spatial competition monopolistic competition and optimum product diversity abstract this is a republication of a passage from william vickrey s 1964 book microstatics which presents important results in spatial competition and monopolistic competition

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sophisticated entry in a model of spatial competition we analyze free entry equilibrium in a model of spatial competition in which locations of established firms are fixed and entrants profit expectations are rational our most interesting results concern large economies economies in which the number of firms is arbitrarily large when the average cost function is u shaped free entry equilibrium is unique socially optimal and characterized by zero profit in contract when there are no diseconomies of scale even large economies are stubbornly imperfect firms can earn substantial pure profit and free entry equilibrium is neither unique nor socially optimal

scale economies and over capitalization in japanese electric utilities this paper presents empirical evidence on scale economies and overcapitalization in japanese electric utilities we employ the short run equilibrium model in which the variable cost function treats capital stock as a quasi fixed factor we specify the variable cost function as a translog form and estimate it using panel data of nine japanese electric utility firms during the period 1981 to 1985 our results show that eight of the nine firms experience scale economies in the short run but diseconomies in the long run and that seven firms significantly over capitalize as expected by the averch johnson effect

measuring economies of diversification a frontier approach the purpose of this article is to improve the statistical analysis of multiproduct firm behavior specifically we are interested in modeling and estimating multiproduct technology focusing on size and product line variation thus we offer a new empirical technique that can be used to directly analyze issues such as subadditivity expansion path subadditivity economies of scope and economies of diversification although applied papers employ a wide variety of theoretical multiproduct cost concepts previous work uses nonfrontier estimation techniques we show how to introduce frontier approaches to multiproduct cost analysis that can be applied to any of these concepts and improve the statistical analysis specifically we introduce an empirical test using frontier techniques that allows for direct measures of economies of diversification at the firm specific level

ethnic networks and access to credit evidence from the manufacturing sector in kenya it is often anecdotally observed that networks can facilitate exchange but there are few empirical studies that explore the significance of such networks in this paper the authors analyze the impact of ethnic networks on access to finance of kenyan firms using an exceptionally rich data set the authors find that ethnicity does not affect access to formal sources of finance but being a member of an ethnic group is significant in explaining access to informal sources of finance like supplier credit the authors interpret these results in terms of information and contract enforcement mechanisms that work within ethnic groups but not across them

diversification diseconomies of scope and vertical contracting evidence from the taxicab industry this paper studies how firms reorganize following diversification proposing that firms use outsourcing or vertical disintegration to manage diseconomies of scope we also consider the origins of scope diseconomies showing how different underlying mechanisms generate contrasting predictions about the link between within firm task heterogeneity and the incentive to outsource following diversification we test these propositions using microdata on taxicab and limousine fleets from the economic census the results show that taxicab firms outsource by shifting the composition of their fleets toward owner operator drivers when they diversify into the limousine business the magnitude of the shift toward driver ownership is larger in less urban markets where the tasks performed by taxicab and limousine drivers are more similar these findings suggest that 1 firms use outsourcing to manage diseconomies of scope at a particular point in the value chain and 2 interagent conflicts can be an important source of scope diseconomies

delivered versus mill nonlinear pricing with endogenous market structure abstract this paper discusses a model where consumers differ according to one unobservable preference for quality and one observable characteristic location with nonlinear prices arising in equilibrium the main question addressed is whether firms should be allowed to practice different nonlinear prices at each location delivered nonlinear pricing or should be forced to set a unique nonlinear contract mill nonlinear pricing assuming that firms can costless relocate we show that the free entry long run number of firms may be smaller equal or higher under delivered nonlinear pricing moreover delivered nonlinear pricing yields higher long run welfare when i fixed costs are low and when ii fixed costs are intermediate and consumer types are not very similar

modelling cost structure the bell system revisited this paper analyses a recent public policy decision and the crucial role played by the choice of the functional form the break up of the bell system is indeed a classic case of anti trust settlement and constitutes one of the most prominent and controversial applications of microeconomics to public policy it is argued that demanding multi output cost properties such as economies of scope for this is the considerable robustness problem displayed by the tranlog cost functional form the reason for this is the considerable able to robustness problem displayed by the translog cost function which is the source underlying many of the expert disagreements it is suggested that the non robustness is due to what ils termed the flip flop property and it is shown that the available empirical evidence from the pre divestiture bell system supports this argument to obtain robust results we propose that the analysis is constrained to the proper region of the cost function we propose that the analysis is con

the role of fixed costs and cost complementarities in determining scope economies and the cost of narrow banking proposals narrow banking proposals would separate insured deposits from most types of bank lending using data from large u s banks the authors examine the extent to which narrow banking proposals are likely to result in increased production costs production costs will rise for nonjoint provision of deposit and loan services if there are cost complementarities in producing the two outputs jointly or if joint production enables banks to spread their fixed costs more effectively unlike standard cost function approaches the authors methods allow them to estimate the fixed cost and cost complementarity effects separately they find the net production cost consequences of narrow banking to be negligible copyright 1993 by university of chicago press

economies of diversification a generalization and decomposition of economies of scope abstract the paper investigates the benefits of diversification for a multi product firm it examines economies of diversification reflecting the cost reduction associated with producing outputs in an integrated firm compared to specialized firms the analysis applies under complete specialization as well as partial specialization when firms are not fully specialized and or when the specialization scheme does not cover all outputs it decomposes economies of diversification into four additive parts a part measuring complementarity among outputs a part reflecting economies of scale a part reflecting convexity and a part reflecting the role of fixed cost this new decomposition appears useful in investigating how scale effects complementarity effects and convexity effects can contribute to economies of scope in a multiproduct firm and helps generate valuable insights into the economics of specialization for multiproduct firms

on the taxation of polluting products in a differentiated industry this paper studies the provision of environmental quality in an imperfectly competitive market it uses a vertical differentiation model in which the free entry equilibrium results in an under provision of quality the following main results are obtained first a commodity tax may have a significant impact on the market structure in this setting it tends to increase the number of active firms second through its impact on market structure a commodity tax may be welfare improving even though quality creates a positive externality third a commodity tax may bring about an equilibrium that is arbitrarily close to a pareto efficient allocation

financialisation institutions and financing constraints in developing countries the paper uses a consistent firm level data from the world banks enterprise surveys to explore the impact of financialisation in the economy on firms access to finance in 138 developing countries access to finance reflects survey based firms perceptions of external financing constraints financialisation is proxied by consistent cross country measures of financial depth these proxies capture separately the role of bank based versus market based financing firm sector and country level information is jointly used for the analysis firm specific characteristics and economic and non economic national factors are included as controls the results show that the proxies of financialisation are broadly robust predictors of financing constraints of firms in developing countries however the magnitude of the financialisation effect varies between bank based and market based channels of financing as well as between low and high income countries and it is influenced by social institutional and religious factors

exploring the accuracy of international trade statistics this study provides a comprehensive investigation of statistical discrepancies in generally accepted international trade figures published by the imf between 1948 and 1994 we calculated export over and underestimation for each country and all of their bilateral trading partners by keeping totals for over and underestimation in separate categories we avoided the cancellation effect of aggregating positive and negative discrepancies among partner countries in general the results show a significant improvement in the quality of trade data over time however for many countries relatively large discrepancies still exist that defy technical explanations such as the cif fob margins also because export over and underestimation coexist for most of the countries at varying degrees use of the aggregate sum of the discrepancy might disguise the actual magnitude of the problem a significant difference exists in the relative magnitude and dispersion of trade discrepancies between oecd countries and non oec

note competitive price and positioning strategies brand positioning and brand pricing are important strategic decisions for marketing managers such decisions are interrelated and depend upon competitive brand positions and prices however any unilateral decisions may encourage repositioning and price adjustment by competitors thus leading to either new market equilibria or a price positioning war this paper examines such price and positioning decisions in a competitive environment by extending the defender consumer model to more complex equilibria we assume that the brands are already in the market and that positions are sticky in the sense that brands cannot leapfrog one another among the insights for such incumbent brands are if prices are symmetric and held constant firms seek to reposition toward the center of the market but price advantages by central firms can mediate that central tendency such that an equilibrium exists with positive profits if brand positions are held constant the nash equilibria for prices exist and are unique and category profits the sum of brand profits are maximized for maximum brand differentiation for two and three brand markets the subgame perfect nash equilibrium where positioning decisions are made with foresight on the price equilibria causes firms to unilaterally seek maximum brand differentiation but for four or more brands greater foresight and or cooperation appears necessary to reach the point of maximum brand differentiation these results apply where the defender consumer model is an exact description of consumer response and where the competitive reaction assumptions hold in any empirical situation such forces might be softened resulting in differentiated but not maximally differentiated brands

nonparametric analysis of cost complementarities in the telecommunications industry the market structure of the telephone industry has been the focus of a large body of empirical research following the divestiture of at t in 1984 using data on local exchange carriers lecs i estimate the total cost function of lecs operating between 1988 and 1995 first i show that cost complementarities can be nonparametrically identi ed in many situations where economies of scope and subadditivity which were the focus of previous empirical research cannot be identi ed next i propose a feasible estimation model taking into account all the properties that a cost function needs to satisfy according to economic theory the telephone companies are treated as multi product rms producing two outputs local and toll calls the results support the assumption that cost complementarities exist in the production of these two outputs the amounts of complementarities are computed and shown to be bigger for small companies

equilibrium number of firms and economic welfare in a spatial price discrimination model abstract we examine welfare implications of the equilibrium number of entering firms in a spatial price discrimination model in contrast to salop salop s 1979 monopolistic competition with outside goods bell journal of economics 10 141 156 the equilibrium number of firms can be either excessive or insufficient from the normative viewpoint

the historical slave trade and firm access to finance in africa access to finance helps explain the link between the historical african slave trade and current gross domestic product we first present mistrust weakened institutions and ethnic fractionalization as plausible historical channels linking the slave trade to modern finance and development we then show i the slave trade is consistently linked to reduced access to the formal and trade credit needed by modern firms ii this shortage particularly reduces capital investment in smaller firms not in business groups and iii the slave trade cannot explain most other business obstacles suggesting that long term societal shocks are exceptionally important for finance received december 16 2014 editorial decision june 29 2017 by editor philip strahan

smuggling around the world evidence from a structural equation model this article uses a multiple indicators multiple causes mimic model to analyse the determinants of smuggling the analysis reveals that higher corruption and a lower rule of law encourage smuggling tariffs and trade restrictions are important push factors while a higher black market premium bmp discourages smugglers based on the mimic estimates we calculate an index of smuggling which provides a ranking for 54 countries we find that smuggling is rampant in cameroon pakistan and kenya while it is least prevalent in switzerland finland and sweden

a theory of quality related differences in retail margins why there is a premium on premium gasoline this paper develops a theory of vertical and horizontal product differentiation to explain observed price cost margin differentials for goods that differ in quality the difference in price cost margins between the high and low quality goods is shown to depend positively on consumers average valuation for incremental increases in quality and positively on the distance to each competitor s closest rival these predictions are largely supported using an extensive station level data set of premium and regular unleaded gasoline prices from the los angeles basin area from 1992 1995

divestiture of nippon telegraph and telephone this article discusses whether the japanese government should break up ntt nippon telegraph telephone in 1995 as the u s federal government compelled at t american telephone telegram to break itself into toll and local telephone companies in 1984 the divestiture of ntt has long been a major industrial policy issue in japan since the common carrier was privatized in 1985 the governmental decision to divest it may influence not only the japanese telecommunications infrastructure but also the global telecommunications and information industries in the world where many common carriers are now facing an environmental change from regulation to competition a unique feature of this study is that it employs eight different estimation techniques to obtain a cost function of ntt so that this research avoids a methodological bias occurring in many empirical studies this study confirms that ntt has maintained cost subadditivity but it has failed to establish the status of a natural monopoly in the observed time period however it also finds that the ntt divestiture will not produce a price reducing benefit to japanese telecommunications consumers this research result will serve as empirical evidence for guiding the governmental review of this large scale industrial policy issue in japan

mental health market power and governance this paper is concerned with the pricing behaviour of providers of residential care for people with mental health problems two aspects of pricing were considered first are there differences between providers market power and their actual mark up rates e g due to differences in motivation second do the different governance arrangements used in sectors of the industry such as unified public and non profit organisation and private bilateral contracting affect pricing behaviour a theoretical model was developed to underpin the empirical analysis of 496 residents in 112 mental health care facilities private bilateral organisation was found to be associated with comparatively lower potential price cost mark up but a greater propensity to use this power to make profits surpluses

symmetric equilibrium existence and optimality in differentiated product markets abstract equilibrium existence and optimality are analysed in a market for products differentiated by their variety a game of three stages is analysed firms enter in the first stage choose varieties in the second stage and choose prices in the third stage the existence of subgame perfect equilibria is established at equilibrium products are symmetrically located in the space of characteristics and are offered at equal prices the surplus maximizing solution is characterized and it is shown that surplus maximizing product diversity is lower than the equilibrium one

business starters and credit rationing this paper investigates which business starters experience credit rationing by simultaneously analyzing which business founders apply for credit and which are refused we argue that credit denial depends largely on the entrepreneurs commitment and signals regarding the repayment of the loan and the success chances of the proposed business our empirical analysis is based on a sample of 1140 potential business starters in the dutch county south limburg our findings show that commitments drive the credit application and approval while the effects of signals are mixed the findings also suggest that business founders have a pretty good idea regarding whether their applications will be honored or not

spatial monopoly and spatial monopolistic competition with two part pricing this paper develops a model of spatial price discrimination by two part pricing when bearing freight and nonlinear pricing are impossible the two part tariff comprises a membership fee and a price per visit when fixed costs per store are low a monopolist makes membership compulsory and builds stores too close together with higher fixed cost the monopolist offers consumers a choice between membership and nonmembership and builds stores too far apart nearby consumers become members more distant consumers nonmembers competition leads to closer spacing than monopoly and lower welfare except at high levels of fixed cost per store copyright 1988 by the london school of economics and political science

exploring gendered behavior in the field with experiments why public goods are provided by women in a nairobi slum abstract women and particularly women in all female groups appear to be especially adept at providing public goods in developing countries we use a one shot public goods game to explore the effect of sex and a group s sex composition on the voluntary provision of public goods in a nairobi slum sex heterogeneity hurts the voluntary provision of public goods because women but not men contribute less in mixed sex than same sex groups women contribute as much as men in same sex groups this result is driven by women s pessimism and men s optimism about others contributions in mixed sex groups rather than by gendered social preferences

on the accuracy of economic observations do sub saharan trade statistics mean anything matching exporters freight on board fob trade statistics with the corresponding importers cost inventory and freight cif data this paper studies the quality of official information on trade between 36 african countries the author found the disparities in data so great as to make the official trade statistics almost useless for most empirical and policy studies he concluded that a statistics on matching exports and imports vary so much that the data cannot be used to assess the level of trade between african countries b the data are probably equally useless for assessing the direction of trade since the countries that exporters report as the destination of trade often fail to report corresponding imports c the data are inadequate for determining the composition of trade because countries report on different levels of detail and d large persistent apparent differences in trends in intra african trade may simply reflect different degrees of accuracy in country trade data finally the fact that reported fob exports often exceed the corresponding reported imports suggests either that smuggling is widespread or that importers are intentionally underinvoicing because of high african tariffs or quotas

competition tacit collusion and free entry techniques drawn from the analysis of spatial competition that satisfies the criteria of feasibility and sustainability this edc equilibrium derives from a two stage process the first stage deals with the initial entry of firms to the market and the development of a free entry equilibrium a la eaton lipsey this stage determines the identities of the potential participants to the collusive agreement in the second stage firms move their prices from the free entry equilibrium to a tacitly collusive equilibrium in which each firm earns additional long run positive profits to show that our edc equilibrium is sustainable under free entry conditions

spatial preemption with finitely lived equipments abstract this paper proposes a dynamic approach to potential competition in a spatial framework where productive investments are location specific and have finite duration we define a notion of strategic sustainability against multiple entries in which spatial preemption comes from anticipated renewal policies of plants we show that in an infinite horizon model with no discounting potential competition leads to average cost renewal but a positive value can be attached to incumbency the conditions for the existence of such strategically sustainable structures are determined in the model of the circular city under mill or discriminatory pricing rules our results are finally related to the usual two stage notion of free entry equilibrium in spatial models

measuring and decomposing economies of diversification an application to biogas fuelled cogeneration plants in austria abstract this paper investigates the existence and the degree of economies of diversification for small scaled renewable fuelled cogeneration systems using 2014 cross sectional data from 67 austrian biogas plants it is the first study applying the recently introduced concept of economies of diversification proposed by chavas and kim 2010 which is a generalization and decomposition of economies of scope economies of diversification are decomposed into three additive parts a part measuring complementarity among outputs a part reflecting economies of scale a part reflecting convexity in addition this paper extends the decomposition introduced by chavas and kim 2010 in such a way that the contribution of each input to economies of diversification and its components can be investigated the results indicate substantial cost savings from diversification for very small scaled plants 100 kwel most of the cost savings come from scale economies for larger plants 250 kwel positive complementarity and convexity effects are the main source of economies of diversification and outweigh the negative effect from scale diseconomies in addition to substantial fuel feedstock cost reductions significant costs saving effects from the jointness in labour and other inputs positively contribute to the complementarity effect while on average capital and labour costs positively contribute to economies of scale feedstock costs work in the direction of diseconomies of scale

industrial structure in us telecommunications some empirical evidence the telecommunications industry in the us is re assessed using a methodology which incorporates new developments in time series analysis the issue of natural monopoly is re considered with a view to the validation of the use of applied econometry in the fields of divestiture and industrial policy recent developments in us telecommunications are considered and incorporated into the model

economies of diversification in the banking industry abstract this paper defines a new measure economies of diversification to examine the cost effect of product line expansion this measure is a special case of expansion path subadditivity and contains economies of scope as a special case a nonparametric frontier technique which isolates the effects of inefficiency and scale is used to measure economies of diversification applied to a set of 468 u s depository institutions operating in 1984 we find slight diseconomies of diversification diseconomies of diversification and inefficiency due to the overutilization of resources are found to be more important determinants of bank costs than is the failure to operate at optimal scale

multiple output production and pricing in electric utilities empirical studies of the electric utility industry have generally focused on one of several issues such as the presence or absence of regulation induced input mix distortions the rules used to select regulated prices whether electricity is one output or several or the naturalness of the electric utility monopoly this paper contributes a method which permits simultaneous estimation of demand elasticities pricing rule parameters and marginal rates of transformation within one econometric model since firms make input and output decisions given the demand and regulatory conditions facing them the marginal rates of substitution and transformation are dependent on the demand elasticities of each consumer class and the prices permitted by regulators its purposes are two first i examine the appropriateness of a multiple output model of production is electricity one output or are the products sold to different consumers distinct outputs most but not all previous studies treat electricity as a homogeneous product 2 while this assumption may be justified for studies which deal strictly with generation of electricity joskow and schmalensee 27 54 5 observe3 that

african smes networks and manufacturing performance abstract this paper examines the role of private support institutions in determining small and medium enterprise smes growth and performance in sub saharan africa ssa it finds that smes in ssa get around market failures and lack of formal institutions by creating private governance systems in the form of long term business relationships and tight ethnically based business networks there are important links between these informal governance institutions and sme performance networks raise the performance of insiders and in the sparse business environments of the ssa region have attendant negative consequences for market participation of outsiders such as indigenous african smes this is indicated through the determinants of access to supplier credit policy interventions will be needed to improve the platform for relation based governance mechanisms and to address the exclusionary effects of tight networks

structural reform of japanese electric power industry separation between generation and transmission distribution this study examines the cost structure of japanese electric power industry to investigate whether a structural reform on the industry really enhances a cost saving benefit to consumers a composite cost function model using a panel data set is used for this study the data set consists of nine electric power companies from 1990 to 2008 based upon the estimation results this study examines whether economies of scale and vertical economies exist in the industry then this study conducts a cost subadditivity test that is a necessary condition of natural monopoly the empirical results indicate that the electric power firms exhibit the status of economies of scale in their transmissions and distributions and the operation as a whole however they do not exhibit economies of scale in their generations thus the transmission operation by integration in a large area can improve its economic efficiency furthermore the industry should introduce more competition in both generation and wholesale power markets where more firms can participate in their power trades this study also empirically confirms that vertical economies have existed in the industry moreover this study confirms that all the estimates in the cost subadditivity test satisfy the necessary condition of natural monopoly where each estimate indicates cost saving in cost subadditivity the test does not guarantee a sufficient condition of natural monopoly however it clearly indicates that the functional separation between generation and transmission will increase total production cost in the industry the complete separation may result in a net loss of economic efficiency if a competition benefit does not exceed an expected economic loss consequently this study suggests that the industrial structure of future japanese electric power industry should be evaluated from not only an expected benefit by introducing competition but also an unbundling cost that occurs with a loss of vertical integration

rejoinder natural monopoly and the bell system response to charnes cooper and sueyoshi our study of the bell system cost function shows that it is possible to reject the hypothesis that at t was a natural monopoly our study is based on a regression analysis of a translog cost function estimated on 1947 1977 data charnes cooper and sueyoshi charnes a w w cooper t sueyoshi 1988 a goal programming constrained regression review of the bell system breakup management sci 34 1 26 claim that they reverse our conclusion when they use goal programming estimators of a translog cost function estimated on exactly the same data that we use this claim is false there is no basis for comparing our estimates with their estimates because they in fact use different data than we use and estimate a different cost function than we estimate moreover when goal programming estimates and regression estimates based on the same data and similar cost function specifications are compared they yield similar estimates and produce the same inference about natural monopoly

a note on the excess entry theorem in spatial markets abstract vickrey vickrey w s 1964 microstatics harcourt brace and world new york shows that the number of firms entering is excessive in his circle model of product differentiation we broaden his result to a large class of transport and production cost functions in particular convex transport and production costs always entail excessive entry as long as a price equilibrium exists we also provide an example of insufficient entry in equilibrium

product variety and welfare under tough and soft pricing regimes we re examine the economic justification for the regulation of firms price policies existing analysis of the relative benefits of alternative pricing policies by treating market structure as exogenous loses an important trade off price deregulation leading to for example discriminatory pricing on the one hand enhances competition between incumbents but on the other acts as a strong deterrent against entry we illustrate this trade off by analysing the familiar address model of product differentiation and show that product variety is determined by the degree of spatial contestability of the market the ability of entrants to make binding location commitments and by whether firms are free to price discriminate copyright 1996 by royal economic society

a composite cost function for multiproduct firms with an application to economies of scope in banking the composite cost function the authors propose combines a quadratic output structure with a log quadratic input price structure and is well suited for examining economies of scope subadditivity and other important properties of multiproduct firms to compare the composite model with an appropriate set of alternative functional forms they develop a parsimonious but general specification that nests the standard translog cost function the generalized translog cost function a separable quadratic cost function and the composite cost function an application to economies of scope in banking confirms the advantages of the composite model copyright 1992 by mit press

goal programming regulation and generalised economies of scale and scope abstract in this paper a new class of goal programming models are employed to define economies of scale and scope first with reference to distribution models and then with reference to more general linear and nonlinear goal programming models applications to interregional production regulation and exchange are provided and in every case these models yield competitive results as special cases but in their general form the models and associated results correspond to appropriately regulated market conditions with regulation being determined inter alia by means of appropriate supply and or demand goal oriented taxes and subsidies

a natural monopoly in natural gas transmission abstract in this article we test for subadditivity in the cost structure associated with transporting natural gas by trans canada pipelines ltd and measure for possible cost savings from increased competition that could be realized by removing the monopoly status granted by the national energy board in measuring subadditivity we apply both the baumol et al contestable markets and the theory of industry structure 1982 and the evans and heckman am econ rev 764 1984 613 procedures our results show evidence of subadditivity in the cost structure and consequently the possible benefits from increased competition resulting from splitting up the monopoly could be offset by the sacrifice of scale efficiencies

standard incentive regulation hinders the integration of renewable energy generation the connection and distribution of growing decentralized electricity generation from renewable energy sources res e is leading tomassive investment needs besides investing in additional conventional assets e g cables grid operators can also invest in innovative smart solutions like local storage capacities or voltage regulation appliances which may be a more suitable way of integrating res e this paper investigates the influence of incentive regulation on the investment decision of grid operators to integrate res e we describe the technical and regulatory background explain the advantages of smart solutions and present an approach for comparing investment scenarios as an example we calculate the profitability of investments in a case study of the german electricity market we apply data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier analysis sfa to show the influence of the investment alternatives on grid operator efficiency objectives we demonstrate that under current standard incentive regulation the grid operators gain profitability by avoiding investments and if they are forced to invest by not implementing smart solutions the results highlight the need to consider innovation in the regulation design further research should investigate specific instruments that can be used to account for innovation our brief discussion of such instruments provides a starting point

measuring economies of scope for cogeneration systems in korea a nonparametric approach this study empirically identifies the existence and the degree of economies of scope for cogeneration systems in korea we derive the index of economies of scope and estimate it by using a nonparametric approach of linear programming method based on the empirical results we explicitly present that there exist economies of scope for cogeneration in korea with total cost reduction of 13 1 in addition we show that the cost saving effects from the jointness in capital and labor are also significant in addition to that in fuel

the failed africanization of commerce and industry in kenya abstract in the 1970s a number of authors challenged the dependency perspective with respect to kenya they maintained that a viable domestic capital class nurtured by state sponsorship had emerged since independence this article questions the revisionist interpretation of state business relations in kenya kenya does possess a dynamic entrepreneurial sector led mainly by kenyan indians government efforts to aid african entrepreneurs or to establish a vigorous state capitalist sector have been ineffective this is evident from surveys of the state enterprise sector private manufacturing and commerce revisionist authors tended to overestimate the capacity of kenyan state agencies to implement policy goals and they neglected the political context of africanization as an instrument of ethnic patronage for state leaders

telecommunications deregulation and subadditive costs are local telephone monopolies unnatural abstract in early 1996 congress passed the telecommunications law providing the foundation for the opening of regulated local telephone monopolies to competition one important premise for introducing competition into local telephone markets is that these markets are not or are no longer natural monopolies this paper reexamines the natural monopoly issue using a cost function that controls for firm heterogeneity our subadditivity tests suggest that local exchange carriers lecs costs are subadditive when there are controls for unobserved heterogeneity suggesting that local telephone markets are natural monopoly markets

the spatial incidence of local retail taxation this paper examines the effects of local retail taxation in two simple models of spatial competition suppose that a suburb or central city imposes an excise tax or subsidy on a particular commodity such as gasoline liquor restaurant meals or groceries or imposes a general sales tax that affects many commodities simultaneously to what extent does this lead to higher prices within the jurisdiction and in neighboring jurisdictions section ii presents the basic model of spatial competition that forms a component of the fixed locations model of section iii and the entry model of section iv infinitely many stores are located along an infinite line and demand density is completely inelastic and uniform along the line the main endogenous variables of interest are the prices charged by the different stores throughout the paper a nash equilibrium in prices is assumed section iii presents the fixed locations model in which the tax is imposed after stores have already established themselves store locations are fixed due to location specific sunk costs if a suburb containing a single store imposes an excise tax on a commodity the store that is taxed and its first second and third nearest neighbors on each side increase their prices by 57 7 percent 15 5 percent 4 2 percent and 1 1 percent of the tax respectively this result is independent of the spacing of the stores and independent of whether or not they are evenly spaced if a suburb containing several stores imposes an excise tax the changes in price follow directly by adding the effects of taxes on several adjacent stores if a central city taxes all stores on the right half line the results are given by 12 the taxed and untaxed stores closest to the boundary

the price and profit effects of horizontal mergers in two dimensional spatial competition abstract consider a horizontal merger between two adjacent stores in a two dimensional model the price and profit increases of merging and neighboring stores are small compared to those that occur in a one dimensional model

a goal programming constrained regression review of the bell system breakup the recently implemented court decision to break up bell american telephone telegraph co to accord with u s anti trust laws represents a highly significant policy decision which is proving to be influential in other countries as well as the u s the telecommunication industry is of such size and importance that even relatively small economies that might be lost with bell s breakup as a natural monopoly could involve substantial welfare losses to consumers and producers studies commissioned by the u s justice department that approached this topic by econometric methods reported that the evidence failed to support the contention that bell was a natural monopoly here a goal programming constrained regression as developed in the management science literature uses the same functional form and the same data but nevertheless reverses the main findings of the econometric studies in every one of the 20 years covered this kind of difference in results obtained by two different methods of analysis poi

labour and capital saving technical change in telecommunications the australian telecommunications sector is being improved and extended through substantial recent investment in intelligent technology such as digital switching fibre optics satellite and cellular transmission and the internet these technologies are being progressively integrated with technology from the broadcasting computer and electronics industries providing a unified information infrastructure for information transmission and processing technological progress embodied in new equipment has the effect of increasing the efficiency of the factors of production such efficiency increases can be biased towards a particular factor for instance the impact of labour augmenting technical change is a decline in the cost of labour per unit of production when such biases are apparent the relativity between the costs of labour and capital per unit of production is changed in the longer term technical change can impact on the rate of employment growth and also on the rate of capital accumulation in th

implications for minimum wage policies of an s shaped labor supply curve abstract a model of family labor supply provides a rationale for raising minimum wages when the labor supply response is negative at low wages under those circumstances the labor market can be caught in a malthusian poverty trap of excess supply unemployment overextended workdays child labor and falling wages raising minimum wages may therefore help resorb this excess supply and stabilize the labor market setting a virtuous cycle in motion in a two sector context such a policy would increase wages in both the covered and uncovered sectors evidence from a study of costa rica in particular is consistent with those conclusions

compact bidding languages and supplier selection for markets with economies of scale and scope preference elicitation is a fundamental problem in single unit combinatorial auctions but it becomes prohibitive even for small instances of multi unit combinatorial auctions the bidders cannot express their preferences exactly as this would take a huge number of bids typically leading to inefficient allocations hence markets with economies of scale and scope require more compact and yet expressive bidding languages in this thesis we propose an expressive bidding language allowing bidders to describe the characteristics of their cost functions bidders in these auctions can specify various discounts and markups and specify pricing rules as logical functions finding the optimal allocation given these pricing rules is a strongly np hard optimization problem and we propose a mixed integer program to solve it based on field data we introduce a multi item cost function and provide extensive computational experiments to explore the computational burden and the impact of different language features on the computational effort and total spend of the auctioneer in addition we explore characteristics of the knowledge representation of the bidding language

from local to global competition abstract we introduce a framework that has known models of oligopolistic competition with differentiated products the circle the logit and the ces as limit cases this integrative approach incorporates both localized and global competition as well as price sensitive individual demands it is used to explain the impact of major changes over the last two centuries reductions in transport costs increased taste for variety population growth and use of technologies with greater returns to scale we work out the properties of an extended chamberlinian model with applications both in industrial organization and economic geography

contracts hold up and exports textiles and opium in colonial india trade and export it is argued spur economic growth this paper studies the microeco nomics of exporting we build a heuristic model of transactions between exporters and producers and relate it to east india company operations in colonial bengal our model and the historical record stress two difficulties the exporter and its agents might not uphold payment agreements and producers might not honor sales contracts the model shows when procurement succeeds or fails highlighting the tension between these two hold up problems we analyze several cases including the east india company s cotton textile venture the famous opium monopoly and present day contract farming

does cournot competition yield spatial agglomeration abstract locations and quantities are chosen sequentially in spatial markets strikingly different location patterns emerge depending on the shape of the market in a circular city firms locate equidistant from each other in a linear city firms agglomerate at the center

demand for differentiated products discrete choice models and the characteristics approach we propose a specific characteristics framework in order to construct linkages between alternative conceptual approaches to modelling product differentiation first it is shown that a demand system which satisfies the gross substitutes property imposes specific requirements on the locations of products in particular the dimension of the characteristics space must be larger than or equal to the number of products minus one we then identify a method for casting a given demand system subject to certain restrictions into our characteristics framework this is illustrated for the logit probit and linear probability models of discrete choice theory finally we find a characteristics representation of the ces representative consumer

the politics of infrastructure investment the role of product market competition abstract in spatial competition public infrastructure plays a crucial role in determining product market outcomes in our model consideration of infrastructure s impact on the product market drives the preferences of consumers in their dual role as voter taxpayers the spatial heterogeneity of consumers produces conflicting political interests and in many cases inefficient outcomes however across both exogenous and endogenous market environments product market competition consistently leads to higher levels of publicly funded infrastructure than monopoly collusion furthermore competition s boost to the popular support for infrastructure investment is often excessive while monopoly leads to underinvestment

product differentiation with consumer arbitrage abstract we determine the equilibrium to a game where two firms set delivered price schedules and consumers simultaneously declare where they want to take delivery of the product equilibrium pricing policies provide incentives for consumers not to demand their preferred varieties but rather to purchase more standard varieties this behavior may decrease market diversity the demanded varieties tend to agglomerate around the market center we also show that it is efficient for the cost of adapting the product to consumers to be shared through arbitrage but oligopoly gives rise to an inefficient level of personal arbitrage

financial market fragmentation and reforms in ghana malawi nigeria and tanzania this article reports the findings from surveys of formal and informal institutions and their clients in ghana malawi nigeria and tanzania it investigates the hypothesis that reforming financially repressive policies would not be sufficient to overcome fragmentation of financial markets because of structural and institutional barriers to interactions across different market segments the four countries have substantially fragmented financial markets with weak linkages between formal and informal segments and interest rate differentials that cannot be adequately explained by differences in costs and risks nevertheless the relatively low transaction costs and loan losses of informal institutions indicate that they provide a reasonably efficient solution to information transaction cost and enforcement problems that exclude their clients from access to formal banking services the findings imply that financial liberalization and bank restructuring in the african context should be accompanied by complementary measures to address institutional and structural problems such as contract enforcement and information availability and to improve the integration of informal and formal financial markets

where to locate in a circular city abstract we study the location choices by cournot oligopolists in a circular market where consumers are located uniformly along the circumference we analyze the subgame perfect nash equilibria spne of a two stage location quantity game we demonstrate that the equidistant location pattern is only one of the many equilibrium location patterns that arise in a circular market nonequidistant multiple or a continuum of location equilibria may also arise both spatial agglomeration and dispersion or a combination of agglomeration and dispersion may occur in equilibrium in the case of infinitely many location equilibria we establish the welfare equivalence of the equilibrium location patterns

multiproduct cost relationships for retail fertilizer plants volume cost relationships developed from the statistical analysis of accounting data have long provided useful information for evaluating firm efficiency french previous descriptive and statistical analyses of accounting data as well as economic engineering cost studies of retail fertilizer firms have focused on a single product line anderson and miller raikes and heubrock williams foster and simpson service o rourke or have simply summarized industry accounting data akridge and downey problems associated with using accounting data to estimate statistical cost functions include a the failure to handle satisfactorily multiproduct firm cost relationships

the bell system divestiture deregulation and the efficiency of the operating companies abstract a variety of casual evidence has been offered in measurement of the efficiencies and inefficiencies thought to flow from the bell system divestiture and accompanying state regulatory reforms to address several questions in this regard we estimate a regulated cost function for local exchange services using panel data on the divested bell operating companies bocs divestiture and regulatory reform are found to have produced significant efficiencies as of 1993 saving about 20 percent in cost relative to what would have obtained in the absence of these events more specifically to 1993 the divestiture yielded savings of 115 4 billion and state level regulatory reform yielded a slightly smaller 96 7 billion in savings both measured in 1993 dollars output augmentation factor bias and allowed rate of return effects contribute in identified ways to these overall results

entry deterrence by non horizontal merger we study when and how pure non horizontal mergers whether cross product or vertical can deter new entry organizational mergers implicitly commit firms to more aggressive price competition because heightened competition deters entry mergers can occur in equilibrium even when absent entry considerations they do not we show that in order to prevent a flood of entrants mergers arise even when a marginal merger costs incumbent firms more than does a marginal entrant

provision of a pure local public good in a spatial model with many jurisdictions abstract this paper examines the provision of a pure local public good in jurisdictions that are spaced evenly along an infinite line each jurisdiction either supplies the local public good or else its residents travel to another jurisdiction to consume the local public good the equilibrium spacing between jurisdictions which supply the local public good which can be uneven varying between a minimum spacing and a maximum spacing for given exogenous parameters can be greater than equal to or less than the socially optimal spacing

the absorption of financial services in an islamic environment abstract this study examines the determinants of access to finance by firms residing in 42 islamic countries firm specific characteristics such as size sector legal status and export status are found to be robust predictors of financing constraints of firms small size firms appear to face more binding financing constraints whilst firms operating in manufacturing and focusing on exports appear to face lower constraints the auditing of accounts the location of operations and ownership structure appear significant with a varying effect on direction differences are documented on the role of firm specific characteristics between islamic and non islamic countries both the absolute and relative size of islamic bank assets is a significant predictor of firms financing constraints the results add new insights on the role of non economic institutions social and cultural factors across regions in predicting financing constraints of firms in islamic countries effective financial inclusion reform must focus on small size introverted and services oriented firms operating in some distance from the center as well as understand the divergent role of institutions social structures and culture within the islamic world

uneven spacing in free entry equilibrium for spatial product differentiation abstract this paper shows that the spacing of firms can be very uneven in free entry equilibrium in a familiar model of spatial competition in which potential entrants have sophisticated expectations about post entry prices