competition and corporate performance are people right to think that competition improves corporate performance my investigations indicate first that there are some theoretical reasons for believing this hypothesis to be correct but they are not overwhelming furthermore the existing empirical evidence on this question is weak however the results reported here based on an analysis of around 670 u k companies do provide some support for this view most important i present evidence that competition as measured by increased numbers of competitors or by lower levels of rents is associated with a significantly higher rate of total factor productivity growth

optimal farm size in an uncertain land market the case of kyrgyz republic this article applies a real options model to the problem of land development making use of the 1998 2001 kyrgyz household budget survey we show that when the hypothesis of decreasing return to scale holds the relation between the threshold value of revenue per hectare and the amount of land cultivated is positive in addition the relation between the threshold and the amount of land owned is positive in the case of continuous supply of land and negative when there is discontinuous supply of land the direct consequence is that in the first case smaller farms will be more willing to rent land and exercise the option where in the second case larger farms will exercise first the results suggest three main conclusions i the combination of uncertainty and irreversibility is an important factor in land development decisions ii farmer behavior is consistent with the continuous profit maximization model and iii farming unit revenue tends to be positively related to farm size once uncertainty is properly accounted for

custom hired tractor services and returns to scale in smallholder agriculture a production function approach historically agricultural transformation has often accompanied the increase in the returns to scale little direct evidence exists however on what actually causes such increase despite the knowledge of many factors that are associated with this increase we fill this knowledge gap by testing whether hiring in tractor services has raised returns to scale in agriculture at the household level in nepal terai that has undergone rapid growth in the tractor use through custom hiring services using switching regression and inverse probability weighted generalized method of moments we address two sources of endogeneity involved with the estimation of returns to scale 1 farmers self selection on whether to hire in tractor services and 2 use of inputs in the production function for both cobb douglas and translog production function specifications we find that hiring in tractor services significantly increased the returns to scale in agricultural production by about 0 2 0 3 among farm households not owning tractors for which suitable control groups are found findings are robust under various alternative specifications

spatial structure of agricultural production in china the spatial structure of county level agricultural production in china in 1999 is analysed a convenient simple method that corrects for both spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity in the input output relationships using spatial lag models and an allowance for the response coefficients to vary across relatively homogeneous regions are described empirical results suggest an abundant labour supply and extensive use of agricultural machinery reflected in its declining price although mechanization is relatively new machines have replaced fertilizer in agricultural production in the north northeast northwest and east regions while irrigation and fertilizer are the significantly important inputs in the central and southwest regions

property rights and finance which is the tighter constraint on private sector investment weak property rights or limited access to external finance from a survey of new firms in post communist countries we find that weak property rights discourage firms from reinvesting their profits even when bank loans are available where property rights are relatively strong firms reinvest their profits where they are relatively weak entrepreneurs do not want to invest from retained earnings

financial and legal constraints to growth does firm size matter using a unique firm level survey database covering 54 countries we investigate the effect of financial legal and corruption problems on firms growth rates whether these factors constrain growth depends on firm size it is consistently the smallest firms that are most constrained financial and institutional development weakens the constraining effects of financial legal and corruption obstacles and it is again the small firms that benefit the most there is only a weak relation between firms perception of the quality of the courts in their country and firm growth we also provide evidence that the corruption of bank officials constrains firm growth

economies of scale and mechanization in chinese corn and wheat production as the growth in chinese farm productivity slowed down between 2000 and 2010 modernizing agriculture has become a priority of the chinese government given the important role of mechanization and

the relationship between uncertainty the contract zone and efficiency in a bargaining experiment research on bargaining suggests that the efficiency of bargaining is related to the size of the surplus to be divided and to uncertainty about the opponent we conducted a bargaining experiment which manipulated both of these factors we find that the presence of uncertainty decreases bargaining efficiency while the effect of contract zone size depends on whether there is uncertainty or certainty

when does privatization work the impact of private ownership on corporate performance in the transition economies this paper compares the performance of privatized and state firms in the transition economies of central europe while controlling for various forms of selection bias it argues that privatization has different effects depending on the types of owners to whom it gives control in particular privatization to outsider but not insider owners has significant performance effects where privatization is effective the effect on revenue performance is very pronounced but there is no comparable effect on cost reduction overlooking the strong revenue effect of privatization to outsider owners leads to a substantial overstatement of potential employment losses from postprivatization restructuring

rural reforms and agricultural growth in china this paper employs province level panel data to assess the contributions of decollectivization price adjustments and other reforms to china s agricultural growth in the reform period decollectivization is found to improve total factor productivity and to account for about half of the output growth during 1978 84 the adjustment in state procurement prices also contributed positively to output growth its impact came mainly from the responses in input use the effect of other market related reforms on productivity and output growth was very small reasons for slowdown in agricultural growth after 1984 are also analyzed copyright 1992 by american economic association

the regulation of labor author s botero juan djankov simeon la porta rafael lopez de silanes florencio shleifer andrei abstract we investigate the regulation of labor markets through employment collective relations and social security laws in 85 countries we find that the political power of the left is associated with more stringent labor regulations and more generous social security systems and that socialist french and scandinavian legal origin countries have sharply higher levels of labor regulation than do common law countries however the effects of legal origins are larger and explain more of the variation in regulations than those of politics heavier regulation of labor is associated with lower labor force participation and higher unemployment especially of the young these results are most naturally consistent with legal theories according to which countries have pervasive regulaory styles inherited from the transplantation of legal systems

effects of land fragmentation and returns to scale in the chinese farming sector using household survey data from rural china economies of scale as measured by returns to scale and the effects of land fragmentation on crop outputs are examined while these effects are found to be detrimental statistically significant and substantial existing economies of scale appear to be too small to suggest radical land policy changes in china

priorities and sequencing in privatization evidence from czech firm panel data abstract while privatization of state owned enterprises has been one of the most important aspects of the economic transition from a centrally planned to a market system no transition economy has privatized all its firms simultaneously this raises the question of whether governments privatize firms strategically in this paper we examine the determinants of the sequencing of privatization to obtain testable predictions about the factors that may affect sequencing we investigate the following competing government objectives i maximizing efficiency through resource allocation ii maximizing public goodwill from the free transfers of shares to the public iii minimizing political costs iv maximizing efficiency through information gains and v maximizing privatization revenues next we use firm level data from the czech republic to test the competing predictions about the sequencing of privatization consistent with the hypotheses of a government priority on revenues and public goodwill we find strong evidence that more profitable firms were privatized first the sequencing of privatization is also consistent with maximizing efficiency through information gains our results indicate that many empirical studies of the effects of privatization on firm performance suffer from a selection bias

distance to the efficiency frontier and foreign direct investment spillovers are firms in the former communist economies converging to the world standard this is the key question in the most challenging economic transformation at the start of this century while expert opinions differ on what constitutes a successful and complete transition it is generally acknowledged that transition economies need to raise their productivity substantially in order to catch up with the advanced countries 1 in this chapter we show how much progress has been made in reducing the distance between the efficiency of domestic firms and the world technology frontier in two transition economies the czech republic and russia and we assess whether the presence of foreign firms in these countries contributes to the reduction of the productivity gap either through knowledge spillovers or competition

land consolidation as technical change economic impacts in rural vietnam abstract this paper deepens the economic analysis of the effects of land consolidation reduction of land fragmentation it does this in the context of rural vietnam studying whether land consolidation promotes or hinders the vietnamese government s policy objectives of encouraging agricultural mechanization and stimulating the off farm rural economy the analysis views land consolidation as a form of technical change making it possible to apply the rich insights developed in the economic literature on that subject this treatment reveals that the economic impacts of land consolidation depend partly on its factor bias and partly on the degree to which labor is substitutable in production for other factors at a theoretical level if a technical change is factor neutral it will reduce off farm labor supply and slow rural structural transformation away from agriculture if it is labor augmenting and the elasticity of substitution between factors is low enough the opposite effects are predicted the paper studies these issues empirically for rice production in vietnam focusing on the impact that consolidation of rice land has on rice production machinery use and labor allocation the findings confirm that land consolidation raises both farm productivity and farm income and stimulates increased machinery use it also reduces farm labor supply lowers labor intensity in farming and thereby releases more farm labor to off farm development consistent with government policy objectives based on these findings the paper concludes that land consolidation should be encouraged through development of land ownership rights and the promotion of land rental markets

effects of technological change and institutional reform on production growth in chinese agriculture recent rapid agricultural production growth in chinese agriculture could be attributed to an increase in inputs technological change and institutional reform an accounting approach was used to separate the relative contribution of these three factors institutional change like the introduction of the household production responsibility system has contributed to past growth in production however technological change is crucial to furthering production growth because of the limited potential for significant increase in the use of conventional inputs in particular land continued institutional change must accompany corresponding technological changes

land fragmentation and food insecurity in ethiopia this paper revisits the economic consequences of land fragmentation taking seriously concerns regarding the exogeneity of fragmentation its measurement and the importance of considering impacts in terms of welfare metrics using data that are well suited to addressing these issues the analysis finds that land fragmentation reduces food insecurity this result is robust to how fragmentation is measured and to how exogeneity concerns are addressed further the paper finds that land fragmentation mitigates the adverse effects of low rainfall on food security this is because households with diverse parcel characteristics can grow a greater variety of crop types

business environment exports ownership and firm performance abstract we use two large samples of firms to assess the effects of business environment constraints competition export orientation and ownership on firm performance we deal with omitted variables errors in variables and endogeneity and find that few business constraints affect performance replicating the analysis with doing business and heritage foundation indicators of the business environment yields similar results in fact country fixed effects reflecting time invariant differences in the business environment as well as other factors such as health care and education matter more for firm performance than differences in the business environment across firms within countries

to steal or not to steal firm attributes legal environment and valuation data on corporate governance and disclosure practices reveal wide within country variation that decreases with the strength of investors legal protection a simple model identifies three firm attributes related to that variation investment opportunities external financing and ownership structure using firm level governance and transparency data from 27 countries we find that all three firm attributes are related to the quality of governance and disclosure practices and firms with higher governance and transparency rankings are valued higher in stock markets all relations are stronger in less investor friendly countries demonstrating that firms adapt to poor legal environments to establish efficient governance practices

mining matters natural resource extraction and firm level constraints abstract we estimate the impact of local mining activity on the business constraints experienced by 25 777 firms across nine large and resource rich countries we find that the presence of active mines in firms immediate vicinity

good and bad institutions is the debate over cross country firm level evidence from the textile industry using firm level data from nine developing countries we demonstrate that certain institutions like restrictive labour market regulations that are considered bad for economic growth might be beneficial for production efficiency whereas good business environment which is considered beneficial for economic growth might have an adverse impact on production efficiency we argue that our results suggest that there might be significant difference in the macro and micro impacts of institutional quality such that the classification of institutions into good and bad might be premature

does land fragmentation increase the cost of cultivation evidence from india although a large literature discusses the productivity effects of land fragmentation measurement and potential endogeneity issues are often overlooked this paper uses several measures of fragmentation and controls for endogeneity and crop choice by looking at inherited paddy and wheat plots to show that these issues matter empirically while crop choice can mitigate effects fragmentation as measured by the simpson index increases production cost and fosters substitution of labor for machinery especially for small and medium farmers greater distances between fragments have a smaller effect creating opportunities for market based consolidation could be one step to limit fragmentation induced cost increases

completing china s move to the market beginning in late 1978 by luck as much as design china arrived at a strategy for market oriented economic reform that combined substantial reform with rapid growth in gdp and exports the sequencing of reform began with the easy to reform sectors agriculture and foreign trade and then took up the more difficult task of reforming the large state owned enterprises with respect to agriculture small scale industry and foreign investment china found ways of introducing meaningful property rights into the increasingly marketized system a partially unreformed financial system and inadequate autonomy of large state enterprises accounts however for the current stop go nature of chinese development