IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/iaae12/124865.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measurement And Decomposition Of Flexibility Of Multi-Output Firms

Author

Listed:
  • Renner, Swetlana
  • Glauben, Thomas
  • Hockmann, Heinrich

Abstract

Flexibility can be considered as a crucial factor of competitive advantage, especially under conditions of dynamically changing environments. Based on the classical microeconomic definition of flexibility, as introduced by Stigler, and some recent concepts developed in the production economics, this article proposes a primal flexibility measure for multi-product firms. When decomposed, this measure offers useful insights into possible sources of flexibility, especially by investigating the role of both scale and scope economies. This approach provides the theoretical basis to investigate the magnitude and sources of flexibility in the Polish agricultural sector during the transition period.

Suggested Citation

  • Renner, Swetlana & Glauben, Thomas & Hockmann, Heinrich, 2012. "Measurement And Decomposition Of Flexibility Of Multi-Output Firms," 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil 124865, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:iaae12:124865
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.124865
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/124865/files/RennerFlex.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.124865?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roberto Mosheim & C.A. Knox Lovell, 2007. "Scale Economies and Inefficiency of U.S. Dairy Farms," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 91(3), pages 777-794.
    2. Fuss, Melvyn & McFadden, Daniel (ed.), 1978. "Production Economics: A Dual Approach to Theory and Applications," Elsevier Monographs, Elsevier, edition 1, number 9780444850133.
    3. Mills, David E & Schumann, Laurence, 1985. "Industry Structure with Fluctuating Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 758-767, September.
    4. Chavas, Jean-Paul, 2008. "On the economics of agricultural production," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 54(4), pages 1-16.
    5. Caves, Douglas W & Christensen, Laurits R & Swanson, Joseph A, 1981. "Productivity Growth, Scale Economies, and Capacity Utilization in U.S. Railroads, 1955-74," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 994-1002, December.
    6. Arne Hallam, 1991. "Economies of Size and Scale in Agriculture: An Interpretive Review of Empirical Measurement," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 13(1), pages 155-172.
    7. repec:bla:econom:v:57:y:1990:i:227:p:355-69 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Jean-Paul Chavas & Robert G. Chambers & Rulon D. Pope, 2010. "Production Economics and Farm Management: a Century of Contributions," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 92(2), pages 356-375.
    9. Mills, David E, 1984. "Demand Fluctuations and Endogenous Firm Flexibility," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(1), pages 55-71, September.
    10. Kumbhakar,Subal C. & Lovell,C. A. Knox, 2003. "Stochastic Frontier Analysis," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521666633, January.
    11. Bernhard Brümmer & Thomas Glauben & Geert Thijssen, 2002. "Decomposition of Productivity Growth Using Distance Functions: The Case of Dairy Farms in Three European Countries," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 84(3), pages 628-644.
    12. Deller, Steven C & Chicoine, David L & Walzer, Norman, 1988. "Economies of Size and Scope in Rural Low-Volume Roads," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(3), pages 459-465, August.
    13. Mills, David E., 1986. "Flexibility and firm diversity with demand fluctuations," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 203-215, June.
    14. Hajargasht, Gholamreza & Coelli, Tim & Rao, D.S. Prasada, 2008. "A dual measure of economies of scope," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 185-188, August.
    15. Christensen, Laurits R & Greene, William H, 1976. "Economies of Scale in U.S. Electric Power Generation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(4), pages 655-676, August.
    16. Hiebert, L Dean, 1989. "Cost Flexibility and Price Dispersion," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 103-109, September.
    17. Norashidah Mohamed Nor & Nor Ghani Md. Nor & Ahmad Zainuddin Abdullah & Suhaila Abd. Jalil, 2007. "Flexibility and small firms' survival: further evidence from Malaysian manufacturing," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(12), pages 931-934.
    18. Fuss, Melvyn & McFadden, Daniel, 1978. "Production Economics: A Dual Approach to Theory and Applications (I): The Theory of Production," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, volume 1, number fuss1978.
    19. Laure Latruffe & Kelvin Balcombe & Sophia Davidova & Katarzyna Zawalinska, 2005. "Technical and scale efficiency of crop and livestock farms in Poland : does specialization matte r?," Post-Print hal-02392195, HAL.
    20. George Stigler, 1939. "Production and Distribution in the Short Run," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(3), pages 305-305.
    21. Weiss, Christoph R., 2001. "On flexibility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 347-356, November.
      • Weiss, Christoph R. & Briglauer, Wolfgang, 2000. "On flexibility," FE Working Papers 0003, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Food Economics and Consumption Studies.
    22. Das, Bhaskar J & Chappell, William F & Shughart, William F, II, 1993. "Demand Fluctuations and Firm Heterogeneity," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 51-60, March.
    23. John C. Panzar & Robert D. Willig, 1977. "Economies of Scale in Multi-Output Production," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 91(3), pages 481-493.
    24. Chavas, Jean-Paul & Kim, Kwansoo, 2010. "Economies of diversification: A generalization and decomposition of economies of scope," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 229-235, August.
    25. Catherine J. Morrison Paul & Richard Nehring & David Banker, 2004. "Productivity, Economies, and Efficiency in U.S. Agriculture: A Look at Contracts," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1308-1314.
    26. Carlsson, Bo, 1989. "Flexibility and the theory of the firm," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 179-203, June.
    27. Fuss, Melvyn & McFadden, Daniel, 1978. "Production Economics: A Dual Approach to Theory and Applications (II): Applications of the Theory of Production," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, volume 2, number fuss1978a.
    28. Zeller, Manfred & Robison, Lindon J, 1992. "Flexibility and Risk in the Firm," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 19(4), pages 473-484.
    29. E. C. Pasour & J. Bruce Bullock, 1975. "Implications of Uncertainty for the Measurement of Efficiency," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 57(2), pages 335-339.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hirsch, Stefan & Barissoul, Ayoub & Möhring, Niklas & Koppenberg, Maximilian, 2024. "Market power, profitability and the decision to exit organic dairy farming in the EU," IAAE 2024 Conference, August 2-7, 2024, New Delhi, India 344258, International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE).
    2. Takeshima, Hiroyuki & Hatzenbuehler, Patrick L. & Edeh, Hyacinth O., 2020. "Effects of agricultural mechanization on economies of scope in crop production in Nigeria," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    3. Hirsch, Stefan & Mishra, Ashok K. & Finger, Robert, 2017. "Firm Flexibility in the EU Dairy Processing Industry," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258467, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. repec:ags:aaea22:335708 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Koppenberg, Maximilian & Mishra, Ashok K. & Dalhaus, Tobias & Hirsch, Stefan, 2023. "The value of firm flexibility under extreme positive demand shocks: COVID-19 and toilet paper panic purchases," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    6. Christian Grovermann & Sylvain Quiédeville & Adrian Muller & Florian Leiber & Matthias Stolze & Simon Moakes, 2021. "Does organic certification make economic sense for dairy farmers in Europe?–A latent class counterfactual analysis," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 52(6), pages 1001-1012, November.
    7. Swetlana Renner & Thomas Glauben & Heinrich Hockmann & Pierre Ouellette, 2015. "Primal and dual multi-output flexibility measures," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 127-136, October.
    8. Tsakiridis, Andreas & Breen, James & O'Donoghue, Cathal & Hanrahan, Kevin & Wallace, Michael & Crosson, Paul, 2016. "Flexibility of beef suckler cow systems under varying calf retention strategies," 90th Annual Conference, April 4-6, 2016, Warwick University, Coventry, UK 236289, Agricultural Economics Society.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Swetlana Renner & Thomas Glauben & Heinrich Hockmann & Pierre Ouellette, 2015. "Primal and dual multi-output flexibility measures," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 127-136, October.
    2. Renner, Swetlana & Pieniadz, Agata, 2008. "Conceptualisation of family farms’ flexibility," 2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium 44126, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Josep Mª Argilés Bosch & Josep García Blandón, 2011. "The influence of size on cost behaviour associated with tactical and operational flexibility," Estudios de Economia, University of Chile, Department of Economics, vol. 38(2 Year 20), pages 419-455, December.
    4. Zimmermann, Klaus F., 1995. "Flexibility in the face of demand fluctuations: Employment, capacity utilization, and industry structure," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 179-193.
    5. Weiss, Christoph R., 2001. "On flexibility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 347-356, November.
      • Weiss, Christoph R. & Briglauer, Wolfgang, 2000. "On flexibility," FE Working Papers 0003, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Food Economics and Consumption Studies.
    6. Yang, Liu & Wang, Yonggui & Ma, Jun & Ng, Chi To & Cheng, T.C.E., 2014. "Technology investment under flexible capacity strategy with demand uncertainty," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 190-197.
    7. Gabriele Dono & Luca Giraldo & Simone Severini, 2012. "The Cost of Irrigation Water Delivery: An Attempt to Reconcile the Concepts of Cost and Efficiency," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 26(7), pages 1865-1877, May.
    8. Josep Mª Argilés-Bosch & Josep García-Blandón & Diego Ravenda & Maika M. Valencia-Silva & Antonio D. Somoza, 2017. "The influence of the trade-off between profitability and future increases in sales on cost stickiness," Estudios de Economia, University of Chile, Department of Economics, vol. 44(1 Year 20), pages 81-104, June.
    9. Dono, Gabriele & Giraldo, Luca, 2011. "Cost Analysis for Water Distribution in Agriculture," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 114435, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    10. Guven Sak & Erol Taymaz, 2004. "How Flexible are Small Firms? An Analysis on the Determinants of Flexibility," Working Papers 0416, Economic Research Forum, revised Aug 2004.
    11. Ryu, Sang-Lyul & Won, Jayoun, 2022. "Scale and scope economies in Korean accounting firms around Sarbanes-Oxley regulations," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    12. Finn Førsund & Lennart Hjalmarsson, 2004. "Are all Scales Optimal in DEA? Theory and Empirical Evidence," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 25-48, January.
    13. F R Førsund & L Hjalmarsson, 2004. "Calculating scale elasticity in DEA models," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 55(10), pages 1023-1038, October.
    14. Ewis, Nabil A., 1983. "A Neoclassical Analysis of the Demand for Cereals in Egypt," Working Papers 243426, University of California, Davis, Agricultural Development Systems: Egypt Project.
    15. Kala Krishna & Marie Thursby, 1994. "Structural Flexibility: A Partial Ordering," NBER Working Papers 4615, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Rezvanian, Rasoul & Mahdian, Seyed & Elyasiani, Elyas, 1996. "Economics of scale and scope in small depository institutions: Evidence from U.S. cooperative banks," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 39-54.
    17. Hisnanick, John J. & Kymn, Kern O., 1999. "Modeling economies of scale: the case of US electric power companies," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 225-237, June.
    18. Giancarlo Moschini, 1988. "The Cost Structure of Ontario Dairy Farms: A Microeconometric Analysis," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 36(2), pages 187-206, July.
    19. Charles A. Fleischman, 1996. "The endogeneity of employment adjustment costs: the tradeoff between efficiency and flexibility," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1996-48, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    20. Michaelides, Panayotis G. & Vouldis, Angelos T. & Tsionas, Efthymios G., 2010. "Globally flexible functional forms: The neural distance function," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 206(2), pages 456-469, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Production Economics; Productivity Analysis;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:iaae12:124865. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaaeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.