Margins, concentration, unions and the business cycle : Theory and evidence for Britain

A number of recent studies have examined the cyclical relationship between price-cost margins, concentration and unions. U.S. data has concluded that unions reduce margins; margins vary over the cycle; and concentration, unionisation and the cycle interact in their effect on margins. However, there is almost no theory to account for these results. We propose a simple theory that assumes only that there is overhead labour present at the firm. This produces theoretical predictions that can explain these results, and discriminate between existing theories. We present results of our own using U.K. panel data, and show similar findings to the U.S.     

Falling margins and rising costs

Several recent papers have examined the way that industrial price-cost margins have evolved over time in response to changing demand and competitive conditions. This paper discusses a rationale for the inclusion of a third determining factor — changing unit costs. Time series analysis of a sample of seven oligopolistic industries indicates that in all cases, shocks to unit costs do play an important and statistically significant role in determining the margin. Moreover, the longer term trend in unit costs is also found to have a negative relationship with the margin, in five industries significant. This finding helps explain the decline in price-cost margins in high concentration industries in the 1970s, and provides some micro-level support for the hypothesis of an aggregate profit squeeze in the U.S. manufacturing sector over that period.This paper is drawn in part from the second essay of my Doctoral Dissertation. I would like to thank, without implicating, the members of my committee: Thomas Weisskopf, Stephen Salant, Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, Severin Borenstein, and Valerie Suslow. Ralph Bradburd and an anonymous referee also provided helpful comments.     

The Impact of High Tech Production Techniques on Productivity and Profitability in Selected U.S. Manufacturing Industries

This paper examines the impact of high technology onmultifactor productivity and price-cost margins. Principal components obtained from five technologyvariables are related to multifactor productivityand price-cost margin. A negative and significantrelationship between price-cost margin and hightechnology methods when industry effects areexcluded, becomes insignificant in the industryeffects specification. The price-cost marginequations suggest that prior findings of a negativerelationship between profitability and hightechnology may result from omitting industryeffects. For multifactor productivity, there is apositive impact from high technology regardless ofwhether the specification includes industry effects.     

Consumer responses to front-of-package labeling in the presence of information spillovers

Voluntary nutrition labeling, a means of nutrition quality disclosure, was introduced in the U.S. over the last decade by leading food manufacturers, primarily in the form of front-of-package (FOP) labeling. This article examines how consumer responses to FOP labeling via product participation and information spillovers shift consumer demand across competing products. Applying a random coefficient logit demand model to sales data from the U.S. ready-to-eat cereal market (RTEC) empirically confirms a positive participation effect of FOP and a strong negative spillover effect on non-participating products. Further results indicate that the participation and spillover effects are stronger for healthy RTECs than they are for unhealthy ones. Moreover, ignoring such effects leads to underestimation of consumer valuation of FOP labeling for participating products, higher own-price elasticities of demand and lower price-cost margins. The findings also suggest that an incentive in a firm’s voluntary participation in self-regulated labeling programs is to avoid negative treatment externalities and that less health-conscious consumers are not influenced by spillover effects. Overall, this article highlights the importance of including spillover effects in the evaluation of FOP programs and that FOP can play a positive role in improving the healthfulness of consumer choices.     

Testing the Competitive Environment and the Persistence of Profits Hypotheses

In the present paper I examine Brozen's (1970, 1971a, b, c, 1982) Competitive Environment Hypothesis and Mueller's (1977) Persistence of Profits Hypothesis in the Greek manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1984. The analysis reveals a positive (market power) association between past and current price-cost margins, although a considerable scrambling in the ranks of price-cost margins takes place over time. A high concentration and high barriers to entry sub-sample of markets examined, showed a general reduction in concentration, barriers to entry and a mobility in price-cost margins ranks, indicating that disciplinary competitive forces are also at work within manufacturing markets.     

制造业外资进入与市场势力波动:竞争还是垄断

对外资市场效应的评估和计量是处理好外资政策、产业政策和反垄断政策关系的重要问题。本文采用中国1999—2010年28个两位数和447个四位数代码制造业面板数据,首先估计了两位数代码制造业的市场势力水平,然后进一步考察外资进入的市场效应,并测度外资引致的福利变动。研究表明:制造业各行业存在显著的市场势力,但金融危机前后市场势力溢价水平波动较大。全样本结果显示制造业市场势力溢价约为6.2%,但金融危机前样本证实市场势力溢价高达22.1%。细分产业中,外资的竞争效应占主导,但在部分产业中外资表现出了反竞争效应。制造业总体层面上,外资进入与市场势力波动之间呈现U形非线性关系,拐点稳定在外资比重为47.3%—54.0%的区间内。从福利角度看,外资进入的竞争效应,使得垄断带来的无谓损失减少了3334.70亿元;但FDI的反竞争效应使得相应行业垄断福利损失增加2407.45亿元。     

Antecedents and Consequences of Information Technology Usage in NPD: A Comparison of Dutch and U.S. Companies*

This study examines information technology (IT) usage for new product development (NPD) in a global context. Specifically, this research seeks to ascertain the factors that influence IT usage and the relationship between IT usage and new product performance in two different countries—the United States and the Netherlands. The interest here is in discovering if, and how, these relationships may be different depending on the country within which the NPD effort is undertaken. Employing a mail survey methodology, the present study uses data from a sample of U.S. practitioner members from the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) and new product managers from Dutch manufacturing companies to examine the effect of IT infrastructure, IT embeddedness, NPD process formalization, colocation, outsourcing of NPD projects, and length of time on the job on the extent of IT usage. The data are also used to explore the impact of IT usage on speed to market and market performance. The results indicate that IT embeddedness and NPD process formalization positively influence IT usage in both the United States and the Netherlands. Colocation and length of time on the job are negatively associated with IT usage only in Dutch firms. Similarly, outsourcing of NPD projects is positively related to IT usage only in U.S. firms. Finally, IT usage has a positive relationship with speed to market in the Netherlands and with market performance in the United States. An important implication of the present study is that IT usage does impact speed to market and market performance, confirming anecdotal evidence. However, these relationships are not the same in each country. Moreover, the antecedents to IT usage also vary by country. Thus, the precursors and consequences of IT usage in NPD are context specific. Another implication of this research is that unless IT is embedded into the NPD process, it is unlikely that the benefits of IT will come to fruition. Finally, this study suggests that as firms use more globally dispersed teams for NPD and outsource more of their development activities, IT usage is likely to increase to facilitate communication and cooperation.     

Domestic concentration,foreign trade and economic performance

In a competitive fringe model the impact of concentration on price-cost margins can be shown to be ambiguous. Therefore, looking at the relationship between rates of return and concentration ratios is not sufficient for perceiving collusive elements. In this paper a model is set up that permits discerning collusion more clearly. Additional evidence concerning collusion can be gained by analyzing the influence of exports and imports on price-cost margins. Applying this approach to West Germany yields the result that the collusiveness prevailing in domestic markets has not visibly decreased in spite of a substantial increase in foreign trade.     

Estimation of price-cost margins and union bargaining power for Belgian manufacturing

This paper extends Hall's (1988) [Hall, R.E., 1988. The relationship between price and marginal cost in US industry, Journal of Political Economy, 96, 921–947] methodology to analyze imperfections in both the product and the labor market for firms in the Belgian manufacturing industry over the period 1988–1995. We investigate the heterogeneity in price-cost mark-up and workers' bargaining power parameters among 18 sectors within the manufacturing industry as well as the relationship between both parameters. Using a sample of more than 7000 firms, our GMM results indicate that ignoring imperfection in the labor market leads to an underestimation of the price-cost margin evaluated at perfect competition in the labor market. These findings are confirmed in the sectoral analysis. Sectors with higher workers' bargaining power typically show higher price-cost margins.     

Does it Pay to be Flexible?

This paper addresses the determinants of price-cost margins inU.S. 4-digit industries. Margins are larger in capital intensive andconcentrated industries with high growth rates and R & D andadvertising to sales ratios. They also fluctuate significantly overthe business cycle. We go beyond the existing literature byconsidering an issue which is a dominant topic in the businessliterature, the flexibility of firms to adjust to exogenous shocks.In particular, we find a significant positive relationship betweenthe flexibility of labour demand and price cost marginssuggesting that it pays to be flexible.     

Modeling oligopolistic interaction

It is shown that standard versions of overt and tacit collusion under quantity-setting oligopoly are formally equivalent. The two approaches are combined to model collusive behavior when firms expect rivals to react to output changes. The combined model yields a structural equation for firm-level price-cost margins that is consistent with empirical studies using line-of-business data.     

Cournot competition in wholesale electricity markets: The Nordic power exchange,Nord Pool

Horizontal shifts in bid curves observed in wholesale electricity markets are consistent with Cournot competition. Quantity competition reduces the informational requirements associated with evaluating market performance because the price-cost margins of all producers then depend on the same inverse residual demand curve instead of one for each firm. We apply the model to the day-ahead market of the Nordic power exchange, Nord Pool, for the years 2011-13. We reject the null hypothesis of perfect competition in all specifications. Results suggest that the average price-cost margin across the sample period was around four percent.     

Comparing U.S. and Japanese corporate-level operating performance using financial statement data

This study uses financial statement data restated to a similar reporting basis to compare the operating performance of U.S. and Japanese companies, identifying possible strategic and environmental explanations for the differences observed. Comparisons are made for U.S. and Japanese samples as a whole, for groups of Japanese firms (keiretsu v. nonkeiretsu), and for 11 industries. The results show that neither country appears to generate systematically higher profit margins, but that U.S. firms turnover assets other than inventory more quickly and therefore have higher rates of return on assets. More intensive examination of these results suggests that environmental factors, such as cultural or structural differences, are the primary causes of the observed differences in the data analyzed.     

On the nature and significance of collusive price leadership

With the help of a simple analytical model we are able to analyze and to further clarify the conditions for collusive price leadership as they were originally devised by Jesse Markham. Within the confines of this model we show how collusion increases price-cost margins, but at the same time decreases concentration in the industry.     

On the Relationship between International Outsourcing and Price–Cost Margins in European Industries

This paper sets up a model, where multinationals compete in quantities and domestic firms form a competitive fringe. Within this framework, we analyse the relationship between market concentration, international outsourcing and the industry price-cost margin. The empirical results of a panel of 66 industries and the EU12 countries in the 1990s strongly confirm our theoretical hypotheses. Market concentration and international outsourcing are positively related to industry price–cost margins. In a thought experiment, we show that industry price–cost margins would have decreased by 0.4 percentage points more in the 1990s, if international outsourcing had not changed since 1990. In addition, international outsourcing accounts for a convergence in margins across industries in the last decade.     

Multiple Glass Ceilings

Both vertical (between job levels) and horizontal (within job levels) mobility can be sources of wage growth. We find that the glass ceiling operates at both margins. The unexplained part of the wage gap grows across job levels (glass ceiling at the vertical margin) and across the deciles of the intra‐job‐level wage distribution (glass ceiling at the horizontal margin). This implies that women face many glass ceilings, one for each job level above the second, and that the glass ceiling is a pervasive phenomenon. In the Netherlands it affects about 88 percent of jobs, and 81 percent of Dutch women in employment work in job levels where a glass ceiling is present.     

Market Power, Scale Economies and Productivity: Estimates from a Panel of Establishment Data

This paper presents a new econometric framework that permits simultaneous estimation of price-cost margins, scale economies and productivity from a panel of establishment data. The model contains only a few, economically interesting parameters to be estimated, but it is nevertheless consistent with a flexible (translog) underlying technology, quasi-fixed capital and the presence of persistent differences in productivity between establishments. The framework is applied to study market power, scale economies and productivity differences in a number of manufacturing industries in Norway. The results reveal statistically significant, but quite small, margins between price and marginal costs in most manufacturing industries.     

Price and margin rigidity in deflation: The great depression

The major hypothesis tested in this paper states that rigid price-cost margins in concentrated industries are an important cause of price rigidity. According to this view, while prices in all industries change with unit variable costs, prices in concentrated industries, where unit margins are rigid, change less than those in unconcentrated industries, where unit margins are more flexible. Three earlier and conflicting studies of price behavior in The Great Depression (1929–33) are reexamined. When these studies are subject to the same or similar tests, it is found that price rigidity is identified with concentration in the period considered.     

Efficiencyv. collusion: Evidence cast in cement

Through the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. portland cement industry experienced a significant increase in average plant size and market concentration. A simultaneous equation model is developed to examine the effects of plant size and concentration on costs, prices and margins in that industry. The results indicate the presence of significant scale economies, but also show that prices and margins are increasing in concentration. Further analysis shows that almost one third of the cost savings associated with larger plants are passed on to producers through higher margins resulting from concomitant increases in concentration, rather than to consumers as lower prices.     

市场势力与规模效应的直接测度——运用新产业组织实证方法对中国钢铁产业的研究

在反垄断与管制过程中,最核心的问题就是对产业市场势力给出直接有效的测定。本文引进近年来发展的新产业组织实证方法(New Empirical IndustrialOrganization),根据中国产业数据的实际进行调整,引入动态的技术进步模型结构,允许企业之间存在生产率差异和规模效应,采用2004—2007年间的面板数据,运用双向随机效应模型GMM估计方法,直接估计了中国钢铁业的市场势力溢价和规模弹性。通过计量得到结论:①目前中国的钢铁产业不存在系统性的市场势力。钢铁产业依然处于完全竞争状态,竞争十分激烈;②传统意义上认为钢铁业所具有的规模效应在中国上市钢铁企业中没有体现,相反中国钢铁产业存在规模不经济的重要特征。