Impact of Manufacturing Practices on Adoption of Plant Information Systems

Firms have invested over $15 billion in the past three years on new information technology and software in their manufacturing plants. In this study, we document how the implementation of new types of manufacturing practices has impacted the types of information technology investments in manufacturing plants. We present a conceptual model to develop hypotheses about relationships between manufacturing practices and the choice of information systems at the plant level. Analysis of cross-sectional survey data from 932 manufacturing plants provides strong empirical support for our hypotheses about how manufacturing practices influence decisions regarding adoption of plant-level IT applications

Customer Concentration and Cost Structure

This study examines the effects of customer concentration levels on firm cost structure decisions. Analyzing cost data from a sample of manufacturing firms from 1976 through 2013, we find a negative relationship between customer concentration and cost elasticity whereby firms exhibit lower proportions of variable-to-fixed costs in the presence of higher levels of customer concentration. Additionally, we find that greater customer bargaining power, proxied by supplier industry competition and product market fluidity, leads to lower cost elasticity as customer concentration becomes greater. These results are robust to alternate specifications as well as controlling for endogeneity using a two-stage model. Our results suggest that suppliers respond to customer concentration by pursuing increased mutual dependence and cooperation with customers rather than attempting to reduce the effect of power imbalances within the supplier-customer relationship

Health Care Regulation and the Operating Efficiency of Hospitals: Evidence from Taiwan

[[abstract]]Using data from the Annual Survey of Hospitals compiled by the Department of Health in Taiwan for years 1994 through 1997, we employed Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to evaluate the impact of a National Health Insurance (NHI) Program on the operating efficiency of district hospitals in Taiwan. We find that, on average, efficiency of district hospitals in Taiwan decreased following the implementation of the NHI Program. Our results are robust to the inclusion of control variables that have been shown to affect hospital operating performance in prior research, and alternative efficiency measurements