Transaction Costs in the Trading System of Cashew Nuts in the North of Benin: A Field Study

Cashew nut trading is an activity with growing economic importance in the north of Benin. Among the cost categories supported by the trading actors are transaction costs to which rare empirical studies have been devoted. Therefore, based on the theoretical concept this article empirically analyzes the importance of the transaction costs generated by cashew nut trading in the north of Benin. The empirical data were collected in two villages. Using a paired‐sample T test this study shows that the transaction costs are relatively important, but are not the major cost category. The average “production cost” is higher than the average transaction cost incurred by the trading actors. Although the transaction costs are on average lower than the other costs category, they are viewed by most actors (82 percent) as a serious constraint in the trading system due to moral hazard problems arising from the existence of these costs. By analyzing the specific factors that influence the magnitude of the transaction costs borne by the actors, the article shows that some socio‐cultural and environmental characteristics of the actors are determinant of the level of transaction costs incurred.     

Career development and participation at work: Time for mating?

Both career development and participation at work activities have emphasized a “prospecting” approach to inquiry. Although jointly inspired by the humanistic ethic, the two ventures have grown as separate streams of inquiry through their distinct responses to economic, hierarchical, technological, reductionist, and systems imperatives about work. A contrasting “mating” approach to inquiry is proposed, with the various imperatives becoming redefined as shared objects for further study. The proposal is supported by a set of diagnostic questions, and illustrated by a comparison between separate “Knowledge for Pay” and “Pay for Knowledge” human resource management initiatives. The possibility of broader application of the mating principle to other human resource management efforts is briefly considered.     

区域物流网络结构及其功能探讨

在现代的区域经济迅速发展中,区域物流网络系统在区域经济中发挥着越来越重要的作用,而对在区域物流网络系统中发挥主导作用的区域物流网络结构的认识仍不充分、全面,缺乏一个系统的梳理,因此,文中在收集的调查信息的基础上,根据物流原理、网络工程理论、区域经济学原理对区域物流网络结构系统分析,深入探究其结构原理及功能。文中认为,区域物流网络结构能够在时间与空间上有效的节省交易的成本,优化整个区域网络系统能够促进经济的规模化发展和经济点的聚集,从而带动经济点的周边经济快速发展。     

Illiquidity,transaction cost,and optimal holding period for real estate: Theory and application

Choosing the optimal holding period is an important part of real estate investment decisions, because “when to sell” affects “whether to buy”. This paper presents a theoretical model for such decision making. Our model indicates that the optimal holding period is affected by both systematic and non-systematic factors—market conditions (illiquidity and transaction cost) and property performance (return and return volatility). Other things being equal, higher illiquidity and transaction costs lead to longer holding periods, while higher return volatility implies shorter holding periods. Our empirical application suggests that the optimal holding period based on our model is quite consistent with previous empirical findings. In addition, we find that when illiquidity risk is incorporated the true real estate risk is significantly higher than the conventional risk estimate. Therefore, the current practice of real estate valuation, which is naively borrowed from finance theory, substantially underestimates real estate risk.     

湖南商学院“三育人”工作量化考评体系的构建

"三育人"工作是高校实现人才培养的重要保障,要如何能发挥"三育人"工作效能,是值得高等教育管理者深入探究的关键问题。本文针对湖南商学院"三育人"工作量化考评体系建设过程中存在的问题,将量化考评管理模式引入考评体系中,构建一个科学、合理、全面的"三育人"工作考评体系,对其工作绩效进行科学的量化和客观的评价。考评体系的构建力求使"三育人"工作更大程度地促进高校的建设与发展,并凸显其在教学、管理、服务工作中的核心作用。     

基于博弈论的供应链伙伴关系交易成本研究

在大部分的工业行业领域,物流的成本能占到生产总成本的一半左右,做好生产活动的供给工作,降低交易成本,对于制造商和供应商意义重大。文章通过研究制造商和供应商之间的博弈,分析了供应商伙伴关系减少交易成本的过程,并提出了供应商伙伴关系减少交易成本的措施。     

供应链合作关系间交易成本的博弈分析

在大部分的工业行业领域,物流的成本能占到生产总成本的一半左右,做好生产活动的供给工作,降低交易成本,对于制造商和供应商意义重大。文中通过研究制造商和供应商之间的博弈,分析了供应商伙伴关系减少交易成本的过程,并提出了供应商伙伴关系减少交易成本的措施。     

Open standards,vertical disintegration and entrepreneurial opportunities: How vertically-specialized firms entered the U.S. semiconductor industry

This paper shows how the emergence of open standards has created large numbers of entrepreneurial opportunities in the semiconductor industry by enabling vertical specialization. Integrating data on firms and technology evolution, we find a gradual increase in the percentage of firms represented by newly-founded “de novo” entrepreneurial startups, instead of “de alio” ones, as open standards emerged in semiconductor products and processes over the life of the industry. This standardization reduced transaction costs and fostered specialization, thus facilitating the entry of vertically-specialized new ventures. Vise versa, the rise of such new ventures further pushed the adoption of open standards, and the vertical disintegration of the industry. Our theory on how standardization creates opportunities for new ventures and our analysis of the semiconductor industry contribute to the technology entrepreneurship literature, as well as the industry architecture literature that has primarily focused on the impact of standardization on the disintegration of vertically-integrated incumbents.     

行政审批改革与制度性交易成本——基于效率评价的视角

制度性交易成本是经济主体为遵守制度规定而产生的非生产性成本,行政审批改革通过提高经营效率、节约时间成本、降低资金成本和促进行业竞争四种途径降低制度性交易成本。本文通过对我国地市级面板数据的实证分析后发现,行政审批改革可以有效降低地区制度性交易成本;当行政审批改革发生在营商环境相对较差的中西部城市、距离省会城市较近的城市以及当城市获得法律支撑时,能够更显著地降低当地制度性交易成本。本文据此提出如下政策建议:深化行政审批改革,减少不必要的审批事项;健全改革激励机制,确保政策的贯彻与落实;通过机构设置、法律规定、权责划分等进行配套措施改革。     

Project management improvement efforts—creating project management value by uniqueness or mainstream thinking?

This paper presents a research study that is part of the large international Project Management Institute (PMI)–sponsored research project the “Value of Project Management.” Three case studies have been conducted on Norwegian enterprises. This article focuses on how enterprises improve project management and presents the improvement efforts and the stated reasons behind them. There are striking similarities as to the prioritized ways the enterprises have chosen to make improvements: use of a rather standardized model for project work and internal schooling activities. The enterprises all explain their efforts as internally driven, even if some consultancy assistance was used. This article discusses three drivers behind the improvement efforts: an economic perspective, a new institutionalism perspective, and an innovation perspective. This article identifies indicators pointing to all drivers and helps us understand why and how enterprises are improving project management. The importance of research on the practice of the most capable enterprises within the project management field is acknowledged.     

城市规划管理中的交易费用

当代经济学研究注重交易费用在经济发展与社会制度设计中所起的作用.而作为社会制度的一部分,城市规划管理对城市开发有重要的影响,科学的城市规划管理应当注重经济学理论的指导作用.在介绍交易费用相关的基本理论基础上,结合美国城市规划管理实践,对城市规划管理中可能存在的交易费用及其影响进行分析研究,并对我国目前的规划管理实践进行思考,提出适应经济发展,尽量降低城市规划管理中的各种交易费用,以提高社会的总效用.     

Making it work in free agent work: The coping practices of Swedish freelance journalists

Studies of post-industrial work have shown how workers are increasingly shouldering the risk of and the responsibility for social protection, work shortages, professional training, and securing a stream of continuous incoming work. This study of Swedish freelance journalists examines how these free agents cope with a situation whereby the need exists to actively bear the full responsibility for attracting and contracting, producing, and billing their work as journalists. The empirical material shows how freelancers engage in various coping practices to secure both sufficient amounts of work and the accompanying economic compensation. Freelancers who “make it work” are often those managing to embed themselves in long-standing relationships with clients and colleagues, thus ensuring a long-term work horizon and a steady income. Even so, the inherent “responsibilization” of contemporary work is amplified and intensified by the freelance work mode. This study makes two contributions: Firstly, it provides knowledge of free agent work in a Swedish context, a national setting that is often presumed to be a “role model” for good working conditions. Secondly, it highlights the specifics of managing work that entails a continuous stream of sequential and parallel assignments of limited duration and the ongoing “employment management work” this entails as regards making sure assignments keep “coming in”.     

THE POLITICAL EMBEDDEDNESS OF PRIVATE ECONOMIC TRANSACTIONS*

Governments are able to manipulate economic transactions in order to achieve foreign policy goals. This article addresses the question: can managers of multinational enterprises (MNEs) structure economic transactions in ways that will limit the costs resulting from government intervention? Using a transaction cost framework, the efficiency of alternative structures (exporting, joint ventures, licensing, or wholly owned subsidiaries) for protecting a firm's interests are assessed. We argue that the traditional focus on the dyadic relationship between supplier and buyer misses sources of transaction costs; by conceptualizing economic transactions as embedded in a political context, additional sources of transaction costs are revealed. We examine three cases of home government intervention in US MNE transactions with the Soviet Union. We find that the full range of structural alternatives is affected by government sanctions, although sanctions are imposed on exporting relationships first and removed last. We find that MNEs are, therefore, beginning to insulate international transactions by making their overseas subsidiaries more independent of US technology and supplies with the hope that the US government will be less likely to impose its will extraterritorially by intervening in foreign subsidiaries’private economic transactions.     

Do the differences in legal systems hinder international enterprises’ debt financing?

This study examines the impact of the differences in the legal system concerning obligation claim rights between host and multinational enterprises' (MNEs) home countries on bank credit financing by constructing a legal system distance index including four dimensions. Using 57,526 firm-year panel observations of 7,257 firms from 53 countries operating in China, the results find that legal system distance has a negative impact on foreign firms' debt financing. The influential mechanism is due to the increasing transaction costs. Further test finds that the negative effect declines as the cultural differences increase. The heterogeneity analysis finds that the negative impact of the legal system distance on the debt level is more pronounced for those foreign firms with a large scale, short operating age, not enough collateral, and sales in the domestic market, but shows no significant differences between a sole proprietorship and joint ventures. This study not only expands the literature on “Law and Finance” but also provides an implication for foreign firms' debt financing in the emerging host country.     

Estimating banking cost efficiency with the consideration of cost management

This study re-investigates the bank cost efficiency by a combination of two strands of literature. The first strand is related to bank cost efficiency; the other is related to earnings management. Employing the findings reported in bank earnings management literature, this study argues that bank observed total cost (“accounting cost”) may be the biased estimator of the true total cost. Using the biased total cost may thus yield incorrect inferences from estimating bank cost efficiency. We propose a method to modify accounting cost, which is referred to as “economic cost”, to be consistent with the economic theory; that is, one that is free of cost management. Both accounting and economic costs are then adopted to analyze the efficiency of 29 commercial banks in Taiwan banking industry. Our results show that estimated efficiency, with the application of economic cost, offers results that are more reasonable results than those of the accounting cost.     

装备采办效益优化研究:一个交易费用理论视角

交易费用理论指出,交易成本是制度的运行成本,其大小取决于交易形式与其制度的匹配程度,两者越匹配则其交易成本越小。从交易费用理论入手,通过分析装备采办成本的构成及决定因素,指出装备采办效益优化的关键在于选择和建立合理的制度以尽可能地降低采办的交易成本,即制度因素是我国装备采办低效的症结。在此思路下,探究了我国装备采办制度的不合理之处,并提出相应的政策建议。     

管理制度中的交易成本:理论与实践

管理制度在执行过程中往往会产生各种各样的交易成本,从某种意义上说,管理执行中的交易成本的高低决定着管理制度能否顺利实施乃至执行效果的好坏。降低管理执行中的交易成本应成为设计管理制度时的重中之重。实践表明,制度"物化"、管理信息系统、利益"木马"、效率工资与文化能有效降低管理执行中的交易成本。     

Transaction Costs and the Structure of the Market: A Case Study

A bstract Drawing upon the development of fish markets in a Chinese fishery community, this paper investigates the impact of transaction costs on the institutional structure of exchange. Fish markets in this region are connected and organized into a hierarchical network. This structure of fish markets dramatically reduces the cost for geographically distanced fishermen and consumers to execute trades. However, the provision of the market itself requires entrepreneurial el forts. In this study, the market is conceptualized as a continuum of middlemen, whose entrepreneurial efforts of buying and selling make the market work. When the middleman makes profits, the market is at work. Otherwise, the market fails to emerge. Comparing the different ways of organizing fish transportation at two distinct villages, this paper shows that the choice of the market or the firm to organize fish transportation is determined by the cost of putting the market to work.     

Transaction costs, relational contracting and public private partnerships: a case study of UK defence

This paper is concerned with the economics of public private partnerships (PPPs)/private finance initiative (PFIs) and in particular the role of transaction costs and the importance of trust in relational contracting. The discussion is illustrated by reference to the UK defence sector. The paper begins by discussing the nature of PPPs/PFIs before moving on to consider how the economics of contracting literature can shed light on their strengths and weaknesses. The transaction cost literature is reviewed alongside a resource-based perspective of procurement decisions. The concepts of trust and reputation are then considered in the context of minimising procurement transaction costs. The theoretical framework developed is then applied and illustrated through a case study of UK defence contracting, in an attempt to assess whether the use of PPPs will necessarily lead to improved economic efficiency. The case study highlights both the scope of PPPs/PFIs and their potential transaction costs in defence procurement, with the normal perils in terms of contracting given information asymmetry, asset specificity and the resulting scope for opportunistic behaviour.