Preemptive Spacing With Vertical Differentiation When Input Quality is of Inelastic Supply

This paper examines a model of vertical differentiation in which an incumbent engages in preemptive spacing to prevent entry. Input quality is of fixed supply, and the incumbent prevents high-end entry by producing a product with all the quality available. It also commits to the production of a minimum-quality product to deter low-end entry. There is no entry in equilibrium, and the incumbent monopolist chooses to sell only its high-quality product. Commitment to the production of the minimum-quality product is used merely as a credible threat to vigorously compete should an entrant also produce a minimum-quality product.     

Emission Taxes and Product Differentiation in the Presence of Foreign Firms

Industries characterized by differentiated products are important contributors of greenhouse gases and currently subject to market‐based policies such as emission taxes. In the context of developing countries, fears about foreign investment leaving the country are often used as an argument not to address industry emissions through emission taxes. This paper develops a Cournot model with product differentiation in the presence of abatement efforts where host and foreign firms are subject to an emission tax. The analysis indicates that abatement efforts and differences in pollution intensity coefficients across firms may play a significant role in the characterization of optimal policy. The analysis also suggests that the government may opt to encourage foreign, less pollution‐intensive firms via higher taxation. Additionally, this paper examines how an optimal emission tax may be adjusted as products become more differentiated; industry emissions may fall/rise as a result of more differentiated products. One important contribution of this paper is that it emphasizes the role of abatement efforts, product differentiation, and differences in pollution intensity coefficients across firms in the characterization of the optimal emission tax.     

进口中间品质量与中国制造业企业全要素生产率

本文基于2000~2007年中国工业企业数据和海关数据,采用A-C-F方法测度制造业企业全要素生产率,进而探讨进口中间品质量对企业全要素生产率的影响,研究发现:进口高质量中间品有助于企业通过"学习效应"机制、研发与进口中间品质量的"互补效应"机制,提高全要素生产率。这两种机制在考虑了企业贸易方式、出口状态、所有制类型、进口来源地差异后皆稳健。在全球价值链环境下,提升中国贸易利得的一个有效途径是进口高质量中间品。     

Measuring Vertical Specialization: The Case of China

The explosive growth of Chinese trade may be due to international production fragmentation, but few have assessed these phenomena together, in part, because it is difficult to measure the vertical specialization (VS) of China's trade. Unique features of China's processing trade cause both identification of imported inputs and their allocation across sectors to vary by trade regime. This paper estimates the VS of Chinese merchandise exports, addressing these two challenges. A new method to identify Chinese imported inputs is developed, and used to calculate VS by sector and destination. VS estimates based on the official Chinese input–output table are contrasted with those based on a split table, capturing processing and normal exports separately. Last, the paper tests whether Chinese “export sophistication” can be explained by VS.     

数字内容企业的产品架构与生产流程

数字内容企业是信息内容产业的基本单位。从这种新型企业的运作管理特征看,其产品平台、业务架构、生产流程与一般的物质产品生产企业和传统的信息服务企业有很大差异。它的流程化、模块化组装生产和媒体式、广播式授权销售代表了一种新型的企业生产和销售框架。从生产运作角度探讨了数字内容企业内部的运营和管理问题。     

Firms in New Technologies: The Case of Superconductivity

This article deals with three main questions. First, what types of firms are engaged in the development and exploitation of a young and perhaps future key technology? Second, on which subfields of that particular technology do certain types of firms concentrate? Third, are there any differences in industry structure and firm activity with respect to national technology policies? These aspects are discussed in terms of a case study on superconductivity. The article is empirical in character. The main pillar of the analysis rests on European patent applications, which we use for comparisons among the United States, Japan, and Germany at the corporate and national levels. To discover differences in national technology policies and their impact on corporate activity, we screened available information on sources, volumes, and aims of national programs concerning superconductivity. The period covered ranges from 1981 to 1992 and thus includes the “paradigm” shift to high-temperature superconductivity around 1987. We find that large multinational firms account for the largest part of all external patent applications in this area. Another outcome of the analysis clearly points to rising shares of patenting by small firms after the technological breakthrough in 1987. But most of these small firms have confined their activities to the national environment so far. One possible explanation may be found in differences in national technology programs supporting the start-up new firms in niche markets. Most of these small new firms are located in the United States, where public programs have created favorable conditions and an increasing domestic demand for them. Thus, although the development of new technologies is increasingly international in scope, current industry patterns and firms’ traditional specialization in related fields of activity still determine the building up of new science- and technology-based industries. At least in the United States, however, the impact of national technology policy may be felt widely in creating new and shaping existing structures in favor of more competition and faster diffusion.     

外资企业环境绩效的探讨——以上海市为例

本文采用上海市企业的排污和经营数据,分析了内外资企业的环境绩效。我们的研究表明外资企业有更高的环境绩效;然而,外资企业并没有在排污口末端去除更多的污染物,相反甚至更少。这反映了外资企业低的排放主要是因为更清洁的生产过程,而不是因为更多的污染物去除。因此,我们认为外资企业更高的环境绩效主要原因是他们具有内在先进的、清洁的生产技术。     

基于垂直产品差异的技术转移分析

为了揭示跨国厂商的技术转移与东道国环境之间的关系,本文利用垂直产品差异模型分析了FDI途径下跨国厂商的技术转移策略及其对本土厂商的技术水平、利润和东道国福利所产生的影响。研究结果表明,东道国环境决定了跨国厂商的最佳转移水平,该最佳水平与跨国厂商掌握的最高技术水平间的差距决定了所转移技术的核心程度;本土厂商利用转移技术提升自身技术水平的激励随着东道国收入水平和市场竞争程度递增;跨国厂商的进入对本土厂商利润的影响包括合作效应(增加利润)和竞争效应(减少利润),只有当合作效应大于竞争效应时才能提升本土厂商利润;无论何种情况下,技术转移总是有利于东道国消费者,如果利润影响中的合作效应大于竞争效应,则会提升东道国整体福利,否则,对东道国福利的影响是不确定的。     

Product Lifetime: A Determinant of Entry Decision by Multinational Firms

Existing literature on the role of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection has painted an ambiguous picture about the size of the effects of stronger IPR on the choice of the multinational firm’s mode of entry into foreign market. Some empirical studies suggest that improving IPR in recipient countries will have higher effect on licensing, while others found larger effect on foreign direct investment (FDI). The available indices of protection only measure country-wide characteristics and do not pick inter-industry variation, while the data show significant differences in losses of US multinationals by industry. In this paper, we introduce and empirically estimate a new dimension to multinational firm’s decision to enter a foreign market—a parameter that reflects the length of positive profits that the firm can earn in various industries. We dub the estimated parameter a perceived time of rent extraction. The introduction of the time parameter allows us to differentiate the effects of stronger IPR on the entry modes in different industries and reconcile the ambiguity results in the literature. Particularly, strengthening IPR has higher impact on FDI in industries with shorter rent extraction time, while licensing is affected more than FDI in industries with longer rent extraction time.     

Export Destination,Product Quality and Wages in a Middle‐Income Country. The Case of South Africa

A robust finding in the firm‐level literature is that exporting firms pay higher wages. Using South African data this paper investigates the relationship between export destination and wages at a worker level. South Africa, a middle‐income country, has two distinct main export markets—a regional market where per capita incomes are lower than at home, and an international market with higher per capita incomes. Our estimates show that workers in firms that export to the region earn less than those that produce for the domestic market. Those in firms that export outside the region earn more than either domestic producers or region‐only exporters. Much of this difference in wages can be explained by the premium the different types of exporters pay for skills. These results support previous studies which suggest that export destination is related to product quality which in turn is related to worker quality and therefore wages.     

The Timing of Environmental Policy: A Note on the Role of Product Differentiation

We examine the role that product differentiation can play in the design of environmental policy under full commitment and no commitment on the part of the environmental regulator. We consider a setting with two firms selling a differentiated product which generates pollution through emissions. Firms can reduce their emissions by undertaking abatement activities while an environmental regulator taxes emissions. The main results are: (1) When products are highly differentiated, the optimal time-consistent (no commitment) tax is always lower than the optimal pre-commitment tax. As the degree of product differentiation decreases, for relatively efficient abatement technology and high damages, the time-consistent emission tax exceeds the optimal pre-commitment one. (2) Abatement when product differentiation is extensive is higher under the time-consistent regime unless the abatement technology is extremely efficient. The same ranking applies to social welfare. However, as products become more and more similar, these results are (partially) reversed and pre-commitment could lead to both higher levels of abatement and welfare.     

Mixed Duopoly with Product Differentiation: Sequential Choice of Location

We investigate the sequential choice of location in a mixed duopoly, where a welfare–maximising public firm competes against a profit–maximising private firm. We examine the desirable role of the public firm in a mixed market. We also consider the effect of price regulation. We find that the public firm should become the follower (leader) if a price regulation is (is not) imposed. We also find that neither price regulation nor privatisation of the public firm improves welfare.     

The shading and distancing of commerce: When internalization is not enough

A political economy of degradation and of sustainability should account not only for the full range of production costs but the sources of those costs. It should consider how the pursuit of wealth can, deliberately or not, lead to uncounted costs and unaccountable actors. This article explores the conditions of cost generation and externalization, especially those that are largely unintended and inadvertent. It shows how the pursuit of wealth, the expansion of markets, the mobility of capital, and the entanglements of production processes can lead to the unwitting generation and displacement of costs. It analyzes competitive business strategy and patterns of production and consumption for their contribution to such costs. Business strategy and state policy tend to create a never-ending search for frontiers, however simulated and however unecological they may be. The costs generated in those frontiers are a function of shading, that is, obscuring of costs, and distancing, the separation of production and consumption decisions, both of which impede ecological and social feedback and create cognitive, institutional, and ethical lags between initial benefits and eventual full costs. As distance increases along dimensions of geography, culture, bargaining power, or agency, negative feedback loops are severed, stakeholders expand while decision making contracts, environmental problems are displaced, and shading and cost externalization increase. The likelihood of sustainable resource use increases as distance is lowered, as institutions locate decision authority in those who receive negative ecological feedback and who have the capacity and incentives to act on that feedback, and as the burden of proof for economic interventions shifts to the interveners.     

When trade liberalization is self‐fulfilling: Population aging and uncertainty

Expectation about future trade liberalization induces sectoral adjustment in advance. As a result, the extent of opposition to trade liberalization decreases, and liberalization becomes self‐fulfilling. We analyze this mechanism from two aspects: population aging and uncertainty. Then, we show that (1) the effect of expectation formation is non‐monotonic across ages, and (2) the effect of population aging of workforce varies depending on its driving force. In addition, we analyze uncertainty about future trade liberalization. Then, we show that (3) the mechanism cannot work due to strategic delay even under small uncertainty, but (4) a subsidy scheme can resolve this problem.     

最低质量标准下企业进入的策略性行为选择

一个行业的竞争力和绩效水平往往要受到行业进入条件和容易程度的影响。对于进入者而言,制约进入的根本技术因素是最低质量标准。在差异化产品市场中,无最低质量标准的限制且进入成本较小时,进入者无论是以高质量进入还是以低质量进入,所获得的利润是一样的,而在内生最低质量标准限制情况下,在位者和进入者达成竞争均衡时的利润有很大的差异,最低质量标准改变了在位者和进入者的质量选择,在位者是高质量产品企业所获得的利润小于在位者是低质量产品企业时所获得的利润,因此,如果在位者能够自由选择质量,在位者有可能选择生产低质量产品,进入者可能选择生产高质量产品,这导致产品市场的竞争不足。在这种情况下,政府应为企业创造开放与竞争的市场环境和政策导向。     

Tax Effects in a Model of Product Differentiation: A Note

We investigate how unit (or specific) tax and ad valorem tax affect equilibrium location choice in a model of product differentiation, which includes Hotelling (linear-city) and Vickrey-Salop (circular-city) spatial models as special cases. We find that neither tax affects equilibrium location patterns as long as each firm has the same production cost. Two taxes can yield different location patterns under cost heterogeneity among firms.     

海外市场需求与跨国垂直并购——基于低端下游企业的视角

本文构建了一个产品从低端到高端分布的Hotelling模型,以探讨我国低端下游企业进行跨国垂直并购的时机选择和决定因素。研究表明,垂直并购国外高端上游企业能实现扩大市场份额、提升产品定位的双重效能。海外市场需求环境对低端下游企业拓展战略起关键性作用。在正常需求条件下,与直接出口及先并购国内上游企业再出口两种模式相比,跨国垂直并购并非最优选择。在遭受负向需求冲击时,国外上游企业生产成本的大幅上升以及国外下游竞争对手品牌价值的下降给跨国垂直并购带来了契机,此时在技术密集度较高的上游产业进行跨国垂直并购成为国内低端下游企业的最优选择。如果并购能实现足够大的品牌价值效应,还会改善被并购企业所在国的社会福利水平。