Investigating the influence of velocity performance on satisfaction with third party logistics service

The Third Party Logistics (3PL) service industry is characterized by customer relationships that can extend over several years, involving multiple instances of service delivery. When services are delivered on an ongoing basis, customers are able to not only evaluate positional (current) performance, but also velocity (rate at which the service changes) performance. This research presents findings from an empirical study utilizing an online survey of 3PL customers to examine the influence of these two types of performance on 3PL service satisfaction. Environmental moderators including market turbulence and competitive intensity are also examined, and results indicate that velocity performance is a more important driver of satisfaction when customers operate in industries characterized by high market turbulence. The findings suggest that 3PL service providers should implement velocity performance metrics, especially for customers operating in rapidly changing environments, and use velocity performance information during the sales process and customer negotiations.     

INTERFAMILY TRANSFERS AS ALTERNATIVES TO GOVERNMENT TRANSFERS TO PERSONS*

How have government transfers altered the distribution of income, the level of work effort, and the rate of personal saving? Most scholars approach this question by comparing the current level of government transfers with the unrealistic counterfactual of a zero-transfer situation. This method overlooks the fact that nongovernment transfers existed before government transfers and the possibility that private transfers might have grown more if government transfers had grown less. This paper explores the significance of one private alternative to government transfers-namely, direct interfamily giving of cash, food, and housing. Fragmentary evidence suggests that such interfamily transfer was quantitatively more important than governmental transfer for these purposes thirty years ago, but is now only half as great. If current government transfers are conversions of, or substitutes for, interfamily transfers, then it follows that some of the benefits of government transfer “slide” over to “secondary beneficiaries,” i.e. those who would have made the private transfers. Further, it follows that the effects of government transfers are not much different from those of the private transfers which they replace.     

Introduction to the symposium: The discipline of applied general equilibrium

Summary The use of general equilibrium models in applied research imposes a discipline in which model structures can easily be compared and contrasted and model results can be interpreted using a well understood and rigorously developed theoretical framework. These features allow researchers to compare results across modeling efforts and to build on the experience of others in deriving results and formulating questions. This paper first presents a brief critical history of applied general equilibrium analysis. It then summarizes the contributions of eight other papers in this issue.We are grateful to Gary Hansen, Ellen McGrattan, and Richard Rogerson for helpful discussions of this paper. We also want to thank the members of the Applied Theory Workshop at the University of Minnesota, who helped referee and edit the papers in this issue: Fernando Alvarez, Raphael Bergoeing, Betsy Caucutt, Ricardo Cavalcanti, Antonia Diaz, Ron Edwards, Andres Erosa, Terry Fitzgerald, Ron Gecan, Doug Gollin, Karine Moe, François Ortalo-Magne, and Marcelo Veracierto. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis or the Federal Reserve System.     

Effects of presubscription and other attributes on long-distance carrier choice

This article describes how Japanese residential customers choose among long-distance carriers. Based upon a 1993 survey, the model indicates that the time required to register customers, whether extra digits are required to use a carrier, and whether a carrier can provide both local and long-distance calls, as well as the carrier's brand identity are significant service attributes that affect competitive outcomes. The effects of these services differences are quantified. Simulations are used to illustrate the competitive impacts of reducing service differences among carriers.     

The high/low divide: Self-selection by values in auction choice

Most prior theoretical and experimental work involving auction choice has assumed bidders find out their value after making a choice of which auction to enter. We examine whether or not bidders knowing their value prior to making a choice of which among multiple alternative auction formats to enter impacts their choice decision and/or the outcome of the auctions. The results show a strong impact on auction choice. Subjects with low values choose the first price sealed bid auction more often while subjects with high values choose the ascending auction more often. The number of bidders in each auction, revenue, efficiency and average bidder surplus all end up equalized.     

Distributional effects of imputed rents in five European countries

Most empirical distributional studies of well-being in developed countries rely on distributions of disposable income. From a theoretical point of view this practice is contentious since a household’s command over resources is determined not only by its spending power over commodities it can buy in the market but also on resources available to the household members through non-market mechanisms such as the in-kind provisions of the welfare state and the value of private non-cash incomes. In developed market economies the most important private non-cash income component is imputed rent from owner-occupied or subsidized accommodation. Employing a wider definition of imputed rent that also allows the analyst to capture income advantages among tenants living in rent-subsidized accommodations of various sorts (including rent-free or reduced-rent households), the present paper examines the differential effects of including imputed rents in the concept of resources in five European countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy and the UK). The results suggest that in almost all cases, the inclusion of imputed rents in the concept of resources leads to a decline in measured levels of inequality and poverty. The main beneficiaries are outright homeowners and households living in rent-free (or heavily subsidized) accommodation—most often older persons. The inclusion of imputed rents in the concept of resources does not lead to substantial changes in the ranking of the countries according to their level of inequality, despite widespread differences in the rates of home ownership and subsidization across the countries studied here.     

Organising migrant workers: the living wage campaign at the University of East London

This critical case study looks at the campaign led by Citizens UK and Unison to get the University of East London (UEL) to sign up to the London living wage (LLW). UEL agreed to pay the LLW after a brief campaign in November 2010 and it was subsequently implemented in August 2011. The study charts the course of the campaign and draws on mobilisation theory and new primary research to account for its success. What our findings suggest is that community organisers and union activists were able to organise and mobilise a largely apolitical group of migrant workers. This, we suggest, can be explained by the successful mobilisation of the community and augurs well for future broad‐based campaigns.     

Adding Value to Applied Policy Models： The Case of the WTO and OECD Support Classification Systems

Both the OECD and the WTO have accumulated systematic data on the magnitude of support going to farmers as a result of farm policies. The datasets are collected for different purposes, but both give a detailed picture of the evolution of these policies. This paper extends recent work on the compatibility or otherwise of the two attempts at policy monitoring by considering the categorization of individual policy instruments in Norway, Switzerland, the US, and the EU. The results show how the OECD dataset, particularly with respect to the link between direct payments and production requirements, complements that of the WTO. Many payments classified in the WTO Green Box require production, raising the possibility that they may distort production and trade. Though the issue of correct notifications to the WTO is the province of lawyers, the implications for modeling and policy analysis are of interest to economists, and the broader question of improving the consistency of the two datasets is of importance in the quest for transparency in the interpretation of changes in farm policies.     

When does FDI have positive spillovers? Evidence from 17 transition market economies

We use rich firm-level data and national input–output tables from 17 countries over the 2002–2005 period to test new and existing hypotheses about the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the efficiency of domestic firms in the host country (i.e., spillovers). We document that backward linkages have a consistently positive effect on productivity of domestic firms while horizontal and forward linkages show no consistent effect. We also examine how the strength of spillovers varies by sector, FDI source, institutional environment (corruption, red tape, level of development), firm’s distance to the technological frontier, and other firm- and country-specific characteristics.