excise taxes with multiproduct transactions i examine excise taxes levied on multiproduct retailers excise taxes reduce equilibrium output and decrease equilibrium product variety in the short run but taxes can raise output per product in the long run and induce entry excise taxes are overshifted into prices in a wide range of cases including under linear and concave demand conditions and excise taxes shift less than one for one into prices only when demand is highly convex multiproduct transactions substantively alter the efficiency of ad valorem and specific forms of excise taxes and affect the comparison of relative tax performance over short run and long run time horizons jel h25 h32 l11 l13 l81

carbon pass through in the electricity sector an econometric analysis abstract we conduct an econometric analysis to investigate the carbon pass through in the greek electricity sector for this reason we utilize a rich micro level panel dataset including hourly data for 24 thermal power plants spanning the period from january 2014 to december 2017 in order to study the pass through of emissions costs to wholesale electricity prices we employ an instrumental variable approach our findings survived several robustness checks accounting for logged linear and non linear econometric specifications the empirical results indicate the existence of an almost complete pass through revealing that retailers fully internalize the cost of co2 permits this study incurs important policy implications since the complete pass through signify that wholesale electricity prices will increase at least in the short run however the overall effect on retail prices will be mostly affected by the amount of co2 permits and the fuel energy mix

crude oil corn ethanol nexus a contextual approach this paper offers a holistic study on the complex relationships between crude oil corn and ethanol during a turbulent period between 2006 and end of 2011 through a holistic mapping of the current market situation and a contextual analytical design we show that there exists a strong relationship between crude oil and corn markets on one side and crude oil and ethanol on the other however the price relationship between corn and ethanol was revealed to be less straightforward and is driven by the us government fuel policy furthermore the study indicates that corn markets have became more prone to volatility due to ethanol production especially when the demand for corn is high and or the crude oil prices are high enough to create a competitive market for ethanol

the economics of small business finance the roles of private equity and debt markets in the financial growth cycle abstract this article examines the economics of financing small business in private equity and debt markets firms are viewed through a financial growth cycle paradigm in which different capital structures are optimal at different points in the cycle we show the sources of small business finance and how capital structure varies with firm size and age the interconnectedness of small firm finance is discussed along with the impact of the macroeconomic environment we also analyze a number of research and policy issues review the literature and suggest topics for future research

dutch disease effect of oil rents on agriculture value added in middle east and north african mena countries abstract this paper investigates the effect of oil rents on agriculture value added in oil producing middle east and north african mena countries annual data from 1970 to 2011 panel cointegration tests by pedroni 1999 long ran panel causality tests by canning and pedroni 2008 and two step system gmm by blundell and bond 1998 are used in this study we find a negative relationship between oil rents and agriculture value added in the long run with a rather slow rate of short run adjustment of agriculture value added back to equilibrium after a boom in oil rents these results indicate that an oil sector boom is associated with a contraction in the agriculture sectors of the countries in the panel in the long run this is probably attributable to a resource movement effect from other economic sectors to the booming oil sector in these countries this serves as evidence of a dutch disease effect of an oil sector boom on agriculture in the mena countries in this study

pricing and the news vendor problem a review with extensions in the newsvendor problem a decision maker facing random demand for a perishable product decides how much of it to stock for a single selling period this simple problem with its intuitively appealing solution is a crucial building block of stochastic inventory theory which comprises a vast literature focusing on operational efficiency typically in this literature market parameters such as demand and selling price are exogenous however incorporating these factors into the mode l can provide an excellent vehicle for examining how operational problems interact with marketing issues to influence decision making at the firm level in this paper we examine an extension of the newsvendor problem in which stocking quantity and selling price are set simultaneously we provide a comprehensive review that synthesizes existing results for the single period problem and develop additional results to enrich the existing knowledge base we also review and develop insight into a dynamic inventory extension of this problem and motivate the applicability of such models

channel coordination under price protection midlife returns and end of life returns in dynamic markets this paper examines three channel policies that are used in declining price environments price protection p is a mechanism under which the manufacturer pays the retailer a credit applying to the retailer s unsold inventory when thewholesale price drops during the life cycle midlife returns m allow the retailer to return units partway through the life cycle at some rebate and end of life returns e allow the retailer to return unsold units at the end of the life cycle under decliningretail prices if the wholesale prices and the return rebates are set properly then em i e midlife and end of life returns achieves channel coordination however such a policy may not be implementable because it may require the manufacturer to be worse off as a result of coordination if p is used in addition to em and the terms are set properly then pem guarantees both coordination and a win win outcome if theretail price is constant over time then em is sufficient to guarantee both coordination and a win win outcome

global oil prices and local food prices evidence from east africa it is widely believed that oil prices impact food prices in developing countries yet rigorous evidence on this relationship is scarce using maize and petrol price data from east africa we show that global oil prices do affect food prices but primarily through transport costs rather than through biofuel or production cost channels we find that global oil prices transmit much more rapidly to the pump and then to local maize prices than do global maize prices suggesting that the immediate effects of correlated commodity price shocks on local food prices are driven more by transport costs than by the prices of the grains themselves furthermore we present suggestive evidence that for markets furthest inland changes in world oil prices have larger effects on local maize prices than do changes in world maize prices

pass through and consumer search an empirical analysis retail price pass through is one of the most important issues facing manufacturers of consumer packaged goods although retailers tend to pass higher wholesale prices through to consumers quickly and completely they often do not pass on trade promotions currently asymmetric pass through is commonly thought to result from retailers exercise of market power alternatively it may be because of consumer search behavior and retailers competitive response we test this theory using a panel threshold asymmetric error correction model applied to wholesale and retail scanner data for ready to eat cereal for a number of retailers in the los angeles metropolitan market we find that consumer search behavior contributes significantly to imperfect pass through by allowing pass through to depend on market power and consumer search costs we find results that are contrary to the conventional wisdom namely market power causes retail prices to fall quickly and rise slowly whereas consumer search behavior causes retail prices to rise quickly and fall slowly precisely the rockets and feathers phenomenon

competitive pricing behavior in the auto market a structural analysis in a competitive marketplace the effectiveness of any element of the marketing mix is determined not only by its absolute value but also by its relative value with respect to the competition for example the effectiveness of a price cut in increasing demand is critically related to competitors reaction to the price change managers therefore need to know the nature of competitive interactions among firms in this paper we take a theory driven empirical approach to gain a deeper understanding of the competitive pricing behavior in the u s auto market the ability motivation paradigm posits that a firm needs both the ability and the motivation to succeed in implementing a strategy boulding and staelin 1995 we use arguments from the game theoretic literature to understand firm motivation and abilities in different segments of the auto market we then combine these insights from the game theoretic literature and the ability motivation paradigm to develop hypotheses about competition in different segments of the u s auto market to test our hypotheses of competitive behavior we estimate a structural model that disentangles the competition effect from the demand and cost effects on prices the theory of repeated games predicts that firms with a long run profitability objective will try to sustain cooperative pricing behavior as a stable equilibrium when conditions permit for example markets with high concentration and stable market environments are favorable for sustaining cooperative behavior and therefore provide firms with the ability to cooperate the theory of switching costs suggests that in markets in which a firm s current customers tend to be loyal firms have a motivation to compete very aggressively for new customers recognizing the positive benefits of loyalty from the customer base in the long run as consumer loyalty in the market increases the gains from increasing market share by means of aggressive competitive behavior are more than offset by losses in profit margins firms therefore have the motivation to price cooperatively empirically we find aggressive behavior in the minicom pact and subcompact segments cooperative behavior in the compact and midsize segments and bertrand behavior in the full size segment these findings are consistent with our theory based hypotheses about competition in different segments in estimating a structural model of the auto market we address several methodological issues a particular difficulty is the large number of car models in the u s auto market existing studies have inferred competitive behavior only in markets with two to four products they also use relatively simple functional forms of demand to facilitate easy estimation functional forms of demand however impose structure on cross elasticities between products such structure when inappropriate can bias the estimates of competitive interaction we therefore use the random coefficients logit demand model to allow flexibility in cross elasticities we also use recent advances in new empirical industrial organization neio to extend structural estimation of competitive behavior to markets with a large number of products we use the simulation based estimation approach developed by berry et al 1995 to estimate our model a frequent criticism of the neio approach is that its focus on industry specific studies limits the generalizability of its findings in this study we retain the advantages of neio methods but partially address the issue of generalizability by analyzing competitive behavior in multiple segments within the auto industry to see whether there is a consistent pattern that can be explained by theory theoretical modelers can use our results to judge the appropriateness of their models in predicting competitive outcomes for the markets that they analyze a by product of our analysis is that we also get estimates of demand and cost apart from competitive interactions for the market managers can use these estimates to perform what if analysis they can answer questions about what prices to charge when a new product is introduced or when an existing product s characteristics are changed

multi period modeling of two way price commitment under price dependent demand abstract this paper examines the use of price commitment policies in dynamic contracting in multiple period finite time horizons two specific forms of price commitment are considered one on the part of the retailer through a retail fixed markup contract and one on the part of the manufacturer through a price protection contract optimal policies for each form of price commitment are analytically derived as are optimal policies for the traditional price only and centralized supply chain scenarios that we use as comparisons we prove that optimal retail price and order size solutions exist in each period under the assumption of non increasing price dependent demand we show that the existence of retailer inventory between periods causes the optimal policies to differ from a static single period model further we show that a supplier offers a price protection policy as a signal to the retailer to resolve the gaming that naturally occurs under price only this effectively decouples the multi period dynamic contracting setting into repeated single period scenarios however the resulting behavior can actually inhibit supply chain performance on the retail commitment side we find that retail fixed markup policies are quite effective in improving supply chain efficiency we show that such policies can lead to pareto improvement over price only contracts and can even coordinate the supply chain in some situations

who bankrolls high tech entrepreneurs abstract where do new technology based firms ntbfs raise outside equity capital to answer that question financial histories were collected from 284 technology based firms founded in new england between 1975 and 1986 financial histories included the year of each round of financing the source the amount and the stage of the financing the 284 firms represented 27 of 1 073 new england ntbfs founded between 1975 and 1986 contained in corptech s corporate technology database one hundred seven 38 were launched with no outside equity investors one hundred seventy seven firms 62 raised 671 million in 445 rounds of equity financing private individuals excluding the founding management team and their relatives were the most common source of equity capital providing 177 rounds of financing for 124 firms ninety firms raised equity from venture capital funds in 173 rounds of financing fewer than 40 firms raised capital from any other single source nonfinancial corporations public stock offerings and other the sample firms raised 76 million from private individuals but almost five times that amount 370 million from venture capital funds public stock offerings accounted for 122 million for all investors the size of a round of financing tended to increase with the stage of the financing overall a typical round of individual investor financing was under 500 000 a typical round of financing from venture capital funds was between 1 million and 3 million public stock offerings typically exceeded 4 million seed and start up financing accounted for 60 of the rounds and 54 of the dollars provided by private individuals as compared to 28 of the rounds and 20 of the dollars provided by venture capital funds the most significant outcome of this research is the conclusion that private individuals and venture capital funds play complementary rather than competing roles in the financing of ntbfs this complementary relationship has two dimensions size and stage at all stages venture capital funds tend to invest substantially more dollars per round than do private individuals second compared to a significantly higher propensity to invest at the seed and start up stages than other investors private investors appear to have longer exit horizons and less risk aversion in fact private individuals provided the seed capital that launched the majority of ntbfs in the sample

r d and internal finance a panel study of small firms in high tech industries since joseph schumpeter economists have argued that internal finance should be an important determinant of r d expenditures yet almost without exception previous empirical studies have not found evidence of such a relation using newly available data the authors investigate this puzzle with a panel of 179 small firms in high tech industries under each estimation strategy they employ the authors find an economically large and statistically significant relationship between r d investment and internal finance their results are consistent with the view that because of capital market imperfections the flow of internal finance is the principal determinant of the rate at which small high tech firms acquire technology through r d copyright 1994 by mit press

how do export controls affect price transmission and volatility spillovers in the ukrainian wheat and flour markets abstract this study investigates the impact of export controls implemented on ukrainian wheat during two periods of significant commodity price spikes and volatility first we investigate the equilibrium price relationship between wheat and flour prices to identify whether export restrictions dampened the price transmission from the wheat market to the flour market second we estimate an asymmetric vec bekk garch model to characterize the nature of short run price adjustments and volatility spillovers between the ukrainian wheat and flour markets the results indicate that export controls insulated the flour market from price shocks in the wheat market by reducing the transmission elasticity by 25 we also find evidence that suggests export controls lead to increased volatility in the flour market in the periods immediately before and after the export controls however we find no evidence that the export controls increase the time invariant i e the constant part of volatility of wheat or flour prices lastly we do not observe asymmetric spillover effects in the flour market but we do find that the wheat market is more volatile when experiencing positive shocks than negative ones

who bears the cost of a change in the exchange rate pass through accounting for the case of beer abstract nominal exchange rates are remarkably volatile they ordinarily appear disconnected from the fundamentals of the economies whose currencies they price these facts make up a classic puzzle about the international economy if prices do not respond fully to changes in the nominal exchange rate who bears the cost of such large and unpredictable changes foreign firms domestic firms or domestic consumers this study presents a new analysis of the sources of incomplete pass through and then uses this analysis to re examine its implications for social welfare i develop and estimate a structural model that analyzes the sources of local currency price stability for a particular industry the model enables counterfactual simulations that quantify the relative importance of firms local cost components and markup adjustments in the incomplete transmission of exchange rate shocks to prices and the effect of the exchange rate shock on domestic and foreign firms profits and on consumer surplus the model is applied to a panel dataset of one industry with retail and wholesale prices for upc level products i find that markup adjustments by manufacturers and the retailer explain roughly half of the incomplete transmission and local cost components account for the other half foreign manufacturers generally bear a greater cost or reap a greater benefit following an exchange rate induced marginal cost shock than do domestic consumers domestic manufacturers or the domestic retailer

retailers strategies and food price dynamics evidence from dairy scanner data abstract we investigate the relationship between retailers strategies and dairy price dynamics using high frequency italian scanner data for different dairy products we compute a weekly drift free price index specific for product category chain and type of store exploiting the unbalanced panel data structure to control for unobservable strategies by chain time and type of store we test if unobservables are statistically significant in influencing the price dynamics of each of the products covered by our analysis in general chain and type of store specific unobservables play a significant role moreover we identify the role of some observable strategic variables in controlling or in stimulating price inflation rates we obtain mixed results on the relationship between private label pl market shares and price trend while we find price promotions to be more effective if applied to national brands nbs rather than pls we conclude with some implications for the potential role of public policies in controlling food inflation

demand uncertainty inventories and resale price maintenance we show that a manufacturer facing uncertain demand and selling through a competitive retail market may wish to support adequate retail inventories by preventing the emergence of discount retailers in our model discounters offer low prices made possible by low probability of being saddled with unsold inventories in the event of slack demand full price retailers are compensated for a higher probability of unsold inventories by a higher retail price when they sell we show that preventing discounting increases the manufacturer s wholesale demand and profits and we delineate demand conditions under which equilibrium inventory holding and consumer welfare increase

coordination mechanisms of supply chain systems supply chain management scm has become an important management paradigm as supply chain members are often separate and independent economic entities a key issue in scm is to develop mechanisms that can align their objectives and coordinate their activities so as to optimize system performance in this paper we provide a review of coordination mechanisms of supply chain systems in a framework that is based on supply chain decision structure and nature of demand this framework highlights the behavioral aspects and information need in the coordination of a supply chain the identification of these issues points out several directions of future research in this area

price protection in the personal computer industry price protection is a commonly used practice between manufacturers and retailers in the personal computer pc industry motivated by drastic declines of product values during the product life cycle it is a form of rebate given by the manufacturer to the retailer for units unsold at the retailer when the price drops during the product life cycle it is a controversial policy in the pc industry because it is not clear how such a policy benefits the supply chain and its participants we show that price protection is an instrument for channel coordination for products with long manufacturing lead times so the retailer has a single buying opportunity a properly chosen price protection credit coordinates the channel for products with shorter manufacturing lead times so the retailer has two buying opportunities price protection alone cannot guarantee channel coordination when wholesale prices are exoge nous however when the price protection credit is set endogenously together with the wholesale prices channel coordination is restored in the two buying opportunity setting with fixed wholesale prices we show that price protection has two primary impacts 1 shifting sales forward in time and 2 increasing total sales finally we present a simple numerical example that suggests given the current economics of the pc industry that price protection under fixed wholesale prices may benefit the total chain and the retailer but hurt the manufacturer

the cyclical behavior of strategic inventories this paper presents a model in which inventories are used by a duopoly to deter deviations from an implicitly collusive arrangement higher inventories allow firms to punish cheaters more strongly and can thus help to maintain collusion we show that when demand is high the incentive to deviate increases so that increases in inventories may be optimal for the duopoly this rationalizes the observed positive correlation between inventories and sales in our empirical section we show that as our model predicts this correlation is more important in concentrated industries we also provide several examples where inventories have been a factor in cartel behavior

measuring market power in the ready to eat cereal industry the ready to eat cereal industry is characterized by high concentration high price cost margins large advertising to sales ratios and numerous introductions of new products previous researchers have concluded that the ready to eat cereal industry is a classic example of an industry with nearly collusive pricing behavior and intense nonprice competition this paper empirically examines this conclusion in particular i estimate price cost margins but more importantly i am able empirically to separate these margins into three sources i that which is due to product differentiation ii that which is due to multi product firm pricing and iii that due to potential price collusion the results suggest that given the demand for different brands of cereal the first two effects explain most of the observed price cost margins i conclude that prices in the industry are consistent with noncollusive pricing behavior despite the high price cost margins leading firms are able to maintain a portfolio of differentiated products and influence the perceived product quality it is these two factors that lead to high price cost margins

the short and long run efficiency of energy precious metals and base metals markets evidence from the exponential smooth transition autoregressive models abstract the aim of this paper is to investigate the long and short run relationship between spot and futures prices of the energy precious metals and base metals markets we analyze daily data from january 1985 to february 2019 the empirical findings based on the cointegration test which follows a nonlinear process suggest that the spot prices of energy and metals assets have long run relationships with their futures prices nonparametric granger causality test results also indicate bi directional causality among futures and spot prices these findings indicate that the energy and metals markets are informationally efficient in the sense of fama 1970

global oil prices macroeconomic fundamentals and china s commodity sector comovements abstract this paper investigates the common movements of commodity sectors in china as well as the economic underpinnings of the comovements we employ a bayesian dynamic latent factor model to disentangle the common and idiosyncratic sector specific factors of the prices of a group of china s commodity sectors petrochemicals grains energy non ferrous metals oils fats and softs the results indicate that the common factor accounts for a significant portion of the fluctuations of china s commodity sectors providing evidence of the strong commodity sector comovements in china we further use a var model to link the common movements across china s commodity sectors to the underlying determinants including global oil price shocks and domestic macroeconomic fluctuations we find that the global oil price shocks have strong effects on the common movements across commodity sectors in china in addition to its domestic macroeconomic fluctuations at long horizons however at short horizons the common movements across commodity sectors in china respond more strongly to the global oil shocks than to its domestic macroeconomic fluctuations

cost pass through in differentiated product markets the case of u s processed cheese in this paper we estimate a mixed logit model for demand in the u s processed cheese market the estimates are used to determine pass through rates of cost changes under different behavioral regimes we find that under collusion the pass through rates for all brands fall between 21 and 31 while under nash bertrand price competition the range of pass through rates is between 73 and 103 the mixed logit model provides a more flexible framework for studying pass through rates than the logit model since the curvature of the demand functions depends upon the empirical distribution of consumer types

supply chain performance anomalies fairness concerns under private cost information abstract this work investigates how fairness concerns influence supply chain decision making while examining the effect of private production cost information and touching on issues related to bounded rationality we conduct laboratory work utilizing a supply chain dyad with an upstream supplier feeding a downstream retailer under a simple wholesale price contract we perform human computer h c experiments where human subjects play the role of the supplier paired with the computerized retailer as well as human human h h experiments where human subjects play the role of both supplier and retailer these experiments allow us to isolate other effects like bounded rationality from the effects of fairness concerns on supply chain decision making we find that compared to standard analytical model the bounded rationality slightly reduces overall supply chain profit without changing its distribution between the supplier and the retailer while fairness concerns lead to greater supply chain profits and a more balanced supply chain profit distribution we further illustrate that under private cost information the retailer s fairness concern is suppressed by the lack of reciprocity from not being able to observe her rival s profit information but that the supplier s fairness concern from altruism persists based on our experimental results we modify classical supply chain models to include utility functions that incorporate both bounded rationality and fairness concerns the estimated other regarding coefficients are significantly lower under private information than under public information for the h h experiments and we find no evidence of inequity aversion for the h c experiments

limit theorems for estimating the parameters of differentiated product demand systems we provide an asymptotic distribution theory for a class of generalized method of moments estimators that arise in the study of dierentiated product markets when the number of observations is associated with the number of products within a given market we allow for three sources of error sampling error in estimating market shares simulation error in approximating the shares predicted by the model and the underlying model error it is shown that the estimators are can provided the size of the consumer sample and the number of simulation draws grow at a large enough rate relative to the number of products we consider the implications of the results for berry levinsohn and pakes 1995 random coecient logit model and the pure characteristic model analyzed in berry and pakes 2002 the required rates dier for these two frequently used demand models a small monte carlo study shows that the dierence in asymptotic properties of the two models are reflected in quite a striking way in the models small sample properties moreover the limit distributions provide a good approximation to the actual monte carlo distribution of the parameter estimates the results have important implications for the computational burden of the two models

commodity price inflation retail pass through and market power abstract when commodity prices rise wholesalers and retailers of products derived from basic commodities respond by passing along at least a portion of the price increase to consumers in this paper we examine whether firms respond differently to positive commodity price shocks than to negative commodity price shocks that is whether commodity price volatility alters market power we exploit recent volatility in food commodity prices over the period 2007 2010 to investigate how commodity price shocks translate into market power in two different vertically structured food product industries potatoes and fluid milk for potatoes we find both wholesale and retail market power decreases increases during periods of rising falling commodity prices moreover price cost margins widen a substantially greater degree in response to negative shocks than margins narrow in response to positive shocks indicating that commodity price volatility increases market power for fluid milk we find that market power likewise declines during periods of rising commodity prices however market power does not significantly change during periods of falling commodity prices suggesting that commodity price volatility decreases market power

venture capital growing pains should the market diet abstract this paper examines recent trends in the venture capital market and current research that explores the impact of these trends high returns in the venture capital industry caused by the surging market for venture backed initial public offerings and recent reductions in the capital gains tax rate have led to dramatic increases in venture capital commitments this rise in fundraising has had dramatic effects on various segments of the venture capital market which may indicate overheating the terms and conditions of venture capital limited partnerships have changed reflecting the growth in demand for venture capital services the share of profits retained by venture capitalists has increased while the restrictiveness of the partnership agreements has eased venture firms are raising substantially larger funds with increasing pressure to find investments thereby moving to later stage investments the price of investments has also responded to the growing desire to increase investment finally institutional investors are increasingly looking internationally for new investment opportunities in venture capital to avoid potential market excesses

dynamic jumps in global oil price and its impacts on china s bulk commodities abstract this paper investigated the impacts of oil price shocks especially dynamic jumps in its returns on china s bulk commodity markets at both the aggregate and industry levels after setting a zero lower bound to the jump intensity of the arji model we found that dynamic jumps exist in oil price movements moreover under shocks of oil price jumps not only the returns but also the risks of china s bulk commodity markets are affected significantly and the reactions of risks are characterized by overreactions meanwhile by decomposing oil price shocks into expected positive negative and unexpected positive negative components we discovered that the impacts of unexpected shocks are positive and significantly asymmetric at both levels while those of the expected shocks are negative and insignificantly asymmetric at the industry level in addition the volatility clustering of all price movements and the permanent volatility effects on china s bulk commodities are also authenticated by applying the garch family models

five facts about prices a reevaluation of menu cost models are price decreases 3 the frequency of price increases covaries strongly with inflation whereas the frequency of price decreases and the size of price increases and price decreases do not 4 the frequency of price change is highly seasonal it is highest in the first quarter and then declines 5 we find no evidence of upwardsloping hazard functions of price changes for individual products we show that the first second and third facts are consistent with a benchmark menu cost model whereas the fourth and fifth facts are not

the role of obsolescence and inventory costs in providing commitment this paper modifies the cournot and stackelberg models to allow the firms to sell less than they have produced and to store the unsold portion of their output as inventory even if one of the firms can choose its output before the other if it is costless to carry unsold goods forward then the cournot outcome emerges we show however that costs of carrying the inventory forward endow the firms with a limited degree of commitment to sell what they have produced this partially restores the first mover advantage if the firms choose their outputs simultaneously the cournot outcome emerges and has locally consistent conjectures

the impact of energy prices on the volatility of ethanol prices and the role of gasoline emissions abstract the contribution of renewable energy resources is vital for a country s economic growth by providing high efficiency in energy as well as an effective tool for the confrontation of climate change in particular concerning the eu an increase in the consumption of renewable energy resources as a proportion of the total energy consumption by its member states was set as an objective until 2020 ethanol has been widely used as a substitute to conventional energy like gasoline and oil the present paper surveys the role of alternative energy prices and gas emissions in the formation of the ethanol prices the results of the empirical survey confirmed the existence of a sole relationship among the variables employed according to the results obtained an increase in the volume of emissions or in gasoline prices results in an increase in ethanol prices while the opposite is confirmed in the case of crude oil he elasticity of ethanol prices to the increase of the emissions is another result worth mentioning indicative of the significant role of the emissions in the formation of ethanol prices

structural analysis of manufacturer pricing in the presence of a strategic retailer consumer goods manufacturers usually sell their brands to consumers through common independent retailers theoretical research on such channel structures has analyzed the optimal behavior of channel members under alternative assumptions of manufacturer retailer interaction vertical strategic interaction research in empirical industrial organization has focused on analyzing the competitive interactions between manufacturers horizontal strategic interaction decision support systems have made various assumptions about retailer pricing rules e g constant markup category profit maximization the appropriateness of such assumptions about strategic behavior for any specific market however is an empirical question this paper therefore empirically infers 1 the vertical strategic interaction vsi between manufacturers and retailer 2 the horizontal strategic interaction hsi between manufacturers simultaneously with the vsi and 3 the pricing rule used by a retailer the approach is particularly appealing because it can be used with widely available scanner data where there is no information on wholesale prices researchers usually have no access to wholesale prices even manufacturers who have access to their own wholesale prices usually have limited information on competitors wholesale prices in the absence of wholesale prices we derive formulae for wholesale prices using game theoretic solution techniques under the specific assumptions of vertical and horizontal strategic interaction and retailer pricing rules we then embed the formulae for wholesale prices into the estimation equations while our empirical illustration is using scanner data without wholesale prices the model itself can be applied when wholesale prices are available early research on the inference of hsi among manufacturers in setting wholesale prices using scanner data e g kadiyali et al 1996 1999 made the simplifying assumption that retailers charge a constant margin this assumption enabled them to infer wholesale prices and analyze competitive interactions between manufacturers in this paper we show that this model is econometrically identical to a model that measures retail price coordination across brands hence the inferred cooperation among manufacturers could be exaggerated by the coordinated pricing category management done by the retailer we find empirical support for this argument this highlights the need to properly model and infer vsi simultaneously to accurately estimate the hsi when using data at the retail level functional forms of demand have been evaluated in terms of the fit of the model to sales data but recent theoretical research on channels lee and staelin 1997 tyagi 1999 has shown that the functional form has serious implications for strategic behavior such as retail passthrough while the logit and linear model implies equilibrium passthrough of less than 100 lee and staelin call this vertical strategic substitute vss the multiplicative model implies optimal passthrough of greater than 100 vertical strategic complement vsc because passthrough rates on promotions have been found to be below or above 100 chevalier and curhan 1976 armstrong 1991 we empirically test the appropriateness of the logit vss and the multiplicative vsc functional form for the data we perform our analysis in the yogurt and peanut butter categories for the two biggest stores in a local market we found that the vss implications of the logit fit the data better than the multiplicative model we also find that for both categories the best fitting model is one in which 1 the retailer maximizes category profits 2 the vsi is manufacturer stackelberg and 3 manufacturer pricing hsi is tacitly collusive the fact that the retailer maximizes category profits is consistent with theoretical expectations the inference that the vsi is manufacturer stackelberg reflects the institutional reality of the timing of the game retailers set their retail prices after manufacturers set their wholesale prices note that in the stores and product categories that we analyze the two manufacturers own the dominant brands with combined market shares of about 82 in the yogurt market and 65 in the peanut butter market the result is also consistent with a balance of power argument in the literature the finding that manufacturer pricing is tacitly collusive is consistent with the argument that firms involved in long term competition in concentrated markets can achieve tacit collusion managers use decision support systems for promotion planning that routinely make assumptions about vsi hsi and the functional form the results from our analysis are of substantive import in judging the appropriateness of assumptions made in such decision support systems

linear and nonlinear causality between sectoral electricity consumption and economic growth evidence from taiwan this study investigates the linear and nonlinear causality between the total electricity consumption tec and real gross domestic production rgdp unlike previous literature we solve the undetermined relation between rgdp and electricity consumption by classifying tec into industrial sector consumption isc and residential sector consumption rsc as well as investigating how tec isc and rsc influence taiwan s rgdp by using the granger s linear causality test it is shown that i there is a bidirectional causality among tec isc and rgdp but a neutrality between rsc and rgdp with regard to the linear causality and ii there is still a bidirectional causality between tec and rgdp but a unidirectional causality between rsc and rgdp with regard to the nonlinear causality on the basis of i and ii we suggest that the electricity policy formulators loosen the restriction on isc and limit rsc in order to achieve the goal of economic growth

estimating a nonlinear rational expectations commodity price model with unobservable state variables this paper is concerned with the estimation of a model in which a possibly serially correlated stochastic process the harvest of an agricultural commodity generates a competitive price in a market comprising both final consumers and risk neutral speculators who can store the commodity at a cost in the anticipation of profit because storage cannot be negative the relationship between prices and harvests is inherently nonlinear and is an unpromising candidate for a linear quadratic model or for linearization more generally instead we calculate numerically a policy function in which price is a function of two unobservable state variables the harvest and current availability and we use the result to fit the price data

demand uncertainty and price maintenance markdowns as destructive competition this paper offers a new theory of destructive competition the authors compare minimum resale price maintenance to retail market clearing in a model with a monopolistic manufacturer selling to competitive retailers in both the resale price maintenance and flexible price games retailers must order inventories before the realization of demand uncertainty the authors find that manufacturer profits and equilibrium inventories are higher under resale price maintenance than under market clearing surprisingly consumer surplus can also be higher in which case unfettered retail competition can legitimately be called destructive copyright 1997 by american economic association

how is volatility in commodity markets linked to oil price shocks abstract this study investigates the effects of oil price shocks on volatility of agricultural and metal commodities we decompose an oil price shock to its underlying components including macroeconomics and oil specific shocks the applied method is the structural vector autoregressive svar model and the time span is from april 1983 to may 2014 the investigation is divided into two subsamples before and after may 2006 for agriculture taking into account the 2006 2008 food crisis and change in u s ethanol production policy and before and after january 2008 for metals considering the recent global financial crisis we find that based on impulse response functions the response of volatility of each commodity to an oil price shock differs significantly depending on the underlying cause of the shock for the both periods moreover according to variance decomposition the explanatory power of oil shocks becomes stronger after the crisis the different responses of commodities are described in detail by investigating market characteristics in each period

food versus fuel what do prices tell us abstract sorting out the impacts of biofuels on global agricultural commodity prices is impossible without turning to data and distinguishing between the short run versus the long run impacts using time series prices on fuels and agricultural commodities the aim is to investigate the long run cointegration of these prices simultaneously with their multivariate short run interactions results indicate no direct long run price relations between fuel and agricultural commodity prices and limited if any direct short run relationships in terms of short run price movements sugar prices are influencing all the other agricultural commodity prices except rice with sugar the number one world input for ethanol results indicate increased ethanol production is potentially influencing short run agricultural commodity prices overall results support the effect of agricultural commodity prices as market signals which restore commodity markets to their equilibria after a demand or supply event shock

financing and advising optimal financial contracts with venture capitalists this paper analyses the joint provision of effort by an entrepreneur and by an advisor to improve the productivity of an investment project without moral hazard it is optimal that both exert effort with moral hazard if the entrepreneur s effort is more efficient less costly than the advisor s effort the latter is not hired if she does not provide funds outside financing arises endogenously this explains why investors like venture capitalists are value enhancing the level of outside financing determines whether common stocks or convertible bonds should be issued in response to incentives

angel financing and public policy an overview abstract within the past few years public efforts have sought to encourage individual or angel investors this article provides an overview of the motivations for these efforts it assesses the underlying challenges that the financing of young growth firms pose the ways that specialized financial intermediaries address them and the rationales for public efforts to encourage angel investors the final section raises a set of questions about the practical implementation of these efforts

world oil and agricultural commodity prices evidence from nonlinear causality abstract the increasing co movements between the world oil and agricultural commodity prices have renewed interest in determining price transmission from oil prices to those of agricultural commodities this study extends the literature on the oil agricultural commodity prices nexus which particularly concentrates on nonlinear causal relationships between the world oil and three key agricultural commodity prices corn soybeans and wheat to this end the linear causality approach of toda yamamoto and the nonparametric causality method of diks panchenko are applied to the weekly data spanning from 1994 to 2010 the linear causality analysis indicates that the oil prices and the agricultural commodity prices do not influence each other which supports evidence on the neutrality hypothesis in contrast the nonlinear causality analysis shows that i there are nonlinear feedbacks between the oil and the agricultural prices and ii there is a persistent unidirectional nonlinear causality running from the oil prices to the corn and to the soybeans prices the findings from the nonlinear causality analysis therefore provide clues for better understanding the recent dynamics of the agricultural commodity prices and some policy implications for policy makers farmers and global investors this study also suggests the directions for future studies

a new statistic and practical guidelines for nonparametric granger causality testing abstract in this paper we introduce a new nonparametric test for granger non causality which avoids the over rejection observed in the frequently used test proposed by hiemstra and jones 1994 testing for linear and nonlinear granger causality in the stock price volume relation journal of finance 49 1639 1664 after illustrating the problem by showing that rejection probabilities under the null hypothesis may tend to one as the sample size increases we study the reason behind this phenomenon analytically it turns out that the hiemstra jones test for the null of granger non causality which can be rephrased in terms of conditional independence of two vectors x and z given a third vector y is sensitive to variations in the conditional distributions of x and z that may be present under the null to overcome this problem we replace the global test statistic by an average of local conditional dependence measures by letting the bandwidth tend to zero at appropriate rates the variations in the conditional distributions are accounted for automatically based on asymptotic theory we formulate practical guidelines for choosing the bandwidth depending on the sample size we conclude with an application to historical returns and trading volumes of the standard and poor s index which indicates that the evidence for volume granger causing returns is weaker than suggested by the hiemstra jones test

combined pricing and inventory control under uncertainty this paper addresses the simultaneous determination of pricing and inventory replenishment strategies in the face of demand uncertainty more specifically we analyze the following single item periodic review model demands in consecutive periods are independent but their distributions depend on the item s price in accordance with general stochastic demand functions the price charged in any given period can be specified dynamically as a function of the state of the system a replenishment order may be placed at the beginning of some or all of the periods stockouts are fully backlogged we address both finite and infinite horizon models with the objective of maximizing total expected discounted profit or its time average value assuming that prices can either be adjusted arbitrarily upward or downward or that they can only be decreased we characterize the structure of an optimal combined pricing and inventory strategy for all of the above types of models we also develop an efficient value iteration method to compute these optimal strategies finally we report on an extensive numerical study that characterizes various qualitative properties of the optimal strategies and corresponding optimal profit values

when bureaucrats meet entrepreneurs the design of effective public venture capital programmes recently public efforts to finance small high technology firms have proliferated we review the motivations for these efforts and make some preliminary observations about their design we explore the underlying challenges that the financing of young growth firms poses the ways that specialised financial intermediaries address them and the rationales for public efforts to finance these companies the final section makes a set of observations about the ways in which the structure of these efforts can most effectively complement private sector activity a frequent fault in programme design is the presumption that technological criteria can be divorced from business considerations when evaluating firms the federal government has played an active role in financing new firms particularly in high technology industries since the soviet union s launch of the sputnik satellite in recent years european and asian nations and many us states have adopted similar initiatives while these programmes precise structures have differed the efforts have been predicated on two shared assumptions i that the private sector provides insufficient capital to new firms and ii that the government either can identify investments which will ultimately yield high social and or private returns or can encourage financial intermediaries to do so in contrast to other government interventions designed to boost economic growth such as privatisation programmes these claims have received little scrutiny by economists the neglect of these questions is unfortunate while the sums of money involved are modest relative to public expenditures on defence procurement or retiree benefits these programmes are very substantial when compared to contemporaneous private investments in new firms government programmes in this arena have been divided between those efforts that directly fund entrepreneurial firms and those that encourage or subsidise the development of outside investors in this paper i will focus on public venture capital initiatives programmes that make equity or equity like investments in young firms or encourage other intermediaries to make such investments in some such programmes such as the advanced technology program and the small business innovation research programmes discussed below the funds are provided as a contract or outright grant while these efforts have proliferated a consensus as to how to structure these programmes remains elusive while the design of regulatory agencies has been extensively studied from a theoretical and empirical perspective little work has

testing for linear and nonlinear granger causality in the stock price volume relation linear and nonlinear granger causality tests are used to examine the dynamic relation between daily dow jones stock returns and percentage changes in new york stock exchange trading volume we find evidence of significant bidirectional nonlinear causality between returns and volume we also examine whether the nonlinear causality from volume to returns can be explained by volume serving as a proxy for information flow in the stochastic process generating stock return variance as suggested by clark s 1973 latent common factor model after controlling for volatility persistence in returns we continue to find evidence of nonlinear causality from volume to returns

the effects of oil prices on the price indices in taiwan international or domestic oil prices matter abstract this study employs the multivariate threshold model developed by tsay 1998 to examine the effects of international and domestic oil prices on the price indices in taiwan using monthly data from january 1999 to december 2011 the results show that changes in domestic oil prices do not granger cause changes in the price indices when the oil price change exceeds the threshold level however international oil price shocks still affect the wholesale price index through the effects of announcement and expectation therefore controlling domestic oil prices to prevent volatility in the price indices is ineffective if we focus on the period when the left wing party is in power we also find that changes in international oil prices have more critical effects on the price indices than changes in domestic oil prices however the lead lag relationship between changes in domestic oil prices and changes in the price indices vanishes except with respect to the transportation category where the consumer price index is affected by domestic oil prices this result may be due to the government s extensive intervention in setting oil prices

what drives micro angel investments despite of the significant role of informal venture capital in the financing of new entrepreneurial ventures there is little research explaining the factors determining the propensity of individuals to make microangel investments building on two theoretical frameworks a social psychological theory of planned behavior and an economic theory on the determinants of demand for risky assets in household portfolios we develop a set of hypotheses predicting the propensity of individuals to make informal investments in new businesses owned by others in our analysis we test whether the determinants of micro angel investments are similar when investing in a business owned by a close family member versus more distant business the hypotheses are tested using data from 6007 interviews of finnish adults carried out in the global entrepreneurship monitor program in 2000 2002 the findings show that the theoretical frameworks have more power in explaining investments in firms not owned by close family members the study provides new understanding of the differences in the drivers of different types of micro angel investments

nonlinear causality between crude oil price and exchange rate a comparative study of china and india a failed replication negative type 1 and type 2 evidence published in this journal by bal and rath 2015 purports a bidirectional nonlinear causality between oil price and india s exchange rate and for china unidirectional nonlinear causality running from exchange rate to oil price their entire testing protocol and ensuing results rest upon claims that all the variables contain a unit root we raise several critical issues and revisit the order of integration of the series as well as their cointegration and granger causality properties through a pure replication and a reanalysis contrary to bal and rath 2015 when we repeat their estimated model with their specification of the ng and perron 2001 unit root test on their data we find that their oil price series rol is level stationary negative replication type 1 a result which makes all their subsequent results biased and misleading our reanalysis confirms that rol is i 0 linearly as well as nonlinearly we also find that the basic bivariate model proposed by bal and rath 2015 fails to produce statistically robust and stable cointegrating patterns nonlinear causality tests confirm the absence of any nonlinear causality for both countries negative replication type 2

the relationship between co2 emissions and economic growth the case of korea with nonlinear evidence abstract using star models we investigate the nonlinear dynamic properties and the interdependence of co2 emissions and economic growth for korea the estimation results indicate that the growth rate of both co2 emissions and industrial production exhibit a significant nonlinear asymmetric dynamics while the linear granger causality test finds no causality in any direction the results of the nonlinear granger causality tests show a two way causality between co2 emissions and economic growth the strong mutual causation between co2 emissions and economic activities indicates that the economic impact from co2 mitigation is expected to be higher in korea this suggests that the appropriate energy and environmental policy be to mitigate co2 emissions while having less impact on the economy

strategic inventories in vertical contracts classical reasons for carrying inventory include fixed nonlinear production or procurement costs lead times nonstationary or uncertain supply demand and capacity constraints the last decade has seen active research in supply chain coordination focusing on the role of incentive contracts to achieve first best levels of inventory an extensive literature in industrial organization that studies incentives for vertical controls largely ignores the effect of inventories does the ability to carry inventory influence the problem of vertical control conversely can inventories arise purely due to incentive effects this paper explicitly considers both incentives and inventories and their interplay in a dynamic model of an upstream firm supplier and a downstream firm buyer who can carry inventories in our model none of the classical reasons for carrying inventory exists however as we prove the buyer s optimal strategy in equilibrium is to carry inventories and the supplier is unable to prevent

economic growth and energy consumption revisited evidence from linear and nonlinear granger causality the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is considered as an imperative issue in energy economics previous studies have ignored the nonlinear behavior which could be caused by structural breaks in this study both linear and nonlinear granger causality tests are applied to examine the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for a sample of asian newly industrialized countries as well as the u s this study finds evidence supporting a neutrality hypothesis for the united states thailand and south korea however empirical evidence on philippines and singapore reveals a unidirectional causality running from economic growth to energy consumption while energy consumption may have affected economic growth for taiwan hong kong malaysia and indonesia policy implications are also discussed

brand supermarket demand for breakfast cereals and retail competition the berry levinsohn and pakes 1995 market equilibrium model is extended to the supermarket chain level to examine consumer choices and retail competition for thirty seven brands of breakfast cereals in boston estimated taste parameters for product characteristics vary significantly across consumers although consumers are price sensitive with respect to their chosen cereals they exhibit strong brand and supermarket loyalty retail markups increase and marginal costs decrease with grocery market shares attesting to oligopoly power with efficiencies markups decrease with the own price elasticity of demand with corn flakes having the highest markups a detailed picture of consumer response and supermarket competition is provided

retail price markup commitment in decentralized supply chains abstract we investigate the operational decisions and resulting profits for a supply chain facing price dependent demand under a policy where there is an ex ante commitment made on the retail price markup we obtain closed form solutions for this policy under the assumption of a multiplicative demand function and we analytically compare its performance with that of a traditional price only policy we compare these results to results obtained when demand follows a linear additive form these formulations are shown to be qualitatively different as the manufacturer s wholesale pricing decision is independent of the retail price markup commitment in the multiplicative case but not when demand is linear additive we demonstrate that the ex ante commitment can lead to pareto improving solutions under linear additive demand but not under the multiplicative demand function we also consider the effect of pricing power in the supply chain by varying who determines the retail price markup

vertical relationships between manufacturers and retailers inference with limited data in this paper different models of vertical relationships between manufacturers and retailers in the supermarket industry are compared demand estimates are used to compute price cost margins for retailers and manufacturers under different supply models when wholesale prices are not observed the purpose is to identify the set of margins compatible with the margins obtained from estimates of cost and to select the model most consistent with the data among non nested competing models the models considered are 1 a simple linear pricing model 2 a vertically integrated model and 3 a variety of alternative strategic supply scenarios that allow for collusion non linear pricing and strategic behaviour with respect to private label products using data on yogurt sold in several stores in a large urban area of the u s the results imply that wholesale prices are close to marginal cost and that retailers have pricing power in the vertical chain this is consistent with non linear pricing by the manufacturers or high bargaining power of the retailers

a control function approach to endogeneity in consumer choice models abstract endogeneity arises for numerous reasons in models of consumer choice it leads to inconsistency with standard estimation methods that maintain independence between the model s error and the included variables the authors describe a control function approach for handling endogeneity in choice models observed variables and economic theory are used to derive controls for the dependence between the endogenous variable and the demand error the theory points to the relationships that contain information on the unobserved demand factor such as the pricing equation and the advertising equation the authors approach is an alternative to berry levinsohn and pakes s 1995 product market controls for unobserved quality the authors apply both methods to examine households choices among television options including basic and premium cable packages in which unobserved attributes such as quality of programming are expected to be correlated with price without correcting for endogeneity aggregate d

risk spillover between energy and agricultural commodity markets a dependence switching covar copula model abstract unlike previous studies we employ a relatively newer modelling technique a time varying copula with a switching dependence to characterise the conditional dependence between energy and agricultural commodity markets in a more realistic way because the dependence may switch between positive and negative correlation regimes over time a dependence switching copula more appropriately and realistically captures a dependence structure than a single copula regime our findings indicate that the lower tail dependence is much stronger in a bearish regime than in a bullish regime highlighting the importance of systematic risk spillovers during extreme downward movements furthermore the significant risk spillovers from energy to agricultural commodities are verified by measuring the conditional value at risk covar and delta covar finally some useful implications are summarized for investors portfolios and risk avoidance

accounting for incomplete pass through recent theoretical work has suggested a number of potentially important factors in causing incomplete pass through of exchange rates to prices including markup adjustment local costs and barriers to price adjustment we empirically analyze the determinants of incomplete passthrough in the coee industry the observed pass through in this industry replicates key features of pass through documented in aggregate data prices respond sluggishly and incompletely to changes in costs we use microdata on sales and prices to uncover the role of markup adjustment local costs and barriers to price adjustment in determining incomplete pass through using a structural oligopoly model that nests all three potential factors the implied pricing model explains the main dynamic features of short and long run pass through local costs reduce long run pass through by a factor of 59 relative to a ces benchmark markup adjustment reduces pass through by an additional factor of 33 where the extent of markup adjustment depends on the estimated super elasticity of demand the estimated menu costs are small 0 23 of revenue and have a negligible eect on long run pass through but are quantitatively successful in explaining the delayed response of prices to costs we nd that delayed passthrough in the coee industry occurs almost entirely at the wholesale rather than the retail level

the long run impact of energy prices on world agricultural markets the role of macro economic linkages the world prices of some food and energy products have followed similar large swings in recent years we investigate the long run relationship between these prices using a world computable general equilibrium model with detailed representations of food and energy markets particular attention is paid to specifying macro economic linkages which have often been overlooked in recent analysis and debate we find that the omission of these macro economic linkages has a substantial bearing on this relationship a positive relationship due to the cost push effect has been identified in most analysis but we find that the introduction of the real income effect may indeed imply a negative relationship between world food and energy prices

improving the numerical performance of static and dynamic aggregate discrete choice random coefficients demand estimation the widely used estimator of berry levinsohn and pakes 1995 p roduces estimates of consumer preferences from a discrete choice demand model with random coefficients market level demand shocks and endogenous prices we derive numerical theory results characterizing the properties of the nested fixed point algorithm used to evaluate the objective function of blp s estimator we discuss problems with typical implementations including cases that can lead to incorrect parameter estimates as a solution we recast estimation as a mathematical program with equilibrium constraints which can be faster and which avoids the numerical issues associated with nested inner loops the advantages are even more pronounced for forward looking demand models where the bellman equation must also be solved repeatedly several monte carlo and real data experiments support our numerical concerns about the nested fixed point approach and the advantages of constrained optimization for static blp the constrained optimization approach can be as much as ten to forty times faster for large dimensional problems with many markets

angels and non angels are there differences abstract the market for informal venture capital is an elusive and nearly invisible source of financing for entrepreneurial ventures this market consists of a diverse set of high net worth individuals business angels who invest a portion of their assets in high risk high return entrepreneurial ventures the emerging consensus of the characteristics of the individual investor is that of a well educated middle aged individual with considerable business experience and a substantial net worth these informal investors appear to prefer investing in the early start up stage of the venture and if given a choice prefer that their investments be located close to home one consequence of this consensus is the tendency to assume that the traits of these business angels are as tightly clustered around the norm as are the traits of venture capital funds they are not in terms of their competence in the many areas of venture investing these individual investors range from the successful cashed out entrepreneur on the one hand to individuals with little or no experience with venture investing on the other at the same time little is known about the characteristics of high net worth individuals who never ventured where angels dare to tread or about these non angels propensity to join the fold thus this study seeks to fill the void by examining the characteristics of high net worth individuals regardless of their investment history or their interest in venture investing an analysis of the data reveals three groups of high net worth individuals business angels with experience investing in entrepreneurial ventures interested potential investors with no venture investment history but who express a desire to enter the venture investment market and uninterested potential investors who under no circumstances would consider investing in entrepreneurial ventures as part of their investment strategy business angels and potential investors both the interested and non interested segment share similar views about the economic significance of the entrepreneur and the difficulty in securing the equity capital for development of the venture as the issues move from the general to the specific divergence in investment attitudes takes place among the two groups but this divergence is in terms of magnitude or intensity rather than in contrasting or opposing views of the process the potential investor tends to view investing in entrepreneurial ventures on a smaller scale than the active investor especially in terms of the dollar amount committed to any one investment while the business angel is more interested than the potential investor across all stages of financing the interest for both groups increases as the type of financing progresses from the seed stage to expansion financing in contrast the potential investor is more likely to seek diversification as a motivation for venture investing than their angel counterparts the potential investor pool is segmented into those potential investors who appear willing to take on the role of business angels and those individuals who have no desire to participate in the venture market for the interested group to increase their interest in providing venture capital these potential investors want assistance in monitoring the performance of the venture investment followed by assistance in pricing and structuring both of these resources relate more to the technical aspects of venture investing and indicate that these are the areas where the potential investor is least likely to have expertise other resources such as finding and evaluating the investment opportunity appear to represent less of a stimulus for the potential investor in many respects interested potential investors act like business angels across several dimensions both consider the later stages of the development of the venture as the preferred stage to invest the business angel and interested potential investor prefer investments to be located relatively close to their primary residence and share similar views on the amount of the investment portfolio to allocate to venture investing where the interested potential investor and business angel clearly differ is on the scale of the commitment and the motivation for investing the potential investor will commit a smaller dollar amount to any one venture is more inclined to participate with other investors and is more apt to see venture investing as a diversification strategy than is the seasoned business angel

energy milk price transmission at the product brand level this article estimates the pass through rates between diesel fuel and retail milk prices at the product brand level using a random coefficient logit demand model and taking the direct and indirect impacts of energy prices this research identifies changes in pass through rates before and after the great recession in 2008 empirical results show that diesel prices significantly impacted the retail prices of milk products and are an important determinant of food price inflation pass through rates are estimated to range from 0 16 to approximately 0 60 through 2008 with an average of 0 22 for the whole period statistical tests indicate that pass through rates before june 2008 were significantly higher than after june 2008 when they dropped significantly to 0 04 to 0 17 interestingly private label brands have the lowest pass through rates implying that compared to manufacturer brands private label prices are more insulated from diesel price shocks

world oil prices and agricultural commodity prices evidence from an emerging market abstract oil prices are thought to have direct effect on agricultural prices followed by an indirect effect through the exchange rate this paper examines the short and long run interdependence between world oil prices lira dollar exchange rate and individual agricultural commodity prices wheat maize cotton soybeans and sunflower in turkey to this end the toda yamamoto causality approach and generalized impulse response analysis for identification of the long and short run interrelationships are applied to the monthly data spanning from january 1994 to march 2010 the impulse response analysis suggests the turkish agricultural prices do not significantly react to oil price and exchange rate shocks in the short run the long run causality analysis reveals that the changes in oil prices and appreciation depreciation of the turkish lira are not transmitted to agricultural commodity prices in turkey hence our results support neutrality of agricultural commodity markets in turkey to both direct and indirect effects of oil price changes

the relationship between crude oil spot and futures prices cointegration linear and nonlinear causality the present study investigates the linear and nonlinear causal linkages between daily spot and futures prices for maturities of one two three and four months of west texas intermediate wti crude oil the data cover two periods october 1991 october 1999 and november 1999 october 2007 with the latter being significantly more turbulent apart from the conventional linear granger test we apply a new nonparametric test for nonlinear causality by diks and panchenko after controlling for cointegration in addition to the traditional pairwise analysis we test for causality while correcting for the effects of the other variables to check if any of the observed causality is strictly nonlinear in nature we also examine the nonlinear causal relationships of vecm filtered residuals finally we investigate the hypothesis of nonlinear non causality after controlling for conditional heteroskedasticity in the data using a garch bekk model whilst the linear causal relationships disappear after vecm cointegration filtering nonlinear causal linkages in some cases persist even after garch filtering in both periods this indicates that spot and futures returns may exhibit asymmetric garch effects and or statistically significant higher order conditional moments moreover the results imply that if nonlinear effects are accounted for neither market leads or lags the other consistently videlicet the pattern of leads and lags changes over time

high tech r d subsidies estimating the effects of sematech abstract sparked by concerns about their shrinking market share 14 leading u s semiconductor producers with the financial assistance of the u s government in the form of 100 million in annual subsidies formed a joint r d consortium sematech in 1987 using compustat data on all u s semiconductor firms we estimate the effects of sematech on members r d spending profitability investment and productivity in so doing we examine two hypotheses the commitment hypothesis that sematech obligates member firms to spend more on high spillover r d and the sharing hypothesis that sematech reduces duplication of member r d spending whereas the commitment hypothesis provides a rationale for the government subsidies the sharing hypothesis does not we find that sematech induced members to cut their overall r d spending on the order of 300 million per year providing support for the sharing hypothesis

dynamic spillovers among major energy and cereal commodity prices abstract over the past decade the sharp increases in the prices of oil and agricultural commodities have raised serious concerns about the heightened volatility of these markets and the possible negative interactions between them this article deals with the dynamic return and volatility spillovers across international energy and cereal commodity markets it also examines the impacts of three types of opec news announcements on the volatility spillovers and persistence in these markets for this purpose we make use of the var bekk garch and var dcc garch models for the daily spot prices of eight major commodities including wti oil europe brent oil gasoline heating oil barley corn sorghum and wheat our results provide evidence of significant linkages between these energy and cereal markets moreover the opec news announcements are found to exert influence on the oil markets as well as on the oil cereal relationships finally we show that the persistence of volatility decreases increases for the crude oil and heating oil gasoline returns after accounting for the opec announcements in these multivariate garch models however the results are more mixed for the cereal markets overall our results can be used to improve the risk adjusted performance by having more diversified portfolios and also serve to hedge the oil risk more effectively

a theoretical analysis of optimal financing strategies for different types of capital constrained entrepreneurs in this paper we compare two alternative financing strategies that capital constrained entrepreneurs can adopt they can either wait until they raised enough money to complete their project the more conservative strategy or use limited resources to achieve some intermediate milestone before contacting large outside investors such as venture capitalists the more adventurous strategy we examine how the choice of financing strategy is affected by entrepreneurial types life style serial and pure profit maximizing entrepreneur we show that specific entrepreneurial characteristics may ultimately affect the shape of firms as they may pursue different strategies to achieve similar goals the paper generates a number of empirical predictions on security design the interplay between angel and venture capital finance and the professionalization of the venture capital market c 2006 elsevier inc all rights reserved

search with learning from prices does increased inflationary uncertainty lead to higher markups aggregate cost uncertainty arising from real shocks or unanticipated inflation reduces the informativeness of prices by scrambling relative and aggregate variations but when agents can acquire additional information such increased noise may in fact lead them to become better informed and price competition will intensify we examine these issues in a model of search with learning where consumers search optimally from an unknown price distribution while firms price optimally given consumers search rules we show that the decisive factor in whether inflation variability increases or reduces the incentive to search and thereby market efficiency is the size of informational costs