The Effects of Competition in Short Product Life‐Cycle Markets: The Case of Motion Pictures*

It is critically important to understand the relationship between new product launch strategies and their interaction with the competitive environment, which results in the successful introduction of new products. Deciding when to launch new products is among the most significant issues facing managers when formulating new products strategy, especially for products with short product life cycles. However, little extant research has focused on the interaction of product launch timing and the competitive market environment. This study explores the effects of four types of competitive threats on the market performance of short product life‐cycle products. Threats from new products and incumbents are possible. Also, products in the same category and those in related product categories exert competitive pressures. In this paper, a framework of competitive threats is developed, and research questions are constructed and empirically tested using the motion pictures industry as the focus of this research. A set of simultaneous equations was estimated using a sample of 2,948 movies introduced in the U.S. market between 1997 and 2004. The results show that all competition types have negative direct, indirect (as mediated by distribution intensity), and total effects on the performance of a new product. For a focal product, incumbent products exert a greater negative impact on performance than new entrants. Surprisingly, products in different, but related, categories are more harmful to the performance of products than products in the same category. The results have important implications for launch timing and new product performance.     

Savings and Investment: Some International Perspectives

Consistent with neoclassical growth models, recent estimates of the close association between domestic saving and investment rates may allow policy makers the opportunity to alter investment through the introduction of polices that alter domestic savings. However, such an interpretation presumes an endogenous investment response. Equally likely, at least theoretically, is that the close association is maintained by movements in domestic savings. The present paper explicitly examines the endogeneity of domestic saving and investment rates. For a subset of countries, including the United States, the results suggest that saving adjustments make up only a small portion of investment behavior.     

Can recipients of sales flyers be segmented?

This paper investigates the possibility of identifying clusters among consumers receiving sales flyers from retailers (supermarkets, etc.). First, flyers are defined and then consumers’ perception of flyers is analysed, based on a representative panel. According to the analysis, three clusters are identified. The clusters possess quite different characteristics – not just in relation to their perceptions and attitudes towards flyers, but also when looking at demographic characteristics.     

Relational View

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

A Monte Carlo investigation of the accuracy of multivariate CAPM tests

In a multivariate regression model relating individual returns to the market return, CAPM implies non-linear restrictions on the parameters. Several asymptotically valid tests of these restrictions have been suggested. The existing Monte Carlo evidence shows that some of these tests are unreliable for reasonable sample sizes, but does not indicate well which tests are reliable. This paper reports the results of an extensive Monte Carlo experiment. Shanken's CSR test and Jobson and Korkie's corrected likelihood ratio test are quite accurate in all cases we consider.     

Monetary policy implementation and the federal funds rate

This paper investigates how the implementation of monetary policy affects the dynamics and the volatility of the federal funds rate. Since the early 1980s, the most important changes in the Fed’s conduct of monetary policy refer to the role of the federal funds rate target and the reserve requirement system. We show that the improved communication and transparency regarding the federal funds rate target has significantly increased the Fed’s influence on the federal funds rate since 1994. By contrast, the declining role of required reserves in the US has contributed to higher federal funds rate volatility. Our results suggest that the introduction of remunerated required reserves will further enhance the controllability of the federal funds rate.     

Energiesparen: Warum wird Beratung gefördert?

Home renovation is generally asserted to be a highly effective means to increase residential energy efficiency and thereby contribute to climate protection from reduced energy consumption. As part of a larger package of measures in the residential sector, the German government is consequently providing financial support for home audits from recognized energy experts who provide advice on retrofitting options. To date, the question concerning the effectiveness these home audits has largely escaped empirical scrutiny. The present paper fills this void by providing evidence for considerable free-rider effects within the home audit program, yielding serious reservations with respect to both the effectiveness of the program and its fiscal costs. Moreover, given the substantial differences between the gross- and net effects of home audits that are revealed by this analysis, the program’s contribution to climate protection and thereby the central justification for the associated government outlays is called into question. The social benefit of the program emerges only from those retrofits that would not have been undertaken in the absence of the home audit.