Productivity,technical efficiency and technological change in French agriculture during 2002-2015: a Färe-Primont index decomposition using group frontiers and meta-frontier

The objective of the article is to assess productivity change in French agriculture during 2002–2015; namely, total factor productivity (TFP) change and its components – technological change and efficiency change. For this, we use the Färe-Primont index which verifies the multiplicatively completeness property and is also transitive, allowing for multi-temporal and -lateral comparisons. We investigate the extent of heterogeneity within each type of farming sub-sample in terms of TFP change, with the help of the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI). In addition, to compare the technologies among the five types of farming considered, we extend our analysis to the meta-frontier framework. Results indicate that during 2002–2015, all farms experienced TFP progress. The smallest average increase was experienced by the dairy farms and the largest by the field crop farms and the beef farms. The latter had the strongest technological progress but a deterioration in efficiency, while the opposite was found for field crop farms. The analysis of HHI reveals that sheep or goat farms are the most homogenous in terms of the direction of TFP change experienced over the period 2002–2015. The meta-frontier analysis shows that field crop farms’ technology is the most productive of all the types of farming.     

Oligopoly and behavioral uncertainty: An application of fuzzy set theory

This paper provides a brief sketch of fuzzy mathematics. It employs this relatively new mathematical tool to define and describe oligopoly markets and to quantitatively establish the impacts of uncertainty on the decision making that is intrinsic to oligopolistic industries. It illustrates how the technique would be used, for example, by applying fuzzy mathematics to the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index.The authors acknowledge and appreciate the helpful comments provided by the anonymous referees.     

文化产业与软件产业融合模式的研究

随着科学技术的不断发展,文化产业与软件产业的融合不断显现化,本文对我国28个省市的文化产业与软件产业的发展状况进行统计,运用赫芬达尔指数,测算文化产业与软件产业的融合程度,并在此基础上得出文化产业与软件产业的四大融合模式:简单耦合模式、文化先行模式、科技引领模式和互助共赢模式。     

Durable goods and horizontal merger analysis

Merger analysis based on standard HHI calculations generally may not fully consider the impact of product durability and hence may significantly bias enforcement efforts. Using an inverse demand equation modified to include a shift parameter linked to the installed base, this paper develops a Durability Adjusted HHI (DAHHI) measure of concentration. DAHHI analysis exposes two potential biases in standard HHI analysis: excessive enforcement in durable goods industries is likely using standard HHI analysis, and Merger Guidelines' thresholds are set too high for non-durable goods industries and too low for durable goods industries. Using the DAHHI methodology, the paper proposes corrections to both biases.I wish to thank Miriam Culjak, John de Figueiredo, Greg Rosston, Brian Silverman, Pablo Spiller, David Teece, Oliver Williamson, and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Also, I wish to thank the Law and Economics Consulting Group for providing the opportunity to investigate this subject. All opinions and errors are the sole responsibility of the author.     

长三角制造业专业化与产业转移研究

文章沿着“产业专业化－产业集聚－产业转移”这样的思路对长三角区域内制造业空间转移展开研究。首先,对产业长三角制造业同构悖论重新进行测度;然后,对用时间序列对制造业产业集聚进行分析;最后产业在两省一市的空间转移进行分析,得出一些结论。     

Measuring Competitive Balance in Professional Team Sports Using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index

Competitive balance in sports leagues is essentially concerned with inequality in match and championship outcomes. Measures of inequality or concentration from the income distribution and industrial organization literatures have, therefore, often been used to measure competitive balance. This paper focuses on the use of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) applied to wins. It is shown that variation in the number of teams in the league affects not only the lower bound but also the upper bound of the HHI. An expression is derived for the upper bound and a normalized measure of the HHI, applicable to wins, is proposed. The differences this can make in practice when tracking variations in competitive balance over time are illustrated by considering Depken’s (1999) application of the HHI to Major League Baseball.      

长江经济带科学竞争力评价及区域异质性分析

科学竞争力是推动国家科技自立自强,实现创新发展的源能力。提升科学竞争力对实现长江经济带高质量发展具有关键意义,也有助于促进全国区域发展战略实现。从科学资源存量、科学资源投入、科学成果产出3个维度构建科学竞争力评价体系,利用加权熵权法计算出长江经济带11个省市在全国的科学竞争力排名,探究2009-2018年科学竞争力变化趋势,并通过计算赫芬达尔指数对区域异质性进行分析。研究发现：从发展趋势看,2009-2018年该区域科学竞争力整体呈上升趋势,增长了29.97%;从区域差异看,科学竞争力呈现自下游向上游的显著梯级递减趋势,上下游地区差异巨大;从科学竞争力核心指标看,长江经济带在全国占有明显优势,但存在科学资源存量与投入占优、科技成果产出水平相对较低的问题。据此,提出长江经济带应精准布局高质量创新载体、建设科学家群落、培育科学联合体、搭建省际科学协同联盟等建议。     

基于指数法的我国林化产品出口市场结构演变分析

采用MCR指数、HHI指数、D指数、E指数对我国林化产品及其主要林化产品的出口结构进行实证分析,得出我国林化产品整体和个体出口市场结构均较集中、林化产品出口风险较大、松香和松节油出口市场结构呈优化趋势、活性炭和林化产品出口市场结构优化不明显、糠醛出口市场结构恶化的结论。     

Effect of Certificate of Need Law on the intensity of competition: The market for emergency care

PurposeThis article aims to contribute to the academic literature in better understanding the impact of Certificate of Need (CON) Law on Emergency Department (ED) care. Impact of CON Law on ED competition remains an unanswered empirical question.MethodsWe examine the impact of CON Law and its stringency on the intensity of competition (rivalry among competitors) between EDs measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). We then estimate the effects of CON Law on HHI by treating CON as an exogenous (endogenous) variable.FindingsOn average the CON legislation enhances ED competition. A possible reason is that the law hinders predatory behavior, and therefore acts as an effective anti-trust tool. Other findings indicate that competition is found to be positively related to a state's population size and median income and negatively related with the prevalence of employer provided insurance and magnitude of illegal immigration in a state.Practical implicationsThis article sheds some light on how political regulations could affect healthcare market and hence may provide public policy makers some insights on reducing healthcare cost.OriginalityOur analysis of the impact of CON regulation on ED competition significantly contributes to the healthcare and strategy literature. The law potentially serves as an anti-trust tool in the hands of the government. We extend the empirical literature by treating CON Law and its stringency as exogenous (endogenous). Our comprehensive analysis considers a host of control variables such as population demographics, their health status and access to health care, healthcare facilities, political environment, in addition to the CON features.     

The distance to competitive balance: a cardinal measure

Competitive balance is a key variable in the analysis of sports competitions. There are several indexes that measure competitive balance but, either they are not a mathematical metric or they do not have the unit interval as a range. Therefore, these indexes do not indicate the magnitude of the differences, and the measurements cannot be interpreted as percentages. We characterize the space of all admissible configurations of the results of a competition. Then, we construct a new index, based on the concept of distance, whose range is the unit interval, and define it as a function in a metric space. So, it solves issues linked to the limited cardinality of most existing indexes, and we can answer this question: What is the meaning of the differences between the levels of competitive balance? We applied this index to the major European soccer leagues over the last twenty seasons.