The Economies Scale of Agricultural Product Processing Companies Listed on Stock Exchange in Hochiminh City and Hanoi, Vietnam

This study applied the Cobb-Douglas production function to identify economics efficiency of 18agricultural product processing companies listed on the Stock exchange in Ho Chi Minh City(HOSE) and Hanoi (HNX) in such sectors as fisheries, rubber and sugar in the period 2009-2013.The method employed FEM and REM models using panel data. The results showed thatperformance of all and each sector in this study has increasing returns to scale. In particular,firms in the sectors of fisheries and rubber primarily relied on raising capital to increasetheiroutput value, while those in the sugar sectormainly increase labors toimprove theiroutput value. Finally, the paper also provides some policy implications to improve theefficiency of capital and labor in the agricultural product processing companies.

Effect of Broiler Prices on Logistics and Supply Chains In Developing The Poultry Industry In Egypt

This study aimed to study the effect of changes of broiler prices on the profitability of broiler logistics under Egyptian conditions. This study was undertaken during the period 2016 – 2020 on random cycles of both broiler and layer farms in three different provinces which were Menofia, Kaliobia and Giza. The data were collected from a cross-sectional survey on the broiler and during the data collection the researcher was contact with the poultry holders and managers. The data were collected from the accurate records which available in the poultry farms of the study areas and from the structured questionnaires methods which established by the researcher and admitted to the farmers during the time of interview, also, the data collected from the Agricultural Directorates of governorates, Livestock development sector and Economic Affairs Sector. The data includes data about logistics costs, returns and net prpfits of broiler production, the data were analyized statistically and economically. The price of broilers considered as the main variable affecting the profitability of broiler production farms. The price of poultry affected by the costs of production costs that includes variable and fixed costs The results, concluded that, the higher prices of broiler prices observed during the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 than that of years 2016 and 2017 and in winter seasons than the summer seasons. The increasing of broiler prices causes increasing returns level for broiler sales, the summer seasons achieved a higher net profit than the winter seasons due to increasing the level of production costs in winter seasons than the summer seasons.

Commuting network effect on urban wealth scaling

Urban scaling theory explains the increasing returns to scale of urban wealth indicators by the per capita increase of human interactions within cities. This explanation implicitly assumes urban areas as isolated entities and ignores their interactions. Here we investigate the effects of commuting networks on the gross domestic product (GDP) of urban areas in the US and Brazil. We describe the urban GDP as the output of a production process where population, incoming commuters, and interactions between these quantities are the input variables. This approach significantly refines the description of urban GDP and shows that incoming commuters contribute to wealth creation in urban areas. Our research indicates that changes in urban GDP related to proportionate changes in population and incoming commuters depend on the initial values of these quantities, such that increasing returns to scale are only possible when the product between population and incoming commuters exceeds a well-defined threshold.

Voluminous, Repetitive, and Intractable

In the late 1970s Paul Samuelson drafted the outline of a paper, never published, with a critical assessment of the theoretical innovations of postwar development economics. He found it a “vital” but essentially “not tractable” subject, with a “voluminous” and “repetitive” literature. This article discusses how that assessment fits in Samuelson’s published writings on economic development, throughout several editions of his textbook Economics, and in papers he wrote before and after that assessment. Increasing returns posed a main analytical hurdle, together with the elusive attempt to provide “laws of motion” of economic development. Samuel son’s notion of “tractability” may be traced back to Peter Medawar’s well-known definition of science as the “art of the soluble.”

Efficiency in Utilization of the Resources Allocated to Lower Level Health Facilities in Uganda: a Case Study of Health Centre IVs

Background: Everyone has a right to quality life with good health of the household and, thus, health sector financing should be a top priority because when the population is healthy, it is very productive and wealthy. In Uganda, Health Centre IVs (HCIVs) created under Uganda National Minimum Health Care Package provide curative, prevention and promotion services. The efficiency of these HCIVs is as critical as people’s health and this paper measures efficiency in utilization of resources allocated to them.Methods: The study used Hospital and HCIV Census data for 2014 and health sector data for FY2015/16 reported by MOH in the Annual Health Sector Performance Report. STATA software was used to perform Data Envelopment Analysis for a preferred model was out-put oriented that optimizes variable returns to scale. In this way, efficiency scores for every HCIV were calculated. Also, a Tobit regression model was run to estimate the factors contributing to the adjusted inefficiency scores for HCIVs.Results: Overall, 7 HCIVs (23.3%) were operating under constant returns to scale, implying that they were efficient (both pure technical and scale efficiency) while the 19 (63.3%) were operating under increasing returns to scale, implying that their health service outputs would increase by a greater proportion compared to any proportionate increase in health services if more inputs were added in the facility. Four HCIVs (13.3%) were operating at decreasing returns to scale meaning an additional input to the HCIVs would produce a less proportional change of outputs. The study identified catchment population, average length of stay, bed occupancy rate, and outpatient department visits as a proportion of inpatient days as the main factors of efficiency among HCIVs.Conclusions: This study has shown how Data Envelope Analysis methods can be applied at the HCIV level of the health system to gain an insight into variation in efficiency across health centers using routinely available data. And, with the majority of HCIVs operating at increasing returns to scale, it showed that there is a need to increase inputs like staff, medicines and beds to achieve the desired optimal scale in case of constant returns to scale.

The Evolution of Professionalism as a Mode of Regulation: Evidence from the United States

Opinion is divided on how far and in what ways professionalism as a mode of regulation has evolved. To date, attention has focused on the impact of neoliberal political and economic ideologies that challenge the idea that professions should be trusted to regulate themselves. This article further examines the impact of these attacks on professionalism and assesses whether they have triggered a process of decline. Drawing on a range of documentary sources from the US, it suggests that, while professional modes of regulation are evolving, the dominant pattern is one of continuity. The analysis also draws attention to the path-dependent nature of professionalism and how it is associated with increasing returns for key stakeholders: producers, government regulators and employers. The article’s main contribution is to highlight these trends empirically and raise questions about the accuracy and value of grand narratives that over-emphasise change and understate the self-reinforcing nature of professional modes of regulation.