scholarly journals Soy dairy performance metrics

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (105) ◽  
pp. 19016-19039
Author(s):  
J Krause ◽  
◽  
M Cornelius ◽  
P Goldsmith ◽  
M Mzungu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Performance Metrics ◽  
Dairy Product ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Regulatory Compliance ◽  
Fixed Costs ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Recordkeeping System ◽  
Tropical Environments ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Manufacturing Technologies

Soybean (Glycine max (L. Merr.) has been a crop of interest to address both poverty and malnutrition in the developing world because of its high levels of both protein and oil, and its adaptability to grow in tropical environments. Development practitioners and policymakers have long sought value added opportunities for local crops to move communities out of poverty by introducing processing or manufacturing technologies. Soy dairy production technologies sit within this development conceptual model. To the researchers’ knowledge, no research to date measures soy dairy performance, though donors and NGOs have launched hundreds of enterprises over the last 18 years. The lack of firm-level data on operations limits the ability of donors and practitioners to fund and site sustainable dairy businesses. Therefore, the research team developed and implemented a recordkeeping system and training program first, as a 14-month beta test with a network of five dairies in Ghana and Mozambique in 2016-2017. Learning from the initial research then supported a formal research rollout over 18 months with a network of six different dairies in Malawi and key collaboration from USAID’s Agricultural Diversification activity. None of the beta or rollout dairies kept records prior to the intervention. The formal rollout resulted in a unique primary dataset to address the soy dairy performance knowledge gap. The results of analysis show that the dairies, on average, achieve positive operating margins of 61%, yet cannot cover the fixed costs associated with depreciation, amortization of equipment and infrastructure, working capital, marketing and promotion, and regulatory compliance. The enterprises in our sample operate only at 9% of capacity, which limits their ability to cover the normal fixed costs associated with the business. The challenge is not the technology itself, as when operated, it produces a high-quality dairy product. The challenges involve a business that requires too much capital for normal operations relative to a nascent and small addressable market.

scholarly journals Who Really Benefits from Consumption Tax Cuts? Evidence from a Large VAT Reform in France

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youssef Benzarti ◽  
Dorian Carloni
Keyword(s):  
Value Added ◽  
Consumption Tax ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Employment Effects ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Price Effects ◽  
Firm Level Data ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Firm Owners

This paper evaluates the incidence of a large cut in value-added taxes (VATs) for French sit-down restaurants in 2009. In contrast to previous studies, which only focus on the price effects of VAT reforms, we estimate the effects of the VAT cut on four groups: workers, firm owners, consumers, and suppliers of material goods. Using a difference-in-differences strategy on firm-level data, we find that: firm owners pocketed more than 55 percent of the VAT cut; consumers, sellers of material goods, and employees shared the remaining windfall with consumers benefiting the least; and the employment effects were limited. (JEL H22, H25, L83)

The Thai Currency Crisis: Financing Constraints, High Fixed Costs, and Corporate Governance

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Dekle ◽  
Cathy Karnchanasai ◽  
Pongsak Hoontrakul
Keyword(s):  
Scale Economies ◽  
Asian Financial Crisis ◽  
Financing Constraints ◽  
Fixed Costs ◽  
High Scale ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Unit Costs ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Financing Costs

We examine the role of financing constraints in depressing output during the Asian financial crisis, using Thai firm-level data. From an output decline of 3.7 percent in our sample in 1998, we find that tightening financing constraints contributed to lowering output by 1.7 percent. We also find evidence of high scale economies or high fixed costs in Thai industries. With high fixed costs, small changes in unit costs or financing costs can lead to large changes in output. We interpret the high fixed costs as evidence of overinvestment prior to the crisis.

scholarly journals Measuring Global Value Chains

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Multinational Firms ◽  
Bilateral Trade ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Global Value Chains ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Input Output ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Production Stages

Recent decades have seen the emergence of global value chains (GVCs), in which production stages for individual goods are broken apart and scattered across countries. Stimulated by these developments, there has been rapid progress in data and methods for measuring GVC linkages. The macro approach to measuring GVCs connects national input–output tables across borders by using bilateral trade data to construct global input–output tables. These tables have been applied to measure trade in value added, the length of and location of producers in GVCs, and price linkages across countries. The micro approach uses firm-level data to document firms’ input sourcing decisions, how import and export participation are linked, and how multinational firms organize their production networks. In this review, I evaluate progress in these two approaches, highlighting points of contact between them and areas that demand further work. I argue that further convergence between these approaches can strengthen both, yielding a more complete empirical portrait of GVCs.

THE HETEROGENEOUS TAX BURDEN: EVIDENCE FROM FIRM-LEVEL DATA IN CHINA

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (04) ◽  
pp. 1003-1035 ◽  
Author(s):  
JIANLIANG YE ◽  
XIAOHAN GUO ◽  
DEMING LUO ◽  
XIANGRONG JIN
Keyword(s):  
Opposite Effect ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Tax Burden ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Industrial Enterprises ◽  
Tax Reduction ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Policy Suggestions ◽  
The Relationship

Firms’ behaviors are not only affected by their taxation burden level, but also their differences from each other. In this paper, we use Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database (CIED) to investigate the relationship between firms’ heterogeneity of tax burden and firms’ characteristics, such as size, ownership, exportation and location. We measure a firm’s tax burden in three ways, the value-added tax (VAT) burden, the corporate income tax (CIT) burden, and the total tax burden. By using a Hausman–Taylor estimation, we find: (1) The CIT burden is positively correlated to the size, while other two tax burdens are not; (2) Both the VAT burden and the total tax burden of SOEs are significantly heavier than those of non-SOEs, while the CIT burden shows the exactly opposite effect; (3) Exporters have a remarkably lower tax burden than non-exporters for all three tax burden measures; and (4) The western region and particularly the central region have lighter tax burden than the eastern region for all three tax burden measures. We also provide empirical evidence and policy suggestions for continuing to proceed with the structural tax reduction and the structural fiscal reform in China.

scholarly journals The Gains from Input Trade with Heterogeneous Importers

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joaquin Blaum ◽  
Claire Lelarge ◽  
Michael Peters
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Result ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Data Input ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Consumer Prices ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Firm Level Data ◽  
Aggregate Effects ◽  
Input Markets

Firms differ substantially in their participation in foreign input markets. We develop a methodology to measure the aggregate effects of input trade that takes such heterogeneity into account. We provide a theoretical result that holds in a variety of settings: the firm-level data on value added and domestic expenditure shares in material spending is sufficient to compute the change in consumer prices due to a shock to the import environment. We characterize the bias of approaches that rely on aggregate statistics. In an application to French data, input trade reduces the prices of manufacturing products by 27 percent. (JEL D24, E31, F12, F14, L11, L25, L60)

scholarly journals GVC and wage dispersion. Firm-level evidence from employee?employer database

Equilibrium ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-375
Author(s):  
Dagmara Nikulin ◽  
Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz ◽  
Aleksandra Parteka
Keyword(s):  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Sector Type ◽  
Sample Heterogeneity ◽  
Wage Inequalities

Research background: Wage inequalities are still part of an interesting policy-oriented research area. Given the developments in international trade models (heterogeneity of firms) and increasing availability of micro-level data, more and more attention is paid to wage differences observed within and be-tween firms. Purpose of the article: The aim of the paper is to address the research gap concerning limited cross-country evidence on a nexus of wage inequality?global value chains (GVCs), analysed from the perspective of wage inequality components within and between firms. Methods: This paper uses a large employee?employer database derived from the European Structure of Earnings Survey (SES), combined with sector-level indicators of GVC involvement based on the World Input-Output Database (WIOD). As a result, a rich database covering more than 7.5 million observations is created. The regression-based decomposition modelling technique developed by Fiorio and Jenkins (2010) is used to identify the contributions of different factors to wage inequalities, focusing on the components within and between firms. Findings & value added: The analysis presented in this paper aimed to show the contribution of GVC involvement, among various other factors, to the observed inequality of wages. Due to the use of a rich database that merges employer and employee data, the effects materialised with respect to different types of wages could be analysed separately, in particular components between and within firms. The general conclusion from the regression-based decomposition in log wages is that GVCs contribute marginally to the observed wage inequality in the European sample analysed in this paper. Some differences confronting the components within and between firms (the latter dominates) are observed; there is also certain intra sample heterogeneity in the estimated results (e.g. due to sector type or country group), but the general result is robust.

scholarly journals Global Production with Export Platforms*

2016 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Tintelnot
Keyword(s):  
General Equilibrium ◽  
Host Country ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Multinational Firms ◽  
Multinational Enterprise ◽  
Fixed Costs ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Multinational Production ◽  
Foreign Affiliates

Abstract Most international commerce is carried out by multinational firms, which use their foreign affiliates both to serve the market of the host country and to export to other markets outside the host country. In this article, I examine the determinants of multinational firms’ location and production decisions and the welfare implications of multinational production. The few existing quantitative general equilibrium models that incorporate multinational firms achieve tractability by assuming away export platforms—that is, they do not allow foreign affiliates of multinationals to export—or by ignoring fixed costs associated with foreign investment. I develop a quantifiable multicountry general equilibrium model, which tractably handles multinational firms that engage in export platform sales and that face fixed costs of foreign investment. I first estimate the model using German firm-level data to uncover the size and nature of costs of multinational enterprise and show that the fixed costs of foreign investment are large. Second, I calibrate the model to data on trade and multinational production for twelve European and North American countries. Counterfactual analysis reveals that multinationals play an important role in transmitting technological improvements to foreign countries and that the pending Canada-EU trade and investment agreement could divert a sizable fraction of the production of EU multinationals from the U.S. to Canada.

Investigating green investment payoff in China

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Qi Chen ◽  
Mary Low
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Compliance ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Quantitative Methodology ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Environmentally Sustainable ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Green Investment ◽  
Investment In China

Purpose This study aims to use Porter’s hypothesis (PH), which tests whether corporates’ green investment has an impact on their economic performance (EP). The study argues that corporates’ environmental strategy should allow for a “win-win” situation concerning regulatory compliance. Design/methodology/approach The quantitative methodology used PH to test empirically the economic consequences of corporates’ green investment in China. Findings This study indicates that there is a U-shaped relationship between green/environmental investment (EI) and EP. When EI is less, corporates’ EP follows a downward sloping curve until the scale of EI increases and exceeds the “threshold.” From this turning point, EP follows an upward-sloping curve as EI increase. This relationship is more significant in high-polluting companies and state-owned companies. Research limitations/implications The empirical results extend the research field of EI and EP for listed companies in China and cover 1,324 observations over the period 2008–2017. Practical implications First, the authors expand the research on green/EI and EP using firm-level data. Second, the study empirically tests the economic consequences of corporates’ green investment. Third, this study finds a non-linear relationship between green investment and EP due to the heterogeneity of industry attributes and property rights. These findings provide better explanations for the different research conclusions regarding the economic consequences of green investment. Originality/value Compared to global research, China’s research on EI has mainly focused on the macro and industry levels. There is still a lack of micro-level research. The paper addresses this research gap as the authors use firm-level EI data to capture companies’ green investment efforts in environmentally sustainable development and its subsequent impact on EP.

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