility on U.S. trade with the world or on U.S. trade with major partners has been assessed by many researchers, but none have considered the case of U.S. trade with African nations. We fill this gap by assessing the symmetric and asymmetric impact of the real bilateral exchange rate volatility between the U.S. dollar and each African partner’s currency on the U.S. trade flows with each of the 20 partners from Africa. We found asymmetric short-run effects of exchange rate volatility on almost all U.S. exports to and imports from each of the 20 countries. In addition, significant long-run asymmetric effects were discovered in the case of U.S. exports to 15 countries and U.S. imports from 12 countries. Our findings are partner-specific.     

浅论新时期国内石油供需形势与发展战略

迅速增长的石油消费需求和国内原油产量的有限,使中国原油供应很大一部分要依靠进口,要想进一步确保中国能源供给尤其是石油安全,通常有三种发展战略可供选择:一是合理并有效利用国际石油资源,继续依赖进口的同时,到国外参与油田开发;二是加紧国内现有主力油田的二次和三次开发,利用现代各种石油开采技术,深层挖掘石油资源;三是加强国内小油田的开发,以缓解主力油田承受的巨大的产能压力。     

The impact of imports and exports on domestic markets: An approach to detecting the relationships

This paper poses the question of whether it is possible to identify whether imports can exert an identifiable constraint on the pricing behavior of domestic producers of a good. A methodology is proposed and implemented for doing precisely this. In particular a model of the cement market in the United States is estimated and the impact of price on market behavior explored. The conclusion suggests that, at least for cement, imports have the predicted relationships. Finally, the question of whether the market model constructed is stable in the statistical sense is addressed. Only the export relationship is problematic.     

Productivity trends in U.S. manufacturing: Evidence from the NQ and AIM cost functions

In this paper, we take the econometric approach to productivity measurement in United States manufacturing, using KLEM data over the period from 1953 to 2001. We are also interested in technical change bias, price elasticities, and elasticities of substitution in the U.S. manufacturing industry. We present an empirical comparison and evaluation of the effectiveness of four well-known flexible cost functions—the locally flexible generalized Leontief (see Diewert [1971. An application of the Shephard duality theorem: a generalized Leontief production function. Journal of Political Economy 79, 481–507]), translog (see Christensen et al. [1975. Transendendal logarithmic utility functions. American Economic Review 65, 367–364]), and normalized quadratic (see Diewert and Wales [1987. Flexible functional forms and global curvature conditions. Econometrica 55, 43–68])—and the globally flexible asymptotically ideal model (see Barnett et al. [1991. Semi-nonparametric Bayesian estimation of the asymptotically ideal production model. Journal of Econometrics 49, 5–50]), the latter modified to introduce technical change by means of Thomsen's [2000. Short cuts to dynamic factor demand modelling. Journal of Econometrics 97, 1–23] factor-augmenting efficiency index approach.     

Gasoline prices,transport costs,and the U.S. business cycles

The effects of gasoline prices on the U.S. business cycles are investigated. In order to distinguish between gasoline supply and gasoline demand shocks, the price of gasoline is endogenously determined through a transportation sector that uses gasoline as an input of production. The model is estimated for the U.S. economy using five macroeconomic time series, including data on transport costs and gasoline prices. The results show that although standard shocks in the literature (e.g., technology shocks, monetary policy shocks) have significant effects on the U.S. business cycles in the long run, gasoline supply and demand shocks play an important role in the short run.     

A Disaggregated Econometric Model Based on Flexible Functional Forms

This paper introduces an econometric input—output model for Western Germany in a disaggregation of 12 commodities and sectors. The ‘Jorgenson’-type equilibrium model is based on flexible functional forms on the supply and on the demand side of the commodity markets. For intermediate demand, the relationship between the translog function and its special cases—the Cobb-Douglas function— is exploited. Prices and production are endogenized by market-clearing conditions. The fully integrated model also endogenizes capital accumulation, a rudimental govern-ment budget and income distribution, as well as wages and labour demand on rationed labour markets. The results of a dynamic ex post simulation show that the model is able to depict the sectoral economic development in Germany in the sample period from 1970 to 1986.     

Impact of uncertainty on high frequency response of the U.S. stock markets to the Fed's policy surprises

This paper examines the impact of uncertainty on estimated response of stock returns to U.S. monetary policy surprise. This is motivated by the Lucas island model which suggests an inverse relationship between the effectiveness of a policy and the level of uncertainty in the economy. Using high frequency daily data from the Federal funds futures market, we first estimate the response of S&P 500 stock returns to monetary policy surprises within the time varying parameter (TVP) model. We then analyze the relationship of these time varying estimates with the benchmark VIX index and alternative measures of uncertainty. Evidence suggests a significant negative relationship between the level of uncertainty and the time varying response of S&P 500 stock returns to unanticipated changes in the interest rate. Thus, at higher levels of uncertainty the impact of monetary policy shocks on stock markets is lower. The results are robust to different measures of uncertainty.     

Forecasting competitive behavior: An assessment of AT&T's incentive to extend its U.S. network

Competitive analysis is used to forecast how, where and when AT&T will integrate backward into the production of its own local access. By using a net present value framework to model AT&T's decision on whether to create additional capacity for collecting and distributing its long-distance traffic, a realistic assessment of the scope and timing of such action is achieved. Thus, a technique outside the usual class of those used in U.S. telecommunications demand forecasting is applied. The effects of two local exchange company rate structures for switched access are compared. Revenue at risk to a local exchange company totaled approximately $267 million for rates in effect, as compared to $100 million under a flattened rate structure.     

The response of decentralized health services to demand uncertainty and the role of political parties in the Spanish public health system

Decentralization of the public health system should lead to health resources being managed more in line with citizens’ preferences. A decentralized system is more flexible in that it can better adapt resources to local needs. Moreover, if regional political parties have responsibility for public health policies, citizens will be able to elect those parties whose positions are more in line with their preferences. However, the role of political parties in public health management has received little attention in the literature. Focusing on the decision to provide reserve service capacity to deal with demand uncertainty, we analyse whether there have been differences between central and decentralized health authorities in Spain and whether these can be explained to some extent by the way different political parties manage the trade-off between being able to cover demand and the economic costs involved. Using data on Spanish public hospitals for the period 1996–2006, we model the difference between observed and potential output using an output-oriented distance function. Reserve capacity is modelled as a function of demand uncertainty, economic costs and the political party in power. We find differences in the way resources are managed by central government and decentralized authorities, even within the same political party. We also find differences between the decentralized authorities themselves according to the political party in power. We conclude that decentralization of public health in Spain has provided regional political authorities with greater flexibility to manage reserve capacity in line with citizens’ needs and preferences.