For what kind of intermediate input/service do firms often go outsourcing? This paper develops a model of two-stage production in which economies of scope are central to the production of both the intermediate and final good. The model is able to explain the patterns of outsourcing from the degree of product differentiation, economies of scope, and economies of scale in production of the interm...

Essays on Scale Economies and Efficiency in Public Education

We advocate a nonparametric multi-output framework to estimate outputspecific economies of scale and we apply this model to male prisons in England and Wales over the sample period 2009-2012. To estimate output-specific returns to scale in prisons, we consider not only the cost-per-place, but also qualitative outputs such as purposeful out-of-cell activity and successful reintegration. Furtherm...

As an organizational form, franchising has evolved to the point where it now accounts for 38% of all retail sales in the U.S. This unqualified success of the franchise form can be attributed to its inherent strategic advantages. The most central of these strategic advantages is economies of scale. But scale, and the ensuing spatial preemption, are only attained through the acquisition of extern...

First paragraph: Why do industrial agricultural operations continue to displace smaller family farms in spite of their continued pollution the natural environment and degradation rural communi­ties? Large-scale, specialized operations, such as concentrated animal feeding (or CAFOs), persist because they have an economic advantage over smaller, diversified farming opera­tions. They higher ecolog...