Process R&;D and Product Line Deletion by a Multiproduct Monopolist

Relative to single-product firms, a multiproduct monopolist can internalize the negative externalities of its R&D investments (the ``cannibalization effect') in two ways: (1) To lower R&D investment for each product; and (2) To delete some of its product lines so as to enlarge the market size for the remaining lines. It is shown that line deletion is profitable if products are close substitutes. If products are not close substitutes, the multiproduct monopolist keeps all product lines and invests less in cost-reducing R&D than single-product firms engaging in Cournot competition with product differentiation. However, it invests more in R&D than single-product firms if there are significant economies of scope in R&D, or if the oligopolistic firms can cooperate in their R&D decisions.      

A HYBRID DISCRETE CHOICE MODEL OF DIFFERENTIATED PRODUCT DEMAND WITH AN APPLICATION TO PERSONAL COMPUTERS

In this article, I consider a new discrete choice model of differentiated product demand that distinguishes a brand‐level differentiation from a product‐level differentiation. The model is a hybrid of the random coefficient logit model of Berry et al. (Econometrica 63 (1995), 841–90) and the pure characteristics model of Berry and Pakes (International Economic Review 48 (2007), 1193–1225) and describes markets where firms offer multiple products of different qualities under the same brand name. I compare the hybrid model with existing models using data on personal computers. Using the estimates of the hybrid model, I also provide empirical evidence that firms reposition their brands in a postmerger market.     

Optimal contract under brand name collaboration

In an international Cournot duopoly, we determine the optimal contract for a brand name collaboration where the contract consists of fixed-fee and output royalty. We show that the firms always have the incentive for brand name collaboration. However, whether the optimal contract will have positive fixed-fee and positive royalty is not immediate and it depends on the factors such as the transportation cost of exporting and the consumers' initial perception about the products of the firms reflected in the consumers' maximum willingness to pay for the products. Thus, our paper shows that the possibility of brand name collaboration is significantly more than predicted in the existing literature.     

Technology roadmapping in review: A tool for making sustainable new product development decisions

Typically, firms decide whether or not to develop a new product based on their resources, capabilities and the return on investment that the product is estimated to generate. We propose that firms adopt a broader heuristic for making new product development choices. Our heuristic approach requires moving beyond traditional finance-based thinking, and suggests that firms concentrate on technological trajectories by combining technology roadmapping, information technology (IT) and supply chain management to make more sustainable new product development decisions. Using the proposed holistic heuristic methods, versus relying on traditional finance-based decision-making tools (e.g., emphasizing net present value or internal rate of return projections), enables firms to plan beyond the short-term and immediate set of technologies at hand. Our proposed heuristic approach enables firms to forecast technologies and markets, and hence, new product priorities in the longer term. Investments in new products should, as a result, generate returns over a longer period than traditionally expected, giving firms more sustainable investments. New products are costly and need to have a durable presence in the market. Transaction costs and resources will be saved, as firms make new product development decisions less frequently.     

Preferential trade areas, multinational enterprises, and welfare

Abstract.  The effects of preferential trade areas (PTAs) on the investments by multinational enterprises and their implications for the welfare of members and non‐members are studied in a model with two types of firms: national firms and multinational firms. In the presence of multinational activity PTAs can create new investment as well as divert investment from non‐members to members. Both affect the welfare of members positively. More interestingly, if the investment creation effect of a PTA is sufficiently strong, then the PTA could be welfare enhancing for non‐members as well. JEL classification: F2, L1     

Business type,industry value chain,and R&D performance: Evidence from high-tech firms in an emerging market

This study focuses on how the business type and technological learning mode, which a high-tech firm chooses based on its core competence, influence the firm's R&D strategies, which in turn affect firm performance. This study also explores how the interaction between a firm's business type and industry value chain stage affects the relationship between R&D investments and operating performance. We suggest that the linkage of R&D investments and operating performance will increase gradually, when firms move from contract manufacturing to own brand business. R&D investments can contribute more to performance when firms adopt the hybrid business type. Furthermore, R&D investments generate more significant benefits for the own brand companies than the contract manufacturers at the same stage of the industry value chain. R&D investments of the downstream contract manufacturers have a negative impact on firm performance. Regardless of business type, firms in the upstream (midstream) stage of the industry value chain outperform downstream stage firms in deriving benefits from R&D activities. Finally, the lagged effects of R&D investments on operating performance are affected by the interaction between business type and industry value chain.     

Do standards improve the quality of traded products?

We examine whether standards raise the quality of traded products. Matching a panel of French firm–product–destination export data with a data set on sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical barriers to trade, we find that such quality standards enforced on products by destination countries: (i) favour the export probability of high-quality firms provided that their productivity is high enough, (ii) raise the export sales of high-productivity, high-quality firms at the expense of low-productivity and low-quality firms and (iii) increase the quality supplied by firms if their productivity is high enough. We then develop a simple new trade model under uncertainty about product quality in which heterogeneous firms can strategically invest in quality signalling to rationalize these empirical results on quality and selection effects.     

Holdups and Efficiency with Search Frictions

A natural holdup problem arises in a market with search frictions: Firms have to make a range of investments before finding their employees, and larger investments translate into higher wages. In particular, when wages are determined by ex post bargaining, the equilibrium is always inefficient: Recognizing that capital-intensive production relations have to pay higher wages, firms reduce their investments. This can only be prevented by removing all the bargaining power from the workers, but this, in turn, depresses wages below their social product and creates excessive entry of firms. In contrast to this benchmark, we show that efficiency is achieved when firms post wages and workers can direct their search toward more attractive offers. This efficiency result generalizes to an environment with imperfect information where workers only observe a few of the equilibrium wage offers. We show that the underlying reason for efficiency is not wage posting per se, but the ability of workers to direct their search toward more capital-intensive jobs.     

Observable versus unobservable R&D investments in duopolies

Journal of Economics - We study a quantity-setting duopoly with homogeneous products in which two firms first make their cost-reducing R&D investments, and then compete in quantities. When...     

Signaling Corporate Social Responsibility: Third‐Party Certification versus Brands

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a credence attribute of products, which can be signaled either through a label certified by a third party, or via unsubstantiated claims used as part of a brand‐building strategy. We use an experimental posted‐offer market with sellers and buyers to compare the impact of these signaling strategies on market efficiency. Only third‐party certification gives rise to a separating equilibrium and an increase in CSR investments. Unsubstantiated claims can generate a halo effect on consumers, whereby the latter are nudged into paying more for the same level of CSR investments by firms.     

试论强势品牌的经营优势

强势品牌能够给企业创造更大的边际收益,给企业带来更多的忠诚顾客,使企业拥有更稳定的品牌资产。强势品牌是企业经营的高级目标,是企业完成营销使命的重要载体。建立强势品牌必须通过准确的品牌定位,导入具有传播力的CI系统,在形成品牌知名度的基础上建立品牌美誉度、忠诚度,并保持品牌建设稳定性等策略得以实现。     

Location choices and third‐degree spatial price discrimination

This paper studies how firms choose their product differentiation levels when they engage in third‐degree price discrimination in the following product market competition in a location‐price model. We show that firms will not choose to locate at the two endpoints if different consumer groups have similar sizes. Hence, the principle of maximum differentiation does not hold, resulting in a more intense product market price competition. Only if the size of one group of consumers is sufficiently larger than that of the other group, would firms make their products as differentiated as possible by choosing the two endpoints as their locations.     

Who invests more in advanced abatement technology? Theory and evidence

We study firm investment in abatement technology under a heterogeneous‐firm framework. We find that more‐productive firms make more (less) investment in abatement technology if investment and productivity are complements (substitutes). Under linear demand, firms’ abatement investments exhibit an inverted U‐shape with respect to productivity level. This finding is in contrast to results in existing studies. We also find that in response to tightened environmental regulations, more‐productive firms raise their respective investments in abatement technology, whereas less‐productive firms do the opposite. More‐productive firms have lower pollution emission intensity. The key theoretical predictions are confirmed by empirical tests using Chinese data.     

Limited liability effect on product safety

This paper analyses how limited liability and capital size affect a firm's investment for product safety. Firms become bankrupt when their products cause accidents and they cannot compensate for the damages incurred. Relatively small firms obtain greater expected profit because they do not need to pay full damage when their products cause accidents and they become bankrupt. Thus, smaller firms may have greater incentives than larger firms to participate in risky projects. But relatively small firms may invest more for product safety because increasing their investments is not costly in case of bankruptcy.     

Multi-product firms in monopolistic competition: The role of scale-scope spillovers

We develop a monopolistic competition model where firms are multi-product, and the elasticity of substitution on the consumption side is variable. The cost function, otherwise very general, is such that expanding firm-level product range (scope) reduces marginal costs of production of existing varieties. This captures scale-scope spillovers, i.e. within-firm spillovers between the scale at which firms operate and their choices of scope. Firm-level product ranges and the mass of firms are endogenously determined. We show how an increase in market size affects the market outcome. A larger market leads to lower prices, larger outputs, and a wider industry-level product range. Firm-level product ranges expand (shrink) under sufficiently strong (weak) scale-scope spillovers. Last, under strong (weak) spillovers, the number of firms increases less (more) than proportionally to the market size.     

The struggle to survive in the R&D sector: Implications for innovation and growth

By allowing for investment activities by research and development (R&D) firms to prevent product obsolescence, we show that if legal patent protection is too strong, a higher R&D subsidy rate delivers insufficient investments for survival in the R&D sector, depressing innovation and growth in the long run.     

The Layoff Rat Race*

We investigate how discretionary investments in general and specific human capital are affected by the possibility of layoffs. After investments are made, firms may have to lay off workers, and will do so in inverse order of the profit that each worker generates. Greater skill investments, especially in specific human capital, contribute more to a firm's bottom line, so that workers who make those investments will be laid off last. We show that as long as workers' bargaining positions are not too weak, workers invest in specific human capital in order to reduce layoff probabilities. Indeed, workers over‐invest in skill acquisition from a social perspective whenever their bargaining power is strong enough, even though they only receive a share of any investment. More generally, we characterize how equilibrium skill investments are affected by the distribution of worker abilities within firms, the probability that a firm will downsize, and the distribution of employment opportunities in the economy.     

Firm's objective function and product and process R&D

Firms undertake different kinds of R&D activities. They do product R&D (R&D aimed at improving the quality of existing products, and creating new products). They also do process R&D (R&D aimed at lowering the cost of making existing and new products). Moreover, firms often do both product and process R&D simultaneously. As far as the objective of firms is concerned, this need not be limited to profit-maximization only. Rather, firms may have a broader objective, where they care about profits as well as consumer surplus. This paper studies effects of a firm having a general objective function (that takes into consideration both profits and consumer surplus) on its product and process R&D choices, and corresponding implications.I consider product and process R&D choices of firms in an infinite horizon set-up with discrete time. Firms in my framework can simultaneously do both product and process R&D in every period, face a discrete-choice model of consumer demand with vertical product differentiation, and maximize a discounted, weighted sum of their profits and consumer surplus over the infinite time horizon.I show how process and product R&D differ from each other in my framework, and the role of a firm's objective function in this regard. I compare process and product R&D choices across firms that differ in their objective function, and illustrate effects of providing general R&D subsidies (subsidies given for any R&D, regardless of whether it is product or process R&D) to firms. I also characterize how in my framework, the choice of process R&D in total R&D — R&D composition — by an individual firm varies over time, and how process and product R&D choices, process and product R&D productivity, and the choice of R&D composition vary across firms that differ in size but are otherwise similar.     

要素品牌策略:突破产品线延伸典型性制约的新途径

产品线延伸的典型性决定了母品牌的品牌联想转移到新产品上的能力,这使得企业往往只能够进行典型的产品线延伸,生产与原有产品线类似的产品。那么,有没有相应的策略可以帮助企业进行非典型的延伸呢?实验研究发现,与某一要素品牌联合的方式推出新产品更容易使企业在非典型性的产品线延伸中获得成功。该结论对于期望通过产品线延伸推出新产品的企业来说具有重要的指导意义。     

绿色消费意愿的反应机制——品牌拟人化和产品类型的匹配效应

“绿水青山就是金山银山”,绿色消费与可持续发展成为经济社会发展的重要议题,消费者如何践行绿色消费、如何对绿色产品形成绿色消费意愿是绿色消费研究的重点领域方向。为此,基于刻板印象内容模型,研究探讨品牌拟人化类型与绿色产品类型的交互效应对绿色消费意愿的影响及其反应机制。研究主要发现：（1）品牌拟人化与产品类型交互影响消费者的绿色消费意愿。对于实用型产品,能力型拟人（vs.温暖型拟人）更能激发消费者的绿色消费意愿;对于享乐型产品,温暖型拟人（vs.能力型拟人）更能激发消费者的绿色消费意愿。（2）绿色感知质量、绿色感知价值中介品牌拟人化类型和产品类型的交互效应对消费者绿色消费意愿的影响。（3）消费动机（利己动机vs.利他动机）调节品牌拟人化类型与产品类型的交互效应对消费者绿色消费意愿的影响。基于以上结果,研究丰富了品牌拟人化的相关研究,为企业品牌拟人化类型的选择、绿色产品的宣传、消费者绿色消费意愿及行为等提供现实参考价值。