In a competitive environment, it is not enough to simply coordinate and promote the efficiency of a company’s internal activities. It is also necessary to ensure that the activities which form part of the company’s “value chain†are organized in a competitive way. From...

The western part of China has a long history and reputation of growing a variety of quality melons largely due to its semi arid agronomic environment. In the past decade, the industry suffered from the interrelated issues of unreliable quality and intense price competition. Even though both the...

The study begins with a discussion of the thesis that Italy, in respect to other countries with similar growth, has a relatively large number of small companies. This is often considered the cause of modest performance of the Italian economic system in terms of growth and efficiency. The paper...

Focusing on the interaction between national brands and private labels, this paper has two main empirical contributions: i) a simultaneous system of demand (share), price and expenditure equations is estimated, and ii) differences in the structure of the local geographic market are incorporated...

Prices for nearly all basic commodity rose at unprecedented rates throughout early 2008, only to fall nearly as fast as financial markets and global economies began to collapse. Rising food prices in 2008 led to concerns that commodity price spikes would lead to more general food inflation, but...

I model the strategic interaction between firms, that face decisions on investment, forward contracts and spot market quantities. For an investment decision that takes place after firms have contracted forward but before firms compete on the spot market (medium term investment), competition...