Industrial Pricing Strategies in Singapore and the U.S.: Same or Different?

It is generally believed that business-to-business marketing strategies are more uniform worldwide than those in consumer markets, because the buying firms focus more on issues such as product performance and profits. If this is so, a strategy model validated in one industrial market should apply reasonably well in another. This study compares pricing strategies of industrial firms in two market economies, the U.S. and Singapore. A pricing strategy model validated in the U.S. was tested in Singapore to determine whether internal and external conditions incorporated in the model could adequately explain differences in strategy choices between the markets.     

The Pricing Structure of Legal Services: Do Lawyers Offer What Clients Want?

Review of Industrial Organization - We analyze clients’ contract choices in auctions where Dutch law firms compete for standard cases such as labor disputes for individuals and collecting...     

Buyer Brokers: Do They Make a Difference? Their Influence on Selling Price and Search Duration

This study focuses on the role of buyer brokers in the home-buying process by examining the effects of brokerage representation on home selling prices and search duration. The results of this study indicate that real estate brokers, no matter the type, have no independent effect on home prices. The principal effect of broker intermediation is a reduction in buyer search time, compared to for-sale-by-owner transactions. The most important finding, however, is that buyer agents are more effective at reducing search time for their clients than more traditional seller agents or non-agent facilitators.     

New Employee Relations Strategies in Britain: Towards Individualism or Partnership?

This article addresses the themes of individualism, partnership and collectivism in British industrial relations by reporting on a detailed three-year case-study-based research project. Drawing on this data set, we offer insights into practical developments in contemporary workplaces and into the thinking of managers and employee representatives as they attempt to steer new paths in their relations. In particular, we examine what happens in practice when senior management teams, in previously collectivized organizations, set out with the explicit intent of shifting the balance of emphasis towards more 'individualized' relations with employees and/or to devise new 'partnership' arrangements.     

Revisions in Repeat-Sales Price Indexes: Here Today,Gone Tomorrow?

Price indexes based on the repeat-sales model are revised all the way to the beginning of the sample every time a new quarter of information becomes available. Revisions can adversely affect practitioners. In this paper we examine this revision process both theoretically and empirically. The theory behind the repeat-sales method says that revisions should lower the standard error of the estimated indexes; we prove that, in fact, the revised index is more efficient than the original one. This implies that large samples should make revisions trivial. However, our data, and the Freddie-Fannie data, suggest that revisions are large, insensitive to sample size and systematic; revisions are more likely to be downward than upward. In Los Angeles and Fairfax, revisions are usually downward and statistically significant. This bias in initial repeat-sales estimates is caused by sample selectivity; properties with only one or two years between sales do not appreciate at the same rate as other properties. We hypothesize that these \"flips\" are improved (possibly cosmetically) between sales. One implication of our analysis is that flips should be removed or downweighted before calculating repeat-sales indexes. The same model estimated without flips appears free of bias. We find small increases in efficiency from adding up to 4,300 observations to a base of 1,200.     

Should undergraduates be instructed in loss prevention?

The reasons why process safety and loss prevention should be included in the training of undergraduate chemical engineers.     

Silk Export:High in Price,Low in Volume

From January to September, the exports of silk products totaled 6.42 billion USD, in- creased 0.81% compared with the same time last year. However, except for a few sorts of silk fabrics, the export volume of silk, silk fabrics and silk finished products all went down. The reason why the total value kept up was because of the rise of the average unit prices. Silk: volume went down, while the average unit price climbed up From January to September, the export of silk was 19,500 tons, dropped…     

Lysine and Price Fixing: How Long? How Severe?

In October 1996 the Archer Daniels Midland Company(ADM) pleaded guilty to criminal price fixing withrespect to sales of lysine and agreed to pay a $70million fine. Earlier, in August 1996 two Japaneseproducers and a Korean producer of lysine had agreedto plead guilty to criminal price fixing charges. Andearlier still, in July 1996 ADM and the two Japanesecompanies settled the civil suits filed by some harmedbuyers by agreeing to pay a sum of $45 million.It is this last event that serves as the focus forthis paper. The adequacy of the settlement amount wasa major area of dispute. Connor (1996, 1997, 1998)has claimed that the trebled damages to lysinepurchasers were an order of magnitude larger. Crucialto Connor's conclusions are his assumptions as to thetime period during which the conspiracy had an effecton prices and the but for price that otherwise wouldhave prevailed in the absence of the conspiracy. Thispaper will argue that Connor substantiallyover-estimated the period of the conspiracy andunder-estimated the but-for price.     

Do Low‐Price Guarantees Guarantee Low Prices? Evidence from Competition between Amazon and Big‐Box Stores

It has long been understood in theory that price‐match guarantees can be anticompetitive, but to date, scant empirical evidence is available outside of some narrow markets. This paper broadens the scope of empirical analysis, studying a wide range of products sold on a national online market. Using an algorithm that extracts data from charts, I obtain a novel source of data from online price trackers. I examine prices of goods sold on Amazon before and after two big‐box stores (Target and Best Buy) announced a guarantee to match Amazon's prices. Employing both difference‐in‐difference and regression‐discontinuity approaches, I robustly estimate a positive causal effect of six percentage points. The effect was heterogeneous, with larger price increases for initially lower‐priced items. My results support anticompetitive theories which predict price increases for Amazon, a firm that did not adopt the guarantee, and are consistent with plausible mechanisms for the heterogeneous impact.     

Investment Analysis,Price Formation and Neglected Firms: Does Real Estate Make a Difference?

This paper examines the relation between information-gathering activities and price formation when the gatherers are small in number. Two measures of information asymmetry are estimated to test the cross-sectional effect of investment-analyst attention on price formation. The analysis contrasts firms that invest predominately in real estate assets to those that do not. Unlike most studies of the competition among information gatherers, the results in this paper indicate that liquidity worsens with increasing investment-analyst attention. These findings provide further evidence that information deficiency is an important economic trait, although real estate securities may suffer less from neglect than from asset-specific information asymmetry.     

Regulating network communication in Asia: a different balancing act?

Because of often conflicting policy objectives, whether, and how, to regulate network communication has become an art of seeking the best balance. One of the most notable controversies has been balancing between freedom of expression and the need to protect the public from harmful materials. As policy objectives and priorities are set by the political, economic, social and cultural contexts in which laws and regulations are formulated and carried out, policymakers may be caught by different sets of conflicting concerns and end up with solutions which are unique to a particular situation. Using China and Singapore, this article examines two East Asian examples of balancing between economic growth, national sovereignty and social harmony, and the implications of such measures for policy research.     

Price Spikes in Energy Markets: “Business by Usual Methods” or Strategic Withholding?

There is considerable controversy whether price spikes in energy markets represent demand shifts in the presence of inelastic supply or strategic withholding by suppliers. This paper sets out a new method for distinguishing the two possible explanations, namely, determining whether supply shifts to the left during periods of high demand. Such behavior would be inconsistent with ordinary profit-maximization, that is, “business by usual methods.” This approach is applied to a period of unusually high prices in the New York wholesale electricity market in 2001. There is evidence of strategic withholding for one brief period.     

Upstream merger in a successive oligopoly: Who pays the price?

This study applies a successive oligopoly model, with an unobservable non-linear tariff between upstream and downstream firms, to analyze the possible anti-competitive effects of an upstream merger in the Norwegian food sector (specifically, the market for eggs). The theoretical predictions are that an upstream merger may lead to higher average prices paid by downstream firms and at the same time no changes in the prices paid by consumers. Consistent with the theoretical predictions it is found that the merger had no effect on consumer prices, but led to higher average prices paid by the downstream firms to the merged firm.     

Innovation strategy and sanctioned conflict: a new edge in innovation?

Teamwork and harmony are worthy objectives, but a healthy dose of conflict also plays an important role in fostering innovation. In their pursuit of teamwork and harmony, companies run the risk of suppressing the creative tension that brings vitality to new-product development (NPD) efforts. Furthermore, a firm's choice of innovation strategy may have a significant effect on the organization's capability for managing conflict. Using results from a survey of 290 marketing and R&D managers from U.S. firms in the electronics industries, Barbara Dyer and X. Michael Song explore the link between strategy and conflict, and the effect this link has on NPD success. Their study examines the following issues: the influence of business strategy on specific conflict-handling behaviors; the relationship between those conflict-handling behaviors and positive conflict outcomes; and the relationship between constructive conflict and new-product success. The study classifies firms predominantly pursuing a more aggressive NPD strategy as prospectors and less aggressive firms as defenders. Three conflict-handling mechanisms are identified: integrating behaviors, forcing behaviors, and avoiding behaviors. Compared to the prospector firms, the defender firms in this study perceived significantly higher levels of conflict in their organizations. In handling conflict, the prospector firms perceived a higher level of integrative behavior than the defender firms. The defenders perceived higher levels of forcing and avoiding conflict behaviors. The study identifies a strong, positive relationship between integrative behaviors and constructive conflict. Positive relationships are also identified between constructive conflict and the success of cross-functional relationships, as well as between constructive conflict and NPD business success. For the firms in this study, the results indicate that strategy is associated with the conflict-handling mechanisms the firm uses. For example, the results suggest that an NPD manager in a prospector firm will encounter high use of integrative behaviors, a high number of complex conflicts, a relatively low level of perceived conflict, a high level of formalization, and frequent exchanges of written and verbal communication among the firm's personnel. The results suggest that managers may help to create an environment conducive to NPD success by assessing their firms' strategies, emphasizing integrative conflict-handling behaviors, and employing formalization of organizational procedures.     

Sourcing Co-Created Products: Should Your Suppliers Collaborate on Cost Reductions?

Review of Industrial Organization - We study how a multi-product downstream firm should source from the upstream market—single-source versus multi-source—in a situation where the...     

Technological regimes in m-commerce: Convergence as a barrier to diffusion and entrepreneurship?

During the dotcom-period, a commonly shared belief was that m-commerce and m-payment would become just as successful as GSM and SMS. Although the ICT industry has successfully recovered from the dotcom crisis, m-commerce has still not had much success: why has the diffusion of m-commerce and m-payment been so slow, almost absent in Europe and USA? The article suggests that the obstacles accounting for this are plausibly systemic and related to factors that hinder the establishment of a new technological regime for m-commerce. Diffusion of m-commerce will require convergence of numerous disparate and competing elements and systems that at present belong to, or are controlled by, different sectors. The article presents a case study of a dotcom firm fictitiously entitled PinkFish in order to demonstrate these factors. By embracing a strategy of convergence based on symbiosis and co-operation, m-commerce may enter a rapid diffusion process in the future.     

Wages and Contracting Out: Does the Law of One Price Hold?

We find that, conditioning on industry of assignment, cleaners and security guards who participate in activities organized by contract companies earn 15 and 17 per cent less, respectively, than workers in those activities organized in‐house. These estimates are hardly affected by the inclusion of a set of jointly statistically significant exogenous variables. We can expect that most of the productive traits that characterize a task are transferred to the contractor in the process of contracting out a cleaning or security task. Thus, our findings are hard to rationalize by a simple competitive labour market setting where the law of one price holds.     

Construction Procurement Auctions: Do Entrant Bidders Employ More Aggressive Strategies than Incumbent Bidders?

Asymmetric auction theory predicts that weak bidders will bid more aggressively when facing strong bidders, while strong bidders will bid less aggressively when facing weak bidders. This paper finds empirical evidence to support this hypothesis regarding the behavior of weak bidders in construction auctions. Examining a comprehensive data set of more than 7,500 Utah construction procurement auctions, we find that entrants bid more aggressively than do incumbents for most subcontractor types. Reflecting their inexperience and uncertainty regarding the true cost of projects, entrants’ bids are found to be more widely dispersed around the central tendency of bids.