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Market
Leaders, Antitrust Policy and the Software Market
-- Federico
Etro
This
article applies the theory of market leaders and endogenous
market structures developed by Etro in 2007 to analyze an
important market of the New Economy the software market.
It describes the evolution and different aspects of competition
in this market and for this market. Finally, it analyzes
the antitrust issues concerning Microsoft in retrospect
and develops new theoretical arguments on the role of this
market leader in its sector and on the bundling and interoperability
parts of the recent European antitrust case.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Tendering
with Different Risk Preferences
-- Fangcheng
Tang, Weizhou Zhong and Shunfeng Song
This
paper investigates tenderers' behaviors in one-shot construction
bid auctions. The model formulated in this paper generalizes
competitive sealed-bid auction theories by allowing different
risk preferences and predicts price quoting behaviors of
different tenderers in the tendering process. The model
theoretically suggests that a tenderer's bid is affected
by his risk preference. Specifically, in a lowest-price
sealed bid process, risk-averse tenderers tend to quote
a higher price, risk-seeking tenderers a lower price, and
risk-neutral tenderers an average price. Therefore,
risk-seeking tenderers are more likely to win the
bid.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Cointegration
Between Labor Productivity and Wage Rates: Empirical Evidence
from the Indian Industries
-- M
Upender and M Sujan
This
paper attempts to perceive the cointegration between labor
productivity and money wage rates in the Indian industries
(factory sector) during the period 1980-81 to 2004-05. The
empirical results based on unit root tests, cointegration
and error correction modeling exemplify that labor productivity
and money wage rates are cointegrated showing the existence
of long run equilibrium between them. The elasticity of
labor productivity, with respect to money wage rate, is
slightly more than unity in the long run revealing that
the substitution possibilities of labor for capital in the
Indian industries are more in the long run. As the substitution
possibilities of labor for capital are more in the long
run, the policy decision to enhance the money wage rate
by 1% would improve the labor productivity, on average,
by more than 1% in the Indian industries, all else remaining
equal.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Total
Factor Productivity in Selected Indian Manufacturing Industries
-- S
S Rajan, K L N Reddy and V Pandit
Productivity
is the key factor in economic growth that reflects its importance.
Keeping this in mind, this paper evaluates productivity
growth for three selected major industries in organized
manufacturing sectoraluminium, iron and steel products,
and refined petroleum productsat the 3-digit level NIC classification,
over the period 1973-74 to 2004-05. The conventional growth
accounting approach is complemented with the production
function approach in the calculation of total factor productivity
growth. The paper examines the productivity growth for two
sub-periods, i.e., 1973-74 to 1992-93 (pre-reform period)
and 1993-94 to 2004-05 (post-reform period), for possible
structural changes due to policy reforms. As far as iron
and steel industry is concerned, productivity growth has
declined in the second sub-period (post-reform period).
Technological progress during the 1990s was significantly
slackened though it remained positive. On the other hand,
aluminium and refined petroleum industries have maintained
consistency in their productivity growth without much volatility.
It is worth noting that the productivity in refined petroleum
products has continued to rise consistently in spite of
two big oil crises and increasing cost of crude oil. Labor
productivity for all the three industries shows a positive
and significant trend. An implication of this finding is
that the reason for the poor performance of iron and steel
industry has to be sought in the inefficient utilization
of factors of production, in particular underutilization
of the labor input in accordance with the changing demand,
together with sluggish growth in technological progress.
©
2008 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
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