Joint ventures as a means of assembling complementary inputs

In recent years, economists have devoted considerable attention to mechanisms through which firms can cooperate, particularly in the conduct of R&D. This literature had tended to focus on cooperation's effects inoutput markets. In contrast, the present analysis examines the effects of cooperation oninput markets. In particular, joint ventures are often said to be motivated by the desire to assemble complementary assets into a package needed to conduct a successful project. Some of the ways in which joint ventures may faciliate the acquisition of needed inputs are explored.This article was originally prepared for the Penn State International Symposium on Joint Ventures and Strategic Alliances, April 6–8, 1992. I am grateful to the conference participants, to seminar participants at Duke University and Harvard Business School and to an anonymous referee for useful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank my colleague Benjamin Hermalin for his careful reading of an earlier draft and for many insightful discussions of the issues raised here. This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. SES-9112076.     

The dual ladder: motivational solution or managerial delusion?

The 'Dual Ladder' reward system has been used for years by industry as an incentive system to motivate technical performance. Its effectiveness has been called into question on many occasions. The paper will report the results of a survey of nearly 1,500 engineers and scientists in nine U.S. organizations. In this survey, engineers were asked to indicate their career preferences in terms of increasing managerial responsibility, technical ladder advancement or more interesting technical work. Responses indicate marked age-dependent differences in response, particularly a strong increase in the proportion preferring more interesting project work over either form of advancement.
Conversations which one of the authors has had recently with managers of the thirteenth company question its status as an exception.     

An investigation into the managerial roles and career paths of gatekeepers and project supervisors in a major R & D facility

This study investigates the role of gatekeepers in the transfer of information within a single R&D location by comparing directly the performance of project groups with and without gatekeepers. The results show that gatekeepers performed a linking role only for projects performing tasks that were 'locally-oriented' while 'universally-oriented' tasks were most effectively linked to external areas by direct project member communication. Gatekeepers also appear to facilitate external communication by their locally-oriented project colleagues. A follow-up study five years later showed that almost all gatekeeping project leaders had been promoted up the managerial ladder; in contrast, one half of the non-gatekeeping project leaders had ascended the technical ladder. This implies that higher managerial levels demand strong interpersonal as well as technical skills.     

Identifying and Applying a Comparative Advantage Framework in Canadian Supply-Managed Agriculture

The marketing of table eggs, broiler hatching eggs, chickens, and turkeys in Canada is limited by federal and provincial supply management (SM) legislation through production quotas. The respective national regulatory agencies in each of these industries allocate, among the provinces, growth in national quotas called “overbase.” Federal legislation stipulates that the allocation of overbase among provinces must take into account the principle of comparative advantage (CA) of production. None of the agencies pertaining to the feather industry has ever identified and applied CA in national quota allocation decisions. To fill this void, we modify the revealed comparative advantage approach developed by Balassa and Bowen to identify CA and develop a provincial agricultural CA index to assign overbase allocations among provinces. Overbase quota allocations should shift toward the agriculturally intensive Prairie provinces that have a CA in the Canadian feather industry and away from the nonagricultural industry‐intensive provinces. Our method of SM overbase quota allocation is consistent with the objectives of Canadian SM legislation. Au Canada, la commercialisation des æufs de consommation, des æufs d'incubation de poulet de chair, du poulet et du dindon est régie par un régime de gestion de l'offre encadré par des lois fédérales et provinciales. Chaque organisme de réglementation national divise, entre les provinces, la croissance des contingents nationaux appelés ?contingent supplémentaire?. La loi fédérale stipule que l'attribution des contingents supplémentaires entre les provinces doit tenir compte du principe d'avantage comparatif en matière de production. Aucun des organismes du secteur de la volaille n'a déterminé l'avantage comparatif ni ne l'a appliqué dans les décisions d'attribution des contingents nationaux. Pour combler cette lacune, nous avons modifié la méthode de ?l'avantage comparatif révélé?élaborée par Balassa (1965) et Bowen (1983; 1985; 1986) pour déterminer l'avantage comparatif et établir un index des avantages comparatifs agricoles provinciaux pour l'attribution des contingents supplémentaires entre les provinces. L'attribution des contingents supplémentaires devrait être dirigée vers les provinces des Prairies très agricoles qui ont un avantage comparatif dans le secteur canadien de la volaille et devrait être écartée des provinces moins agricoles. Notre méthode d'attribution des contingents supplémentaires concorde avec les objectifs de la loi canadienne sur la gestion de l'offre.     

Exploring tax evasion in the context of political uncertainty

We present a model of agents facing the uncertainty of two future forms of government who are able to insure against this uncertainty by hiding funds from taxation. In order to choose whether or not to hide funds from taxation, agents need to know policy choices that each government would make should it come to power. But each government, before it could make its decision, would need to know the choices of the agents who would, for example, produce tax revenues. This informational tension is resolved endogenously. We derive the resulting level of tax evasion in society and the optimal choices made by the potential governments. We examine how changes in governmental structure would affect the level of tax evasion, and how that, in turn, would affect a particular form of capital flight.     

Stochastic rationing by waiting list

In a stochastic queueing environment in which participants maximize expected utility, changes in queueing parameters have predictable impacts on waiting list size. For example, a decrease in mean service time cannot produce a decrease in waiting list size when arrival rate and mean service time are functionally independent.     

Place-Based Manufacturing Subsidies and the Spatial Distribution of Production

Atlantic Economic Journal -     

Corporate taxation, incumbency advantage and entry

It is the purpose of this paper to show that corporation tax may affect industrial structure. Analyzing the effects of corporation tax, we demonstrate that it tends to favour incumbents over entrants. We further show that the effect of this advantage on an incumbent's output depends on his profit or loss history. An incumbent with a past profit is likely to produce a greater output, thereby partially or fully crowding out an entrant's output. In contrast, an incumbent with a past loss is more likely to produce a smaller output, making entry easier.     

THE FACT AND CAUSES OF VARIATION IN STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES

As organizations adapt to changes in environmental conditions and internal needs, they often develop new structures. Research has described several diverse processes by which this development takes place (cf. Chandler, 1962; Child, 1972; Pettigrew, 1973; Sproull, et al., 1978). The only explanations provided thus far for these divergent views is methodological artefact and observer bias (Allison, 1971). In this paper, three parallel case studies are used to show that such differences are real - different organizations do follow different development paths. Evidence is provided to suggest that this variation is caused by the differing structures of organizational control surrounding new structures.