Francine Lafontaine
Biographic Data
| ID | 1075330 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Francine Lafontaine |
| GIVEN NAMES | Francine |
| FAMILY NAME | Lafontaine |
| SIGNATURE | LAFONTAINE F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5268-5097 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 7 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Financial Constraints and Moral Hazard: The Case of Franchising
Financial constraints are considered an important impediment to growth for small businesses. We study theoretically and empirically the relationship between the financial constraints of agents and the organizational decisions and growth of principals, in the context of franchising. We find that a 30 percent decrease in average collateralizable housing wealth in an area is associated with a delay in chains’ entry into franchising by 0.33 years on …
Do Large Modern Retailers Pay Premium Wages
With malls, franchise strips, and big-box retailers increasingly dotting the landscape, many are concerned that U.S. middle-class jobs in manufacturing are being replaced by minimum-wage jobs in retail. Retail jobs have spread, whereas manufacturing jobs have shrunk in number. The authors show that wage rates in the retail sector rise markedly with firm size and with establishment size. These increases are halved when they control for worker fixe…
Organizational Form and Performance: Evidence from the Hotel Industry
We use a unique proprietary panel data set from a large hotel company to study how organizational form affects hotel pricing and performance. Aggregate data patterns suggest sizable performance differences between franchised and company-operated hotels. However, after controlling for other factors, we find that if significant at all, such differences are economically small. Moreover, once we endogenize the choice of organizational form, the diffe…
Markets: State Franchise Laws, Dealer Terminations, and the Auto Crisis
In fall 2008, General Motors and Chrysler were both on the brink of bankruptcy, and Ford was not far behind. As the government stepped in and restructuring began, GM and Chrysler announced their plan to terminate about 2,200 dealerships. In this paper, we first provide an overview of franchising in car distribution, how it came about, and the legal framework within which it functions. States earn about 20 percent of all state sales taxes from aut…
The Dynamics of Franchise Contracting: Evidence from Panel Data
This paper provides the first systematic evidence on how franchi‐sors adjust their royalty rates and franchise fees as they gain fran‐chising experience. This evidence comes from a unique panel data set that we assembled on these monetary contract terms for about 1,000 franchisors each year for the 1980–92 period. We find that there is much persistence, over time, in franchise contract terms within firms. We find this despite sizable across‐firm …
Retail Contracting: Theory and Practice
We summarize a number of regularities that arise in the empirical literature on contractual relationships between manufacturers and their exclusive resellers. We do this using studies of traditional and business‐format‐franchise relationships, as well as studies of sales‐force‐integration decisions. Some of the patterns that we uncover are consistent with a standard incentive‐cum‐insurance theory of organization, while others are not. We briefly …
Retail contracting and costly monitoring: Theory and evidence
The Dynamics of Franchise Contracting: Evidence from Panel Data
This paper provides the first systematic evidence on how franchi‐sors adjust their royalty rates and franchise fees as they gain fran‐chising experience. This evidence comes from a unique panel data set that we assembled on these monetary contract terms for about 1,000 franchisors each year for the 1980–92 period. We find that there is much persistence, over time, in franchise contract terms within firms. We find this despite sizable across‐firm …
Do Large Modern Retailers Pay Premium Wages
With malls, franchise strips, and big-box retailers increasingly dotting the landscape, many are concerned that U.S. middle-class jobs in manufacturing are being replaced by minimum-wage jobs in retail. Retail jobs have spread, whereas manufacturing jobs have shrunk in number. The authors show that wage rates in the retail sector rise markedly with firm size and with establishment size. These increases are halved when they control for worker fixe…
Retail contracting and costly monitoring: Theory and evidence
Retail Contracting: Theory and Practice
We summarize a number of regularities that arise in the empirical literature on contractual relationships between manufacturers and their exclusive resellers. We do this using studies of traditional and business‐format‐franchise relationships, as well as studies of sales‐force‐integration decisions. Some of the patterns that we uncover are consistent with a standard incentive‐cum‐insurance theory of organization, while others are not. We briefly …
The Dynamics of Franchise Contracting: Evidence from Panel Data
This paper provides the first systematic evidence on how franchi‐sors adjust their royalty rates and franchise fees as they gain fran‐chising experience. This evidence comes from a unique panel data set that we assembled on these monetary contract terms for about 1,000 franchisors each year for the 1980–92 period. We find that there is much persistence, over time, in franchise contract terms within firms. We find this despite sizable across‐firm …
Markets: State Franchise Laws, Dealer Terminations, and the Auto Crisis
In fall 2008, General Motors and Chrysler were both on the brink of bankruptcy, and Ford was not far behind. As the government stepped in and restructuring began, GM and Chrysler announced their plan to terminate about 2,200 dealerships. In this paper, we first provide an overview of franchising in car distribution, how it came about, and the legal framework within which it functions. States earn about 20 percent of all state sales taxes from aut…
Organizational Form and Performance: Evidence from the Hotel Industry
We use a unique proprietary panel data set from a large hotel company to study how organizational form affects hotel pricing and performance. Aggregate data patterns suggest sizable performance differences between franchised and company-operated hotels. However, after controlling for other factors, we find that if significant at all, such differences are economically small. Moreover, once we endogenize the choice of organizational form, the diffe…
Do Large Modern Retailers Pay Premium Wages
With malls, franchise strips, and big-box retailers increasingly dotting the landscape, many are concerned that U.S. middle-class jobs in manufacturing are being replaced by minimum-wage jobs in retail. Retail jobs have spread, whereas manufacturing jobs have shrunk in number. The authors show that wage rates in the retail sector rise markedly with firm size and with establishment size. These increases are halved when they control for worker fixe…
Financial Constraints and Moral Hazard: The Case of Franchising
Financial constraints are considered an important impediment to growth for small businesses. We study theoretically and empirically the relationship between the financial constraints of agents and the organizational decisions and growth of principals, in the context of franchising. We find that a 30 percent decrease in average collateralizable housing wealth in an area is associated with a delay in chains’ entry into franchising by 0.33 years on …
Economics (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Franchising Strategies and Performance (6 works) · Microeconomics (6 works) · Merger and Competition Analysis (5 works) · Franchise (4 works) · Industrial organization (4 works) · Marketing (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Econometrics (3 works)