The vertical restraints guidelines of the department of justice

In January, 1985, the Department of Justice issued Vertical Restraints Guidelines intended to clarify the legal status of vertical restraints, which had remained indefinite since the Supreme Court had declared in 1977 that the “rule of reason” was applicable to a large class of these restraints, and to outline an enforcement policy fair to all concerned and economically justified. The guidelines are mainly concerned with the two most controversial types of arrangement: territorial or customer restraints and exclusive dealing arrangements. Separately treated are tying arrangements, where the enforcement policy strictly follows lines indicated by a recent Supreme Court decision. A large part of the text of the guidelines is devoted to a detailed explanation of ways in which a given vertical restraint may be freed from the suspicion of anticompetitive effect. The analysis employs defective tests for anticompetitive impact and does not deal adequately with practices with both good and bad effects. Therefore, the guidelines do not appear to have accomplished their stated purpose.     

The economics of industrial R & D

The relationship between research and commercial operation is examined in terms of production using a simple Cobb-Douglas production function, where output is expressed in terms of inputs of labour, capital and‘technical progress’. The model was tested in a single company environment by multiple regression analysis of output as the dependent variable on various measures of research, labour and capital. The results of the regression analysis are in full agreement with the model as outlined and the assumption that output is dependent simultaneously on labour, capital and the cumulative research investment.     

The economics of advertising: Where's the data?

Economists accept the importance of advertising to firm rivalry and economic performance, but data limitations have frustrated empirical research. This paper addresses that frustration and compares sources of advertising data. The paper concludes that data provided by a private vendor on measured-media consumer advertising represents the best choice, but involves substantial effort to link it to the Census industrial classification system. The authors do this for 284 manufacturing industries for Census years 1967 and 1982. Comparisons of industry advertising levels and advertising-to-sales ratios are given. Relative advertising levels and intensities have remained remarkably stable over the 15 year period.     

电力技术经济学的建立与发展

文中就电力技术经济学的学科性质,研究对象及任务,电力技术经济学与其它学科的关系,电力技术经济争研究内容与研究方法作了较为深入的阐述,并提出了该学科建立与发展的重要性。     

政治经济学公共课的困境

教材“硬伤”依旧,理论视角和研究方法的“桎梏”,现实的困惑与迷茫,政治性“推崇”和“禁忌”,西方经济学的冲击,学生“厌学”与教师“厌教”,是当前政治经济学公共课的主要困境。     

The economics of international codesharing: an analysis of airline alliances

International airline alliances allow airlines to coordinate their operations in providing international service. This paper analyzes the effect of such alliances on traffic levels, fares, and welfare. In the model, the benefits of alliances arise because cooperative pricing of trips by the partners puts downward pressure on fares in the interline city-pair markets (these are markets where travel on both carriers is necessary). The loss of competition in the interhub market, which connects the hub cites of the partners, generates a countervailing effect, tending to raise the fare in that market. While the presence of economies of traffic density complicates these impacts by generating cost links across markets, simulation analysis shows that the above tendencies typically prevail. Welfare analysis shows that both consumer and total surplus typically rise following formation of an alliance despite the harm to interhub passengers, suggesting that the positive effects of alliances may outweigh any negative impacts.     

石油经济大事

2日根据中国振华石油控股有限公司（振华石油）与巴基斯坦石油与自然资源部3月29日签订的合同,振华石油获得巴基斯坦两个陆上区块100％的石油天然气勘探许可证。根据合同,振华石油拟在未来3年的勘探期内,在地处巴东部旁遮普省的东巴哈瓦普尔（BAHAWALPUREAST）和跨越旁遮普省、     

石油经济大事

1日委内瑞拉总统查韦斯宣布,委内瑞拉国家石油公司（PDVSA）已于当日凌晨接管了奥里诺科重油带项目的控制权。根据委内瑞拉《石油法》和查韦斯今年2月发布的一项法令，奥里诺科重油带的外资控制项目都必须转为由委国家石油公司控制的合资项目，其中委方股份不低于60％。此前，该重油带的4个重油升级战略合作项目，     

The transaction cost economics (TCE) theory of trading favors

Trading favors is a pervasive business practice, especially in emerging economies. To date, a range of theories has been utilized to explore trading favors, but most extant studies focus especially on negative aspects of favors (e.g., corruption and bribery). We adopt transaction cost economics (TCE) to analyze systematically trading favors as an economizing practice serving efficiency purposes. From the TCE perspective, trading favors is a component of the relational contracting portion of transaction governance, and contributes to economizing on bounded rationality and bounded reliability. We hypothesize that trading favors will be more prevalent in (1) macro-contexts characterized by a vacuum of formal institutions as well as by excessive formal rules; (2) cultural contexts where in-group membership is highly valued; (3) high bounded rationality/low bounded reliability contexts where frequent opportunities exist for indirect reciprocity; and (4) cases whereby no asset-specific investment(s) in innovation need to be made by the supplier of the favor. Enforcement mechanisms such as in-group sanctions, access to formal contracting as a complement to favors, possibility of image scoring and incentive compatibility can function as critical components of the trading favors practice. We suggest a classification of favor trading practices based on their link to formal contracting and rate of recurrence, and describe a range of likely impacts.     

石油经济大事

2日 河南首条长距离成品油管道--洛郑驻管道投入全线运行.管道起点为洛阳石化总厂,途经洛阳、郑州、许昌、漯河、驻马店等15个市区县,全长425千米.     

The economics of food aid under subsistence farming with an application to Malawi

We investigate how food-aid affects price and production of staple food, with a partial equilibrium model with non-separable production and consumption. The model captures the key characteristics of sub-Saharan Africa subsistence economies. Simulations generate negative but also positive food-aid elasticities of production. Conditions are identified which mitigate the negative impact and support a positive impact. The share of domestic food production in total staple food demand (+) and the share of income from staple food production in total household income (−) are key determinants. Price and production equations, estimated with a panel of district data of the Malawi maize market for the period 1999–2010, show a small positive impact of food-aid. Large negative impacts of food-aid are not likely given production and income shares and behavioural responses.     

The medical community's opposition to organ markets: Ethics or economics?

A severe shortage of cadaveric human organs for transplantation exists in the U.S. The obvious cause of this shortage is our current public policy which proscribes payment for such organs. Support for this policy and opposition to the formation of organ markets has been quite strong among transplant suppliers (both hospital and physician groups). This paper critically evaluates the ethical arguments advanced to buttress this policy position and presents an alternative economic explanation based upon profit-maximizing behavior. The model we develop is based upon monopsony in organ procurement with a kinked (and possibly discontinuous) organ supply function.     

Expanding mobile wireless capacity: The challenges presented by technology and economics

As demand for mobile broadband services continues to explode, mobile wireless networks must expand greatly their capacities. This paper describes and quantifies the economic and technical challenges associated with deepening wireless networks to meet this growing demand. Methods of capacity expansion divide into three general categories: the deployment of more radio spectrum; more intensive geographic reuse of spectrum; and increasing the throughput capacity of each MHz of spectrum within a given geographic area. The paper describes these several basic methods to deepen mobile wireless capacity. It goes on to measure the contribution of each of these methods to historical capacity growth within U.S. networks. The paper then describes the capabilities of 4G LTE wireless technology, and further innovations off of it, to further improve network capacity. These capacity expansion capabilities of LTE-Advanced along with traditional spectrum reuse are quantified and compared to forecasts of future demand to evaluate the ability of U.S. networks to match future demand. Without significantly increasing current spectrum allocations by 560 MHz over the 2014–2022 period, the presented model suggests that U.S. wireless capacity expansion will be inadequate to accommodate expected demand growth. This conclusion is in contrast to claims that the U.S. faces no spectrum shortage.     

2008年国内外十大石油经济新闻

编者按:2008年,世界政治、经济领域焦点、热点不断,一些重大事件的发生和趋势的扭转呈现突发性强、变化急剧的特点.举世瞩目的中国也经历了悲与喜、冰与火的两重天.石油作为重要的能源和特殊商品,在一定意义上是政治经济的聚焦点,更是经济走势的风向际.在刚刚过去的一年中,全球金融危机与油价巨幅涨跌相伴而生,能源安全与气候变化向人类发出警告.面对危机与挑战,世界期待中国发挥更大的作用,中国也在努力作出自已的贡献.     

2010年国内外十大石油经济新闻

1 美联储二次量化宽松国际油价创两年新高2010年11月3日,美联储宣布启动第二轮量化宽松(QE2)计划,拟在2011年二季度之前购买6000亿美元的长期美国国债.消息一出,美元汇率大跌,WTI原油期货及其他大宗商品急剧上涨.     

The competition effects of industry-wide vertical price fixing in bilateral oligopoly

This paper examines the competition and welfare effects of vertical price fixing through industry-wide resale price maintenance (RPM) arrangements, such as those benefiting from exemption from a general prohibition against RPM. A bilateral oligopoly framework is employed incorporating differentiation between manufacturer products and between retailer services. Transactions between the stages involve prices being determined through bargaining. We do not find RPM to be universally undesirable. However where retailer power is strong, the social effects of RPM are likely to be adverse, since the practice can assist in coordinating final price levels and prevent socially desirable countervailing power arising.