The Telecommunications Act at three years: an economic evaluation of its implementation by the Federal Communications Commission

The competitive free-for-all that Congress envisioned in the 1996 Telecommunications Act has for the most part not appeared. The Act calls for two forms of regulatorily-assisted entry into local markets: lease of network elements and resale. The FCC has decreed that the charges for those elements and the resale discounts must emulate the costs of an ideally-efficient firm. This standard is in fact not efficient, and the FCC’s attempt to jump-start the entry of competitors in this way has short-circuited the competitive process itself and jeopardized achievement of the goals of the Act.     

Informed lending as a deterrent to predation

Predatory practices have been rationalized by positing some information problem between entrant firms and their financiers. We argue that an effective way to deter product market predation is to obtain credit from an informed source, who can disentangle a firm’s expected profitability from its realized profits. Bank finance is often seen as a way of obtaining informed financing. We thus offer a rationale for choosing between bank financing and public debt financing based on its implications for competition in the product market.     

Spatial Interaction,Spatial Multipliers and Hospital Competition

The hospital competition literature shows that estimates of the effect of local market structure (concentration) on pricing (competition) are sensitive to geographic market definition. Our spatial lag model approach effects smoothing of the explanatory variables across the discrete market boundaries, resulting in robust estimates of the impact of market structure on hospital pricing, which can be used to estimate the full effect of changes in prices inclusive of spillovers that cascade through the neighboring hospital markets. The full amount, generated by the spatial multiplier effect, is a robust estimate of the impacts of market factors on hospital competition. We contrast ordinary least squares and spatial lag estimates to demonstrate the importance of robust estimation in analysis of hospital market competition. In markets where concentration is relatively high before a proposed merger, we demonstrate that Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) can lead to the wrong policy conclusion while the more conservative lag estimates do not.     

我国电信企业成本管理改进研究

随着国内外电信市场竞争的加剧,我国电信运营商要在竞争中求得发展,必须在复杂的竞争环境中准确分析各业务的赢利状况、企业价值链中各个环节的效益,最终实现比竞争对手更高的利润指标。这在很大程度上都要取决企业成本管理水平的高低,对此我国电信运营企业必须要有高度的重视,采取行之有效的措施提高成本管理水平。     

非对称竞争对联盟成员机会主义行为倾向影响的实证研究——以我国运动用品（鞋服）制造业为例

本文以我国运动鞋服制造业企业联盟为研究对象，就非对称竞争对联盟成员机会主义倾向的影响这一新的研究领域进行了实证研究，证实了联盟成员间非对称竞争对成员企业的机会主义倾向会产生显著的影响。同时，本研究从竞争行为和竞争意向两个层面上对非对称竞争进行分析，结果表明，相对于行为层面，非对称竞争意向会对成员企业机会主义倾向产生更为显著的强化作用。本研究的相关结论对于进一步的研究与企业管理实践均有一定价值。     

The Competitive Effects of Advertising in the US Automobile Industry, 1970‐94

Is advertising anticompetitive? One school of thought in industrial economics holds that advertising increases profits and reduces consumer welfare by creating spurious product differentiation and barriers to entry. Another school focuses on the informative character of advertising, claiming that advertising makes markets more competitive and reduces profits by supplying consumers with information about price and quality. We distinguish these views by examining the effect of advertising on competition in the US automobile industry. Our data include advertising, sales, profit, and market-share figures for General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler over a 25-year period from 1970 to 1994.We ask if advertising increases or decreases profitability, controlling for market structure and other factors affecting demand.Wefind that these firms cannot increase their profits above normal levels by increasing their advertising expenditures. This evidence supports the view that advertising serves primarily to transmit information, not to create entry barriers.     

略论企业间基本品牌关系与战略决策模式

从战略管理的角度,全面分析企业间品牌竞争的外部环境和企业间的相互关系,并提出企业品牌战略管理的基本框架和基本决策模式,可使企业的品牌战略成为一个完整的体系。     

The Persistence of Profits in the Long Run: A New Approach

We present a trend‐based alternative to the standard first‐order autoregression model in persistence of profits studies. This is motivated by reservations over the interpretation of the standard model, and rests on a different concept of dynamic competition. A nine‐category taxonomy of long‐run persistence stereotypes is developed. Structural time series estimates are presented for a sample of UK companies. We find the null of long run competitive equilibrium not rejected in nearly a third of cases, but non‐eroding persistence to be present in around 60%.     

Industry concentration,excess returns and innovation in Australia

This paper examines market concentration and stock returns on the Australian Securities Exchange. We find that dominant companies operating in concentrated industries in Australia are able to generate significant risk‐adjusted excess stock returns. Our results for Australian data are opposite to that found by Hou and Robinson (2006) for United States market data. Hou and Robinson reason that United States firms which operate in concentrated industries are insulated from competitive pressures, have lower levels of innovation (Arrow, 1962) and therefore experience lower profitability and stock returns. By contrast, the Australian data show a significant and positive relationship between concentration and innovation expenditure. Therefore, the excess stock returns of dominant companies in Australia are consistent with previous research linking innovation expenditure with excess stock returns. We hypothesize that the apparent contradiction of our results compared with Hou and Robinson (2006) for the United States market is resolved by an examination of the differences in size and competition in United States and Australian industries and the consequent differential ability of dominant companies in the two countries to generate monopoly rents and invest in ‘Schumpeterian’ (Schumpeter, 1942) innovation.     

财政存款、银行竞争与僵尸企业形成

银行以优惠利率贷款为低质企业“输血”,是企业僵尸化的重要成因。然而,基于中国背景的文献,对银行“输血”动机的研究并不充分,本文从地方财政存款影响银行信贷分配的视角,分析僵尸企业形成的内在机理。首先,通过构建理论模型对银行竞争财政存款及影响企业融资和投资绩效进而僵尸化的逻辑进行刻画,而后依据省份财政存款、银行竞争与微观企业财务数据,对理论推论进行了验证。研究发现,财政存款占当地存款比重越大,企业僵尸化概率越高,并且银行竞争助长了企业僵尸化。此外,基于工具变量估计处理了核心变量的内生性问题,并进行了多种稳健性检验。机制检验表明,财政存款的信贷分配效应,促使企业过度投资,导致经营绩效恶化,进而提高了企业僵尸化概率,银行竞争则会加剧该效应。本文拓展了财政存款的经济效应与僵尸企业形成方面的文献,对于僵尸企业治理有一定参考意义。