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on Information and Communication Technologies |
| By: | Bojnec, Å tefan; FertÅ, Imre |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the impact of the number of the Internet users on food industry trade between developed OECD countries using both panel and cross-sectional data. We find the positive, significant and over time increasing effect of the Internet on food industry exports confirming that the Internet reduces market-specific entry costs for food industry exports. The significant positive effect pertained to the Internet is found in the importing countries. The significant positive effects on food industry exports are found for the countryâs economic size and bilateral common features and proximities. The Internet mitigates the countries proximities, but increased the distance between the countries. |
| Keywords: | Internet, Distance, International trade, OECD countries, International Development, |
| Date: | 2010–03–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aesc10:91958&r=ict |
| By: | Marcel Fafchamps; David McKenzie; Simon Quinn; Christopher Woodruff |
| Abstract: | Personalized Digital Assistants (PDAs) and other forms of hardware needed to collect survey data electronically have become more affordable and powerful in recent years, leading to their use in a number of surveys in developing countries. Simple use of these devices can offer the prospect of more timely data entry and greater accuracy in guiding respondents through skip patterns. Further benefits are possible through the use of more complex consistency checks. We use PDAs to measure sales and profits for microenterprises, which are notoriously noisy. Consistency checks in the cross-section compare sales and profits, while those in the panel query responses which result in large changes from one period to the next. Cross-sectional checks also served as a second prompt in the case of missing profits. These checks do succeed in reducing the standard deviation and in increasing the correlation of the observations for which corrections are made. However, we find that the vast majority of large changes in enterprise sales and profits are confirmed by firm owners as genuine, highlighting the volatility of income in this sector. As a result, the overall impact of these consistency checks on the full sample is rather limited, suggesting that while such checks are useful if computerized forms of data collection are being used, the consistency checks per se are not a strong reason for using computerized data collection in collecting firm profits and sales. |
| Keywords: | Microenterprises; Measurement; Profits; Panel; Survey Methods; Electronic Data Collection. |
| JEL: | C81 O12 M41 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csa:wpaper:2010-19&r=ict |
| By: | Yonghong An, Michael R. Baye, Yingyao Hu, John Morgan, and Matt Shum |
| Abstract: | This paper (1) presents a general model of online price competition, (2) shows how to structurally estimate the underlying parameters of the model when the number of competing firms is unknown or in dispute, (3) estimates these parameters based on UK data for personal digital assistants, and (4) uses these estimates to simulate the competitive effects of horizontal mergers. Our results suggest that competitive effects in this online market are more closely aligned with the simple homogeneous product Bertrand model than might be expected given the observed price dispersion and number of firms. Our estimates indicate that so long as two firms remain in the market post merger, the average transaction price is roughly unaffected by horizontal mergers. However, there are potential distributional effects; our estimates indicate that a three-to-two merger raises the average transaction price paid by price sensitive "shoppers" by 2.88 percent, while lowering the average transaction price paid by consumers "loyal" to a particular firm by 1.37 percent. |
| Date: | 2010–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jhu:papers:564&r=ict |