Inter‐Jurisdictional Competition for Firms*

Regions inhabited with an immobile population of disabled and able individuals compete to attract mobile firms that provide jobs. The redistributive goal of regional governments is to support the disabled, who cannot work. Able individuals may work, be involuntary unemployed because of frictions in the labor market, or choose to be voluntary unemployed. Labor force participation decisions depend on regional redistributive policies. Both the size of workforce and tax on firms affect profits and therefore, firms’ location decisions. Allowing regions to engage in tax competition may be efficient. If regions cannot tax firms, they compete by implementing inefficient redistributive policies.     

Competition and Competition Policy in the Trans‐Tasman Air Travel Market

New data on air fares offered on 29 trans‐Tasman and domestic New Zealand routes are analysed to test whether competition between traditional or ‘legacy’ airlines still matters for pricing in the new air travel regime characterised by internet booking systems and competition from low cost carriers. It is found that market structure does indeed still matter. Air fares are significantly lower on those domestic New Zealand routes where Air New Zealand faces competition from Qantas. In addition, on the trans‐Tasman routes, the new entrants Virgin (Pacific) Blue and Emirates have put competitive pressure on Air New Zealand and Qantas, but such pressure would not be sufficient to compensate for loss of independent competition between the larger incumbents.     

Soviet methodology for the valuation of natural resources

The article discusses recent changes in the methodology for valuing natural-resource products and resource deposits in the Soviet Union and discusses the probable efficiency consequences of the changes. It concludes that improved methods for monitoring and policing stock draw-down and the imposition of efficiency rents are equally important as potential sources of improved use of natural-resource stocks.     

给自然资源算笔账

我们平常所说的宝贵的大自然，在某种意义上，其宝贵程度是可以“计算”的。在经济学家和环境科学家眼中，一项自然资源所提供的产品和服务的价值是很多方面的。比如，一大片淡水或咸水湿地所提供的服务是这样计算的：许多鱼类在湿地中产卵，小鱼在那里度过生命的开始阶段，全世界每年捕鱼量为1亿吨，价值500亿到1000亿美元。湿地可能会有助于生产这种利润十分丰厚的产品。但是，一个湿地为全球捕鱼量所做的贡献可不只是这些。仅美国的淡水消遣性垂钓业的鱼类价值就高达160亿美元，另外还有460亿美元由该行业的相关雇员产生。因此，除了为你…     

自然资源价值核算浅析

长期以来人们一直认为自然资源没有价值,所以93年以前的SNA体系没有把自然资源和环境核算包括在内。但是随着环境恶化和自然资源越来越稀缺,自然资源无价值的观点无法继续立足。本文首先就自然资源的价值观进行了讨论,然后阐述了自然资源价值论的理论依据,即劳动价值论,最后讨论了自然资源的估价方法。     

Welfare‐ and Revenue‐Enhancing Tariff and Tax Reform under Imperfect Competition

We examine welfare and revenue effects of tariff and tax reform in a country importing final and intermediate goods, both of which are produced under imperfect competition. We consider two reform strategies. First, lower the sum of a consumption tax and a tariff on the intermediate good, and leave the sum of the consumption tax and a tariff on the final good unchanged. Second, lower the former and change the latter to leave government revenue unchanged. We specify conditions under which each reform strategy raises welfare without decreasing government revenue.     

Demographic pressure and natural resources conservation

A field survey was carried out in the villages of Nlobesse'e at the Western periphery of the Dja Biosphere Reserve, South Cameroon, to evaluate the various effects that the increase in the local populations exert on the conservation of the natural resources of the reserve. Survey results show that the population was increasing rapidly at 40.00/00 per annum, with 61.54% of the total inhabitants originating from other parts of the country. Despite the rapid population growth, the population of the Kaka and Baka ethnic groups also known as the pigmies who have been noted by ECOFAC (Ecosystème Forestière d'Afrique Centrale) for having a marked negative impact on the conservation of the natural resources (because they depend mostly on the natural resources of the reserve for their livelihood and practice very little or no agriculture) were decreasing at a rate of 6.2%. Probably they sought better hunting, gathering and collecting conditions elsewhere in the reserve. Animal proteins originating from the reserve provide most of the animal proteins consumed by the households and the entire population of Nlobesse'e demands 44.4 kg of “bush meat” per day. It was also noted that the local population practiced very little agriculture in the reserve. Hunting and fishing, activities that have been noted for having a negative influence on the conservation of biodiversity contributed 15.2% and 11.2%, respectively, of the total income of the households. Other sources of income included: wages earned from the agro-plantation that contributed 40.3%, farming 24.2%, commerce 3% and others 4.58%. Merchant middlemen also referred to as “buyam sellam” and individuals with no commercial interest were the two main relay agents responsible for transporting natural resources out of Nlobesse'e. It would have been expected that the increasing population combined to the high incidence of poverty in the region (per capita income of 225 FCFA or $0.3 per day) would have exerted a high sustainability pressure on the conservation of reserve resources. However, this was not the case because of an agro-plantation in the area that provided the local population with the necessary income to buy foodstuff and other needed resources from far away areas. To maintain this trend, it is recommended that other sources of income such as the creation of small-scale enterprises and ecotourism should be encouraged in and around biospheres reserves.     

实行目标成本管理增强企业竞争力

成本管理是企业管理的一个重要内容,而目标成本管理是成本管理的一种有效的管理方法和手段.企业在市场经济环境中,要善于将目标成本管理的理念、方法运用到企业的管理中,企业各部门领导一定要重视这项工作,精通这方面的知识,采取各种措施降低成本,才能使企业在竞争中立于不败之地.只有各个环节的目标成本得到有效控制,企业才能提高成本管理水平,有效地提高企业经济效益,增强企业竞争力.     

网络型产业竞争化与规制重构

随着技术进步和市场需求的变化,使网络型产业引入竞争成为必然。随着竞争的引入,政府改变规制规则,对网络型产业的市场结构、市场行为和市场绩效将产生根本性影响,促进网络型产业的生产效率和服务提升,引发产业链的优化整合,改变产业结构。通过引入竞争,对网络型产业做出规制重构,是规制机构基于实现经济效率和社会福利的规制目标的现实选择。     

A Two‐Country Game of Competition Policies

Recently a number of studies have recognized that trade policy can be substituted for by competition policy. This study demonstrates, however, that there is a fundamental difference in the working of terms‐of‐trade effects between competition policy and tariff policy and that if countries optimally set their respective competition policies, it is unlikely to result in a tariff‐war‐like state in which all countries adopt distortionary policies. Instead, in a Nash equilibrium, one country maintains perfect competition in its domestic service sector while the other country tolerates imperfect competition.     

The supply of non‐renewable resources

There exists no formal treatment of non‐renewable resource (NRR) supply, systematically deriving quantity as function of price. We establish instantaneous restricted (fixed reserves) and unrestricted NRR supply functions. The supply of a NRR at any date and location depends not only on the local contemporary price of the resource but also on prices at all other dates and locations. Besides the usual law of supply, which characterizes the own‐price effect, cross‐price effects have their own law. They can be decomposed into a substitution effect and a stock compensation effect. We show that the substitution effect always dominates: a price increase at some point in space and time causes NRR supply to decrease at all other points. Our new—although orthodox—setting takes into account not only NRR supply limitations but also the heterogeneity of NRR deposits, and the endogeneity of their development and opening. Our analysis extends to NRRs the partial‐equilibrium analysis of demand and supply policies. Thereby, it provides a generalization of results about policy‐induced changes on NRR markets.     

Airline Schedule Competition and the Entry Route Choices of Low‐Cost Carriers

This study investigates the entry route choices of low‐cost carriers (LCCs). A LCC considers whether to enter a spoke route or a rim route of a major carrier's hub‐spoke network. Under a Cournot schedule competition model, we demonstrate that rim entry is more profitable for LCCs if connecting passengers' hub‐through additional travel time cost is large, and spoke entry is more profitable if this time cost is small. Welfare analysis shows that rim entry is socially preferable when the time cost is large and that spoke entry is socially preferable when the time cost is small. In a certain range of time costs, however, LCCs choose spoke entry even though it is not socially preferable.     

Competition and Privatisation Policies in a Differentiated Mixed Oligopoly: The Pay‐off‐interdependence Approach

I revisit the relationship between competition and privatisation policies in a mixed oligopoly with differentiated goods, following the pay‐off‐interdependence approach in the fashion of Matsumura and Okamura. We find that although the intensity of market competition increases with the degree of importance of each firm's relative performance, the optimal degree of privatisation can decrease in a differentiated goods mixed oligopoly in both the increasing marginal costs case and the constant marginal costs case. Further, given the degree of importance of each firm's relative performance and the number of private firms, we find that the optimal degree of privatisation can decrease as the degree of product differentiation declines. Finally, by considering an alternative‐pay‐off model in both cases, we compare the optimal degree of privatisation of the public firm.     

Public Goods and Tax Competition in a Two‐Sided Market

A rather neglected issue in the tax competition literature is the dependence of equilibrium outcomes on the presence of firms and shoppers (two‐sided markets). Making use of a model of vertical and horizontal differentiation, within which jurisdictions compete by providing public goods and levying taxes in order to attract firms and shoppers, this paper characterizes the noncooperative equilibrium. It also evaluates the welfare implications for the jurisdictions of a popular policy of tax coordination: The imposition of a minimum tax. It is shown that the interaction of the two markets affects the intensity of tax competition and the degree of optimal vertical differentiation chosen by the competing jurisdictions. Though the noncooperative equilibrium is, as it is typically the case, inefficient such inefficiency is mitigated by the strength of the interaction in the two markets. A minimum tax policy is shown to be effective when the strength of the interaction is weak and ineffective when it is strong.     

Competition Among Italian Junior‐Secondary Schools: A Variance‐Decomposition Empirical Analysis

The public economic theory emphasizes the potential role of competition in fostering the performance of educational systems. The rationale for pro‐competitive policies in education (i.e. vouchers, charter schools, tax deductions) is that schools can improve their quality responding to ‘pressures’ from nearby competitors. The objective of this paper is to analyze the potential relationship between (i) competition among schools and (ii) students’ achievement in Italy. While previous studies used OECD‐Pisa data for this purpose, here a new dataset about Italian schools has been employed: about 19,000 students in 150 schools constitute the sample. The reference framework is the idea that the presence of more schools in a certain area, and/or the proportion of students enrolled in private schools, should raise the performance of schools operating in that area through a ‘competition effect’. A multilevel strategy, which allows separating between‐areas variance in achievement scores, is employed. The findings support the view that competition has an impact, albeit little, on students’ achievement, and such competitive pressure is due to the number of schools, no matter if public or private.     

Productivity Catch‐up Between Chinese and Taiwanese Electronics Firms

This paper aims to depict the patterns of China's productivity catch‐up with Taiwan in the electronics industry over the period 2001–2007. Specifically, we investigate the roles that ownership structure and innovation efforts play in the dynamics of the productivity gap. The firm‐level evidence suggests that the labour productivity gap between Chinese and Taiwanese electronics firms has narrowed during the past decade. Second, the narrowing of the labour productivity gap has occurred in foreign‐owned enterprises rather than in local firms. Examining the determinants of productivity catch‐up show that R&D significantly contributes to Chinese electronics firms' catching up with their Taiwanese counterparts.     

Is There a Hold‐up Problem?

We report on a hold‐up experiment in which unilateral investment is followed by bilateral bargaining according to Nash’s demand game. Without communication, investment is low and coordination is poor. Unilateral communication facilitates coordination, but not perfectly. Successful coordination predominantly entails “fair” outcomes. Perhaps surprisingly, sellers (investors) do at least as well under buyer communication as under seller communication.     

Federal tax policies,congressional voting and natural resources

Can abundance of natural resources affect legislators' voting behaviour over federal tax policies? We construct a political economy model of a federalized economy with district heterogeneity in natural resource abundance. The model shows that representatives of natural resource‐rich districts are more (less) willing to vote in favour of federal tax increases (decreases). This occurs because resource‐rich districts are less responsive to federal tax changes due to the immobile nature of their natural resources. We test the model's predictions using data on roll‐call votes in the US House of Representatives over the major federal tax bills initiated during the period of 1945–2003, in conjunction with the presence of active giant oil fields in US congressional districts. Our identification strategy rests on plausibly exogenous giant oil field discoveries and exploitation and narrative‐based aggregate federal tax shocks that are exogenous to individual congressional districts and legislators. We find that: (i) resource‐rich congressional districts are less responsive to changes in federal taxes and (ii) representatives of resource‐rich congressional districts are more (less) supportive of federal tax increases (decreases), controlling for legislator, congressional district and state indicators. Our results indicate that resource richness is approximately half as dominant as the main determinant, namely party affiliation, in driving legislators' voting behaviour over federal tax policies.