Job Safety and Contract Workers in the Petrochemical Industry

The legal rules for assigning liability for the costs of accidents penalize petrochemical plants that exercise direct control over contract employees. Evidence from diverse sources indicates that these liability rules lead plant management to give primary responsibility for the safety training and supervision of contract employees to contractors. However, analysis of the determinants of accidents suggests that host plants offer more effective safety training and supervision than do contractors. It follows that accident rates in the petrochemical industry would be reduced if liability rules were altered so that host plants had greater incentives to take primary responsibility for the safety training and supervision of contract workers.     

Unions and the U.S. Comparative Advantage

Analysis of data covering 134, three-digit (SIC) manufacturing industries from the mid-sixties to the mid-eighties undermines the claim that unions are responsible for altering the composition of U.S. trade flows. Heavily unionized industries are not found to have lost any more to imports nor gained any more in exports than comparable U.S. industries. On the other hand, industrial concentration appears to be a significant disadvantage.     

Industry Structure,Segmentation, and Quality Competition in the U.S. Hotel Industry*

We examine how quality competition affects the relationship between market size and industry structure at the product level using evidence from the U.S. hotel industry. Starting in the early 1980s, quality competition for business travelers became more based on variable and less on fixed costs, and became less scale intensive. Since then, market size increases have been met by more, but smaller, hotels in business travel destinations but continued to be met by larger hotels in personal travel destinations. Our results illustrate how the way consumers benefit from increases in market size depends on how firms compete.     

Competition and Service Quality in the U.S. Airline Industry

The U.S. government, media, and flying public have expressedgreat concern in recent years over both airline market concentration and flightdelays. This study explores potential connections between the two by examining whetherthe lack of competition on a particular route results in worse on-time performance.Analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics in 2000 indicatesthat both the prevalence and duration of flight delays are significantly greater onroutes where only one airline provides direct service. Additional competition iscorrelated with better on-time performance. Weather, congestion, and schedulingdecisions also contribute significantly to explaining flight delays.     

Using Incentive Pay and Providing Pay Supplements in U.S. Job Markets

This article investigates whether the earnings premium found with use of incentive pay is offset by lower supplemental pay. More comprehensive measures of employer costs for employee compensation are used to test the hypothesis. These data indicate that bonuses, overtime work, pension provision, and shift differentials can be less common in jobs with incentive pay, but the lower incidence of these forms of compensation does not offset the higher earnings associated with incentive pay.     

Dynamic Adjustment in the U.S. Higher Education Industry, 1955–1997

We analyze how the number of higher education institutions responds to demand growth by applying a dynamic model to U.S. data over the period 1955–1997. We derive our dynamic, partial adjustment model from first principles under various assumptions about firm behavior, ranging from profit-maximization by Cournot firms to output-maximization by non-profit firms. Empirical estimates from this dynamic model suggest that the higher education industry does indeed respond to demand growth, but only moderately in the short run and little more in the long run. Certain segments within the overall industry exhibit much stronger responsiveness in the short and long run, in particular, public and 2-year schools.     

Industry costs and consolidation: efficiency gains and mergers in the U.S. railroad industry

Since partial deregulation in 1980, there has been a massive consolidation of firms in the U.S. railroad industry premised largely on efficiency gains. We estimate a cost function and use it to calculate cost effects for specific mergers and for all mergers at the industry level from 1983–2003. Our central results are that consolidation in the railroad industry accounts for about an 11.4 percent reduction in industry costs (more than $4 Billion in 1992 prices), and that while there are tremendous differences across mergers with respect to the direction, level, timing, and source of cost impacts, most mergers result in cost savings.     

The Effect of Employer-Sponsored Education on Job Mobility: Evidence from the U.S. Navy

We examined the impact of employer-sponsored part-time college education on job mobility, using the case of the Tuition Assistance (TA) program of the U.S. Navy. We used two modeling approaches—a bivariate probit model of job mobility and TA usage that accounts for the endogeneity of TA usage, and a propensity score model. The results from both models showed that TA usage significantly decreases the probability of staying in the Navy.     

美国纺织工业的兼并浪潮

1998年是美国纺织工业企业兼并重组活动创纪录的一年,并且兼并的步伐似乎不会停止。面对强大的竞争压力,越来越多的公司选择合并或购并其它公司以努力改善其命运。本文透过1998年企业兼并活动,探讨推动     

Diffusion and Performance of Modular Production in the U.S. Apparel Industry

This article examines the determinants of the diffusion of team production systems (modular assembly) and the impact of these systems on firm performance relative to traditional assembly systems in the apparel industry. The article draws on an extensive survey providing detailed information on a wide range of manufacturing practices and retail relationships in the U.S. apparel industry. We find that recent diffusion of modular practices is driven primarily by the product market. We also show that modular systems affect business-unit performance (particularly operating profits) where they are combined with complementary investments in information systems linking apparel suppliers with retail customers.     

Measuring Market Power in the U.S. Aluminum Industry: A Residual Demand Approach

This paper applies a refined market power test to examine market power in the U.S. aluminum industry. The study conducts a two-step analysis in which the inverse residual demand facing the industry is first estimated to generate the associate elasticity to infer market power, and then the inverse partial residual demand facing the industry is estimated to produce the elasticity to measure the potential effect of inter-industry coordination. The results suggest that only the primary industry attains market power, and the market power can exert even without collusion between the primary and secondary industries.     

美国开放式基金产业发展现状及其对我国的启示

通过分析美国基金产业现状发现,美国开放式基金产业是美国普通居民首要的投资渠道。作为金融市场最重要的投资者,开放式基金对塑造现代美国金融结构和竞争环境发挥了重要作用。美国的基金产业发展得益于良好的法律法规和监管机制等基础制度建设,以及较低的准入门槛和金融市场的有序竞争。     

Vertical and Horizontal Scope Economies in the Regulated U.S. Electric Power Industry

This paper investigates vertical economies between generation and distribution of electric power, and horizontal economies between different types of power generation in the U.S. electric utility industry. Our quadratic cost function model includes three generation output measures (hydro, nuclear and fossil fuels), which allows us to analyze the effect that generation mix has on vertical economies. Our results provide (sample mean) estimates of vertical economies of 8.1% and horizontal economies of 5.4%. An extensive sensitivity analysis is used to show how the scope measures vary across alternative model specifications and firm types.     

Trust Formation in University–Industry Collaborations in the U.S. Biotechnology Industry: IP Policies,Shared Governance,and Champions*,†

Haggling over rights to potential inventions can be a major roadblock to successful university–industry (UI) collaborations. Yet such collaborations are critical for innovation in science‐based industries. This study examines the roles of universities' intellectual property (IP) policies and of shared governance for trust formation between academe and industry. The study also examines how UI champions moderate this process and how trust between university and industry partners affects UI collaboration outcomes. The analysis of survey data of 105 recent UI collaborations in the U.S. biotechnology industry indicates that the flexibility and transparency of university IP policies and shared governance by UI partners are both positively related to trust formation. The activities of UI champions amplify the positive effects of shared governance and at the same time reduce the importance of university IP policies for trust formation between UI partners. The amount of trust between partners is positively related to knowledge transfer and innovation performance. The findings suggest that despite widely reported industry concerns over the control of IP, UI research partners can develop a trustful environment and thereby plant the seeds for a successful collaboration. In order to enhance trust, companies should not only consider university IP policies, but also need to actively engage in shared governance with university partners. UI collaboration champions can help shift the attention of company managers from formal rules set by university IP policies toward shared project planning, coordination, and implementation with university partners.     

The Welfare Effect of Advertising Restrictions in the U.S. Cigarette Industry

The welfare effect of advertisingrestrictions in the U.S. cigarette industry dependsupon the impact of advertising on consumer and producer surplus, the transfer to consumers for being exposed to utility-reducing advertising, and smoking externalities. We estimate a demand equation and a supply relation simultaneously and use the parameter estimates to generate predictions of the impact of advertising restrictions on social welfare. Our results show that advertising restrictions benefit producers by limiting competition and generating higher industry profits, and such restrictions lower social welfare if the external cost of cigarette smoking is sufficiently low.