Survival in 19th century cities: The larger the city, the smaller your chances

Using Union Army veterans’ lifetime socioeconomic and health records, this essay finds a consistent and persistent hierarchy in survival rates and hazard ratios by urban size at and across three stages of life: birth, late adolescence, and death. This urban mortality penalty remains after controlling for variables associated with each individual veteran. The results of our geographical mobility analyses suggest that, with respect to these veterans, the search for an explanation should focus on late adolescence and adulthood as much as on early life. A complete explanation of the penalty requires a project of greater scope.     

The Survival of Family Firms: The Importance of Control and Family Ties

The aim of this article is to analyze the survival patterns of a group of family firms which have already spent at least 25 years in the market. To this end, we use the Kaplan–Meier product limit estimator supplemented with qualitative information gathered by direct observation and discussions with entrepreneurs. The main findings are that small family firms which have reached their 30th year in the market face a very high risk of sudden exit, increasing with firm age. Further control carried out by means of interviews with entrepreneurs identifies problems connected with succession as one of the main causes of the decision to close down.     

Product differentiation and duration of US import trade

We examine the extent to which product differentiation affects duration of US import trade relationships. The results are consistent with a matching model of trade formation. Using highly disaggregated product level data we estimate the hazard rate is at least 23% higher for homogeneous goods than for differentiated products. The results are not only highly robust but are often strengthened under alternative specifications. As the smallest relationships are dropped, differences across product types increase. Controlling for potential measurement errors also results in larger differences across product types.     

The competing risks of acquiring and being acquired: Evidence from Colombia's financial sector

This paper studies the determinants of the probability of participating in a process of merging or acquisition for financial institutions in Colombia. We use survival analysis techniques and competing risks models to estimate the probability of participating in such processes as an acquiring or acquired firm. Using an especially rich database containing financial information of Colombian banks for the period 1990–2007, we find that both macroeconomic and microeconomic variables are important determinants of this probability. However, there are differential effects for the acquiring firm and the acquired firm. Particularly, while firm size and solvency are significant determinants of the probability of being an acquiring firm, efficiency is an important determinant of the probability of being acquired. Also, the concentration index, which plays no role for acquiring firms, plays an important role in the probability of being acquired.     

Survival in Cournot games

In a model that encompasses a general equilibrium framework, we consider a monopolist (a producer) with subjective beliefs that endogenously hedges against fluctuations in input prices in a complete market. We allow for entries and Cournot competition in this economy, and we study how erroneous beliefs affect long-run survival for those firms. We introduce a notion of entropy of beliefs, and we use it to characterize the class of beliefs for which the monopolist eventually disappears almost surely. When disappearance occurs, the whole market power switches to the entrant making the most accurate predictions in our sense. The class of beliefs for which survival occurs is much broader than that of perfectly competitive settings.     

Business model innovation and third-party alliance on the survival of new firms

In this study, we address the question of how the degree of business model innovation affects the survival of new firms. We present a newly constructed data set of 129 new firms that launched electronic trading platforms in the US bond market between 1995 and 2004 following the advent of Internet technology. We analyze the founding and survival of these new firms during the period of our study. We find that new firms with a high or low degree of business model innovation are more likely to survive for longer than new firms with a moderate degree of business model innovation. We show that partnering with third-party firms with complementary assets reduces the survival of new firms as the degree of business model innovation increases. We discuss the implications of our findings for managers, policy-makers and researchers.     

银行卡支付平台竞争绩效及其生存区间分析

银行卡支付平台具有双边市场属性，其交叉网络外部性强度深刻地影响着整个电子支付行业竞争格局。研究采用一个两阶段博弈模型分析银行卡支付平台竞争绩效及其生存区间，结果表明“赢者通吃”并非银行卡市场的常态，平台共存的条件在于交叉网络外部性要么足够大，要么就是足够小。     

The effects of loyalty programs on customer lifetime duration and share of wallet

In the retailing sector, consumers typically patronize multiple outlets, which confronts these outlets with an important issue: determining how to gain a greater part of consumer expenditures. One potential avenue is to increase consumer lifetime duration and repeat purchases through loyalty cards. This research, using BehaviorScan single-source panel data, examines the impact of loyalty programs on customer lifetime duration in grocery stores. The findings suggest that loyalty schemes have positive effects on customer lifetimes and share of consumer expenditures. However, multiple loyalty card memberships of geographically close retailers reduce lifetime duration. Furthermore, the higher the share of consumer expenditures in a store, the longer the lifetime duration will be.     

Multivariate survival functions characterized by constant product of mean remaining lives and hazard rates

Under the assumption that the products of multivariate mean remaining lives and hazard rates are the same constant, it is shown that the corresponding multivariate survival function belongs to one of three families: (1) multivariate Gumbel exponential distribution; (2) multivariate Lomax (Pareto type II) distribution; (3) multivariate rescaled Dirichlet distribution. This result is then used to derive another characterization of the latter two families based on the residual life distribution.     

财务危机预警模型在商业银行信贷风险管理中的应用

商业银行不良信贷已经成为其发展的瓶颈,商业银行要发展,就必须从根本上降低未来不良贷款形成的可能性。本文认为形成不良贷款最主要的原因是企业盈利能力的下降。因此借助我国上市公司的财务样本数据,建立了企业财务危机预警的生存分析模型——Cox模型,该模型具有可以使用时间序列、无需样本配对、连续预测和高鲁棒性的特点,能够为商业银行提供更为有效的企业财务危机预测,从而降低商业银行不良贷款的形成。