Do strategic groups differ in reputation?

While most strategic group research has focused on performance implications, we consider the relationship between strategic group membership and reputation. Using strategic group identity and domain consensus concepts, we propose strategic groups have different reputations. We find significant differences exist in reputation across three identified strategic groups of U.S. property/casualty insurers, supporting our contention that reputation is a multilevel concept. Post hoc analyses suggest strategic groups with higher reputation also have higher performance on some critical measures, indicating reputation may be a mobility barrier beneficial to members of certain groups. Practitioner implications include challenges of within‐group differentiation in firm reputation. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do International Roaming Alliances Harm Consumers?

This paper develops a model of international roaming in which mobile network operators (MNO's) compete both on the wholesale market to sell roaming services to foreign operators and on the retail market for subscribers. To allow their subscribers to place or receive calls abroad, they have to buy roaming services provided by foreign MNO's. In the absence of international alliances, competition between foreign operators would drive wholesale unit prices down to marginal costs. However, international alliances are endogenously formed since they serve as a commitment device to soften competition on the retail market, leading to excessively high roaming per‐call prices.     

Do brand names differentiate identical industrial products?

Many industrial marketing companies manufacture goods that are intrinsically identical to goods made by their competitors. When faced with this problem, an increasing number of companies attempt to use branding at the ultimate consumer level to pull their product through intermediate manufacturers and distribution channels. This paper analyses the validity of this strategy by looking at the U.K. man-made fibre market, where it has been used extensively. The conclusions are that branding alone is unlikely to be of value in the market. This hypothesis is supported by the results of a survey of industrial experts and consumers. It is suggested that the key to controlling the market in question is branding with rigid control of product end use.     

Do Merger Efficiencies Always Mitigate Price Increases?

In a Cournot model with differentiated products, we demonstrate that merger efficiencies in the form of lower marginal costs for the merging firms (the insiders) lead to higher post‐merger prices under certain conditions. Specifically, when the degree of substitutability between the two insiders is not too high relative to that between an insider and an outsider, increased efficiencies may exert upward rather than downward pressure on the prices of the merging firms. Our results suggest that in cases where firms engage in quantity competition, antitrust authorities should not presume that efficiencies will necessarily mitigate the anticompetitive effects of the merger.     

How Much Do Employers Learn from Referrals?

This paper tests the hypothesis that referrals from various sources provide employers with more information about job applicants than they would have with‐out a referral. The study uses data that contain information on two workers in the same job, allowing the differences in job and firm characteristics to be canceled out and controlling for the possibility that workers with referrals from different sources (or no referral at all) sort into jobs that put different weights on individual performance. The estimation results are consistent with referrals from current employees providing employers with more information than they would have otherwise. Additionally, it appears as though hiring through friends or relatives of the employer may involve some favoritism that results in employers either collecting less information than they would otherwise or ignoring information when setting wages. The study finds weak evidence consistent with referrals from other firms or labor unions providing useful information, and no evidence that referrals from community organizations or other sources have any effect.     

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Mortgage Shoppers: How Much Do They Save?

Survey evidence suggests that many U.S. and European consumers do not spend a lot of time comparing mortgage products. We show, however, that mortgage shopping is associated with a substantial monetary payoff, using a unique data set from a website where borrowers (not the lenders) can post their complete set of received mortgage rate offers. A borrower who shops for five mortgage offers is able to save 7,078 euros in net present value on average. The potential savings suggest suboptimal mortgage shopping as the opportunity cost of time to renegotiate additional quotes is unlikely to be that high.     

Do Responsible Contractor Policies Increase Construction Bid Costs?

Beginning in 2000, some school districts in Ohio required contractors to incorporate health insurance coverage, among other items, into their bids. Such responsible contractor policies (RCPs) are controversial because they may raise costs. This study sheds empirical light on the controversy. We estimate construction bid costs using data on elementary school projects bid in Ohio from 1997 to 2008, some of which were covered by an RCP and others of which were not. The results indicate that once we account for variation in geographic location of schools, RCPs exert no statistically discernible impact on construction bid costs.     

Do foreign entrepreneurs benefit their firms as managers?

Research summary: The entrepreneurship literature has extensively studied an individual's decision to found a new venture, but it has little to say about the individual's choice to operate this venture personally or hire an agent. This decision is particularly challenging for foreign entrepreneurs, who, in addition to traditional factors, such as agency costs and personal preferences, need to take into consideration the benefits and liabilities of foreignness. Using novel data on foreign entrepreneurial firms and instrumenting for the owner‐manager choice with a visa policy change, we find that managing foreign entrepreneurs significantly improve firm performance. Our results further suggest that foreign owner‐managers reduce operating costs but have no effect on the firm's productivity and growth. Managerial summary: Immigrants represent a significant part of the population in the United States and Europe and are often more entrepreneurial than local nationals. However, a person starting a firm in a foreign country faces unique challenges. One important choice that a foreign entrepreneur has to make is whether to operate the firm personally or hire a local agent. Foreign entrepreneurs are often believed to be worse managers because they have limited local knowledge and skills. However, our results point to the contrary: We find that managing foreign entrepreneurs significantly improve firm performance by decreasing firms' operating costs. This happens because foreign owner‐managers often have access to unique resources, higher work incentives, and superior management skills acquired at home. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do Occupational Regulations Increase Earnings? Evidence from China

We examine the influence of occupational certification and licensing in China. In the empirical analysis, we find that licensing is associated with an average of 15 percent higher wages and certification with a 13–14 percent higher wage based on ordinary least squares estimates. However, using propensity score and instrumental variable estimates suggests that part of the positive effect of certification on wages is due to self‐selection. In addition, the characteristics of a certificate or license, such as the type and quantity, further influence wage determination in China.     

Do Employers Prefer Overqualified Graduates? A Field Experiment

We test whether employers prefer overqualified to adequately qualified job candidates. To this end, duos of fictitious applications by bachelor's and master's graduates are sent to real job openings with a bachelor's degree as a minimum requirement. For the overall sample, we find that overqualified master's graduates are 19 percent more likely to be directly invited for a job interview and 11 percent more likely to get any positive reaction. This relative advantage for overqualified workers is found to be higher for bottleneck occupations. Relative preferences also differ across employers within labor‐market segments.     

Brand Imitation: Do the Chinese Have Different Views?

Trademark infringement is a big problem for international brands in Asia, especially among the three Chinese societies — the PRC, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. An exploratory study of the perceptions and attitudes of these consumers regarding their acceptability and willingness to purchase brands which imitate the look of multinational brands was carried out. The results showed the Hong Kong Chinese to be more aware and loyal to multinational brands. The PRC nationals and Taiwanese generally had low awareness of which brands were originals and which were imitators. All respondents thought the manufacture of imitator brands to be unethical, but not the purchase of such brands. The major predictor of choosing an imitator brand was the respondent's ability to identify the original brand. The results from this study suggest marketers should educate their new consumers that they are the original brand or market leader in their product category.     

Do Recessions Transform Work and Employment? Evidence from Ireland

Two contrasting views tend to dominate the literature on the impact of recessions on employment. One view is that recessions amount to a ‘critical conjuncture’ for work and employment systems, a time when firms try to transform radically existing employment models. The alternative perspective is that firms, constrained mostly by the forces of path dependency, seek to adjust to the immediate or short‐term pressures of the recession but otherwise maintain the established way of organizing the employment relationship. The purpose of this article is to contribute to this literature by reporting the findings of a major study of the effects of the recession on work and employment in firms based in Ireland. The main finding to emerge from the study is that firms mostly have made improvised adaptations in response to the crisis and have shied away from far‐reaching transformational strategies.     

How Do Start-up Acquisitions Affect the Direction of Innovation?*

A start-up engages in an investment portfolio problem by choosing how much to invest in a “non-rival” project and a “rival” project that threatens an incumbent. Anticipating its acquisition, the start-up distorts its investment portfolio in order to raise acquisition rents. This may improve or worsen the direction of innovation and consumer surplus. The bigger the difference in social surplus appropriability across the two projects, the more likely it is that the direction of innovation improves and consumers benefit from an acquisition. These results also hold if the acquirer takes over the research facilities of the start-up.     

Do Large, Diversified Banking Organizations Have Competitive Advantages?

The issue of whether large, geographically diversifiedbanking organizations (LDBs) have net competitiveadvantages, over smaller banks, that benefit retailcustomers in individual local markets has importantimplications for antitrust policy and the viability ofsmaller banks. If LDBs possess net advantages, thenlarge banks may be considered an extra-competitiveforce in the antitrust analysis of proposed bankmergers and the future viability of small banks mightbe doubtful. The results of this paper, however, donot support the view that LDBs have net competitiveadvantages. LDBs generally had difficultymaintaining, much less increasing, their depositshares from 1990 to 1996 in markets in which they madeno acquisitions. The analysis also indicates thatmarket share changes experienced by LDBs vary with anumber of LDB and market characteristics.     

Do strategic groups exist? an economic framework for analysis

This paper offers a framework and methodology for resolving the question regarding the existence of strategic groups. We say that a strategic group exists if characteristics of the group affect firm performance independently of firm-level and industry-level effects. We argue that group-level effects are a byproduct of strategic interactions among members, and develop an empirical testing model, based on the ‘New Economics of Industrial Organization,’ to distinguish true group effects from spurious effects. From this model, we derive a series of logically consistent propositions, suggesting that while strategic interactions are critical for a group-level effect on profits, mobility barriers are necessary to preserve both groups and their effects over time. A review of prior empirical studies of strategic groups suggests that the inconclusive nature of prior research has been due more to the lack of a theoretical foundation for empirical analysis than to the nonexistence of groups. To the extent that our methods have been employed, there is limited evidence that a rigorous search for strategic groups may prove fruitful. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do physician incentives affect hospital choice? A progress report

The US health reforms of March 2010 introduced new provisions for physicians providing Medicare and Medicaid services to be given financial incentives to control costs. Physician payment mechanisms generating similar incentives are currently used by some health maintenance organizations in California. We describe an ongoing research project in which we investigate physician responses to these payment schemes. The question is whether patients whose physicians have incentives to control hospital costs are admitted to lower-priced hospitals than other patients, all else equal. We provide an initial analysis of California hospital discharge data from 2003, documenting evidence consistent with this hypothesis.     

How Do Firms Finance Nonprimary Market Investments? Evidence from REITs

This study explores the impact of investment characteristics, mainly investment location relative to the firm's primary market, on financing choices by real estate investment trusts (REITs). Using a large sample of commercial property acquisitions, we show that REITs are 4–8% less likely to use secured (mortgage) debt when acquiring properties in their primary markets than elsewhere. The documented evidence supports a demand‐side story for the relation between investment characteristics and financing. Moreover, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that REITs avoid mortgage financing in their primary markets to preserve operational flexibility in those markets.     

Do remedies affect the efficiency defense? An optimal merger-control analysis

This paper examines the optimal use of remedies and the efficiency defense for merger control. We develop a framework in which merger efficiency gains are endogenously determined and are not observed by the Competition Authority. The possibility of an efficiency defense can push firms to design the merger better, leading to greater efficiency gains. Firms can also submit remedies to the Competition Authority: they interact with the efficiency defense, by reducing the firm's incentive to enhance efficiency. At the same time remedies improve the assessment of the merger, in particular by signaling the true level of efficiency gains. We ask to what extent it may be optimal to make use of both instruments simultaneously, and thus discuss the possibility that the Competition Agency refrain from using one of the instruments to try to improve overall merger-control performance.     

多威(Do—Win)的做和赢

2007年6月2日,中直机关第七届运动会成功举办,刘淇、顾秀莲等领导同志出席了本届运动会,并下场参加了比赛。中央办公厅、中纪委、中组部、中宣部等共38个直属机关单位参加了本届运动会。在开幕式上,由直属机关单位2008名运动员进行的广播体操表演,成为