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on Marketing |
| By: | Irene Brambilla; Guido Porto |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impacts of cotton marketing reforms on farm productivity, a key element for poverty alleviation, in rural Zambia. The reforms comprised the elimination of the Zambian cotton marketing board that was in place since 1977. Following liberalization, the sector adopted an outgrower scheme, whereby firms provided extension services to farmers and sold inputs on loans that were repaid at the time of harvest. There are two distinctive phases of the reforms: a failure of the outgrower scheme, and a subsequent period of success of the scheme. Our findings indicate that the reforms led to interesting dynamics in cotton farming. During the phase of failure, farmers were pushed back into subsistence and productivity in cotton declined. With the improvement of the outgrower scheme of later years, farmers devoted larger shares of land to cash crops, and farm productivity significantly increased. |
| JEL: | O12 O13 Q12 |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11804&r=mkt |
| By: | Karen Bonner; Seamus McGuinness (Economic Research Institute of Northern Ireland) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the extent to which marketing assistance administered to a group of high performing Northern Ireland SMEs led to improved export revenue growth. Standard OLS models provided no evidence to support the view that marketing grants substantially improved the export performance of assisted firms; however, substantial impacts were detected when treatment models were estimated, indicating that selection into marketing assistance tended to be a non-random event. Marketing assistance was found to be a highly effective policy tool when targeted towards SMEs already active in export markets and/or involved in product innovation. From a methodological standpoint the analysis highlights the potential benefits of using other grant information within the treatment model as a means of uncovering additional important information on firm level characteristics that might otherwise have been missed |
| Keywords: | SMALL ENTERPRISES, TECHNOLOGY |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eri:wperin:4&r=mkt |
| By: | OECD |
| Abstract: | The interest in marketing margins and price transmission has recently gained remarkable momentum and the amount of studies on this subject is rapidly growing. There is a myriad of questions about prices and margins investigated by these studies, yet new questions are surfacing as markets and business practices change with an impressive speed. Wohlgenant (2001), in his survey on marketing margins, identifies some of the questions puzzling researchers and policy makers alike. For example: Are marketing margins too large? Why are margins different among products? How have... |
| Date: | 2005–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:agraaa:3-en&r=mkt |
| By: | Bekkali, Mukhtar; Beghin, John C. |
| Abstract: | We analyze the economics of domestic cultural content protection in terrestrial broadcasting, the most widespread policy instrument used in broadcasting. Using the love-of-variety approach, we model a representative consumer deriving utility from broadcasting services net of advertising,and allocating scarce time between consuming the various broadcasting services and leisure. Advertising is a nuisance; it costs time yet brings no utility. Broadcasting is a pure public good; broadcasters make profit in the monopolistic competition environment by bundling advertising with valuable cultural content. We impose a discrete domestic content requirement and then investigate the effects of its marginal changes on consumption of domestic broadcasting. Domestic content requirement may reduce (increase) consumption of domestic programs when consumer’s demand is highly elastic (inelastic), the degree of preference for foreign content over domestic content is high (low) and opportunity cost of listening time is high (low). The reduction occurs because the consumer reshuffles her consumption bundle towards leisure away from high domestic-content stations thereby reducing the overall aggregate consumption of broadcasting, and subsequently, the overall aggregate consumption of domestic programs. |
| Keywords: | boradcasting, domestic content, radio, cultural protection |
| JEL: | F1 L8 |
| Date: | 2005–11–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12476&r=mkt |
| By: | Marcello D'Amato (Università di Salerno, CSEF and CEPR); Riccardo Martina (Università di Napoli Federico II and CSEF); Salvatore Piccolo (Università di Salerno, CSEF and Northwestern University,) |
| Abstract: | The relationship between managerial incentives and product market competition is studied in an imperfectly competitive industry where two managerial .rms, compete by setting quantities. Owners simultaneously choose between two contractual regimes: a cost-based and a profit-based one, while privately informed managers perform an unveri.able cost-reducing activity and choose quantities. We characterize the incentive properties of alternative managerial remuneration schemes owners may use to control managers.behavior and we study the equilibrium relationship between owners’ and managers’ choices, efficiency and market competition. It is showed that a competing-contracts effect, at play under profit target, may induce firm owners not to select the constrained efficient allocation in the pre-specified set of contracts. Moreover, under profit-based schemes a pure agency effect, at play directly through information rents, drives a positive impact of competition on managerial effort. As a result an inverted-U shaped relationship between product market competition, managerial effort and agency costs obtains, thus leading to marginal costs convex with respect to a measure of competition. |
| Keywords: | generations competing contracts, cost-target, managerial firms, profit-target, product market competition, vertical hierarchies, X-inefficiency |
| JEL: | D82 L13 L22 |
| Date: | 2005–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sef:csefwp:148&r=mkt |
| By: | Anette Boom (Freie Universität Berlin) |
| Abstract: | In a monopoly setting where consumers cannot observe the quality of the product we show that free samples which are of a lower quality than the marketed digital goods are used together with high prices as signals for a superior quality if the number of informed consumers is small and if the difference between the high and the low quality is not too small. Social welfare is higher, if the monopolist uses also free samples as signals, compared to a situation where he is restricted to pure price signalling. Both, the monopolist and consumers benefit from the additional signal. |
| Keywords: | Digital Goods, Free Samples, Multi-dimensional Signalling |
| JEL: | D21 D82 L15 |
| Date: | 2004–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trf:wpaper:70&r=mkt |