opec market failure or power failure abstract the actions of opec and saudi arabia are discussed in terms of their objectives and their technical and social constraints it is concluded 1 that opec does not act as a cartel and 2 that hotelling s rule is not an important feature of pricing or production opec s more specifically saudi arabia s ideal policy is to keep price moderate to try to assure a market for their high reserves over the long run such an action would require heavy investments in capacity including in excess capacity for times of interruption of supply from other countries as in the 1990s and for times of high demand as in the 2000s the action may be inconsistent with other objectives and in any case may be too difficult to achieve

an empirical investigation of changes in scale economies for the commercial banking firm 1979 1986 the period of the 1980s represents a particularly turbulent time for the banking industry a number of technological and regulatory changes have occurred including the elimination of regulation q which had limited the explicit interest payments that banks could pay on some types of deposits it would be expected that these changes would affect the structure of costs for banks the behavior of the cost function is studied over the 1979 1986 time period and in contrast to previous studies using earlier data increasing economies of scale are found in the later years for banks in both unit and branch banking states these results indicate that there may be increased cost pressure for smaller banks to become larger either through mergers and acquisitions or through internal growth this may lead to further consolidation pressures within the industry and reductions in the overall number of banking firms copyright 1991 by ohio state university press

analysis of iran s crude oil export future capacity the paper analyzes iran s oil export capacity and the factors affecting it first the local energy demand is reviewed and crude oil with 5 7 annual growth rate is introduced as a major source to respond to the increasing domestic energy demand then the national plans for controlling the local demand and replacing oil with other types of energy carriers are reviewed to create a view over the future of local demand for crude oil in iran in the next step crude oil production and exploration situation in iran are investigated and the required increase in production to maintain the present level of export is calculated by estimating the average capital expenditures for adding each barrel of new capacity to iran s daily oil production the necessary annual investment to compensate the production drop and domestic consumption growth for maintaining the export is introduced then the future of oil export in iran is predicted in three optimistic reference and pessimistic scenarios on the basis of the country s ability in managing the financial resources in upstream oil industry finally domestic and foreign investment and the history of buyback contracts and their undeniable role in development of iranian oil and gas projects are discussed

scale and scope economies in the multi product banking firm abstract the multi product nature of the banking firm is examined utilizing the translog cost function this analysis indicates that contrary to conventional wisdom natural monopoly scale economies and product specific decreasing costs are not robust characterizations of the banking industry there is however evidence that the cost function is characterized by economies of scope the implications of these results are discussed and extensions of this approach suggested

cross cultural interaction the international comparison fallacy international management studies have been based primarily on the comparison of managerial behavior in countries around the world often these studies have implied that business people behave similarly with their domestic colleagues as with their foreign counterparts in questioning that assumption this study tests whether intra cultural behavior accurately predicts cross cultural behavior using a negotiation simulation and a sample of 462 japanese american and canadian businesspeople behaviors in cross cultural negotiations were found to differ in some important ways from those in intra cultural negotiations

scale economies in banking a restructuring and reassessment the issue of scale economies in banking has a rich history most earlier studies report modest operating cost scale economies for small institutions those with less than about 50 million of deposits in 1968 dollars but are unclear where these economies might end if at all unfortunately these studies are limited in four important respects first those that were well specified did not measure the total cost of banking operations but concentrated on estimating scale economies for individual banking functions e g demand deposits separately from commercial loans second an average cost curve that could take a u shape over the full range of banks was not fitted either because larger banks were not included or because of the functional form used cobb douglas consequently the optimum or minimum cost size of a bank or office could not be determined third the variables measuring the costs of branching were misspecified fourth the branch

economies of scale and economies of scope in multiproduct financial institutions a study of british columbia credit unions this paper investigates the production technology facing computerized credit unions in canada a full system of translog cost equations is estimated in order to test for economies of scale economies of scope and other production characteristics in a multiproduct context the regression results indicate that most of the credit unions in our sample experience significant increasing returns to scale as they expand their level of output there is also evidence of cost complementarity or economies of scope in their mortgage and other lending activities as a result legislation which limits the ability of credit unions to grow and diversify will likely raise the operating costs of this important group of financial institutions additional structural tests of the most general translog specification suggest that none of the restrictive production conditions commonly imposed by other researchers using cobb douglas and ces specifications provide a valid representation of credit union technology the results of many earlier studies are therefore open to question this paper presents a number of structural tests of the production technology facing large computerized credit unions in canada a full system of translog cost equations is estimated using detailed cross sectional data on british columbia credit unions the parameter estimates obtained from our multiproduct specification allow us to test for economies of scale economies of scope and factor substitution unlike many earlier studies the present paper introduces the various outputs as separate variables instead of crudely proxying them with a single output measure such as total assets the total number of loans or the number of depositors by explicitly recognizing the multiproduct nature of the intermediation process we are able to address more interesting production questions and remove some of the bias caused by misspecification and measurement error in simpler approaches the flexible translog specification allows us to estimate the sensitivity of costs to proportionate increases in all outputs economies of scale as well as the cost savings firms realize by producing several outputs jointly rather than specializing in the production of one economies of scope the test results reported in the latter part of the paper suggest that increasing returns to scale exist in almost all of the credit unions in our sample though

allocative and scale efficiency among maize farmers in zambia a zero efficiency stochastic frontier approach the commonly used stochastic frontier model assumes that all firms are inefficient in this specification inefficiency is non negative and the probability of inefficiency being exactly zero is al

product line deregulation and the cost structure of us savings and loan associations recent legislative actions restrict thrift powers which were broadened by deregulatory actions in the early 1980s using nationwide data for savings and loans s ls evidence is found that these restrictions may rise intermediation costs for s ls by limiting their ability to exploit economies of scope between mortgage related and other outputs in addition economies of scale for a wide size range of s ls are found evidence is also found to suggest that insolvent s ls have higher costs for the same level of outputs than solvent s ls

economies of superscale in commercial banking most previous studies of scale economies in banking have excluded banks larger than 1 billion in assets thus study by contrast estimates cost functions for the 100 largest us commercial banks hedonic terms are incorporated to correct for the aggregated nature of the call report data available for these banks in addition we attempt to quantify the cost benefit of diversification in the model we estimate efficient bank scale to range from 15 billion to 37 billion in total assets a thousandfold increase over some previous findings these results are supported by comparison of actual average costs as well as by casual historical observation and the level of widespread concern over interstate banking our findings suggest some cost incentive or benefit to expansion or consolidation among large regional banks including interstate expansion or consolidation

intercultural influence a study of japanese expatriate managers in canada this study explored the nature of intercultural influence by examining the influence strategies of japanese managers in canada with their canadian and japanese subordinates theories of inter group behavior and cultural differences were used to predict the influence strategies used by japanese managers with subordinates from their own and another culture there were significant differences in their strategies which were associated with the national culture of their subordinates japanese managers used significantly more influence with canadian than with japanese subordinates including strategies of assertiveness reason sanctions upward appeal and reciprocity the structure of japanese influence differed from that found in prior research we discuss the implications of these differences for managers influencing subordinates across cultures

the stampede toward hofstede s framework avoiding the sample design pit in cross cultural research we propose a method to design better multi country samples for international business studies using hofstede s framework and aimed at determining the effects of national culture on various business phenomena we describe typical research scenarios then develop sets of algorithms that calculate indexes reflecting the power of different samples for hypotheses testing the indexes were computed from hofstede s data then rank ordered the top multi country samples are presented in tables for selection when designing studies

an empirical study of joint production and scale economies in commercial banking this paper utilizes the translog cost function to test the proposition that the bank productionfunction is characterized by jointness the cross section analysis for the years 1973 through 1978 indicates that bank production is in fact characterized by jointness this result calls into question the findings and implications of studies that utilize the assumption of non jointness in production since virtually all of the major bank cost studies employ the assumption of nonjointness the second part of our analysis examines scale economies for the banking firm while allowing for jointness in production our estimates indicate that scale economies characterize bank production at only small bank sizes and that the cost structure of large banks is characterized by diseconomies of scale

a critical review of iran s buyback contracts abstract iran s oil and gas industry requires investments of us 15 billion in the short term and over us 70 billion in the medium term iran tries to interest international oil companies ioc in investing in iran s oil and gas business by offering buyback contracts under a buyback contract an ioc invests and when production starts the field is handed over to the national iranian oil company nioc or one of its representatives the ioc gets its costs and an agreed upon profit paid out of the oil and or gas gross profits assuming the field produces as agreed upon and the international energy prices are high enough according to the iranian government the buyback contract contains sufficient incentives for an ioc to invest in iran the iocs however disagree they claim that they solely bare the risks in a buyback contract whereas the iranian counterpart receives all windfall profits furthermore the iocs claim that the utilisation of iran s oil and gas reserves will be sub optimal if they are not involved in optimising long term recovery in this paper we investigate these claims and show that they are partly correct given iran s need for investment capital iran might have to change its policy

energy consumption and economic activities in iran abstract the causal relationship between overall gdp industrial and agricultural value added and consumption of different kinds of energy are investigated using vector error correction model for the case of iran within 1967 2003 a long run unidirectional relationship from gdp to total energy and bidirectional relationship between gdp and gas as well as gdp and petroleum products consumption for the whole economy was discovered causality is running from value added to total energy electricity gas and petroleum products consumption and from gas consumption to value added in industrial sector the long run bidirectional relations hold between value added and total energy electricity and petroleum products consumption in the agricultural sector the short run causality runs from gdp to total energy and petroleum products consumption and also industrial value added to total energy and petroleum products consumption in this sector

the role of expatriates in the management of interdependence complexity and risk in multinational corporations a multilevel analysis of environmental country and organizational affiliate factors is used to explain the differential utilization rates of u s nationals in overseas professional positions of a major u s bank with 84 branches in 43 countries the research suggests that to the extent that the affiliates of a multinational corporation operate in environments with differing levels of political risk cultural distance and competition and have operations with different levels of complexity and interdependence a single staffing policy may be inappropriate

environmental damage costs in iran by the energy sector on the basis of the energy supply and demand this paper assesses the environmental damage from air pollution in iran using the extern e study that has extended over 10 years and is still in progress in the european union eu commission damage costs were transferred from western european practice to the conditions of iran by scaling according to gdp per capital measured in ppp terms using this approach the total health damage from air pollution in 2001 is assessed at about 7 billion equivalent to 8 4 of nominal gdp in the absence of price reform and control policies it is estimated that damage in iran will grow to 9 billion by 2019 in the money of 2001 this is equivalent to 10 9 of nominal gdp i e a larger percentage of a larger gdp of this total 8 4 billion comes from the transport sector the damage cost to the global environment from the flaring of natural gas assessed on the basis of a carbon price of 10 ton co2 and found to be approximately 600 million per year this is equal to a little less than 1 of current gdp there are larger costs associated with recovery and use of such gas but equally there are large potential benefits

when in rome the effects of cultural adaptation on intercultural business negotiations drawing on social identity and similarity attraction theories as well as empirical studies in intercultural communication hypotheses were developed to test the effects of three degrees of adaptive behaviors during intercultural buyer seller negotiations hypotheses covered both the positive and negative effects of adaptation on the adjudged interpersonal attractiveness of the adaptor these hypotheses were tested in two experimental studies using scenario based manipulations the first study looked at american subjects responses to adaptive behaviors of japanese business people to test the generalizability of these findings to a less familiar culture a replication looking at american subjects responses to adaptive behaviors of korean business people was also conducted the findings partially support the notion that moderate adaptation may be the optimal strategy in intercultural negotiations moderate adaptation was found to improve the adjudged attraction of the japanese business people relative to no adaptation and substantial adaptation however this finding was not replicated with korean business people

eliciting public preference for nuclear energy against the backdrop of global warming one of the most important issues related to sustainability is to reduce the use of fossil fuels due to the reduction in greenhouse gases ghg emission nuclear power results in low carbon emissions and is thus important to mitigating the adverse effects of global warming and climate change however the downside of nuclear power cannot be overlooked and consequently nuclear power is a controversial issue in many countries around the world thus an important question concerns how people should support nuclear power do the climate and energy security benefits of nuclear power outweigh its risks and costs therefore we use a modified double bounded contingent valuation model to explore the attitudes and the willingness to pay wtp of a country in order to demonstrate its implications for policy we confirm that supporters and opponents of nuclear power are balanced both in terms of their numbers and in terms of their wtp the policy implication is that people do not support any dramatic increase or reduction in nuclear power and that nuclear power should still be an important means of generating electricity in taiwan the current share of nuclear power in electricity generation of 20 should be maintained in the near future

homogeneity restrictions on the translog cost model a note benston hanweck and humphrey bhh 1 first applied the translog cost model to empirical analyses of depository institutions cost characteristics subsequent studies by benston berger hanweck and humphrey bbhh 2 murray and white 7 gilligan and smirlock 4 and gilligan smirlock and marshall gsm 5 have employed this type of flexible form cost function as a regularity condition the translog cost model should be linearly homogenous in all input prices that is given the following translog cost function