We study the relationship between firms' output quality and their choice of organizational structure. To do so, we use data on each step of the production and transaction chain that makes up Peruvian fishmeal manufacturing. We first show that quality upgrading is an important motive for...

In 2003, after claims of dumping, the U.S. imposed heavy tariffs on imports of catfish from Vietnam. As a result, Vietnamese exports of catfish to the U.S. market sharply declined. Using a panel data of Vietnamese households, we explore the responses of catfish producers in the Mekong delta...

Existing learning models attribute failures to learn to a lack of data. We model a different barrier. Given the large number of dimensions one could focus on when using a technology, people may fail to learn because they failed to notice important features of the data they possess. We conduct a...

In this paper I provide a production theory-based framework for measuring markups of price over marginal coat, and the effects of cost and demand characteristics on these markups. Price to marginal coat ratios are measured for various Canadian manufacturing industries, and the impacts of...

In this paper we develop a general intertemporal model of production, emphasizing the role of present and expected future corporate income taxes, credits and allowances along with costly adjustment and variable utilization of the quasi-fixed factors. Three specific issues are considered: 1) the...

This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Arnold Harberger's celebrated model of the corporation income tax. While the model has been enormously useful as an analytical device for studying two sector economies, its usefulness for understanding the incidence and excess burden of the...

This paper examines the implications of the learning curve in a world of uncertainty. We consider a competitive firm whose costs decline with cumulative output. Because the price of the firm's output evolves stochastically, future production and cumulative output are unknown, and are contingent...

A great deal of research on the empirical behavior of inventories examines some variant of the production smoothing model of finished goods inventories. The overall assessment of this model that exists in the literature is quite negative: there is little evidence that manufacturers hold...

In this paper we theoretically and empirically model import demand and export supply behavior of firms for the U.S. economy from 1967-1982. A producer theoretic approach based on duality theory is used to derive econometric systems of producer supply and demand functions that are consistent with...