New product introduction: follower firm timing behaviour

A multidisciplinary perspective is taken to the analysis of data upon the follower firm timing behaviour of 99 ‘non-pioneering’ firms introducing low-fat products into US food markets, encompassing extant approaches in marketing, economic and managerial literatures. The payoffs to followers are considered to be related to demand growth, the extent of competition, early mover advantages, firm characteristics, and risk and entry cost reductions. The propensity of firms to react to these potential payoffs is considered as involving four sequential stages and determined by organizational characteristics. The findings suggest: (i) follower firms vary in the rate at which they ultimately move through each and all of the stages identified; (ii) there is evidence that firm characteristics, time and previous entry (although not simply) impact upon the speed of market entry by firms reflecting the various influences on payoffs identified; and (iii) speeds of reaction are related to firms' abilities to internalize external market developments     

Corporate Social Responsibility and International Competition: A Welfare Analysis

This paper examines the welfare implications of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in international markets under imperfect competition. Based on a stylized model of an import‐competing duopolistic market, we show the feasibility of moving toward tariff reductions when both domestic and foreign firms launch CSR initiatives in that their payoffs include not only individual profits, but also the benefits of consumers. For the case where the foreign exporter unilaterally adopts the consumer‐oriented CSR as a strategy, there is a rent‐shifting effect because the foreign firm's payoff increases whereas the domestic firm's profit decreases. In response, the importing country's government raises its tariff on the foreign product. If, instead, the domestic firm adopts the CSR strategy unilaterally, the rent‐shifting effect disappears and both the competing firms’ payoffs increase. We further identify the conditions under which the CSR initiatives of the firms constitute the dominant strategy, leading to a Pareto efficient outcome at which the firms’ payoffs, consumer surplus, and social welfare are at their maximum levels.     

Money illusion and coordination failure

Economists long considered money illusion to be largely irrelevant. Here we show, however, that money illusion has powerful effects on equilibrium selection. If we represent payoffs in nominal terms, choices converge to the Pareto inferior equilibrium; however, if we lift the veil of money by representing payoffs in real terms, the Pareto efficient equilibrium is selected. We also show that strategic uncertainty about the other players' behavior is key for the equilibrium selection effects of money illusion: even though money illusion vanishes over time if subjects are given learning opportunities in the context of an individual optimization problem, powerful and persistent effects of money illusion are found when strategic uncertainty prevails.     

创业团队风险决策的修正效应与影响因素

创业决策具有高的风险性,如何提高创业团队风险决策的质量是一个值得探讨的问题。提出了创业团队风险决策的修正效应,以此衡量决策的过程质量,通过对46支大学生创业团队的实证研究,探究了群体凝聚力与决策过程中的成员参与度对团队风险决策修正效应的影响作用。结果显示:团队的任务凝聚力对团队决策的修正效应起到了显著的正向影响作用,成员参与度是两者关系的重要调节因素,在高的成员参与度下,任务凝聚力对团队决策的修正效应具有更大的促进作用;而团队的人际凝聚力对团队决策的修正效应没有显著影响作用。在此基础上,对提高创业团队风险决策的质量提出了相应的管理建议。     

The problem of political calculation in autocracies

Autocrats depend on their followers to remain in power. They compensate the followers in exchange for their support. Yet, they have few tools to guide them in determining the compensation commensurate with the value of each follower’s support. The failure of political calculation can easily lead to the autocrat’s demise. In semi-authoritarian and democratic regimes, elections provide a solution to the problem of political calculation. In elections, citizens cast votes in exchange for public or private goods. Thus, the number of votes received by candidates and parties can be used as a proxy for the value of their support.     

领导者情绪智力对员工工作满意度的影响

采用跨层次的研究设计,利用通过问卷调查收集的数据,探讨了领导者的情绪智力对员工工作满意度的影响作用以及员工的情绪智力对两者间关系的调节作用。针对多层线型模型的统计分析结果表明:领导者认知自我情绪的能力对员工工作满意度的影响作用显著;员工的情绪智力对其工作满意度的影响作用显著;员工的情绪智力对领导者的情绪调节能力与员工的工作满意度间的关系具有调节作用。     

The effects of heterogeneous interaction and risk attitude adaptation on the evolution of cooperation

This paper addresses the evolution of cooperation in a multi-agent system with agents interacting heterogeneously with each other based on the iterated prisoner’s dilemma (IPD) game. The heterogeneity of interaction is defined in two models. First, agents in a network are restricted to interacting with only their neighbors (local interaction). Second, agents are allowed to adopt different IPD strategies against different opponents (discriminative interaction). These two heterogeneous interaction scenarios are different to the classical evolutionary game, in which each agent interacts with every other agent in the population by adopting the same strategy against all opponents. Moreover, agents adapt their risk attitudes while engaging in interactions. Agents with payoffs above (or below) their aspirations will become more risk averse (or risk seeking) in subsequent interactions, wherein risk is defined as the standard deviation of one-move payoffs in the IPD game. In simulation experiments with agents using only own historical payoffs as aspirations (historical comparison), we find that the whole population can achieve a high level of cooperation via the risk attitude adaptation mechanism, in the cases of either local or discriminative interaction models. Meanwhile, when agents use the population’s average payoff as aspirations (social comparison) for adapting risk attitudes, the high level of cooperation can only be sustained in a portion of the population (i.e., partial cooperation). This finding also holds true in both of the heterogeneous scenarios. Considering that payoffs cannot be precisely estimated in a realistic IPD game, simulation experiments are also conducted with a Gaussian disturbance added to the game payoffs. The results reveal that partial cooperation in the population under social comparison is more robust to the variation in payoffs than the global cooperation under historical comparison.     

集群领先企业与跟随企业的协同创新过程模型

采用模型研究和数值模拟的方法,研究了集群内的领先企业与跟随企业进行协同创新的两阶段过程——研发阶段和市场化阶段。研究结果显示:协同创新可实现领先企业和跟随企业的"双赢";在协同创新过程中,跟随企业依附于领先企业,领先企业可获得比跟随企业更多的市场份额和利润;跟随企业应更关注协同创新过程中领先企业对其的技术溢出,从而提高自己的创新实力。     

Endogenous rationing,price dispersion and collusion in capacity constrained supergames

This paper examines the feasibility of collusion in capacity constrained duopoly supergames. In each period firms simultaneously set a price–quantity pair specifying the price for the period and the maximum quantity the firm is willing to sell at this price. Under price–quantity competition firms are able to ration their output below capacity. For a wide range of capacity pairs, the equilibrium path providing the smaller firm with its highest stationary perfect equilibrium payoff requires that it undercut its rival’s price and ration demand. Furthermore, for some capacities and discount factors supporting security level punishments, price shading and rationing arise everywhere on the set of stationary perfect equilibrium paths yielding (constrained) Pareto optimal payoffs. That is, price shading may not only be consistent with optimal collusion, it may be a requirement of optimal collusion.     

变革型领导国内研究综述

变革型领导理论产生于社会环境越来越趋于全球化、企业所面临的经营环境信息化与多元化时代背景下,世界的急速变化给管理者和领导者带来了极其严峻的挑战和考验,变革型领导理论突破性地把领导者和下属的角色相互联系起来,领导者通过自身的行为表率,对下属需求的关心来优化组织内的成员互动,试图在领导者与下属之间创造出一种能提高双方动力和品德水平的理论。该理论的提出使整个领导学界产生了一次大的革命,成为了近二十年学界和企业界共同关注的焦点。由于该理论产生于西方文化背景下,而中国的领导过程与西方的领导过程既有相似的方面,也有独特的一面。变革型领导理论自传入国内以来,国内研究者们从不同角度进行了广泛而深入的理论探索和相关的实证研究。本文从变革型领导的概念、结构、测量以及作用机制等方面对变革型领导的相关国内研究进行梳理,并提出未来研究的展望。     

Mergers in asymmetric Stackelberg markets

It is well known that the profitability of horizontal mergers with quantity competition is scarce. However, in an asymmetric Stackelberg market we obtain that some mergers are profitable. Our main result is that mergers among followers become profitable when the followers are inefficient enough. In this case, leaders reduce their output when followers merge and this reduction renders the merger profitable. This merger increases price and welfare is reduced.      

DISCRIMINATION IN A MODEL OF CONTESTS WITH INCOMPLETE INFORMATION ABOUT ABILITY

We study contests with private information and identical contestants, where contestants' efforts and innate abilities generate output of varying qualities. The designer's revenue depends on the quality of the output, and she offers a reward to the contestant achieving the highest quality. We characterize the equilibrium behavior, outcomes, and payoffs for both nondiscriminatory and discriminatory (where the reward is contestant‐dependent) contests. We derive conditions under which the designer obtains a larger payoff when using a discriminatory contest and describe settings, where these conditions are satisfied.     

知识团队冲突与创造力关系:领导政治技能调节下的跨层次模型

基于领导理论,探讨团队领导政治技能对团队冲突（任务冲突和关系冲突）与知识团队成员个体和团队创造力关系的调节作用。利用85个团队领导与414个团队成员的配对问卷数据,证实了团队任务冲突与团队创造力呈倒U型关系,团队关系冲突负向影响团队和个体创造力;团队领导政治技能显著抑制关系冲突对个体和团队创造力的负效应,显著增强任务冲突对个体创造力的正效应,负向调节团队任务冲突与团队创造力的倒U型关系。     

Uniqueness of stationary equilibrium payoffs in coalitional bargaining

We study a model of sequential bargaining in which, in each period before an agreement is reached, the proposer?s identity is randomly determined, the proposer suggests a division of a pie of size one, each other agent either approves or rejects the proposal, and the proposal is implemented if the set of approving agents is a winning coalition for the proposer. The theory of the fixed point index is used to show that stationary equilibrium expected payoffs of this coalitional bargaining game are unique. This generalizes Eraslan [34] insofar as: (a) there are no restrictions on the structure of sets of winning coalitions; (b) different proposers may have different sets of winning coalitions; (c) there may be a positive probability that no proposer is selected.     

HOW MANY FIRMS BECOME LEADERS?*

This paper investigates a quantity-setting oligopoly model with endogenous timing. We formulate an n-firm two-period model. Each firm chooses whether to take its action in period 1 or take its action in period 2 after observing the first-period actions of other firms. We call firms taking their actions in period 1 ‘leaders’ and those taking action in period 2 ‘following’. We find that the number of followers is at most one regardless of whether leaders have first mover advantage.     

HOW MANY FIRMS SHOULD BE LEADERS? BENEFICIAL CONCENTRATION REVISITED*

This article investigates the relationship between the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and welfare in multiple‐leader Stackelberg models. We formulate two long‐run models of free entry of followers; in the first (second) model, leaders select their output before (after) the entry of the followers. We find that in both models, in contrast to the short‐run models, the Stackelberg model yields a larger welfare and HHI than the Cournot model does regardless of the number of leaders; that is, beneficial concentration always occurs.     

Are there too few trades during the NFL draft?

College football players are initially assigned to teams in the National Football League (NFL) through the league’s draft selection process. At each team’s turn to pick, the team has the option of exercising the pick itself or trading it to another team. If gains from trade are exhausted, draft picks should be exercised by the team with the highest expected value. That is, the expected player contribution garnered from a given pick should not be dependent on whether the pick was traded or retained. Regression results, however, indicate that controlling for a player’s draft position, when a team trades up to acquire a player, that player is more likely to have greater on-field success. This suggests that there are too few draft day trades. Plausible reasons are high transaction costs or the fear of media scrutiny that draft trades can engender.     

Renegotiation in Repeated Games with Side-Payments

We consider repeated games with side-payments: players have an endowment of wealth in each period in which transfers can be made. We show that if endowments are large enough and the common discount factor high enough, then a strongly renegotiation–proof equilibrium (SRP) in the sense of Farrell and Maskin exists. As the discount factor goes to 1, the set of SRP payoffs converges to the set of efficient, individually rational payoffs. These results provide a justification for the efficiency principle when agreements are not enforceable. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C73, D23, L14.     

Innovation by Heterogeneous Leaders*

We develop a Schumpeterian growth model in which leaders and followers conduct research and development (R&D) activities and in which leaders have different‐sized quality leads over their followers, and thus have different profit flows. We show that leaders with larger quality leads make smaller R&D investments; this result is consistent with the actual behaviors of some previous leader firms, such as Sony and Eastman–Kodak. Moreover, we show that subsidizing the R&D of followers can promote the aggregate R&D of leaders, because promotion of followers' R&D decreases (increases) the number of leaders with larger (smaller) quality leads and smaller (larger) R&D investments.