企业资本结构与产品市场竞争——一种新的理论视角

直到 2 0世纪 80年代 ,企业资本结构对产品市场竞争的影响才引起经济学家的广泛关注。对于这一问题的研究 ,存在着两种截然不同的理论结论 :一种观点认为企业债务水平的提高会使其在产品市场竞争中更为强硬 ,增强其竞争力 ;另一种观点则恰好相反。借鉴前人理论成果的基础上 ,尝试着提出了一种较为一般的分析框架 ,并将不同的理论成果作为这一分析框架的不同侧面。     

产品市场竞争度与公司治理效应的实证分析:基于经理人激励视角

近年来,产品市场竞争作为公司治理的一种外部机制正受到重视。本文取2006年中国上市公司数据,以产品市场竞争为出发点,将公司治理绩效、经理人薪酬、经理人市场竞争度与企业研发联系起来进行实证分析。研究结果表明,这四项与HHI都呈正向相关关系,说明提高产品市场竞争度不仅有利于改善公司治理绩效,而且能够通过较高的薪酬选拔合乎企业的优秀人才。实证分析显示,研发与HHI间的关系最为显著,但其受控制权性质、资产与债务规模的控制较为明显。     

Productivity, indexation and macroeconomic outcomes: The implications of goods market competition and wage bargaining structure

One strand of the macroeconomics literature explores the extent to which the indexation of nominal wages to a variable in addition to the price level can improve macroeconomic performance. The present paper contributes to this literature by developing a model in which the nominal wage is indexed not only to the price level but also to productivity. Two key features of the framework are a monopolistically competitive goods market and a unionized labor market in which wages are determined by a finite number of unions. A significant finding is that the multiparameter indexation scheme generally outperforms full-information wage setting.     

Foreign competition and quality sorting: Overlaps in US and Chinese exports

The paper studies the performance of US exports conditional on presence and magnitude of Chinese exports in the same foreign markets. Outcomes within product—destination markets are analysed in a panel covering 4,219 products, 67 destinations and 11 years (1996–2006). Generally, an increasing exposure to Chinese export competition is related with lower US export revenues, quantity and market shares. Robustness checks support existence and direction of a causal relationship. Other outcomes, such as product switching, market exit and export unit value adjustments are less clear‐cut. Detailed analyses of responses in individual destinations and product categories suggest that this is, partly, because Chinese and US exports compete only in some markets. In product markets where lower US export quantity coincides with adjustments of export unit value, quality sorting appears to be prevalent. In some cases, however, lower export unit values appear to help export quantities remain unchanged. Overall, the average estimated displacement effects obtained from a pooled sample mask substantial panel‐unit heterogeneity.     

Market Delineation and Product Differentiation

The purpose of this study is to analyse theoretically the implications of applying the procedure for market delineation used by competition authorities in the EU and in the U.S. Specifically, we investigate the circumstances under which the procedure will lead to a positive relation between actual market power and the assessed degree of market dominance. Another objective is to test whether the procedure is neutral in the sense that it does not discriminate among different sources of market power. In order to address these issues, we develop an oligopoly model that allows for an arbitrary number of firms as well as for vertical and horizontal product differentiation. It is found that the correlation between actual market power and assessed market dominance is likely to be weak in industries where the marginal cost of production is low and that the procedure discriminates strongly among different sources of market power.     

审计委员会、董事会特征与财务呈报质量:基于中国证券市场的实证研究

Board independence and the board’s expertise characteristics are key factors influencing the quality of financial reporting. Companies, having a higher percentage of independent directors, having independent financial directors, or having an audit committee on board are more likely to generate quality accounting earnings information. Variables representing board behavior characteristics, namely, ratio of shares owned by the board, board meeting frequency within a year, and the number of independent directors holding posts concurrently in the controlling shareholder’s company, are not significantly related to the quality of financial reporting. Board meeting frequency is even abnormally negatively related to the quality of financial reporting. Translated from Guangli Pinglun 管理评论 (Business Review), 2006, (7): 49–56     

产品市场竞争对经理层激励效果的影响研究

通过对我国转轨经济条件下的产品市场竞争对经理层激励效果的影响进行研究,并结合我国上市公司终极控制人的特征,对国有控股和民营控股公司中这种影响关系的差异进行系统比较。实证研究发现,只有当产品市场竞争程度超过一定水平后,产品市场竞争才会对经理层激励效果存在显著的正面影响,并且这种影响在民营控股企业中比在国有控股企业中更强烈。     

Product quality,firm heterogeneity and trade liberalization

This paper develops a framework for studying the general equilibrium effects of endogenous quality upgrading, a new margin of trade, on the welfare impact of trade liberalization. The theoretical model introduces product quality differentiation amongst heterogeneous firms and focuses on supply-side determinants of international trade. Among other results, in general equilibrium, trade liberalization decreases the share of high-quality varieties in exports and the average productivity of exporters. These changes affect average export price in opposite ways. Nevertheless, trade liberalization in the quality-extended model increases consumers’ welfare by more than in the benchmark model.     

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.     

Unfolding market vision quality: understanding its dimensions,drivers, and before-launch performance

ABSTRACT

While prior research has recognised the importance of developing radical and really new product innovations for long-term business success, the factors underpinning successful development of such ‘market-driving’ innovations remain elusive. This study unfolds the extrinsic and intrinsic dimensions of market vision (MV) quality and investigates their drivers, the organisational and individual dimensions of market visioning competence (MVC). Further, it examines the extent to which MV dimensions influence before-launch performance – specifically, the ability to maintain breakthrough integrity (BI) of new products and achieve early success with customers (ESC) with market-driving innovations. Using a sample of 179 managers of innovative companies in Thailand, the results highlight that the MVC organisational dimension acts as a key driver for both dimensions of MV quality. While the MV extrinsic dimension influences BI, the instrinsic dimension of MV influences ESC – and ultimately, BI influences ESC. Research implications exist to advance the development of market-driving innovations.     

Tax competition with asymmetric market structures: The role of policy instruments*

We analyze the location choice of a multinational corporation (MNC) between two host countries with different market structures, i.e. the number of competing domestic firms in them. We consider the effects of import tariffs and lump-sum subsidies on the MNC's locational choice. Our findings include: (1) with lump-sum subsidy, the country with fewer firms always gets the MNC, (2) with tariffs, the country with more domestic firms gets the MNC when the export transportation cost is high and the domestic firms are sufficiently inefficient, while the country with fewer domestic firms wins the MNC when export transportation cost is low, and (3) the MNC location decision may crucially depend on which instrument is used to attract the MNC.     

Competition,firm size and returns to skills: Evidence from currency shocks and market liberalisations

We investigate the impact of product market competition on returns to skills in Italy using a longitudinal dataset on individual working histories. This impact is identified using three exogenous shocks affecting competition: the unforeseen devaluation of the Lira in 1992, its return to a fixed exchange regime in 1996 and the market liberalisation in the utility and transport sectors in the late 1990s–early 2000s. We analyse how firm heterogeneity and shocks of different types and signs affect the impact of competition on skill premia. We find that opposite shocks have opposite effects: an increase (resp. decrease) in international competition increases (resp. decreases) skill premia. Moreover, international shocks have greater effects on medium sized firms, while domestic liberalisation shocks have greater effects on large incumbents.     

Market openness and market quality in gold markets

This paper studies the impact of market openness on market quality in gold markets, by investigating the openness event that occurred when the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) launched an international board (SGEI) for foreign investors in China. Investors prefer to trade on the SGE than the SGEI, probably due to the SGE’s higher liquidity. In addition, using the New York Mercantile Exchange (COMEX) gold futures as the benchmark, we show the SGE experiences a significant increase in liquidity without a concomitant increase in volatility. Moreover, the SGE’s contribution to international gold price discovery increases after the openness event.     

Implications of strategic alliances for earnings quality and capital market investors

Strategic alliances are well-established organizational forms and a means of strategy implementation. Despite their growing pervasiveness in the economy, existent literature provides few insights about earnings quality of strategic alliances. This challenge is especially severe in contractual alliances (CAs), where firms do not form a new corporate entity that is separate from the parent organization in comparison to joint ventures (JVs). We investigate how earnings attributes differ depending on involvement in strategic alliances of 8137 CAs and 3026 JVs spanning 1997–2007. We find, in particular, that earnings attributes of firms involved in contractual alliances are broadly reflective of low underlying accounting quality. Relative to JV firms and non-alliance (NA) firms, they have higher levels of discretionary accruals, lower accrual quality, and earnings that are less persistent, less smooth, less relevant, less timely, and less conservative. They also have lower earnings response coefficients.     

Welfare and quality improvement in an international market

This paper analyzes the optimal uniform and discriminatory quality requirements under Cournot competition when two firms produce high-quality and low-quality products, respectively, in an international market. The quality requirements in our paper are not set for the foreign firm but are set to regulate products of different qualities, since in the real world a domestic firm could be a high- or low-quality producer. We find that whether the government should raise the quality requirements depends on the type of competition in which firms engage and the adopted quality requirements. By and large, the government should always set quality requirements raising both firms’ quality directly or indirectly, regardless of the quality of the product of the domestic firm. However, if the domestic firm is a high-quality producer, the government should set a quality requirement that enables the domestic firm to monopolize the market when a discriminatory quality requirement is adopted, and should not set any quality requirement when a uniform quality requirement is adopted. Moreover, we show that the quality requirement can actually improve global welfare in most cases.     

产品市场的竞争性与企业资本结构选择

随着经济全球化的发展,国内外产品市场的竞争越来越激烈。从产品市场竞争性的角度,研究产品市场的竞争性对企业资本结构的影响,结论是:企业资产负债率与其所处的产品市场的竞争程度正相关,且产品市场竞争程度对资产负债率差异的解释力非常显著。     

Recent Advances in Structural Econometric Modeling: Dynamics, Product Positioning and Entry

In the empirical analysis of consumer markets, recent literature has begun to explore the dynamics in both consumer decisions as well as in firms' marketing policies. Other research has begun to explore the strategic aspects of product line design in a competitive environment. In both cases, structural models have given us new insights into consumer and firm behavior. For example, incorporating consumer and firm dynamics may help explain patterns in our data that are not well-captured by static models. Similarly, the strategic aspects of firm entry and product-positioning may be intrinsically linked to firm conduct and the intensity of competition in a market. Structural analysis of these consumer and firm decisions raise a number of substantial computational challenges. We discuss the computational challenges as well as specific empirical applications. The discussions are based on the session “Structural Models of Strategic Choice” from the 2004 Choice Symposium.     

Emerging Market Footholds and Knowledge: An Examination of New Product Launch Performance

As developed markets become more saturated, managers increasingly recognize the value of emerging markets as venues for growth opportunities. Yet, launching products into these markets is extremely risky due to weak institutional environments (e.g., lack of physical infrastructure), making success more uncertain. To alleviate this challenge, theory points to using emerging market footholds that yield market-specific knowledge. However, it is unclear whether knowledge is realized and, if so, what facets of harvested knowledge are effective in driving performance. Accordingly, we used data collected from a survey of business professionals to examine emerging market footholds and market-specific knowledge (i.e., customer, competitor, and logistics knowledge). Our results show that the extent of market presence held by an emerging market foothold is positively associated with all types of knowledge, yet only competitor and logistics knowledge—not customer knowledge—is positively associated with product launch performance. A supplemental sample of new product launches in developed markets revealed the opposite results wherein customer knowledge was the only significant predictor. Viewed collectively, the results suggest a market maturity threshold wherein logistics and competitive knowledge becomes less influential in driving performance, and customer knowledge becomes more influential.     

The causal correlations among market structure,conduct, and performance of the CPA industry

This study uses the structure–conduct–performance theory to explore causal correlations among the market structure of the certified public accountant industry, the conduct, and the operation performance of accounting firms. The study uses stepwise regression analysis to find out important factors of these three dimensions. The empirical results confirm that there exist causal correlations among market structure, conduct, and operation performance of accounting firms, not just a single direction relationship. This study hopes that the findings can provide researchers and practitioners with the more complete and useful references for policy and decision-making.     

制造型供应商不同产品特征与品牌导向的关系机理--基于我国产业市场的实证研究

本文以信息整合理论为依据,将供应商产品特征视为其实施品牌导向的前置变量,并把供应商产品特征划分为产品重要性与产品复杂性两类,探讨不同产品特征与品牌导向的关系。对184家制造型供应商数据进行实证分析,结果发现,供应商产品重要性与品牌导向具有倒U型关系,产品复杂性与品牌导向具有U型关系,同时市场竞争强度会增强上述两组变量间的非线性关系。