getting big too fast strategic dynamics with increasing returns and bounded rationality neoclassical models of strategic behavior have yielded many insights into competitive behavior despite the fact that they often rely on a number of assumptions including instantaneous market clearing and perfect foresight that have been called into question by a broad range of research researchers generally argue that these assumptions are good enough to predict an industry s probable equilibria and that disequilibrium adjustments and bounded rationality have limited competitive implications here we focus on the case of strategy in the presence of increasing returns to highlight how relaxing these two assumptions can lead to outcomes quite different from those predicted by standard neoclassical models prior research suggests that in the presence of increasing returns tight appropriability and accommodating rivals in some circumstances early entrants can achieve sustained competitive advantage by pursuing get big fast gbf strategies rapidly expanding capacity and cutting prices to gain market share advantage and exploit positive feedbacks faster than their rivals using a simulation of the duopoly case we show that when the industry moves slowly compared to capacity adjustment delays boundedly rational firms find their way to the equilibria predicted by conventional models however when market dynamics are rapid relative to capacity adjustment forecasting errors lead to excess capacity overwhelming the advantage conferred by increasing returns our results highlight the risks of ignoring the role of disequilibrium dynamics and bounded rationality in shaping competitive outcomes and demonstrate how both can be incorporated into strategic analysis to form a dynamic behavioral game theory amenable to rigorous analysis

non monotonic effects of market concentration on prices for residential solar photovoltaics in the united states abstract emerging renewable energy markets may become more concentrated over time as the most efficient firms accumulate market share the effects of this market concentration on prices are tested using a rich dataset of residential solar photovoltaic pv systems in the united states a novel hypothesis is explored that the effects of market concentration may be non monotonic prices may decline in market concentration due to efficiency gains associated with returns to scale but increase in concentration in already concentrated markets due to increasing market power the results of an econometric model provide evidence to support the non monotonic hypothesis however the data suggest that the relationship between prices and firm scale is nuanced and that both large and small scale pv installers may wield efficiency advantages

off the cliff and back credit conditions and international trade during the global financial crisis abstract we study the collapse of international trade flows during the global financial crisis using detailed data on monthly us imports we show that credit conditions were an important channel through which the crisis affected trade volumes by exploiting the variation in the cost of capital across countries and over time as well as the variation in financial vulnerability across sectors countries with higher interbank rates and thus tighter credit markets exported less to the us during the peak of the crisis this effect was especially pronounced in sectors that require extensive external financing have limited access to trade credit or have few collateralizable assets exports of financially vulnerable industries were thus more sensitive to the cost of external capital than exports of less vulnerable industries and this sensitivity rose during the financial crisis the quantitative implications of our estimates for trade volumes highlight the large real effects of financial crises and the potential gains from policy intervention

industry dynamics and the distribution of firm sizes a nonparametric approach the aim of this paper is to analyze the evolution of the size distribution of young firms within some selected industries trying to assess the empirical implications of different models of industry dynamics the model of passive learning jovanovic 1982 the model of active learning ericson and pakes 1995 and the evolutionary model audretsch 1995 we use a non parametric technique the kernel density estimator applied to a data set from the italian national institute for social security inps consisting in 12 cohorts of new manufacturing firms followed for 6 years since the patterns of convergence to the limit distribution are different between industries we conclude that the model of passive learning is consistent with some of them the active exploration model with others the evolutionary model with all of them

entry costs reduction and competition in the portuguese mobile telephony industry we study the eect of entry on costs and competition in the portuguese mobile telephony industry we construct and estimate a model that includes demand network and cost equations the latter accounts for ine ciency and cost reducing eort we show that failure to account for cost reducing eort leads to biased estimates of competition in the industry we also nd that our estimated price cost margins are similar to hypothetical nash margins if rms are patient and have optimistic beliefs about the industry growth finally our results suggest that the entry of a third operator in 1998 lead to signi cant cost reductions and fostered competition

size age and firm growth in an infant industry the computer hardware industry in india abstract in contrast to the existing studies on the relationship of firm growth with size and age of the firm which typically focus on relatively mature industries in developed economies this study analyses firm growth patterns for an infant industry in a developing economy it is found that a age positively impacts growth which is the opposite of the result in previous studies b as in previous studies current size negatively impacts growth but the magnitude is much higher and c lagged size negatively impacts growth suggesting that fixed factors become a hindrance to growth in rapidly growing infant industries

the value relevance of intangibles the case of software capitalization the value relevance of intangibles the case of software capitalization author s david aboody and baruch lev source journal of accounting research vol 36 studies on enhancing the financial reporting model 1998 pp 161 191 published by blackwell publishing on behalf of accounting research center booth school of business university of chicago stable url http www jstor org stable 2491312 accessed 14 09 2010 16 12

evolutionary theorizing in economics modern economic analysis oriented toward understanding the workings of economies that make extensive use of markets came into existence with three guiding questions all central in adam smith s 1776 1937 the wealth of nations one question concerned order without any central authority guiding and commanding action how is economic activity coordinated the second question was the challenge of explaining the prevailing constellation of prices inputs and outputs what explains the price of labor and the rent of land the third question addressed the processes of economic progress or development smith and other early economists clearly were impressed by the inventiveness the energy and the growing productivity generated by the evolving market economy how to understand its dynamics the first two questions have defined continuing central concerns of the discipline of economics since they first were posed over two centuries ago when not posed in the context of an economy that is understood as in the process of developing they seem to pull the focus of theorizing toward equilibrium conditions the third question concerned with the processes driving economic progress pulls the theorizing toward an evolutionary orientation the question of economic development has waxed and waned in centrality to the discipline as has the importance of evolutionary theorizing during the first several decades of the twentieth century evolutionary thinking and language was widespread in economics but as one contrasts the economic

the market evolution and sales takeoff of product innovations in contrast to the prevailing supply side explanation that price decreases are the key driver of a sales takeoff we argue that outward shifting supplyand demand curves lead to market takeoff our fundamental idea is that sales in new markets are initially low because the first commercialized forms of new innovations are primitive then as new firms enter actual and perceived product quality improves and prices possibly drop which leads to a takeoff in sales to provide empirical evidence for this explanation we explore the relationship between takeoff times price decreases and firm entry for a sample of consumer and industrial product innovations commercialized in the united states over the past 150 years based on a proportional hazards analysis of takeoff times we find that new firm entry dominates other factors in explaining observed sales takeoff times we interpret these results as supporting the idea that demand shifts during the early evolution of a new market due to nonprice factors is the key driver of a sales takeoff

industry and firm specific factors of innovation novelty this article investigates the underlying factors that might shape the firm s choices with respect to degrees of innovation novelty using a sample of 2983 firms observed under the portuguese community innovation survey we assess the relative relevance of a set of firm and industry specific factors in explaining firms choices about incremental or radical innovation the results indicate that both the firm s idiosyncratic historical factors giving rise to heterogeneous r d capabilities and the industry context have power to shape the firm s innovation choices even though firm specific factors appear to be more powerful the estimated impacts on firm s innovation novelty are nonetheless significantly moderated by the type of firm and industry

the legacy of steven klepper industry evolution entrepreneurship and geography this introductory essay of the special issue honoring steven klepper provides a synthesis of his work and places the articles of the special issue within the context of his scholarship steven klepper s pioneering work linked life cycle patterns in industry evolution to underlying micro level firm innovation dynamics and employee entrepreneurship and to the macro level implications regarding geographical agglomeration and the growth of economies taken together the lifetime of klepper s research provides an integrated account of the key industrial mechanisms at work and also sets the stage for future research as is elaborated in individual contributions to the special issue

dynamic entry and exit with uncertain cost positions abstract we study the dynamics of entry and exit based on firms learning about their relative cost positions each firm s marginal cost of production is its own private information thereby facing ex ante uncertainty about its cost position the inelastic market demand can accommodate only a fraction of firms to operate and thus only firms with relatively lower costs are viable in the long run some firms in the market will exit if excessive entry or overshooting occurs we derive the unique symmetric sequential equilibrium the equilibrium properties are consistent with empirical observations i entry occurs gradually over time with lower cost firms entering earlier than higher cost firms ii exiting firms are among the ones that entered later indeed in the last period moreover equilibrium overshooting probability is shown to always be positive and decreasing over time

are knowledge spillovers driving the convergence of productivity among firms this study evaluates the impact of knowledge spillovers on the convergence of productivity among firms with the use of patent citation data knowledge spillovers are decomposed into intra and inter industry spillovers and internal knowledge flows the findings from this study suggest that each firm is converging to its own steady state productivity growth rate which is conditional on the firm s r d efforts and the intensity of intra industry spillovers it receives moreover if technology followers and leaders invest equally in r d activities the followers will eventually catch up with the leaders because the former tend to be the ones who receive knowledge spillovers from the latter

dynamic capacity planning using strategic slack valuation in this paper we analyze a particular aspect of capacity planning that is concerned with the active trading of production facilities for a homogenous product market we provide a theoretical rationale for the valuation and trading of these assets based on a metric of strategic slack we show that trading production assets with non additive portfolio profitability involves complex coordination with multiple equilibria and that these equilibria depend on the foresight in the planning horizon using the concept of strategic slack we have analyzed the dynamics of market structure the impact of asset trading on the level of production of the industry and to derive boundaries on the value of the traded assets moreover through computational learning the formulation is applied to a large oligopolistic electricity market showing that plant trading tends to lead to increased market concentration high prices lower production and a decrease in consumer surplus

product and process innovations in the life cycle of an industry abstract filson rev econ dyn 4 2001 uses industry level data on firm numbers price quantity and quality along with an equilibrium model of industry evolution to estimate the nature and effects of quality and cost improvements in the personal computer industry and four other new industries this paper studies the personal computer industry in more detail and shows that the model explains some peculiar patterns that cannot be explained by previous life cycle models the model s estimates are evaluated using historical studies of the evolution of the personal computer industry and patterns that require further model development are described

getting there exploring the role of expectations and preproduction delays in processes of organizational founding because of preproduction delays environmental conditions at founding cannot explain organization building decisions taken earlier as a consequence environmental conditions at founding cannot explain organizational founding future levels of resource availability may be estimated but not directly observed by potential entrepreneurs at the time at which they decide to enter preproduction in this paper we take these considerations as our starting point to build a dynamic feedback model of organization founding according to the model organizational founding is driven by expectations that entrepreneurs form about future levels of resources and only indirectly by current levels of population density we explore the behavior of the model under a variety of experimental conditions we show that the qualitative behavior of the model is consistent with studies that have linked the duration of preproduction stage with fluctuations in density during population maturity our simulation analyses sustains three main conclusions first historical trajectories of organizational populations that are consistent with empirical observations may be produced by mechanisms that are not directly dependent on density second alternative hypotheses about how expectations are formed produce qualitatively different historical trajectories of density third fluctuations in numbers of organizations are linked to specific aspects of individual organization building decisions

sales growth of spanish tourist firms some implications of gibrat s law on marketing management abstract the research presented in this paper is targeted towards empirical validation of three hypotheses deduced from gibrat s law and concerning sales growth in the spanish tourism industry the research refers to the years 1997 2000 and uses a sample of 1131 surviving firms all of which are devoted to tourism activities regression correlation and automatic interaction detection techniques were used throughout the sample the results show the existence of two firm growth segments set apart by a threshold size reached only when initial size is measured in sales terms firms above the threshold size grow at a significantly lower accumulated rate than firms below it thus contradicting gibrat s law however no relationship was observed for successive inter annual growth rates this in turn suggests that marketing actions and programmes have rather a medium and long term effect than a short term effect over sales growth sound implications about the firms degree of market opportunity management strategic interdependence and market orientation were deduced from these results

estimating the innovator s dilemma structural analysis of creative destruction in the hard disk drive industry 1981 1998 this paper studies strategic industry dynamics of creative destruction in which firms and technologies experience turnover theories predict that cannibalization between existing and new products delays incumbents innovation whereas preemptive motives accelerate it incumbents cost dis advantage relative to that of entrants would further reinforce these tendencies to empirically assess these three forces i estimate a dynamic oligopoly model using a unique panel data set of hard disk drive manufacturers the results suggest that despite strong preemptive motives and a substantial cost advantage over entrants cannibalization makes incumbents reluctant to innovate which can explain at least 57 percent of the incumbent entrant innovation gap

a review of uncertainties in technology experience curves abstract the use of log linear experience curves or learning curves relating reductions in the unit cost of technologies to their cumulative production or installed capacity has become a common method of representing endogenous technical change in energy economic models used for policy analysis yet there are significant uncertainties in such formulations whose impact on key model results have been insufficiently examined or considered this paper reviews the major types of uncertainty in log linear experience curves and their effect on projected rates of cost reduction uncertainties are found not only in the learning rate parameter of a log linear model but also in the functional form that determines the shape of an experience curve evidence for alternative forms such as an s shaped curve is reviewed along with case studies that demonstrate the uncertainties associated with cost increases during early commercialization of a technology a phenomena that is widely recognized but rarely quantified or incorporated in learning models additional factors discussed include the effects of learning discontinuities institutional forgetting and the influence of social economic and political factors we then review other models of causality which aim to improve modelers ability to explain and predict the influence of other underlying processes that contribute to technology cost reductions in addition to learning ignoring other types of underlying mechanisms can create a false sense of precision and overestimate the true contribution of learning currently however uncertainties in such multi factor models remain large due to the difficulties of estimating key parameters such as private sector r d investments and extending models of a specific technology to a broader suite of technologies and cost projections pending the development and validation of more robust models of technological change we suggest ways to significantly improve the characterization and reporting of current learning model uncertainties and their impacts on the results of energy economic models to help reduce the potential for drawing inappropriate or erroneous policy conclusions

technology uncertainty sunk costs and industry shakeout i propose a novel explanation for new industry shakeouts because of capacity sunk costs and the fear of backing the wrong technology firms initially invest up to a small capacity leading to a large number of initial entrants as the dust settles and a dominant technology emerges surviving firms expand to their long term optimal capacity which results in a reduction in the number of competitors notwithstanding the increase in total market output copyright 2012 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

costly external finance corporate investment and the subprime mortgage credit crisis abstract we study the effect of the recent financial crisis on corporate investment the crisis represents an unexplored negative shock to the supply of external finance for non financial firms corporate investment declines significantly following the onset of the crisis controlling for firm fixed effects and time varying measures of investment opportunities consistent with a causal effect of a supply shock the decline is greatest for firms that have low cash reserves or high net short term debt are financially constrained or operate in industries dependent on external finance to address endogeneity concerns we measure firms financial positions as much as four years prior to the crisis and confirm that similar results do not follow placebo crises in the summers of 2003 2006 nor do similar results follow the negative demand shock caused by september 11 2001 the effects weaken considerably beginning in the third quarter of 2008 when the demand side effects of the crisis became apparent additional analysis suggests an important precautionary savings motive for seemingly excess cash that is generally overlooked in the literature

the conditioning effect of time on firm survival an industry life cycle approach in an effort to reconcile theoretical blind spots we integrated research in technology management organizational ecology and evolutionary economics the central premise underlying the resultan

why do financial systems differ history matters abstract we describe a dynamic model of financial intermediation in which fundamental characteristics of the economy imply a unique equilibrium path of bank and financial market lending yet we also show that economies whose fundamental characteristics have converged may continue to have very different financial structures because setting up financial markets is costly in our model economies that emphasize bank lending are more likely to continue doing so in the future all else equal

does transaction misalignment matter for firm survival at all stages of the industry life cycle research on industry life cycles suggests that competitive pressures are more severe during the shakeout stage which could be associated with the emergence of a dominant design than at other stages transaction cost theory on the other hand assumes generally competitive markets and does not address the industry life cycle it therefore implies that transaction cost economizing is a superior firm strategy regardless of the stage of the life cycle this paper seeks to reconcile these two streams of research by investigating whether aligning transactions with governance modes in accordance with transaction cost prescriptions has a differential effect on firm survival in preshakeout versus shakeout stages of the industry life cycle analyzing data from the early u s auto industry 1917 1933 we find that while transaction misalignment did not have a significant impact on firm survival during the preshakeout stage or during the period as a whole it did have a significantly larger negative impact on survival during the shakeout stage than during the preshakeout stage we also find that the negative effects of misalignment on survival were significantly weaker for larger firms during the shakeout stage this suggests that applications of transaction cost theory which assume uniformly severe selection pressures across the industry life cycle and uniform effects of misalignment across firms of different sizes could be misleading it also suggests that theories of the industry life cycle could usefully take transaction costs into account along with production costs in their analyses of competition over the life cycle

in praise of the old i o abstract old i o is the body of empirical regularities obtained by cross section statistical methods following their introduction by bain bain 1951 relation of profit rate to industry concentration american manufacturing 1936 1940 quarterly journal of economics 65 293 324 its researchers did not seek to fit particular theoretical oligopoly models to market data apart from theoretical conditions for sustainable collusion but they did establish a large number of empirical regularities cross section associations between dimensions of performance allocative efficiency productive efficiency turnover of suppliers in markets and their structural and behavioral features these associations continue to serve a wide range of uses for economic understanding and policy formation

clusters of entrepreneurship employment growth is strongly predicted by smaller average establishment size both across cities and across industries within cities but there is little consensus on why this relationship exists traditional economic explanations emphasize factors that reduce entry costs or raise entrepreneurial returns thereby increasing net returns and attracting entrepreneurs a second class of theories hypothesizes that some places are endowed with a greater supply of entrepreneurship evidence on sales per worker does not support the higher returns for entrepreneurship rationale our evidence suggests that entrepreneurship is higher when fixed costs are lower and when there are more entrepreneurial people

sunk costs windows of profit opportunities and the dynamics of entry abstract this article adds two elements to a standard model of monopolistic competition first the number of potential entrants is limited in each period and increases only over time second the potential entrants differ with respect to the consumers valuation of the variant they could offer the resulting simple model exhibits a rich dynamic structure covering the product life cycle a path dependent equilibrium and the traditional textbook case of entry the welfare analysis confirms the view that there cannot be too much entry even entry of inefficient firms improves welfare

on industry life cycles delay entry and shakeout in beer brewing abstract this paper proposes a new explanation for industry shakeout an event evident in the life cycle of many industries in which the number of firms drops significantly in a short interval of time based on an in depth analysis of the shakeout in the united states beer brewing industry between 1880 and 1890 we propose that industry shakeouts naturally follow periods of mass entry by firms similar patterns are evident in two other industries we briefly examine the us automobile and tire industries while entry rates fluctuate broadly in all these industries we find that the timing of exit for a given cohort of entrants is remarkably similar over time the exit hazard rate is peaked in the first two years of every cohort s life and drops dramatically to low and stable levels for subsequent ages in this sense mass exit follows mass entry and does not require a deep explanation it is the mass entry evident in the data for these industries that requires an explanation we propose a theoretical model of information accumulation to explain entry into an industry entrepreneurs are uncertain about the profitability of the industry and this uncertainty is resolved through sufficient accumulation of information regarding the fortunes of incumbent firms delay in entry occurs solely due to the fact that it takes time to accumulate sufficient information to support more entry the resulting entry pattern from simulations of the model looks much like that observed in the industries we study

light emitting diodes and the lighting revolution the emergence of a solid state lighting industry emergence of new industries from evolving technologies is critical to the global economy yet has been relatively understudied due to the paucity of available data this study draws lessons on industry emergence by analyzing how a solid state lighting ssl industry grew out of light emitting diode led technologies that evolved for half a century with participation by tens of thousands of researchers in universities national laboratories and firms using data on publications patents and firms combined with business history we trace the evolution of ssl through a succession of market niches at times a few researchers with unorthodox research approaches made breakthroughs that greatly advanced particular technology trajectories and pushed led research in unexpected directions a succession of led market niches advanced the technology and provided profits to incentivize continuing research while reducing cost and improving efficacy of leds innovating firms developed a thicket of patents and captured substantial profit but were embroiled in extensive litigation that was ultimately resolved through cross licensing a major new generation of lighting products is now disrupting the traditional lighting industry although the leading incumbent lighting firms all invested early and heavily in ssl the industry s future leadership is uncertain

do favorable land price policy affect renewable energy industry evidence from photovoltaics abstract renewable energy is necessary for sustainable social and economic development this is particularly so with global energy shortages the continuous deterioration of ecosystems and the environment as well as the world population explosion this article qualitatively and quantitatively analyzes the effects and problems of chinese favorable land price policy on photovoltaics in examining the favorable land price policy in china this study develops a multiple linear regression model to study the effects of favorable land price policy on photovoltaic power and photovoltaic industry data used in this research was mainly collected from 20 provinces in china it is found that the development of pv in china has been greatly affected by the favorable land price policy in the end it is highly recommended that favorable land price policy should be continued for renewable energy systemic deficiencies can be overcome through continual reform and innovation of mechanisms

transformative technology and institutional transformation coevolution of biotechnology venture firms and the institutional framework in japan abstract japan is developing a national strategy for biotechnology which it sees as a transformative technology of strategic importance significant institutional transformation has occurred including changes to the legal structure of universities partly in an effort to enhance technology transfer these and other institutional changes are proving conducive to entrepreneurship and have developed alongside an increase in the number of biotechnology venture firms this paper presents an overview of these institutional transformations in the light of recent deregulation and legislative changes it posits that the emergence of bioventure firms the increase in their number and arguably their changing nature are manifestations of the coevolution of organizations with changes to the institutional framework finally it gives examples of several bioventures based on interviews conducted with the founders and chief scientists in japan and reveals some of the salient characteristics of these firms

technological extinctions of industrial firms an inquiry into their nature and causes after a buildup in the number of firms new industries commonly experience a shakeout in which the number of firms declines sharply three theoretical perspectives on how technological change contributes to industry shakeouts are analyzed the theories are used to synthesize predictions concerning technological change and industry evolution the predictions inform an analysis of four us industries that experienced sharp shakeouts automobiles tires televisions and penicillin using data on firm participation and innovation from the commercial inception of the four products through their formative eras we uncover regularities in how the products evolved the regularities suggest that shakeouts are not triggered by particular technological innovations nor by dominant designs but by an evolutionary process in which technological innovation contributes to a mounting dominance by some early entering firms copyright 1997 by oxford university press

sunk costs and regulation in the u s pesticide industry abstract this paper examines the impact of sunk costs and market demand on the number of innovative companies the u s market share of foreign based firms and merger choice in the u s pesticide industry results are consistent with sutton s 1991 view of sunk costs and market structure in that rising endogenous sunk research costs and exogenous sunk pesticide product regulation costs and declining demand negatively affect the number of firms in the industry have a stronger negative impact on the number of smaller firms and encourage foreign based firm expansion

turbulence in growing and declining industries turbulence over the industry life cycle is examined for the case of portugal using the lowest possible level of industry aggregation thus allowing for the use of panel data to study the evolution of product markets replacement of exiting firms by subsequent entrants plays a primary role in generating turbulence in high growth markets while displacement of incumbents by recent entrants is the main selection force in declining markets as the industry life cycle progresses trial and error entry and entry mistakes decrease and turbulence subsides

things change dynamic resource constraints and system dependent selection in the evolution of organizational populations an extensive empirical literature has demonstrated the existence of density dependent selection in organizational vital rates this research has also shown that historical trajectories followed by organizational populations only partly conform to the predictions of the original model inconsistencies with the model s predictions prompt a series of questions why do organizational populations suddenly collapse after reaching a peak why do organizational populations oscillate after collapsing what causes extinction of organizational forms to address these questions scholars have proposed a variety of modifications to the original model of density dependence all have merit but none is completely satisfying the main objective of this study is to narrow the gap between theories models and observed historical trajectories by identifying a unitary analytical framework that can account for the variety of empirical trajectories typically followed by mature organizational populations the model that we present is based on the hypothesis of system dependent selection according to which patterns of resource availability are produced by processes that are partly endogenous to organizational populations the main analytical insight of the study is that under conditions of dynamic resource constraints introduced by system dependent selection the presence of population level inertia leads to a rich variety of historical trajectories during population maturity we show that this result holds in the absence of any particular assumption about the microstructure of organizational populations possible trajectories include sustained oscillations resurgence and extinction

comparative analysis of firm demographics and survival evidence from micro level sources in oecd countries in this paper we present cross country evidence on firm size distribution firm demographic and post entry performance for 10 oecd countries we use harmonized firm level data drawn from business registers or social security records these data enable international comparisons and the identification of idiosyncratic country effects while average firm size differs across countries due to both sectoral specialization and within sector characteristics we find similar degrees of firm churning across countries in most of them about 20 of firms enter and exit most markets every year and about 20 40 of entering firms fail within the first 2 years of life however post entry growth of successful entrants is much higher in the usa than in europe which may be indicative of barriers to firm growth as opposed to barriers to entry

persistence of leadership in product innovation in a firm model of vertical product differentiation three distinct patterns of market shares emerge as an equilibrium outcome reflecting three distinct strategies in respect of timing of the introduction of new products the main novelty relative to the existing literature on vertical product differentiation lies in the incorporation of learning by doing this assumption generates stability of market share patterns over a sequence of product innovations copyright 1992 by blackwell publishing ltd

when national innovation system meet varieties of capitalism arguments on labour qualifications on the skill types and scientific knowledge needed for radical and incremental product innovations the literatures on varieties of capitalism voc and national innovation systems nis propose very similar arguments about how firms require different types of labour qualifications to pursue strategies of radical product innovation rpi incremental product innovation ipi and product imitation pi respectively despite their similar lines of reasoning however the voc scholars are concerned with the skill profiles of a firm s entire workforce whereas the nis proponents focus on the knowledge base of scientists given that both literatures have developed without explicitly taking the arguments of the neighbouring discipline into account it is thus unclear whether they explain the same or different phenomena furthermore both literatures propose firm level arguments but test them on the basis of macro rather than micro level indicators this paper therefore asks first does micro level evidence support the voc and nis arguments that particular types of employee skills and knowledge backgrounds of scientists are needed for different competitive strategies and if so do rpi ipi and pi firms need to employ scientists in combination with a workforce having the respective qualifications or is it sufficient if scientists or employees alone are adequately qualified quantitative analyses indicate that a particular mix of scientific knowledge combined with employee skills facilitate rpi ipi and pi strategies the article thus concludes that despite their similar reasoning the voc and the nis literatures indeed describe different phenomena without being aware of the synergies created whenever adequate employee and scientific qualifications are hired together

export market exit and financial health in crises periods abstract this paper uses rich firm level data for the uk to investigate the link between firms financial health and export exit paying attention to the erm currency crisis and the global financial crisis our results show that deterioration in the financial position of firms has increased the hazard of export exit during the 2007 09 crisis but has no significant effect on the early 1990s crisis we also explore the extent to which firms in financially vulnerable industries face greater sensitivity of export exit to financial conditions we conclude that firms in sectors with great reliance on external finance experience higher hazards of exiting the export market during the 2007 09 crisis

the coevolution of industries social movements and institutions wind power in the united states this study of the u s wind energy industry extends theory on the process of industry emergence by developing and testing a coevolutionary model of the relationship between social movement organizations smos institutions and industries building on research that suggests that smos can influence institutions and the path of emerging industries we show that the growth of an industry can also influence the diversity of social movements by motivating the participation of specialist smos these new smos in turn deploy distinct knowledge capabilities goals and strategies to produce institutional changes that are necessary for the continued growth of the industry our study offers a more complete conceptualization of the influence of social movements on industry emergence and growth and it extends understanding of how smo diversity is produced

selection of workers and firm heterogeneity a model based on differences between workers regarding their preferences for wage and leisure drives the heterogeneity of firms result the more industrious workers are driven to small firms due to free riding in large firms an industry consisting of small and large firms turns out to produce more output than an industry consisting of only large firms some comparative statics results are derived with respect to the size of large firms the productivity difference between firms and monitoring capabilities

explaining the shakeout process a successive submarkets model this paper explains contemporaneous exit and entry in a new industry with a diffusion process across submarkets it allows a re interpretation of the shakeout process in some industries in a novel way the industry is a collection of initially inactive independent submarkets the timing of their activation is determined by an exogenous aggregate diffusion process new submarket opening attracts new entry however the post entry endogenous sunk investment requirement induced by innovations also forces much exit to follow entry the aggregate market thus has overlapping exit and entry and has a shakeout if the aggregate diffusion process follows a typical s shape

interbank liquidity crunch and the firm credit crunch evidence from the 2007 2009 crisis we study the credit supply effects of the unexpected freeze of the european interbank market using exhaustive portuguese loan level data we find that banks that rely more on interbank borrowing before the crisis decrease their credit supply more during the crisis the credit supply reduction is stronger for firms that are smaller with weaker banking relationships small firms cannot compensate the credit crunch with other sources of debt furthermore the impact of illiquidity on the credit crunch is stronger for less solvent banks finally we find no overall positive effects of central bank liquidity but instead higher hoarding of liquidity

industrial policy and the creation of new industries evidence from brazil s bioethanol industry industrial policy programs are frequently used by governments to stimulate economic activity in particular sectors of the economy this study explores how an industrial policy program can affect the creation and evolution of an industry and ultimately the long term performance of firms we examine the history of the brazilian bioethanol industry focusing on the industrial policy program implemented by the brazilian government in the 1970s to develop the industry we put together a novel data set containing detailed information about the history of bioethanol producers our findings show that plants founded during the industrial policy program tend to be in the long run more productive than those founded before the program was in place based on additional analyses and complementary fieldwork we infer that the wave of acquisitions that occurred after the end of the industrial policy program had an important effect on the performance of the plants founded when the program was in place industrial policy especially in conjunction with a competitive post industrial policy business landscape can succeed in nurturing competitive firms

technological platforms and diversification as the invention of fundamental new sciences spawns subsequent research discovery and commercialization core technologies branch into new applications and markets some of them evolve over time into many derived technologies whereas others are essentially dead ends the pattern of evolution and branching is called a technological trajectory an intriguing question is whether some firms can ride the trajectory by developing proprietary experience in a platform technology because the knowledge is proprietary firms that originate in industrial fields based on a platform technology acquire the technological skills to diversify and to mimic the branching of the underlying technological trajectory the ability to compete in hypercompetitive markets depends on the acquisition of know how that is applicable to a wide set of market opportunities such capabilities serve as platforms into quickly evolving markets to respond rapidly to market changes a firm must have already acquired fundamental compet

the real product market impact of mergers i document sources of value creation in mergers by analyzing novel data on the quality and price of goods sold by merging firms when two competitors in a product market merge their products converge in quality and prices fall relative to the competition these effects take two to three years to be fully realized and are stronger in mature industries prices do not fall however when the acquirer is diversifying into a new product market this direct evidence of real changes induced by merger activity is consistent with consolidation by related merging firms to achieve operational efficiencies and lower costs

strategic entry before demand takes off in developing industries firms have to decide whether and when to enter the market depending on the state of demand existing firms in the industry and the firm s capabilities this paper investigates a model of increasing demand in which firms decide when to enter the market anticipating the strategic behavior of other potential entrants and the effects of entry on future potential entrants this paper shows that the ability of early entry to deter future competitors entry leads firms to enter the market at a rate faster than demand is expanding if there is the potential for many firms to enter the market firms may be less likely to enter because of future competitor entry to correct any market opportunities if firms enter the market depending on their fixed capabilities rather than depending on the firm s circumstances at each moment in time firms end up entering the market at a faster rate in the early periods

the evolution of new industries and the determinants of market structure several empirical regularities concerning firm growth rates and industry firm size distributions have been developed by studying primarily mature industries the primary purpose of this article is to bring together and extend empirical regularities on the evolution of new industries and to use these regularities to gain further insight into the forces governing industry evolution to explain these regularities a model is constructed which emphasizes how factors governing the early evolution of industries may shape their market structure at maturity it stresses how chance events and exogenous factors that influence the number of potential entrants to the industry the growth rate of incumbents and the ease of imitation of industry leaders will influence the ultimate number and size distribution of firms in the industry

recent evolutionary theorizing about economic change this famous passage from marshall s principles of economics it first appeared in the fifth edition which came out in 1907 nicely brings out two issues which are as germane to economics today as they were when marshall wrote the first is the heavy reliance by economists in their formal theorizing on the notion of equilibrium the other is the appeal that biological conceptions3x201d have for many economists particularly when their focus is on economic change

searching and learning by trial and error i study a dynamic model of trial and error search in which agents do not have complete knowledge of how choices are mapped into outcomes agents learn about the mapping by observing the choices of earlier agents and the outcomes that are realized the key novelty is that the mapping is represented as the realized path of a brownian motion i characterize for this environment the optimal behavior each period as well as the trajectory of experimentation and learning through time applied to new product development the model shares features of the data with the well known product life cycle jel d81 d83 d92 l26

knowledge and competitive advantage the coevolution of firms technology and national institutions this issue of jibs offers reviews of two books that analyse the dynamic interaction between the business environments and business strategies in very different ways the institutional underpinnings for business strategies are a major research topic for comparative management aiming to explain why in different contexts firms pursue different strategies and with different implications for performance j peter murman in knowledge and competitive advantage takes a historical perspective focusing on the co evolutionary processes between national innovation systems business strategies and performance this books thus adds to the industry level longitudinal research reviewed in jibs no 4 2003 tom murtha et al s managing new industry creation and david mckendrick et al s from silicon valley to singapore

the life cycle of the u s tire industry 1 introduction a recent literature has emerged focusing on industry evolution or the dynamic patterns that industries and firms follow as they systematically evolve over time this literature is important because of the insights provided about how industries change why they change and the consequences of industrial change the year 1982 saw three fundamental contributions made to the research on the evolution of industry boyan jovanovic published the first formal model of industry evolution richard nelson and sidney winter presented their influential book on the causes and effects of this phenomenon and michael gort and steven klepper published their careful analysis of the stages of the product life cycle knowledge concerning industry dynamics and industry evolution has expanded since then despite this progress in the field of industry evolution considerable gaps remain for example we lack an adequate empirical understanding of the evolutionary process at the single industry level from the early to the late stages of its life cycle shakeouts have been identified in the literature as an integral component of this evolutionary process the sudden disappearance of large numbers of firms have been documented across a broad spectrum of industries such as steel airline carriers financial intermediaries automobiles and tires an important strand in the literature argues that the catalyst for these shakeouts is the introduction of a new dominant innovation confronted by a new technology introduced by a competitor the inability of other firms to adopt this new dominant technology presumably forces them out of the market jovanovic and macdonald 1994 made a pioneering and parsimonious contribution in this field of research by explaining patterns of number of firms output and prices of the u s tire industry despite the importance of their contribution we argue that their model does not adequately describe the key historic developments that have taken place in this or many other industries that faced a shakeout of producers 2 the domain of relevance of the jovanovic macdonald model is limited it assumes that one innovation followed by just one refinement is responsible for the nonmonotonicity in firm numbers this implies that the model is applicable only for those industries having experienced just two technologies in their entire history an initial low tech and a subsequent high tech phase most industries including the automobile tire industry that was the testing ground of jovanovic and macdonald have an ongoing history of significant improvements in product quality and productivity it seldom occurs that one innovation is dominant this is certainly true for the tire industry nelson 1987 in his study on the u s tire industry observed that there was no single technical breakthrough that unlocked the industry s potential for highspeed production nor was any individual or firm of overriding importance the advent of mass production was a cumulative process resulting from a vast number of successive small changes pp 331 2 italics added almost half a century ago reynolds 1938 p 463 described a similar process the great improvement in tire quality during the past 30 years is undoubtedly due to constant repetition of the cycle of invention and imitation we take a different approach than jovanovic and macdonald and explain the nonmonitonicity in firm numbers as resulting from gradual unit cost reduction over time leading to declining profit margins in the present paper we relate this cumulative process to the concept of learning by doing we will test the model using data of the american tire industry we do this to facilitate the comparison between our model and that of jovanovic and macdonald and because this industry is one of the few for which data are available for a long time period the process of learning by doing leading to decreasing marginal costs over time has an important impact on the number of firms in the industry

entry and exit from manufacturing industries symmetry turbulence and simultaneity some empirical evidence from greek manufacturing industries 1982 1988 the interdependence between entry and exit of firms into manufacturing industries is the focus of this research when both entry and exit equations are estimated separately the results support the existence of strong symmetry in their determinants when however entry and exit are estimated within a simultaneous equation framework the empirical evidence does not offer sufficient grounds to support the notion that entry and exit are simultaneously linked instead it seems that they are two contemporaneously related processes which respond in like fashion to the structural characteristics found in particular industries their linked response is also extended to factors unaccounted for by the individual entry and exit formulations and this expresses itself in significant contemporaneous correlation between the entry and exit equation residuals the change in the identities of firms operating implied by the positive correlation between entry and exit may then be attributed to industry turbulent condition

steven klepper recipient of the 2011 global award for entrepreneurship research this article reviews the academic contributions of the 2011 receiver of the global award for entrepreneurship research professor steven klepper carnegie mellon university the global award consists of 100 000 euro and a statuette of the internationally renowned swedish sculpture carl milles klepper has made breakthrough analyses in the realm of industrial dynamics emphasizing the regularities in the time paths of entry of new producers exit of incumbent firms spin offs and innovation his work is predominantly empirical but he has also played an essential role in developing more rigorous theoretical models of phenomena such as spin offs of particular importance is how klepper has managed to link traditional neoclassical models with evolutionary theory as well as entrepreneurship research with mainstream economics

how business opportunities constrain young technology based firms from growing into medium sized firms this paper analyses how the novelty of business opportunities at start up constrains young technology based firms from attaining substantial growth and becoming medium sized data from 262 young swedish technologybased firms are used to estimate a logit regression model relating different types of opportunities to the probability of becoming medium sized the results show that firms which seek to exploit opportunities based on new market knowledge are less likely to attain substantial growth than firms that seek to exploit opportunities based on existing market knowledge the former class of firms can nevertheless increase the probability of such growth by actively seeking external financing

decomposing uncertainty and its effects on imitation in firm exit decisions this study examines the effects of different uncertainty types on interorganizational imitation in firm exit decisions we draw on herding models to conceptualize exit decisions as being based on a firm s private information which the firm updates with information inferred from observing the actions of others we posit that different types of uncertainty differentially affect this observational learning process in particular we propose that certain uncertainty types attenuate rather than foster observational learning and subsequent imitation we test this theory using a 29 year panel data set on the exit of private venture capital firms our results indicate that observational learning does influence imitation in firm exit decisions and they also suggest that a common belief that uncertainty enhances imitation does not apply to all types of uncertainty specifically we find that uncertainty fosters imitation only when it is idiosyncratic to the firm uncertainties that are common to all firms in contrast actually reduce reliance on observational learning by decomposing uncertainty into different types and explicating their effects on imitation we demonstrate that this relationship is more nuanced than previously assumed and in addition highlight the role of deliberate information processing in imitation

when shakeout doesn t occur the evolution of the turboprop engine industry abstract a careful case study of the history of the turboprop engine industry 1948 1997 is offered as an example of non shakeout pattern the persistence of high concentration is not associated with the exit of smaller manufacturers but instead a stable coexistence of generalist and specialist strategies emerges in sharp contrast to the pattern observed in the otherwise similar jet engine industry this paper identifies the relevant variables of a more general theory of industry life cycle by taking into account the lack of creation of significant increasing returns in r d manufacturing or marketing all of which are commonly found in industries that produce systemic products

a dynamic model of entry and exit in a growing industry the potential demand in a new industry evolves over time demand is initially low but advertising by the industry s early entrants can speed up demand growth however there is intrinsic uncertainty of the demand level in each period and uncertainty of the demand evolution path which can be affected by the underlying economic environment we construct a dynamic model that features the stochastically and endogenously expanding demand of a new industry and we investigate the optimal entry and exit behavior of firms as the industry evolves we find that firms incentive to enter early depends critically on the cost that early entrants have to pay in developing the market when the cost is high and the benefit spills over to potential entrants firms have an incentive to wait and the probability of entry can increase with the number of incumbents under certain circumstances firms entry strategy is also influenced by the transition of economic states firms are more likely to enter under a state that shows the prospect of demand taking off soon we also find that in the early stage of an industry higher demand uncertainty can induce faster entry

on the origin of strategy action and cognition over time we develop a perspective on how managers search for a strategy in the spirit of cyert and march 1963 we aim for a perspective that reflects the reality of managerial behavior that respects both the reasoning power of managers and the bounds on their rationality and that permits organizations to change but within realistic limits our perspective employs the variable time to frame the question of strategy s origins in a distinctive way over time the cognitive and physical elements that make up a strategy become less plastic while mechanisms to search rationally for a strategy become more available this generates a fundamental tension in the origin of strategy managers struggle to understand their environment well enough to search rationally for an effective strategy before their firms lose the plasticity necessary to exploit that understanding a focus on time allows us to synthesize and extend the evolutionary and positioning models of strategic search toward this end we couple induction and deduction the inductive part of the paper uses detailed observation of the search for a strategy at one firm to identify constructs that play a crucial role in strategic search the deductive part steps beyond our focal firm and uses these constructs to derive theoretical propositions about the typical path of strategic search and the mortality associated with different approaches to search

the transatlantic productivity gap a survey of the main causes abstract during the last 2 decades europe s economy experienced a productivity slowdown whereas the united states us economy exhibited a marked acceleration the result is that since the early 1990s the relative productivity levels between the two regions have continuously diverged leading to a transatlantic productivity gap much of the explanation for this is the strong performance of the us in the so called new economy or knowledge economy and in particular the underinvestment in r d and as a result productivity and innovation has been at the forefront in the european policy agenda however various explanations for the us european union transatlantic productivity gap suggest that the picture is rather more complex than simply the effects on or the result of particular technology driven sectors

the anatomy of industry r d intensity distributions using firm data disaggregated by industry we establish a set of regularities in the distribution of firm r d intensities within manufacturing industries we show how a simple probabilistic process in which chance influences a key unobserved determinant of r d and firm size conditions the returns to r d can account for these regularities and other features of the distributions the model provides a unified noncausal explanation of a series of long observed relationships across mean r d intensity market concentration and the coefficient of variation it also offers a novel explanation for the inverse relationship between r d productivity and firm size jel 031