Joint oligopsony-oligopoly in the U.S. leaf tobacco market, 1924–39

The leaf tobacco marketplace is highly organized. Prior to 1940, the few large tobacco companies controlled that organization explicitly. The question is whether this organization set oligopsonistic leaf prices or minimized production and transaction costs. A model of joint oligopsonyoligopoly shows that pricing of cigarettes and leaf tobacco was unified: oligopolistic cigarette pricing was sufficient to curtail both cigarette production and leaf purchases. The companies could just bid in the market for the leaf necessary for that cigarette production rate.Prima facie, the organization was not for oligopsony coordination. The implied econometric model of pricing fits observed behavior well.Malcolm Boyd, Dennis Carlton, John Garen, Stephen Karlson, Li Way Lee, An-loh Lin, Robert Miller, Stephen Spurr and the referee have given me thoughtful, perceptive and useful comments. I am pleased to acknowledge their involvement without implicating them in whatever errors remain.     

UK World War I and interwar data for business cycle and growth analysis

This article contributes new time series for studying the UK economy during World War I and the interwar period. The time series are per capita hours worked and average capital income, labor income, and consumption tax rates. Uninterrupted time series of these variables are provided for an annual sample that runs from 1913 to 1938. We highlight the usefulness of these time series with several empirical applications. The per capita hours worked data are used in a growth accounting exercise to measure the contributions of capital, labor, and productivity to output growth. The average tax rates are employed in a Bayesian model averaging experiment to reevaluate the Benjamin and Kochin (J Political Econ 87:441–478, 1979) regression.     

Value Orientations, Income and Displacement Effects, and Voluntary Contributions

Identifying the value orientations of subjects participating in market or non-market decisions by having them participate in a ring game may be helpful in understanding the behaviour of these subjects. This experiment presents the results of changes in the centre and the radius of a value orientations ring in an attempt to discover if the measured value orientations exhibit income or displacement effects. Neither significant income effects nor displacement effects are identified. An external validity check with a voluntary contribution game provides evidence that value orientations from rings centred around the origin of the decision-space explain significant portions of voluntary contributions while value orientations from displaced rings do not.     

Finance and growth in Africa: The broken link

While bank liabilities in Sub-Saharan Africa are found to follow (but not lead) economic growth, the link between bank credit and growth is altogether absent.     

Small and Medium Enterprise Financing in Transition Economies

This paper studies the financing status of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in transition economies. Factors causing financing obstacles are indentified and further analyzed to determine their influence over financing patterns. Bank regulatory practices relevant to SMEs’ access to bank loans and their influence over loan structures are identified. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by exploring the impact of specific bank regulatory practices on credit lending to SMEs in transition economies.     

Designing a competency-based human resources organization

New organizing factors are emerging as human resources professionals seek performance breakthroughs, with process and competency emerging as key factors in determining how the HR function is organized. While the process focus rides the wave of interest in total quality management and reengineering, a growing number of organizations see competence as the key to enduring performance and to making HR most effective. This article combines experience from the authors' work with some emerging possibilities to describe a competency-based approach for designing a high performing HR organization. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.