A long-standing puzzle in labor economics has been the positive relationship between wages and firm size. Even after controlling for worker's observed characteristics such as education, work experience, gender, and geographic location, a significant firm size wage effect averaging 15 percent...

Since the 1980s, China has been undertaking a transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy through decentralisation, giving local states more decision-making power and providing incentives to apply entrepreneurial policies. This policy has been successful in terms of economic...

Over the past two decades, the financial services industry has experienced a significant increase in competition and internal rivalry. Driven by deregulation and advances in information technologies, many historical institutional distinctions among financial intermediaries have disappeared or...

This dissertation addresses three important business and policy related issues regarding financial theories and their application in different markets. Chapter one extends option-pricing theory to value alternative asset-securitization structures. By decomposing each structure into fixed income...

I design an input-output model to investigate the energy supply chain of coal-coke-steel in China. To study the demand, supply, and energy-intensity issues for coal and coke from a macroeconomic perspective, I apply the model to test two hypotheses: (1) coal and coke intensities in individual...

The debate on the impact of modern logistics on industrial location choice and property markets focuses on (1) whether modern inventory control and supply- chain configuration consolidate manufacturing and distribution locations and (2) whether modern logistics have reduced the demand for...

Past empirical literature provides strong evidence that competitionincreases when new firms enter a market. However, rarely have economistsbeen able to examine how competition changes with the threat of entry.This paper uses the evolution of the zip code level market structure offacilities-based...

Growth in the meat packing and processing industry in the Midwestern United States has generated a significant amount of debate regarding the costs and benefits of this type of economic development. This research employs 1990-2000 proprietary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics'’...

Pork production has been evolving from relatively small, family-run operations toward large-scale operations with several employees. This study uses a national survey of pork producers and their employees to answer several questions about the structure of wages and benefits in this rapidly...

The Slovenian transition represents a slow but steady liberalization of constraints on competition. Using a unique longitudinal data set on all manufacturing firms in Slovenia over the period 1994-2001, this study analyzes how firm efficiency changed in response to changing competitive...