Market structure and competition in transition: results from a spatial analysis

The present article provides first microlevel (indirect) empirical evidence on changes in entry barriers, the determinants of firm profitability as well as the nature of competition for a transition economy. We estimate size thresholds required to support different numbers of firms for several retail and professional service industries in a large number of geographic markets in Slovakia. The 3 time periods in the analysis (1995, 2001 and 2010) characterize different stages of the transition process. Specific emphasis is given to spatial spill-over effects between local markets. Estimation results obtained from a spatial ordered probit model suggest that entry barriers have declined considerably (except for restaurants) and that the intensity of competition has increased on average. We further find that demand spill-overs and/or the effects associated with a positive correlation in unobservable explanatory variables seem to outweigh negative spill-over effects caused by competitive forces between neighbouring cities and villages. The importance of these spatial spill-over effects differs across industries.     

开放式基金投资者择时能力的实证研究

基于开放式基金的净现金流数据,系统研究了我国基金投资者的择时能力。研究结果显示,我国的基金投资者并不具备良好的择时能力,在基金收益波动比较大时,投资者的择时能力表现更差。通过与美国的研究结果进行比较发现,我国基金投资者的择时能力比美国基金投资者差很多。     

Effect of CSR contribution timing during COVID-19 pandemic on consumers’ prepayment purchase intentions: Evidence from hospitality industry in China

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) contributions are essential for hospitality companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, little is known about how CSR contribution timing during the pandemic might affect consumers’ prepayment purchase intentions. This paper takes a hospitality company as an example, using two experiments to explore (a) the effect of CSR contribution timing on consumers’ prepayment purchase intentions and (b) the potential roles of psychological contracts and distance to the COVID-19 risk center. Study 1 demonstrated that CSR contributions during the COVID-19 outbreak (vs. after its peak) led consumers to have higher prepayment purchase intentions, revealing the impact of CSR contribution timing. This effect was also driven by psychological contracts between consumers and the hospitality company. Study 2 showed that, when participants were in the peripheral area of a COVID-19 outbreak, CSR contributions during the outbreak (vs. after its peak) increased prepayment purchase intentions whereas the opposite effect occurred when consumers were in the risk center.     

我国政府和企业投资重点、时点及地点组合研究

目前我国在政府和企业投资的研究领域中,只是单纯考虑投资重点、投资时点和投资地点中某一项或两项因素的影响指标,很少将三者组合起来进行分析,但是三者均对投资起着至关重要的作用,本文运用焦点问题法,以评价指标体系为切入点,通过分析每个点的影响指标,从而建立一套相对完善的投资选择综合评价指标体系,并在分析量化相关指标的基础上,确立了模糊综合评价的方法对投资中重点、时点、地点进行评价,对于我国政府和企业投资决策的全面性起到了关键作用,并为投资决策提供了良好的判断依据.     

How does entry regulation influence entry into self‐employment and occupational mobility?1

We analyse how an entry regulation that imposes a mandatory educational standard affects entry into self‐employment and occupational mobility. We exploit German reunification as a natural experiment and identify regulatory effects by comparing differences between regulated and unregulated occupations in East Germany with the corresponding differences in West Germany after reunification. Consistent with our expectations, we find that entry regulation reduces entry into self‐employment and occupational mobility after reunification more in regulated occupations in East Germany than in West Germany. Our findings are relevant for transition or emerging economies as well as for mature market economies requiring large structural changes after unforeseen economic shocks.     

From command-and-control to market-based environmental policies: Optimal transition timing and China’s heterogeneous environmental effectiveness

Despite the rich literature on command-and-control and market-based environmental policies, the transition between them has received relatively less attention. This paper identifies that there exists an optimal transition timing from command-and-control policies to market-based policies by analyzing the trade-off between the abatement cost and innovation compensation effects of environmental regulations, and the optimal transition timing occurs when the marginal opportunity cost of pollution abatement equals the marginal output of capital input. Using province-level data of 30 regions in China from 2007 to 2015, we measure environmental efficiency by the slack-based model with desirable and undesirable output, and adopt the spatially adaptive semi-parametric model to carry out our empirical research, which shows that command-and-control policies, rather than market-based policies, promote China’s environmental efficiency. Enhancing investment in technological innovation contributes to improving environmental efficiency for both types of policies. Finally, the effect of such policies on environmental efficiency remains heterogeneous across regions.     

On the measurement of entry rates

The purpose of this paper is to explicitly examine the impact that two distinct methods used to measure entry have on identifying the determinants of entry. The two approaches can be termed as the ecological approach and the labor market approach. Based on new business startups in 75 regional markets in West Germany, we find that the two different methods for measuring entry yield disparate results. Most strikingly, we find that the ecological approach yields a positive relationship between unemployment and startup activity, while the labor market approach points to a negative impact of unemployment on the startup of new firms. By decomposing these two measures we offer a reconciliation of what appears to be a measurement contradiction.     

Access regulation and the adoption of VoIP

The introduction of packet-switched telephony in the form of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) raises concerns about current regulatory practice. Access regulation has been designed for traditional telephony on public networks (PSTN). In this paper we analyze the effect of access regulation and retail price regulation of PSTN networks on the adoption of a new technology in the form of VoIP. In particular, we show that with endogenous consumer choice between PSTN and VoIP telephony, higher prices for terminating access to the PSTN network make VoIP less likely to succeed and lead to lower profits of operators that offer exclusively VoIP telephony.