The Value of Collusion with Endogenous Capacity and Demand Uncertainty

Collusion has often been alleged in industries where long‐lived capacity investments are important. This article develops a computational duopoly model with capacity investments, demand shocks and either competitive or collusive pricing. It shows that allowing for endogenous capacity investments can sometimes make collusion less valuable than competition and that it can change the normal relationships between the profitability of collusion and both the discount rate and industry‐wide demand shocks.     

Product Market Competition and Corporate Real Estate Investment under Demand Uncertainty

This article theoretically and empirically analyzes the interactions among corporate real estate investment, product market competition and firm risk. In our model, firms own strategic real estate or lease generic real estate. Our model predicts that strategic real estate ownership is positively correlated with industry concentration and negatively related to demand uncertainty. Also, firm risk is higher for firms with more strategic real estate operating in a more concentrated market. This prediction arises because smaller investments induce greater market competition, which effectively eliminates the right tail of the firm's profit distribution. We provide strong empirical support for our predictions. In particular, firm value is more volatile in less competitive markets for a given level of demand uncertainty.     

Investment under Demand Uncertainty,Ex-Ante Pricing,and Oligopoly

This paper considers the capacity choice of duopolists who set price ex-ante under demand uncertainty with risk-neutrality. The duopolists compete for market shares on the basis of availability of supply, rather than by price competition. Collusive pricing coexists with Cournot–Nash capacity choice. A formal model is presented, where the market share of each firm may deviate from the certainty share due to rationing. With shares reflecting different costs, capacity utilisation for the lower cost firm is expected to be substantially lower. The implications for the price-cost margin and capacity formation are also explored.     

我国石油需求与石油替代战略

石油是重要的能源和战略物资。当今世界 ,石油供应和需求的发展不仅是一个经济问题 ,而且一直是涉及国际关系的政治问题。当前 ,我国能源供需平衡发展中的主要问题已经由总量平衡矛盾为主 ,转变为以结构性矛盾为主。这个结构性矛盾的突出表现就是石油供应短缺 ,它将成为今后制约我国国民经济发展的“瓶颈”。本文通过对石油供应短缺原因和我国石油供需平衡的分析 ,指出解决石油供应短缺的最佳途径是采取石油进口替代战略。     

Customer and Competitor Insights,New Product Development Competence,and New Product Creativity: Differential,Integrative, and Substitution Effects

Developing creative new products requires a synthesis among customer‐oriented and competitor‐oriented learning, and new product development competence. However, underlying this synthesis is a paradox: how to integrate both customer and competitor insights within a technology‐centric new product development process. In order to examine the nature of this organizational tension, this study develops a conceptual framework and tests a series of six hypotheses with data generated from our study of creative new products within 187 high‐technology ventures in China. Differential effects are found in the way in which customer‐oriented learning (neutral) and competitor‐oriented learning (positive) relate to new product creativity. Their integration, meanwhile, is positively related to this new product outcome. Results also reveal that new product development competence, both independently and when integrated with customer‐oriented learning, positively impacts new product creativity. However, the study also reveals a surprising finding of a substitution effect where the combination of competitor‐oriented learning with new product development competence is inversely related to new product creativity. These findings are discussed, and their implications are derived for further research and both market and technology management.     

New Product Models: Practice, Shortcomings and Desired Improvements

Vijay Mahajan and Jerry Wind report the results of a study conducted to assess the role of new product models in supporting and improving the new product development process. The study focused on current industry practice in deciding which models and methods to use, their shortcomings and desired improvements. The results have implications for developers, suppliers and users of new product forecasting models. The article concludes with a research and implementation agenda to further foster and benefit from advances in new product models.     

Advertising Bans, Monopoly, and Alcohol Demand: Testing for Substitution Effects using State Panel Data

Using a panel of 45 states for the period 1982–1997,this study analyzes the importance of severalrestrictive alcohol regulations, including advertising bans for billboards, bans of price advertising, state monopoly control of retail stores, and changes in the minimum legal drinking age. In contrast to previous research, the study allows for substitution among beverages as a response to a regulation that targets a specific beverage. A restrictive law that applies only to one beverage (or one form of advertising) can result in substitution toward other beverages (or non-banned media). Allowing for substitution means that the net effect on total alcohol consumption is uncertain, and must be determined empirically. The empirical results demonstrate that monopoly control of spirits reduces consumption of that beverage, and increases consumption of wine. The effect on beer is positive, but is not statistically significant. The net effect on total alcohol is significantly negative. Higher minimum legal drinking age laws have negative effects on beverage and total alcohol consumption. Bans of advertising do not reduce total alcohol consumption, which partly reflects substitution effects. The study thus demonstrates the possible unintended consequences of restrictive alcohol regulations.     

Short-Run Demand and Uncertainty of Outcome in Major League Baseball

This article explores the importance of uncertainty in athletic contests. We use a probit model and Monte Carlo simulations to forecast game outcomes in Major League Baseball. Simulations are necessary to understand fully the preferences that consumers have towards uncertainty in sports. We use these simulations to estimate demand using attendance data for regular season games. Our findings show that when game, playoff, and consecutive season uncertainty measures are all included in estimating attendance for individual games, only the metrics that are related to the home team’s standing are significant. These metrics include the change in performance from the previous season and the importance of the game in qualifying for the playoffs.     

Environmental Uncertainty, Organizational Integration, and New Product Development Effectiveness: A Test of Contingency Theory

R&D/marketing integration clearly improves new-product development (NPD) effectiveness. However, achieving this integration increases the costs of NPD efforts. If technical and market uncertainty moderate the effects of integration on NPD effectiveness, perhaps a firm can achieve NPD success in a more cost-effective manner by seeking the appropriate level of integration, based on the perceived level of uncertainty. In a study of 101 NPD projects at high-tech firms in the U.S. and the U.K., William E. Souder, J. Daniel Sherman, and Rachel Davies-Cooper explore the interplay between technical and market uncertainty, integration, and NPD effectiveness. Their study examines two types of integration: R&D/marketing integration and direct R&D/customer integration. The study measures NPD effectiveness in terms of such indicators as NPD cycle time, prototype development proficiency, design change frequency (a negative performance indicator), and product launch proficiency. The responses from both the U.S. and the U.K. firms provide balanced samples of high and low uncertainty projects, as well as successful and unsuccessful projects. The results of this study support previous research regarding the positive effects of both R&D/marketing integration and direct R&D/customer integration on NPD effectiveness. However, only one measure of NPD effectiveness—R&D comercialization effectiveness—was affected by both R&D/marketing integration and direct R&D/customer integration. This result suggests that the two types of integration are distinct from one another and that managers need to emphasize different types of integration, depending on which aspects of NPD effectiveness their firms need to improve. The results also suggest that technical and market uncertainty influence some aspects of NPD effectiveness. For example, the perceived level of technical uncertainty was found to influence prototype development proficiency and to moderate design change frequency. In other words, these results support the idea that a high level of technical uncertainty warrants paying extra attention to increasing prototype development proficiency in the interest of reducing design change frequency. However, the results also reinforce the idea that NPD activities generally involve high levels of technical and market uncertainty, which means that the high cost of integration may be a requirement for NPD success.     

Strategic Suppliers' Technical Contributions to New Product Advantage: Substitution and Configuration Options

Current theory lacks clarity on how different kinds of resources contribute to new product advantage, or how firms can combine different resources to achieve a new product advantage. While several studies have identified different firm‐specific resources that influence new product advantage, comparatively little research has explored the contribution of strategic supplier resources. Combining resource‐based and relational perspectives, this study develops a theoretical model investigating how a strategic supplier's technical capabilities impact focal firm new product advantage and how firms combine different resources to gain this advantage. The model is tested using detailed survey data collected from 153 interorganizational new product development projects in the United Kingdom within which a strategic supplier had been extensively involved. Empirical results support our research hypotheses. First, supplier technical performance is shown to have a significant positive impact on new product advantage. Next, we show that while supplier technical capabilities have a positive influence on supplier technical performance, the a priori nature of the supplier's task moderates the relationship. Finally, our data support our hypotheses related to the positive relationship between relationship‐specific absorptive capacity and new product advantage, and the proposed negative moderation of supplier technical capabilities on this relationship. Based upon these findings, we encourage managers to recognize that strategic suppliers' with greater technical capabilities perform better regardless of the degree of creativity required by their task; but that strategic suppliers with lower technical capabilities may partially compensate (substitute) for their lack of technical capabilities, if they are able to respond to high problem‐solving task requirements. Furthermore, we suggest that the firm's development of relationship‐specific absorptive capacity is much more important when a strategic supplier is less technically capable. A buying firm's relationship‐specific absorptive capacity can, according to our data, substitute for low supplier technical capabilities. On the other hand, where the supplier has strong technical capabilities, investments in relationship‐specific absorptive capacity have no effect on new product advantage. Our findings reinforce recent calls for research on how firms can combine different resources and capabilities to achieve superior performance.     

Effects of Macroeconomic Uncertainty and Labor Demand Shocks on the Housing Market

This article shows that macroeconomic uncertainty affects the housing market in two significant ways. First, uncertainty shocks adversely affect housing prices but not the quantities that are traded. Controlling for a broad set of variables in fixed‐effects regressions, we find that uncertainty shocks reduce both housing prices and median sales prices in the amount of 1.4% and 1.8%, respectively, but the effect is not statistically significant for the percentage changes of all homes sold. Second, when both uncertainty and local demand shocks are introduced, the effects of uncertainty on the housing market dominate that of local labor demand shocks on housing prices, median sale prices, the share of houses selling for a loss and transactions. The aforementioned effects are largest for the states that exhibit relatively high housing price volatilities, suggesting real options effects in the housing market during the times of high uncertainty.     

Demand Uncertainty,Development Timing and Leasehold Land Valuation: Empirical Testing of Real Options in Residential Real Estate Development

This article develops and tests a long‐dated American call option pricing model for valuing development land under leasehold. We analyze and test option values in ten detailed Hong Kong cases involving purchase, holding, converting and developing land. We also test for optimal exercise of long‐dated American calls using processes based on the optimal trigger ratio feature of the perpetual American call option model. Generally, the empirical results confirm presence of a positive and nontrivial option premium (mean +5.274%) in the cases, and that developers appear to delay exercise to the point predicted by the real options model.     

The Moderating Effect of Environmental Uncertainty on New Product Development and Time Efficiency*

This empirical study examines the influence of environmental uncertainty on industrial product innovation. The present study addresses what is believed to be a shortcoming in the new product development literature and explores potential effects of environmental uncertainty on the development process, project organization, and on project timeliness with a sample of development projects in two countries, Canada and Australia. When looking at the combined sample of 182 completed projects, this study finds that the perceived market‐related project environment has a direct and positive impact on time efficiency. Further, this research finds that a higher degree of technological uncertainty moderates the relationship between development process, project organization and time efficiency. Consequently, innovating companies may benefit by adapting some of their development approaches to different environmental conditions and to varying degrees of uncertainty. However, when examining country‐specific effects, the results change quite significantly. In particular, the findings indicate that environmental uncertainty in the Canadian sample neither directly impacts time efficiency, nor does it have any moderating effect. Instead, technical proficiency in the development process, project team organization, and process compression appear to be viable strategies to increase time‐efficient development. In contrast, the results of the Australian study suggest that perceived market and technological uncertainty impact time efficiency. In particular, under conditions of technological unpredictability, project team organization increases time efficiency, whereas process compression appears to decrease time‐efficient product development. However, process compression seems to be a viable strategy in environments characterized by lower technological uncertainty. The results also point to the importance of disaggregating data when studying product development processes across countries.     

Product Innovativeness Dimensions and Their Relationships with Product Advantage,Product Financial Performance,and Project Protocol

A considerable body of research informs the relationship of product innovativeness with firm and environmental variables as well as the impact of product innovativeness on product financial success. While providing significant insight, the extant literature exhibits conflicting findings that raise questions as to how, specifically, product innovativeness contributes to product financial performance. This study ties together several streams of research related to the product innovativeness construct to enhance understanding of the product innovativeness—product financial performance relationship. The product innovativeness construct is deconstructed by conceptualizing the relationships among three dimensions of product innovativeness: technological discontinuity, marketing discontinuity, and customer discontinuity. Product innovativeness is distinguished from product advantage, and the relationships among product innovativeness dimensions, product advantage, and product financial performance are empirically tested. The results reveal that, indeed, product innovativeness consists of three separate dimensions that exhibit no or moderate correlations with product advantage. Furthermore, product advantage positively and marketing discontinuity negatively influence product financial performance. Finally, the study also examines how project protocols impact the product innovativeness dimensions. Project protocols, also known as product definitions, describe the general parameters a new product should exhibit (i.e., target segments, product functions and features, base technology, pricing, communication and distribution channels, and required resources) as well as the priorities of the general parameters. Because they guide product design and set priorities and have been found to be a dominant driver of product financial performance, project protocols are important. The present study enhances understanding of how project protocols influence the dimensions of product innovativeness, finding that project protocols positively impact product financial performance indirectly through product advantage and marketing discontinuity.     

Capacity Utilisation and Excess Capacity: Theory, Evidence, and Policy

This paper models capacity utilisation as a cyclical variable that reflects both the value of precautionary capacity and the desire to hold strategic excess capacity. Business unit data from the Profit Impact on Marketing Strategy (PIMS) database of large, predominantly US, companies are used. Separate estimation is carried out for a number of SIC industry groups. Panel data estimation in first difference instrumental variable form is employed. Unlike many previous studies the utilisation variable is well determined. The results show significance for precautionary and strategic effects in particular industries. The paper discusses the reasons for the industry specificity of the results. Policy implications are discussed.     

Business R&;D and the Interplay of R&;D Subsidies and Product Market Uncertainty

This paper examines the effect of product market uncertainty and government research and development (R&D) subsidies on firm-level R&D investment. Using a sample of German manufacturing firms, we find that product market uncertainty reduces R&D investment and government R&D subsidies increase R&D investment. Moreover, our results indicate that R&D subsidies mitigate the effect of product market uncertainty on R&D investment. These findings suggest that public policies aimed at increasing business R&D investment can achieve this objective by reducing the degree of uncertainty in the product market.      

Pricing Mortgage-Backed Securities: Integrating Optimal Call and Empirical Models of Prepayment

Residential mortgage borrowers frequently appear to behave suboptimally with respect to their mortgage prepayment options. Many borrowers fail to exercise even well-into-the-money options while others prepay when the call option is out-of-the-money. To account for these apparently suboptimal prepayments, the recent trend in mortgage-backed securities research has been away from optimal call valuation models, in which the decision to exercise is determined endoge-nously, in favor of models in which prepayment behavior is exogenously specified based on empirical estimation. This paper develops a rational model of mortgage prepayment which incorporates both types of "non-optimal" prepayment and retains endogenous call. This enables the model to disentangle and compare the separate effects of the interest rate call, impeded by transaction costs, and of non-interest-rate driven prepayment. In addition, by recognizing heterogenous borrower transaction costs, the model presents a way to account more precisely for the varying prepayment lags associated with well-into-the-money call options and to account for the phenomenon of "burnout" within a mortgage pool. The paper includes an empirical test of the unbiasedness of the integrated pricing model by comparing simulated prices from our theoretical model to observed prices on traded Fannie Mae and GNMA securities.     

溢出效应、不确定性和企业集群

本文在传统文献的基础上，引入不确定性，从研发的角度对企业的集群行为进行了考察。通过区分研发成果的溢出和研发努力的溢出，我们将企业之间的空间距离引入企业的研发决策。我们证明，在完全竞争的情况下，企业研发的风险和研发努力的溢出使得企业可以通过选择集聚来提高的均衡利润，最后给出了我们的政策建议。     

The Effects of Brand Strategy and Technological Uncertainty on Pioneering Advantage in the Multigenerational Product Market

This research investigates how brand strategy and technological uncertainty influence the order‐of‐entry effects for a previous generation pioneer in the successive generation. The findings of our longitudinal experiment reemphasize the importance of continuous pioneering, demonstrating that consumers exhibit a strong preference for a previous generation pioneer's product when it continues to pioneer the successive generation. More importantly, the findings indicate that continuous pioneering with a new brand leads to greater brand preferences when technological uncertainty is high. This is because in that condition, consumers perceive greater innovativeness with a new brand than with the extant one. On the other hand, an extant brand increases consumer brand preferences for a previous generation pioneer's product in the successive generation when technological uncertainty is low. The theoretical and practical implications of the results for understanding and managing pioneering advantage and brand strategy in the multigenerational product markets are discussed.