世界天然气汽车市场发展现状和主要地区特点分析

进入21世纪以来,全球主要国家和地区的天然气汽车市场快速发展并已初具规模。截至2008年,全世界天然气汽车保有量已超过940万辆,加气站1．4万座以上,主要分布在富气贫油和环保法规严格的国家。全球车用天然气消费量占天然气消费总量的比重仍然很低,2008年约为0．69％。尽管世界总体天然气汽车市场发展势头良好,但各主要地区的发展情况差异较大。在拉美、亚太和中东地区持续快速增长的同时,北美地区天然气汽车市场的发展却出现波折。在天然气汽车市场发展过程中,天然气价格、基础设施建设、资源保障、汽车技术的革新以及价格、税收方面的政策优惠等因素都将长期产生影响,尤其是在天然气汽车市场的起步阶段。     

Entry mode choice in China's regional distribution markets: Institution vs. transaction costs perspectives

In this paper, we investigate the entry mode choice of a leading Taiwanese food company in setting up regional distributors in China's 312 sales districts. Our study shows that, in entry mode decisions, the institutional factors are more important than transaction cost considerations. Both formal and informal institutions are considered. Formal institutions refer to government prescribed institutions (laws and regulations), while informal institutions refer to rules prescribed by the industry and the society. Both institutions are shown to affect the entry mode choices but one important type of institution, professional norms, is conspicuously missing in China. Professional norms exert peer pressures on the practitioners in the same profession, forcing their behaviors to conform to a common pattern. In the absence of professional norms, the roles of network ties and mimetic behaviors are heightened and they become a proxy for professional norms. As a foreign enterprise operating in China's local markets, the Taiwanese food company attained legitimacy by forming alliances with local wholesalers and by following its predecessors in selecting organization forms.     

亚太地区炼油工业发展现状与前景展望——兼论亚太地区炼油工业对石油市场及油品贸易的影响

2009年增幅达到历史高点后,亚太地区炼油能力增速明显放缓。预计在2015-2017年间,亚太和中东地区会迎来新一轮炼油能力扩建浪潮。亚太地区不仅原油蒸馏能力激增,同时二次深加工转换能力也在大幅提高,并较原油蒸馏能力增速更快。亚太地区的运输燃料,包括汽油、柴油和航煤将面临过剩。迄今为止,中国和印度大部分的炼油规划项目并没有被取消,但日本、中国等部分国家与地区有关闭炼厂的计划。如果出口型炼厂还能继续拓展市场,预计未来亚太炼厂利用率将会回升。预计亚太地区在未来仍将是液化石油气（LPG）、石脑油、燃料油、沥青、石油焦等石化产品的净进口地区,同时成为包括汽油、柴油、煤油在内的交通燃料的净出口地区。该地区交通燃料出口国家的炼油商不仅要争夺本土的市场份额,还要争夺国际市场的份额。中国、日本、印度、马来西亚、越南、澳大利亚、菲律宾的油品贸易未来会发生一些变化。     

Group identity in markets

We present a laboratory experiment that measures the effects of group identity—one's perceived membership in social groups—on market transactions in an oligopoly market with a few sellers and buyers. We artificially induce group identity using art preferences and college majors in different treatments, respectively. Subjects are randomly assigned into the roles of buyers and sellers and interact repeatedly. We find that the presence of groups influences both the selection of trading partners and the determination of prices. All else equal, sellers are more likely to make offers to ingroup buyers, and the buyers are more likely to accept offers from ingroup sellers. There are considerable intergroup price differentials with the outgroup sellers charging a lower price than the ingroup sellers.     

Referrals in search markets

This paper compares the equilibrium outcomes in search markets with and without referrals. Although it seems clear that consumers would benefit from referrals, it is not at all clear whether firms would unilaterally provide information about competing offers since such information could encourage consumers to purchase the product elsewhere. In a model of a horizontally differentiated product market with sequential consumer search, we show that valuable referrals can arise in the equilibrium: a firm will give referrals to consumers whose ideal product is sufficiently far away from the firm's offering. We allow firms to price-discriminate among consumers, and consumers to misrepresent their tastes. We found that the equilibrium profits tend to be higher in markets with referrals than in markets without. Consumers tend to be better off in the presence of referrals when search costs are not too low, and under a certain parameter range, referrals lead to a Pareto improvement.     

Emerging capital markets: A case study of equity markets in Pakistan

The Pakistan financial system displays all the classic characteristics of an emerging market: market capitalisation amounts to only 5.5% of GNP; less than 0.3% of the population are shareholders, resources mobilised through the capital market are insignificant compared to that through the banking system, and equities account for about 4% of the assets of the financial system.The pricing of both equity and debenture capital is administratively set by the Government. This has resulted in the shares of well-managed companies being issued at below market clearing price. Consequently, new shareholders benefit at the expense of original shareholders. Underwriters are denied any useful function and underwriting commission does not reflect perceived issue risk.There is a paucity of stock of well-run companies. The market also suffers from inadequate information flow and faces some fundamental institutional weaknesses. If the share buying habit is to increase and if savings are to be channelled into financial markets, appropriate mechanisms need to be developed for both broker and investor protection.The views expressed in this paper are those of its authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the International Finance Corporation. The information presented here in has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but is not guaranteed as to completeness or accuracy.     

Intellectual capital in business-to-business markets

This paper reports on research concerning the level of knowledge assets possessed by firms in business-oriented vs. consumer-oriented industries. Further, the research also covers the level of competitive intelligence activity in these industry groups, estimating the level of interest of competitors in acquiring another firm's knowledge assets. From this information, we can begin to develop ideas about what types of firms and industries can really benefit from knowledge management systems and investment, as well as which can benefit from knowledge protection systems. As a result, the issues of knowledge management and knowledge protection become much more strategic and more obviously dependent on circumstances. Such a conclusion begs the question of what measures will help us to determine important circumstances and optimal knowledge strategies for competitive advantage, clearly opening up the field to a wide range of future research streams.     

Vertical mergers in procurement markets

This paper uses computational methods that reveal ambiguous strategic effects of vertical mergers in a duopoly setting featuring incomplete information about sellers' costs, and differences in sellers' productive capabilities. First, vertical mergers can be jointly unprofitable. Second, the buyer's preferred merger partner is almost always the seller with lower expected costs, and is typically the larger seller. Third, vertical mergers always reduce the unintegrated seller's profits, sometimes dramatically. Finally, vertical mergers can increase total welfare. Some of the results contrast qualitatively with unambiguous findings from models with symmetric sellers, which suggests that caution should be used in drawing general inferences from those models.     

Price promotions in emerging markets

How should price promotion strategies be modified in an emerging market (e.g., India, China) compared to those employed in developed markets (e.g., USA, Canada)? Specifically, how should the presence of middle-class consumers with limited ability to pay, prevalent in an emerging market, influence the depth and frequency of price promotions offered by competing firms? Lay intuition suggests that firms should promote more frequently and offer deeper discounts in emerging markets, in order to effectively sell to limited income, middle-class consumers. We construct a theoretical model that investigates the effect of the middle-class segment on firms' price promotion strategies. Contrary to lay intuition, our analysis reveals precisely the opposite results. First, price promotions offered in an emerging market (with middle-class consumers) are shallower than those offered in a developed market (without middle-class consumers). Second, relatively deep price promotions occur less frequently in an emerging market, compared to a developed market. These theoretical findings are consistent with the empirical evidence we gathered from the supermarkets in India and in Canada.     

Quality infomediation in search markets

We examine the effects of informational intermediation by a third party ‘infomediary’ in a search model with heterogeneous seller qualities and asymmetric information. The infomediary earns revenue by selling a list of accredited sellers (a ‘guidebook’) to buyers and selling accreditations to sellers. We show that such information always improves welfare but can hurt informed buyers (as well as the uninformed) if it is not sufficiently informative about seller qualities. The model also provides a number of insights concerning the private and social incentives to create information, and the determinants and nature of demand for infomediation services by buyers and sellers.     

Ordered search in differentiated markets

This paper presents an ordered search model in which consumers search both for price and product fitness. I construct an equilibrium in which there is price dispersion and prices rise in the order of search. The top firms in consumer search process, though charge lower prices, earn higher profits due to their larger market shares. Compared to random search, ordered search can induce all firms to charge higher prices and harm market efficiency.     

Reducing overreaction in contract markets

Predicting market share can be difficult for industrial firms whose sales occur in the form of a few large contracts received at irregular intervals during the course of a year. This article discusses the problems that this type of sales pattern may cause and provides a solution for determining probabilistic share forecasts.     

Predatory reputation in US airline markets

Despite its long history in antitrust policy, predation remains a poorly understood phenomenon. The main difficulty is in empirically identifying predatory intent. I propose a method for measuring the effect of reputation, whose significance would enable us to infer predatory intents. Maximum likelihood estimation using simulated annealing algorithm is conducted with a sample of US airline markets. The results provide some support for the presence of entrants learning and reputation effect. As an application, I discuss how the outcomes of my empirical model could help analyze such antitrust cases as the American Airlines Case.     

Heavily skewed pricing in two-sided markets

A common feature in two-sided markets is the prevalence of heavily skewed pricing strategies in which price markups are much higher on one side of the market than the other. We show that maximal skewed pricing is profit maximizing under constant elasticity of demand. The most elastic side of the market is used to generate maximum demand by providing it with platform services at the lowest possible price. Full participation of the high-elasticity, low-price side of the market attracts the other side. As this side is less price elastic, the platform is able to extract high prices.     

Switching costs in local credit markets

Switching costs are a key determinant of market performance. This paper tests their existence in the corporate loan market in which they are likely to play a central role because of the complexity of contracts and the relevance of informational problems. Using very detailed data at bank-firm level on four Italian local credit markets we empirically show that firms tend to iterate their choice of the main bank over time. This inertia is not related to unobserved and time invariant firms' preferences across banks and can be attributed to the existence of switching costs. Moreover these costs are higher for single-bank firms. We also offer evidence that banks price discriminate between new and old borrowers by charging lower interest rates to the former in order to cover part of the switching costs. The discount amounts to about 44 basis points and is equal to 7% of the average interest rate. These results prove robust to a number of other potential identification drawbacks.     

Strategic conduct in credit derivative markets

This paper reviews recent research at the intersection of industrial organization and corporate finance on credit default swap (CDS) markets. These markets have been at the center of the financial crisis of 2007–09 and many aspects of their operation are not well understood. The paper covers topics such as counterparty risk in CDS markets, the "empty creditor problem," "naked" CDS positions, super-senior status of credit (and other) derivatives in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and strategic behavior in CDS settlement auctions.     

Organize around end-use markets

Companies can gain by changing their organization structure toward a market centered one clustered around market groups. An analysis is made of the gains and certain trade-offs that occur. The recommended new organization structure is illustrated. A number of questions and areas that deserve in-depth concern are pinpointed.     

Co-branding on industrial markets

During the last decade branding has developed to be one of the main focus areas in consumer marketing. In the industrial marketing area there has only been limited attention to this phenomenon. In this paper we focus on how co-branding can be used on industrial markets to increase value. Through an empirical study of professional purchasers' attitudes towards co-branding activities between two companies, we explore the potential of this strategy.     

兰州首启专业玩具市场

兰州首家、西北地区最大的专业玩具礼品批发市场——兰州香港CEPA国际玩具礼品批发市场预计市场春节前后即可开业。CEPA是《内地与香港关于建立更紧密经贸关系安排》的英文缩写。     

On commodity taxation in vertically differentiated markets

We examine the impact of commodity taxation on vertically differentiated product markets when entry is allowed. We show that an ad valorem tax may have a dramatic effect on market structure by inducing the entry of a large number of firms in what was previously a natural monopoly. The producers of high quality products reduce market share after an increase in their unit production cost, leaving more room for lower quality products. While within a given market structure aggregate quality decreases monotonically with the tax rate, quality jumps upwards at tax rates that cause a change in market structure.