The equilibrium set of two-player games with complementarities is a sublattice

Summary. I prove that the equilibrium set in a two-player game with complementarities, and totally ordered strategy spaces, is a sublattice of the joint strategy space. Received: May 31, 2001; revised version: October 4, 2002     

Long-run risk-return trade-offs

Excess market returns are correlated with past market variance. This dependence is statistically mild at short horizons (thereby leading to a hard-to-detect risk-return trade-off, as in the existing literature) but increases with the horizon and is strong in the long run (i.e., between 6 and 10 years). From an econometric standpoint, we find that the long-run predictive power of past market variance is robust to the statistical properties of long-horizon stock-return predictive regressions. From an economic standpoint, we show that, when conditioning on past market variance, conditional versions of the traditional CAPM and consumption-CAPM yield considerably smaller cross-sectional pricing errors than their unconditional counterparts.     

Endogenous market structures and the optimal financial structure

Abstract We characterize the optimal financial structure as a strategic device to optimize the value of a firm competing in a market where entry is endogenous. Debt financing is always optimal under quantity competition, and, contrary to the Brander‐Lewis‐Showalter results based on duopolies, we show the optimality of moderate debt financing also under price competition with cost uncertainty (but not with demand uncertainty). We derive the formulas for the optimal financial structure, which does not affect the strategies of the other firms but reduces their number.     

Endogenous market structures and contract theory: Delegation, principal-agent contracts, screening, franchising and tying

I study the role of unilateral strategic contracts for firms active in markets with price competition and endogenous entry. Traditional results change substantially when the market structure is endogenous rather than exogenous. They concern (1) contracts of managerial delegation to non-profit maximizers, (2) incentive principal-agent contracts in the presence of moral hazard on cost-reducing activities, (3) screening contracts in case of asymmetric information on the productivity of the managers, (4) vertical contracts of franchising in case of hold-up problems and (5) tying contracts by monopolists competing also in secondary markets. Firms use always these contracts to strengthen price competition and manage to obtain positive profits in spite of free entry.     

THE THEORY OF ENDOGENOUS MARKET STRUCTURES

Most market structures are neither perfectly or monopolistically competitive: they are characterized by a few large firms that are engaged in strategic interactions in their production and investment decisions and whose number is endogenous. The theory of endogenous market structures analyzes markets in partial and general equilibrium where strategies affect entry and entry affects strategies, and exogenous primitive conditions on technology and preferences affect the equilibrium. We discuss applications to industrial organization, international trade, business cycle theory, international finance, growth and implications for welfare and for competition, trade, fiscal and monetary policy.     

The Open Innovation Journey: How firms dynamically implement the emerging innovation management paradigm

Open Innovation is currently one of the most debated topics in management literature. Nevertheless, there are still many unanswered questions in Open Innovation research. Especially two issues require further investigation: (i) understanding the relevance of Open Innovation beyond high-tech industries and (ii) studying how firms implement Open Innovation in practice. The paper addresses these topics by studying, through an in-depth case study, the journey that the Italian leading cement manufacturer, has undergone to move from a Closed to an Open Innovation paradigm.The paper shows that the Open Innovation paradigm is implemented along a three-phase process that comprises the stages of unfreezing, moving and institutionalising. Moreover, it emerges that the changes through which Open Innovation has been implemented involve four major dimensions, i.e. networks, organisational structures, evaluation processes and knowledge management systems. They should be therefore conceived as the managerial and organisational levers an innovating firm can act upon to streamline its journey toward Open Innovation. Theoretical and managerial implications of using these levers for implementing Open Innovation are discussed at length.