Stable processes of exchange

In this paper we address a long standing gap in economic theory—the gap between claims for the dynamic efficiency of trading in markets, and the findings of formal economic theory, which justify those claims only under restrictive assumptions. We use agent-based methods to study the dynamics of exchange with trading agents who are characterized by several different preference relations. We see that outcomes converge with high probability to Pareto optima in the cases studied, including the well-known example due to Scarf.     

Dynamic Area Allocation and Economies of Scale and Scope

This article applies the adjustment cost framework to the case of area allocation by simultaneously determining the levels of input demand and output supply. Dynamic measures of economies of scale and scope are defined for output‐specific areas. An application to a rotating sample of Dutch cash crops reveals that farmers have a strong incentive for specialisation, but that large adjustment costs for area allocation resulting in small adjustments toward the optimal level prevent them from doing so.     

Factors influencing sales call frequency of industrial salespersons

Industrial sales representatives face a problem of allocating their time in deciding which customers or prospects to call on and how frequently to make those calls. These decisions directly influence the firm's costs and revenues, yet research in this area has been sparse. This article reports an empirical study of the relationship between the call frequency of salespersons and select characteristics of the market, the customer, and the salesperson-customer interaction. Data for the study were collected by a self-administered questionnaire which was completed by 83 salespersons representing 34 different firms. Respondents provided data concerning their call frequency on a particular customer, time in the sales territory, and responses to a series of Likert statements. Eight summative scales were developed from the statements. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between call frequency and the independent variables. Several predictors (Role Consensus, Important Purchase Decision, Important Customer, and Customer Disposition) were salient variables in the model. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the research findings to marketing managers and researchers.     

Using Experts' Experiences Through Stories In Teaching New Product Development

The situations that new product development students typically have to face in the workplace are filled with unstructured problems. A systematic collection and organization of a number of experts' experiences, encoded as cases into a case library, and presented in the form of stories to learners while interacting with a task environment is considered by many scholars as a way to increase unstructured problem-solving skill in these learners. Despite the acknowledged potential of case libraries in other fields, no case libraries have been built to support the teaching of the NPD process. Prior to developing one, we conducted a study to shed some light into the effects of experts' stories and unstructured problem solving. Forty-four undergraduates were subjected to the following: a pretest, random assignment to one of three groups (experimental or case library with stories, comparable or fact sheet with material comparable to the stories but presented as facts, and control or text randomly selected from a textbook unrelated to the material), and post test. The tests attempt to measure whether the experimental group incorporated the lessons to be learned from the stories in the case library. The results indicate that indeed the case library supported unstructured problem-solving skills when compared to fact sheets or random text. General implications for new product development educators are provided. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.     

Measuring the Impact of Price-Induced Innovation on Technological Progress: Application to the U.S. Food Processing and Distribution Sector

A model of price-induced innovation is presented incorporating long-run prices as arguments in the production function serving the role of stimulating firms to seek innovations. The empirical application examines the production structure and technological progress of the U.S. food processing and distribution sector for the period 1948–1991. The empirical model separates scarcity, innovation, and exogenous technical change responses in analyzing the Morishima elasticities for input combinations and multifactor input biases. The results suggest significant structural changes occurring in the food processing and distribution sector since 1980. Focusing on multifactor input bias, results suggest that there are no wide changes in technical change patterns over the last forty years. However, Morishima elasticity results suggest a more varied pattern of technical change between inputs. The price-induced technical progress has a dominant contribution on input decisions compared with the exogenous technical change.     

The impact of the 2008 financial crisis on dynamic productivity growth of the Spanish food manufacturing industry. An impulse response analysis

The emergence of a financial crisis is an event that can impact the fortunes of nearly all economic agents. The focus here is on the 2008 financial crisis and how firms’ productivity growth was impacted by this crisis in the years that followed. This article focuses on dynamic productivity growth and its components using a firm‐level data set of Spanish meat processing, dairy processing, and oils and fats firms. The impulse response analysis shows that the impact of the crisis on dynamic productivity growth is negative and persistent in the oils and fats industry, initially positive but then negative in the meat processing industry, and positive in the dairy processing industry. The observed magnitudes of change in indicator are between 2% and 5% for oils and fats industries, and of 1% in both dairy and meat industries. Our analysis further confirms that firms’ size is an important factor in explaining how crisis impacts dynamic productivity growth and its components, while we find only slight evidence regarding the firms’ experience in the market.     

Input‐Specific Dynamic Productivity Change: Measurement and Application to European Dairy Manufacturing Firms

We propose a new method for measuring and decomposing input‐specific productivity change in a dynamic context. The resulting input‐specific dynamic Luenberger productivity change indicator is decomposed to identify the contributions of input‐specific dynamic technical, technical inefficiency and scale inefficiency changes. The empirical application of the paper focuses on panel data of large firms in the European dairy processing industry over the period 2005–2012. The results show similar patterns for dynamic input‐specific productivity change and its components for labour across European regions (Eastern, Western and Southern), while differences between regions are found regarding materials and investments.     

Inter-Firm and Intra-Firm Efficiency Measures

Intra-firm efficiencyinvolves computing a particular firm's efficiency degree overtime relative to the firm-specific production frontier. Inter-firmefficiency reveals a particular firm's performance over timerelative to the ``best practice frontier' among the set of comparablefirms. These efficiency measures are related by an inter-firmcatch-up component reflecting differences in technology acrossfirms. Those measures are estimated for Dutch pot-plant firmsusing the Generalized Maximum Entropy formalism. The empiricalresults suggest the inter-firm catch-up component is the majordeterminant of inter-firm efficiency.