This paper uses the concept of a metafrontier to compare the technical efficiencies of firms that may be classified into different groups. The paper presents the basic analytical framework necessary ...for the definition of a metafrontier, shows how a metafrontier can be estimated using non-parametric and parametric methods, and presents an empirical application using cross-country agricultural sector data. The paper also explores the issues of technological change, time-varying technical inefficiency, multiple outputs, different efficiency orientations, and firm heterogeneity.
This paper analyzes the gain in pricing power that a firm achieves by merging with a potential competitor in its market. Using pricing data for the merger of USAir and Piedmont, empirical analysis ...finds that prices rose by 5.0 to 6.0 per cent on routes that one carrier served and the other was a potential entrant. This was more than half the increase on routes where the two carriers had been direct competitors. Other important factors included carrier size, market concentration, incumbent's identity and the potential entrant's presence at one or both endpoints.
Case studies of export behavior suggest that firms that penetrate foreign markets reduce entry costs for other potential exporters, either through learning effects or establishing commercial ...linkages. We examine whether spillovers associated with one firm's export activity reduce the cost of exporting for other firms. We identify two sources of spillovers: export production in general and the specific activities of multinationals. From a simple model of export behavior we derive a probit specification for the probability that a firm exports. Using panel data on Mexican manufacturing plants, we find evidence of spillovers from multinational enterprises but not from general export activity.
This article provides a conceptual framework for assessing and managing the university technology business incubator (UTBI) as a tool for new venture creation. It is widely believed that UTBIs ...contribute to the nurturing of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). However, they have escaped systematic review in the United States due to a lack of historical data. To fill this gap, a new UTBI performance assessment framework is proposed, which is drawn from a combined survey of the existing body of knowledge in the areas of business incubation, the university's involvement in technology and business development support, and the commonly accepted approaches to organizational assessment that provide the necessary building blocks for the integrative framework. The proposed model is comprised of three performance dimensions: (1) program sustainability and growth; (2) tenant firm's survival and growth; and (3) contributions to the sponsoring university's mission. Further, the scope and effectiveness of the facility management policies, and the provision of services are assessed. The application of this framework is illustrated using four representative UTBI cases selected from a field of 30 five-year or older U.S.-based facilities and their 29 tenant firms out of the 84 firms contacted for the survey (35%). A comparative review of these four cases reveals that the framework provides a flexible methodology to assess the performance of UTBIs. The article concludes with a set of elements identified for evaluating UTBIs under the aforementioned three performance dimensions providing measurement indicators. This framework seeks to provide conceptual clarity for those responsible for assessing UTBI performance, directing their operations, or endeavoring to create them.
Shareholder-initiated proxy proposals on corporate governance issues became popular in the late 1980s as corporate takeover activity declined. We find firms attracting governance proposals have poor ...prior performance, as measured by the market-to-book ratio, operating return, and sales growth. There is little evidence that operating returns improve after proposals. The proposals also have negligible effects on company share values and top management turnover. Even proposals that receive a majority of shareholder votes typically do not engender share price increases or discernible changes in firm policies.
Better child health is widely thought to improve school performance, and therefore post-school productivity. But most of the literature ignores that child health as well as child schooling reflects ...behavioral choices. Therefore the estimated impact of child health on child schooling in these studies may be biased, perhaps substantially. This study employs longitudinal data to investigate the impact of child health (as indicated by nutritional status) on school enrollments in rural Pakistan using an explicit dynamic model for the preferred estimates. These estimates use price shocks when children were of preschool age to control for behavior determining the child health stock measure. They indicate that child health (nutrition) is three times as important for enrollment than suggested by "naive estimates" that assume that child health is predetermined rather than determined by household choices in the presence of unobserved factors such as preferences and health endowments. These results, therefore, reinforce strongly the importance of using estimation methods that are consistent with the economic theory of households to explore the impact of some choice variables on others using socioeconomic behavioral data.
This paper documents the restructuring of 92 Japanese corporations that experienced a substantial decline in operating performance between 1986 and 1990. These firms implement a number of downsizing ...measures such as asset sales, plant closures, and employee layoffs. Firms also expand and diversify, and often restructure their internal operations. Compared to US firms with a similar decline in performance, however, Japanese firms are less likely to downsize, and layoffs affect a smaller fraction of their workforce. The frequency of asset downsizing and layoffs in Japanese firms increases with the ownership by the firm's main bank and other blockholders. Blockholders also increase the probability of management turnover, outside director removals and outside director additions, but decrease the likelihood of acquisitions. We document improvements in operating performance following downsizing actions in Japan.
This paper examines the correlation between the returns on individual stocks and the yield changes of individual bonds issued by the same firm, and finds that they are negatively and ...contemporaneously correlated. This suggests that individual stocks and bonds are driven by firm-specific information that is predominantly related to the mean, rather than the variance, of the firm's underlying assets. Furthermore, I find that lagged stock returns have explanatory power for current bond yield changes, while current stock returns are unrelated to lagged bond yield changes. This shows that stocks lead bonds in reflecting firm-specific information.
The paper describes the dynamics of employment at a firm and sector level in French industry and examines how far technological innovation can give account of it. We use a sample of 15,186 firms, ...over the period 1986–90. The two facts we want to explain at a firm and sector level are the net change in employment and the micro turmoil (transfers between competing firms). Innovating firms and sectors create jobs more than others over the medium run (5 years). Process innovation is more about job creation than product innovation at the firm level, but the converse is true at the sector level. This paradox is probably due to substitution effects (creative destruction).
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