asset specificity and the fear of exploitation if asset specificity renders the investing party dependent ex post why would the ex ante willingness to make relationship specific investments vary we show how specific investments generate both positive and counter negative cooperative incentives we also observe the influences of trust and time horizon on these incentives which are aggregated to derive the specific investments effect sie our result suggests that while the fear of exploitation increases proportionally to the magnitude of specific investments and the attendant quasi rents it grows exponentially with the deterioration of inter personal trust and or inter temporal time horizon contexts

competition under consumer loss aversion we address the effect of expectation based consumer loss aversion on firm strategy in imperfect competition consumers are fully informed about match value and price at the moment of purchase however some consumers are initially uninformed about their tastes and form a reference point consisting of an expected match value and price distribution whereas others are perfectly informed all the time we show that if firms have symmetric costs a larger share of informed consumers leads to a more competitive outcome the reverse holds if cost asymmetry in duopoly is sufficiently large

corporate social responsibility for supply chain management a literature review and bibliometric analysis corporate social responsibility csr in supply chain management scm has gained an increasing research attention in recent years extant studies have discussed stakeholder interests performance evaluation ethical sourcing and sustainable production the purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic study quantitatively depicting the knowledge structure and the intellectual progress of csr for scm this research adopts bibliometric analysis in conjunction with network analysis to systematically evaluate the csr related publications for scm the analysis involves 628 peer reviewed articles identified with careful selection of influential work data analytic techniques including citation analysis co citation analysis and co word analysis are used key findings for researchers include 1 an analytical discussion of the five sub fields that constitute the intellectual structure of csr for scm 2 theoretical and conceptual research significantly dominate in this field 3 the topics of sustainable development and economic and social effects are more frequently discussed among scholars 4 key research gaps include lacking of practical and normative modeling research and considering from the supplier perspectives in emerging economies the findings suggest that future research would emerge a greater depth of practical and modeling analysis to enrich the theories

competitive targeted advertising with price discrimination this paper investigates the eects of price discrimination by means of targeted advertis ing in a duopolistic market where the distribution of consumers preferences is discrete and where advertising plays two major roles it is used by rms as a way to transmit relevant information to otherwise uninformed consumers and it is used as a price discrimination device we compare the rms optimal marketing mix advertising and pricing when they adopt mass advertising non discrimination strategies and targeted advertising price discrim ination strategies if rms are able to adopt targeted advertising strategies we nd that the symmetric price equilibrium is in mixed strategies while the advertising is chosen deter ministically our results also unveil that as long as we allow for imperfect substitutability between the goods rms do not necessarily target more ads to their own market in par ticular rms optimal marketing mix leads to higher advertising reach in the rival s market than in the rms own market provided that advertising costs are su ciently low in relation to the consumer s reservation value the comparison of the optimal marketing mix under mass advertising strategies and targeted advertising strategies reveals that targeted adver tising might constitute a tool to dampen price competition in particular if advertising costs are su ciently low in relation to the value of the goods we obtain that average prices with non discrimination mass advertising are below those with price discrimination and targeted advertising regardless of the market segment accordingly when i goods are imperfect substitutes ii advertising is not too expensive and iii targeted advertising constitutes an eective price discrimination tool price discrimination through targeted advertising may be detrimental to social welfare since it boosts industry pro ts at the expense of consumer surplus

the role of market forces in assuring contractual performance the conditions under which transactors can use the market repeat purchase mechanism of contract enforcement are examined increased price is shown to be a means of assuring contractual performance a necessary and sufficient condition for performance is the existence of price sufficiently above salvageable production costs so that the nonperforming firm loses a discounted steam of rents on future sales which is greater than the wealth increase from nonperformance this will generally imply a market price greater than the perfectly competitive price and rationalize investments in firm specific assets advertising investments thereby become a positive indicator of likely performance

economies of scale and barriers to entry dixit has recently presented a model in which established firms select capacity to discourage entry but cannot employ threats they would not rationally execute after entry entry deterrence in a slight modification of this model involves the classical limit price output under linear or concave demand however the capital cost of a firm of minimum efficient scale is an upper bound on the present value of the monopoly profit stream that can be shielded from entry it is argued that this suggests the general unimportance of entry barriers erected by scale economies

gift giving and the evolution of cooperation gift giving is a practice common to many societies in an evolutionary model the social custom of giving gifts at the beginning of a relationship can lead to trust and cooperation the evolutionary approach makes predictions about the character of the goods that can be used as gifts for example gift goods may have little use value even at low levels of consumption although the gifts themselves are useless the institution is not

determinants of the structure of u s foreign trade 1958 1976 abstract the heckscher ohlin model with three direct factor inputs is borne out for u s net exports of manufactures in annual cross section regressions for 1958 1976 the coefficient on unskilled labor became significantly more negative over the period and there is evidence that the negative sign on physical capital may reflect the inclusion of natural resource industries further analysis based upon 1960 and 1970 census years suggests the importance as well of skill and technological variables calculations of the total factor requirements of u s trade uphold the leontief paradox for 1958 but not for 1972

resources transactions and rents managing value through interfirm collaborative relationships this paper offers a theoretical explanation for why interfirm collaborations form yet fail and further suggests how firms might manage them for a more positive outcome based on a perspective of value we explain how a more inclusive and integrative perspective one which combines elements from transaction costs and resource based theory provides more robust insight into collaboration formation management and instability in doing so we differentiate rent yielding firm specific assets at the core of the resource based view from the transaction specific assets at the core of transaction cost theory the paper makes a crucial distinction between the potential value attainable through collaborations and its actual realization the crux of our argument is that firms enter into collaborative relationships because these are expected to yield superior value relative to alternate organizational forms in certain situations offering potentially synergistic combinations of complementary resources and capabilities yet such relationships are frequently prone to failure because the partner firms tend not to recognize ex ante the nature and extent of transaction specific investment that is required in the collaborative relationship to attain these synergies in our argument critically the relationship between organizations is seen not simply as a governance structure of a hybrid nature but more importantly as a productive resource for value creation and realization in this light transaction specific investment in what we term relational specificity becomes imperative in the search for value we explain why the transaction costs incurred in the exchange of resources are not independent of the nature of resources to be transacted and similarly why the returns realized from these resources are not independent of the relationship and transaction specific expenditures incurred in effectively combining them and maintaining the combination the interdependence between the two mediated by the quality of the relationship has direct implications for the earning of rents through collaborations these relationship specific expenditures can be of an internally generated nature endogenous to the alliance form itself and need not exceed alternative forms while the associated benefits have the capacity to potentially exceed the alternatives this translates into potentially superior value the paper contributes in three key related ways a the explicit recognition of the relationship as a value bearing asset embedded in a larger and endogenous institutional context namely a system of resource relationships both intraorganizational and inter organizational among partner firms and the collaboration b the recognition of the evolving relationship between production and exchange which at the level of the collaboration is directly dependent on the nature evolution and dynamics of the relationship among the parties to the transaction and c the provision of a nontrust explanation for why firms might knowingly forego opportunities to take advantage of their partners drawing from this the paper occasions a a shift in focus from the form to the process of governance which has direct implications for value creation and realization and b a shift in the primary identity of transaction specific and relationship specific expenditures from cost to investment in future value

market provision of broadcasting a welfare analysis this paper presents a theory of the market provision of broadcasting and uses it to address the nature of market failure in the industry advertising levels may be too low or too high depending on the nuisance cost to viewers the substitutability of programs and the expected benefits to advertisers from contacting viewers market provision may allocate too few or too many resources to programming and these resources may be used to produce programs of the wrong type monopoly ownership may produce higher social surplus than competitive ownership and the ability to price programming may reduce social surplus

why corporations insure corporations insure to reduce the shirking information problem of joint production insurance encourages specialization in ownership increasing the returns to monitoring and lowering shareholders demand for a more diversified portfolio it enhances the credibility of specific capital as a performance bond and it lowers the cost to shareholders of compensating other members of the team for investing in firm specific assets tax and other factors may further encourage individual corporations to insure

climate change and australia s comparative advantage in broadacre agriculture australia has long been a major exporter of the products of broadacre agriculture a production system well suited to the economic and climatic conditions of the country presumably it holds a comparative advantage in these products among which grain crops and grazing livestock predominate however the future plausibility of this proposition is sensitive to the projected impacts of climate change this article develops a framework to quantify the future patterns of comparative advantage in broadacre agriculture given the projections of several global climate models we find empirical support for the conventional wisdom and note substantial resilience and robustness in australia s comparative advantage under a number of scenarios

long term sustainability of third party facilitated market linkages evidence from the usda marketing assistance program in the armenian dairy industry abstract public private partnerships are increasingly seen as an important tool to build agri food supply chains and develop markets for agri food products in emerging economies however many of these initiatives fail when the public component of the program ends one exception is the usda market assistance program map that facilitated the redevelopment of the armenian dairy sector after privatization this paper presents a case study of this initiative and hypothesize that the usda map facilitated farmer investment in private enforcement capital this investment resulted in sustainable market relationships between farmers and dairy processors even after the usda map expired we find empirical evidence to support this hypothesis using a panel dataset collected from 172 armenian dairy farmers in 2004 and 2009

market networks and corporate behavior data on market relations between a large population of corporations and investment banks are used to study the organization market interforce the pattern of direct market ties between a firm and its banks forms of interfaces range from a long term exclusive tie the relationship interface to many short lived episodic ties the transaction interface with hybrid forms between the two poles contrary to widespread belief the article finds that strong relationships still exist transactions interfaces are rare most firms use hybrid interfaces a firm s interface is conceptualized as the intentional result of its efforts to reduce dependence and exploit power advantages observed interfaces are shown to be related systematically to various power dependence concepts including resource intensity number of transactions and dollar amounts raised criticality the availability of resource alternatives power asymmetry between a firm and its main bank organization size standardization of exchange and

time scarcity and the market for news abstract we develop a theory of news coverage in environments of information abundance time constrained consumers browse through news items across competing outlets they choose which outlets to access and which stories to read or skip thus indirectly deciding how much time to spend on a given outlet firms decide on rankings of news items that maximize their profits we show that even when readers or television viewers and firms are rational and unbiased they spend more time on the news than they would like and not necessarily on the topics they prefer in particular relevant news items may be crowded out we then study how reader efficient standards can be restored and derive implications on diverse aspects of new and traditional media these include tabloidization and polarization of the news and other aspects relevant for the political economy of the media including political knowledge gaps and voter turnout

how to deliver foreign aid the case of projects governed by the spanish international agency summary international agencies use two alternative modes of governance to deliver international aid projects under bilateral agreements with recipient governments in house or through incumbent ngos through the lenses of institutional and transaction cost economics this article examines 95 international aid projects delivered in morocco and ecuador by the spanish international agency finding that those projects delivered in house present different features than those projects outsourced through incumbent ngos specifically international aid projects delivered in house involve important investments in specific assets are much more complex and can turn the public agency into a hostage of its own disbursement

determinants of trust in supplier relations evidence from the automotive industry in japan and the united states abstract this study examines the determinants of inter organizational trust by using survey data from over 1000 suppliers in the automotive industry drawing on transaction cost economics game theory and sociological exchange theory we define trust and derive a model of its determinants regression analysis results indicate that determinants of trust are different from determinants of opportunism us japanese differences are found in three respects i the way trust is conceptualised by suppliers is more complex in japan than in the us ii the level of trust is higher in japan than in the us and iii the factors facilitating trust and those attenuating opportunism differ in the us and japan

efficient investments in the implementation problem abstract this paper identifies a condition for an efficient social choice rule to be fully implementable when we take into account investment efficiency to do so we extend the standard implementation problem to include endogenous ex ante and ex post investments in our problem the social planner aims to achieve efficiency in every equilibrium of a dynamic game in which agents strategically make investments before and after playing the mechanism our main theorem shows that a novel condition commitment proofness is sufficient and necessary for an efficient social choice rule to be implementable in subgame perfect equilibria the availability of ex post investments is crucial in our model there is no social choice rule that is efficient and implementable in subgame perfect equilibria without ex post investments we also show that our positive result continues to hold in the incomplete information setting

effective interim collaboration how firms minimize transaction costs and maximise transaction value this study of automotive transaction relationships in the u s a and japan offers abta which indicate that transaction costs do not necessarily increase with an increase in reiation specijk investments we empirically examine the conditions under which transactors can simultaneously achieve the twin benejits of high asset specificity and low transaction costs this is possible because the dtfferent safeguards which can be employed to control opportunism have different set up costs and result in different transaction costs over dl erent time horizons we examine in detail the ractices of javanese firms which result in effective inteq n collaboration 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

targeted advertising strategies on television the personal video recorder pvr facilitates the use of targeted advertising by allowing companies to monitor television viewing behavior and to build demographic profiles of viewers from the data that are collected our research explores the extent to which an advertiser should allocate resources to increase the quality of its targeting we present a game theoretic model that extends the conventional measurement of targeting quality by exploring the trade off between two measures accuracy and recognition accuracy measures the likelihood that any target segment prediction is correct while recognition conversely measures the likelihood that any member of the target segment is identified we find that the relative resources allocated to improving accuracy and recognition depend upon the size of the population of viewers the propensity of viewers to skip commercials the overall cost of airing commercials and the competitive environment furthermore the incentives to improve accuracy are markedly different from those to improve recognition although improving accuracy does not affect the extent of price competition improving recognition leads to intensified price competition and reduced profitability in the product market thus when facing a competitor that pursues a strategy to improve its recognition of potential customers an advertiser should choose to reduce its investment in recognition and increase its investment in accuracy

targeted advertising the role of subscriber characteristics in media markets this paper seeks to establish the importance of targeted advertising in media markets using zip code level circulation for us daily newspapers i show that newspapers facing more competition have lower circulation prices but higher advertising prices than similar newspapers facing little or no competition i explain this by showing that newspapers in more competitive markets are better able to segment readers according to their location and demographics this leads to greater homogeneity in the characteristics of subscribers and raises advertisers willingness to pay for such readers the results imply a substantial benefit to advertisers and media firms from targeted advertising

learning and protection of proprietary assets in strategic alliances building relational capital one of the main reasons that firms participate in alliances is to learn know how and capabilities from their alliance partners at the same time firms want to protect themselves from the opportunistic behavior of their partner to retain their own core proprietary assets most research has generally viewed the achievement of these objectives as mutually exclusive in contrast we provide empirical evidence using large sample survey data to show that when firms build relational capital in conjunction with an integrative approach to managing conflict they are able to achieve both objectives simultaneously relational capital based on mutual trust and interaction at the individual level between alliance partners creates a basis for learning and know how transfer across the exchange interface at the same time it curbs opportunistic behavior of alliance partners thus preventing the leakage of critical know how between them copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

predation reputation and entry deterrence abstract economists often argue that predatory practices are irrational since there exist cheaper or more certain means to gain or maintain a monopoly our gametheoretic equilibrium analysis suggests that if a firm is threatened by several potential entrants then predation may be rational against early entrants even if it is costly when viewed in isolation because it yields a reputation which deters other entrants asymmetric information plays a crucial role in our analysis since it provides the rationale for entrants to base their expectations of the firm s future behavior on its past actions the analysis also suggests methods to treat general reputational phenomena

factor movements and commodity trade as complements abstract several models are presented in which factor mobility leads to an increase in the volume of world trade the models share the common characteristic that the basis for trade is something other than differences in relative factor endowments these alternative bases for trade include returns to scale imperfect competition production and factor taxes and differences in production technology taken together the models suggest a more general idea the widely held notion that trade in goods and factors are substitutes is in fact a rather special result which is a general characteristic only of factor proportions models

examining the leontief paradox in u s agricultural trade abstract factor intensity of united states agricultural trade is examined in the context of leontief s classic paradox using leontief s method as well as methods developed recently by leamer and others findings indicate that factor endowments are important determinants of u s agriculture s comparative advantage in trade as suggested by the heckscher ohlin theory

buyer supplier relations in industrial markets when do buyers risk making idiosyncratic investments it is well established that the existence of investments specific to a relationship influences the choice of governance structure including the use of contractual safeguards what is less well understood are the circumstances leading to the creation of those specific assets to begin with this paper explores the industrial buyer s motives to put itself at risk by making investments tangible and intangible which cannot be readily redeployed from one supplier to another using original data from a sample of 388 supply relationships involving all automakers in the u s and japan we examine features of the supply task the supplier and the supply environment which serve as motives to make supplier specific investments we also examine potential factors which facilitate the posting of specific assets as credible commitments to attenuate supplier opportunism we find that specific investments by buyers serve as a mechanism to 1 increase coordination when the manufacturing task is complex 2 buffer the buyer against technological uncertainty and 3 build close relationships when the requisite production skills are scarce the supply market is thin we find more specific investments in supply arrangements that are embedded in a broader business relationship we find fewer supplier specific investments in the japanese context finally we find that buyers focus their investments on lesser known low share component makers perhaps to capitalize on a unique focused supplier capability

raising search costs to deter window shopping can increase profits and welfare consumers tend to browse products they are interested in and firms often invest resources in selling to them a consequence i show is that it is optimal for a firm to increase the cost of browsing even though this drives away potential customers because doing so allows it to target sales efforts at those consumers most likely to buy despite representing pure waste this can increase welfare by facilitating efficient allocation of sales or marketing resources for a similar reason consumers often benefit from search costs in aggregate and prefer them to other means of screening such as price increases

testing two trade models in latin american agriculture abstract the heckscher ohlin and markusen models state that countries export the goods intensive in the use of their relatively abundant factor latin american agricultural trade is consistent with both models the paper then shows that latin american agricultural trade is primarily explained by country differences in relative factor abundance between countries rather than differences in technology this findings does not reject the heckscher ohlin model but rejects one of markusen s models

quantifying the bullwhip effect using two echelon data a cross industry empirical investigation the bullwhip effect denotes the phenomenon whereby demand variability is amplified from a downstream site buyer to an upstream site supplier in the supply chain this paper contributes to the literature that empirically investigates the bullwhip effect by providing new evidence regarding its prevalence and magnitude in contrast to previous work we use a two echelon approach which allows us to observe variations at both the upstream and the downstream sites by drawing on a financial accounting standard regarding information disclosure about major customers we are able to link 5494 buyers and suppliers in the u s between 1976 and 2009 we merge this information with quarterly financial accounting data to form a sample of 14 933 buyer supplier dyad observations we correct for sample selection bias using propensity score matching and estimate the average bullwhip effect in our sample to be 1 90 i e 90 demand variability amplification between echelons a significant bullwhip effect is observed across industries mining manufacturing wholesale and retail and is supported by several robustness checks we investigate and discuss how these results can be generalized beyond our sample

explaining the volume of north south trade much of the recent literature on scale economies has been motivated by the large volume of trade among the industrialized countries relative to north south trade this paper presents theoretical and empirical analyses of two alternative hypotheses one based on differences in north versus south gnp and one based on higher protection levels in the south counter factual experiments using a numerical general equilibrium model support the hypotheses that north south trade is relatively small because the south is poor and highly protected copyright 1990 by royal economic society

optimal auction design in two sided markets a key feature of online markets for advertising e g sponsored links is that clicking rates depend on the searchers expectations that the platform selects relevant advertisers this article studies auction design by a platform that maximizes profits in the long run where clicking rates are mechanism dependent in line with the practice of the major search engines the revenue maximizing mechanism is a scoring auction that combines the willingness to pay and the relevance to searchers of advertisers by trading off rent extraction and clicking volume this mechanism works as a cross subsidization device between searchers and advertisers

search diversion and platform competition abstract platforms use search diversion in order to trade off total consumer traffic for higher revenues derived by exposing consumers to unsolicited products e g advertising we show that competition between platforms leads to lower equilibrium levels of search diversion relative to a monopoly platform when the intensity of competition is high on the other hand if there is only mild competition then competing platforms induce more search diversion relative to a platform monopolist when platforms charge consumers fixed access fees all equilibrium levels of search diversion under platform competition are equal to the monopoly level irrespective of the nature of competition furthermore relative to platforms that cannot charge such fees platforms that charge positive negative access fees to consumers have weaker stronger incentives to divert search

the antecedents and performance implications of cooperative exchange norms our study investigates the antecedents and performance implications of cooperative exchange norms we argue that in early relationships the level of expected cooperative norms in an exchange is the result of a calculative process facilitated by transaction attributes joint transaction specific investments and observability the greater the level of these two exchange attributes the greater the level of cooperative exchange norms all else being equal we further argue that the realized level of cooperative exchange norms can deviate from the expected level because the development of such norms is the result of social processes that management cannot directly and fully control this gap between realized and expected norms affects exchange performance performance suffers when the realized level of cooperative exchange norms falls below the expected level but overshooting expectations lays a critical groundwork for repeat transactions the analysis of a survey of 182 collaborative r d alliances provides initial support for our theory

the impact of targeting technology on advertising markets and media competition an important component of advertising effectiveness is the quality of the match between advertisers and the intended recipients of ads traditionally media have been able to tighten such matches by providing content tailored for specific groups of consumers for example local media outlets attract audiences from their localities ensuring that when local advertis ers place ads they are mostly viewed by their potential customer base recently online adver tising has afforded new technologies that tar get consumers directly rather than indirectly through tailored content a leading example of such targeting is based on geographic loca tion as inferred from ip addresses so while the boston globe may have had an advantage in selling ads to boston advertisers now the new york times can offer boston based ads to consumers located in boston industry specula tion is that such technologies may spur higher demand for online advertising but that these technologies will benefit general outlets more than local newspapers 1 it may be problematic for the future of the local news industry if gen eral outlets gain at their expense to date there has been little analysis on how the market for advertising might be impacted by targeting 2 intuition suggests that an outlet

developing social capital in buyer supplier relationships the contingent effect of relationship specific adaptations abstract strategic buyer supplier relationships are increasingly viewed in both the scholarly and practitioner literatures as key drivers of sustainable competitive advantage in particular relationship specific adaptations the extent to which exchange members make tangible or intangible adaptations for a partner are acknowledged as one of the central issues such adaptations need to be examined in context taking into consideration the social ties that connect a firm and its suppliers using the lens of social capital we examine the contingent effect of buyer and supplier relationship adaptations and structural and cognitive capital on the development of relational capital a sample of 163 buyer supplier relationships within uk manufacturing firms is used to test a series of three way moderated regressions the data indicate that the relationship between structural and cognitive forms of social capital and the level of relational capital is moderated by the extent of the relationship adaptations made by each firm and its supplier contrary to expectations the relationship between cognitive capital and relational capital was significantly negative when high levels of buyer adaptations and supplier adaptations were present indicating a substitution effect between cognitive capital and relationship adaptations structural capital was found to be most strongly related to relational capital when adaptations were reciprocated by both actors however unilateral adaptations by either actor resulted in significantly lower levels of relational capital as structural capital increased implications for theory and managers are discussed relating to the impact of different combinations of relationship specific adaptations on social capital components in a buyer supplier relationship

the determinants of trust in supplier automaker relationships in the us japan and korea we examine the determinants of trust in 453 supplier automaker relationships in the us japan and korea we define trust and derive a model of its determinants drawing upon 1 an embeddedness relationship based perspective 2 a process based perspective and 3 an economic hostage based perspective our findings indicate strong support for the process based perspective in all countries embeddedness was only important in japan and the economic hostage based variable stock ownership was not important in any country

modes of foreign entry a transaction cost analysis and propositions a frontier issue in international marketing is the appropriate choice of entry mode in foreign markets the objective of this paper is to offer a transaction cost framework for investigating the entry mode decision this framework provides 1 a theoretical basis for systematically interrelating the literature into propositions 2 propositions about interactions which resolve the apparently contradictory arguments advanced to date specifically the paper illustrates the feasibility of clustering 17 entry modes into the degree of control the mode provides the entrant proposes that the most appropriate i e most efficient entry mode is a function of the tradeoff between control and the cost of resource commitment advances testable propositions delimiting the circumstances under which each mode maximizes long term efficiency