Learning: What and How? An Empirical Study of Adjustments in Workplace Organization Structure

We seek to understand how firms learn about what adjustments they need to make in their organization structure at the workplace level. We define four organizational systems: traditional (the simplest system), high‐performance (the most complex system), decision‐making oriented, and financial‐incentives oriented (intermediate complexity). We analyze (1) learning‐by‐doing on adoption of more or less complex systems, (2) the performance–experience learning curves associated with different systems, (3) the match between perceived organizational capabilities and the choice of systems, the influence of (4) other firms’ systems and performance on a firm’s adjustment decisions, and of (5) a firm’s location on its decisions.     

European Antitrust Policy 1957–2004: An Analysis of Commission Decisions

This paper provides a survey of  European antitrust law enforcement since its foundation in the Treaty of Rome of 1957 up to and including 2004. We present a complete overview and statistical analysis of all 538 formal Commission decisions under Articles 81, 82, and 86 of the European Community Treaty. We report a range of summary statistics concerning report route, investigation duration, length of the decision, decision type, imposed fines, number of parties, sector classification, nationality, and Commissioner and Director General responsible. The statistics are linked to changes in legislation and administrative implementation, thereby providing an historical overview that summarizes the Commission’s work in the area of antitrust. One or more appeals were filed with respect to 161 of the 538 decisions. We estimate the determinants of the size of the imposed fine and probability of appeal when an infringement has been found.     

The cyclical behavior of the Department of Justice’s antitrust enforcement activity

We study the cyclical behavior of antitrust enforcement as measured by the number of cases initiated by the US Department of Justice. The key result is that antitrust case activity is countercyclical. This finding is robust across alternate indicators of economic activity which include stock prices, corporate profits and business cycles, and across different types of cases. The finding of countercyclical case activity does not appear to lend support to interest-group theories that predict greater regulatory protection towards producers during economic contractions. One interpretation of our result would be that antitrust violations tend to increase during economic downturns, leading to an increase in the number of cases initiated, the broad implication being that the Antitrust Division primarily acts as an antitrust law enforcement agency. Our results show that politics, as measured by the party of the President and the Republican versus Democrat composition of the House and Senate, does not have a clear impact on case activity. Finally, the number of cases initiated are significantly affected by the extent of funding.     

Empirical Research of the Indemnificatory Housing Community Facility Management——A Case Study on X Community of Guangdong

保障性住房小区的社区管理是社会管理的重要组成部分.以广东省较早建设的保障性住房社区X小区为例,调查了社区物业管理现状,发现物业管理公司存在服务质量差、居民对服务满意度低;业主委员会缺乏监督、内讧严重等问题.在此基础上,从物业公司、业主委员会、住户等方面分析了问题的深层次原因.最后提出建立政府主导、居民参与、业委会负责、物业管理公司提供服务、物业管理监督委员会监督的保障性住房小区物业管理新模式,并辅以建立多维度的物业服务评价考核制度保证服务水平.     

What Are the Effective Strategic Orientations for New Product Success under Different Environments? An Empirical Study of Chinese Businesses

Innovation is an organization's spanning process that must continually change in response to, and in anticipation of, changing business environments. Research in the fields of marketing and management has examined individual strategic orientations (SOs) (such as market orientation) and their relationship to innovation performance. Few studies, however, have compared the effectiveness of different SOs for innovation performance in a single study. It is also not clear from previous research whether the business environment influences the effectiveness of the SOs. The objective of this paper is therefore twofold: it aims to evaluate (1) whether a focus on the customer, the technology, the competitor, or the interfunctional coordination, will have the greatest impact on new product success, and (2) whether the effectiveness of a specific SO varies with the environment. Data were collected from more than 500 senior executives in a wide range of manufacturing and service firms in China. Using cluster analysis and an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model, which are commonly adopted to examine the effects of environments on the relationship between strategy and performance, we identified four subgroups of firms facing distinctively different market and competitive environments. As predicted, the results show that all four SOs have (albeit to a different degree) a significant and positive relationship with innovation performance. More importantly, the results point to the relative advantage in pursuing a specific SO by taking into account its effect under different environments and the effects of other SOs. However, the particularly strong effect of technology orientation compared to that of the other SOs on new product performance across all clusters is somewhat surprising. We offer some tentative explanations for this finding, though further research will be required to fully understand it. Overall, our findings indicate the need for managers to be responsive to environmental contexts and to allocate resources to pursue the effective (hence appropriate) strategic orientations for the specific context.     

Ocean Carriers’ Collusion Under Antitrust Immunity: Evidence of Asymmetric Pass-Through

As fuel costs are the largest component of the shipping industry’s operating costs, this study examines whether ocean carriers pass fuel cost increases through to freight rates more quickly than they pass through fuel cost decreases. The focal price collusion theory suggests that such asymmetric pass-through could be a result of collusive behavior because collusion is easier to sustain when costs are falling than when costs are rising. Using a lag-adjustment model as the econometric framework, findings from this study show strong evidence for asymmetric adjustments of the US inbound freight rates in response to fuel cost changes. Such asymmetry persisted after the passage of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 1998. Moreover, the findings do not support the consumer search theory as an alternative explanation for the freight rate asymmetry.     

Vertical Restraints,the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Sylvania</Emphasis> Case,and China’s Antitrust Enforcement

We briefly review the relevant economic theories and legal treatment of vertical restraints, and especially focus on the 1977 landmark case of Sylvania and its possible influence on China’s antitrust enforcement on vertical restraints. China’s competition policy, and particularly its antimonopoly law, does not explicitly instruct with respect to the enforcement approach (per se versus rule of reason) toward vertical restraints. But from an overview of China’s recent antitrust cases, we find that there is a division in the approaches taken by public versus private enforcement: Even though the administrative enforcement is more inclined to the application of per se prohibitions (or the application of the EU-style prohibition-plus-exemption approach), it seems that a rule of reason is the (increasingly) prevailing approach that is taken by the courts.     

“High-Tech” Antitrust: Incoherent,Misguided, Obsolete,or None of the Above? Comments on Crandall-Jackson and Wright

That prominent antitrust cases have been in the “high-tech” arena is not surprising, since high-tech industries are often susceptible to the scale economies that lead to highly concentrated or monopoly markets. Crandall and Jackson’s observations on the IBM case are on point. Regarding AT&T, the salient observation is that recent changes in legal doctrine may make it impossible to bring antitrust cases in regulated industries. The problem with the Microsoft case was not that it was right or wrong, but that it was fundamentally incoherent. Wright’s critique of the Federal Trade Commission’s case against Intel is problematic because buyers in exclusion cases tend to be better off, not victims as they would be under collusion or anticompetitive mergers. As these observations apply more generally to cases in sectors that are not associated with high-tech, I offer a few thoughts on some antitrust issues that are particular to high-tech sectors, specifically how the prospect of innovation could affect market definition in merger cases and, more broadly, whether dynamic efficiencies reduce the need for antitrust enforcement.     

The Year in Review: Economics at the Antitrust Division, 2018–2019

Review of Industrial Organization - This article highlights the economic analysis that underlay certain enforcement efforts of the Antitrust Division over the past year. The Division’s...     

The Year in Review: Economics at the Antitrust Division, 2009–2010

This paper covers the activities of the Economic Analysis Group of the Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, during 2009–2010. It describes the economic analysis undertaken by EAG in several important investigations and other activities as an advocate for competition.     

Long-Term Contracts and Asset Specificity Revisited: An Empirical Analysis of Producer–Importer Relations in the Natural Gas Industry

This paper discusses long-term contracts as a particular organizational form situated somewhere between full vertical integration and short-term, market-based trading in the natural gas industry. We focus on the determinants of the duration of contracts under changing technical, economic, and institutional conditions. Using 311 long-term contracts we find that duration decreases as international market structures grow more competitive, and that contracts linked to an asset-specific investment extend, on average, three years longer.     

The Year in Review: Economics at the Antitrust Division, 2020–2021

Challenging anticompetitive acquisitions of nascent competitors is a top priority of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. It is especially important that competition agencies remain vigilant of such acquisitions in platform markets, where indirect network effects and other market forces tend to preserve the status quo at the expense of smaller, more innovative rivals and potentially final consumers. This article discusses two such attempted acquisitions: (1) Visa’s acquisition of technology firm Plaid that threatened to disrupt Visa’s monopoly power in online debit; and (2) Sabre’s acquisition of Farelogix, which is a firm that allows airlines to connect directly to travel agencies and thereby disintermediates Sabre and other global distribution systems.

     

Economics at the Antitrust Division 2016–2017: Healthcare,Nuclear Waste,and Agriculture

This year the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice litigated an unprecedented number of cases. Two mergers, Anthem with Cigna and Aetna with Humana, threatened to dramatically alter the face of commercial health insurance. The Anthem case raised questions of how to evaluate a claim that competition costs billions annually in potential medical cost savings. The Aetna case raised questions of how commercial insurers compete against the public programs—specifically Medicare. The Division also litigated numerous other civil matters including a proposed merger of nuclear waste disposal facilities. In that case, economists had to explore the scope and bounds of competition within a variety of regulatory regimes. And, in a merger of two new technologies that improve the efficiency of planting seeds, the emerging nature of the market led to interesting variations in the analysis. This overview of the economic issues in these particular cases is intended to provide insights into the challenges of enforcing antitrust law and the way in which economic analysis in particular is used to address those challenges.     

Present at the Beginning of a New Era for Antitrust: Reflections on 1982–1983

The early 1980s were an important time of transitionfor antitrust policy for the Antitrust Division of theU.S. Department of Justice. I had the privilege to beselected to serve as the first ``Chief Economist' forthe newly installed Assistant Attorney General forAntitrust, William F. Baxter. In this essay I discusssome of the important achievements of that period, aswell as some missed opportunities.     

Economies as an Antitrust Defense: The Welfare Tradeoffs—Introduction to the Special Issue

Review of Industrial Organization - This special issue is occasioned by the 50th anniversary of the publication of Williamson’s (Am Econ Rev 58:18–36, 1968a) seminal analysis of the...     

The Year in Review: Economics at the Antitrust Division, 2004–2005

This paper covers the activities of the Economic Analysis Group (EAG), during 2004–2005. It describes the economic analysis undertaken by EAG in several important investigations, appellate matters, and other activities as an advocate for competition.     

The Year in Review: Economics at the Antitrust Division, 2007–2008

This paper covers the activities of the Economic Analysis Group (EAG) of the Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, during 2007–2008. It describes the economic analysis undertaken by EAG in several important investigations, and in other activities as an advocate for competition. The views in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Antitrust Division.     

The Year in Review: Economics at the Antitrust Division, 2008–2009

This paper covers the activities of the Economic Analysis Group (EAG) of the Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, during 2008–2009. It describes the economic analysis undertaken by EAG in several important investigations, and in other activities as an advocate for competition.