A note on incentive incompatibility under franchising

This note provides a formal demonstration of the incentive incompatibility problem that exists in franchisor — franchisee relationships. It is shown that incentive incompatibility exists with respect to both price and quality. Several contractual mechanisms designed to mitigate the incompatibility problem are examined.     

Network neutrality and the nature of competition between network operators

The neutral architecture of the Internet is being challenged by various parties, such as network operators providing the connections to end-users, who are interested in gaining control of the information exchanged over the Internet. What are the effects on competition and welfare of such practices? Currently, there exists very little economic theory on network neutrality. This paper provides a preliminary analysis of the type of economic modeling that can address network neutrality, as well as of the type of results that can be expected.     

Quality Competition and Social Welfare in Markets with Partial Coverage: New Results*

We use a vertical product differentiation model under partial market coverage to study the social welfare optimum and duopoly equilibrium when convex costs of quality provision are either fixed or variable in terms of production. We show the following new results. First, under fixed costs, the social planner charges a uniform price for the single variant that just covers costs of quality provision. Like the duopoly equilibrium, this socially optimal pricing entails a partially uncovered market, but a smaller share of the market is served compared with the duopoly equilibrium. Second, for the variable cost case, it is socially optimal to provide both high‐ and low‐quality variants, but market shares need not be equal. This differs from the result in fully covered markets. Third, in the duopoly equilibrium, the quality spread is too wide under variable costs relative to the social optimum. Under fixed costs, the duopoly produces two variants, but quality is too low relative to the social optimum, which has only one variant.     

竖向地震力的冲量计算法

一般认为地震在地表引起的破坏主要是S波的水平震动,很少考虑地震竖向力的作用。单从考虑地震水平力的作用是不易全面反映震害特征的。提出用冲量法来研究计算竖向地震力,通过对最大竖向地震力分布研究,探讨竖向地震力对建筑物的影响与破坏,为进一步提高工程抗震设计水平提供理论依据。     

差异化战略:《新周刊》新锐之道

现在的杂志界“同质化”现象泛滥,许多刊物从封面到内容都是低层次重复。整个中国杂志界由于受体制的限制和束缚,存在创新意识和原创精神的缺失,难觅成熟的商业操盘。《新周刊》作为新闻时事杂志的“异类”,充分运用差异化战略,步步为营,闯出了一片新天地。文章从专题、封面设计、受众定位、经营方法等方面阐述了《新周刊》的差异化战略。     

渠道发展新动态及成因分析

归纳新的市场条件下渠道发展的新动态,并从多个维度分析了这些新动态产生的原因,以便为企业的渠道设计决策和渠道管理决策提供参考。     

基于交易费用理论的企业边界纵向一体化研究

交易费用理论认为，企业的最优边界在市场费用等于企业协调成本那一点，交易费用中的企业规模实质上是企业的纵向规模即纵向边界，企业纵向规模的扩张主要通过纵向一体化来实现。虽然纵向一体化能够有效地削弱人的机会主义和有限理性，克服不确定性，降低交易成本，但它并不必然是企业发展的一种好办法，企业发展到一定阶段，纵向分拆策略是有效的。企业的纵向边界呈现扩张与收缩交互进行的局面。     

Minimum Quality Standards under Asymmetric Duopoly with Endogenous Quality Ordering: A Note

In this note, we revisit minimum quality standards (MQS) under a vertically differentiated duopoly. We generalize the model in Ronnen (1991) and Valletti (2000) by introducing asymmetry into the fixed cost of quality improvement and by explicitly taking into account the endogeneity of quality ordering. In the generalized model, we show that the results derived by Ronnen (1991) and Valletti (2000) are largely robust.     

Free Entry under Uncertainty

When focusing on firm’s risk-aversion in industry equilibrium, the number of firms may be either larger or smaller when comparing market equilibrium with and without price uncertainty. In this paper, we introduce risk-averse firms under cost uncertainty in a model of spatial differentiation and show that the impact of uncertainty will increase the number of firms in an industry. With increased uncertainty, the risk premium of the marginal buyer increases by more than the risk premium of the average buyer, so that the price increases by more than the risk premium. When turning to the free entry game, we find that the market generates too many firms.     

Effect of credible quality investment with Bertrand and Cournot competition

We show how credible revelation and ability to commit to quality choice effect equilibrium qualities and welfare when product market is either Bertrand or Cournot competition. We show that results depend on the type of competition but not generally on the cost of quality function. We show that with Bertrand competition, the equilibrium qualities are lower with credible commitment. Competition is moderated and producer surplus is higher and consumer surplus lower. With Cournot competition, higher quality will be better but lower quality will be worse with credible commitment. Consumer surplus is always greater with credible commitment and if cost does not increase too quickly with quality, producer surplus will also increase. Thus credible commitment is a collusive device with Bertrand competition but it can improve social welfare with Cournot competition. Received: February 8, 2000; revised version: February 14, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" The idea of this paper originated in the weekly workshops of Mordecai Kurz at Stanford. I am forever in debted to Mordecai and fellow students – Luis Cabral, Peter DeMarzo, John Hillas, Michihiro Kandori, Steve Langois, Patrick McAllister, Steve Sharpe, Peter Streufert, Steve Turnbull and Gyu-Ho Wang – for their criticism and encouragement. I also benefited from comments from Yi-Heng Chen, Jin-Li Hu, Kala Krishna, Jinji Naoto, Thomas J. Prusa, and Shyh-Fang Ueng at various later stages of this work. Last but not least, I am grateful for the detailed comments of the referee.