How long must a firm be great to rule out chance? Benchmarking sustained superior performance without being fooled by randomness

Although sustained superior firm performance may arise from skillful management or other valuable, rare, and inimitable resources, it can also result from randomness. Studying U.S. companies from 1965–2008, we benchmark how long a firm must perform at a high level to be confident that it is something other than the outcome of a time‐homogeneous stationary Markov chain defined on the state space of percentiles. We find (a) the number of sustained superior performers in Compustat, measured by ROA and Tobin's q, exceeds the number of false positives we would expect to be generated by such a process; yet (b) the occurrence of false positives is often enough to fool many observers, so (c) the identification of sustained superior performers requires particularly stringent benchmarks to enable valid study. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The relative impact of actual and potential rivalry on firm profitability in the pharmaceutical industry

This paper estimates the effects of actual and potential rivalry on profitability of firms in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry during the 20‐year period 1963–82. The results show that during the 1960s actual rivalry among the sampled firms did not materially affect firm profitability, but that during the 1970s competition among incumbents had an increasingly adverse effect on their profitability. The results also show that potential competition significantly reduced drug firms’ profitability during the entire 20‐year period. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impact of Vertical Mergers on Industry Profitability: An Empirical Evaluation

Vertical integration has become an important business strategy to respond to the needs of a consumer-driven marketing system. Although one of the perceived benefits of vertical ownership integration is improved profitability of the integrated firm, empirical literature mostly ignores this issue. Using a sample of U.S. food manufacturing industries, this study examines the impact of vertical mergers on profitability. Findings show that vertical mergers negatively impact profits. This may be due to the failure of vertical mergers to create differential advantages, such as cost savings, for the integrated firm.     

Price-Performance Competition and the Merger Guidelines

While analysis of competition among differentiatedproducts has evolved under the revisions to theMerger Guidelines since 1982, it remains adhoc. This paper argues that price and performancecompetition among differentiated products is the rulerather than the exception and proposes methods toexplicitly analyze both forms of competition. Themethods address price and performance competition indemand and supply, explicitly incorporatingcompetitive responses as called for by the 1992 Guidelines. Empirical implementation is discussed for a specificmarket.     

世界创新竞争驱动制造业转型的机理与验证

梳理人类工业化进程中的创新史可以看出,世界创新竞争与制造业转型具有历史耦合性。世界创新竞争会从动力驱使、要素注入、竞争互动等方面驱动制造业转型,本文也据此构建了两者内在作用机理的“三维”模型。在此理论模型指导下,本文以10个代表性国家为例,运用面板数据计量方法实证分析了2003～2012年世界创新竞争与制造业转型的关系,结果却显示世界创新竞争与制造业转型之间存在着与理论相悖的负相关关系。表明在过去的创新竞争中,发达国家把创新的重点放在了虚拟经济领域,而发展中国家创新不足导致了制造业领域“创新忽视”和创新资源的稀缺。应以实体经济为基础,积极调整创新战略,充分发挥创新竞争对制造业转型升级的积极作用。     

技术竞争中商业模式的作用

在知识经济时代,技术革新日新月异,企业之间的技术竞争也愈演愈烈,渐渐演变为标准竞争。然而,技术的经济价值只是潜在的,只有通过合适的商业模式才能将其充分释放出来,从而为企业带来巨大的经济效益,乃至实现持久的竞争优势。以企业技术竞争中所采取的商业模式为研究对象,利用切萨布鲁夫提出的商业模式六维度分析框架,运用多重案例研究的方法探讨商业模式在企业技术竞争中的重要作用。通过对案例分析结果的归纳和总结,为商业模式理论提供了新的观点,也能够为标准竞争中的企业提供有益的启发。     

创新竞争与垄断内生——兼议中国反垄断法的根本性裁判准则

创新与垄断之间的关系是经济学界争议最多的课题之一,但以往的实证研究结果一直莫衷一是。为此,本文构建了一个动态的创新和产量竞争模型,研究结果表明:在不同的产业发展阶段,创新与垄断的关系是动态变化的;从长远看,创新与垄断正相关,熊彼特假说成立。垄断势力可以是创新和产量竞争的市场内生结果,创新竞争导致垄断内生。而且,这种市场内生的垄断与社会总福利、消费者剩余相辅相成、并行不悖,是产业发展的社会合意结果。据此,本文提出:企业因合法经营和技术创新而获得的垄断势力是合法的,垄断是否市场内生可以作为我国反垄断执法机构裁判合法垄断和非法垄断的根本性司法准则。