Managerial Firms,Entry, and Switching Costs

Empirical evidence shows that switching costs are important in many industries. We analyze the welfare effects of entry into markets with switching costs when firms can be run by managers and the entrant may be partially foreign-owned. We find that with profit-maximizing firms, the welfare effect of entry depends crucially on the ownership of the entrant firm. We also show that entry is less likely with managerial firms than it is with profit-maximizing firms. In the latter case, entry always reduces welfare if the share of the entrant firm owned by foreign investors is high. However, with managerial firms, entry always increases welfare.     

Business strategy and firm location decisions: testing traditional and modern methods

Business Economics - For nearly a century, economists have relied upon the neoclassical principle of a “profit-maximizing firm.” Two modern challenges to this principle have arisen: the...     

Hospital activity and hospital profits

The paper uses data from a cross section of southeastern hospitals to examine which activities are profitable for hospitals. The analysis suggests that hospitals may operate at less than profit-maximizing levels of output. In addition, contrary to popular belief emergency rooms are shown to be profit generating centers for hospitals.     

The decision to export: Firm heterogeneity,sunk costs,and spatial concentration

Integrating perspectives of the Uppsala model of internationalization process, international new ventures and trade theories of heterogeneous firms, this paper develops a dynamic discrete-choice model of export decisions by a profit-maximizing firm. Empirical analyses based on a panel data set of Chinese firms show that sunk costs, productivity, firm size, foreign ownership, industry competition and spatial concentration are positively associated with the decision to export, while state ownership has a negative association with the probability of exporting. However, we find that the relationships are not always uniform and depend on firm-specific idiosyncrasies. The results show that foreign-invested firms and large firms (regardless of ownership) rely on productivity performance related advantages for expanding overseas, while domestic firms, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises, build competitive advantage by leveraging agglomeration economies and the associated spillovers. Our results highlight the role of firm heterogeneity, sunk costs and spatial concentration in shaping the export behavior of firms.     

Risk transfer versus cost reduction on two-sided microfinance platforms

Microfinance can be an important tool for fighting global poverty by increasing access to loans and possibly lowering interest rates through microlending. However, the dominant mechanism used by online microfinance platforms, in which intermediaries administer loans, has profound implications for borrowers. Using an analytical model of microlending with intermediaries who disburse and service loans, we demonstrate that profit-maximizing intermediaries have an incentive to increase interest rates because much of the default risk is transferred to lenders. Borrower and lender interest rate elasticities can serve as disciplining mechanisms to mitigate this interest rate increase. Using data from Kiva.org, we find that interest rates do not affect lender decisions, which removes one of these disciplining mechanisms. Interest rates are high, around 38% on Kiva. In contrast, on an alternative microfinance platform that does not use intermediaries, Zidisha, interest rates are only around 10%, highlighting the dramatic impact of intermediaries on interest rates. We propose an alternative loan payback mechanism that still allows microfinance platforms to use intermediaries, while removing the incentive to increase interest rates due to the transfer of risk to lenders.     

Application of production standards in complex organizations under uncertainty

This article explores the optimal determination of production (quantitative) standards under alternative assumptions concerning the ability of complex organizations to adjust variable inputs as the price of output becomes known.The model allows for transaction costs associated with ex ante and ex post input acquisitions (e.g., contracting for labor services). When such input transaction costs are not observable by top management, pecuniary incentive schemes based on ex post performance are considered. We show that standard-based compensation schemes can be built into the ex post optimization model so that the profit-maximizing production standards and the incentive designs are simultaneously determined.     

“寡头”市场结构、贸易媒介与贸易商品定价——分析框架及基于棉花贸易史的案例研究

中国在贸易中面临"寡头"地位确立与定价权缺失共存的困境,通过提出一个引入贸易媒介环节的三分法贸易商品定价框架对此进行解释。贸易商品定价受到"寡头"国家/政府政策作用于贸易媒介市场结构程度的影响,还依赖于出口国/进口国的微观市场结构状况。贸易媒介通过与生产者和消费者的定价博弈选择使其利润最大化的买卖价格,政府政策/私人保护通过影响贸易媒介市场结构间接影响贸易商品定价。利用典型的英美棉花贸易"双寡头"案例,通过价格变动的相对弹性、转嫁系数和Granger因果检验三种方法定量分析了英美棉花贸易的定价博弈,计量结果与三分法分析结果完全符合,为论文提出的分析框架提供了例证支持。     

The Trade-Off Between Supervision Cost and Performance Based Pay: Does Gender Matter?

The study adds to the literature by providing new empirical evidence consistent with efficiency wage theory,and by providing estimates of the average cost of supervising a worker by industry. This research uses the 1996 wave of the NLSY and incorporates estimates of supervision cost computed from industry classifications. We further detect presence of no gender differences neither in risk-averseness nor in productivity gains associated with cost of supervision and performance-based pay. While the findings imply that employers should consider the incentive effects of supervision and performance based pay when constructing pay schemes, there is no need for employers to devote resources to constructing gender-specific payment mechanisms. Our evidence suggests that profit-maximizing firms should treat males and females equally and develop gender-neutral pay schemes.     

The strategic use of early bird discounts for dealers

We study a widely used ordering process (“Early Bird Discounts”) whereby a profit-maximizing manufacturer permits his dealers to place advance orders at a discount before they set retail prices. We show that such discounts may be used to shift just enough channel profits to dealers to enable them to cover their fixed costs and stay in business. If the manufacturer instead simply cut his wholesale price in order to generate gross margins for his dealers, these margins would soon dissipate as price competition among dealers selling the same product forced retail prices back down to the per-unit cost. We show that when dealer fixed costs are low, the manufacturer offers an Early Bird Discount to his multiple dealers that induces all but two of them to exit; when fixed costs are high, the manufacturer offers no preorder discount (i.e. switches to linear pricing) and induces all but one dealer to exit. Although uniform slotting allowances could also be used to reward dealers, a sales-based alternative like an Early Bird Discount sometimes has a key advantage when the manufacturer has dealers in cities of different sizes. If the same Early Bird Discount is offered, dealers in markets with more consumers, who typically have larger fixed costs, will preorder larger amounts and will automatically receive higher gross margins. To duplicate such payments with slotting allowances, non-uniform allowances would have to be offered to firms in different markets, which is divisive and possibly illegal.     

Informing Buyers of Risks: Analysis of the Marketing and Regulation of All Terrain Vehicles

An examination of the marketing practices and the regulation of the all terrain vehicle (ATV) industry during the 1980s is presented. This review includes a content analysis of ATV advertising, an examination of the Consumer Product Safety Commission's (CPSC) regulation of the ATV industry, a study of the consent decree regulating the marketing of ATVs, and an analysis of the costs and benefits to the ATV industry of providing additional information to consumers. The paper concludes that deaths and injuries from A TV-related accidents might have been reduced substantially if the CPSC had been more aggressive in informing the public about the safety hazards associated with ATV use. Cost/benefit analysis reveals that the profit-maximizing strategy for ATV manufacturers was to market ATVs aggressively even when faced with the prospects of lawsuits and regulatory action.     

DYNAMIC MONOPOLIST'S BEHAVIOUR AND CONSUMER LEARNING*

This paper studies the features and the welfare properties of the equilibrium in a monopoly model with asymmetric information: consumers can only learn the quality of the good through experience. Because of word-of-mouth communication, cumulated sales help the process of product diffusion. It is proved that usually the profit-maximizing price policy entails a low introductory price, that is gradually increased over time. Output decreases over time, so that, in order to accelerate the process of information diffusion, the monopolist is induced to produce more than he would with perfect information. For the same reason, the quality level could also be above its full information level. Thus, consumers might even benefit from their own lack of information, becauses this induces the monopolist to offer a larger output, possibly of a better quality.     

Influences on Pricing and Markup in Segmented Manufacturing Markets*

The literature indicates that international manufactured product markets are segmented and imperfectly competitive. An industry pricing equation that encompasses markup pricing is constructed from flexible specifications of the firm's cost and demand functions, along with the profit-maximizing equilibrium condition. Instrumental variables estimation is carried out for 24 three-digit International Standard Industrial Classification industries, with data pooled across Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, for the period 1970–1991. The markup model is rejected for most industries. However, something approaching a fixed markup does exist in many industries, particularly when the Herfindahl index is low. The results indicate that countries with high levels of industry concentration are more likely to have prices and markups that are influenced by competing foreign prices. Nearly all markups are either pro-cyclical or a-cyclical.     

Scheduling sales force training: Theory and evidence

To have a productive sales force, firms must provide their salespeople with sales training. But from a profit-maximizing perspective, there are also reasons to limit training: training is expensive, it has diminishing returns, and trained salespeople need to be compensated at a higher level since their value in the outside labor market has increased. Due to these reasons, the following inter-related questions are not straightforward to answer: (1) How much training should be provided and how should training be scheduled over time? (2) How should compensation vary with training? (3) Should salespeople be asked to pay for some or all of their training? An analytical model is developed and analyzed using optimal control theory to provide answers to these questions. Thereafter, an empirical investigation is undertaken that broadly corroborates the analytical findings.     

The Property Rights Theory of the Firm and Mixed Competition: A Counter-Example in the US Health Care Industry

We present a counter-example to the conventional property rights theory of the firm, which indicates that not-for-profit firms are incapable of directly competing against strictly profit-maximizing firms without the presence of barriers to entry, outside assistance, changing profit status or economies of scale and scope. We employ a modified Bertrand duopoly model of mixed competition in the health care industry to show that, even when these four conditions do not hold, not-for-profit firms may still be able to compete and possibly dominate the market. Consequently, market fundamentals, rather than market intervention, regulation or uncertainty, determine a not-for-profit provider's success or failure in the market. A necessary requirement is that the not-for-profit manager must care about non-pecuniary benefits but be willing to accept lower than normal returns. Moreover, under specific cost and demand conditions, a not-for-profit's ability to compete may actually be enhanced by increasing its production of non-pecuniary benefits.     

Do entrepreneurial goals matter? Resource allocation in new owner-managed firms

This paper focuses on how entrepreneurial goals affect the resource allocation of new firm owners. It connects research in psychology and management that examines the core motivations of entrepreneurs with research in economics that models the behavior of owner-managers as utility-maximizing rather than profit-maximizing. We hypothesize that new owners with nonmonetary goals allocate their resources differently than do owners with monetary goals and that the differences are meaningful in size. To test these hypotheses, we estimate firm level equations based on economic theories of input demand that show how input quantities depend on owner goals. Data come from a national survey of new U.S. business owners. We find owner goals have both a statistically and substantively significant effect on resource allocation for new firms. Owners with nonmonetary goals put in more of their own and family hours rather than hiring outside employees. Implications for research and policy are discussed.     

Globalization and affordability of microfinance

We study how globalization can differentially affect financial inclusion through the lens of microfinance. Based on an institutional logics perspective, we argue that MFIs embody both social logic and market logic with regard to provision of affordable microfinance loans. Speicially, social logic is amplified by greater social globalization and the stronger presence of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) in the microfinance industry. In contrast, economic globalization catalyzes MFIs' market logic, leading to weaker or greater affordability of microfinance, depending on the relative strength of the profit-maximizing motive and real competition. We test these predictions by focusing on MFI interest-rate setting and using longitudinal data from 2030 MFI observations across 50 countries from 2002 to 2012. We find that country-level social globalization measure is negatively associated with the average MFI loan interest rates and that country-level economic globalization measure has an inverse U-shaped relationship with the average MFI loan interest rates. These results support our hypotheses and suggest a more nuanced view on how globalization affects affordability of microfinance.     

AN ECONOMIC RATIONALE FOR COUNTERTRADE: Liquidity Constraints

Countertrade is a generic term for parallel business transactions linking sales contracts with agreements to purchase goods or services. Countertrade has been viewed as an inefficient way of doing business primarily because of problems associated with such things as quality variations and increases in transaction costs. A review of the international trade literature suggests that market imperfections (shortage of convertible currency, information asymmetry that may create the so-called lemon problem and moral hazard) may provide motivations for countertrade. This article focuses on one motivation: liquidity constraint. The liquidity constraint is introduced in both goods and the factor markets in addition to the production constraint. The article compares and contrasts two strategies facing the management team of a profit-maximizing firm. The model developed shows that countertrade strategy could be superior to standard money-mediated trade strategy when the liquidity constraint is binding. Therefore, countertrade appears to be a rational response to conditions that restrict standard trade. As such, countertrade can supplement standard money-mediated trade and contribute to the growth of international business.     

Setting price or quantity: Depends on what the seller is more uncertain about

We consider a seller with uncertain demand for its product. If the demand curve were certain, then setting price and setting quantity would be equivalent ways to frame the seller’s problem of choosing a profit-maximizing point on its demand curve. With uncertain demand, these become distinct sales mechanisms. We distinguish between uncertainty about the market size and uncertainty about the consumers’ valuations. Our main results are that (i) for a given marginal cost, an increase in uncertainty about valuations favors setting quantity whereas an increase in uncertainty about market size favors setting price; (ii) keeping demand uncertainty fixed, there is a nonmonotonic relationship between marginal costs and the optimal selling mechanism (setting price or quantity); and (iii) in a bilateral monopoly channel setting, coordination occurs except for a conflict zone in which the retailer’s choice of a selling mechanism deviates from the coordinated channel selling mechanism.     

Spatial agent-based modeling of household and firm location with endogenous transport costs

The paper describes a spatial economic agent-based model (ABM), consistent with the principles of new economic geography (NEG), which allows the discrete-time evolutionary simulation of complex interactions of household and firm location choices. In contrast with the current ABM approaches, it considers a multi-regional (multi-urban) setting to enable a more realistic representation of decisions related to commuting, migration and firm (re)location. The model allows simulating spatially differentiated, multi-commodity markets for land and labor in a system of cities and the behavior of profit-maximizing firms with multi-regional asset investment decisions, incorporating endogenous transport costs with congestion effects. It also accounts for the impact of agglomeration forces on industrial location choices and the formation of urban development patterns. The conceptual framework and main components of the spatial ABM are presented and several implementation issues are discussed with regard to possible case-specific applications and policy scenarios.     

Managing Channel Profits: The Role of Managerial Incentives

The existing literature has examined how manufacturers can enhance profits by employing specific channel structures and channel coordination mechanisms. In this paper, we examine the implications of strategically designed managerial incentives for channel performance in a duopoly. We first analyze how equilibrium outcomes (especially manufacturer profits) are altered when the manufacturers provide their channel managers with strategically designed incentives. Following that, we examine how optimal channel structure decisions are altered when manufacturers provide their managers with strategic incentives, i.e., we examine how strategic incentives moderate optimal channel structure decisions. In contrast with the existing literature, we find that an asymmetric channel structure with one manufacturer employing a profit-maximizing retailer and the other integrated manufacturer providing strategic incentives for the channel manager in charge of pricing, is an equilibrium outcome under certain conditions. We then compare how the implications of strategic incentives differ from those of channel structure decisions and channel coordination initiatives, and discuss when and why strategic incentives yield superior outcomes from the manufacturer’s perspective. Our results shed light on the sparsely researched role of managerial incentives in the channel context.