Is there Evidence of Learning‐by‐Exporting in Turkish Manufacturing Industries?

Exporting has always been thought of as one tool to improve productivity and, consequently, to spur economic growth in low‐ to middle‐income economies. However, empirical evidence of this so‐called ‘learning‐by‐exporting’ effect has been limited. This article determines whether learning‐by‐exporting is evident in two Turkish manufacturing sectors—the textile and apparel (T&A) and the motor vehicle and parts (MV&P) industries. A semi‐parametric estimator that controls for problems associated with simultaneity and unobserved plant heterogeneity is used to test the learning‐by‐exporting hypothesis. After controlling for these issues, our results suggest statistically stronger learning‐by‐exporting effects in the T&A than in the MV&P industry. The highly concentrated and capital‐intensive nature of the MV&P industry is the main reason for the lower learning‐by‐exporting effect in this sector. From a policy perspective, this implies that targeting export‐enhancing policies to industries with significant learning‐by‐exporting effects may lead to more productivity gains and would better stimulate an export‐led growth.     

Size and Foreign Ownership Effects on Productivity and Efficiency: An Analysis of Turkish Motor Vehicle and Parts Plants

The levels and interactions of foreign connections and size may be important determinants of plant productivity and efficiency, particularly in a developing country such as Turkey. We explore the productive contributions of foreign ownership (FDI), emphasizing its linkages with plant size and input composition, for plants in the Turkish motor vehicle and parts industry. We evaluate the implications of FDI for overall productivity, input-specific contributions, and returns to scale, using OLS, stochastic production frontier, and quantile (size-specific) regression estimates of a translog production function model. We find significantly higher productivity of plants with foreign ownership, driven by a higher marginal product of labor, particularly for smaller plants. This effect augments the productive contributions of technical progress, capital intensity, and increasing returns to scale. FDI is also associated with a greater productive contribution of imported capital investment.     

随机预定需求下的客房分配:酒店收益管理博弈

本文研究具有两个不同消费级别的两家酒店在完全信息条件下收益管理的单期静态博弈。讨论了酒店分别在竞争与合作两种情况下,对于低价房间预留数目的设定策略。在竞争情况下,证明了纳什均衡唯一解的存在性。在合作情况下,分析了两酒店的节省成本及目标函数的凹性。在合作情况下,提出了使两酒店总收益大幅度提高的条件。最后,用一些算例(假设客房预定需求变量服从截断正态分布)分析了在每种情况下的酒店最优管理方案。     

Sending Vietnamese Rice Farmers Back to School: Further Evidence on the Impacts of Farmer Field Schools

This study evaluates the impact of farmer field schools (FFS) on knowledge, insecticide use, and yield using a nonconsecutive, two‐year panel data that allows one to control for nonrandom selection. Regression analysis using a difference‐in‐difference approach indicates FFS training did not result in statistically significant impacts on insecticide use and yield over the period of time examined. However, there is some evidence that FFS had an “initial” knowledge impact, but it was not sustained over time. Retraining FFS graduates may be an attractive option to help maintain knowledge and improve performance over time, but we do not find empirical evidence on the effectiveness of this strategy based on a small sample of retrained farmers. La présente étude examine l’impact du programme Champ‐École‐Paysan (CEP) (Farmer Field Schools – FFS) sur l’acquisition des connaissances, l’utilisation d’insecticides et le rendement, à l’aide de données de panel non consécutives recueillies sur une période de deux ans et permettant de maîtriser la sélection non aléatoire. Une analyse de régression utilisant la méthode de différence de différences a révélé que la formation offerte dans le cadre du programme CEP n’a pas eu d’impact statistiquement significatif sur l’utilisation d’insecticides ni sur le rendement au cours de la période visée par l’étude. Toutefois, il semble que le programme CEP a eu un impact sur l’acquisition des connaissances au début, mais que cet impact n’a pas été soutenu au fil du temps. Le recyclage des participants au programme CEP peut constituer une option intéressante pour le maintien des connaissances et l’amélioration du rendement au fil du temps. Par contre, l’étude d’un petit échantillon de producteurs recyclés n’a pas fourni de preuve empirique permettant de croire à l’efficacité de cette stratégie.     

Demand regimes and income distribution reconsidered in an open economy portfolio balance framework

A large body of neo-Kaleckian literature has debated the distributional determinants of demand and growth. One general conclusion has been that open economy considerations weaken the potential for a wage-led growth regime. However, this literature has largely ignored asset portfolio considerations and the stock and flow interactions that result from the feedback from savings to wealth and from wealth to the current account. This study develops a theoretical framework that specifies a fuller system of (instantaneous) flow equilibria embedded in a medium-run framework with stable steady-state stocks of real and financial assets. The balance-of-payments constraint that results ensures that simply raising the wage does not yield a higher stock of real capital. A lower markup may increase the steady-state stock of capital but only through the relative price channel. These results are much stronger than those derived in the existing literature, and more important, emerge regardless of whether the demand regime is wage-led or profit-led in the absence of international trade.     

Greenfield Investments or Acquisitions: Impacts of Institutional Distance on Establishment Mode Choice of Multinational Enterprises in Emerging Economies

ABSTRACT

The authors analyze the impacts of formal and informal institutional distance on establishment mode choice of multinational enterprises (MNEs) using a sample of 343 foreign direct investments (FDIs) made in selected emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America by the Finnish MNEs. This study contributes to conceptualization and operationalization of institutional distance as well as its application in international business studies. The empirical analysis revealed that high informal institutional distance results in preference of greenfield investments by the Finnish MNEs as the authors hypothesized. However, the authors also found that high formal institutional distance results in preference of acquisitions, which is opposite the study hypothesis as well as the findings of previous studies addressing similar issues.     

Bilateral trade impacts of temporary foreign visitor policy

Using country-level panel data from 1950 to 2003, this paper critically examines the impact of the US Visa Waiver Program (VWP) on bilateral trade levels. Our empirical analysis uses a variety of specifications, estimators, and robustness checks, including a ??random growth?? specification that controls for selection bias from both time-varying and time-invariant unobserved country-specific characteristics. The results indicate that a temporary foreign visitor policy with less requirements, such as the US VWP, tends to increase the bilateral trade levels between the US and the selected VWP countries, especially for US exports. This suggests that VWP may have encouraged business travel and commerce enough such that there are export benefits from this less restrictive temporary foreign visitor policy of about 10?C20% (~2?C4% in tariff equivalent terms).     

Firm performance and knowledge spillovers from academic, industrial and foreign linkages: the case of China

Firm performance may be enhanced by linkages with academic institutions, other firms, and foreign markets that confer knowledge spillovers as well as internal R&D that creates firm-specific knowledge. In particular, firm productivity and innovation may be enhanced by positive externalities from knowledge and technology produced by universities and research institutions (URIs) and diffused to the domestic economy. Productive contributions from such linkages might be particularly expected in China, where policy measures have explicitly supported and facilitated connections between URIs and firms to stimulate economic development and competitiveness. In this paper, we measure the performance impact of such knowledge spillovers in Chinese firms by using a variety of specifications, estimators, and robustness checks, including an ??instrumental variable?? specification that controls for endogeneity. We find more patent activity in Chinese firms with URI connections and enhanced firm productivity particularly from linkages with research institutions (RIs). Introduction of new products, processes, and new businesses is also positively associated with linkages with research institutions, as well as with linkages with other firms.     

Interactive Role of Consumer Discrimination and Branding against Counterfeiting: A Study of Multinational Managers’ Perception of Global Brands in China

Prior research has examined consumer intentions to purchase fakes, branding strategies and anti-counterfeiting actions, but little attention seems to have been paid to the role of consumers’ ability to discern fakes and branding strategies against counterfeiting. This article, thus, based on a study of 128 multinational managers’ experience in China, examines these inter-relationships. As a result, we address how knowledgeable and experienced managers in branding, consumer consumption and anti-counterfeiting effort perceive consumers’ ability to discriminate fakes from originals interacts with branding strategies, and how such relationship influences the effectiveness of anti-counterfeiting effort. Our findings suggest that consumer discrimination itself has no significant effect on anti-counterfeiting success. However, it significantly interacts with branding strategies to predict a means to mitigate brand damage. That is, consumers’ ability to discriminate fakes from originals appears to undermine efforts to mitigate brand damage from counterfeiting, at least in China when branding is based on improving product features or advertising and promotion. However, if branding emphasises after sales service, consumers’ ability to discriminate was found to enhance firms’ ability to limit counterfeiting damage to brands. Such interactions, however, did not help stop counterfeiting, except that branding based on reliability appears to have such a positive effect.