FACTORS THAT AFFECT THE LONG‐TERM SURVIVAL OF MICRO,SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN ETHIOPIA

There is an increasing recognition of the potential importance of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) for employment, income and poverty reduction in Ethiopia. Although the MSME sector contributes significantly to the national economy, the high failure rate among well established small businesses and enterprises is a matter of major concern. A random sample of 500 small businesses and enterprises selected from five major cities in Ethiopia were followed up for 6 years in order to assess the impact of influential factors that affect the long‐term survival and viability of small enterprises. Hazard ratios estimated from the Cox Proportional Hazards Model were used to quantify the impact of key predictors of survival. Businesses that ceased operation were characterised by inadequate finance (61%), low level of education (55%), poor managerial skills (54%), shortage of technical skills (49%), and inability to convert part of their profit to investment (46%). The study shows that participation in social capital and networking (iqqub schemes) was critically helpful for long‐term survival. Businesses that did not participate in iqqub schemes regularly were found to be 3.25 times more likely to fail in comparison with businesses that did. Results of the study have implications that could be used for developing policy initiatives that are aimed at fostering long‐term growth in small businesses and enterprises.     

Adjustment Costs,Inventories and Output

This paper analyzes the optimal adjustment strategy of an inventory‐holding firm facing price‐ and quantity‐adjustment costs in an inflationary environment. The model nests both the original menu‐cost model that allows production to be costlessly adjusted, and the later model that includes price‐ and quantity‐adjustment costs, but rules out inventory holdings. It is shown that the firm's optimal adjustment strategy may involve stockouts. At low inflation rates, output is inversely related to the inflation rate, and the length of time demand is satisfied increases with the demand elasticity but decreases with the storage cost and the real interest rate.     

Inequality foundations of concentration measures: An application to the Hannah-Kay indices

The aim of this paper is to provide a connection between concentration and inequality. In particular, we show that the general entropy inequality indices are, among inequality measures, those consistent with the whole set of Hannah-Kay concentration indices. We isolate the inequality component underlying concentration measures, obtaining an explicit additive decomposition of the change in concentration into the change in its two components, i.e., inequality and the number of firms. This relationship proves to be valid for the whole set of Hannah-Kay concentration indices, and embodies as particular cases some others previously found in the literature. We are particularly grateful to Emilio Cerdá for helpful comments on the mathematical formulation of the paper. The second author also acknowledges support through the European Commission Project #ERBCHRXCT980248.     

The impact of regulation on market risk

While it is crucial to understand the impact of regulatory changes on market risk, the literature does not show how risk responds to expected regulatory changes that are specifically designed to change risk. Our paper fills this gap by providing a detailed study of one such case. Using both a sample of privatized U.K. companies, and U.K. and U.S. control portfolios, between 1993 and 2000, we show (both for the single-factor market model and the three-factor Fama-French model) that the observed changes in market risk are significant and consistent with theory.     

Are Venture Capitalists a Catalyst for Innovation?

In this paper we test two hypotheses concerning the presence of innovation in venture capital investments and the growth of innovative venture backed firms. To examine these hypotheses we considered sample of 37 Italian venture backed firms that went public on the Italian Stock Exchange between 1995 and 2004 and by a statistical matching procedure we picked 37 twin firms among the non‐venture backed IPOs for the same period. Our evidence shows that innovation is an important factor during the selection phase but once the investment is made, the company does not promote continued innovation and concentrates all efforts to improve other economic and managerial aspects.     

QUANTIFYING THE OUTSOURCING OF JOBS FROM MANUFACTURING TO SERVICES

There has been debate internationally and in South Africa about the extent to which a relative decline in manufacturing employment and rise in services employment can be accounted for by intersectoral outsourcing of jobs in the domestic economy. This article develops a new methodology for testing for and quantifying outsourcing at an economy-wide level. This methodology is used to analyse intersectoral shifts in employment in South Africa between 1997 and 2005. Trends in employment in the business services subsector of services are also examined for what they suggest about the extent of outsourcing. Overall, the results suggest that intersectoral outsourcing accounts for some but by no means all of the apparent shift in employment between the manufacturing and services sectors in South Africa.     

Price rigidities and institutional variations in markets with posted prices

Summary Standard laboratory posted-offer markets respond slowly and incompletely to demand shocks. In these one-sided markets, where sellers control the setting of prices, very little information is transmitted via the process of exchange. For this reason, traders have trouble distinguishing randomness in their own experience from changes in market fundamentals. This paper reports the results of twelve laboratory markets conducted to assess whether some common variants to standard posted-offer rules can correct the adjustment deficiences. Although discounting, multiple postings and excess demand information all improve performance, we find that response remains poor, and efficiencies low.Support for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation (SBR 9319842 and SBR 9320044), and the University of Virginia Bankard Fund. Data are archived at FTP address: fido.econlab.arizona.edu. We wish to thank Charles Plott and Shyam Sunder for useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Quality Competition and Social Welfare in Markets with Partial Coverage: New Results*

We use a vertical product differentiation model under partial market coverage to study the social welfare optimum and duopoly equilibrium when convex costs of quality provision are either fixed or variable in terms of production. We show the following new results. First, under fixed costs, the social planner charges a uniform price for the single variant that just covers costs of quality provision. Like the duopoly equilibrium, this socially optimal pricing entails a partially uncovered market, but a smaller share of the market is served compared with the duopoly equilibrium. Second, for the variable cost case, it is socially optimal to provide both high‐ and low‐quality variants, but market shares need not be equal. This differs from the result in fully covered markets. Third, in the duopoly equilibrium, the quality spread is too wide under variable costs relative to the social optimum. Under fixed costs, the duopoly produces two variants, but quality is too low relative to the social optimum, which has only one variant.     

Does individualization help productivity of transition agriculture?

There are large differences across transition countries with respect to agricultural‐sector performance and corresponding scope of farm restructuring and shift to individual farming. In this article we analyze the impact of individualization on productivity growth within an augmented neoclassical growth model framework. This approach allows us to circumvent criticisms on the grounds of lack of theoretical and objective criteria for inclusion of explanatory variables. Furthermore, in the empirical analysis using a panel data covering 15 transition countries over the period 1990–2001 and applying a generalized method of moments with instrumental variable estimator we are able to control for the impact of various factors and the potential endogeneity of variables. Our estimation results are robust and support the view that the shift to individual farming, as well as the overall economic reforms, has positively contributed to the productivity growth in agriculture during the first decade of transition.     

Partial Horizontal Inequity Orderings: A Non‐parametric Approach*

We provide a partial ordering view of horizontal inequity (HI), based on the Lorenz criterion, associated with different post‐tax income distributions and a (bistochastic) non‐parametric estimated benchmark distribution. As a consequence, several measures consistent with the Lorenz criterion can be rationalized. In addition, we establish the so‐called HI transfer principle, which imposes a normative minimum requirement that any HI measure must satisfy. Our proposed HI ordering is consistent with this principle. Moreover, we adopt a cardinal view to decompose the total effect of a tax system into a welfare gain caused by HI‐free income redistribution and a welfare loss caused by HI, without any additive decomposable restriction on the indices. Hence, more robust tests can be applied. Other decompositions in the literature are seen as particular cases.