Competition with Congestible Networks

We analyse competition between two network providers when the quality of each network depends negatively on the number of customers connected to that network. With respect to price competition we provide a sufficient condition for the existence of a unique pure strategy Nash equilibrium. Comparative statics show that as the congestion effect gets stronger quantities will decrease and prices increase, under both Bertrand and Cournot competition. In an example with endogenous capacities it turns out that equilibrium capacities are at first increasing and then decreasing in the strength of congestion. Furthermore, capacities are higher under Cournot competition. Welfare comparisons between Bertrand and Cournot competition are unambiguous for fixed capacities, but may turn around for endogenous capacities.     

Vertical Integration and Market Foreclosure with Convex Downstream Costs

Received December 14, 2000; revised version received July 16, 2001     

HRM and Indian epistemologies: A review and avenues for future research

India is emerging as a super power, slated to be among the world's five largest economies and viewed by international investors, business conglomerates and tertiary education providers as a land of opportunity. A database search since the opening up of the Indian economy in 1991 reveals a slowly increasing number of scholarly articles on HRM, with a steep rise from the year 2000 onwards. While it is acknowledged that the field of HRM is a broad area, there is currently a dearth of research in specific HRM practices and policies in India to warrant a focus on only one area. Hence the primary objective of this article is to present a scholarly survey of important research literatures in the area of HRM in India, and to offer avenues for future research. To this end this article garners, integrates and discusses research on HRM in India with a focus primarily on the past fifteen years. It is within this complexity that research on India and its workforce is presented by illuminating HRM as embedded in the Indian environment with its intricate epistemologies and transitions in a period of dynamic change.     

The Impact of Upfront Payments on Assortment Decisions in Retailing

There is a contentious debate about the exclusionary effects of upfront payments to be made by manufacturers to place their products on retailers’ shelves. Analyzing a two-stage bargaining process with one downstream retailer and a pool of upstream manufacturers, we find that upfront payments lead to a smaller assortment if the retailer’s bargaining power is high enough and the suppliers’ products are close substitutes.     

Some applications of stochastic analysis in financial economics: An outline

The basic features of a recent approach to the theory of continuous trading, are presented.

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Sommario Vengono presentate le linee base di un recente approccio alle opzioni in tempo continuo basato su tecniche di analisi stocastica.

     

Language ability and entrepreneurship education: Necessary skills for Europe’s start-ups?

Language ability and entrepreneurial education are seen as essential resources for start-ups operating in intensified landscapes of internationalisation and globalisation. Deemed as the necessary skills for corporate effectiveness vis-à-vis rivals, this paper responds to calls for increased understandings of cultural components as vital to entrepreneurship and the product of institutional forces. Thus, it explores (a) the impact language ability has on start-up expansion; (b) the perceptions of international relations as based on language ability as a tool for cross-cultural communication; and (c) the role of educational context from the entrepreneurs’ perspective. Based on interviews from European online start-ups across three discrete contexts—Finland, Portugal and Sweden—it concludes that contextual trends regarding language and education are founded upon the cultural-cognitive and normative pillars of institutionalisation. Further, by combining actor-context perspectives, it poses that language ability and education are resources borne from the domestic environment which positively moderate the start-up’s international success. Nevertheless, the notion of learnt entrepreneurship remains contested. Taken together, this study contributes by offering deeper insight into the role of context on entrepreneurial tendencies by combining resource and institutional perspectives.     

Mobile phone termination charges with asymmetric regulation

We model competition between two unregulated mobile phone companies with price-elastic demand and less than full market coverage. We also assume that there is a regulated full-coverage fixed network. In order to induce stronger competition, mobile companies could have an incentive to raise their reciprocal mobile-to-mobile access charges above the marginal costs of termination. Stronger competition leads to an increase of the mobiles’ market shares, with the advantage that (genuine) network effects are strengthened. Therefore, ‘collusion’ may well be in line with social welfare.      

Wise Up: Creating Organizational Wisdom Through an Ethic of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Kaitiakitanga</Emphasis>

Organizations are searching for innovative business approaches that deliver profits and create shared value for all stakeholders. We show what can be learned from the relational wisdom approach of Indigenous Māori and reframe the prevailing economic argument that has seen companies profit and prosper at the expense of communities and ecologies. We develop an ethic of kaitiakitanga model premised on Māori values which holds the potential to enrich and further humanize our understanding of business. The Māori economy is a globally connected, prosperous, and profitable sector of the New Zealand economy. By drawing on Māori values, we present a wisdom position through an ethic of kaitiakitanga or stewardship to emphasize and illustrate the interconnectedness of life in a woven universe. Through practicing kaitiakitanga, organizations can build businesses where wisdom is consciously created through reciprocal relationships. In this worldview of business, humans are stewards endowed with a mandate to use the agency of their mana (spiritual power, authority, and sovereignty) to create mauri ora (conscious well-being) for humans and ecosystems—and this commitment extends to organizations.     

Complexity and Progressivity in Income Tax Design: Deductions for Work-Related Expenses

We analyze optimal income taxes with deductions for work-related or consumptive goods. We consider two cases. In the first case (called a complex tax system) the tax authorities can exactly distinguish between consumptive and work-related expenditures. In the second case (called a simple tax system) this distinction is not exact. Assuming additively separable utility functions, we show that work-related expenditures should be fully deductible in the first case while deduction rates should be less than 100 percent in the second case. Under further simplifying assumptions, we also show that the simple system can be characterized by higher tax burdens on low income earners and less redistribution.     

Quality distortions in vertical relations

This paper examines how delivery tariffs and private quality standards are determined in vertical relations that are subject to asymmetric information. We consider an infinitely repeated game where an upstream firm sells a product to a downstream firm. In each period, the firms negotiate a delivery contract comprising the quality of the good as well as a non-linear tariff. Assuming asymmetric information about the actual quality of the product and focusing on incentive compatible contracts, we show that from the firms’ perspective delivery contracts lead to more efficient contracts and thus higher overall profits the lower the firms’ outside options, i.e. the higher their mutual dependency. Buyer power driven by a reduced outside option of the upstream firm enhances the efficiency of vertical relations, while buyer power due to an improved outside option of the downstream firm implies less efficient outcomes.