WELFARE ENHANCING COORDINATION IN CONSUMER COOPERATIVES UNDER MIXED OLIGOPOLY

The recent globalization of world economies has led the retail markets of developed countries towards increasing levels of integration and strategic interdependence. A non negligible share of retail and food markets is currently served by co‐operative societies. Consistently with this trend, the consumer cooperatives have recently experienced increasing levels of integration. The main aim of this paper is to study the welfare effects of coordination among consumer cooperatives competing in quantities in a mixed oligopoly against profit‐maximizing firms. We show that, in absence of agency problems, under increasing or constant returns to scale a higher output coordination of the consumer cooperatives does not affect the total welfare as long as a nonnegative profit constraint holds in these firms. On the other hand, under decreasing returns to scale, the consumer cooperatives contribute more to social welfare when acting on behalf of all consumers. This is because, by coordinating consumers’ preferences, these firms can reduce their market output, thus helping the market to come closer to the first best. All together these results seem to provide an argument in favour of the recent process of integration involving consumer cooperatives in many developed countries.     

The Role of Parent-Firm Characteristics in Affiliate Activities in South Korean Foreign Direct Investment

ABSTRACT

We examine the role of parent-firm characteristics in affiliate activities, including local sales, exports to Korea, and exports to third countries. We find that parent-firm characteristics apparently affect the selling behaviors of affiliates. First, affiliate local sales increase with higher research and development (R&D) intensity and capital intensity but with lower parent wages. Affiliate exports to Korea decrease with higher capital intensity and lower wages, and affiliate exports to third countries rise with higher R&D intensity. We also analyze the extent to which affiliate activities are influenced by country and industry characteristics, and the results coincide with those of conventional motivations for foreign direct investment (FDI).     

Do Newly Founded Firms Pay Lower Wages? First Evidence from Germany

Using a linked employer–employee data set for Germany, this paper analyses wage setting in a cohort of newly founded and other establishments from 1997 to 2001. While theory provides alternative explanations for higher or lower wages in newly founded firms, we show empirically that start-ups tend to pay lower wages, ceteris paribus. On average, wages in newly founded establishments are 8% lower than in similar incumbent firms. This negative wage differential is substantially smaller in eastern than in western Germany. The wage differential is shown to decline over time as the newly founded firms become more mature.     

The Born-Global Phenomenon: A Comparative Case Study Research

This qualitative, case-based research investigates the most relevant traits shown by several new, export-involved born-global firms and their entrepreneurs-managers versus other more traditional and also recently-established exporting SMEs in a specific geographic region inside Spain. More concretely, we aim to shed light on the type of factors and specific conditions underlying the emergence and further expansion of born-global exporters, as compared to other counterparts, which do not share their rapid internationalising character from inception. From our cross-comparison of four firm cases investigated in this setting against a number of factors generally associated with the born-global or gradual internationalisation paths, our results indicate that both constitute two consistent and distinctive patterns of international development. Another relevant finding in this research is that born globals seem indeed to be more entrepreneurial regarding their export entry behaviour into foreign markets than gradual exporters. Relevant academic, managerial, and policy-making implications are also outlined from these results.     

Boards of directors in family firms: a generational perspective

The purpose of this study is to advance the understanding of boards of directors in family firms. Building on generational changes in family attributes, we argue that firms in a different generational phase have different governance needs and characteristics. With regard to board task needs, the empirical results indicate a convex generational evolution in the need for board advice, and a rise over the generations in the need for board control. With regard to board composition, we find that the likelihood of having an outside director on the board has a convex generational trend. This relationship seems to be fully mediated by the firm’s board task needs. Furthermore, the number of family directors seems to increase over the generations. This study demonstrates that it is important to consider the generational phase of the family firm in order to understand its governance system.

我国会计服务市场面临的挑战及其对策

我国加入WTO后,必须开放会计服务市场,以“保证我国与外国合作的事务所和职业人士享受与东道国同行同等的权利”;“消除市场准入的歧视性壁垒”。因此,加入WTO后的中国会计服务市场竞争将会日趋激烈。对此,我们应采取积极对策,例如,健全审计的法律法规制度,尽快与国际审计惯例接轨,提高注册会计师的职业道德和执业水平等措施。     

Employment change in independent owner-managed high-technology firms in Great Britain

There is a growing volume of literature that points to the potential for small technology-based firms to achieve substantial employment growth. As a direct consequence of such work this sector of any economy has attracted increasing attention from national and local Governments concerned with finding ways of revitalising economically deprived localities and creating employment opportunities. This paper provides up-to-date empirical evidence surrounding the ability of small high-technology firms to create additional jobs in Great Britain. In addition, key founder and business characteristics are isolated which are significantly associated with employment change in growing high-technology firms over the 1986 to 1992 period. With respect to factors influencing these high levels of employment growth, a high firm size (in 1986) was found to act positively on employment growth, as was a graduate level education for the key founder. On the finance side firms which had access to and used a multiplicity of sources of start-up finance tended to grow faster. Futher, on the basis of our results we would suggest (and recommend) a Government policy which at the firm level actively encourages high-technology firm start-ups (who record higher rates of survival than firms in more conventional sectors) as well as providing support for existing high-technology firms who have already demonstrated the inclination and ability to grow in employment size.     

银企关系与房地产公司的信贷违约--基于嵌入性视角的研究

嵌入性理论认为,社会资本是企业可以利用的重要资源。本文基于我国房地产上市公司信贷数据,发现银企关系作为企业一项重要的社会资本提供了财务变量和股票市场变量以外有关公司违约的重要信息,有助于提高违约风险模型的预测能力。其中银企双边关系久期、主营房地产业务时间以及公司国有背景与违约风险率显著负相关,银企关系规模的实际作用效果与关系网络的规模和结构有关。     

中国银行业创值能力分析--EVA体系对银行经营绩效的考察

中国经济要保持高速、稳定增长,需要进一步提高经济效率,实现质量型增长.其中,关键是资金效率.中国资金运用效率的高低很大程度上取决于占社会资金78%以上的银行业的资金效率.为此,本文应用EVA分析体系来综合系统地分析中国银行业的绩效.分析结果显示,上市银行虽然好于非上市银行,但由于国有商业银行的比重较大,银行业整体创值能力明显较弱.建议以提高国有商业银行资金运用效率为当下改进社会资金运用效率的切入口.     

我国高科技上市公司债务结构治理效应的实证研究

以2003年度中国证券市场上的高科技上市公司为样本,考察了我国上市公司的债务结构的治理效应。研究发现,公司绩效指标与资产负债率、流动负债比率、长期负债率表现出了显著的负相关关系,此说明债务结构的治理效应对公司绩效产生了显著的负面影响,即债权治理在中国高科技上市公司中表现出软约束和治理弱化的特征,没有发挥出应有的作用。