The dynamics of entry,exit and profitability: An error correction approach for the retail industry

We develop a two equation error correction model to investigate determinants of and dynamic interaction between changes in profits and number of firms in retailing. An explicit distinction is made between the effects of actual competition among incumbants, new firms competition and potential competition from firms outside the market. Effects of cost, demand and general income changes on profitability are investigated to gain insight in the role of retailing in the cost, demand and wage inflationary processes. The relative importance of profitability, growth and unemployment as determinants of net entry are studied. The model is tested using a panel data set of 36 Dutch shoptypes covering the 1977–1988 period.     

Impact of personalization and privacy concerns on information disclosure and pricing

Advances in IT have enabled some firms to offer personalized products according to the private information disclosed by consumers, while others are still offering standardized products, which brings about asymmetric competition. For consumers, disclosing private information for personalized products leads to reduced misfit cost as well as privacy loss. To illuminate the impact of consumers' trade-off between the benefit of information disclosure and the associated privacy concerns on firms' asymmetric price competition, we consider a setting where only one firm is capable of product personalization based on consumers' personal information. The capable firm makes a profit from selling the product and monetizing consumers' information. We demonstrate that as the capable firm becomes more adept at personalization, he may raise or lower the price depending on his profit foci, and an improvement in his capability does not always guarantee a higher profit. Counterintuitively, an increase in the unit misfit cost (i.e., greater product differentiation) can, under certain circumstances, intensity price competition, making both firms worse off and leading to higher consumer surplus. We also show that when consumers are more privacy-concerned, there exists an indirect effect that weakens the impact of an increase in price on the monetization of consumers’ information, and hence price competition can be mitigated and both firms can be better off. Furthermore, we demonstrate that product personalization with misfit-reducing effect always increases consumer surplus under the asymmetric competition. Our findings provide firms and policy-makers with great managerial insights.     

Financial development,the choice of technology,and comparative advantage

In this general equilibrium model, banks and manufacturing firms engage in oligopolistic competition. A more advanced manufacturing technology has a higher fixed cost but a lower marginal cost of production. We show that manufacturing firms located in a country with a more efficient financial sector choose more advanced technologies and this country has a comparative advantage in the production of manufactured goods. Even though the foreign country has a less developed financial sector than the home country, the opening up of trade with the foreign country leads domestic manufacturing firms to adopt more advanced technologies. An increase in the level of efficiency in the financial sector of one country causes manufacturing firms in both countries to adopt more advanced technologies.     

Compatibility Under Differentiated Duopoly with Network Externalities

This paper investigates a firm’s equilibrium behavior under product compatibility, product differentiation, and the network effect. We find that a firm with a higher degree of compatibility has a greater competitive disadvantage due to its higher spillover effect with other firms. A firm under Cournot competition can increase its demand and profit by decreasing consumers’ subjective belief about the degree of differentiation between products, when the firm’s product compatibility and/or relative production cost is sufficiently small. When the relative production cost satisfies certain conditions, the principle of maximum differentiation exists. However, the principle of minimum differentiation never exists. Furthermore, when firms can freely determine their own compatibility, each firm will choose the lowest degree of compatibility, in contrast to the social optimum in which both firms choose the highest degree of compatibility. A social dilemma occurs.     

Information and disclosure in strategic trade policy

We relax the standard assumption in the strategic trade policy literature that governments possess complete information about the economy. Assuming instead that governments must obtain information from firms, we examine firms' incentive to disclose information to the governments in the Brander–Spencer setting. With quantity competition, we find firms disclosing both demand and cost information, thereby justifying the literature's omniscient-government assumption. With price competition, however, firms have no incentives to disclose demand or cost information, so governments remain uninformed. Further, with quantity competition and unknown demand, governments are caught in an informational prisoner's dilemma.     

A Ricardian model of international trade with oligopolistic competition

This paper studies a Ricardian model of international trade with a continuum of products in a general equilibrium model in which firms engage in oligopolistic competition. It provides a bridge between trade models based on perfect competition and models based on imperfect competition. Compared with a model based on perfect competition, the incorporation of fixed cost leads to the result that an increase of domestic labor may increase the relative wage of the domestic country.     

Welfare gains from Foreign Direct Investment through technology transfer to local suppliers

We hypothesize that multinational firms operating in emerging markets transfer technology to local suppliers to increase their productivity and to lower input prices. To avoid hold-up by any single supplier, the foreign firm must make the technology widely available. This technology diffusion induces entry and more competition which lowers prices in the supply market. As a result, not just the foreign-owned firm, but all firms downstream of that supply market obtain lower prices. We test this hypothesis using a panel dataset of Indonesian manufacturing establishments. We find strong evidence of productivity gains, greater competition, and lower prices among local firms in markets that supply foreign entrants. The technology transfer is Pareto improving — output and profits increase for firms in both the supplier and buyer sectors. Further, the technology transfer generates an externality that benefits buyers in other sectors downstream from the supply sector as well. This externality may provide a justification for policy intervention to encourage foreign investment.     

Banking competition and firm-level financial constraints in Latin America

Prior literature argues that, given the existence of information asymmetries and agency costs, higher competition may increase financial constraints by reducing banks' incentives to build lending relationships. Using a sample of listed firms for six Latin American countries, we analyze the relation between banking competition and financial constraints. We find evidence in line with prior research that banking competition increases financial constraints. This result is robust and heterogeneous. We include other country-specific variables and check the robustness of our findings; the main results hold. Our results show that the effect of competition differs across firms and industries. Specifically, consistent with the information hypothesis, the negative impact of competition is higher for small quoted firms and for low-assets tangibility industries. Also, as expected, we find evidence that firms are more affected by financial constraints during the last crisis. This negative effect is larger for firms in more competitive banking industries.     

Markups,import competition and exporting

This paper analyses the relationship between markups and international trade at the firm level using a large sample of French manufacturing firms for the period 1995–2007. In particular, the paper investigates the effect of increasing import competition from China on firms' price–cost margins and the way in which exporting interacts with this effect. The results show robust evidence that firms in more direct competition with Chinese imports decrease their markups. However, firms that become exporters experience a smaller reduction in their price–cost margins. Consistent with these findings, the results also show that firms facing tougher competition from China are more likely to start exporting to avoid such competitive pressures.     

The effect of exogenous product familiarity on endogenous consumer search

When a consumer is familiar with one product but not its competitor, she is faced with a decision: either buy what she knows, or engage in search to learn more. When search is costly, competing firms may attempt to encourage or discourage search by adjusting prices. In this paper we consider how competitive dynamics between two quality differentiated firms are affected if one product enjoys a familiarity advantage. Familiarity is defined as a consumer’s ex-ante knowledge of fit for a particular product. An increase in the level of familiarity for one product allows a firm to charge higher prices since there are more consumers with information on that product relative to the competition. We call this the direct effect of familiarity. However, an increase in familiarity also has an indirect effect, since it gives the rival firm a stronger incentive to decrease price in order to encourage searching, in turn increasing overall competition. The effect of familiarity on profits depends on the magnitudes of these effects, and it is moderated by the level of quality differentiation between products. For very high or very low levels of differentiation, the results are relatively straightforward. However, when the level of differentiation is moderate, the results are more nuanced, with the higher-quality firm realizing higher profits from more familiarity, even if it must lower prices due to the indirect effect. We also find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, overall competition may be higher when firms are more quality differentiated. This is driven by the fact that higher quality differences bolster the indirect effect, with a lower quality firm providing deeper price cuts to counter increased familiarity of a high quality rival. We conclude by examining how changes in the cost of searching impact equilibrium outcomes.

     

Scale economies,entry, and welfare

This study shows how scale economies, initial size differences among firms, potential competition, and adjustment costs may influence the entry of firms into a dynamic oligopoly. It also examines the effects of these factors on the final size distribution of firms in an industry, and on the welfare levels of consumers and producers. We find that low to moderate scale economies are insufficient for Cournot-Nash competition to drive small firms from the market. Only when scale economies are quite high will the distribution of firm sizes become degenerate. Potential competition and the size of incumbent firms' capital stocks are additional barriers to entry. The welfare conclusion is that there may be a government role to preserve potential competition, but also to dissuade small firms from entering certain markets where there are economies of scale.     

Is competition from China so special?

Competition from China is perceived as particularly damaging. We study whether this is true for firm performance. Using the universe of Spanish export transactions, we find that an increase in competition from China does not have a more damaging effect on export revenues, prices and number of exported products than an equally sized increase in competition from other countries. We document, though, that Chinese competition raises the probability that a firm ceases to export a good to a destination more than competition from other countries. This effect declines over time. We document an omitted variable bias in studies focusing only on Chinese competition, even when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity of destinations for different products within firms.     

When strategies collide: Divergent multipoint strategies within competitive triads

As market barriers fall and market boundaries blur, firms are becoming increasingly broad in their scope of operations and markets. This expansion in a firm's scope intensifies competition as the interaction between rivals spreads across many markets. To succeed as a firm, managers must then take a multi-market approach to competition. Critical to success is an understanding of how rival contact across markets can affect a firm's competitive behavior. This understanding exists for competition between two firms; however, few firms face only one rival across multiple markets. We expand the focus on one competitor and explore configurations of competitive triads. We explain why triadic competition is more dynamic and deviates somewhat from dyadic competition, and set the foundation for exploring competition among a broader set of competitors.     

Competitiveness of Firm Behavior and Public Policy for New Technology Adoption in an Oligopoly

Economic growth requires that firms adopt new technologies. However, it may be insufficient or excessive in less competitive industries from the social welfare point of view. In this case, a government subsidy or tax is necessary. We analyze the optimum subsidy or tax policy for new technology adoption by firms when firms maximize the weighted average of absolute and relative profits. We do not consider that firms really maximize the weighted average, but the weight on the relative profit is used as a parameter indicating competitiveness of firm behavior. We show that the optimum policy is likely to be subsidization (or taxation) when the set-up cost for new technology adoption is large (or small). It is likely to be subsidization (or taxation) when competitiveness is large (or small), that is, it is near to perfect competition (or joint profit maximization).     

Product Quality,Cost Asymmetry and the Welfare Loss of Oligopoly

When competition is tough, firms which do not implement the least expensive technology are forced to exit, or the low cost firms are able to increase their market share. Persistent cost or profit differences require some form of restricted entry, specific intangible assets or oligopolistic co-ordination. If technology or skills is easy to transfer but it is not transferred because of collusion, we have to add a cost side effect ('the staircase')stemming from the non-proliferation of the best technology- to the well-known demand side loss ('the triangle'). This paper presents a model with vertical product differentiation and develops a method which disentangles cost differences coming from vertical product differences and those coming from other sources. Data for the paper industry in the EU, in the US and in Japan indicate that cost differences are large. If at least some part of them comes from oligopolistic co-ordination, then the welfare loss of oligopoly is much larger than the usually measured demand side welfare loss.     

Asymmetric Payoffs and Spatial Competition

We investigate the location choice of two firms whose objectives are the weighted average of their own profit and social welfare, in which they simultaneously decide their locations before setting their prices. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the asymmetric locations are influenced by the asymmetry of the firms’ objectives or by the asymmetry of firms’ marginal costs. We show that, when both firms have the same marginal cost, the equilibrium locations are always symmetric even in the case of the asymmetric objectives. On the other hand, the cost differences lead the asymmetric locations in equilibrium. That is, the asymmetric locations are a result of the cost asymmetry, but not the asymmetry of the firms’ objectives. We also demonstrate that the pursuit of profit by the cost-inefficient firm may increase consumer surplus.     

供应链集中度与企业创新——基于中国制造业上市公司的实证研究

信息技术革命和国际垂直分工深刻地改变了全球制造业的生产格局和竞争基础，传统的企业间竞争正逐渐演化为供应链间的竞争。对2011-2018年A股制造业上市公司的实证分析发现：供应商集中度负向影响企业创新，但这一效应在市场地位较高的企业中得到弱化；客户集中度与企业创新则呈显著正相关，且在市场地位较高的企业中得到强化。研究还发现，融资约束缓解是供应链集中度影响企业创新活动的作用渠道。研究对于供应链与创新活动之间的关系做出了文献贡献，并对创新驱动发展战略下企业根据自身市场地位权变性地从事创新活动提供了实践指导。     

Does a Tougher Competition Policy Reduce or Promote Investment?

The question of how interventions from the Competition Authority (CA) affect investment is not a straightforward one: a tougher competition policy might, by reducing the ability to exert market power, either stimulate firms to invest more to counter the restrictions on their actions, or make firms invest less because of the reduced ability to have a return on investment. This tension is illustrated using two models. In one model investment is own-cost-reducing whereas in the other investment is anti-competitive. Anti-competitive investments are defined as investments that increase competitors’ costs. In both models the optimal level of investment is reduced with a tougher competition policy. Furthermore, while in the case of an anti-competitive investment a tougher authority necessarily leads to lower prices, in the case of a cost-reducing investment the opposite may happen when the impact of the investment on cost is sufficiently high. Results for total welfare are ambiguous in the cost-reducing investment model, whereas in the anti-competitive investment model welfare unambiguously increases due to a tougher competition policy.     

互联网平台经济与正在缓解的市场扭曲

改革开放以来,我国区域经济发展取得了令人瞩目的成绩,但是局部地区资源错配现象依然存在。我国互联网平台经济的迅速崛起,引发了人们的思考:作为一种跨部门、跨区域的市场交易机制,互联网平台经济是否有助于缓解局部地区市场扭曲?基于对这一问题的思考,本文采用2009—2017年我国省际面板数据,借助中介效应回归模型,实证分析互联网平台经济对市场扭曲的影响。结果表明,互联网平台经济对金融市场错配和技术市场错配具有显著的改善效应,其关键影响机制在于:一方面,作为一种跨区域营销和贸易机制,互联网平台经济有助于显著加剧区域内市场竞争;另一方面,作为一种跨区域产业分工与协调机制,互联网平台经济有利于显著提升区域产业专业化水平。在价值链作用下,这种发端于产品市场的机制效应会传递至要素市场,使得技术资源、金融资源等要素市场的扭曲局面得以改善。实证结果还显示,互联网平台经济的竞争效应仅在私营企业间产生显著影响,在国有企业间缺乏显著性。本文能够为进一步厘清市场效率变革的原因机制提供一个理论解释视角,为促进市场一体化建设提供政策参考。     

Political risk and the cost of capital in the MENA region

We examine the impact of political risk in the MENA region on the cost at which firms can raise capital. Using the implied cost of equity as a measure of the cost of capital and ICRG's political risk rating as a proxy for political risk, we find that political risk results in a higher cost of capital. Economically, our results suggest that a one standard deviation increase in the political risk index is associated with a 450 basis points increase in the cost of equity capital of MENA firms. Our results are consistent across a battery of robustness checks. Our findings have important policy implications that are relevant to the MENA region and beyond.