environmental efficiency evaluation of industry in china based on a new fixed sum undesirable output data envelopment analysis national natural science funds of china for innovative research groups 70821001 national natural science funds of china 70901069 71222106 71203186 research fund for the doctoral program of higher education of china 20133402110028 fundamental research funds for the central universities wk 2040150007 china scholarship council

the long run and short run impact of captive supplies on the spot market price an agent based artificial market an agent based model is developed that matches the results of xia and sexton 2004 as well as our generalization of their model we relax xia and sexton s assumption of no supply response by captive feeders which reduces the price depressing effect of captive supplies finally the agent based model is used to simulate packers choosing both captive supply quantities and spot market quantities packers in the relaxed agent based model choose no captive supplies and thus reach the cournot solution the research narrows the gap between theoretical models and the empirical work on captive supplies that shows little effect on prices but a gap remains

recent trends in the size structure of italian manufacturing firms this paper analyses the re emergence of small scale production which has characterised the more recent phase of industrial development in western countries providing updated evidence about the phenomenon and focussing in particular the attention on italy where it has been assuming peculiar relevance

cointegration tests and spatial price linkages in regional cattle markets this analysis empirically evaluates spatial linkages in regional cattle markets using cointegration tests of regional price series several markets were not cointegrated over the 1980 through 1987 period however significant increases in cointegration of several regional livestock markets are observed through the 1980s the increased cointegration parallels significant structural changes in the livestock industry a formal analysis of market characteristics reveals that distances between markets industry concentration ratios market volumes and market types have significant influences on cointegration relationships between markets

small store presence in japan the determinants of the development of small store presence in japan are investigated using a fixed effects multinomial logit market share model large stores tend to have higher market shares in shop types with increasing shares in consumer expenditures increasing inventory turnover and increasing diversification but do not seem to be able to profit from scale economies in labour use

the competitive implications of top of the market and related contract pricing clauses this article examines the competitive implications of contract pricing arrangements which link the contract price to the subsequent cash price we focus on so called top of the market pricing tomp in cattle procurement the tomp clause is shown to have anticompetitive consequences when the same buyers who purchase contract cattle with the tomp clause also compete to procure cattle in the subsequent spot market the tomp clause reduces packers incentives to compete aggressively in the spot market although tomp pricing is not in producers collective interest rational sellers may nonetheless sign these contracts with little or no financial inducement

a framework to analyze the performance of thinly traded agricultural commodity markets thinly traded agricultural commodity markets are a concern for farmers and policy markers due to the belief that prices in these settings will be highly volatile subject to manipulation and incapable of efficiently allocating resources analysis of thin agricultural markets has to date been impeded by lack of an appropriate analytical framework from which to study their behavior in this paper we propose the modern agricultural markets mam framework as an appropriate paradigm through which to view and evaluate thin markets we argue that thinly traded markets that meet key conditions required for a mam will generate maximum economic surplus and enable farmers to earn at least a competitive return on their investments in the absence of these conditions however the concerns known as the thin market problem have validity we set forth the mam framework interpret it in a thin market context and conduct several brief case studies of thin markets to illustrate use of the approach and draw some key inferences about these markets behavior the analysis indicates that appropriate government policies directed to thin markets are those that facilitate their convergence to mam status but in reality key policies under recent consideration would have the opposite effect

accounting for net entry into greek manufacturing by establishments of varying size adopting the view that size matters in understanding entry exit patterns this research explores the nature and causes of net entry patterns of various size defined groups of establishments in the case of a less industrialised country greece the hypothesis to be tested is that the determinants of entry are not independent of firm size throughout this paper the analysis has had to confront difficulties arising from the use of net entry rates defined at the size class level the degree of size disaggregation used in this paper is considerably finer than used before five employment defined size classes have been used instead of sliding cut off points discriminating between small and large firms unlike other research using pooled models to explain variation in entry exit rates across industries the data used here are characterised by the absence of significant industry specific systematic variation overall the results obtained in this paper indicate that there is a gradation in the responses of different size classes to stimuli defined at the industry level evidence is offered that small firms are different in that they manage to overcome entry barriers perhaps adopting different survival strategies and that large firms are well aware of market conditions and are in an advantageous position to overcome many of the problems imposed by entry barriers size classes in the middle of the size class distribution offer a rather mixed result due to size related advantages and disadvantages

entrepreneurial strategy and the presence of small firms a model is presented hypothesizing that the level of small firm presence in any given industry emanates from the exogenous stock of entrepreneurial talent a stochastic element of managerial and entrepreneurial talent entry deterrence and the entrepreneurial strategy deployed by small firms using data newly released by the u s small business administration the hypothesis is tested for a sample of 247 four digit standard industrial classification industries spanning the entire spectrum of firm sizes we find that consistently for all the measures of small firm size and for all of the time periods used the existence of entry deterrence and reliance upon innovative strategy explains a significant proportion of the variation in the presence of small firms

co2 emissions reduction of chinese light manufacturing industries a novel ram based global malmquist luenberger productivity index climate change has become one of the most challenging issues facing the world chinese government has realized the importance of energy conservation and prevention of the climate changes for sustainable development of china s economy and set targets for co2 emissions reduction in china in china industry contributes 84 2 of the total co2 emissions especially manufacturing industries data envelopment analysis dea and malmquist productivity mp index are the widely used mathematical techniques to address the relative efficiency and productivity of a group of homogenous decision making units e g industries or countries however in many real applications especially those related to energy efficiency there are often undesirable outputs e g the pollutions waste and co2 emissions which are produced inevitably with desirable outputs in the production this paper introduces a novel malmquist luenberger productivity mlp index based on directional distance function ddf to address the issue of productivity evolution of dmus in the presence of undesirable outputs the new ram range adjusted measure based global mlp index has been applied to evaluate co2 emissions reduction in chinese light manufacturing industries recommendations for policy makers have been discussed

estimating the market effect of a food scare the case of genetically modified starlink corn abstract in 2000 a genetically modified corn variety called starlink that was not approved for human consumption was discovered in the food corn supply to estimate the price impact of this event on the u s corn market we develop the relative price of a substitute method this method applies not only to the starlink event but also to rare events in other markets we find that the contamination led to a 6 8 discount in corn prices and that the suppression of prices lasted for at least a year

the share of small and medium sized enterprise in greek manufacturing this paper examines the determinants of small establishment shares in greek manufacturing and compares the results to previous findings for u s small firms two groups of explanatory variables are used industry variables and small firm performance variables both types of variables are found to have an impact on the determination of small firms shares with performance variables being at least as strong as industry variables measures of entry barriers give mixed results capital intensity exercizes an expected negative impact advertising intensity shows a trace of positive impact for medium sized establishments in consumer goods sectors operating efficiency of small firms also appears as a strong influence on their shares whereas investment intensity does not appear significant these results are in partial agreement to earlier findings for u s small firms their generality is tempered both by the fact that they come from a small country of middle level of development and by the recognition that the year of observation 1983 was at the start of greece s industrial adjustment to entry in the eec both these concerns constitute areas of future research

market power and the cattle cycle the relationship between the dynamic cattle cycle and the potential for market power in cattle purchases has rarely been studied this paper provides a conceptual framework showing how the cattle cycle and buyer market power are related not only does a larger cattle stock lead to a lower fed cattle price but the cattle stock s negative effect on price is magnified by the degree of buyer market power in cattle procurement empirical findings support the posited theoretical relationships and help explain why previous researchers reached different conclusions regarding the extent of market power in the industry copyright 2010 oxford university press

small business in german manufacturing in recent years one observes a renaissance of small business research efforts the stimuli came from different directions one strand of more policy oriented research concentrated on the impact of small businesses on the creation of new employment opportunities 1 another host of studies paid attention to the relationship of innovation productivity of small versus large business 2 and industrial economics research examined the role of small businesses as actual and potential challengers of larger competitors in a given market 3 whatever motive guided this research it was emphasized that the cumulated knowledge about large business behavior is by far greater than about their small business counterparts

long term decline of small and medium size enterprise share there exist few studies of long term small and medium size enterprise sme share in developing countries this paper presents and examines evidence that sme share in venezuelan manufacturing has experienced serious decline from 1961 to present times evidence is given of this decline in terms of key performance measures numbers of firms employment numbers and manufacturing value added an absolute decline of this stratum has also occurred from 1979 onwards economic modelling suggests that efficiency and innovation variables are significantly correlated with this decline while a structural variable explains movement around this trend this broadly concurs with studies in other select economies where these groups of variables have also been found to be significant however unlike venezuela these variables often explain a recent revival in these economies sme share in particular we find evidence that the decline in venezuelan smes relative efficiency and innovation performance along with the prejudicial business environment cause this decline in sme share

organization markets and persistence of profits in italian industry abstract persistence of profits is found in a large sample of italian manufacturing firms inter cluster differences are remarkable in two respects i product markets where the degree of price differentiation is high and suggests that each cluster may correspond to a separate market segment ii internal organization where high profit firms appear to have moved towards less vertically integrated production structures while persistently low profit firms appear to have more integrated organizational forms

financing the german mittelstand this paper describes how the german mittelstand or small and medium sized enterprises are financed in germany the role of the german mittelstand both in a static and in a dynamic framework is described and contrasted with that of the same size group in other leading industrialised countries we find that in general the mittelstand has played a mmore important role in germany than in other industrialised nations such as the united states or the united kingdom the traditional success of the german mittelstand is partly attributable to a system of finance that is richly layered by complementary institutions designed to meet the financial needs of both large and smaller enterprises however we find evidence that even under the german system of finance liquidity constraints exist and are greater for smaller firms the german system of finance moreover seems particularly deficient in the channeling of funds to new firm startups in the newer industries

flexible technology and industrial structure in the u s this paper analyzes the development over the postwar period of output employment and the number of plants in manufacturing in the united states it is shown that the distribution of flexible technology in the form of machine tools ncmts shifted markedly toward small plants during the 1980s it is found that the probability of adoption and the penetration rate of ncmts are higher in large than in small plants even though the number of ncmts per worker is much higher in small plants this apparent paradox is explained it is also suggested that the shift of output towards smaller plants is correlated with the increased use of flexible technology and that this reflects changes in the division of labor among plants of various sizes as well as changes in the composition and organization of production in large plants

regime switching and oligopsony power the case of u s beef processing in this article we estimate a model of oligopsony behavior under imperfect monitoring of rival actions to analyze weekly marketing margin data for the u s beef packing industry oligopsonists are hypothesized to follow a discontinuous pricing strategy in equilibrium and we focus on shocks in the normal throughput of supply as a potential catalyst for regime switching between cooperative and noncooperative phases we adopt an algorithm developed by bellone 2005 that relies on hamilton s 1989 multivariate first order markov process to test for the cooperative noncooperative switching behavior we find strong evidence that links switching conduct by packers to disruptions in coordinating the derived demands for processed beef with the supply of live cattle once switched cooperative regimes lasted an average of 21 weeks while noncooperative regimes averaged 33 weeks the average marketing margin for processed beef was 68 lower in the noncooperative regimes compared to the cooperative regimes this led to an annual average increase in profits of 408 million dollars to the beef packing industry and about an 8 9 reduction in live cattle prices

the abatement of carbon dioxide intensity in china factors decomposition and policy implications to deal with the challenges brought about by climate changes china decided to reduce the carbon dioxide co2 intensity by 40 45 per cent from 2005 to 2020 using the decomposition technique this study finds that energy intensity is the most important force to drive the decline of co2 intensity between 1980 and 2008 followed by structural factors such as the adjustment of energy and industrial structure therefore any environmental policy to promote energy efficiency will play the biggest role in achieving the target of abating co2 intensity in 2020

the determinants of smes market share in 1991 taiwan manufacturers small and medium sized enterprises smes have become increasingly popular in recent decades having caused concern among scholars of various areas our line of research focuses on the determinants of smes market share this study explores the topic base on taiwan s manufacturers data collected in 1991 our empirical results indicate that taiwan has witnessed smes becoming prosperous in manufacturing industries with higher relative labor productivity low entry barriers prosperous subcontracting activities and young ages our results indicate that in the transitory process of industrial development taiwan s smes no longer can afford high wage payments when at the same time the quality of labor does not increase accordingly as taiwan approaches the status of a developed economy the beneficiaries of export activities have changed unlike 1986 in 1991 there was a smaller share of smes in taiwan s export oriented industries furthermore smes benefited from their efforts to increase their automation status the emphasis on issues concerning environmental protection proved to be another source of entry barrier that kept smes from prospering certain similarities arise when comparing our conclusions with those of the u s canada germany and japan all of whom represent industrialized countries we can conclude that as taiwan matures in her industrial development process smes also struggle to a certain maturity in theirs