On nonrenewable resource oligopolies: The asymmetric case

We give a full characterization of the open-loop Nash equilibrium of a nonrenewable resource game between two types of firms differing in extraction costs. We show that (i) there almost always exists a phase where both types of firms supply simultaneously, (ii) when the high cost mines are exploited by a number of firms that goes to infinity the equilibrium approaches the cartel-versus-fringe equilibrium with the fringe firms acting as price takers, and (iii) the cheaper resource may not be exhausted first, a violation of the Herfindahl rule, that may be detrimental to social welfare.     

Best response dynamics with level-n expectations in two-stage games

This paper analyzes behavior in repeatedly played two-stage games, where players choose actions in both stages according to best replies using level-n expectations about the opponent׳s actions in both stages. Level-n expectations are recursively defined in a way that a player holding level-n expectations correctly predicts the action of an opponent holding level-(n−1) expectations. A general conceptual framework to study such dynamics for two-stage games is developed and it is shown that, contrary to results for single-stage games, the fixed points of the dynamics depend on the level of the expectations. In particular, for level-0 expectation, fixed points correspond to a Nash equilibrium of a simultaneous move version of the game, whereas (under certain conditions) fixed points converge towards the subgame perfect equilibrium of the two-stage game if the level of expectations goes to infinity. The approach is illustrated using a two-stage duopoly game, where firms in the first stage invest in activities reducing their marginal costs and in the second stage engage in Cournot competition. Conditions for local stability of the fixed points are derived for different levels of expectations and it is shown that level-2 expectations are sufficient to move the fixed-point of the dynamics to a close neighborhood of the subgame perfect equilibrium. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that although firms benefit from unilateral increases in the level of expectations, an increase of n by all firms reduces all profits.     

Raising the bar (8)

This editorial summarizes the papers published in issue 13(3) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper challenges the home market hypothesis that large countries host more firms relative to their size than small countries by considering the lobbying activities of multinational firms. The second paper analyzes the implications of a spatial weight matrix used to estimate a spatial econometric model that depends on an endogenous economic variable. By adding a spatial context, the third paper provides a novel contribution to the literature on international norms in de facto measures of human rights performance. The fourth paper examines the determinants of accepting informal work in Poland. The fifth paper deals with non-stationarity and cointegration in a dynamic spatial econometric panel data model when the number of observations in the time – rather than in the cross-sectional– domain tends to infinity.     

Infinite-dimensional VARs and factor models

This paper proposes a novel approach for dealing with the ‘curse of dimensionality’ in the case of infinite-dimensional vector autoregressive (IVAR) models. It is assumed that each unit or variable in the IVAR is related to a small number of neighbors and a large number of non-neighbors. The neighborhood effects are fixed and do not change with the number of units (N), but the coefficients of non-neighboring units are restricted to vanish in the limit as N tends to infinity. Problems of estimation and inference in a stationary IVAR model with an unknown number of unobserved common factors are investigated. A cross-section augmented least-squares (CALS) estimator is proposed and its asymptotic distribution is derived. Satisfactory small-sample properties are documented by Monte Carlo experiments. An empirical illustration shows the statistical significance of dynamic spillover effects in modeling of US real house prices across the neighboring states.     

Inter-organizational communication as a relational competency: Antecedents and performance outcomes in collaborative buyer–supplier relationships

Inter-organizational communication has been documented as a critical factor in promoting strategic collaboration among firms. In this paper, we seek to extend the stream of research in supply chain management by systematically investigating the antecedents and performance outcomes of inter-organizational communication. Specifically, inter-organizational communication is proposed as a relational competency that may yield strategic advantages for supply chain partners. Using structural equation modeling, we empirically test a number of hypothesized relationships based on a sample of over 200 United States firms. Our results provide strong support for the notion of inter-organizational communication as a relational competency that enhances buyers’ and suppliers’ performance. Implications for future research and practice are offered.     

Strategic location of firms: Does it empower bribe givers or bribe takers?

This paper uses survey data on the corruption experience (rather than corruption perceptions) of firms located in different types of cities in more than one hundred countries to analyze the impact of firms’ strategic location on corruption. In a corrupt economy, location might influence the ability of bureaucrats/politicians and firms to extract and dodge rents. Placing the analysis in the literature on determinants of corruption, our results reveal that the corruption experiences of firms located in nations’ capital cities are qualitatively different from firms located elsewhere: they do not experience greater corruption, while firms in large cities and main business cities do. However, when manufacturing and service firms are considered separately, their corruption experience and perceptions differ.     

The impact of organizational structure on time-based manufacturing and plant performance

The innovation and organizational theory literatures argue that implementing radical innovation can be facilitated or hindered by the organization’s structural design. As firms attempt to cope with an external environment that is changing from industrial to post-industrial, how do they implement change? This study develops a research framework that examines relationships among various structural dimensions (i.e. number of layers in the hierarchy, level of horizontal integration, locus of decision-making, nature of formalization, and level of communication), time-based manufacturing practices, and plant performance. Based on 224 responses from manufacturing firms, this study develops instruments to measure these organizational sub-dimensions using part of this sample (N=104), and it tests the structural relationships with the remaining responses (N=120). Results indicate that the nature of formalization, the number of layers in the hierarchy, and the level of horizontal integration have significant, direct, and positive effects on the locus of decision-making and level of communication. Locus of decision-making and the level of communication, in turn, have significant, direct, and positive effects on time-based manufacturing practices. Finally, time-based manufacturing practices have a significant, direct, and positive impact on plant performance.     

Some large-concentration-parameter asymptotics for the k-class estimators

A sufficient condition is derived in this paper for the consistency and asymptotic normality of the k-class estimators (k-stochastic or nonstochastic) as the concentration parameter increases indefinitely, with the sample size either staying fixed or also increasing. It is further shown that the limited-information maximum likelihood estimator satisfies this condition. Since large sample size implies a large concentration parameter, but not vice versa, the usual conditions for consistency and asymptotic normality of the k-class estimators as the sample size increases can be inferred from the results given in this paper. But more importantly, the results in this paper shed further light on the small-sample properties of the stochastic k-class estimators and can serve as a starting point for the derivation of asymptotic approximations for these estimators as the concentration parameter goes to infinity, while the sample size either stays fixed or also goes to infinity.     

Revolutionary innovation and the incumbent business: Patterns of relationship and coping strategies

Revolutionary innovations bring about drastically new ways of doing business that potentially challenge the dominance and even the survival of many powerful incumbent firms. The choice of the incumbent firms’ strategies in coping with a revolutionary innovation depends on the specific patterns of relationship between the revolutionary innovation and the incumbent firms’ core business, be it substitutive, complementary, or parallel. In the situation of a substitutive relationship, the incumbent firms could exit from the incumbent business through swift divesting or gradual harvesting before it is eventually displaced or eroded. In a complementary relationship, the incumbents could absorb the innovation into the incumbent business by embracing the innovation that enables them to add entirely new functions to their incumbent business or assimilating the innovation to enhance the value of the incumbent business. In a parallel relationship, the revolutionary innovation either results in the retrenchment of the incumbent business or leaves it undisturbed, which, respectively, calls for specializing in certain niches of the incumbent business or further solidifying the incumbent business. In addition to the above coping strategies focusing primarily on the incumbent business, the incumbent firms also need to deal simultaneously with the new businesses inspired and propelled by the revolutionary innovation. They could fend off the potential disruptions of the innovation by engaging in a competitive fight in the market domain or a nonmarket fight in the sociopolitical domain. They could also enter those new businesses through greenfield entry or merger and acquisition.     

Efficiency and productivity in the Thai non-life insurance industry

This paper estimates a stochastic cost frontier for a sample of the non-life insurance industry in Thailand from 2000 to 2007. Our model explicitly considers the heteroscedasticity in the variances of the noise and inefficiency components that could affect the position of the cost frontier as well as the measurement of efficiency. Tests for double heteroscedasticity and appropriate specification for the cost frontier are performed. The chosen model is used to examine whether economies of scale and a change in technology exist. In addition, this paper calculates total factor productivity (TFP) change and decomposes it into scale effect, cost efficiency effect, technology effect, output effect, price effect, and environmental effect. Our results reveal that, on average, Thai non-life insurance firms are between 74 and 79 % efficient, that economies of scale exist, and that regress in technology shifts the cost frontier upward by 2.2 %. The regress in technology is the dominant contributor to a negative TFP growth of 1.15 %. The restructuring of the industry following the 1997 Asian financial crisis finally paid off when the industry experienced technology progress in 2005 and beyond. Between 2005 and 2007, technology progress and productivity growth occurred at a little over 2 % a year. In-depth analysis of the most and the least efficient firms reveals that most efficient firms tend to strategically select types of insurance services and underwrite average and small size sum insured per policy to diversify their risks. In addition, they tend to be savvy investors. The opposite holds for the least efficient firms which concentrate in providing labor-intensive, small sum automobile insurance policies or underwrite large coverage policies for fewer policyholders. Balancing the mix of insurance types, spreading risk across insurance types or across number of policyholders, investing in high yield assets, or developing a market niche may prove beneficial for improving cost efficiency.     

Bargains Followed by Bargains: When Switching Costs Make Markets More Competitive

In markets where consumers have switching costs and firms cannot price‐discriminate, firms have two conflicting strategies. A firm can either offer a low price to attract new consumers and build future market share or a firm can offer a high price to exploit the partial lock‐in of their existing consumers. This paper develops a theory of competition when overlapping generations of consumers have switching costs and firms produce differentiated products. Competition takes place over an infinite horizon with any number of firms. This paper shows that the relationship between the level of switching costs, firms' discount rate, and the number of firms determines whether firms offer low or high prices. Similar to previous duopoly studies, switching costs are likely to facilitate lower (higher) equilibrium prices when switching costs are small (large) or when a firm's discount rate is large (small). Unlike previous studies, this paper demonstrates that the number of firms also determines whether switching costs are pro‐ or anticompetitive, and with a sufficiently large (small) number of firms switching costs are pro‐ (anti‐) competitive.     

Adaptive expectations and cobweb phenomena: Does heterogeneity matter?

This paper studies a cobweb-type commodity market characterized by a strictly monotone demand and supply, in which n types of firms operate. Types differ in a key parameter governing price expectations which are supposed to be adaptive. The unique steady state of the resulting economic dynamics is characterized in terms of stability and the impact of the number of firms types is studied: to this end the notions of structural and behavioural degree of instability, which are introduced in the paper, prove to be crucial in determining whether stability or instability prevail. The case of market integration is also considered and conditions to have stability (or instability) in terms of the original markets' parameters are given. The baseline structure is extended in two directions. The first extension assumes the point of view of an authority who is uncertain about the firms types. In this case the structural degree of instability determines how heterogeneity affects the probability of ending up with a stable outcome. The second extension consists in endogenizing the choice of predictors through a discrete choice-based evolutionary mechanism. In both cases the amount of the heterogeneity and its possible variations play a critical role in shaping the range of possible long-run outcomes of the model.     

Cross-shareholding network and corporate bond financing cost in China

This study examines the effect of cross-shareholding network centrality on the cost of corporate bond financing. Based on a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms that issued general corporate bonds from 2007 to 2018, we adopt a social network analysis method and use three indicators (Degree, Betweenness, and Eigenvector) and the principal factor (Composite) extracted from them to measure the firms’ centrality in the cross-shareholding network. We find that bondholders’ demand lowers bond yield spreads for firms with higher cross-shareholding network centrality. In further analyses, we explore the impact mechanisms using mediator models and find that such centrality promotes resource accessing, information disclosure, and corporate governance, thus decreasing corporate bond financing cost. In addition, we incorporate the moderate effect of geographical location and find that the relationship between cross-shareholding network centrality and corporate bond financing cost is more significant in firms located in remote places.     

Emergent dynamics of a macroeconomic agent based model with capital and credit

In this paper we present and discuss a Macroeconomic Agent-Based Model with Capital and Credit (CC-MABM) which builds upon the framework put forward by Delli Gatti et al. (2011). The novelty of this model with respect to the previous framework consists in the introduction of a stylized supply chain where upstream firms – i.e. producers of capital goods (K-firms) – supply a durable and sticky input (capital) to the downstream firms, who produce consumption goods (C-firms) to be sold to households. Both C-firms and K-firms resort to bank loans to satisfy their financing needs. There are two-way feedbacks between firms and markets which yield interesting emerging properties at the macro level. We show that the interaction of upstream and downstream firms and the evolution of their financial conditions – in a nutshell: Capital and Credit – are essential ingredients of a “crisis” i.e. a sizable slump followed by a long recovery.     

Firm performance and the political economy of corporate governance: survey evidence for Bulgaria,Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia

Using survey data for 220 traditional manufacturing firms over 7 years of transition and 4 Central Eastern Europe (CEE) countries, we find firms that produced for the EU market under planning consistently outperform those that produced for the CMEA market. Within the previously CMEA market, the best firms were selected to outside privatisation and outperformed insider/state owned firms. Outside privatisation was resisted in EU oriented firms and ownership was found to have no effect on performance. Path dependent demand shocks and political constraints on the sequencing of state firms to private ownership determine the relationship between firm performance and ownership structure during transition.     

Animal spirits and unemployment: a disequilibrium analysis

The past decade has seen a number of advances in modelling disequilibrium dynamics. This paper draws on separate approaches to disequilibrium dynamics to demonstrate a Keynesian result concerning the formal relevance of “animal spirits” in production economies. Specifically, it is shown that a parameter that can be associated with the “animal spirits” of firms is crucial to the stability of full employment equilibrium in a production economy. This approach to “animal spirits” is different to that taken by recent New Keynesian DSGE-type models, but similar in spirit to “Old Keynesian” approaches, including that of the General Theory. The corollary of the main conclusion is that price flexibility is not a sufficient condition for convergence on full employment equilibrium.     

Managers’ use of language in corrupt firms’ financial disclosures: Evidence from FCPA violators

This paper explores management’s use of language in financial disclosures of corrupt firms by looking at a sample of firms that have been prosecuted for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). We find that the management of FCPA violators use more negative, less litigious, more complex and less conservative language when disclosing financials than non‐violators. The language effect prior to an FCPA prosecution is driven by firms with low corporate governance performance. By contrast, firms with high corporate governance use less complex and more conservative language before an FCPA prosecution than firms with low corporate governance performance. Furthermore, we find that after an FCPA prosecution the language becomes less litigious and complex than before the FCPA litigation.     

The number of banking relationships and the business cycle: New evidence from Colombia

We study the determinants of multiple bank–firm relationships using a uniquely rich data set comprised of information on individual loans of a large number of firms in Colombia. We control for firm-specific variables and find that the business cycle exerts important influence on the number of bank relationships sustained by firms. Our evidence suggests that the number of bank relationships is counter-cyclical, decreasing during macroeconomic expansions and increasing during contractions. However, this effect is stronger for large firms which have more access to alternative sources of funding.     

Capital procurement of a consumer cooperative: Role of the membership market

Cooperative firms are commonly thought to be financially weak and unable to flourish in the market economy. This paper addresses the idea that a consumer cooperative issues a membership, which represents an ownership share in the cooperative, as a method of procuring equity capital. It then shows that, in theory, consumer cooperatives are not necessarily financially weaker than investor-owned firms in the presence of a membership market. This implies that the consumer cooperative is potentially a promising alternative to the investor-owned firm when the latter type of firm induces serious market failure in the product market.     

Information systems and technology sourcing strategies of e-Retailers for value chain enablement

In the e-Retail industry, a well-designed IT infrastructure is essential in creating a tightly integrated value chain and delivering high quality service. With intense competition for market share and profits, information systems and technology (IST) sourcing decisions are becoming increasingly important to e-Retail firms to support continued growth and market responsiveness. Drawing on the contingency theory, we examine organizational and environmental factors that influence an e-Retailer's IST sourcing strategy of make versus buy in enabling its value chain activities, and we also look at firm-level performance impacts of IST sourcing decisions that involve bundling across value chain activities. We test the proposed model and hypotheses using a panel data set of 307 firms over the period of 2006–2010. The results show that firms that make transformative IT investments tend to source a smaller portion of IST for their e-Retail value chain activities than firms that pursue automate or informate as their strategic role for IT investment. Capabilities are positively associated with IST sourcing. Firms experienced in e-Retail are more likely to build rather than buy their IST. In addition, we find mimicking behavior for IST sourcing among firms in the same merchandizer category. We find that IT strategic role is strongly associated with growth metric, whereas sourcing decisions predominantly impact operational performance measures. There is partial evidence that alignment between IT strategic role and IST sourcing decisions results in better performance effects. Moreover, complementary IST sourcing of synergistic marketing and sales activities positively impacts Web sales and conversion rate, but the sourcing combination of logistics, operations, and sales activities is associated with lower Web sales and conversion rate.