ADVERTISING SUNK COSTS AND CREDIBLE SPATIAL PREEMPTION

Large sunk investments in advertising allow managers to credibly preempt potential entrants by introducing new products prior to anticipated increases in market growth. Previous investment in advertising can lower a firm's cost to introduce new products allowing it to credibly preempt potential entrants. Entrants may not have enough residual share to find it profitable to enter later, and incumbents find it profitable to keep new products in the market even if entrants choose to enter. I present empirical evidence from the RTE cereal industry.     

Optimal Exit Policy with Uncertain Demand*

In a framework where entrants must make sunk investment decisions with uncertain returns and have private demand information, we show that the relationship between innovation and exit value is non-monotone and features an inverted U-shaped pattern. Consumer surplus is maximised at the lowest exit value that incentivises the investment. These insights are applied to optimal merger policy. An entrant is more willing to innovate to be acquired afterwards, even if it has no bargaining power. This innovation-for-buyout effect implies that an entrant is less likely to leave the market under a lenient than a strict merger policy.     

Implications of regulation for entry and investment in the local loop

A number of countries around the world are trying to promote competition at the local loop as demand for higher bandwidth to the home increases. Different technologies (xDSL, cable modems, and wireless local loop) offer alternative solutions and the issue for regulators is to design a framework that promotes competition and investment. Regulators can promote competition in a number of ways, but two “pure” strategies are services and infrastructure competition. This paper models the regulator and incumbent–entrant interactions explicitly in order to understand how the structure of the voice services might evolve under different regulatory frameworks. Our analysis suggests that a “mix” of infrastructure and service competition like the one promoted in Netherlands, stimulates investment by incumbents and entrants alike and offers better consumer benefits. The message for policy makers is that the introduction of “sunset clauses” provides new entrants with strong incentives to invest while allowing them to enter in service competition and to acquire important knowledge about their new market.     

How does institutional change affect heterogeneity among firms?

This paper examines the variation in performance of incumbents and entrants following the deregulation of prices and entry in the airline industry. Our approach is similar to earlier studies of interfirm performance heterogeneity across industries. Drawing on theories of industry evolution, we hypothesize that the performance of entrants will have higher variance than incumbents. Further, given the opportunities offered by price deregulation, we propose that incumbents will have higher variance in performance under deregulation than in the earlier regime. The findings indicate that entrant performance heterogeneity is significantly greater than incumbent performance heterogeneity following deregulation, but that the variation in performance among incumbents does not significantly change when deregulation occurs. The second result is surprising given the range of service and process innovations that incumbents initiated. These results suggest that the distinction between entrants and incumbents is critical to future studies of performance variation within and across industries. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

UNRAVELING THE PROCESS OF CREATIVE DESTRUCTION: COMPLEMENTARY ASSETS AND INCUMBENT SURVIVAL IN THE TYPESETTER INDUSTRY

When radical technological change transforms an industry established firms sometimes fail drastically and are displaced by new entrants, yet other times survive and prosper. Drawing upon an unusually rich data set that covers the technological and competitive history of the typesetter industry from 1886 to 1990, this paper uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis to unravel this process of creative destruction. It argues that the ultimate commercial performance of incumbents vs. new entrants is driven by the balance and interaction of three factors: investment, technical capabilities, and appropriability through specialized complementary assets. In this industry, specialized complementary assets played a crucial role in buffering incumbents from the effects of competence destruction, and an analysis that examined investment or technical capabilities in isolation would have led to misleading results. This work thus highlights the importance of considering multiple perspectives when examining the competitive implications of technological change. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Productivity Dynamics and the Role of ‘Big‐Box’ Entrants in Retailing

We use a dynamic model to measure the impact of the entry of large stores on incumbents’ productivity separate from demand while accounting for local markets and the endogeneity of entry. Using data on all retail food stores in Sweden, we find that incumbents’ productivity increases after the entry of large stores and that the magnitude of the increase declines toward the upper part of the productivity distribution. Our findings highlight that large entrants drive productivity.     

Institutional barriers and industry dynamics

This study demonstrates that new entrants exhibit higher productivity but also higher exit hazard than incumbents in post‐liberalization China. We argue this seemingly paradoxical relationship is attributable to institutional barriers, defined as the hindrance in the institutional environment that prevents market selection forces to function. New entrants require higher productivity to compensate for those institutional barriers, which in turn implies a higher exit hazard after controlling for productivity. Our empirical findings support this argument and further show that the differences in productivity and exit hazard between new entrants and incumbents become smaller where and when institutional barriers recede. By integrating economic and institutional perspectives, we highlight the importance of institutional factors in shaping industry evolution. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does competition increase quality? Evidence from the US airline industry

This paper studies the impact of competition on quality provision in the US airline industry exploiting a novel source of exogenous variation in competition. While mergers among market incumbents may stifle competition, a merger may increase the probability of entry if the merging airlines were not operating prior to merger in the market but each of them had presence at different route endpoints. We find non-merging incumbent airlines increase their flight frequency upon entry threat and accommodate entry of the newly merged airline by lowering flight frequency upon entry. While non-merging incumbents reduced arrival delays only upon entry of the newly merged airline, we find that incumbents decrease their cancelation rates and departure delays both upon merger announcement and entry of the newly merged airline. Our evidence suggests an increase in competition may increase consumer surplus, because non-merging incumbents increase quality and convenience, while keeping their prices unchanged.     

An Empirical Analysis of Entrant and Incumbent Bidding in Road Construction Auctions

This paper explores differences in the bidding patterns of entrants and incumbents in road construction auctions. We find that entrants bid more aggressively and win auctions with significantly lower bids than incumbents. The differences in their bidding patterns are consistent with a model of auctions in which the distribution of an entrant's costs exhibits greater dispersion than that of an incumbent's and relations of stochastic dominance in the distributions do not persist for the entire range of estimated costs. We also find that more efficient firms bid, on average, more aggressively and firms with greater backlogs bid less aggressively.     

The Institutions of Industrial Restructuring in Southeast Asia

The expected restructuring of Asian corporations in the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis has not materialized. This paper argues that restructuring in Asia will depend upon two institutional changes. First, the creation of high quality institutions that promotes the growth of new entrants and provides incentives to incumbents to restructure and or exit. Second, that the market scope of dominant incumbents be confronted and limited. The first condition creates pathways for new organizational populations to enter the economy and the second ensures room for their growth. The current debate emphasizes the former but neglects the latter. The absence of either inhibits the rate and direction of restructuring for two reasons. First, incumbents may lack the incentive and ability to exit or transform their structures and, secondly, incumbents can create a ‘blocking coalition’ to diminish competition from new entrants.     

Empirical studies of entry and exit: A survey of the evidence

Over 70 empirical studies of entry and exit patterns covering eleven different countries generally support the expectation that entry is more frequent in more profitable, rapidly growing industries, and slower where the absolute costs of capital required to build a minimum efficient scale plant are imposing. Scale economies, excess capacity, and limit pricing receive little empirical support as entry impediments. The evidence concerning the effects of advertising and R&D intensity is confusing.Exit is faster where profits are lower, and slower where durable specific (sunk) capital costs are more important. Exit and entry are strongly correlated, probably due to displacement (of incumbents by more efficient entrants) and vacuum effects (in which entrants are enticed by the prospects of selling to uncommitted customers abandoned by a recent exit).     

CUT‐THROAT FRINGE COMPETITION IN AN EMERGING COUNTRY MARKET: TAX EVASION OR THE ABSENCE OF MARKET POWER?*

Brazil's established soft‐drink firms recently lost ground to multiple low‐price entrants, with small‐scale operations and minimal advertising. While incumbents attributed such undercutting to entrants' lower costs from non‐compliance with the law, ‘generics’ counterargued that incumbents' high prices stemmed from unilateral market power rather than cost heterogeneity. By estimating a structural model, I can single‐handedly explain established brands' high prices through low equilibrium price elasticities of demand. Tax evasion in the fringe, while plausible, appears to be offset by higher procurement costs or less efficient scale. More generally, a competitive informal sector can alleviate the allocative distortions in certain concentrated industries.     

Profit Raising Entry

Common wisdom suggests that entry reduces profits of incumbent firms. On the contrary, we demonstrate that if the incumbents differ in marginal costs and the entrants behave like Stackelberg followers, then entry may benefit the cost efficient incumbents while hurting the cost inefficient ones. And the total outputs of all incumbents may be higher under entry.     

Does Big Drive Out Small?

This paper measures the impact of the entry of large supermarkets on incumbents of various sizes. Contrary to the conventional notion that big stores drive small rivals out of the market, data from Tokyo in the 1990s show that large supermarkets’ entry induces the exit of existing large and medium-size competitors, but improves the survival rate of small supermarkets. These findings highlight the role of store size as an important dimension of product differentiation. Size-based entry regulations would appear to protect big incumbents, at the expense of small incumbents and potential entrants.     

Did federal regulation discourage facilities-based entry into US local telecommunications markets?

In the United States from 2001 to 2006, federal regulations allowed entrants to lease from incumbents at relatively low cost all of the network infrastructure necessary to provide local phone service. These platform entrants could then provide phone service without installing any of their own equipment. Advocates of this policy claimed that it was needed to provide an economically feasible means by which entrants could serve residential customers. Critics contended that the policy substantially deterred loop entry whereby entrants installed their own switching equipment. An analysis of panel data for each state over this period indicates that the policy's critics may have been correct. The cross-price elasticity of loop entry with respect to platform price was roughly 1.0. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that loop entry may have decreased by roughly 20% due to platform entry price reductions.     

Estimating Differential Dynamic Merger Effects on Market Structure and Entry in Related Markets

The U.S. and EU merger guidelines emphasize “ease of entry” arguments but little is known about the dynamic impact of realized mergers on market structure. This study provides insights on this topic with the use of detailed firm-level data on the memory chip market. Our estimation results provide evidence for differential merger effects on market structure. These effects depend on whether the mergers are dominated by market-power or efficiency gains. While efficiency-dominated mergers cause exit, market-power-dominated mergers attract entrants, and these effects are increasing over time. We also find that market-power mergers have a larger effect on entry than efficiency mergers have on exit. Our results show that mergers can reduce the number of potential entrants into related product markets and serve as an instrument to “reduce the likelihood of entry”.

     

Non-Discriminatory Pricing,Partial Backward Ownership,and Entry Deterrence

This article demonstrates that entry deterrence can occur when downstream incumbents hold non-controlling ownership shares of a supplier that does not price-discriminate. Such backward ownership implies a rebate on the input price for the incumbents and a competitive disadvantage for downstream entrants. An industry can use non-controlling ownership to change the pricing of a supplier in a way that appears to be accommodating but in fact deters entry. The supplier benefits from an obligation or a commitment to supply the customers under equal terms, as this induces profitable sales of ownership stakes to incumbent downstream firms.     

Facilities to service based competition,not service to facilities based,for broadband penetration: A comparative study between the United States and South Korea

As a fundamental infrastructure in the Era of Information, a broadband network has a significant impact on democracy, economy, and society, indicating the importance of policy to increase broadband penetration. Considering the characteristics of broadband as a network, many governments introduced service-based competition, which is assumed to lower entry barriers by allowing entrants to lease incumbents' facilities, as a stepping stone to facilities-based competition.Questioning this unidirectional approach, the present study examines how the direction of policy implementation, that is service- to facilities-based versus facilities- to service-based, affects broadband diffusion. Through the case study of the U.S. and South Korea which experienced both modes of competition in opposing temporal sequences, this research concludes that facilities- to service-based competition might contribute to higher and faster broadband diffusion than service- to facilities-based competition. Rather than impose unbundling obligations against incumbents, facilities-based competition with financial support of the government to entrants seems to induce an earlier peak in broadband penetration. Additionally, consistent commitment of the government enforcement appears to be critical in implementing service-based competition.Though limited to the cases of the U.S. and Korea, this study suggests that service-based competition may be neither a necessity to facilitate broadband diffusion nor a precondition to introduce facilities-based competition. Moreover, service-based competition policy can function to deter overbuild of facilities and lessen the financial burden of broadband service providers if adopted after an initial period of facilities-based competition policy, which includes government investment in broadband facilities, that seems to help promote competition and give incentives to construct networks.Contrary to the literature, the present study raises a new perspective of the role of service-based competition as an enhancer for service quality and that of facilities-based competition with government investment as a booster of early and rapid broadband diffusion.     

Firm and environmental influences on the mode and sequence of foreign research and development activities

This paper develops an explanation for the mode and sequence of entry that firms select for their international research and development activities. The hypotheses are based on the internalization and evolutionary theory perspectives. I first hypothesize that there is a sequence to the mode of foreign research and development activities initiated. I then discuss two firm capabilities and alternatives which might cause firms to omit parts of the sequence. The context of the study is the foreign research and development activities of incumbents and recent entrants to the Japanese pharmaceutical industry. The results indicate intriguing differences between the motivations of established firms and new entrants in establishing foreign research and development activities. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.