Drug innovation and price competition

This study is designed to examine the relationship between drug innovation and price competition. The empirical results presented here support the hypothesis that new drugs-as measured by new chemical entities-exert downward pressure on the prices of existing competitors within the same therapeutic class. The implication of this finding for public policy is that drug innovation not only provides new therapy but also stimulates price competition.     

When patents matter: The impact of competition and patent age on the performance contribution of intellectual property rights protection

The question whether patenting impacts patenting firms' subsequent financial performance is important for technology-oriented companies. However, relevant research has led to contradictory results. We strive to overcome this impasse by introducing innovation competition and patent age as moderators of patents' performance contribution into the discourse. Based on a sample of 975 cases from diverse industries, we find strong support for our arguments. In line with our expectations, the results show that the number of patents granted, the degree of patent competition, and the timeliness of a patent contribute positively to financial performance. Moderation analysis nuances our findings by showing that the impact of patent protection on financial performance is stronger when the patent competition is stronger and the patents are younger.These findings provide insights into the conditions under which patenting leads to higher financial performance. Our findings highlight the importance of innovation competition and patent age for innovation research. The empirical results show firms that patenting pays and that, in order to tap the full potential of patents, they need to focus on emerging competing industries and reduce the time to market. Policy makers learn that patenting is a successful approach to foster innovation at limited social costs.     

基于实证分析的JY市邮储银行客户满意提升策略研究

随着全球经济一体化进程的加快,银行业竞争日趋激烈,客户已成商业银行的战略性资源,客户满意度目前已成为影响商业银行竞争力的关键因素。基于实证研究,对JY市邮储银行的客户满意度进行测量与分析,并从服务理念、特色与定位、产品与服务创新等方面提出了JY市邮储银行客户满意的提升策略。     

产品市场竞争与现金持有动态调整

本文采用中国上市公司2005～2008年812家公司3248个样本的平衡面板数据,对产品市场竞争及其变化与企业现金持有动态调整之间的关系进行研究。实证研究的结果表明,从静态角度看,产品市场竞争对现金持有调整速度的影响不显著;但是从动态角度看,企业的现金持有水平将随着产品市场竞争的动态变化做出调整,产品市场竞争越趋向激烈,企业现金持有调整的速度越快。进一步研究发现,产品市场竞争的动态变化与现金持有调整速度之间的上述关系在非国有企业和高成长企业更为明显。     

Time-Varying Relationship between Inflation and Inflation Uncertainty

This paper investigates whether the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty has changed and whether the change in this relationship has been gradual or abrupt. We extend the time-varying parameter with stochastic volatility in mean model (TVP-SVM) to include a mixture innovation disturbance in the time-varying parameter process. The proposed model produces more reliable estimates and allows us to investigate the occurrence of breaks in the gradually evolving process of the time varying coefficients. Using data of US, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, UK, France, Italy, Spain and Australia, we find that: (i) the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty substantially varies over time; (ii) there is strong support for the existence of abrupt changes in the US inflation–inflation uncertainty relationship; (iii) our empirical results of Canada and New Zealand show that the correlation between inflation and inflation uncertainty has been much weaker since early 1990s, which coincides with the timing of the implementation of inflation targeting.     

Effects of standardization and innovation on mass customization: An empirical investigation

Mass customization (MC) refers to the capability to produce customized goods for a mass market. Innovation can enhance the flexibility and responsiveness of a company, and standardization enables the company to achieve economies of scale and scope, both of which are necessary for developing MC capability. A conceptual model is proposed to explore the relationships among innovation, standardization, MC capability, and delivery speed. Hypotheses are tested using survey data from 204 manufacturing companies in China. The results show that standardization positively influences innovation. Innovation and standardization positively affect MC capability and are complementary in developing MC capability. Innovation significantly enhances delivery speed. However, the direct effect of standardization on delivery speed is nonsignificant. In addition, innovation and standardization indirectly affect delivery speed through MC capability. This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the individual and interactive effects of standardization and innovation in developing MC capability and their joint influence on delivery speed. The results will help managers understand the roles of standardization and innovation in improving organizational capability and performance.     

经济增长过程中人力资源开发问题的研究

21世纪是竞争的社会,而这种竞争归根到底就是人才的竞争,即一国人力资源的数量和质量直接影响其经济发展的速度和其在全球经济中竞争力强弱。文章指出,为了更好地开发和利用我国的人力资源,政府要调整好教育产业结构,同时加强人力资源的产权保护,这样才能提高人力资源开发的积极性,促进经济增长。     

Innovation ecosystems: A conceptual review and a new definition

The concept of innovation ecosystems has become popular during the last 15 years, leading to a debate regarding its relevance and conceptual rigor, not the least in this journal. The purpose of this article is to review received definitions of innovation ecosystems and related concepts and to propose a synthesized definition of an innovation ecosystem. The conceptual analysis identifies an unbalanced focus on complementarities, collaboration, and actors in received definitions, and among other things proposes the additional inclusion of competition, substitutes, and artifacts in conceptualizations of innovation ecosystems, leading to the following definition: An innovation ecosystem is the evolving set of actors, activities, and artifacts, and the institutions and relations, including complementary and substitute relations, that are important for the innovative performance of an actor or a population of actors. This definition is compatible with related conceptualizations of innovation systems and natural ecosystems, and the validity of it is illustrated with three empirical examples of innovation ecosystems.     

The role of openness in the fuzzy front-end of service innovation

The early stages of innovation involve high levels of uncertainty, leading to it being labelled as the “fuzzy-front end” (FFE). Although openness has been identified as pivotal to innovation performance in the open innovation literature, little effort has been put into exploring its role in the FFE. Specifically, this study examines ‘openness competence’ within the FFE–i.e., the ability of a FFE team to explore, gather and assimilate operant resources from external sources by means of external searches and inter-organisational partnerships. The aim is to investigate the impact of openness competence on front-end uncertainty reduction and service innovation success. Data were obtained from a survey of 122 IT-based service innovation projects implemented by IT service provider firms in Thailand. The results suggest that openness competence positively influences both the degree of uncertainty being reduced during the FFE and the overall success of service innovations. These findings offer several implications for research on open innovation and the FFE as well as encouragement to managers to apply a more open approach to the FFE of their service innovation projects.     

TAX COMPETITION AS A CAUSE OF FALLING CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATES: A SURVEY OF EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

Abstract Since the mid 1980s, tax rates on corporate income have declined in most industrialized countries. Tax competition between countries for mobile capital has frequently been mentioned as an explanation for this development. A vast empirical literature dealing with tax competition for mobile capital has emerged. This paper categorizes and summarizes the existing empirical studies on this issue. Particular focus is placed on the isolation of the substantive implications the quantitative study outcomes convey. Given the empirical evidence surveyed, it appears that tax rates indeed decline due to tax competition between countries, and in particular due to competition for profits. In addition to summarizing the substantive implications of the existing empirical literature, the paper addresses the question of whether the existing studies can convincingly isolate tax competition as a driver of falling corporate income tax rates.     

Managerial incentives for process innovation

Cost‐reducing investments by firms are often not publicly observable. This lack of observability would preclude a strategic use of process innovation. However, we show that an observable and verifiable contract that provides direct monetary incentives for cost reductions — an innovation incentive contract — can act as a strategic commitment device. Our model predicts that manager‐led firms are more innovative than owner‐led firms and that these contracts become less prevalent as product market competition intensifies. Both predictions are consistent with recent empirical evidence. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Purchasing orchestration practices – Introducing a purchasing-innovation framework

This research investigates the purchasing role in enhancing an organization's innovation performance. Taking a purchasing perspective, this research introduces a new purchasing-innovation framework and specific purchasing orchestration (PO) practices related to the acquisition, integration, re-configuration, and commercialization of critical resources to enhance innovation performance. A theory elaboration methodology is applied to broaden the scope of resource orchestration theory (ROT) and introduce PO practices as an essential enabler of innovation. Qualitative interviews with managers from different industries enrich the theory elaboration process. This research contributes to theory by developing the concept of PO and enhancing the theoretical understanding of its meaning. Based on theory and empirical data, this research elucidates the PO practices of resource structuring, bundling, and leveraging support. The purchasing innovation framework explains how open-mindedness and technological uncertainty influence purchasing orchestration practices and innovation performance. Purchasing managers benefit from this research by learning to identify and address potential PO capability gaps and take a holistic perspective on resource management, looking both upstream and downstream in the supply chain.     

Innovation for Inclusive Business: Intrapreneurial Bricolage in Multinational Corporations

It is often argued that multinational corporations (MNCs) are in a unique position to innovate business models that can help to alleviate poverty. This empirical study into intra‐organizational aspects of pro‐poor business innovation in two MNCs suggests, however, that certain elements of their management frameworks – such as short‐term profit interests, business unit based incentive structures, and uncertainty avoidance – may turn into obstacles that prevent MNCs from reaching their full potential in this respect. We introduce the concept of intrapreneurial bricolage to show how middle manager innovators may promote pro‐poor business models despite these obstacles. We define intrapreneurial bricolage as entrepreneurial activity within a large organization characterized by creative bundling of scarce resources, and illustrate empirically how it helps innovators to overcome organizational constraints and to mobilize internal and external resources. Our findings imply that intrapreneurial bricolage may be of fundamental importance in MNC innovation for inclusive business. In addition to the field of inclusive business, this study has implications for the study of bricolage in large organizations and social intrapreneurship, as well for managerial practice around innovation for inclusive business.     

Learning,disagreement and inflation forecasting

This paper studies inflation forecasting based on the Bayesian learning algorithm which simultaneously learns about parameters and state variables. The Bayesian learning method updates posterior beliefs with accumulating information from inflation and disagreement about expected inflation from the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). The empirical results show that Bayesian learning helps refine inflation forecasts at all horizons over time. Incorporating a Student’s t innovation improves the accuracy of long-term inflation forecasts. Including disagreement has an effect on refining short-term inflation density forecasts. Furthermore, there is strong evidence supporting a positive correlation between disagreement and trend inflation uncertainty. Our findings are helpful for policymakers when they forecast the future and make forward-looking decisions.     

Competition and Innovation in Retail Electricity Markets: Evidence from Italy

Italy's 2015 Annual Competition Law, if finally approved, provides for phasing out retail electricity price regulation, as well as the implementation of full retail liberalisation, from 1 July 2018. This is a significant reform, not just because it is consistent with the broader market design for electricity. Indeed, retail liberalisation is a qualifying element of the full integration of the European Union's electricity market. The full opening of retail markets provides a great opportunity for innovation, both on the demand side and on the supply side. This article investigates the theoretical background, and presents some empirical evidence, on the competition–innovation nexus in retail electricity markets.     

The M5 competition: Background,organization, and implementation

The M5 competition follows the previous four M competitions, whose purpose is to learn from empirical evidence how to improve forecasting performance and advance the theory and practice of forecasting. M5 focused on a retail sales forecasting application with the objective to produce the most accurate point forecasts for 42,840 time series that represent the hierarchical unit sales of the largest retail company in the world, Walmart, as well as to provide the most accurate estimates of the uncertainty of these forecasts. Hence, the competition consisted of two parallel challenges, namely the Accuracy and Uncertainty forecasting competitions. M5 extended the results of the previous M competitions by: (a) significantly expanding the number of participating methods, especially those in the category of machine learning; (b) evaluating the performance of the uncertainty distribution along with point forecast accuracy; (c) including exogenous/explanatory variables in addition to the time series data; (d) using grouped, correlated time series; and (e) focusing on series that display intermittency. This paper describes the background, organization, and implementations of the competition, and it presents the data used and their characteristics. Consequently, it serves as introductory material to the results of the two forecasting challenges to facilitate their understanding.     

实体企业金融化对技术创新的影响研究

以2007—2017年中国沪深A股非金融类上市企业为样本,本文研究金融化对企业总体技术创新、突破式创新以及渐进式创新的影响。结果表明,金融化会显著抑制企业不同类型技术创新,且对突破式创新的抑制作用较大。在此基础上,将经济不确定性纳入研究框架发现,经济不确定性增加不仅会扩大金融化对企业不同类型技术创新的抑制作用,且这一抑制作用因企业所有权和所属产业不同而有所差异。其中,对于低创新强度的国有企业和非高新技术企业,经济不确定性增加会扩大金融化对其渐进式创新的抑制作用;而对于高创新强度的非国有企业和高新技术企业,经济不确定性增加则会扩大金融化对其突破式创新的抑制作用。进一步分析不同期限的金融资产投资对企业不同类型技术创新的影响,发现长期金融化会显著抑制企业不同类型技术创新,而短期金融化的影响则不显著。     

Trade creation and diversion revisited: Accounting for model uncertainty and natural trading partner effects

The effect of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on trade flows is subject to model uncertainty stemming from the diverse and even contradictory effects suggested by the theoretical PTA literature. The existing empirical literature has produced remarkably disparate results and the wide variety of empirical approaches reflects the uncertainty about the ‘correct’ set of explanatory variables that ought to be included in the analysis. To account for the model uncertainty that surrounds the validity of the competing PTA theories, we introduce Bayesian model averaging (BMA) to the PTA literature. Statistical theory shows that BMA successfully incorporates model uncertainty in linear regression analysis by minimizing the mean squared error, and by generating predictive distributions with optimal predictive performance. Once model uncertainty is addressed as part of the empirical strategy, we find strong evidence of trade creation, trade diversion, and open bloc effects. Our results are robust to a range of alternative empirical specifications proposed by the recent PTA literature. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

新形势下企业经济管理创新研究

改革开放以后,我国的经济得到了快速的发展。经济的发展使得行业竞争不断加剧,企业之间的不断竞争对企业的创新能力提出了更高的要求。企业要想在这激烈的竞争当中存活下去,实现自身的价值,就必须努力进行创新。然而,当下很多企业在经济管理创新方面还有很多的不足之处。本篇文章就是要对新形势下企业经济管理创新问题进行一下探讨和分析,发现其中的问题,并针对这些问题提出相应的解决方法。     

Exploring the impact of innovation strategy on R&D employees’ job satisfaction: A mathematical model and empirical research

This study develops a mathematical model to examine the effect of innovation strategy on R&D employee’s job satisfaction and to identify the optimal guidelines of innovation strategy, with conflict and organization performance being treated as the intermediary variables. The study further conducts an empirical survey to illustrate the contributions of this mathematical model. The results indicate that the product innovation has a greater influence on organizational performance, while the process innovation has a greater influence on conflict resolution among R&D employees. The mathematical and empirical results have provided an optimal guideline for determining the allocation of resources, which suggests that firms must focus on product innovation to gain the optimal R&D employee’s job satisfaction. In addition, the types of innovation policies along with rivals’ attitudes influence the advantages to be taken from a firm innovation strategy.