Search results for "Fixed cost"
showing 10 items of 20 documents
Evaluation of Small Vase and Y-trellis Orchard Systems for Peach and Nectarine Production in Mediterranean Regions
2015
Two peach planting systems, Small Vase (SV) and Y-trellis (Y), were evaluated and compared in the Mediterranean settings of Southern Italy. The two orchards were located next to each other on relatively uniform soil and terrain, and the observations included two peach (âRich Mayâ and âSummer Richâ) and two nectarine (âBig Bangâ and âNectarossâ) cultivars. In the SV system, trees were spaced at 4.5 A 2.5 m (888 trees/ha), whereas in the Y system, trees were spaced at 5.5 A 2 m (909 trees/ha) and no canopy gap was left between rows. Yield per tree; fruit size grade; unit price of sold peaches for each size grade; materials, labor and associated costs for cultural management;…
Who Uses Intermediaries in International Trade? Evidence from Firm-level Survey Data
2013
The present paper uses data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey conducted in Turkey in 2005 to shed light on the firms that use intermediaries in international trade. It lends robust empirical support to recent theories which suggest that indirect exporters are mostly small firms that are not profitable enough to cover the high fixed costs of building an own distribution network abroad. Manufacturers who develop new products are more likely to use trade intermediaries, as are firms that produce low-quality goods. In contrast, neither foreign ownership nor credit constraints are correlated with the choice of export mode. Moreover, firms that rely on trade intermediaries to sell their goods…
Monitoring and Market Power in Loan Markets
2000
Whether or not banks are engaged in ex ante monitoring of customers may have important consequences for the whole economy. We approach this question via a model in which banks can invest in either information acquisition or market power (product differentiation). The two alternatives generate different predictions, which are tested using panel data on Finnish local banks. We find evidence that banks’ investments in branch networks and human capital (personnel) contribute to information acquisition but not to market power. We also find that managing customers’ money transactions enhances banks ability to control their lending risks.
Licensing policies for a new product
2005
This paper studies licensing policies for the owner of a new product and addresses their welfare impact in the assessment of market failures. We show that the best licensing policy for the patent holder is fixed fee licensing with an exclusive territory clause. Consumers are also better off with fixed fees but do not prefer the exclusive territory clause. Social welfare is higher under exclusive territories when fixed costs are not too large. As for efficiency, the number of licences in the private market equilibrium falls short of the socially optimal solution. Our analysis discloses that (i) any policy measures aimed at enhancing the diffusion of technology, in terms of the number of lice…
A Simultaneous Approach for IMS Design: a Possibility Based Approach
1999
IMS investments are characterised by high fixed costs and long life cycles. On the other hand, their redditivity and risk coverage depend on their manufacturing efficiency that is mainly defined during the design phase by fixing the system configuration. Due to the flexibility required to IMS, system configuration depends not only from technological information, such as product routing table and service times, but also from marketing data such as the typology of products to be manufacture and their production volumes. Moreover, the evaluation of the redditivity and the risk of the investment depends on market information such as product prices as well. Such interdependencies make the invest…
Policy uncertainty and foreign direct investment
2020
While foreign direct investment (FDI) is known to be the most stable type of international capital flows, it may be particularly susceptible to heightened uncertainty because of its high fixed costs. We investigate the effect of domestic policy uncertainty on FDI inflows into 16 host countries using the OECD bilateral FDI panel data set and the economic policy uncertainty index from 1985 to 2013. The bilateral structure of the data enables us to disentangle pull factors of FDI from its push factors, thereby obtaining a cleaner causal identification of the higher domestic policy uncertainty effect. To alleviate remaining endogeneity concerns, we use the timing of “exogenous” elections as an …
Who uses intermediaries in international trade? Evidence from firm-level survey data
2011
The present paper uses data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey conducted in Turkey in 2005 to shed light on the firms which use intermediaries in international trade. It lends robust empirical support to recent theories which suggest that indirect exporters are mostly small firms which are not profitable enough to cover the high fixed costs of building their own distribution network abroad. Manufacturers which introduce entirely new products to foreign markets are more likely to use trade intermediaries, as are firms which produce low quality goods. In contrast, neither foreign ownership nor credit constraints are correlated with the choice of export mode. Moreover, firms which rely on t…
Pension Schemes and Falling Birth-Rates: Change in Customs or Microeconomic Optimization?
2004
In this paper, we develop an overlapping generations model where fertility is endogenous. The utility of the parents is a function of the number of their children, and each child implies two types of fixed costs: the financial cost and the cost in terms of time. A "pay-as-you-go" pension scheme introduces an externality in that the number of children will be fewer than optimal because their favorable impact on the level of pension income is not taken into account. First, we define the competitive equilibrium dynamics and the steady state. This allows comparisons with the optimal stationary state, a notion which generalizes the golden rule. Two instruments, pensions and child benefits, are n…
Strictly convex variable cost does not imply U-shaped average cost
2016
Abstract We show that strictly convex variable costs do not imply U-shaped average costs and provide a sufficient condition for U-shaped average costs. As an application we study endogenous entry when firms have market power and they have decreasing average cost but increasing marginal cost.
Beyond Viner: Smoothed Cost Curves and Co-Detetermination of Output and Production Capacity
2017
We address two problems of traditional cost functions: the discontinuity caused by the production capacity (the marginal cost abruptly becomes infinite when production capacity is reached) and the production capacity is artificially exogenous. So, we introduce a smoothed form of marginal cost function. It progressively tends to infinity when it approaches to the production capacity. Then, we prove that it is perfectly possible to determine directly output, fixed costs and production capacity simultaneously, even if this could lead to a system of equations that is not so elementary to solve because it includes a Lambert function. We also show that the smoothed cost function prevails in both …