Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, 1967. / Bibliography: leaves [335]-351.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2010. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed June 30, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-117).

For centuries the world’s biggest breweries, including Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors, have been producing America’s favorite beers like Budweiser and Coors Light. However, more recently smaller, craft breweries have seen significant expansion as a growing number of Americans are drinking craft beers. How has this recent trend affected the beer market in the United States? More specifically, how has the recent success of craft breweries affected Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors? I examine the economic factors that have led to craft beer’s success in a highly competitive market, and further, how this success has impacted Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors. My study reveals that the premier quality of craft beer has distinctively separated itself from the traditional American lagers, like Coors and Bud Light. Furthermore, as the United States has experienced economic growth, more and more Americans are choosing craft beers over these American lagers. In final, I examine and explain Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors’ recent multi-billion dollar investments into the craft beer industry.

O principal índice usado para medir concentrações horizontais é o Hirschmann-Herfindahl Index (HHI). Este índice tornou-se popular nos últimos anos devido ao seu apelo teórico e a sua simplicidade computacional, entretanto, apesar desta conveniência, o HHI é inaplicável na análise de mercados em que os compradores possuem poder de mercado. Isso ocorre porque o modelo de Cournot supõe que apenas os vendedores podem influenciar os preços. O erro causado pela aplicação inadequada do HHI é ainda maior quando o mercado considerado apresenta firmas verticalmente integradas. Diante disso, o objetivo deste trabalho é aplicar o MHI, medida de concentração sugerida por Hendricks e Mcafee (2007), na análise da aquisição da Agip pela BR, com vistas a identificar os impactos da operação sobre a concorrência, comparando os resultados com a análise da SEAE e a decisão do CADE. O MHI é capaz de captar a mudança de incentivos de todas as firmas do mercado estudado após o Ato de Concentração, e permite que o efeito líquido da integração seja medido através das variações das margens preço/custo das firmas da indústria. / The main index that is used to measure horizontal concentrations is the Hirschmann-Herfindahl Index (HHI). This index became popular in the last years due to its theoretical appeal and its computational simplicity. However, despite this convenience, the HHI is inapplicable in the analysis of markets where the purchasers have market power. This happens because the Cournot model assumes that only the sellers can influence the prices. The error caused by inadequate application of HHI is even bigger when the considerate market shows vertically integrated firms. In front of this, the objective of this work is apply the MHI, the concentration measure suggested by Hendricks e McAfee (2007), in the analysis of Agip acquisition by BR, with the purpose of identify the operation impacts in the competition, comparing the results with the SEAE analysis and the CADE decision. MHI is capable of catch the incentive change in all firms of the analyzed market after the Concentration Act, and allows that the operations net effect is measured through the price-cost margin variation.

The central goal of my dissertation is to answer important questions about market design in health care when consumers have inertia, using modern industrial organization tools. The presence of consumer inertia in several markets has been well established in the literature, although we still know very little about how inertia affects the way markets work. In my dissertation, I shed light on these issues in the context of different institutional settings of health care sectors in different countries. Health care markets are extremely relevant because of their huge impacts on the quality of life and on mortality of individuals. In times when the expenditure on health care is increasingly high in modern economies, a better understanding of how these markets work is needed in order to decrease costs and improve their performance. The first chapter disentangles the effects of reductions in switching costs and in the length of contracts (lock-in) on consumer welfare, using quasi-experimental variation in the length of contracts in the Uruguayan health care system. In the second chapter, I study the effect of supply-side firm responses in terms of pricing and offering of new products, on consumer welfare in Medicare Part D in the U.S. Finally, the third chapter studies the effects of increased competition induced by reductions of consumer inertia, on quality and returns to skills for physicians, using uniquely detailed data from the Uruguayan health care sector. The use of tools from the field of industrial organization allows me to combine a solid theoretical background with clearly identified reduced-form and structural models, to analyze the welfare implications of equilibrium behavior in these markets, and to evaluate policy interventions and regulations aimed at improving welfare.

Small scale farmers represent 80% of all farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and contribute up to 90% of agriculture production. Small scale farming is not without its problems and sub-Saharan Africa has one of the lowest agriculture productivities in the world - this despite ample land and water availability. These problems include inter alia, the fundamental lack of economies of scale and access to market, high transaction costs, and limited access to finance. This is in a global environment, where contract farming is becoming very dominant in agriculture: In 2010, 41% of the North American agriculture output was sold on contract, compared to 11% in the ‘60’s. The research objective was to evaluate contract farming as a vertical integration mechanism for small scale farmers to take advantage of this growing long term trend. To this end, a hypothesis was proposed that contract farming is a practical model that increases farm income for the small scale farmer. In support of this hypothesis, five propositions were tested, viz: does contract farming provide market linkage, reduce transaction costs, increase rural development, raise production output, and can it be applied across different crops. The research followed a deductive approach and a qualitative data collection method. The propositions were tested using empirical evidence obtained from semi-structured interviews with companies involved in contract farming. The hypothesis was confirmed by the evidence presented. The individual propositions: market linkage, transaction costs, rural development and different crops were all supported. However the evidence presented that contract farming raises output was inconclusive. These findings are however, subject to solving a number of issues - such as land transfer, mitigating the effect of low economies of scale, controlling side selling, and having a dispensation that increases profits over the long term. Further to the findings, a model framework is proposed to structure a contract farming system. With 60% of the sub-Saharan population involved in agriculture, the ability to increase farm side income presents an enormous opportunity to contribute to rural economic prosperity. This is not only for the benefit of farmer, but also for his community, via the multiplier effect. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / ccgibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

This dissertation is composed of three essays at the intersection of regional economic analysis and industrial organization. In the first chapter, I derive an estimating equation for retail market structure in order to quantify the effects of e-commerce competition on brick and mortar retail establishment and employment counts. Using a multilevel regression specification, I find that (i) e-commerce establishment count exposure results show heterogeneity in the sign of the effects across the retail sectors represented in the data (ii) the magnitude of the e-commerce exposure effect is also heterogeneous across retail sectors (iii) the heterogeneity is not purely random and correlates highly with retail industrial characteristics like the labor share of receipts and profit margins, (iv) the e-commerce exposure is passed through to intensive margins like employment. The second essay turns to a regional focus, where I develop a multilevel difference-in-difference approach to estimate the causal effects of discontinued Shuttle launches on the industry and labor markets of Florida's Space Coast. I find strong evidence for (i) an across industry substitution effect previously unexplored in the regional literature(ii) a spike in unemployment of 17% relative to the estimated counterfactual outcome for the region (iii) a contraction in payroll of nearly 10% of regional GDP in some industries combined with a gain of 7.5% through across industry labor reallocation. In the final essay, I focus on the relationship between the size of retail establishments and the growth of their proximate markets. In accomplishing this, I demonstrate the utility of Department of Defense satellite images of ambient night light activity as a measure of the spatial variation in economic activity, as well as a measure of economic growth. This allowed me to use a dynamic panel regression approach to test the concentrating effect of market growth on retail firms. I find evidence that (i) with an autoregressive coefficient closer to 0 than 1 (alpha=0.23), establishment size is not persistent (ii) firms adjustment contemporaneously to economic growth and discount past growth for hiring decisions (iii) a positive and significant firm size elasticity with respect to spatial variation in economic activity.

No description available.

Le premier chapitre étudie comment l'introduction d'un marché à terme de l'acier affecte les producteurs d'acier et leurs clients. Le deuxième chapitre demande comment les tarifs d'importation dans les industries en amont affectent les incitations à investir des entreprises en aval. Le troisième chapitre étudie comment la propriété managériale affecte la performance dans le secteur des fonds communs de placement. / The first chapter studies how the introduction of a futures market for steel affects steel producers and their customers. The second chapter asks how import tariffs in upstream industries affect downstream firms’ incentives to invest. The third chapter studies how managerial ownership affects performance in the mutual fund industry.

No description available.