the federal funds rate and the channels of monetary transmission the authors show that the interest rate on federal funds is extremely informative about future movements of real macroeconomic variables then they argue that the reason for this forecasting success is that the funds rate sensitively records shocks to the supply of bank reserves that is the funds rate is a good indicator of monetary policy actions finally using innovations to the funds rate as a measure of changes in policy the authors present evidence consistent with the view that monetary policy works at least in part through credit i e bank loans as well as through money i e bank deposits copyright 1992 by american economic association

approaches and methods for the econometric analysis of market power a survey and empirical comparison this study discusses two widely used approaches in the new empirical industrial organization neio literature and examines the strengths and weaknesses of the production theoretic approach pta and the general identification method gim for the econometric analysis of market power in agricultural and food markets we provide a framework that may help researchers to evaluate and improve structural models of market power starting with the specification of the approaches in question we compare published empirical studies of market power with respect to the choice of the applied approach functional forms estimation methods and derived estimates of the degree of market power thereafter we use our framework to evaluate several structural models based on pta and gim to measure oligopsony power in the ukrainian dairy industry the pta based results suggest that the estimated parameters of oligopsony power are significantly different from zero while gim based results do not indicate any evidence of oligopsony market power in the ukrainian dairy industry moreover estimations results vary substantially due to the employed estimation procedure

what do entrepreneurs pay for venture capital affiliation this study empirically evaluates the certification and value added roles of reputable venture capitalists vcs using a novel sample of entrepreneurial start ups with multiple financing offers i analyze financing offers made by competing vcs at the first professional round of start up funding holding characteristics of the start up fixed offers made by vcs with a high reputation are three times more likely to be accepted and high reputation vcs acquire start up equity at a 10 14 discount the evidence suggests that vcs extra financial value may be more distinctive than their functionally equivalent financial capital these extra financial services can have financial consequences a central issue for early stage high tech entrepreneurs is obtaining external resources when the assets of their start up are intangible and knowledge based particularly for entrepreneurs without an established reputation convincing external resource providers such as venture capitalists vcs to provide financial capital may be challenging the literature contains two main lines of research for overcoming this problem one research stream has concentrated on designing institutional structures to permit financing early stage ventures this contractual and monitoring based approach is aimed at solving potential agency problems between investors and entrepreneurs e g admati and pfleiderer 1994 lerner 1995 hellmann 1998 and kaplan and str omberg 2001 2002 2003 a second research stream has suggested that when the quality of a start up cannot be directly observed external actors rely on the quality of the start up s affiliates as a signal of the start up s own quality

an analysis of bargaining power for milk cooperatives and milk processors in florida the florida dairy market has a few fluid milk processors and many dairy farmers the dairy farmers are represented in negotiation with the processors by a cooperative this research builds a theoretical model of bargaining between the processors and a cooperative the model is applied to the florida dairy market to examine price negotiations between florida milk processors and a dairy cooperative an expectation maximization em algorithm along with maximum likelihood estimation is used to estimate the econometric disequilibrium model with time series data for the period of october 1998 to may 2009 the results show that the class i price set by the federal milk marketing order is the major factor influencing the cooperative s supply reservation price negotiated quantity and production seasonality affect the processors demand reservation price the processors appear to be more patient and have higher average bargaining power 0 8804 than the cooperative 0 1196 the highest lowest bargaining power

from plan to plant effects of certification on operational start up in the emergent independent power sector in this paper we study the transition from planned venture to operational start up in the emergent independent power sector planned ventures face tremendous obstacles in assembling the resources necessary to begin operations we hypothesize and show that formal certification from authorized actors increases the likelihood of making this transition moreover we find that the effects of certification are contingent on the legitimacy of the sector as a whole certifications have a stronger effect on start ups when sector legitimacy is low than when it is high this research helps us understand a rarely studied organizational transition from entrepreneurial intention to actual operations within nascent sectors it directs attention to the legitimating effects of formal certification highlights the importance of a multilevel approach to legitimacy and contributes to the growing rapprochement between entrepreneurial studies and institutional theory

a century of research on agricultural markets this article provides a perspective on major innovations in research on agricultural markets over the past century we review research on market structure and performance vertical coordination arrangements and institutions for producer collective action contributions to empirical modeling of agricultural price determination and marketing margins are also evaluated as are innovations in research on spatial market relationships and the role of storage finally we discuss contributions to understanding market information systems and the functioning of market based mechanisms for agri

modelling upstream and downstream market power in bilateral oligopoly abstractthis article develops a general model that estimates market power exertion in a bilateral market relationship for processors and retailers where each may also have market power in their primary input market and output markets respectively monte carlo experiments are used to generate industry data for market structures such as perfect competition monopoly monopsony bilateral imperfect competition with an integrated processor retailer bilateral imperfect competition with separate processor and retailer and bilateral imperfect competition with four adjacent upstream and downstream markets then new empirical industrial organization models are estimated using the data with models that match the market structure under which the data were generated true and with models that reflect alternative market structures alternative the general model is derived using the production function approach without imposing the fixed proportion assumption monte carlo simulation results indicate that the gen

industrialization and consolidation in the u s food sector implications for competition and welfare good sources for information on recent developments in food market structure include barkema drabenstott and welch u s department of agriculture 1996b and rogers my objective is not to add to this literature but rather to consider what we have learned as a profession about the rapid consolidation in food processing and distribution what are its implications for market power economic efficiency and the distribution of economic welfare among producers consumers and marketers

measuring market power in multi product oligopolies the us meat industry this paper develops and estimates an economic model for measuring market power in a quantity setting oligopoly engaged in the joint production of demand related goods the model which allows for firms conjectures about both same and cross market responses to own output variation is applied to the us meat beef and pork industry he hypothesis that the industry s equilibrium reflects price taking behaviour is rejected the hypothesis of no cross effects cannot be rejected roughly half of the farm to retail price spreads for beef and pork appear to be attributable to market power

young and no money never mind the material impact of social resources on new venture growth although growth is a desirable outcome for new ventures due to the many advantages of large size most new firms fail to grow largely because of their limited resources and adaptability this paper addresses the question of how new ventures grow despite their limited financial resources i explore the effect of two specific nonfinancial social resources legitimacy and status on new venture growth i propose that new firms can acquire legitimacy by mimicking the structures and ceremonial activities of established firms in their industry and can acquire status by affiliating with high status entities using a unique panel data set on a cohort of advertising agencies founded in new york and chicago between 1977 and 1985 i show that legitimacy and status have favorable impacts on new firms growth in revenues and number of employees the paper makes important contributions to social embeddedness and institutional research by examining the strategic implications of firm level social resources and to the literature on entrepreneurship in general and new venture growth in particular

interorganizational alliances and the performance of firms a study of growth and innovation rates in a high technology industry this paper investigates the relationship between intercorporate technology alliances and firm performance it argues that alliances are access relationships and therefore that the advantages which a focal firm derives from a portfolio of strategic coalitions depend upon the resource profiles of its alliance partners in particular large firms and those that possess leading edge technological resources are posited to be the most valuable associates the paper also argues that alliances are both pathways for the exchange of resources and signals that convey social status and recognition particularly when one of the firms in an alliance is a young or small organization or more generally an organization of equivocal quality alliances can act as endorsements they build public confidence in the value of an organization s products and services and thereby facilitate the firm s efforts to attract customers and other corporate partners the findings from models of sales growth and innovation rates in a large sample of semiconductor producers confirm that organizations with large and innovative alliance partners perform better than otherwise comparable firms that lack such partners consistent with the status transfer arguments the findings also demonstrate that young and small firms benefit more from large and innovative strategic alliance partners than do old and large organizations copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

individual and opportunity factors influencing job creation in new firms we build on multiple theoretical perspectives to investigate the unique and joint effects of individual and opportunity level factors affecting job creation in new firms we tested hypotheses using survey data from individuals who transitioned from unemployment to self employment under the auspices of a german public policy program our findings reveal that an entrepreneur s breadth of knowledge has a negative influence on the firm s job creation whereas the entrepreneur s leadership experience has a positive influence however as the sector specific labor requirements of a business opportunity increase both breadth of knowledge and leadership experience allow founders to operate their firms with fewer employees

media legitimation effects in the market for initial public offerings in this study we argue that media provided information affects investors impressions of newly public firms in 225 initial public offerings ipos the volume of mediaprovided information had a negative diminishing relationship with underpricing and a positive diminishing relationship with stock turnover on the first day of trading the relationship between the tenor of media provided information and underpricing increases at a nonlinear rate and decreases similarly for turnover findings provide important evidence that publicly available information not only reflects ipos legitimacy but also adds to their legitimacy and influences investor behavior in the last 20 years an increasing amount of research on markets has been conducted from a social constructionist perspective emphasizing how social structures enhance the flow of useful and credible information that market participants use to reduce the uncertainty of market exchanges e g aldrich fiol 1994 zuckerman 1999 further recent organizational research has begun to stress the influence of information intermediaries such as financial analysts and the media on mar

are researchers deliberately bypassing the technology transfer office an analysis of tto awareness most universities committed to the commercialization of academic research have established technology transfer offices ttos nonetheless many researchers bypass these ttos and take their inventions directly to the marketplace while tto bypassing has typically been portrayed as deliberate and undesirable behavior we argue that it could be unintentional as many researchers may simply be unaware of the tto s existence taking an information processing perspective and using data on 3250 researchers in 24 european universities we examine researcher attributes associated with tto awareness our evidence confirms that only a minority of researchers are aware of the existence of a tto at their university tto awareness is greater among researchers who possess experience as entrepreneurs closed many research and consulting contracts with industry partners conduct research in medicine engineering or life sciences or occupy postdoctoral positions policy implications of these findings are discussed

no news is bad news sensegiving activities media attention and venture capital funding of new technology organizations a significant body of research has examined how new organizations gain legitimacy and how gaining it affects their subsequent access to resources less attention has been given to the problem of how new organizations attract collective attention although related to legitimation the problem of attracting attention is distinct as attention and evaluation are distinct cognitive processes in this study we examine the allocation of collective attention to new organizations in a system of relationships within which new organizations seek to attract attention through their sensegiving activities the information properties of their sensegiving activities affect the level of attention they receive from different types of media and media attention in turn increases their perceived value potential in the eyes of venture capital investors vcs we examine these relationships in a sample of 398 information technology start ups that have obtained different levels of venture capital funding our results show that new organizations that engage in more intense and diverse sensegiving activities attract higher levels of industry media attention and that these effects are enhanced by the human capital of their founders and leaders diverse sensegiving activities are also associated with higher levels of attention from the general media but only the attention of specialized industry media is positively associated with the level of vc funding obtained these findings extend current research on information intermediation and institutional legitimation by demonstrating that media attention early in the life of new organizations affects how they are valued by a well informed expert audience such as vcs they also contribute to entrepreneurship research on the effects of new organizations strategies on their ability to secure resources and to research on vc funding decisions

imperfect competition in agricultural markets and the role of cooperatives a spatial analysis important characteristics of many agricultural markets are costly to transport raw products and relatively few processors one or more of which is often a cooperative this paper analyzes pricing behavior in these oligopsonistic spatial markets and focuses specifically upon the conjecture that cooperatives may have a procompetitive effect on the behavior of rival non co op processors the existence and magnitude of a procompetitive effect is shown to depend upon a number of structural and strategic factors including competitive relations among the non co op processors and a cooperative s membership and pricing policies

the effect of farm supply shifts on concentration and market power in the food processing sector in this paper we examine the marginal impact of changing farm supply on the market structure of the downstream food processing sector we develop a theoretical model that allows for cost differences among processors and endogenizes downstream entry and exit comparative statics results are consistent with several well established trends in the food processing sector in particular the analysis demonstrates that increasing concentration in the food processing sector is consistent with decreasing market power indeed we find that when the farm supply curve shifts outward an increase in concentration can only occur when there is a decrease in market power

international business cycles the authors estimate a dynamic two country model in which economic fluctuations are driven by a worldwide supply shock country specific supply shocks and relative fiscal money and preference shocks identification is achieved using only long run restrictions based on a theoretical model the main results are 1 supply shocks particularly country specific ones are very important in generating international business cycles and 2 although the post 1973 flexible exchange rate period has been inherently more volatile there are no differences in transmission properties of economic disturbances across exchange rate regimes for the endogenous variables they focus on copyright 1993 by american economic association

does asymmetry of international shocks matter for the u s business cycle this article proposes and investigates the asymmetry hypothesis which predicts that an international asymmetric shock tends to have a stronger and longer effect on the u s business cycle than a symmetric shock the hypothesis finds empirical support in the impulse responses of u s output and inflation to symmetric and asymmetric shocks those responses are estimated in a four variable structural vector autoregression the hypothesis also finds support in stylized facts the longest u s expansions have tended to occur when the rest of the world was growing below potential jel e3 e5 e4 i introduction economic expansions in the united states since world war ii have tended to end with the same pattern as the economy approaches capacity wage and price inflation begins to rise the federal reserve then tightens monetary policy to dampen inflationary pressures thereby pushing the economy into a recession 1 the expansion that ended in march 2001 however appeared to deviate from this pattern it was associated with little inflationary build up and consequently the federal reserve did not begin a string of uninterrupted tightening until late june 1999 when consumer price index cpi inflation was running only slightly above the 2 rate by comparison consumer prices were rising at 6 2 at the end of the 1960s boom and over 5 at the end of the 1980s boom clearly the monetary tightening of 1999 was enacted more in reaction to the threat of inflation in light of the tight labor market than to actual high inflation what made the 1990s expansion different a number of explanations have been offered for the longevity of the latest expansion that the credit markets have played an important role in sustaining the current expansion 2 that greater fiscal discipline and enhanced central bank credibility have helped tame inflation expectations and sustain the boom that the rise in the services component of gross domestic product gdp relative to manufacturing and more efficient inventory management have contributed to rendering the economy less susceptible to cyclical swings that the increase in productivity growth caused by digital technology has helped meet increases in demand and labor shortages without driving up inflation or that globalization per se has helped prolong the expansion this article considers another factor that is likely to have helped increase the longevity of the 1990s expansion we call this factor the asymmetry hypothesis the hypothesis maintains that in a flexible exchange rate regime an asymmetric that is country specific shock will have a stronger and longer effect on output than will a shock that also hits the rest of the world the hypothesis makes two assumptions that the united states is sufficiently integrated with the rest of the world or globalized and that the federal reserve is forward looking and at least partly effective in combating inflation and recessions under those assumptions an expansion caused by a symmetric positive shock is accompanied by stronger inflationary pressures than an expansion caused by an equal sized asymmetric shock prompting quicker and stronger monetary tightening consequently an expansion caused by a symmetric shock ends earlier than one caused by an asymmetric shock symmetrically a contraction caused by a symmetric negative shock is potentially more devastating for the economy than one caused by an equal sized asymmetric shock prompting quicker and stronger monetary easing thus a contraction caused by a symmetric shock ends earlier than a contraction caused by an asymmetric shock this article builds a two country open economy model to illustrate why the hypothesis makes sense in an age of globalization and a forward looking monetary regime it then estimates a structural vector autoregression svar system using both long run and short run restrictions to investigate whether the hypothesis can stand the scrutiny of empirical study

the gains from merger or collusion in product differentiated industries a merger in an industry with differentiated products increases the market power of the merging firms to the extent that their products are close substitutes and that other firms produce only more distant substitutes such a merger makes the residual demand curve of each partner steeper by shifting each in the direction of the industry demand curve 2 the extent of this increase in market power depends upon the own elasticity of demand for each merging firm s product as well as the cross elasticity of demand for each with all other firms products as a result evaluating the effect of a merger between two firms with n 2 other competitors would seem to require the estimation of at least n2 parameters all of the price elasticities of demand a formidable task that extremely difficult estimation task is unnecessary however the necessary information is contained in the slopes of the two single firm residual demand curves before the merger and the extent to which the merged firm will face a steeper demand curve for example suppose a merger between two u s brewing firms say pabst and anheuser busch were proposed it is not particularly important to determine whether it is competition from miller or competition from stroh or from heileman or which puts the most effective brake on anheuser busch s pricing only the total effect of these other firms and the particular effect of competition from pabst are of interest this paper proposes econometric procedures for estimating the demand system that merger partners will face based only on pre merger data the key to the procedures is that the effects of all other firms in the industry are summed together formally we start with a model of an n firm product differentiated industry manipulation of the model removes the prices and quantities of all but two firms this reduces the dimensionality of the problem to manageable size rather than an n firm demand system we estimate a two firm residual demand system in this way the technique extends our econometric method for

evaluating price enhancement by processing cooperatives section 2 of the capper volstead act requires the secretary of agriculture to determine whether a cooperative has unduly enhanced its prices there has been no consensus about what level of price enhancement is too high this paper contrasts pricing of cooperative and proprietary brands of differentiated food products empirical evidence indicates that market share and advertising do not generally provide cooperatives any more power to enhance prices than they give proprietary firms the paper suggests a standard for undue price enhancement the predicted price level of proprietary brands in similarly structured markets

disentangling the multiple effects of affiliate reputation on resource attraction in new firms past research has established that new firms can enhance their attractiveness to prospective resource providers by affiliating with more reputable firms but research on this process has yet to fully account for two critical realities underscored by recent research 1 firms need to acquire resources from different groups of resource providers and 2 reputation is multidimensional drawing on the organizational reputation literature and on information processing theory we propose that two groups of resource providers will respond differently to new firms affiliations in accordance with differences in the groups abilities to recognize and interpret reputation related signals we also propose that within a single group of resource providers distinct characteristics of the affiliate will exert different influences we test these propositions using longitudinal data from belgian firms that affiliated with venture capital vc investors consistent with our predictions we find that characteristics of a

the seed and agricultural biotechnology industries in india an analysis of industry structure competition and policy options since the late 1980s technological advances and policy reforms have created new opportunities for private sector investment in india s seed and agricultural biotechnology industries these changes have had a significant impact on cotton yields and output in india but less so for rice and wheat the country s main cereal staples for which yield growth rates are tending toward stagnation this analysis examines the structures of these industries their potential effects on competition and innovation and the policies that may improve both industry performance and the delivery of new productivity enhancing technologies to india s cereal production systems our findings suggest that more substantive policy reforms are needed to encourage further innovation reduce regulatory uncertainty and encourage firm and industry level growth while continued public spending on agricultural research is needed to support technological change

has the rise in globalization reduced u s inflation in the 1990s juann h hung this article investigates whether increased globalization of the u s economy has helped hold down inflation in the 1990s based on several measures we find that globalization has increased further we find that import prices exert a greater impact on prices of products in industries faced with greater import penetration high foreign excess capacity accounts for much of the recent decline in u s inflation our results suggest that the decline in inflation is explained by the interaction of increased globalization and high excess foreign capacity globalization by itself does not lead to less inflation just greater sensitivity to foreign economic conditions jel e3 i introduction has the rise in globalization helped reduce u s inflation in the 1990s two hypotheses have been proposed for how the rise in globalization may have held down inflation the first is the so called competing goods effect hypothesis which contends that greater competition from foreign producers has limited the ability of domestic producers to raise prices the second hypothesis maintains that excess capacity abroad has helped u s manufactures meet the robust domestic demand in the united states without straining domestic resources and pushing up inflationary pressures this article first lays out a general framework that integrates these two hypotheses and then investigates each of them empirically we find evidence in support of both hypotheses to examine the competing goods effect hypothesis we estimate panel data regressions to find whether import prices have indeed exerted a greater impact on product prices in industries that are faced with greater import penetration the results are affirmative we study the second more general hypothesis by making two inquiries first has the rise in globalization coincided with the breakdown of the traditional phillips curve s ability to predict inflation that began in the early 1990s that is has the united states become considerably more open in the 1990s than in previous years when the phillips curve tracked inflation with reasonable accuracy second has foreign capacity utilization played an important role along with traditional explanatory variables in predicting inflation our empirical evidence suggests that the answers to both inquires are also positive most striking is the finding that by including foreign capacity utilization in the estimation of a phillips curve equation almost all of the missing inflation the difference between actual inflation and predicted inflation based on the traditional phillips curve since 1994 disappears our findings suggest that the interaction of slack foreign economic conditions and greater openness to trade may have helped tame the u s inflation in the 1990s but globalization alone has not permanently reduced the threat of recession or inflation indeed greater globalization may even help increase inflation when the u s and foreign economic expansions are synchronized no single researcher has looked at all of the questions posed in this article but each question has been investigated separately before krugman 1994 1995 and irwin 1996 have looked at whether the united states has become more globalized over the past decade they find that trade with the rest of the world is not a significant or rapidly growing influence on the u s economy the question of whether prices of foreign goods influence domestic prices through the competing goods effect has been investigated by swagel 1997 he finds a statistically significant but small impact in 10 of the 19 industries in his sample similarly slaughter and swagel 1997 find that increased globalization has had only a modest impact on wages in industrialized economies finally orr 1994 and tootel 1998 find very little or no impact of foreign capacity utilization on domestic inflation

testing oligopolistic behavior abstract this paper develops an empirical model of short run pricing behavior for firms in a homogeneous product oligopoly it is based on the variable profit function and related output supply and factor demand equations and is used to analyze the behavior of firms in the coffee roasting industry a parametric test of the dominant firm model is developed and applied the hypothesis of dominant firm behavior and cournot behavior are rejected the hypothesis of price taking behavior is rejected for the largest two firms in the industry but is not rejected for all other firms using the estimated pattern of firm behavior an index of overall industry performance is constructed

estimating the degree of market power in the beef packing industry a technique for assessing the degree of monopoly power developed by appelbaum 1979 1982 is extended here to permit measurement of monopsony power as well data from the u s beef packing industry are examined the results reveal small but statistically significant monopoly monopsony price distortions in slaughter cattle and wholesale beef markets but in spite of a recent trend toward heightened concentration in the industry give no indication that performance has become appreciably less competitive of late this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

intangible resources tobin s q and sustainability of performance differences this paper tests empirically the hypothesis that the greater the intangibility of a firm s resources the greater the sustainability of its competitive advantage resource intangibility is measured by 1 tobin s q and 2 the predicted value from a hedonic regression of q on several accounting measures of intangibles sustainability is measured by the persistence of firm specific profits using a dynamic panel data regression model i find that intangibles play an effective role in sustaining a firm s competitive advantage as predicted by the resource based view of the firm however the results suggest that intangibles can also lock firms into persistent disadvantages

information processing moderators of the effectiveness of trust based governance in interfirm r d collaboration it is generally assumed that improved outcomes accompany the use of trust as a governance mechanism in an interfirm relationship briefly trust is a social lubricant that reduces the friction costs of existing trade and or serves to increase the scope of trade in contrast to this universalistic view we posit that the performance of trust based governance is contingent on the ability of trading partners to read each other and learn about counterpart behavior these information processing abilities allow firms to assess partner trustworthiness better which reduces the risk of misplaced trust the increased efficacy of communication and learning from one another also enables them to better capitalize from the adaptation and revision possibilities uncovered through trust based governance during the task execution phase given the central role of these cognitive requirements we assess these contingent effects with data from a knowledge intensive task setting using a sample of 129 firms that have engaged outside contractors on client sponsored r d projects we find strong support for our thesis specifically we find that trust based governance has a larger positive impact on task performance when the client is more skilled at understanding the outsourced tasks at hand the task itself requires skills that are relatively more readily taught less tacit and the task itself is organized in parallel with work being done at the contractor as well as the client as a corollary we also find that firms adopt trust based governance to a greater extent as these information processing abilities increase as well as with the colocation of the contractor and client suggestions for engineering trust based governance are offered

seasonal oligopoly power the case of the us fresh fruit market what has been ignored in much of the existing studies of oligopoly power is that market behaviour need not be static in nature and oligopoly power in agriculture need not be present in every month of the year in a market which is characterized by seasonality and supplied by different sources during different seasons it is quite possible to observe oligopoly power during different months of the year in this paper a method for estimating and testing for seasonal changes in the degree of oligopoly power is introduced it was found that in the pear market oligopoly power coefficients remain low throughout the year on the other hand the grape market is characterized by higher oligopoly power coefficients and considerable season variations

which ties matter when the contingent effects of interorganizational partnerships on ipo success this paper investigates the contingent value of interorganizational relationships at the time of a young firm s initial public offering ipo we compare the signaling value to young firms of having ties with two types of interorganizational partnerships endorsement relationships such as those with venture capital firms and investment banks and strategic alliance partnerships we propose that under different equity market conditions potential investors in an issuing firm attend to different types of uncertainty attention to these different types of uncertainty affects investors perceptions of the relative value of a young firm s different kinds of endorsements and partnerships and hence ipo success results from a sample of young biotechnology firms show that ties to prominent venture capital firms are particularly beneficial to ipo success during cold markets while ties to prominent investment banks are particularly beneficial to ipo success during hot markets a firm s strategic alliances with major pharmaceutical health care firms did not have such contingent effects implications for understanding the contingent value of interorganizational ties are discussed copyright 2003 john wiley sons ltd

initial human and financial capital as predictors of new venture performance abstract this research seeks to predict the performance of new ventures based on factors that can be observed at the time of start up indicators of initial human and financial capital are considered to determine how they bear upon the probability of three possible performance outcomes 1 failure 2 marginal survival or 3 high growth four categories of initial human and financial capital are examined general human capital represented here by the entrepreneur s education gender and race may reflect the extent to which the entrepreneur has had the opportunity to develop relevant skills and contacts management know how embodied in the entrepreneur or available through advisors or partners reflects management specific skills and knowledge without regard to the kind of business industry specific know how reflects specific experience in similar businesses financial capital is one of the most visible resources it can create a buffer against random shocks and allow the pursuit of more capital intensive strategies which are better protected from imitation the study utilizes a longitudinal study of 1053 new ventures representative of all industry sectors and geographical regions the research departs from most previous studies in considering different measures of performance marginal survival and growth and in considering explicitly whether the factors contributing to marginal survival differ from those contributing to high growth it was found that measures of general human capital influenced both survival and growth except for gender with women owned ventures being less likely to grow but just as likely to survive management know how variables had more limited impact having parents who had owned a business contributed to marginal survival but not to growth number of partners contributed to growth but not to survival management level prior employment in non profit organizations or not having been in the labor force and the use of professional advisors did not have significant effects industry specific know how contributed to both survival and growth amount of initial financial capital also contributed to both the usefulness of the model is enhanced by the fact that the resource variables considered are relatively easy to assess and all can be considered at the time of start up although some of the human capital variables cannot easily be changed the benefits or risks associated with each can be assessed in some cases potential problems can be identified so that plans can be modified to improve prospects overall it appears that using a model based upon the initial human and financial capital of the venture it is possible to predict the performance of new ventures with some degree of confidence

interpreting and enforcing section 2 of the capper volstead act based upon legislative intent court holdings and economic theory undue price enhancement is associated with the exercise of market power consequently a necessary condition for an agricultural marketing cooperative to be in violation of section 2 is the ability to prevent members from overproducing if market power is exercised investigations of undue price enhancement should first determine the extent to which a cooperative possesses potential market power if such potential exists the theory of workable competition provides the framework for determining whether price enhancement has become undue

character conformity or the bottom line how and why downsizing affected corporate reputation the aim of this study is to illuminate reputational change processes and identify the underlying theoretical mechanisms we draw upon extant literature to develop three distinct explanations for reputational change respectively emphasizing criteria of organizational character symbolic conformity and technical efficacy we evaluate these explanations by examining the reputational consequences of corporate downsizing our results show that downsizing exerted a strong negative effect on reputation consistently with the character explanation however significant moderation of this negative effect by other factors including stock market reaction and downsizing s overall prevalence indicates the need for a multitheoretical approach to reputational change

dual measures of monopoly and monopsony power an application to regulated electric utilities the inefficiency from monopoly pricing monopsony pricing and other institutional factors should be simultaneously estimated to avoid misspecification estimation of a behavioral profit function where input and output shadow prices may diverge from their market values allows unbiased simultaneous estimation of inefficiencies if its normalized form is employed in an application to electric utilities consuming western coal the authors cannot reject the hypothesis that utilities act as price takers in output markets and find weak and statistically insignificant evidence of fuel adjustment clause bias strong evidence is found of monopsony behavior in the market for western coal and its transportation copyright 1989 by mit press

competition and rail rates for the shipment of corn soybeans and wheat this article investigates the extent and importance of rate competition among railroads for the export shipment of three narrowly defined agricultural commodities since passage of the staggers rail act of 1980 which increased the railroads freedom to set rates i construct measures of intermodal and intramodal competition and find that each has strong impacts on rail rates the farther a shipper is from competing water transportation the more considerably rates rise rates fall as railroad competition in a region increases there appears to be some interaction between intermodal and intramodal competition i find that the competitive effects of two proposed rail mergers depend on the vigor of intermodal competition from truck and water transport and on the change in interrailroad competition that results from the reduced number of competing rail systems

imperfect competition in multiproduct food industries with application to pear processing agricultural product markets often involve relatively few firms processing a farm product into multiple processed products this market structure prompts concern that processing firms may exercise both oligopsony and oligopoly power the present paper develops and applies a methodology to test simultaneously for market power in both the raw input market and multiple processed output markets application of the methodology to california pear processing indicates the industry has exerted power in both its farm input market and the markets for canned pears and fruit cocktail

marketing margins market power and price uncertainty this paper provides a conceptual and empirical framework for analyzing marketing margins in a noncompetitive food processing industry facing output price uncertainty the framework allows the decomposition of observed margins into components reflecting the marginal cost of the processing industry oligopoly oligopsony price distortions and an output price risk component the empirical procedure is applied to a time series of spreads between wholesale pork prices and farm prices of market hogs the principal finding is that while farm wholesale margins are more consistent with competitive performance now than they were fifteen years ago the output price risk component persisted throughout the sample period

state and county level determinants of food manufacturing establishment growth 1987 93 empirical models are developed and estimated to identify economic determinants of food manufacturing establishment growth between 1987 and 1993 separate growth equations are estimated for states and counties at the three digit sic level significant agglomeration diseconomies are found to exist for nearly all subindustries at the county level but not at the state level the ability of rural counties to attract food processors to create local employment opportunities and market outlets for farmers varies considerably across subindustries

when do entrepreneurs accurately evaluate venture capital firms track records a bounded rationality perspective there has been substantial research on the value of young firms engaging high quality partners this literature as well as the broader firm reputation literature has tended to assume that individ

the liability of good reputation a study of product recalls in the u s automobile industry in this paper we explore opposing theoretical claims about how organizational reputation affects market reactions to product defects on the one hand good reputation could be a disadvantage because expectations about product quality are more likely to be violated by defects in highly reputed products on the other hand a good reputation could be an advantage because of strong inertial effects on reputation orderings we empirically test these competing hypotheses using data on product recalls in the u s automobile industry from 1975 to 1999 our results support for the idea that reputation can be an organizational liability in that highly reputed firms suffer more market penalty as a result of their product recalls we also propose that the reputational effects are moderated by two important factors substitutability and generalism specialism our results show that having few substitutes with an equivalent level of reputation or a focused product identity stemming from specialism buffers the negative market reactions to product recalls we conclude with a discussion on the implications of these results for institutional reputation and status theories

moderating effects of investor experience on the signaling value of private equity placements abstract we contend that young start up firms requiring external capital are able to differentiate themselves from competitors through their choices of investors and financing mechanisms private placements of equity convey efficient signals to markets for several reasons they are short term irreversible occur after a more rigorous analysis than public offerings provide contain governance mechanisms and are generally observable by outsiders the disclosure that investors possess a superior reputation for evaluative ability conveys an additional endorsing signal of the firm s prospects this proves especially valuable for younger firms less capitalized firms and firms that have more recently received private equity from an experienced investor using an event history analysis on a sample of 329 publicly held biotechnology firms we find firms that are perceived to be more uncertain and that disclose the presence of more prominent investors are better able to attract subsequent financing