The Notion of Vertical Integration in Economic Analysis. The Author constructs a model for vertically integrated sectors in the general case, within a new theoretical approach. First, commodities are measured in terms of physical units; then an alternative physical unit of measurement for capital goods is introduced. This is in terms of units of productive capacity. The Author begins with an analysis of an economic system in which all commodities are produced by means of commodities and are used as capital goods. Production is considered first with circulating capital goods only and then with fixed capital goods. Each commodity resolves itself into wages and profits. Each price is ultimately made up of wages and profits through labour coefficients. If the wage rate itself is used as the numeraire of the price system, all prices come to be expressed in terms of the wage rate (i.e. in terms of labour commanded). The Author then develops the same model within vertically integrated sectors of a higher order. A more specific definition of industry is given, generalisations and restrictions are discussed along with the role of technical progress. The new theoretical approach is shown to introduce dramatically new possibilities for dynamic analysis.

Hollywood’s overseas expansion during the 1920s–1930s resulted from interwoven economic, political, and industrial changes. Although European agents rented Hollywood movies prior to 1914, World War I destroyed European film industry infrastructures, thus allowing American companies to flood markets with their products. Simultaneously, US domestic growth resulted in vertically integrated companies whose international revenues facilitated greater quality and quantity of production. This achievement fostered by Jewish immigrant studio moguls repackaged the very utopian promise that had brought them to the United States. They accomplished what the US government could not – global advertisement for an American way of life and consumerism. Even though some nations attempted building robust film industries, boycotting American theatres and products, or legislating restrictions, the rise of Nazism and World War II prevented effective national cinemas. Hollywood’s global ascendancy is not simply about American domination but about how a national cinema became a global one.

This chapter covers the economic theory and evidence about the impact of provider consolidations (mergers and acquisitions) in healthcare services. As expected, hospital combinations within local markets (horizontal) are associated with higher unit prices but no measurable improvement in metrics of quality or outcomes. Prices increase by about 15%. Currently 30%–40% of the US population lives in big cities with competitive hospital markets. However, an equal fraction lives in smaller cities that could support more competitive hospitals; public policy to encourage competition there would be appropriate. The chapter investigates economic theories of vertical integration across markets; results here are less robust. An example of enhanced market power through bundling is provided, but a health system’s ability to do so is limited by lower administrative cost to employers of dealing with a single insurer that covers sellers in such markets.

The US legal system is notoriously complex. Navigating this labyrinthine structure requires knowledge of legal precedents, procedures, and rules, along with the ability to anticipate and adapt to shifts in the legal landscape. Businesses, therefore, require the guidance of seasoned lawyers. Over the past few decades, US corporations have increasingly turned to in-house lawyers for legal services, leading to their rising prominence in the corporate hierarchy and profound changes in the US legal profession and corporate governance. This could also be true for Chinese companies operating in the United States. Hence, this chapter investigates the Chinese companies’ utilization of full-time internal legal managers within the dual institutional context. For those employing such managers, this chapter scrutinizes two key aspects: (1) whether these legal managers are locally hired or are expatriates and (2) whether they hold licenses to practice law in the United States, which approximates their ability to handle US legal risks and opportunities. Analysis under the dual institutional framework reveals not only effects of both home- and host-state institutions but also substantial intercompany variations associated with other institutional and firm-specific variables of theoretical and policy importance.

The chapter begins with a paradox, namely that the liquor laws were liberalised in the early 1960s at precisely the moment when the apartheid regime was becoming distinctly illiberal. It argues that part of the reason was that the temperance movement had failed to reproduce itself generationally while its influence on the National Party government was marginal. Moreover, Afrikaner nationalists hitched wine to the bandwaggon of cultural nationalism. Successive commissions of enquiry targeted excessive drinking amongst the Coloured population, but attempts to extend the reach of racialised prohibition stalled. Indeed, the racial provisions of the 1928 Liquor Act were repealed in 1962, following the Malan Commission which maintained that the law was being routinely flouted. After a heated parliamentary debate the law was amended such that that wine could be purchased by all South Africans. Moreover, the distribution became freer with the creation of grocers’ licences for wine and promises of intervention to reverse vertical integration in the liquor industry. This outcome signalled a defeat for temperance interests and pointed to the greater influence wielded by the wine lobby.

This chapter analyses global value chains. First, we explain how globalisation leads to fragmentation of production and dispersion of activities. Global value chains consist of nodes, where each node represents the value added received from the previous node. Countries can now specialise in activities and functions – nodes of the global value chain – rather than in the whole production of certain goods. Second, we discuss how to measure global value chains, which is challenging. Recent efforts allow us to estimate so-called forward- and backward linkages. Third, we provide a framework to map the governance configuration of global value chains based on the complexity of the knowledge to be exchanged in a transaction, the ease of codifying information about the transaction, and the capability of the supplier with respect to the specificities of the transaction. Fourth, we describe some possible sources of inefficiencies in global value chains (taxation, rent-seeking, contracts and trade costs).

Discusses the regulatory principles for access pricing and for regulating multi-sided markets. Considers how access pricing affects investment, and the merits of vertical and horizontal separation

This chapter covers the value-adding segments of television GVC’s programme-making phase. It is a phase dominated by artistic intent and creation, right from the birth of the concept to post-production, where colour grading, sound mixing, and editing are taking place. The segments are: facilities (support and services to TV content producers), content production (content creation), and distribution. This chapter traces the route content follows from creation to final production master. It provides an in-depth analysis of each segment of the programme-making phase and includes aggregation. It examines firm behaviour and explains why the search for scale plays such a determining role in the strategies of firms. It highlights three key trends that characterise the chain’s programme-making production network: internationalisation, consolidation, and vertical integration, emphasising that they occur in the wider context of industry segmentation. The chapter looks back at the formation of ten global TV studios (or TV production majors) and defines the role and nature of content aggregation in the TV GVC.

We discuss vertical mergers, which occur when two firms at different levels of the supply chain consolidate to become one firm. Vertical mergers can provide procompetitive benefits when they decrease transaction costs, such as those incurred in market exchange, and eliminate double marginalization. These mergers, however, may increase a firm’s market power, which could lead to raising rivals’ costs or market foreclosure. In this chapter, we provide a comprehensive theory of vertical integration. We also discuss mergers that involve suppliers of complementary goods.

This chapter begins by comparing the developmental ecologies of bananas and coffee, showing how banana production for export has tended to arise on capital-intensive and fully proletarianized plantations dominated by vertically integrated transnational fruit companies. The spread of proletarianized and peripheralized banana regimes in the early part of the twentieth century generated local labor unrest throughout the banana-producing regions of Latin America, but this unrest was largely quelled by partnerships between authoritarian governments and the banana companies. This partnership unraveled as British world hegemony collapsed in the 1930s and 1940s. However, the world banana market was reconstructed under US world hegemony through a process of vertical disintegration that transformed banana transnationals into buyers/distributors and created spaces for the formation of local banana exporters through domestic development initiatives. In Colombia, this process transformed Urabá’s banana zone into a key site of development, but it only permitted entrance into a peripheral niche of the market. Collective action strategies akin to the ICA for coffee failed to generate opportunities for upgrading, pressuring Colombia’s banana planter-exporters to become heavily reliant upon the authoritarian practices of the National Front regime to quell worker unrest and maintain labor control on Urabá’s banana plantations.

This chapter is the first of two chapters relating to business strategy and covers the most fundamental aspects in terms of strategic planning and positioning. The starting point is a discussion of the concept of competitive advantage, and how this relates to value creation. Different types of competitive advantage, based on costs and benefits, are discussed, and these are related to market positioning, targeting and segmentation. The relevance of price elasticity is explained in the context of positioning and competitive advantage. Various forms of integration are discussed, in terms of vertical, horizontal and diversification aspects. The nature, costs and benefits of each of these forms is explained. Recent trends in diversification are discussed, along with empirical studies. As with other chapters, case studies are vital in order to illustrate the management principles; in this case, three prominent tech firms are discussed in terms of their strategy development since their origins: Apple, Netflix and Tesla. Although all of them are high-cap tech firms of global reach, they each have quite different prospects.

In Chapter 4, an attempt is made to classify national systems of healthcare delivery on the basis of their degree of organizational separation/integration. For this purpose, two opposing models are outlined: the integrated and the separated models. In order to bring into focus the main differences between the integrated model and the separated model, the use of the following dimensions is proposed: (1) insurer-provider integration; (2) primary and secondary care integration; (3) the presence or absence of gatekeeping mechanisms; (4) the greater or lesser freedom of patients in choosing their providers; (5) the individual or group practice of general practitioners. The twenty-seven countries considered in this research are distributed fairly evenly along the entire separation/integration axis. The majority of SHI systems have characteristics that arecloser to the separate model, while the majority of universalist countries are more oriented toward the integrated model. However, the association between the financing model and the provision model is by no means automatic.

In this chapter we consider supply chains, meaning the sequence of markets in an industry. For example, when the artist Damien Hirst hosted an auction of his own work at Sotheby’s London in 2008, he bypassed his dealers, leapfrogging over a stage of the typical supply chain. Supply chains are also sometimes vertically integrated markets, meaning the same firm owns many stages of these sequential markets. Vertical integration is the process by which a firm enters into the business area of its supplier or its customer, via acquisition, competition, or long-term contract. Vertical market power is often motivated by power or avoidance of different forms of market failure. Here, we are not (as in Chapter 4) talking about failure of the alignment of price and value but failure to transact reliably and without risk or undue cost. We explore related concepts of asset specificity and then business strategy models that take the supply chain as their spine.