This paper studies the flexible-versus-dedicated technology choice and capacity investment decisions of a multi-product firm under demand uncertainty in the presence of budget constraints. The firm operates under a capital budget for financing the capacity investment, and an operating budget, which is uncertain in the capacity investment stage, for financing the production. We investigate how t...

Inventory turnover varies widely across retailers and over time. This variation undermines the usefulness of inventory turnover in performance analysis, benchmarking and working capital management. We develop an empirical model using financial data for 311 public-listed retail firms for the years 1987-2000 to investigate the correlation of inventory turnover with gross margin, capital intensity...

Since China accelerated its market oriented economic reforms at the end of 1992, its energy intensity has declined 3.6% annually over 1993–2005. However, its energy intensity declined 4.2% annually during its first reform period 1979–1992. Therefore, can we conclude that the accelerated marketization since the end of 1992 has made no contribution to its energy efficiency improvement? In order t...

Technological upgrading and increases in capital intensity have been championed in the organized manufacturing sector in India on the grounds that such measures improve productivity, efficiency and competitiveness. In a developing economy, these are costly propositions. Also, the effect of technological changes on productivity and efficiency levels must be estimated before implementing such pol...

In this model, we characterize optimal immigration and fiscal policies in presence of a rival public good and heterogeneous discounting. Surprisingly, even if the government is benevolent towards natives only, it is optimal to keep borders open. Indeed, in the long run, patient natives hold the whole stock of capital, while impatient immigrants work. Moreover, since capital intensity is station...

In this paper we address the question of the impact of permitting free migration in an enlarged trading bloc. We estimate two sectoral equations for trade flows and real wages of three regional blocs of the enlarged EU that we defined as North (wealthiest EU), South (Greece, Portugal and Spain) and East (acceding Central and Eastern European countries). We then use the estimated coefficients to...

the paper examines industrial concentration in iranian food products and beverages industries using firm level data aggregated to the 4-digit isic industry level between 2002 and 2004. based on different concentration indices the average level of concentration has increased slightly for the period of study. the empirical results show that increase in the level of concentration is more likely in...

Profitability (ROA) study of the Indian pharmaceutical industry has been studied under dynamic conditions to avoid endogeneity issues. Vector Error Correction Mode (VECM) results suggest short-run and long-run dependency profitability on working capital intensity, research & development physical intensity. Physical intensity exhibited a negative impact ROA. Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (...

This thesis consists of three essays that explore hiring criteria, skill demands and labor market outcomes. The first essay investigates the use of worker credit status as a hiring screen. The practice has sparked debate, with opponents asserting that it amounts to discrimination and proponents maintaining that it is an important tool for employers to assure the quality of new employees. This s...

Why More West than East German Firms Export Using unique new data and a recently introduced non-linear decomposition technique this paper shows that the huge difference in the propensity to export between West and East German plants is to a large part due to differences in firm size and human capital intensity. JEL Classification: F14