Appropriability,preemption, and firm performance

The impact of strategies used to appropriate innovation rents on firm performance is analyzed using a sample of U.S. public manufacturing firms. Stronger appropriability at the firm level, achieved through patent protection or the ownership of specialized complementary assets, leads to superior economic performance, as measured by the stock market valuation of a firm's R& D assets. Among commonly used ‘nonconventional’ patent strategies, preemptive patenting allows incumbents to strengthen their market power. Consistent with theory, such effect is higher for incumbents with higher ex ante market power and facing a higher threat of entry, and lower when R& D competition is characterized by the discovery of drastic innovations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An analysis of B2B ingredient co-branding relationships

The proliferation of co-branding in consumer markets has been given considerable attention in the literature, yet attention to the practice in business-to-business markets has been limited, despite the growing attention to the role of relationships in the B2B arena. In an examination of co-branding in the industrial sector, this paper discusses the use of ingredient co-branding and uses an econometric modeling approach to offer a rationale for why it occurs. The analysis provides insight into why downstream manufacturers participate in a relationship that strengthens the supplier's position in the market. We find that under the threat to the supplier of entry from a competitor whose costs are unobservable, co-branding relationships will be entered into resulting in a reduced probability of entry. This co-branding arrangement benefits both the incumbent supplier and the downstream manufacturer. The incumbent supplier benefits from the reduced probability of competitor entry, and the downstream manufacturer is rewarded with a lower price. Further, we find that the cost of the co-branded product is lower, due to a mitigation of double marginalization in a vertically-integrated solution. We examine co-branding relationships with and without advertising support and find that co-branding relationships with advertising support tend to be superior.     

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 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.     

Product specification under a threat of entry: Evidence from Airlines’ departure times

I examine how incumbent airlines adjust their departure times in response to the threat of entry by Southwest Airlines. I find that incumbents space their flights more evenly throughout the day when faced with potential entry. This reaction depends strongly on the level of the incumbent’s market share and hub status at the endpoint airports of a market. The evidence suggests that incumbents’ actions are designed to deter, rather than accommodate, entry. I do not find effects on flight frequency, suggesting that incumbents may rely more on the strategic choice of product attributes than on product proliferation to deter entry.     

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.     

Three problems in applying contestability to regulated markets

The theory of contestable markets emphasizes that the ease of entry rather than the number of existing firms forces incumbents to set prices at optimal levels. The policy implications of this work contrast sharply with past U.S. regulatory and antitrust policies, legitimizing increased industry concentration and decreased regulation. This paper explores three factors that influence the desirability of regulation or antitrust policy despite the apparent existence of a contestable market time lags, technological change, and cyclical macroeconomic fluctuations. Time lags enable incumbents to earnsupra-normal profits and take last-minute action to forestall entry. New technologies can create sunk costs that reduce the contestability of a market. Recessions can depress capital markets, raising the cost of exit, while expansion creates opportunities for entry without threatening monopolistic prices. These shortcomings limi the ability of contestability theory to provide guidelines for the regulation of actual industries.     

Acquisitions,entry, and innovation in oligopolistic network industries

In industries with network effects, incumbents' installed bases create barriers to entry that discourage entrepreneurs from developing new innovations. Yet, entry is not the only commercialization route for entrepreneurs. We show that the option of selling to an incumbent increases the innovation incentives for entrepreneurs when the network effects are strong and incumbents compete to preemptively acquire innovations. Thus, we establish that network effects and installed bases do not necessarily restrict the innovation incentives and that network effects promote acquisitions over 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.     

Big splash,no waves? Cognitive mechanisms driving incumbent firms’ responses to low‐price market entry strategies

Research Summary: Low‐price market entries, aiming for rapid sales growth, tend to prompt strong competitive reactions. This research explores whether and how firms using low‐price entry strategies can mitigate retaliatory incumbent reactions. An experiment with 656 managers shows that entrants can attenuate the strength of incumbents’ responses by fostering perceptions of high aggressiveness or low commitment. Entrants may be able to accomplish this by adjusting their entry strategy to embed (subtle) cues of aggressiveness and (lack of) commitment. A replication experiment with university students reinforces our overall theoretical argument. However, the results also indicate that the interpretation of cues embedded in the entry strategy may be affected by the experience of incumbent firm managers. Overall, these results clarify the cognitive foundations of competitive responses to market entry. Managerial Summary: What drives incumbents to respond strongly to market entries, and what can the entrant, if anything, do to mitigate those responses? This research offers empirical evidence and theoretical insights for managers faced with these questions by shedding light on the thinking processes preceding competitive responses. The study shows that while managers are motivated to respond strongly to market entries that appear to be highly consequential to their business, these responses may be mitigated if the entrant manages to foster perceptions of high aggressiveness or low commitment to the market. Managers form these perceptions in part on the basis of the entrant’s behavior, creating an opportunity for entrants to adjust their entry strategies in a manner that demotivates strong competitive responses.     

Pseudo-Generic Products and Barriers to Entry in Pharmaceutical Markets

This paper examines incentives for brand-name pharmaceutical producers to market pseudo-generic versions of their own branded products upon the expiry of patent protection.Using a two-stage game model, we determine that under plausible demand and cost conditions, brand-name incumbents can find it profitable to produce pseudo-generics as a means of blocking rivals' entry even when independent firms producing true generics face low entry costs.The model shows that social welfare can be higher when firms use pseudo-generics instead of capacity for entry deterrence as long as substitutability between brand-name and generic products is sufficiently high.     

NON‐COOPERATIVE ENTRY DETERRENCE IN LICENSE AUCTIONS: DYNAMIC VERSUS SEALED BID*

We examine the impact of potential entry on incumbent bidding behavior in license auctions, in both dynamic and sealed bid formats. Unlike sealed bid auctions, dynamic auctions reveal information about the identities of potential winners and allow bidders to revise their bids. This helps incumbents to coordinate their entry deterrence efforts. If entry is sufficiently costly for each incumbent, only the dynamic auction has an equilibrium where entry is deterred for sure. Numerical calculations suggest that, regardless of how costly entry is for each incumbent, sealed bid auctions can generate a higher probability of entry as well as a more efficient allocation.     

Threat of entry,asymmetric information,and pricing

This paper examines the impact of asymmetric information on incumbent firms' propensity to engage in limit pricing when faced with threat of entry. I draw from information economics to argue that incumbents will use price to respond ex ante to entry in situations characterized by asymmetric information. I suggest two situations in which asymmetric information can arise: when potential entrants are from outside the primary industry and when incumbent firms are members of R&D consortia. I then study pricing in the U.S. cable TV industry to show that pricing patterns of incumbent cable TV systems are consistent with limit pricing when the relationship between the incumbent and potential entrant is characterized by asymmetric information. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The learning curve,technology barriers to entry,and competitive survival in the chemical processing industries

This paper evaluates entry and survival rates in a sample of 39 chemical product industries. The analysis focuses on learning-based cost advantages potentially held by incumbent firms. A logit model of entry gives no evidence that entry decisions were sensitive to the cumulative production lead held by incumbents. Entry was facilitated by the fact that for most products, technology was available from a range of sources. A hazard function model reveals that entrant survival rates were unrelated to order of entry or source of process technology. However, survival was adversely affected when the leading incumbent held a large cumulative output advantage or when entrants built plants of sub-optimal scale. Thus, a large incumbent lead in production experience did not deter new entry but did reduce the entrant'S probability of survival.     

Is a Big Entrant a Threat to Incumbents? The Role of Demand Substitutability in Competition Among the Big and the Small

We establish a model of market competition between large and small firms and investigate the way in which demand substitutability affects how the entry of big firms impacts incumbents. We focus on the relative strength of two opposing effects of entry on large incumbent firms’ demand: the direct substitution effect among large firms (negative) and the indirect feedback effect through the change in small firms’ aggregated behavior (positive). If the substitutability between large and small firms is sufficiently high, the indirect effect dominates the direct effect and large incumbents’ equilibrium prices and profits increase. We show that welfare effects are ambiguous, which calls for careful assessment when regulating large firms’ entry.     

CREDIBLE RETALIATORY ENTRY AND STRATEGIC TOE‐HOLDS*

The anticipated profits from entry by an established firm into a new market will depend on how incumbents in that market are expected to respond. One possibility, suggested by cases and the literature, is that an incumbent may respond with ‘retaliatory entry’ into the first entrant's ‘home’ market. The model presented here describes conditions under which this can be a credible threat that deters the first entry. When the conditions are such that it is not credible, the paper shows how firms can provide credibility through the establishment of toe‐hold investments in other markets.     

Mode of entry and ex-post performance

In this study I develop and empirically test hypotheses delineating how a set of industry- and firm-level factors are differentially associated with postentry performance of de novo and acquisitive entrants. First, I conceptualize structural entry barriers as sunk costs or irrecoverable investments that entrants must make in the entered industry to be competitive vis-à-vis incumbents. I then argue that de novo and acquisitive entrants differ in three important ways: (1) incremental vs. up-front sunk cost investments in overcoming impediments to entry; (2) increasing productive capacity vs. changing ownership in the entered industry; and (3) low vs. high costs of integration when realizing synergies with parent firms. I use the Trinet, FTC-ALB, and Compustat data bases to construct a sample comprising de novo and acquisitive entries made during the period 1980–82. Next, I evaluate postentry survival and growth between 1982 and 1986. Overall, empirical tests provided partial support for the hypotheses, and the explained variance in my models ranged from 17 percent to 37 percent. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Asymmetry of information and contestability theory

In this paper, contestability theory is examined under conditions of asymmetric information. Signals of economic profitability to potential entrants are the incumbent's list price and accounting rate of return. A disequilibrium analysis indicates that, while potential entry imposes a price discipline, incumbents can earn profits, although not indefinitely under stable conditions. Also, there may be wasteful entry even into industries where prices approximate the optimum.