Contractual structure in British Columbia’s silviculture sector : a transaction cost economic analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the effects of institutional reforms in British Columbia's silviculture sector. Based on transaction cost economics, the institutional restructuring in BC's silviculture sector, especially since 1987, is argued to have effected the contractual relationships for silvicultural performances in response to the need to economize on transaction costs. Research emphasis is on forest companies' choice of contractual forms between contracting out and in-house operation. An analytical framework is developed through the presentation of a theory of contractual choices and the identification of a set of transaction cost attributes and firm characteristics. Hypothesis testing is performed by means of probit and ordered probit models, using survey data. Empirical results confirm the general validity of transaction costs theory that firms pick contractual forms in accordance with the attributes of silvicultural activities and firm-specific characteristics. Separate regression analyses have also been conducted to examine the determinants of forest companies' choice of payment schemes such as piece wages and time rates and the determinants of silvicultural contractors' performances. Changes in the structure of silvicultural costs during the period 1987 - 1996 have also been examined through a case study of a major forest company that operates on the BC Coast. The empirical results confirm that contractual forms tend to align with transaction attributes and firm characteristics so that some costs of transacting can be saved. The research findings suggest that neither pure market-based outsourcing nor vertically integrated in-house forms necessarily prevail. Ultimately, the choice of governance modes is dictated by the nature of the transactions involved.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".