The strategic nature of advertising in segmented markets

We develop a simple model in which firm-specific advertising has cooperative and predatory effects. Our model is set in a static market where firms are naturally segmented into two distinct submarkets: several large firms located in the core, with small firms operating as a fringe. We test the net effect of opposing market size (cooperative) and market share (predatory) effects of both fringe and core firm advertising on the advertising decisions of large firms in several US consumer industries. Empirically, fringe firm advertising leads to an increase in advertising efforts by large firms, implying strategic complementarity. On the other hand, increased advertising by core firms in an industry decreases advertising expenditures of other core firms, indicating they are strategic substitutes. Our findings imply that equilibrium levels of advertising can be greater with asymmetric, rather than symmetric, strategic interactions.     

股市发展与收入分配不平等

股市发展与收入分配状况的关系是金融理论界和业界广泛关注的问题之一。本文构造全球33个国家从1988年至2013年有关股市发展和收入分配不平等的面板数据,实证研究各国股市发展及自由化改革对其收入分配不平等程度的影响及内在机理。研究发现：首先,一国股市规模越大,由于门槛效应的存在,其收入分配状况趋于恶化,而流动性的提升将在一定程度上改善其收入分配状况。其次,一国股市的发展对不同收入阶层存在不同的影响。最后,股市自由化前后,股市对收入分配状况的影响存在显著差异：股市自由化之后,股市规模的扩大和股市流动性的提升将在一定程度上改善收入分配状况。     

Technological regimes and demand structure in the evolution of the pharmaceutical industry

This paper examines how the nature of the technological regime governing innovative activities and the structure of demand interact in determining market structure, with specific reference to the pharmaceutical industry. The key question concerns the observation that—despite high degrees of R&D and marketing-intensity—concentration has been consistently low during the whole evolution of the industry. Standard explanations of this phenomenon refer to the random nature of the innovative process, the patterns of imitation, and the fragmented nature of the market into multiple, independent submarkets. We delve deeper into this issue by using an improved version of our previous “history-friendly” model of the evolution of pharmaceuticals. Thus, we explore the way in which changes in the technological regime and/or in the structure of demand may generate or not substantially higher degrees of concentration. The main results are that, while technological regimes remain fundamental determinants of the patterns of innovation, the demand structure plays a crucial role in preventing the emergence of concentration through a partially endogenous process of discovery of new submarkets. However, it is not simply market fragmentation as such that produces this result, but rather the entity of the “prize” that innovators can gain relative to the overall size of the market. Further, the model shows that emerging industry leaders are innovative early entrants in large submarkets.     

State Accountancy Regulations,Audit Firm Size,and Auditor Quality: An Empirical Investigation

This paper extends the literature on occupational licensing by examining the effect of states' licensing requirements for Certified Public Accountants (CPAs). We related variations in licensing requirements across states to CPA firm based assessments of service quality. Based upon prior research, we also examined the relationship between service quality and a market generated quality indicator: CPA firm size. The results show no association between audit quality and variations in regulatory strictness. However, a positive relationship was found between audit quality and firm size, suggesting that market forces, rather than governmental intervention, is effective in addressing the information asymmetry that can exist between CPAs and their clients.     

Innovation,competition and firm size distribution on fragmented markets

This paper presents a simple model of firm and consumer behavior. We formulate a sub-market entry game, where boundedly rational firms decide on investing in R&D for inventing new products that will appeal to targeted groups of consumers. The success depends on the amount of resources available for the project as well as on the firm’s familiarity with market characteristics. Successful innovation feeds back into the firm size and (potentially into) market knowledge and increases the future R&D productivity. A new product decreases the market-shares of incumbents. However, this business stealing effect is asymmetric across incumbent population. We identify the section of parameter space where firms have an incentive to diversify horizontally. In this section, the model results in rich industrial dynamics. Firm size heterogeneity emerges endogenously in the model. Equilibrium firm size distributions are heavy tailed and skewed to the right. The heaviness of the tail depends on submarket specificity of firm’s market knowledge. This relationship is non-monotonic, emphasizing two different effects of innovation on industrial dynamics (positive feedback and asymmetric business stealing).     

The impact of trade on employment,welfare, and income distribution in unionized general oligopolistic equilibrium

This paper sets up a multi-sector general oligopolistic equilibrium trade model in which all firms face wage claims of firm-level unions. By accounting for productivity differences across industries, the model features income inequality along multiple lines, including inequality between firm owners and workers as well as within these two groups of agents, and involuntary unemployment. We use this setting to study the impact of trade liberalization on key macroeconomic performance measures. In particular, we show that a movement from autarky to free trade with a fully symmetric partner country lowers union wage claims and therefore stimulates employment and raises welfare. Whether firms can extract a larger share of rents in the open economy depends on the competitive environment in the product market. Furthermore, the distribution of profit income across firm owners remains unaffected, while the distribution of wage income becomes more equal when a country opens up to trade with a fully symmetric trading partner. We also analyze how country size differences and technological dissimilarity of trading partners affect the results from our analysis.     

INEQUALITY,INCOMPLETE CONTRACTS,AND THE SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF BUSINESS FIRMS*

This article analyzes the effects of intrafirm bargaining on the formation of firms in an economy with imperfect capital markets and contracting constraints. In equilibrium, wealth inequality induces a heterogeneous distribution of firm sizes, allowing for firms both too small and too large in terms of technical efficiency. The findings connect well to empirical facts such as the missing middle of firm‐size distributions in developing countries. The model can encompass a nonmonotonic relationship between aggregate output and inequality. It turns out that an inflow of capital may indeed decrease output in absolute terms.     

SEARCH DIRECTION AND WAGE DISPERSION*

In a directed search model, we allow the unemployed and the vacancies to choose whether to send or receive wage offers. This determines the market structure. There are several equilibria but a unique evolutionary stable one. Wage offers are made under incomplete information about the number of offers, and the equilibrium strategies involve mixing. This results in wage dispersion. We show that if the unemployment–vacancy ratio is close to unity, the stable equilibrium consists of two submarkets with opposite search directions. Otherwise, the long side of the market sends offers. The stable equilibrium is efficient, given the frictions.     

企业生产率、国外市场知识与企业出口额

本文运用企业异质性贸易理论,利用分行业上市企业的面板数据,将企业规模作为控制变量,研究了企业生产率、国外市场知识与中国企业出口额的关系。结果显示:企业生产率和国外市场知识对企业出口额的影响显著为正,影响效果存在行业差异;作为控制变量的企业规模,对企业出口额的影响存在不确定性,或正向相关或负向相关或呈U形关系。     

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.     

Directed search with multi-vacancy firms

I construct a directed search model in which firms decide whether to enter a market and how many positions to create. Within this framework, the number of firms and the size of each firm are determined endogenously, wages play an allocative role in the matching process, and the frictions inherent in this process derive from the equilibrium behavior of workers and firms. I characterize the (unique) equilibrium. Comparative statics generate testable implications for cross-sectional variation in matching efficiency, as well as the dynamic behavior of vacancies and unemployment. Moreover, allowing for ex-ante heterogeneity across firms, the model can easily and naturally generate the observed relationship between firm size, wages, profitability, and hiring.     

Scope economies in the pharmaceutical sector

The paper’s objectives are twofold: to propose an experimental simulation to measure scope economies between pairs of submarkets and to point out the role of submarkets in explaining the concentration level in the pharmaceutical market. We simulate scope economies consistent with the diversification choices of large international companies in the years 1987 and 1997. Our results suggest that: i) the random diversification (that is no scope economies hypothesis) is rejected, and ii) scope economies are significant. (JEL: C15, D21, L11, L65)     

Diversification by entry into a new submarket?

Using a dataset on the subsector and geographical segmentation of 208 Pharmaceutical companies, a Bayesian panel probit is used to analyze the role of state dependency, size and achieved diversification in affecting entry decision. We properly account for unobservable heterogeneity in a context with nonstrictly exogenous regressors. We find that achieved diversification, measured by the number of submarkets already entered affects negatively the probability of entry. Beside some country-specific exceptions, size and the lagged dependent variable do not seem to be relevant.     

Knowledge appropriability, firm size, and growth

Empirical evidence shows that the number of patents per R&D dollar declines with firm size. In this paper, we propose a Schumpeterian growth model that accounts for this evidence. We analyze an economy with firms that engage in cost-reducing innovation resulting from the accumulation of both codified and tacit knowledge: the former occurs through the purchase of patents, while the latter is the result of R&D conducted in-house by firms. We study the relation between knowledge appropriability and market structure, and we show that a shift from patents to in-house research occurs as firm size gets larger. Since innovation statistics concentrate mainly on patents, this process of research reallocation results into an under-estimation of innovative activity and is responsible for the declining ratio of patents to R&D expenditure. Survey data on UK-based firms provide support to our results.     

企业兼并中的人际关系磨合成本研究

兼并会造成企业内社会资本的损失,兼并中的人际关系磨合成本是一种交易成本,磨合过程可以视为"交易成本资本化",从而形成新的社会资本的过程.本文重点分析了影响企业兼并中磨合成本的主要因素:兼并者与被兼并者的相对规模,相对绩效和相对市场竞争力,各自所属产业或行业及产业或行业关系,兼并前的业务与人员往来,兼并方式及政府在兼并中的作用,兼并后对被兼并者管理人员的安排,以及兼并后兼并者对被兼并者实行控制的方式.本文还比较了东亚与西方企业的兼并,在其他情况相同的条件下,东亚企业兼并中的人际关系磨合成本较高,磨合期较长,并在实际上减少了兼并,介于企业与市场之间的组织形式更为发达.     

An operational risk profile: the experience of British firms

This study provides an analysis of 163 operational loss events experienced by a variety of British firms over the period 1999–2008. 10 different hypotheses are tested to examine the distribution of loss severity and frequency with respect to business line, event type and corporate entity type. We also test hypotheses on the relation between loss severity and the decline in the market value of the announcing firm and whether or not the decline in market value is greater if the loss results from internal fraud. The results indicate that loss severity does not depend on firm size, that the decline in market value bears no stable relation to the loss amount and that they decline in market value relative to the loss amount is positively related to firm size.     

Earnings distribution,corporate governance and CEO pay

We investigate the relationship between earnings differentials and the pay of CEOs of 190 British companies between 1970 and 1990. We find that (i) changes in the differential between the 90th and 50th weekly earnings percentiles for non‐manual adult male workers [90:50] explain changes in the level of real CEO salary and bonus in our sample of companies; (ii) changes in this differential also account for changes in the elasticity of CEO pay to firm size; (iii) a broader measure of earnings inequality does far worse than 90:50 at explaining changes in both the level and the firm size elasticity of CEO pay; (iv) fitting the model on data for 1970–1983 and predicting pay levels for the period starting with the widespread adoption of executive share option schemes in 1984, we find a structural break in the relationship between lower management pay differentials and the pay of the CEO. We conclude first that top executive pay prior to 1984 was a stable function of both firm size and earnings differentials lower on the administrative ladder, consistent with a hypothesis advanced by Herbert Simon in 1957; and second that the use of share options from 1984 onward represents not simply a change in the mode of top executive compensation, but a de‐linking of the pay of top executives and that of their subordinates.     

HUMAN CAPITAL ACCUMULATION AND LABOR MARKET EQUILIBRIUM*

We analyze an equilibrium labor market with on‐the‐job search and experience effects (as workers learn by doing). The analysis yields a Mincer wage equation with worker fixed effects and endogenously determined firm fixed effects. Equilibrium sorting—where over time more experienced workers also tend to move to better paid employment—has a significant impact on wage inequality.     

Effects of regulatory burden and corruption on firm performance: Evidence from Moldova

Firms in Moldova face a high level of regulatory burden, as proxied by the number of inspections by public authorities. At the same time, they face high levels of corruption. We examine the effect of frequent inspections on four measures of firm performance: labour and total factor productivity, and levels of tangible and intangible assets. We also investigate how corruption affects the relationship between inspections and firm performance. We perform panel data analysis using firm-level administrative data and survey data from Moldova in 2005–2015. The results show that inspections and corruption each affect firm productivity negatively, but corruption moderates the negative effect of inspections. We also find that inspections and intangible assets are positively correlated, but this correlation is weaker for higher levels of corruption. Finally we examine whether these results differ by industry, firm size and ownership types. Inspections and corruption affect medium and large firms, and state-owned enterprises differently from micro and small firms and private firms respectively.     

Bank competition and the cost of debt: the role of state ownership and firm size

The argument on the puzzling relationship between bank competition and the cost of debt remains inconclusive as the effects of state ownership and firm size are intertwined. We find that bank competition is negatively associated with the cost of debt and observe that the negative effect of bank competition is stronger for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and weaker for large-sized enterprises. Our findings accord with the market power hypothesis. State ownership strengthens the negative impact of bank competition on the cost of debt, but firm size tends to weaken it. SOEs and large-sized enterprises are associated with a lower cost of debt compared to non-SOEs and small- and medium-sized enterprises, respectively.