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Ownership
Kinds of Ownership Terms modified by Ownership Selected AbstractsTAX REVISIONS OF 2004 AND PRO SPORTS TEAM OWNERSHIPCONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 4 2010N. EDWARD COULSON Tax law revisions of 2004 altered the "roster depreciation allowance" enjoyed by pro sports team owners. Supporters claimed this would practically eliminate costly legal oversight by the IRS and, ultimately, increase owner tax bills. Government officials and leagues remained silent on team value impacts but outside analysts argued they would rise by 5%. We model this policy change and investigate it empirically. Supporters in Congress were absolutely correct that owner tax payments should increase but outside analysts underestimated team value increases by half. No wonder Major League Baseball and the National Football League favored the revision. (JEL D21, G38, H25, L83) [source] CHANGES IN THE LOCATION OF EMPLOYMENT AND OWNERSHIP: EVIDENCE FROM CALIFORNIA,JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2008Jed Kolko ABSTRACT We use the National Establishment Time-Series database to describe shifts in the geographic dispersion of employment and ownership of firms. Focusing on data on business establishments in California, and establishments anywhere in the United States that are owned by firms headquartered in California, we find shifts in the operations of businesses headquartered in California to other states. However, this shift has been offset by increased employment in the state by firms headquartered elsewhere, resulting in California's share of national employment holding quite constant. The evidence points to increasing geographic dispersion of firms' operations, especially in industries with lower communication costs. [source] FIRM OWNERSHIP, PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION AND WELFARE,THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 2 2007YUANZHU LU The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of firm ownership in a differentiated industry. We find there is no effect on product differentiation and welfare due to ownership ratio change between private and state so long as the private (state) ownership in a partially state-owned firm remains at least half (less than half). However, when the private (state) ownership in the partially state-owned firm falls below half (rises more than half), the degree of product differentiation increases (decreases) whereas welfare decreases (increases) in the share of private (state) ownership; and thus the extent of private or state ownership matters. [source] MUTUAL VERSUS PROPRIETARY OWNERSHIP: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY FROM THE UK UNIT TRUST INDUSTRY WITH A COMPANY-PRODUCT MEASUREANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2010Yoshikatsu Shinozawa ABSTRACT,:,In the debate of the relative merits of differing ownership forms, most empirical studies examine either corporate performance or the product characteristics of the financial products that are available in the financial services industry. Based on the UK unit trust industry, this paper assesses which ownership form, mutual or proprietary is more efficient in managing unit trust operations and providing high return generating unit trusts. Using a combined corporate performance and product range performance metric, this study reveals no significant differences between the two ownership forms in terms of the corporate-product performance score. The results indicate that the owner-customer fused role in the mutual organization must be considered in the mutual versus proprietary ownership debate. [source] Corporate governance and corporate social responsibility: issues for AsiaCORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2007Richard Welford Abstract An increasingly important aspect of CSR is the recognition that sound practices are often based on good standards of corporate governance. Good corporate governance provides the foundations of good CSR by creating value-creating relationships with all stakeholders. This article seeks to review corporate governance issues from an Asian perspective. Ownership and control of many companies in the region differ from those commonly seen in the West and there are therefore specific issues that need to be addressed in this context. It is argued that the fact that so many Asian companies are dominated by controlling shareholders (often families) means that corporate governance may have to be even stronger in the Asian region than elsewhere. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] Ownership and Incentives in Joint Forest Management: A SurveyDEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 1 2005Tuukka Castrén The relationship between the state and communities has been an overriding issue in the development of forestry institutions globally. In many countries, the trend is for communities to become co-managers of public forests. Meanwhile, in development co-operation both poverty and multiple rural livelihoods have received increased attention. In this article, the potential of joint community-state management of forests is discussed. Forest production has several characteristics that make it suitable for joint management where both parties benefit. Involving communities in management decreases the state's monitoring costs, while communities benefit from better access to market information. For this to take place, however, the state forest apparatus needs to be free from undue rent-seeking. The most advantageous solutions are case- and context-specific. [source] The Internationalization of Asset Ownership in Europe.ECONOMICA, Issue 300 2008Edited by HARRY HUIZINGA, LARS JONUNG No abstract is available for this article. [source] Diversification, Ownership and Control of Swedish CorporationsEUROPEAN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2002John A. Doukas We study the short- and long-term valuation effects of Swedish takeovers. Using a sample of 93 bidding firms that acquired 101 targets between 1980 and 1995, we find that diversifying acquisitions lead to a negative market reaction and deterioration of the operating performance of the bidder. Announcement and performance gains in each of the three years following the acquisition occur only when bidders expand their core rather than their peripheral lines of business. Our findings suggest that focused acquisitions lead to greater synergies and operating efficiencies than diversifying acquisitions. Intra-group acquisitions, however, show that bidders do not realise significant gains whether they adopt diversifying or focusing investment strategies by purchasing firms controlled by the Wallenberg and SHB conglomerate groups. Intra-group targets realize significant gains regardless bidder's investment strategy. Finally, the evidence does not support the view that intra-conglomerate acquisitions are associated with expropriation of minority shareholders. However, they appear to enhance the control rights of large shareholders of the bidding firm. [source] Moving from Private to Public Ownership: Selling Out to Public Firms versus Initial Public OfferingsFINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2008Annette B. Poulsen We study two alternative means to move assets from private to public ownership: through the acquisition of private companies by firms that are public (sellouts) or through initial public share offerings (IPOs). We consider firm-specific characteristics for 1,074 IPO and 735 sellout firms to identify differences in growth, capital constraints, and asymmetric information between the two types of transactions. Our results suggest that firms move to public ownership through an IPO when they have greater growth opportunities and face more capital constraints. We provide a better understanding of the firm-specific characteristics that lead firms to go public. [source] Ownership, Governance, and Bank Performance: Korean ExperienceFINANCIAL MARKETS, INSTITUTIONS & INSTRUMENTS, Issue 4 2005Sungho Choi G21; G32; G34 The paper examines the effect of ownership and governance on firm performance. Tracing the post financial crisis experience, 1998,2002, of the Korean commercial bank industry, the paper investigates whether the involvement of foreign investors in the ownership structure had any significant effect on the banks' performance i.e., return and risk measures. Further, it examines the effects of the presence of outside directors, especially directors from foreign countries, in the corporate board structure impacts banks performance. Evidence indicates that the extent of the foreign ownership level, not the mere existence of foreign ownership, has a significant positive association with the bank return and a significant negative association with the bank risk. The number of outside board of directors does not have any significant affect on performance however the presence of a foreign director on that board is significantly associated with bank return and risk. These findings are relatively robust under the different specifications of performance measures. [source] Ownership and Production Costs: Choosing between Public Production and Contracting-Out in the Case of Swedish Refuse CollectionFISCAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2003Henry Ohlsson Abstract Many comparisons of public and private firms use a public/private ownership dummy variable to capture cost differences. If, however, public and private firms use different production technologies, the dummy-variable approach is misspecified. Data from public and private firms should not be pooled. Secondly, selectivity bias may arise, making it more difficult to identify cost differentials that actually exist. Thirdly, if data should be pooled, the resulting empirical model may be logically inconsistent. This paper compares public and private firms using the refuse collection costs of 170 firms in 115 Swedish municipalities. First, public production costs were 6 per cent lower than private production costs. Secondly, cost differences did not affect producer choice. It is crucial to adjust for selectivity. Data for private and public firms should not be pooled. The dummy-variable model is misspecified. [source] Investor Protections and Concentrated Ownership: Assessing Corporate Control Mechanisms in the NetherlandsGERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 2 2004Robert Chirinko Corporate governance; legal approach; the Netherlands Abstract. The Berle,Means problem , information and incentive asymmetries disrupting relations between knowledgeable managers and remote investors , has remained a durable issue engaging researchers since the 1930s. However, the Berle,Means paradigm , widely dispersed, helpless investors facing strong, entrenched managers , is under stress in the wake of the cross-country evidence presented by La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny, and their legal approach to corporate control. This paper continues to investigate the roles of investor protections and concentrated ownership by examining firm behaviour in the Netherlands. Our within-country analysis generates two key results. First, the role of investor protections emphasized in the legal approach is not sustained. Rather, firm performance is enhanced when the firm is freed of equity market constraints. Second, ownership concentration does not have a discernible impact on firm performance, which may reflect large shareholders' dual role in lowering the costs of managerial agency problems but raising the agency costs of expropriation. [source] Hospital ownership and quality of care: what explains the different results in the literature?HEALTH ECONOMICS, Issue 12 2008Karen Eggleston Abstract This systematic review examines what factors explain the diversity of findings regarding hospital ownership and quality. We identified 31 observational studies written in English since 1990 that used multivariate analysis to examine quality of care at nonfederal general acute, short-stay US hospitals. We find that pooled estimates of ownership effects are sensitive to the subset of studies included and the extent of overlap among hospitals analyzed in the underlying studies. Ownership does appear to be systematically related to differences in quality among hospitals in several contexts. Whether studies find for-profit and government-controlled hospitals to have higher mortality rates or rates of adverse events than their nonprofit counterparts depends on data sources, time period, and region covered. Policymakers should be aware of the underlying reasons for conflicting evidence in this literature, and the strengths and weaknesses of meta-analytic synthesis. The ,true' effect of ownership appears to depend on institutional context, including differences across regions, markets, and over time. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Ownership,efficiency relationship and the measurement selection biasACCOUNTING & FINANCE, Issue 5 2006Richard Bozec G32; H11; L33 Abstract This study analyses the bias in the selection of performance measures for ownership comparisons, which depends on the specific objectives of the firms being compared. Our sample includes 13 Canadian state-owned enterprises (SOEs), commercialized and/or privatized between 1976 and 2001. To replace profitability measures and reduce biases, we propose the use of technical efficiency, which provides for SOEs' specificities. Overall, the results clearly support the view that privatization has no impact on a firm's technical efficiency, the only positive impact being related to a change in the objectives of the firm while using profitability measures. The results of this study raise the question of the validity of comparisons between SOEs and private firms when using profitability indicators. The potential bias in favour of the private firms contributes to a misleading image of the public sector being presented as inferior and inefficient. The use of more sophisticated measures, such as data envelopment analysis, suggests conflicting conclusions. This study also casts doubt on the legitimacy of the privatization program initiated around the world and more specifically in Canada in which the main justification for such a reform has been to increase the performance of SOEs. [source] Ownership, corporate governance and industrial relations in the banking and telecommunications sectors: the case of GreeceINDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 3 2010Stella ZambarloukouArticle first published online: 10 MAY 2010 ABSTRACT The article examines how changes in ownership and corporate governance have affected industrial relations systems by drawing on the recent experience of Greece in two sectors: banking and telecommunications. The findings show that despite the seeming institutional stability in industrial relations arrangements, substantive change has taken place in the aforementioned sectors, which has resulted in the decentralisation of bargaining procedures. [source] Bargaining, Bonding, and Partial OwnershipINTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2000Sudipto Dasgupta This article provides a theory of interfirm partial ownership. We consider a setting in which an upstream firm can make two alternative types of investment: either specific investment that only a particular downstream firm can use or general investment that any downstream firm is capable of using. When the benefits from specific and general investments are both stochastic, equity participation by the downstream firm in the upstream firm can lead to more efficient outcomes than take-or-pay contracts. The optimal ownership stake of the downstream firm is less than 50 percent under a natural assumption about relative bargaining power. [source] The Impact of Foreign Equity Ownership on Emerging Market Share Price VolatilityINTERNATIONAL FINANCE, Issue 1 2000Mark Coppejans We ask whether foreign equity ownership affects the stability of share prices in an emerging economy. We address the effect of ownership restrictions exogenously imposed on stock ownership and the impact of introducing or widening foreign ownership through cross-listing. A methodology for variance ratio analysis is introduced that corrects for liquidity and volume differences across stock series experiencing different degrees of foreign ownership. We find that foreign ownership does not affect volatility in the absence of cross-listing. Foreign ownership introduced or accompanied by cross-listing of a stock series raises the variance of returns. This effect is found to operate in part through increases in volume traded on the domestic market following the listing, and through an identifiable increase in the volatility of information net of volume effects. [source] The Role and Functions of Audit Committees in the Indian Corporate Governance: Empirical FindingsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AUDITING, Issue 1 2004Jawaher Al-Mudhaki This paper examines the composition, focus and functions of audit committees (ACs), the effects of meetings and the criteria used in the selection of members by Indian listed companies from 73 questionnaire responses. The survey was carried out during February,March, 2002. The study reveals that so far only 56.2% of companies have established an AC despite the fact that it is now mandatory. Of those companies which have ACs, 68.3% have between three and six members on ACs. However, only 14.6% of companies have independent non-executive directors on the committee, while 90.2% have non-executive directors. This shows a lack of independent representation on the committees. The functions of ACs are quite diverse and are classified in three areas: financial statements and reporting, audit planning, and internal control and evaluation. The review of annual audited financial statements, discussion and recommendations of audit fees and review of the effectiveness of internal control were rated very highly by the respondents. The review of note disclosure and scope of external audit work are other important functions performed by ACs. The most important areas for focus are compliance with the standards and regulatory bodies, probing material items and undisclosed liabilities. However, there are statistical differences between medium and large sized companies in the performance of their role. The main criteria used for membership of an AC are: experience and knowledge of business, experience of holding similar positions and accounting and finance expertise. Ownership in the company was not perceived as an important criterion. The majority of companies' AC meetings are held monthly or quarterly. MANOVA analysis reveals that the frequency of AC meetings has an effect on the internal control functions. The study concludes that the concept of an AC is not new in India but their formation is slow and their composition lacks independence. AC functions are still concentrated in the traditional areas of accounting and their role is not changing fast enough to make the corporate governance more effective. [source] Characteristics of Australia's community pharmacies: National Pharmacy Database ProjectINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHARMACY PRACTICE, Issue 4 2007Mr Constantine G Berbatis lecturer Objective To report the characteristics of community pharmacies in Australia and analyse them for their association with pharmacists' consultation time. Setting A large representative sample of community pharmacies in Australia in 2002. Method Questionnaires were mailed by an independent survey group to managers and owners in a national sample of pharmacies stratified into six zones. Questionnaires were returned by 1131 of 1532 pharmacies contacted (73.8%). The data were analysed using the general linear model (GLM) for univariate analysis. Key findings: Male pharmacists comprised 76.3% of pharmacy owners and 39.5% were aged = 51 years. Most pharmacies (81.1%) had one or two pharmacist owners, and 51.3% of pharmacies were members of marketing groups. Medicines accounted for approximately 75% of annual sales and occupied a minority of the average total area of 187.2 m2. Pharmacies opened for an average of 55.5 h per week. Pharmacists spent 18.8% of their time on patient consultation. This was significantly related to pharmacies with forward pharmacy dispensing areas (P < 0.001), which were owner or partner operated (P < 0.002) and had high numbers of customers (P < 0.004). Holding national accreditation status and belonging to a banner group may be additional factors. Conclusions Ownership of community pharmacies in Australia is dominated by pharmacists in contrast to the minority pharmacist ownership in the USA and England. Owners and managers of pharmacies were mainly male and older than other staff. Pharmacists working in pharmacies with a forward dispensing area, designed to facilitate patient consultation, were significantly more likely to provide increased consultation time for patients. Owner- or partner-operated pharmacies, and pharmacies with high numbers of customers were also significantly associated with patient consultation time. The strength of association between membership of marketing groups and national accreditation with consultation time requires more evidence. [source] Cost Efficiency in South Asian Banking: The Impact of Bank Size, State Ownership and Stock Exchange Listings,INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF FINANCE, Issue 1-2 2007SHRIMAL PERERA ABSTRACT This study examines the cost efficiency performance of 111 commercial banks in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka over 1997,2004. The primary focus is to assess whether bank size, state ownership and stock exchange listing have significant effects on South Asian banks' efficiency performance. To this end, a translog-form composite-error cost efficiency model, which allows for exogenous environmental influences, is estimated. The results indicate that the overall efficiency of South Asian banks declined over 1997,2004. Larger banks and banks with widespread ownership through stock exchange listings were found to be relatively more cost efficient. In contrast, state-owned banks were less efficient. [source] Rules Governing the Transfer of Ownership: Wealth Effects and the Influence of Ownership StructureINTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF FINANCE, Issue 3 2000Henk Berkman This paper studies a unique change in regulation governing the transfer of share ownership in New Zealand. The new regulation requires all listed firms to adopt one of three proposed takeover regimes, ranging from almost free transferability of shares to a uniform pricing rule. Our empirical results indicate that a higher proportion of shares held by blockholders makes adoption of a liberal takeover regime more likely. We also find that an increase in the proportion of non-beneficial shares held by directors and shares held by trust companies increases the probability that a firm adopts a more restrictive takeover regime. Furthermore, the results from an event study show that firms adopting the liberal takeover regime experience substantial positive abnormal returns compared to firms adopting the standard or restrictive regime. [source] Household-level Impacts of Dairy Cow Ownership in Coastal KenyaJOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2004Charles F. Nicholson This study uses heteroskedastic Tobit and Censored Least Absolute Deviations models to examine the impacts of dairy cow ownership on selected outcomes for a sample of 184 households in coastal Kenya. The outcomes examined include gross household cash income, gross non-agricultural income, consumption of dairy products, time allocated to cattle-related tasks, number of labourers hired and total wage payments to hired labourers. The number of dairy cows owned has a large and statistically significant impact on household cash income; each cow owned increased income by at least 53% of the mean total income of households without dairy cows. Dairy cow ownership also increases consumption of dairy products by 1.0 litre per week, even though most of the increase in milk production is sold. The number of dairy cows has no significant effect on total labour for cattle-related tasks. However, in contrast to previous studies, labour allocation to cattle by household members decreases and labour requirements for dairy cows are met primarily by an increase in hired labour. Dairy cow ownership results in relatively modest increases in payments to hired labourers and the number of hired labourers employed. The large positive impacts on income and the substitution of hired for household labour in cattle care suggest that intensification of smallholder dairying can be beneficial as a development strategy in the region if disease and feed constraints are addressed. [source] Corporate Governance in IndiaJOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 1 2008Rajesh Chakrabarti The Indian corporate governance system has both supported and held back India's ascent to the top ranks of the world's economies. While on paper the country's legal system provides some of the best investor protection in the world, enforcement is a major problem, with overburdened courts and significant corruption. Ownership remains concentrated and family business groups continue to be the dominant business model, with significant pyramiding and evidence of tunneling activity that transfers cash flow and value from minority to controlling shareholders. But for all its shortcomings, Indian corporate governance has taken major steps toward becoming a system capable of inspiring confidence among institutional and, increasingly, foreign investors. The Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI), which was established as part of the comprehensive economic reforms launched in 1991, has made considerable progress in becoming a rigorous regulatory regime that helps ensure transparency and fair practice. And the National Stock Exchange of India, also established as part of the reforms, now functions with enough efficiency and transparency to be generating the third-largest number of trades in the world, just behind the NASDAQ and NYSE. Among more recent changes, the enactment of Sarbanes,Oxley type measures in 2004,which includes protections for minority shareholders in family- or "promoter"-led businesses,has contributed to recent increases in institutional and foreign stock ownership. And while family- and government-controlled business groups continue to be the rule, India has also seen the rise of successful companies like Infosys that are free of the influence of a dominant family or group and have made the individual shareholder their central governance focus. [source] Managerial Ownership and Accounting Conservatism in Japan: A Test of Management Entrenchment EffectJOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 7-8 2010Akinobu Shuto Abstract:, We examine the effect of managerial ownership on the demand for accounting conservatism in Japan. We find that within the low and high levels of managerial ownership, managerial ownership is significantly negatively related to the asymmetric timeliness of earnings, which is consistent with the implication of the incentive alignment effect. We also find a significant positive relationship between managerial ownership and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings for the intermediate levels of managerial ownership, as suggested by the management entrenchment effect. These evidences suggest the possibility that accounting conservatism contributes to addressing the agency problem between managers and shareholders. [source] Bank Relationship and Firm Performance: Evidence From Thailand Before the Asian Financial CrisisJOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 9-10 2004Piman Limpaphayom Abstract: This study examines the relation between bank relations and market performance in Thailand, an economy in which commercial banks play a crucial role through lending relationship and, for a number of companies, equity ownership. Overall, bank relationships, both equity-based and debt-based, positively affect capital investment. However, there is a negative relation between lending relationships, both short-term and long-term, and market performance indicating that bank lending may not always be consistent with value maximization. There is also evidence of a positive marginal effect of bank monitoring through equity ownership on market performance. Further, the relation between bank equity ownership and market performance appears to be non-linear with a concave function. Ownership by corporate insiders is also negatively related to bank equity ownership. Overall, the findings highlight the detrimental effects of excessive short-term debt usage, one of the factors believed to contribute to the financial crisis in Thailand, and the marginal benefit of the equity-based relationship on firm value. [source] A Simultaneous Equations Analysis of Analysts' Forecast Bias, Analyst Following, and Institutional OwnershipJOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 7-8 2003Lucy F. Ackert In this paper we use a simultaneous equations model to examine the relationship between analysts' forecasts, analyst following, and institutions' investment decisions. Estimates of our three equation model using US data indicate that higher institutional demand leads to greater optimism among analysts and lower analyst following. At the same time, institutional demand increases with increasing optimism in analysts' forecasts but decreases with analyst following. We also investigate firm characteristics as determinants of analysts' and institutions' decisions. Empirical estimates of the effects of these characteristics indicate that agency-driven behavioral considerations are significant. [source] Managerial Ownership, Information Content of Earnings, and Discretionary Accruals in a Non,US SettingJOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 7-8 2002Gorm Gabrielsen This study employs Danish data to examine the empirical relationship between the proportion of managerial ownership and two characteristics of accounting earnings: the information content of earnings and the magnitude of discretionary accruals. In previous research concerning American firms, Warfield et al. (1995) document a positive relationship between managerial ownership and the information content of earnings, and a negative relationship between managerial ownership and discretionary accruals. We question the generality of the Warfield et al. result, as the ownership structure found in most other countries, including Denmark, deviates from the US ownership configuration. In fact, Danish data indicate that the information content of earnings is inversely related to managerial ownership. [source] Effects of Concentrated Ownership and Owner Management on Small Business Debt Financing,JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2007Zhenyu Wu Using unique data and a new powerful Monte Carlo-based statistical tool, we examine the effects of concentrated ownership and owner,management (CO-OM) on the creditor,shareholder agency conflicts in small firms. A significant CO-OM effect from the small business owner's view, but insignificant from the commercial lenders' perspective, is found. Special features of informational asymmetry problems in small firms with CO-OM are also highlighted. Theoretical and empirical contributions are made to the small business management and corporate governance literature. Findings obtained from this research have important implications for small business practitioners as well as researchers, and this study can serve as a reference for policymakers and institutional lenders to assist small firms in successfully raising money through debt financing. In addition, a new powerful methodology is introduced to deal with various potential statistical biases and can be further applied to this line of research. [source] Total Cost of Ownership in the Services Sector: A Case StudyJOURNAL OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2006Krisje Hurkens SUMMARY Few detailed studies exist of the trade-offs to be made when developing a comprehensive, strategically focused total cost of ownership (TCO) model. Moreover, most studies of TCO have been conducted in manufacturing firms, with little or no TCO research directed toward service organizations. This research presents the results of a study conducted at a leading vehicle glass repair and replacement organization. The results show how TCO information can be used for strategic decision making regarding the allocation of volumes. This information can also be used in the identification of improvement areas for preferred suppliers by introducing a limited number of key performance indicators that have a significant impact on the TCO of supplier offerings. The paper highlights some of the trade-offs required in designing such a model. It fills an existing literature gap that allows service organizations to better understand the development and implementation of total cost measurement systems. [source] The Impact of Public Ownership and Competition on ProductivityKYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 4 2005José Manuel González-Páramo Summary Are private firms more efficient than public ones? Does privatisation improve performance? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to disentangle the impact of ownership and competition upon business performance. This paper presents empirical evidence relating to the hypothesis that public ownership and competition are determinants of firms' productivity. It concludes that public ownership has a significant negative effect on productivity and also that privatisation has a positive impact on efficiency. Furthermore, increased competition is found to have a positive effect on productivity. These results are interpreted as confirming that privatisation is effective as a means of increasing firms' efficiency, at least in a non-regulated and relatively competitive sector, such as manufacturing. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||