Input substitutability and vertical integration

Input substitutability in final production is a well-known motive for noncompetitive input producers to integrate with their customers. In models that characterize the noncompetitive input industry as a pure monopoly, whether such integration would increase or decrease final production is ambiguous. The analysis here breaks the total output effect into factor substitution and market power components and discovers that the output ambiguity is sensitive to the specific model of noncompetitive equilibrium assumed. For the empirically most important cases of industrial organization, the sole effect of input substitutability on output is likely to be an unambiguous output increase.For their helpful comments, I am indebted to Stephen Karlson, Li Way Lee, W. G. Shepherd, Stephen Spurr, Hal Varian, and the referee. Any errors in the paper persist in spite of them.     

Resale price maintenance in a model of consumer search

A retail search model of Salop and Stiglitz (1977) is adapted to analyze manufacturer incentives for resale price maintenance. For some retailer cost functions and distributions of consumer search costs, imposition of a minimum price for retailers causes a price distribution to collapse to an intermediate price. Manufacturers may benefit from price floors when sales to high-search-cost consumers that have obtained lower prices increase sufficiently so as to offset decreased sales to other consumers facing higher prices. In contrast to previous work, no free-riding problem with respect to dealer services is necessary for manufacturers to prefer banning discounting of their products.     

A new approach to estimation of the effects of non-tariff barriers to trade: An application to the Swedish textile and clothing industry

Zusammenfassung Ein neuer Ansatz zur Sch?tzung der Wirkungen von nichttarif?ren Handelsschranken: Eine Anwendung auf die schwedische Textil-und Bekleidungsindustrie. — Der Aufsatz hat das Ziel, die Wirkungen abzusch?tzen, die sich aus den Ver?nderungen der nichttarif?ren Handelsschranken für Preise, Besch?ftigung und Einfuhrvolumen ergeben. Um diese Wirkungen zu untersuchen, wurde ein Ansatz benutzt, der mindestens drei Vorzüge gegenüber denjenigen hat, mit denen in anderen Studien die Folgen der verst?rkten Entwicklungsl?nder-exporte für die Industriel?nder analysiert wurden. Erstens bringt er ausdrücklich die Preise ins Spiel, wodurch die M?glichkeit er?ffnet wird, den Gewinn abzusch?tzen, den die Konsumenten infolge erh?hter Importe und die Entwicklungsl?nder infolge erh?hter Exporte haben. Zweitens wird in dieser Untersuchung die potentielle Arbeitslosigkeit in den Grenzbetrieben der einzelnen Branchen ermittelt, woraus sich eine Nachfragekurve für Arbeit ableiten l?\t, die dem jeweiligen Industriezweig und dem jeweiligen Jahr zugeordnet werden kann. In anderen Studien wurde h?ufig der durchschnittliche Arbeits-Output-Koeffizient benutzt. Da sich die Grenzbetriebe feststellen lassen, kann drittens genau angegeben werden, wie die potentielle Arbeitslosigkeit des Industriezweiges regional verteilt sein wird.

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Résumé Une nouvelle approche pour l’estimation des effets des barrières non-tarifaires au commerce extérieur: Une application à l’industrie suédoise de textile et de vêtement. — Cet article envisage d’estimer les effets des changements dans les barrières non-tarifaires au commerce extérieur sur les prix, l’emploi et le volume d’importation. Pour analyser ces effets nous avons appliqué une approche qui a au moins trois avantages comparé à celles qui sont appliquées dans d’autres études qui analysent l’effet des exportations augmentées des PVD sur les économies des pays developpés. Premièrement, elle expressément introduit les prix dans l’analyse et ainsi offre la possibilité d’estimer les gains consommatrices des importations augmentées aussi bien que les gains pour les PVD en conséquence des exportations élevées. Deuxièmement, nous identifions dans notre étude le ch?mage potentiel dans les usines industrielles marginales et dérivons une courbe de demande de travail qui est spécifique pour l’industrie et l’année correspondante. Dans d’autres recherches on a souvent utilisé des rapports moyens de travail/produit. Troisèmement, comme nous pouvons identifier les usines marginales nous pouvons aussi précisément dépein-dre la distribution régionale du ch?mage potentiel de l’industrie.

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Resumen Un nuevo enfoque para la estimación de los efectos de barreras comerciales que no sean tarifas: Una aplicación para el caso de la industria textil y de confectión sueca. — El estudio intenta estimar el impacto sobre precios, empleo y volumen de las importaciones, de cambios en las barreras comerciales con ex-clusión de tarifas. Para analizar estos efectos se utiliza un enfoque que tiene por lo menos tres ventajas con respecto a los normalmente empleados en estudios que analizan el impacto de un aumento de las exportaciones de países en desarrollo sobre las economfas desarrolladas. Primeramente, los precios son considerados explícita-mente en el análisis, permitiendo así la posibilidad de estimar la ganancia del con-sumidor a través de un incremento en las importaciones y el beneficio para los países en desarrollo proveniente de un aumento en las exportaciones. En segundo lugar, en el análisis se identifica el desempleo potencial en las empresas marginales de la industria y se deriva una curva de demanda laboral relativa a la industria y ano considerados. En otros estudios se ha utilizado generalmente un promedio de la relatión empleo-producto. Finalmente, como las empresas marginales pueden ser identificadas, es posible ilustrar de forma precisa, la distribución regional del des-empleo potencial en la industria.

     

Online Marketing: A Boon or Bane for Business in Singapore?

This paper examines the impact of e-commerce through online marketing among the multi-national corporations in Singapore. A survey was carried out to examine the differences between online and traditional marketing strategies, to explore the possibility of online marketing replacing traditional marketing, and consequently, the future of online marketing in Singapore. The findings reveal that MNCs do adopt different marketing strategies, both online and offline, in aspects of product, price, place, promotion, people, physical evidence and promotion. Results indicate that online marketing is still in its infancy in Singapore. Although most MNCs are not selling online but some plan to do so within twelve months.     

Deciding to export: An exploratory study of Singaporean entrepreneurs

This paper confirms a mapping between a taxonomy of entrepreneurs and what triggered Singaporeans to become exporters. The study involved interviews with 47 new exporters based in Singapore. Entrepreneurs were classified as either ‘opportunity seeking’ or ‘reactive’. Export triggers were either ‘pull’, negative ‘push’, or positive ‘push’. We find that those who were opportunity seeking at start-up were more likely to have responded to export ‘pull’ forces. It was rare indeed for a reactive founder to have been ‘pulled’ into exporting. Among this group of entrepreneurs, ‘push’ forces dominated the decision to export. The paper concludes with some implications for policy targeting and suggestions for further research.     

Modeling economic and agro-environmental dynamics of potato production systems

Crop rotation and other input management practices are of particular interest for their potential impacts on economic and agro-environmental components of potato production. Although crop yield and experimental impacts of rotations of grains, oilseed and legume crops have been published for several experimental studies in Canada there are few models related to the economic and environmental dynamics of potato production. We describe a dynamic model which integrates environmental and economic processes in potato production. The potato rotation model consists of interconnected modules of irrigation and precipitation, soil characteristics, soil erosion, soil water, phosphorus, nitrogen, soil organic matter, farming operations, crop yield and the related calculation of economic return. While not all aspects of crop production have been interlinked, including nitrogen carry-over, this model is the first step in the analysis of experimental data for irrigated potato rotations conducted in southern Manitoba.      

Contributions to Canadian economic history: The last 30 years

The cliometric revolution that transformed economic history in the US in the 1960s was soon embraced by Canadian economic historians. Many of the important issues surrounding Canadian development remained the same: the role of resources, the place of international trade, immigration, capital accumulation and interactions with Native Americans, among others. But beginning in the 1960s, and certainly over the last 30 years, economic historians of Canada have addressed them with the tools of modern economics, both theoretical and empirical. We highlight the recent work emphasizing not just the methods but also the fundamental ways our understanding of Canadian history has been changed.     

Accounting Price of an Exhaustible Resource: Response and Extensions

Wei (Environ Resour Econ 60:579–581, 2015) presents a novel derivation of the accounting price for an exhaustible resource in a non-optimal economy subject to an allocation mechanism. We show that Wei (2015) and Hamilton and Ruta (Environ Resour Econ 42:53–64, 2009) are in fact employing different and mutually exclusive allocation mechanisms for the economy, and this explains the differences between the respective accounting prices. Because accounting prices must be defined subject to the allocation mechanism for the economy, the prices derived in the two papers are equally valid within their respective allocation domains. Further analysis shows that if there is declining marginal product of factors, a ‘Hartwick investment rule’ for the model economy (set investment just equal to depletion, valued at the accounting price) will lead to declining consumption for the Wei (2015) accounting price, and increasing consumption for the Hamilton and Ruta (2009) accounting price. This result is extended to consider the accounting standards recommended in the UN SEEA (System of environmental-economic accounting 2012: central framework. United Nations, European Commission, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Bank, 2012), as well as accounting for environmental externalities from resource use.