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Market Structure (market + structure)
Selected AbstractsTHE ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE MARATHON-ASHLAND JOINT VENTURE: THE IMPORTANCE OF INDUSTRY SUPPLY SHOCKS AND VERTICAL MARKET STRUCTURE,THE JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2007CHRISTOPHER T. TAYLOR This study measures the effects of the Marathon/Ashland Petroleum (MAP) joint venture on rack and retail reformulated (RFG) gasoline prices in the four cities where both firms sold RFG before the joint venture. MAP was an early transaction in the recent era of petroleum mergers and resulted in large regional increases in concentration. While wholesale (rack) prices increased in the two cities experiencing the largest change in market structure in the year following the transaction, retail prices did not increase. Our results also highlight the importance of identifying the marginal source of supply in correctly identifying merger effects. [source] DESIGNING A MARKET STRUCTURE WHEN FIRMS COMPETE FOR THE RIGHT TO SERVE THE MARKET,THE JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2005Michel Mougeot In many industries, a regulator designs an auction to select ex-ante the firms that compete ex-post on the product market. This paper considers the optimal market structure when firms incur sunk costs before entering the market and when the government is not able to regulate firms in the market. We prove that a free entry equilibrium results in an excessive entry when the entry costs are private information. Then, we consider an auction mechanism selecting the firms allowed to serve the market and show that the optimal number of licences results in the socially optimal market structure. When all the potential candidates are actual bidders, the optimal number of firms in the market increases with the number of candidates and decreases with the social cost of public funds. When the market size is small, as the net profit in the market decreases with the number of selected firms, entry is endogenous. As increasing competition in the market reduces competition for the market, the optimal structure is more concentrated than in the previous case. [source] BANKING MARKET STRUCTURE, CREATION AND ACTIVITY OF FIRMS: EARLY EVIDENCE FOR COOPERATIVES IN THE ITALIAN CASEANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2009Francesca Gagliardi ABSTRACT,:,This paper investigates whether local differences in banking competition impact on the creation and activity of firms, with a special focus on cooperatives. The empirical analysis, implemented on a sample of Italian firms, reveals non-monotonic effects of bank market power on firm creation and activity. In regard to the former, a bell-shaped relationship is found for both cooperative and non-cooperative firms, suggesting that a moderately concentrated banking market favours firms' creation. A less homogeneous pattern characterizes firms' activity: a bell-shaped parabola is still found for non-cooperative firms, while a U-shaped relationship emerges for cooperatives, showing that active coops benefit from relatively more intense banking competition. [source] Environmental Taxation and Induced Structural Change in an Open Economy: The Role of Market StructureGERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2008Christoph Böhringer Environmental taxation; imperfect competition; structural change Abstract. Studies of structural change induced by environmental taxation usually proceed in a perfect-competition framework and typically find structural change to be quite moderate under realistic emission reduction scenarios. By observing that some of the industries affected are likely to operate under imperfect rather than perfect competition, additional mechanisms emerge which may amplify structural change beyond the extent identified as yet. Especially, changes in economies of scale may arise which weaken or strengthen the competitive position of industries over and above the initial cost effect. Using a computable general equilibrium model for Germany to examine the effects of a unilaterally introduced carbon tax, we find that induced structural change is more pronounced under imperfect competition than under perfect competition. At the macroeconomic level, we find that aggregate losses in economies of scale are larger than aggregate gains, implying that the total costs of environmental regulation are higher under imperfect competition than under perfect competition. [source] Personal Income Distribution and Market StructureGERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2002Corrado Benassi Income distribution affects market demand and its elasticity, and, as a consequence, the optimal behaviour of firms and market equilibrium. This paper focuses on the effects of income polarization, and presents a model where , for any unimodal density function describing income distribution of the consumers , income polarization leads to market concentration, i.e., to a smaller number of firms able to survive in the long run, provided that the firms' fixed costs are sufficiently low. [source] Market Size, Technology Choice, and Market StructureGERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2002Walter Elberfeld We introduce technology choice into a model of monopolistic competition and analyze the structural effects of changes in market size. A larger market leads to the adoption of a large-scale technology. If a technology switch occurs, the number of firms decreases, and a rationalizing effect arises: individual and aggregate output increases; prices fall. This need not benefit consumers since a technology switch is associated with a decrease in product variety. [source] Knowledge, Market Structure, and Economic Coordination: Dynamics of Industrial DistrictsGROWTH AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2002Ron A. Boschma The industrial rise of the Third Italy has been characterized by the growth of dynamic networks of flexible small and medium,sized enterprises (SMEs) that are spatially concentrated in specialized industrial districts. This network type of coordination has been associated with horizontal, trust,based relations rather than vertical relations of power and dependency between local organizations. This would lower transaction costs (essential for local systems with an extreme division of labor), facilitate the transmission and exchange of (tacit) knowledge (and thus, learning and innovation), encourage cooperation mechanisms (such as the establishment of research centers), and stimulate political,institutional performance (e.g. through regulation of potential social conflicts). From an evolutionary perspective, the focus is on the dynamics of industrial districts drawing from current experiences in Italy. In this respect, this paper concentrates on two main features of industrial districts that have largely contributed to their economic success in the past, that is, their network organization and the collective learning process. The evolution of industrial districts is described in terms of organizational adjustments to structural change. The way in which the size distribution of firms has changed is discussed (in particular the role of large companies), how the (power) relationships between local organizations have evolved, what are the current sources and mechanisms of learning, and to what extent institutional lock,in has set in. Finally, a number of trajectories districts may go through in the near future are presented. [source] Competition and Market Structure of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated QuotationsINTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF FINANCE, Issue 3-4 2007YOUNGSOO KIM ABSTRACT In this paper, we study the relation among market structure, trading costs, and competition in National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ). In particular, we address the following questions: Do NASDAQ dealers exercise market power and extract economic rents in setting bid-ask spread? How persistent is the market power of dominant dealers? Our estimate of the rent is approximately ¢8.76, or 0.54% of stock price. The half-life of the persistence of this rent is approximately 20 months for the entire sample, while the half-life of younger stocks tend to be shorter than those of more mature stocks. Our result supports Schultz: NASDAQ dealers make markets only for stocks where they have competitive advantages in accessing order flow and in information. It might take a while before a market maker poses effective competition to existing dominant market makers. In the meantime, incumbent market makers are able to exercise market power and appear to earn abnormally large profits. [source] Market Structure, Electoral Institutions, and Trade PolicyINTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2009Daniel Yuichi Kono The view that intra-industry trade is politically easier to liberalize than inter-industry trade is widely held and potentially explains key features of the global trading system. This view, however, rests on weak theoretical and empirical foundations. I argue that intra-industry trade can in fact lead to higher protection, but only where electoral institutions privilege narrow protectionist interests. I support this hypothesis with an analysis of trade barriers in 4,400 sectors in 65 countries and an analysis of lobbying in the US. My results imply that scholars should stop invoking intra-industry trade as an explanation for low trade barriers in wealthy countries and advanced manufacturing sectors. They also have important implications for the more general relationship between political institutions, collective action, and policy outcomes. [source] The Strategic Effects of Vertical Market Structure: Common Agency and Divisionalization in the US Motion Picture IndustryJOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 4 2001Kenneth S. CortsArticle first published online: 28 JAN 200 I examine the release-date scheduling of all motion pictures that went into wide release in the US in 1995 and 1996 to investigate the effects of vertical market structure on competition. The evidence suggests that complex vertical structures involving multiple upstream or downstream firms generally do not achieve efficient outcomes in movie scheduling. In addition, analysis of the data suggests that the production divisions of the major studios act as integrated parts of the studio, rather than as independent competing firms. [source] Price and Nonprice Competition with Endogenous Market StructureJOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 1 2000George Symeonidis This paper examines the effect of the intensity of short-run price competition and other exogenous variables that affect gross profit margins,such as the degree of product differentiation and the consumers' responsiveness to quality,on market structure and on advertising and R&D expenditure. A key result is that more intense short-run competition can lead to lower concentration in industries with high advertising or R&D intensity, unlike exogenous-sunk-cost industries. Also, price competition has a negative effect on advertising or R&D expenditure. A case study is also presented, which is consistent with the theoretical results of the paper. [source] Pricing-to-Market and Market Structure,OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICS & STATISTICS, Issue 2 2008Matteo Bugamelli Abstract Stimulated by imperfect competition/sticky prices framework of the new open economy macroeconomics, empirical research has reconsidered the role of exchange rates in international adjustment. This paper reassesses the link between exchange rates and traded good prices by estimating pricing-to-market equations for the five main euro area countries over the period 1990,99. We minimize selection biases by keeping all manufacturing products and all destination markets and show that exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) is much larger, almost complete, than previously estimated. Thanks to a huge variability in terms of exchange rate variations, products and destination markets, we can map differences in ERPT into market structures and, at the same time, reconcile our results with the empirical literature. We find that ERPT is highly incomplete for sales by oligopolistic industries into advanced economies, indeed in the order of 50,60% as previously estimated. ERPT is instead almost complete in emerging and developing economies where therefore exchange rate movements can help adjust external imbalances. We also find that ERPT is largely asymmetric: it is almost complete after an appreciation of the exporter's currency, rather incomplete after a depreciation. This result is very robust across specifications. [source] Volatility, Market Structure, and the Bid-Ask Spread,ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2009Kee H. Chung Abstract We test the conjecture that the specialist system on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) provides better liquidity services than the NASDAQ dealer market in times of high return volatility when adverse selection and inventory risks are high. We motivate our conjecture from the observation that there is a designated specialist for each stock on the NYSE who is directly responsible for maintaining a reasonable level of liquidity (i.e., the bid-ask spread) as the ,liquidity provider of last resort' whereas there is no such designated dealer on NASDAQ. Empirical evidence is consistent with our conjecture. In a similar vein, we show that the specialist system provides better liquidity than the dealer market in thin markets. [source] Monetary Policy under Alternative Asset Market Structures: The Case of a Small Open EconomyJOURNAL OF MONEY, CREDIT AND BANKING, Issue 7 2009BIANCA DE PAOLI welfare; optimal monetary policy; asset markets; small open economy Can the structure of asset markets change the way monetary policy should be conducted? Following a linear-quadratic approach, the present paper addresses this question in a New Keynesian small open economy framework. Our results reveal that the configuration of asset markets significantly affects optimal monetary policy and the performance of standard policy rules. In particular, when comparing complete and incomplete markets, the ranking of policy rules is entirely reversed, and so are the policy prescriptions regarding the optimal level of exchange rate volatility. [source] Competition and Cost Accounting: Adapting to Changing Markets,CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 2 2002Ranjani Krishnan Abstract The relation of competition and cost accounting has been the subject of conflicting prescriptions, theories, and empirical evidence. Practitioner literature and textbooks argue that higher competition generally requires more accurate product costing. Theoretical economic analysis, in contrast, predicts that the optimal level of product-costing accuracy is sometimes higher at lower levels of competition. Results of survey research are inconsistent, suggesting a need for further identification of conditions under which higher competition leads to more accurate product costing. This study shows experimentally that individuals' choices of the level of product-costing accuracy depend not only on the current level of competition but also on the previous level of competition , that is, on an interaction between market structure (monopoly, duopoly, and four-firm competition) and market history (increasing versus decreasing competition). In the experiment, subjects decide on the quantity of data to collect at a pre-set price per datum to support more accurate product-cost estimates. Subjects collect the most cost data (i.e., choose the most accurate product costing) in monopoly, collect the least in duopoly, and an intermediate amount in the four-firm market, consistent with the pattern of optimal cost-data collection in Hansen's 1998 model. The process of convergence to the optimum differs significantly across market types and market histories, however. Subjects who begin in four-firm competition adapt more successfully to change than those who begin in monopoly. The lowest levels of decision performance occur when ex-monopolists face their first competitor: they overreact to this first encounter with competition and overspend on cost data. [source] Industry responses to EU WEEE and ROHS Directives: perspectives from ChinaCORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 5 2006Jieqiong Yu Abstract The electrical and electronics (EE) industry has come under increasing pressure to adopt extended producer responsibility (EPR) policies through the introduction of the European Union's Directives on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and the Restriction of Use of Certain Hazardous Substances (ROHS). Based on the findings of 50 questionnaires and in-depth interviews with China's EE manufacturers, this paper investigates the perception of and readiness of companies for implementation of WEEE and ROHS in China. It identifies key difficulties encountered by manufacturers in fulfilling the requirements and evaluates the effectiveness of these two directives in promoting environmental reform. The findings indicate that the extent of companies' responses largely depends on their market structure and client requirements. Supply chain management, raw material testing and cost implications appear to be key challenges in addressing issues surrounding the directives. There is little evidence to suggest that these directives have effectively driven China's EE manufacturers towards systematic eco-design. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] A risk-based approach for bidding strategy in an electricity pay-as-bid auctionEUROPEAN TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRICAL POWER, Issue 1 2009Javad Sadeh Abstract With the reform of electric power industry and the development of electrical energy markets in many countries, it is of significance to develop bidding strategies for generation companies (GenCos). In this environment, one of the most challenging and important tasks for a GenCo is developing effective strategies to optimize hourly offer curve. In this paper, focusing on Iran's electricity market structure, we model the bidding problem from the viewpoint of a GenCo in a pay-as-bid (PAB) auction. Our goal is to present a tool for determining the optimal bidding strategy of a price-taker producer in an electricity PAB auction taking into account the relevant risks. Due to uncertainties in power market, the market-clearing price (MCP) of each hour is assumed to be known as a probability density function (pdf). The optimal solution of bidding problem is obtained analytically based on the classical optimization theory. Also, the analytical solution for a multi-step bid protocol is generalized and the properties of the generalized solution are discussed. A model is developed to consider concept of risk using two different methods. The two proposed methods are then compared and the results interpreted using numerical examples. In addition, the effect of variation of MCP's pdf parameters on supplier's profit is studied. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Does more choice reduce waiting times?HEALTH ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2005Luigi Siciliani Abstract This paper develops a model of the supply of elective treatments within a duopolistic market structure where patients can be referred to the hospital with the lowest waiting times. We investigate the effect of a higher degree of substitutability among the two hospitals on equilibrium supply, waiting time and the size of the waiting list. The degree of substitutability is interpreted as the degree of choice or the extent to which patients can switch from one hospital to the other. We show that the greater the degree of substitutability among hospitals, the lower is the supply and the higher the waiting time. The effect on waiting list size is ambiguous. This result holds either when the hospital is remunerated with a fixed budget or with activity-based funding. However, the reduction in supply and the increase in waiting time generated by higher substitutability are higher when hospitals are remunerated with fixed budgets. The main implication of the model is that, under certain assumptions, policies aimed at increasing provider choice may fail to reduce waiting times. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] A Relational Approach to Measuring Competition Among HospitalsHEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH, Issue 2 2002Min-Woong Sohn Objective. To present a new, relational approach to measuring competition in hospital markets and to compare this relational approach with alternative methods of measuring competition. Data Sources. The California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development patient discharge abstracts and financial disclosure files for 1991. Study Design. Patient discharge abstracts for an entire year were used to derive patient flows, which were combined to calculate the extent of overlap in patient pools for each pair of hospitals. This produces a cross-sectional measure of market competition among hospitals. Principal Findings. The relational approach produces measures of competition between each and every pair of hospitals in the study sample, allowing us to examine a much more "local" as well as dyadic effect of competition. Preliminary analyses show the following: (1) Hospital markets are smaller than thought. (2) For-profit hospitals received considerably more competition from their neighbors than either nonprofit or government hospitals. (3) The size of a hospital does not matter in the amount of competition received, but the larger hospitals generated significantly more competition than smaller ones. Comparisons of this method to the other methods show considerable differences in identifying competitors, indicating that these methods are not as comparable as previously thought. Conclusion. The relational approach measures competition in a more detailed way and allows researchers to conduct more fine-grained analyses of market competition. This approach allows one to model market structure in a manner that goes far beyond the traditional categories of monopoly, oligopoly, and perfect competition. It also opens up an entirely new range of analytic possibilities in examining the effect of competition on hospital performance, price of medical care, changes in the market, technology acquisition, and many other phenomena in the health care field. [source] Improving Auditor Independence Through Selective Mandatory RotationINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AUDITING, Issue 2 2002Miles B. Gietzmann When an auditor receives significant fee income from one client it has often been suggested that reappointment concerns may dilute auditors incentives to maintain independence from management. A possible response to this issue could be to mandate the rotation of auditors. However this is costly since new auditors must repeatedly invest in learning a new clients accounting system. In this research we build a model to formally analyze this trade-off. We find that the desirability of rotation depends critically upon characteristics of the audit market structure and to what extent an individual client dominates an auditors' client portfolio defined in terms of total fees. We show that although rotation is costly, in audit markets with relatively few large clients (thin markets), the resulting improved incentives for independence outweigh the associated costs. Our research is timely because although historically it may not have been economically desirable to adopt mandatory rotation, currently with increased corporate merger activity taking place, for instance in the oil sector, markets may now have become sufficiently thin to warrant the introduction of rotation. [source] Time-to-market in vertically differentiated industriesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 4 2007Emanuele Bacchiega L11; L12; L13 This paper analyzes the optimal time to introduce a new product in a vertical differentiated market when the delay between innovation and market opening can be shortened through investments whose costs increase, the shorter the desired delay. The timing process is affected by the trade-off between being first and getting monopoly profits, and postponing entry for reducing time-to-market costs. We study the balance of these forces and how this balance is influenced by market structure. In our model, it is possible a priori to observe at the optimal solution both a quality-upgrading equilibrium (first entering the market with the low quality good and then marketing the high quality variant) and quality-downgrading equilibrium (first entering the market with the high quality good and then marketing the low quality variant) while in the existing published literature a quality-upgrading equilibrium is always observed. [source] Competition and Market Structure of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated QuotationsINTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF FINANCE, Issue 3-4 2007YOUNGSOO KIM ABSTRACT In this paper, we study the relation among market structure, trading costs, and competition in National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ). In particular, we address the following questions: Do NASDAQ dealers exercise market power and extract economic rents in setting bid-ask spread? How persistent is the market power of dominant dealers? Our estimate of the rent is approximately ¢8.76, or 0.54% of stock price. The half-life of the persistence of this rent is approximately 20 months for the entire sample, while the half-life of younger stocks tend to be shorter than those of more mature stocks. Our result supports Schultz: NASDAQ dealers make markets only for stocks where they have competitive advantages in accessing order flow and in information. It might take a while before a market maker poses effective competition to existing dominant market makers. In the meantime, incumbent market makers are able to exercise market power and appear to earn abnormally large profits. [source] The urban market for farmers' water rights,IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE, Issue 4 2003Stephen Merrett stress de répartition; irrigation; droits à l'eau; provision urbaine Abstract Allocation stress, that is, access conflicts between the agricultural, domestic, industrial, urban service and environmental uses of water, is set to become more intense in the future because of global population growth and climate change. Because of the dominant role of irrigation water use at the global level, it is imperative to explore the possibilities of reducing farmers' use of water or, at the very least, of slowing its growth. One process by which the scale of irrigation is reduced occurs when farmers choose to sell their water rights to actors that apply these released flows in towns and cities for household, manufacturing and urban service uses. In this paper a theory of price and volume determination of such markets is presented, using concepts of urban actors' maximum bid price and farmers' minimum release price for water rights. The limits of the theory are then discussed with respect to timescale, water concessions, part-sales, sales of land, the legal context, third-party effects, market structure and transaction costs. The main conclusion is that the market equilibrium approach is rarely applicable and that fieldwork will in general have to deal with arcane, one-off bilateral trades. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Les contraintes d'allocation de l'eau, c'est-a-dire, les conflits d'accès à l'eau entre secteurs agricole, domestique, industriel, urbain et de l'environnment, vont augmenter dans le futur, à cause du changement du climat et de la croissance de la population mondiale. Le rôle dominant de l'irrigation tend de réduire l'usage de l'eau dans la secteur agricole. Cette réduction se produit quand les fermiers vendent leur droits à l'eau aux acteurs urbains. Dans cet article on présente une théorie des prix et quantités de ces marchés. On présente aussi les limites de la théorie et on conclut que l'approche par équilibre du marché s'applique rarement et qu'il faut en pratique considerer egalement des transactions obscures et bilatérals. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF VERTICAL RESTRAINTSJOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 5 2006Oana Secrieru Abstract The types of contracts arising in a typical vertical manufacturer,retailer relationship are more sophisticated than a simple uniform price. In addition to setting per unit prices, manufacturers and retailers also revert to non-linear pricing and non-price instruments. These instruments or contracts are referred to as vertical restraints and can take the form of franchise fees, resale-price maintenance, exclusive dealing, exclusive territories and slotting allowances. The use and the effects of one type of instrument versus another depend crucially on specific market assumptions upstream and downstream and on the division of bargaining power between manufacturers and retailers. This paper surveys the industrial organization literature on retail pricing and shows that vertical restraint instruments have important effects on producer and consumer prices, market structure, efficiency and welfare. [source] The Strategic Effects of Vertical Market Structure: Common Agency and Divisionalization in the US Motion Picture IndustryJOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 4 2001Kenneth S. CortsArticle first published online: 28 JAN 200 I examine the release-date scheduling of all motion pictures that went into wide release in the US in 1995 and 1996 to investigate the effects of vertical market structure on competition. The evidence suggests that complex vertical structures involving multiple upstream or downstream firms generally do not achieve efficient outcomes in movie scheduling. In addition, analysis of the data suggests that the production divisions of the major studios act as integrated parts of the studio, rather than as independent competing firms. [source] Price and Nonprice Competition with Endogenous Market StructureJOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 1 2000George Symeonidis This paper examines the effect of the intensity of short-run price competition and other exogenous variables that affect gross profit margins,such as the degree of product differentiation and the consumers' responsiveness to quality,on market structure and on advertising and R&D expenditure. A key result is that more intense short-run competition can lead to lower concentration in industries with high advertising or R&D intensity, unlike exogenous-sunk-cost industries. Also, price competition has a negative effect on advertising or R&D expenditure. A case study is also presented, which is consistent with the theoretical results of the paper. [source] Supply response and price volatility in the Greek broiler marketAGRIBUSINESS : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 1 2010Anthony N. Rezitis The authors examine the supply response of the Greek broiler market. A generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) process is used to estimate expected price and price volatility; price and supply equations are estimated jointly. In addition to the standard GARCH model, several different symmetric, asymmetric, and nonlinear GARCH models are estimated. These models use different conditional variance specifications (linear or nonlinear) to grasp some additional empirical regularity of data like asymmetry. Asymmetric price volatility means that different volatility is recorded in the case of a fall in prices than an increase in prices by the same amount. The possible existence of asymmetry in the producer's price volatility gives useful information about market structure and possible market power. The empirical results indicate that among the estimated GARCH models the nonlinear asymmetric GARCH model (NAGARCH) seems to better describe producers' price volatility of the Greek broiler industry. Furthermore, the empirical findings show that price volatility is an important risk factor and broiler feed price is the most significant cost factor of the supply response function. Finally, the model provides forecasts for quantity supplied, producers' price, and price volatility. [EconLit. Classifications: Q110, C510, D200]. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Applying marketing channel theory to food marketing in developing countries: Vertical disintegration model for horticultural marketing channels in kenyaAGRIBUSINESS : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 2 2001Tjalling Dijkstra This article shows that marketing channel theory, which has been extensively applied in developed countries, can also be of great value to the developing world. Notably, the channel approach makes it possible to explain the number of trade levels observed in food marketing systems. We propose here a vertical disintegration model for horticultural marketing channels in Kenya. It contains one dependent variable (the degree of vertical disintegration of a channel) and five independent variables (the population size of the market center served by the channel, the population density of the rural hinterland of that market center, the transport time from farm to market center, the turnover of the retailer involved, and the keeping quality of the commodity traded). Binomial and multinomial logit analyses show that the probability of encountering a more disintegrated horticultural marketing channel increases when the market center has more inhabitants, when the center's rural hinterland is more densely populated, and when the transport to the center takes more time. The probability of encountering a less disintegrated channel increases when the retailer in the channel has a larger turnover and when the traded commodity is a leafy vegetable. [EconLit classification: L190 market structure) © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [source] Deregulation and the Racial Composition of AirlinesJOURNAL OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2001Jacqueline Agesa Economic theory suggests that the enhanced product market competition of deregulation reduces employers' ability to discriminate when hiring. Recent studies of the effect of deregulation on racial employment in the naturally competitive trucking industry find that deregulation increased minority employment. This study examines the effect of deregulation on racial employment in the airline industry. Because deregulation transformed airlines from wasteful service competition to rigorous price competition, deregulation's effect on racial hiring in this continuously competitive industry is not apparent. This study finds that deregulation only modestly changed the racial composition of major airline occupations, which suggests that the change in market structure as a result of deregulation may largely determine the effect of regulatory reform on the racial composition of an industry. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. [source] Is Contemporary Interest Rate in Conflict with Islamic Ethics?KYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 1 2008Erhun Kula SUMMARY This paper considers whether the modern interest rate theory is in conflict with Islamic values. Unfortunately, the issue is not sufficiently debated in economic and cognate literature and thus a mist surrounds the Islamic concept of interest (riba) and its use in the Moslem world that contains about 1.3 billion people and hundreds of billions of dollars of surplus funds. A substantial part of this money has not been made available to the commercial banking system as Islamists in particular keep their savings in the form of gold, precious stones or durable foreign currency, in residential or other safe places, believing that earning interest on savings is against the principles of Islam. This attitude by creating a shortage of funds for investment projects is hampering the economic development of many Moslem countries where standards of living are generally low. The finding of the paper is that only one component part of the time preference rate, namely pure time discount, may be objectionable from the Islamic as well as from secular viewpoints; the rest does not appear to be against Muslim ethics. However, a truly competitive financial market structure is likely to wipe away the excessive pure time discount rate leaving the market interest rate free from any objectionable parameter. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||