Industry Consolidation Research Articles

Analysis of closed versus operating dairies in the southeastern United States

This study analyzed differences between dairies that have closed compared with dairies still operating in the southeastern United States. Significant changes have occurred in the US dairy industry in the last decade, involving the number of dairy farms, herd size, milk quality, and management practices, yet the dairy industry remains the fourth leading agricultural sector in the United States, with $38 billion of milk sales in 2017. Although the number of dairy cows in the United States has remained relatively constant over the past decade, at approximately 9 million head, the number of dairy operations has decreased by 30%, resulting in larger dairies. This trend is even more prevalent in the southeastern United States, where the number of dairies has decreased by 39% from 5,315 in 2008 to only 3,235 in 2017. Additionally, downward pressure on bulk tank somatic cell count, which is used as a milk quality metric and has implications regarding animal health, intensified with US processors' introduction of incentive and penalty systems for quality milk production, necessitating better management of mastitis in dairy herds. In this context, this study examines factors that affect southeastern US dairy farms' persistence in the industry by using primary survey data collected in 2013 through a mail survey of Grade A dairies in Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Dairies that were no longer operational had exited the industry from 2007 through 2014. A probit regression was used to determine which farm and operator characteristics were associated with the dairy's operational status. Dairy farms with more cows and higher average milk production per cow were more likely to be operational. For an additional 10 kg/d of milk production per cow, the dairy was 1.5% more likely to be operational. For each 100 additional cows a dairy had, it was 4% more likely to be operational. The analysis also identifies nonpecuniary determinants of operational status for southeastern US dairies, such as mastitis management practices. Findings suggest that operations capable of leveraging scale effects are more likely to remain operational, with results affirming the consolidation of the US dairy industry and demonstrating that more productive farms are more likely to stay in operation. Results also suggest that factors other than farm size affect a dairy's operational status.

Behind closed doors: What happens when pharmacies close?

Behind closed doors: What happens when pharmacies close?

The impact of industry consolidation on government procurement: Evidence from Department of Defense contracting

We study the relationship between market structure and public procurement outcomes. In particular, we ask whether and to what extent consolidation-driven increases in industry concentration affect the way in which the government procures its goods and services. We focus on the defense industry, by far the largest contributor to federal procurement spending in the U.S. This industry experienced a sharp increase in the level of concentration during the 1990s, driven by a series of large mergers between defense contractors. Using detailed microdata on Department of Defense (DoD) contract awards, we estimate the causal effect of industry concentration on a series of procurement outcomes, leveraging the differential impact of these mergers across product markets. We find that market concentration caused the procurement process to become less competitive, with an increase in the share of spending awarded without competition, or via single-bid solicitations. Increased concentration also induced a shift from the use of fixed-price contracts towards cost-plus contracts. However, we find no evidence that consolidation led to a significant increase in acquisition costs. We infer that the government’s buyer power, especially relevant in this context given the government is often the only purchaser, constrained firms from exercising any additional market power gained by consolidation.

Do cânone modernista à noção antropológica de cultura: O conceito de cultura nas políticas culturais do governo Lula (2003-2011)

Este artigo analisa a concepção de cultura predominante nas políticas culturais do Governo Lula, à luz de transformações mais gerais do campo cultural brasileiro, notadamente aquelas trazidas pela consolidação de uma indústria cultural nas décadas de 1960-70 e pelo enfraquecimento do cânone modernista como critério exclusivo de avaliação das obras e manifestações culturais. Assim, apresentaremos as linhas gerais das políticas culturais do governo Lula, apontaremos os momentos principais da institucionalização e consagração do cânone modernista no Brasil e refletiremos sobre o significado e os impasses da adoção de um conceito antropológico de cultura no período lulista. O artigo debateu como as mudanças nas políticas culturais apareceram relacionadas ao enfraquecimento de uma visão mais especializada da cultura como produção artística e intelectual de vanguarda, em direção ao fortalecimento de uma noção de cultura como modo de vida, expandindo a gama de atividades legitimadas pelo Estado em políticas cultuais mais diversas e inclusivas.

The influence of internet architecture on centralised versus distributed internet services

ABSTRACT The internet evolves rapidly as innovations in technology, applications and business emerge. In some cases, the changes have also given rise to the creation of centralised service deployment models and industry consolidation. This paper focuses on the question of how internet technology and open interfaces may affect the ability to deploy services in a collaborative fashion vs in a centralised fashion. The paper presents a categorisation of factors influencing these choices and discusses these factors in the context of several case studies. Some aspects of centralisation and consolidation are direct consequences of physics. A large organisation can provide a short round-trip time to users around the globe, due to service instances in many locations. Other aspects are due to economics. For instance, network effects cause the value of a service to grow per Metcalfe’s law. But technology and deployment choices also have an effect. Federated, collaborative networks with open standardised interfaces (such as email) allow multiple service providers to interact with each other. Closed systems may not allow this. Many popular social networks fall in this category. While technology is not the main driving force behind what are often business and economic decisions, awareness of technology choices makes it easier to understand the likely impacts of a chosen model.

Bitter Beer Face: Are Beer Conglomerates Violating New York Consumer Protection Laws?

This Article examines the potential legal implications under New York consumer protection laws of the growth in the beer industry: specifically, the battle between the craft beer industry and its large corporate competitors over labeling and advertising. This Article proceeds in four Parts: Part II summarizes the growth and consolidation of the craft beer industry; Part III explains federal regulation of beer labeling; Part IV explains New York State’s regulation of beer labeling; and Part V examines the application of New York consumer protection laws to the labeling practices of the beer industry. This Article concludes with the determination that while the actions of certain breweries potentially violate New York law, private enforcement is challenging.

Business consolidation and human resources management in Nigerian banking industry

Business consolidation and human resources management in Nigerian banking industry

Cartoon Vision: UPA Animation and Postwar Aesthetics by Dan Bashara

Reviewed by: Cartoon Vision: UPA Animation and Postwar Aesthetics by Dan Bashara Ryan Pierson (bio) Cartoon Vision: UPA Animation and Postwar Aesthetics by Dan Bashara University of California Press. 2019. 296 pages. $85.00 hardcover; $34.95 paper; also available in e-book. In a 1923 essay, critic Élie Faure argued that cinema's aesthetic and political potential lay in its status as a plastic art. Faure claimed that film did not arouse our deepest feelings through characters or plot; rather, he wrote, we are most moved by the patterns of tonality and volume that shift over time before our eyes. Faure called this quality of film "cineplastics": the expression of movement or change itself as a pictorial value.1 By fixing visual movements into rhythmic shapes, cinema could offer its audience an impersonal collective spectacle. According to Faure, collective spectacles like Greek tragedy, religious ritual, and architecture—and now the cinema—have the power to help a population define itself, "developing in the crowd the sense of confidence, harmony, [and] cohesion."2 For modernist critic Annette Michelson, Faure's essay marks an apotheosis of what she calls the "radical aspiration": a dream that the movies could bring together the possibilities of formal experimentation and social utopianism.3 According to Michelson, this radical aspiration was soon quelled with the consolidation of the film industry and the advent of sync sound. Revolutionary programs for film did crop up again after World War II, but these had to be carried out in fierce defiance of industry and popular taste.4 Michelson's story of cinematic modernism will be familiar to [End Page 173] film scholars. It upholds a now-standard modernist canon as running from the 1920s European avant-garde and the Soviet montage movement through the French New Wave (particularly Jean-Luc Godard) and the American avant-garde. But what if cineplastics—not Faure's to-the-letter definition of modeling in time but the underlying cinematic dream of using pictorial values to organize a population—didn't really go away? What if it changed its form instead? What if the radical aspiration became cartoony? This is the question driving Dan Bashara's book Cartoon Vision: UPA Animation and Postwar Aesthetics. To be sure, linking animation to modernism is hardly a new gesture. In fact, it is probably the characteristic gesture of animation scholarship within film studies.5 Bashara's innovation here is to connect the radical aspiration to a particular American cartoon studio, United Productions of America (UPA), under the aegis of a particular kind of modernism, the New Bauhaus school of postwar design, spearheaded by European émigrés György Kepes and László Moholy-Nagy. UPA has a distinctive visual style. Its major traits are pretty well agreed upon by animation scholarship: simplified graphic forms, bold colors, an aggressive use of the two-dimensionality of the screen, and human characters (rather than animals). In other words, UPA cartoons liberally mix together elements of abstraction and representation. This mixture is easy to read as a kind of light formalism or kitsch. Bashara insists, though, that UPA's style is not reducible to a compromise between high modernist technique and mainstream sensibility. Rather, the principles that UPA took from the world of Kepes and Moholy-Nagy constitute their own specific modernist program, with its own aesthetic and political goals. The chief goal of the Kepes and Moholy-Nagy program was to train citizens in a new way of seeing, one that was more in keeping with the modern world.6 The task of the artist was to streamline a viewer's sense of vision by offering images that reduced forms to their essential qualities and reduced spaces to simple structures. UPA, Bashara argues, was as much an active participant in this modernist project as Charles and Ray Eames, Paul Rand, and other towering figures of postwar American design. Scholars have long noted that UPA stylized its cartoons in a design-like way, but no one before Bashara has clarified UPA's relationship to postwar design with such depth or specificity. Crucial here is that Bashara takes figures in design culture, instead of the work of other animation studios, as his...

Collaboration Leveraging on Military Industry Development in Defense Diplomation Perspective (Case Study: Development of Turkish-Indonesian Medium Tanks)

The development of the military industry has a country's economic calculation and military strategy. If two or more countries cooperate in the development of the military industry, then these activities have direct and indirect implications in Defense Diplomacy. For NATO members like Turkey, they are bound by the Single Europe Act: consolidation and contraction of the defense industry. Likewise, the geographical region of Indonesia has Ways as an ethical foundation in maintaining the same relations with ASEAN countries. However, Turkey, in collaboration with Indonesia can develop and produce a prototype Medium Tank that is in great demand from other countries so that it not only impacts on the economic benefits and military strategy itself but influences the strategies and attitudes of other countries. The study aims to explain the multi-effects of developing Medium Tank cooperation between Turkey and Indonesia. Through the case study approach method, it can be understood that collaboration between the development of military industry between countries can increase Defense Diplomacy as a national defense leveraging, namely, Confidence Building Measure (CBM) that affects the environment of direct and indirect strategies. Thus Defense Diplomacy not only builds relationships with opposing or future opponents but is also able to become a leveraging that makes state-of-the-art technology a game-changer. Keywords: Medium Tank, Leverage Strategy, Defense Industry DOI : 10.7176/IAGS/79-04 Publication date: January 31 st 2020

Microeconomic and Macroeconomic Effects of the Banking Sector Development Policy in Russia

This article studies the impact of banking supervision on the Russian banking sector structure. The article also discusses the main challenges facing the banking system and the macroeconomic role of the Bank of Russia’s supervisory policy. Taking into account some features of the national banking sector, the author justifies the current strict banking supervision despite all possible short- and longterm negative effects of this policy. For example, static and dynamic estimates of the competition level in the Russian banking sector, which were obtained using structural and non-structural methods, show a low competition level. A noncompetitive banking industry increases costs in the economy and exacerbates existing imbalances. For this reason, the paper considers key measures that contribute to the development of banking competition. The article emphasizes the great importance of the goals of building a full three-tier banking system and privatization of public sector banks. However, strict banking supervision and consolidation of the banking industry have reduced the impact of negative factors on the supply of loans and increased the Russian banking sector’s sustainability. These positive changes and macroeconomic reform provide the basis for stable economic growth. The main results obtained can be used by national authorities to develop the Russian banking system.

Impacts of Health Care Industry Consolidation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: A Qualitative Study.

While most studies of health care industry consolidation focus on impacts on prices or quality, these are not its only potential impacts. This exploratory qualitative study describes industry and community stakeholder perceptions of the impacts of cumulative hospital, practice, and insurance mergers, acquisitions, and affiliations in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since the 1980s, Pittsburgh’s health care landscape has been transformed and is now dominated by competition between 2 integrated payer-provider networks, health care system UPMC (and its insurance arm UPMC Health Plan) and insurer Highmark (and its health care system Allegheny Health Network). Semi-structured interviews with 20 boundary-spanning stakeholders revealed a mix of perceived impacts of consolidation: some positive, some neutral or ambiguous, and some negative. Stakeholders perceived consolidation’s positive impacts on long-term viability of health care facilities and their ability to adopt new care models, enhanced competition in health insurance, creation of foundations, and pioneering medical research and innovation. Stakeholders also believed that consolidation changed geographic access to care, physician referral behaviors, how educated patients were about their health care, the health care advertising environment, and economies of surrounding neighborhoods. Interviewees noted that consolidation raised questions about what the responsibilities of non-profit organizations are to their communities. However, stakeholders also reported their perceptions of negative outcomes, including ways in which consolidation had potentially reduced patient access to care, accountability and transparency, systems’ willingness to collaborate, and physician autonomy. As trends toward consolidation are not slowing, there will be many opportunities to experiment with policy levers to mitigate its potentially negative consequences.

Las «conocidas» de siempre. Recepción de la commedia all’italiana en Buenos Aires

The artistic boom and industrial consolidation that took place in Italian cinema after the Second World War had a wide reception in Argentina. Although Neorealism’s influence has been noticed in Latin American cinemas’ renovation, I consider that the presence of commedia all'italiana (produced over the fifties and sixties) in Buenos Aires’ cinemas has also had a strong effect on spectators ?some of whom would become filmmakers, and who later on took aspects of that model for their own films. Audience’s preference for these movies undoubtedly operated as an important reference for local producers during the following years. In this article, I examine comedies’ reception at a quantitative (observing the screening programmes) and qualitative (analyzing different kinds of reviews) levels. This process has also been part of a broader transnational development of peninsular cinema in Argentina, taking into account the centrality of Italian’s culture in the South American country.

The business aviation industry: growth, contraction and consolidation

The most significant portion of revenue within the general aviation industry derives from business aviation. Since the mid-1960s, this industry segment has always been largely impacted by recessions. The industry experienced explosive growth during the housing boom and an almost snail-like pace post-recession. Consequently, cost-cutting and industry consolidation have made it challenging to forecast what is ahead.

The agency cost of ownership and governance adaptations in farm producer organizations

Purpose Many farm producer organizations pursue growth and complexity in response to price volatility, industry consolidation and other external developments. Consequently, as ownership is dispersed and control is delegated, members may face increasing agency cost. In spite of the potential to impact performance and even survival, empirical attention to agency problems in farm producer organizations is limited. The purpose of this paper is to address the gap in the literature with an empirical study. Design/methodology/approach With survey responses from 365 farm producer organizations in the USA, the author uses a two-limit tobit model to estimate the relationships of six ownership and governance characteristics (i.e. board size, management size, director independence, manager independence, CEO independence and non-member ownership) to agency cost, which is proxied by the operating expense ratio. Findings While controlling for heterogeneity in scale and technology, the author finds positive relationships of board size, management size and CEO independence to agency cost. The novel result illustrates there is a significant cost to the adoption of non-traditional ownership and governance characteristics by farm producer organizations. Practical implications The presence of agency cost serves as motivation to farm producer organizations to implement new or adapt old agency mechanisms. One recommendation is to reconsider the payment structure of non-member CEOs. There may not be enough incentive to inspire an upstream bias, which is perhaps possible by linking CEO performance to price, patronage and member-oriented performance measurements. Originality/value Agency cost is rarely studied in relation to farm producer organizations. Recent contributions in the empirical literature lacked an explicit connection of ownership and governance characteristics to agency cost.

New Scholarship

New Scholarship

Monsanto and Mergers: How Antitrust Got Borked and How Courts Can Take It Back

It is clear regulation alone is not enough to ensure firms with monopolistic tendencies will not continue to engage in monopolistic behavior. Due to the vital importance of credit access to the American economy and the urgency required of policymakers during the financial crisis, legislators passed new regulations on the banking industry. The government reacted to the “too big to fail” financial industry through bailouts of the companies and the creation of new laws, but the government has failed to respond to the growing threat large agricultural companies may pose when these companies have the ability to use monopoly power. Under the Trump Administration, the Department of Agriculture has withdrawn a rule under the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Act (GIPSA), providing clear definitions for certain predatory practices by agriculture corporations. To effectively regulate monopolistic tendencies it also takes an active administration responsible for enforcing the law. The government must take the lead in preventing the creation of monopolies by exercising its power under both the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Act to block the consolidation of agribusiness. If they fail to do so, these companies will continue to grow their already considerable market power. Regulators must take action to reduce the consolidation of this vital industry through regulations promoting competition and prevent mergers. The government must also use their regulatory powers to break up companies if necessary to protect the public from monopolies.

Evolution of industrial policy in emerging regions: The case of the automotive industry in Guanajuato, Mexico

Objetivo: este artículo analiza, críticamente, el desarrollo de la política industrial (PI) en Guanajuato, México, a través de la reconstrucción de su trayectoria y la evolución de su enfoque. Se centra en los instrumentos de política diseñados para promover la industria automotriz en este estado, la que recientemente ha desplegado un gran dinamismo, medido este a través de la inversión extranjera directa atraída por la región. Metodología: la información presentada es el resultado de un análisis cualitativo e interpretativo de los planes y programas especializados. Para analizar la evolución de la política industrial se reconstruyó su trayectoria a través de la consideración de, lo que llamamos, hitos legales, y del tipo de los instrumentos de política diseñados y aplicados (pasivos / activos). Resultados: se identificaron dos etapas y enfoques de política que denominamos: 1) Establecimiento de las Condiciones Básicas-Enfoque Pasivo y 2) Condiciones de Largo Plazo-Enfoque Activo. Durante la primera etapa, la PI se enfocó en la atracción de IED y en la construcción de infraestructura básica; en la segunda etapa, con una visión de largo plazo, se han desarrollado e implementado intrumentos activos de PI que buscan promover la construcción de infraestructura especializada, el encadenamiento, la capacitación y la transferencia tecnológica. Limitaciones: la obtención de la información fue a través del análisis de documentos oficiales. Para futuras investigaciones es importante llevar a cabo un análisis crítico de los resultados de los proyectos establecidos en los planes y programas analizados, a través de estudios de caso o de estudios de correlación entre variables clave (p.e. IED y empleo, IED vs inserción de empresas locales, etc.). Conclusiones: los instrumentos de política que se han implementado en Guanajuato han fomentado la consolidación de la industria automotriz en la región. Algunos indicadores económicos que dan cuenta de esto son: mayor empleo, avance en el desarrollo de proveedores locales, programas de capacitación, entre otros. Sin embargo, su influencia en el desarrollo local es débil, por lo que la política industrial debería enfocarse en la construcción de capacidades locales de absorción para que exista un beneficio generado por las externalidades de la IED.

Consolidation in the dental industry: a closer look at dental payers and providers

We examine the effect of commercial dental insurance concentration on the size of dental practices, the decision of dentists to own a practice, and the choice of dentists to work at a dental management service organization—a type of corporate group practice that has become more prevalent in the United States in recent years. Using 2013–2015 dentist-level data from the American Dental Association, county-level data on firms and employment from the United States Census, and commercial dental insurance market concentration data from FAIR Health®, we find a modest effect of dental insurance market concentration on the size of dental practices. We also find that a higher level of commercial dental insurance market concentration is associated with a dentist’s decision not to own a practice. There is inconclusive evidence that higher levels of dental insurance market concentration impact a dentist’s decision to affiliate with a dental management service organization. Overall, our findings imply that dentists consolidate in response to increases in concentration among commercial dental insurers.

Data Management for Solving the Problem of Sequential Shaping Simulation

The publication presents the results of a study of the process of investing in the innovation of the Russian manufacturing industry (sample 2009-2017). Factors of economic efficiency of investment projects of the industry are revealed. It is proved that the efficiency of investment is determined by external factors, primarily by the level of economic concentration (CR3) of the market of innovative products. The coordination of the scientific result with the industry consolidation dynamics model (A.T. Kearney) is presented.

Factors of economic efficiency of innovative entrepreneurship in the manufacturing industry

The publication presents the results of a study of the process of investing in the innovation of the Russian manufacturing industry (sample 2009-2017). Factors of economic efficiency of investment projects of the industry are revealed. It is proved that the efficiency of investment is determined by external factors, primarily by the level of economic concentration (CR3) of the market of innovative products. The coordination of the scientific result with the industry consolidation dynamics model (A.T. Kearney) is presented.