Dynamic efficiency of Cournot and Bertrand competition: input versus output spillovers

We consider the efficiency of Cournot and Bertrand equilibria in a duopoly with substitutable goods where firms invest in process R&D that generates input spillovers. Under Cournot competition firms always invest more in R&D than under Bertrand competition. More importantly, Cournot competition yields lower prices than Bertrand competition when the R&D production process is efficient, when spillovers are substantial, and when goods are not too differentiated. The range of cases for which total surplus under Cournot competition exceeds that under Bertrand competition is even larger as competition over quantities always yields the largest producers’ surplus.     

Endogenous spillovers and incentives to innovate

Summary. We present a new approach to endogenizing technological spillovers. Firms choose levels of a cost-reducing innovation from a continuum before they engage in competition for each other's R&D-employees. Successful bids for the competitor's employee then result in higher levels of cost reduction. Finally, firms enter product market competition. We apply the approach to the long-standing debate on the effects of the mode of competition on innovation incentives. We show that incentives to acquire spillovers are stronger and incentives to prevent spillovers are weaker under quantity competition than under price competition. As a result, for a wide range of parameters, price competition gives stronger innovation incentives than quantity competition. Received: February 1, 1999; revised version: November 14, 2001     

STRATEGIC R&D AND NETWORK COMPATIBILITY

We analyse the effects of network externalities in strategic R&D competition. We present a model of two firms competing with R&D investments and prices in a differentiated consumer market. Buyers form firm-specific networks which can be compatible. A high degree of compatibility and large spillovers moderate price competition due to weak strategic value of firm-specific networks and R&D investments, respectively. Asymmetry in product qualities brings out network effects that cancel out in conventional symmetric settings. The lower quality firm increases R&D and decreases its price as spillovers or network compatibility is increased. This happens when R&D and firm-specific network size have high strategic value.     

Growth, Competition and Welfare

The impact of competition on growth and welfare is analysed by developing a model in which the number of firms, profit margins and innovation rates are endogenous. Different regimes of oligopolistic competition are distinguished. The tougher the price competition, the lower the profit margins for a given rate of concentration. This reduces the number of firms and product variety in a free entry equilibrium. Consequently, tougher competition implies larger firm size and higher rates of innovation since new technologies can be applied in a larger market. Oligopolistic pricing leads to underinvestment in firm-specific knowledge, even if inter-firm knowledge spillovers are neglected.     

政府产品创新补贴下的企业R＆D策略选择

为了研究在政府产品创新补贴政策下企业的R＆D策略选择问题,建立了双寡头市场中面向工艺R＆D的三阶段博弈模型：第一阶段政府以社会福利最大为目标选择产品创新补贴率;第二阶段企业进行R＆D投资以降低生产成本;第三阶段企业在产品市场中进行古诺竞争。根据双寡头在第二和第三阶段是否合作,给出了研发竞争、研发卡特尔、技术共享联盟和研究共同体等四种R＆D策略,得到了相应的政府最优R＆D补贴率。研究表明：从企业的R＆D投入和产品产量的角度看,当溢出效应较高时,研发竞争策略优于研发卡特尔策略;当溢出效应较低时,研发卡特尔策略优于研发竞争策略。研发卡特尔策略与研发竞争策略相比,研发卡特尔更能推动企业利润的提高并且可以改善社会总福利。从产品产量、企业利润和社会总福利最大化角度考虑,研究共同体为四种策略中的最优策略。     

Market size and entry in international trade: Product versus firm fixed costs

This paper develops a theoretical framework to infer the nature of fixed costs from the relationship between entry patterns in international markets and destination market size. If fixed costs are at the firm level, firms take advantage of an intrafirm spillover by expanding firm‐level product range (scope). Few firms enter with many products and dominate international trade. If fixed costs are at the product level, an interfirm spillover reduces the fixed costs to export for all firms producing the product. The resulting entry pattern consists of many firms exporting different varieties of the same product. Using cross‐country data on firm and product entry, I find empirical evidence consistent with product‐level costs. More firms than products enter in larger markets offering their consumers lower prices and a greater variety of goods within the product category.     

Product customization

The advent of the Internet has revolutionized the way companies advertise, develop and distribute products. Firms can now customize their advertising messages and products to the particular characteristics and needs of customers. Customers themselves can create their own products. We investigate investments by firms in product-customization capabilities within a duopoly model of horizontal product differentiation. We find that (i) if brand name effects are not too strong, one firm emerges as a leader in product customization—firms make asymmetric investments in product-customization technologies in order to reduce price competition, (ii) if brand name effects are strong, both firms make extensive investments in product customization, and (iii) the possibility of product customization can raise industry profits if brand names are weak, but not when they are strong.     

Selection,Market Size and International Integration: Do Vertical Linkages Play a Role?

We analyze how increases in the market size and in the level of international integration affect the process of selection among firms with heterogeneous productivity levels when they are interconnected by vertical linkages. We show that when vertical linkages among firms are relatively weak (strong), an increase in the market size softens (toughens) the competition facing firms in this market and more firms of a lower (higher) efficiency survive, increasing (decreasing) the welfare level. Moreover, an increase in the level of economic integration softens competition only for intermediate vertical linkages, worsening the welfare level only for strong linkages.     

Chinese competition and product variety of Indian firms

Using detailed firm-product-year data across manufacturing industries in India, and exploiting the exogenous nature of China’s entry into the WTO in 2001, we investigate the link between the impact of import penetration from China on the product variety of Indian manufacturing firms. We find: (i) robust and significant effects of product drop, with the effect coming only from competitive pressure in the domestic market; (ii) robust evidence of product drop or ‘creative destruction’ only for firms belonging to the lower-half of the size distribution; (iii) firms drop their peripheral/marginal products and concentrate on the core ones; and (iv) the result is strongest for firms producing intermediate goods. For an average Indian manufacturing firm, a 10 percentage point increase in India’s Chinese share of imports in the domestic market reduces the product scope of firms by 1.7–4.4%. In contrast, we find positive effects on product scope when firms are importing intermediate goods. We also find evidence of significant productivity effects and within-firm factor reallocation. Our results are consistent to a battery of robustness checks and IV estimation.     

Spillover feedback loops and strategic complements in R&D

This paper studies, in a two‐period model, the effects of knowledge spillovers among product market competitors on R&D levels. It argues that when firms' R&D decisions are strategic complements, in industries in which spillovers increase the marginal productivity of a firm's R&D, both incoming and outgoing spillovers spur R&D in equilibrium. Outgoing spillovers can foster innovation even in a homogeneous‐product industry. In these industries, the intellectual property law should be such that facilitates knowledge diffusion. If firms have power in deciding the level of knowledge spillovers, we show that a firm will choose to disclose its knowledge to its product market competitors.     

Does FDI Facilitate Domestic Entry? Evidence from the Czech Republic

This paper analyzes the impact of FDI on domestic firm entry and firm size distributions in the Czech Republic during 1994–2000. We find that larger foreign presence stimulates the entry of domestic firms within the same industry, indicating the existence of positive horizontal spillovers from FDI. We also find evidence of significant vertical entry spillovers—FDI in downstream (upstream) industries initiates entry in upstream (downstream) sectors. Our results also show that entry spillovers through vertical linkages are stronger than horizontal spillovers and that while service industries benefit from both horizontal and vertical spillovers, manufacturing industries do not experience significant positive entry spillovers of any kind. We also find that country of origin of FDI matters—horizontal spillovers are driven by FDI from the EU countries. The right skewness of the firm size distributions in industries without FDI further emphasizes an important role of FDI presence for overall industry dynamics.     

Impact of firm heterogeneity on direct and spillover effects of FDI: Micro-evidence from ten transition countries

This paper presents a comparative study of the importance of direct technology transfer and spillovers through FDI on a set of 10 transition countries, using a common methodology and appropriate methods to account for selection and simultaneity correction. This paper considers by far the largest firm level dataset (more than 90,000 firms) used by any study on the spillover effects of FDI. The main novelty of the paper is the explicit control for various sources of firm heterogeneity when accounting for different effects of FDI on firm performance. This work shows that the heterogeneity of firms in terms of absorptive capacity, size, productivity and technology levels affect the results. Controlling for these variables leads to some interesting results, which contrast with the previous empirical work in the field. We find that horizontal spillovers have become increasingly important over the last decade, and they may even become more important than vertical spillovers. Positive horizontal spillovers are equally distributed across size classes of firms, while negative horizontal spillovers seem to be more likely to accrue to smaller firms. Moreover, positive horizontal spillovers seem more likely to be present in medium or high productivity firms with higher absorptive capacities, while negative horizontal spillovers are more likely to affect low to medium productivity firms. These findings suggest that both direct effects from foreign ownership as well as the spillovers from foreign firms substantially depend on the absorptive capacity and productivity level of individual firms. In addition, these results show that foreign presence may also affect smaller firms to a larger extent than larger firms, but this impact may be in either direction.     

Firm size and types of innovation

We propose a general theory of innovation that illustrates the relative benefits of performing process versus product R&D when firm size is endogenous. A firm's size, scope, and R&D portfolio are shown to reflect the same underlying characteristic of the firm, namely manufacturing efficiency. We demonstrate that efficient firms become larger, have greater scope, and perform more of both process and product R&D. In light of decreasing returns to R&D, this implies small firms obtain more product innovations per dollar of R&D than large firms, which is consistent with evidence we present that small firms are more innovative than large firms as they obtain more patent counts and citations per dollar of R&D.     

DEFECTING FROM R&D COOPERATION

This paper introduces defection into the strategic R&D model. In defecting, a firm cheats by choosing its R&D expenditures to maximise its own profits, instead of maximising the joint profits of the cooperating firms. Two cooperative environments are considered: R&D cartelisation, where firms coordinate R&D activities; and RJV cartelisation, where firms coordinate R&D activities and share information. Under R&D cartelisation, defection entails an increase (decrease) in R&D and effective spillovers for low (high) spillovers; whereas under RJV cartelisation, defection always entails a decrease in R&D and effective spillovers. Under R&D cartelisation, consumer surplus and total welfare increase (decrease) with defection when spillovers are low (high). Whereas consumer surplus and welfare always decrease with defection under RJV cartelisation. Under R&D cartelisation, the incentives for defection first decrease then increase with spillovers; they also increase with the size of the market, but decline with production costs and R&D costs. Moreover, the incentives for defection are higher under RJV cartelisation. With low spillovers under RJV cartelisation, a firm prefers to be subject to defection by the other firm, to not cooperating at all. Punishment for defection is considered, under the form of abstaining from information sharing.     

Strategic Rivalry With Spillovers Within Segmented Versus Integrated Markets

We consider a two-stage game with firms investing in R&D in the first stage while competing [a] la Cournot in the second stage. The firms are located in two countries, which are either segmented or integrated. R&D spillovers occur between firms located in the same country as well as between firms located in different countries.

We first examine the consequences of market integration on the impact of national and international R&D spillovers on innovative efforts, effective R&D, profits and total welfare. Comparing the resulting equilibrium levels, we subsequently conclude that market integration always leads to higher R&D investments and output if international R&D spillovers are limited, while the welfare consequences are ambiguous. Finally, we also analyze the welfare maximization problem of a ‘constrained social planner who can only decide on the level of R&D spillovers.     

Product entry in a fast growing industry: the LAN switch market

We provide empirical evidence on market positioning by firms, in terms of market niche, distance from technological frontier and dispersion. We focus on the switch industry, a sub-market of the Local Area Network industry, in the nineties. Market positioning is a function of the type of firms (incumbents versus entrants), market size and contestability as well as firm competencies. We find that incumbents specialize in high-end segments and disperse their product in a larger spectrum of the market. Instead, entrants focus on specific market niches. Market size, market contestability and firm competencies are also important determinants of product location.     

New technology adoption in a Cournot oligopoly with spillovers

In a two-stage Cournot oligopoly where a subset of firms first make a choice between two alternative production technologies independently and then all firms compete in quantity, the effect of information spillovers is analyzed when the outcome of R&D is uncertain. It is shown that the range of parameter values that support heterogeneous firms in equilibrium will diminish as information spillovers become larger. Particularly, when the spillover effect is so strong that the investment by one firm is beneficial to its R&D active rivals, all active firms will choose the same technology. A similar result can be derived from a socially desirable point of view except that the cut-off magnitude of spillovers is different. By introducing a positive success probability to characterize the uncertainty of the R&D outcome, it is found that when information spillovers are not too small, there will be underinvestment in equilibrium relative to the social optimum.     

Efficient bargaining versus right to manage: A stability analysis in a Cournot duopoly with trade unions

The present study considers a unionised (nonlinear) duopoly with two different labour market institutions, i.e. efficient bargaining (EB) and right to manage (RTM), to analyse product market stability under quantity competition with trade unions. We show that when the preference of unions towards wages is small, (i) the parametric stability region under RTM is higher than under EB, and (ii) a rise in the union power in the Nash bargaining played between firms and unions monotonically increases (resp. reduces) the parametric stability region under RTM (resp. EB). In contrast, when the preference of unions becomes larger, an increase in the union's bargaining power acts: (1) as an economic stabiliser when the union power is small; (2) as an economic de-stabiliser when the union power is high. In addition to established results with regard to equilibrium outcomes, our findings shed some light on the effects of how the labour market regulation affects out-of-equilibrium behaviours in a Cournot duopoly.     

PRODUCT LINE RIVALRY

We analyse how product line rivalry by multi‐product oligopolists is affected by market size and product substitutability. We show that the width and degree of overlap in competing product lines is determined by the tension between two effects: the drive to ‘be where the demand is’ and the desire to weaken competition and intra‐firm product cannibalization. Product lines are shown to be wider and more overlapped in large markets and when product substitutability is weak. Our analysis suggests that firms can increase their profits by agreeing not to overlap their product lines.