Suchergebnisse

Foundations -- The evolution of the post-staggers rail industry and rail policy / by Mark Burton and Paul Hitchcock -- Economic foundations for 21st century freight rail rate regulation / by John W. Mayo and Robert D. Willig -- Railroads in an increasingly interrelated economy -- International trade and the demand for U.S. rail services / by Ferdinando Monte -- Accounting for external costs in pricing freight transportation : eight policy options / by David Austin -- Price effects in truck-competitive railroad markets / by Gerard McCullough and Ishay Hadah -- The structure of the rail industry -- Restructuring rail systems : implications for network quality and welfare / by David Besanko -- An empirical analysis of economies of scope in the U.S. railroad industry / by Azrina Abdullah Al-Hadi and James Peoples -- Railroads and post-staggers regulation -- The law and economics of revenue adequacy / by Jeffrey T. Macher, John W. Mayo and Lee Pinkowitz -- Open access and revenue adequacy / by William Huneke -- Regulation in a 4"deregulated" industry : railroads in the post-staggers era / by John W. Mayo and David E.M. Sappington -- List of contributors -- Index.

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the empirical literature in transaction cost economics (TCE) across multiple social science disciplines and business fields. We show how TCE has branched out from its economic roots to examine empirical phenomena in several other areas. We find TCE is increasingly being applied not only to business-related fields such as accounting, finance, marketing, and organizational theory, but also to areas outside of business including political science, law, public policy, and agriculture and health. With few exceptions, however, the use of TCE reasoning to inform empirical research in these areas is piecemeal. We find that there is considerable support of many of the central tenets of TCE, but we also observe a number of lingering theoretical and empirical issues that need to be addressed. We conclude by discussing the implications of these issues and outlining directions for future theoretical and empirical work.

This paper examines the joint impact of firm- and country-level factors on the international plant location decisions of semiconductor firms from 1994–2002. We find that these factors interact to influence the location decisions of firms investing abroad in a given host country. Firms with more advanced technological capabilities are more likely to make investments in countries with greater technological sophistication but not in politically hazardous countries where they face greater expropriation hazards. Firms with less-advanced technology are more willing to accept a trade-off between country-level political hazards and technological sophistication. Firms also trade off own- versus other-firm experience as sources of critical knowledge regarding the foreign investment environment.

AbstractWe examine the adoption of fuel‐efficient precalciner kilns in the cement industry using the universe of adoption decisions in the United States over 1973–2013. We find that cement plants are more likely to adopt the technology if fuel costs are high, nearby competitors are few, and local demand conditions are favorable. We relate the findings to the Schumpeterian and induced innovation hypotheses regarding the effects of competition and factor prices. Our results suggest firms may be most responsive to factor prices under advantageous competitive and demand conditions.

Abstract
While interest group explanations have considerably advanced our understanding of governmental outcomes, much remains to be understood about the specific country-level, industry-level and firm-level characteristics that underlie the influence firms have on the establishment of governmental rules, laws and regulations. In this study, we draw upon a unique database of roughly 6000 international firms to investigate the abilities of firms to affect governmental policies. We find that country-level institutional characteristics, such as the legal origin and political diversity of the firm's home country, significantly affect the ability to influence government. We also find that industry-level characteristics, such as the number of industry competitors, and firm-level characteristics, such as size and age, are determinants of firm influence on governments.