{"title":"Wage Differentials, Firm Investment, and Stock Returns","authors":"Yongjun Kim","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2740124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2740124","url":null,"abstract":"This paper shows whether labor costs affect firm capital investment and stock returns. I estimate wage premium across U.S. industries to find the negative investment-return relation predicted by q-theory is steeper for high wage firms than low wage firms. I highlight two important features for the mechanism at work: 1) increasing labor adjustment costs with wage, and 2) gross complementarity between capital and labor. In addition to the investment spread, I present implications of wage differentials on hiring spread, value premium, and corporate investment between firms. Overall, my results provide supportive evidence for investment-based model with factor adjustment costs.","PeriodicalId":237187,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Production; Cost; Capital & Total Factor Productivity; Value Theory (Topic)","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125030882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Manuel Garćıa-Santana, Enrique Moral-Benito, Josep Pijoan-Mas, Roberto Ramos
{"title":"Growing Like Spain: 1995-2007","authors":"Manuel Garćıa-Santana, Enrique Moral-Benito, Josep Pijoan-Mas, Roberto Ramos","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2778521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2778521","url":null,"abstract":"Spanish GDP grew at an average rate of 3.5% per year during the expansion of 1995-2007, well above the EU average of 2.2%. However, this growth was based on factor accumulation rather than productivity gains as TFP fell at an annual rate of 0.7%. Using firm-level administrative data for all sectors we show that deterioration in the allocative efficiency of productive factors across firms was at the root of the low TFP growth in Spain, while misallocation across sectors played only a minor role. Cross-industry variation reveals that the increase in misallocation was more severe in sectors where government influence is more important for business success, which represents novel evidence on the potential macroeconomic costs of crony capitalism. In contrast, sectoral differences in financial dependence, skill intensity, innovative content, tradability, or capital structures intensity appear to be unrelated to changes in allocative efficiency. All in all, the observed high output growth together with increasing firm-level misallocation in all sectors is consistent with an expansion driven by a demand boom rather than by structural reforms.","PeriodicalId":237187,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Production; Cost; Capital & Total Factor Productivity; Value Theory (Topic)","volume":"302 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128623243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Simultaneous Pricing and Quality Decisions for Seasonally Produced Perishable Products in a Heterogeneous Market","authors":"Prashant Chintapalli, J. Hazra","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2736008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2736008","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes the problem of joint quality and quantity management under competition for a deteriorating perishable product that is seasonally produced but has demand throughout the year. Each firm makes the quality choice, which is a tactical decision, and undertakes production and stocking decisions at the beginning of a two-period selling horizon, with the complete knowledge of the qualities already chosen. The equilibrium quality and quantity decisions of the firms are discussed, and the impact of the firms' cost structures on their decisions is analyzed. The firms have to perform the optimal trade-off among the cost of quality, the production costs, and the disparity in the quality levels that the firms can choose in order to maximize their profits. Later, we also show that the presence of competition does not always improve market quality.","PeriodicalId":237187,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Production; Cost; Capital & Total Factor Productivity; Value Theory (Topic)","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126218167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Disproving the U-Shaped Production Theory","authors":"Hak Choi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2725295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2725295","url":null,"abstract":"This paper changes the traditional view of the U-shaped average cost model. It also changes the view about fixed cost. A fixed cost, which comes with a fixed capital, may increase the initial value of the total average cost, but its positive impact on output and profit is more significant. The U-shaped AC curve or its cascade is refuted.","PeriodicalId":237187,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Production; Cost; Capital & Total Factor Productivity; Value Theory (Topic)","volume":"99 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130367188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Determinants of Value Added in Exports and Their Implications","authors":"Nakgyoon Choi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2771538","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2771538","url":null,"abstract":"This study decomposes the value added in gross exports into its components, including domestic value added and foreign value added. In contrast to previous studies, we exclude transaction costs such as net taxes on products for this study, which accounted for about 3 percent of total gross world exports from 1995 to 2011 on average. The share of Korean domestic value added in exports to exports in gross value turned out to decrease from 69.9 percent in 1995 to 55.4 percent in 2011, comparable to the shrinkage in the world average from 83.5 percent to 78.3 percent during the same period. This result reveals that Korean exports of parts and raw material have been utilized in a relatively small degree, while foreign components imported to Korea have been utilized for Korean exports in a relatively large degree. This study also investigates the determinants of value added in exports by estimating the expanded multi-sector gravity model, with panel data covering 13 countries and 18 sectors for 17 years from 1995 to 2011. Empirical evidence shows that trade costs such as tax and transportation costs reduce value added in exports, implying that trade facilitation measures and tax policy lowering trade costs are vital for the promotion of value added in exports. We also find that material and service offshoring have a significant positive effect on value added in exports, supporting the notion that efficient offshoring of material and services inputs raises productivity and competitiveness in manufacturing as well as services industries.","PeriodicalId":237187,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Production; Cost; Capital & Total Factor Productivity; Value Theory (Topic)","volume":"213 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116748046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Does Multinational Production Affect the Measurement of Competitiveness?","authors":"","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2759784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2759784","url":null,"abstract":"This work assembles a unique bilateral dataset on multinational production in the manufacturing sector, in which value added and factor incomes are broken down by location country and by ultimate owner country. Using this dataset, which covers 44 countries over the years 2004-11, we compute measures of production capabilities in which value added is allocated across countries not according to the location of the activity but according to the nationality of the firm or of the factors involved in production (Baldwin and Kimura 1998). These indicators based on the ownership of production are then compared with standard geography-based indicators. This framework is also applied to the analysis of the two modes of supply of foreign markets (exports and FDI) using a common metric based on value added (domestic value added in exports versus value added of foreign affiliates). Overall, the evidence suggests that there are significant differences between geography-based and ownership-based measures, proving that, in an increasingly integrated global economy, ownership matters for the measurement of competitiveness.","PeriodicalId":237187,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Production; Cost; Capital & Total Factor Productivity; Value Theory (Topic)","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130553366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Measuring Diploma Production Costs: Does an Undergraduate Business Degree Cost More to Produce than a Non-Business Degree?","authors":"Michael M. Barth, I. Karagiannidis","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2788736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2788736","url":null,"abstract":"Many colleges and universities have implemented tuition differentials for certain degree programs including business and engineering. The primary justification for the differential is that the cost of producing these degrees is higher than the cost of other degrees. Most college accounting systems are unsuited for measuring cost differentials by degree program and instead look at the cost of operating the academic unit itself. This research outlines a method that can be used to convert commonly available financial data to a more appropriate form for cost analysis using a value stream accounting approach. We apply Lean management thinking and value stream accounting to compute the per capita salary expense incurred individual students as they progress through their degree program, then aggregate those costs per student to arrive at the average direct teaching cost of earning the degree. Our results show that the average aggregate faculty salary expense differs between degree programs. However, while business salaries tend to be higher than other disciplines, we find that the cost of delivering the classroom instruction portion of a business degree falls within a range. It was higher than the humanities, but significantly lower than the teaching costs for engineering and for the sciences. Cross-subsidies between degree programs can be ameliorated through well-designed tuition differentials, but institutions must understand the underlying cost structure to better manage scarce resources. Although the results we obtained are specific to this institution, the process we used is generalizable to all institutions.","PeriodicalId":237187,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Production; Cost; Capital & Total Factor Productivity; Value Theory (Topic)","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122675666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stock Prices, Regional Housing Prices, and Aggregate Technology Shocks","authors":"Jiro Yoshida","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2654270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2654270","url":null,"abstract":"The correlation between stock and housing prices, which is critical for household asset allocations, varies widely by metropolitan area and country. A general equilibrium model demonstrates that an aggregate positive technology shock increases stock prices and housing demand but can decrease housing prices where land supply is elastic because stable future rents are discounted at higher interest rates. Using panel data of U.S. metropolitan areas and OECD countries, I find that the housing price response to TFP shocks as well as the stock-housing correlation are smaller and even negative where the housing supply is elastic. I also find that household equity investment is positively related to housing supply elasticity.","PeriodicalId":237187,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Production; Cost; Capital & Total Factor Productivity; Value Theory (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129680276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Multiregional Firms and Region Switching in the US Manufacturing Sector","authors":"A. Gervais","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2605602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2605602","url":null,"abstract":"This paper uses data on US manufacturing firms to study a new extensive margin, the reallocation of resources that takes place within surviving firms as they open and close establishments in different regions. To motivate the empirical analysis, I extend existing models of industry dynamics to include production-location decisions within firms. The empirical results provide support for the mechanisms emphasized by the theoretical model. In the data, only about 3 percent of firms make the same product in more than one region, but these multiregional firms are more productive on average compared to single-region firms, and they account for about two-thirds of output. The results also show that \"region-switching\" is pervasive among multiregional firms, is correlated with changes in firm characteristics, and leads to a more efficient allocation of resources within firms.","PeriodicalId":237187,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Production; Cost; Capital & Total Factor Productivity; Value Theory (Topic)","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125490085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making, Buying and Concurrent Sourcing: Implications for Operating Leverage and Stock Beta","authors":"B. Lambrecht, G. Pawlina, João C. A. Teixeira","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1571223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1571223","url":null,"abstract":"We present a real options model of a firm’s make-or-buy decision under demand uncertainty. \"Making\" is subject to decreasing returns to scale, fixed costs, and capital investment. \"Buying\" happens at a fixed price and requires no investment. Three distinct procurement regimes endogenously arise: buying, making, or concurrent sourcing for, respectively, low, intermediate, and high demand. Capital constraints encourage buying or concurrent sourcing. Operating leverage peaks when the firm switches between buying and making, and it is lowest (and negative) at the switch between making and concurrent sourcing. This non-monotonic pattern mirrors and drives the behavior of the firm’s beta.","PeriodicalId":237187,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Production; Cost; Capital & Total Factor Productivity; Value Theory (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130857456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}