expatriate assignment adjustment and effectiveness an empirical examination of the big picture this study extends the international literature by empirically testing a model of expatriate adjustment that examines the relationships between organizational antecedents i e reasons for assignment a more comprehensive set of adjustment behaviors self reported performance and subordinate rated managerial effectiveness using data from 194 expatriate managers and 505 subordinates working in the multinational hotel industry structural equations modeling results supported the hypothesized model the conceptual and empirical contributions of this study as well as the managerial implications are discussed

national cultural distance and cross border acquisition performance previous theoretical research has argued that national cultural distance hinders cross border acquisition performance by increasing the costs of integration this article tests the alternative hypothesis that national cultural distance enhances cross border acquisition performance by providing access to the target s and or the acquirer s diverse set of routines and repertoires embedded in national culture using a multi dimensional measure of national cultural distance and controlling for other effects we examine a sample of 52 cross border acquisitions that took place between 1987 and 1992 and find a positive association between national cultural distance and cross border acquisition performance

management practices across cultures role of support in technology usage as global corporations pursue a dual strategy of global integration and local responsiveness it becomes necessary to determine whether some management practices can be applied across borders using a sample of 143 employees from nine nigerian organizations we found that organizational support contributed to technology usage however only employees with low computer training associated support with aspects of technology usage such as daily use frequency of use and total application

the role of key stakeholders in the international joint venture negotiations case studies from eastern europe recent literature has suggested that a key stakeholder may be able to shift the balance of bargaining power during a joint venture negotiation and thus change the outcome of the process this paper explores the role of central and eastern european transitional governments as key stakeholders and how they influence international joint venture negotiations this role is described and analyzed by examining eight dyads of western european and central eastern european enterprises that have recently negotiated agreements the findings suggest that transitional governments as key stakeholders intervene at different stages of the negotiation process have both direct and indirect influences on the process and that they can change the balance of power in the negotiations sometimes to the detriment of their own state owned enterprise

building international business theory a grounded theory approach the field of international business ib is in need of more theory development as such the main focus of our manuscript was to provide guidance on how to build ib specific theory using grounded theory gt moreover we contribute to future theory development by identifying areas within ib where gt can be applied and the type of research issues that can be addressed using this methodology finally we make a noteworthy contribution by discussing some of gt s caveats and limitations particularly those relevant to ib this effort is intended to spur further interest in the development of ib theory

national culture and strategic change in belief formation this paper studies strategy related beliefs in five organizations in hungary with substantial foreign participation we find that one of the strongest determinants of similarity of beliefs was being a member of the functional area favored by the strategic change the effect of being in the favored area was greater than the effect of all other individual characteristics including nationality

political economic context and sensitivity to equity differences between the united states and the transition economies of central and eastern europe recent labor economics studies suggest that low enterprise productivity in former socialist economies can be corrected by adopting reward systems emphasizing compensation for performance we used t

does competition reduce price dispersion new evidence from the airline industry we analyze the effects of competition on price dispersion in the airline industry using panel data from 1993 q1 through 2006 q3 competition has a negative effect on price dispersion in line with the textbook treatment of price discrimination this effect is pronounced for routes with consumers characterized by relatively heterogeneous elasticities of demand on routes with a homogeneous customer base the effects of competition on price dispersion are smaller our results contrast with those of borenstein and rose who found that price dispersion increases with competition we reconcile the different results by showing that the cross sectional estimator suffers from omitted variable bias

price discrimination and retail configuration the hypothesis that price discrimination based on willingness to pay for quality can occur in multifirm markets is confirmed using microdata on gasoline retailing a test that discriminates between price structures associated with discrimination and with cost driven competitive differentials is developed and implemented with controls for variation in outlet and market characteristics a second test based on profitability variation rejects a competitive peak load pricing explanation for the observed price dispersion the data suggest that price discrimination at the retail level adds at least 9 a gallon to the average price of full service gasoline

talking searching and pricing this paper studies a consumers search model with word of mouth communication firms market a homogeneous product and choose prices consumers obtain price information in two ways they can search on their own and they can talk to other consumers in the basic model word of mouth communication is exogenous and the focus is on how the level of word of mouth communication shapes market equilibrium outcomes when search costs are low an intensification in word of mouth communication decreases firms competition the opposite holds when search costs are high the model is then extended to allow for strategic word of mouth communication market equilibria with word of mouth communication have the feature that some consumers acquire information personally while other consumers obtain their information by networking with others a decrease in the costs of word of mouth communication relatively to the costs of searching reduces the fraction of consumers who acquire information personally consequently it decreases firms competition

learning in an equilibrium search model this paper explores the role of learning in an equilibrium search model with asymmetric information firms with identical but privately observed marginal cost sell a homogeneous good to heterogeneously informed consumers a reservation price equilibrium exists if the uninformed consumers search cost is sufficiently large in this equilibrium the amount of price dispersion is inversely related to the realization of marginal cost also the average price level is less responsive to cost changes than when cost is observable finally uncertainty about firms marginal cost increases the expected price level copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

consumer search and dynamic price dispersion an application to gasoline markets this article studies the role of imperfect information in explaining price dispersion we use a new panel data set on the u s retail gasoline industry and propose a new test of temporal price dispersion to establish the importance of consumer search we show that price rankings vary significantly over time however they are more stable among stations at the same street intersection weestablishtheequilibriumrelationshipsbetweenpricedispersionandkeyvariables from consumer search models price dispersion increases with the number of firms in the market decreases with the production cost and increases with search costs

do auctions and forced divestitures increase competition evidence for retail gasoline markets to foster competition governments can intervene by auctioning licenses to operate or by imposing divestitures the dutch government has done exactly that organizing auctions to redistribute tenancy rights for highway gasoline stations and imposing divestitures of such stations on the four major companies we evaluate this policy experiment and find that the auctioning of licenses without an obligation to divest has no discernible effect on prices an obligation to divest lowers prices by 1 3 2 3 at divested sites moreover prices decrease by 0 9 1 2 at sites nearby this suggests that the observed price decreases are at least partly due to competitive spillovers

price dispersion in the small and in the large evidence from an internet price comparison site this paper examines four million daily price observations for more than 1 000 consumer electronics products on the price comparison site http shopper com we find little support for the notion that prices on the internet are converging to the law of one price in addition observed levels of price dispersion vary systematically with the number of firms listing prices the difference between the two lowest prices the gap averages 23 per cent when two firms list prices and falls to 3 5 per cent in markets where 17 firms list prices these empirical results are an implication of a general clearinghouse model of equilibrium price dispersion

spatial differentiation and vertical mergers in retail markets for gasoline this paper studies an empirical model of spatial competition applied to gasoline markets the main feature is to specify commuting paths as the locations of consumers in a hotelling style model as a result spatial differentiation depends in an intuitive way on the structure of the road network and the direction of traffic flows the model is estimated using panel data on the quebec city gasoline market and used to evaluate the consequences of a recent vertical merger difference in difference and counterfactual simulation methods are compared and the results to a large extent validate the assumptions of the demand model jel g34 l13 l42 l81 q41 r41

the role of consumers in competition and competition policy abstract this paper develops the idea that consumers behaviour matters significantly from the viewpoint of industry performance this is examined through some theoretical propositions on search and switching behaviour but then at greater length through some case study examples these demonstrate how even in potentially competitive industries reluctance by consumers to search or to switch suppliers can lead to sub competitive outcomes comparisons are made between industries where search and switching is easy and those where it is not the significance of non traditional competition policy remedies such as enforcement of annual contracts in changing the outcome is drawn out

price stabilization and the risk averse firm an analytically simple and tractable approach to firm level welfare analysis of complete and partial mean preserving price stabilization for producers with general risk averse preferences facing a stochastic technology is developed necessary and sufficient conditions for price stabilization to be welfare enhancing are derived under different assumptions of the producer s preferences and the producer s technology existing stabilization results for the risk averse firm are shown to be corollaries of these more general results

do country level institutional frameworks and interfirm governance arrangements substitute or complement in international business relationships interfirm relationships among partners from institutionally distant environments are subject to governance difficulties owing to the paucity of shared cognitive and regulatory frameworks we examine the potential of formal contracting and relational governance developed at the partnership level to overcome the formal and informal institutional gap at the country level empirical results from a sample of 184 international partnerships of large us firms support an overall substitutive relationship between informal institutional frameworks and interorganizational relational arrangements whereby the performance benefits of relational governance are reinforced at higher degrees of informal institutional distance contrastingly formal institutional frameworks and contractual governance are found to have a complementary relationship with performance gains from formal contracting undermined at higher degrees of formal distance

asymmetric price effects of competition when price dispersion is prevalent a relevant question is what happens to the whole distribution of equilibrium prices when the number of firms changes using data from the gasoline market in the netherlands we find first that markets with n competitors have price distributions that first order stochastically dominate the price distributions in markets with n 1 firms second the effect of competition is stronger for the medium to upper percentiles of the price distribution finally consumer gains from competition are larger for relatively well informed consumers to account for these empirical patterns we extend varian s 1980 model by allowing for richer heterogeneity in consumer price information

prejudice and wages an empirical assessment of becker s the economics of discrimination we test the predictions from becker s 1957 seminal work on employer prejudice and find that relative black wages a vary negatively with the prejudice of the marginal white in a state b vary negatively with the prejudice in the lower tail of the prejudice distribution but are unaffected by the prejudice of the most prejudiced persons in a state and c vary negatively with the fraction of a state that is black our estimates suggest that one quarter of the racial wage gap is due to prejudice with nontrivial consequences for black lifetime earnings

number of sellers average prices and price dispersion abstract a variety of models provide differing predictions regarding the effect of an increase in the number of competitors in a market seller density on prices and price dispersion we review different approaches to generating equilibrium price dispersion and then empirically estimate the relationship between seller density average product price and price dispersion in the retail gasoline industry using four unique gasoline price data sets controlling for station level characteristics we find that an increase in station density consistently decreases both price levels and price dispersion across four geographical areas

hungarian western partnerships a grounded theoretical model of integration processes and outcomes international cooperative ventures icvs are known to be strongly influenced by the parent firms values practices and systems vpss however less clear is whether and why vpss actually adopted by an icv are those of either parent singly both parents jointly or neither parent this question is especially timely in the transition economies of central and eastern europe where cooperative activity with western multinationals is growing rapidly and where decades old legacies of communism abound in this exploratory study we used a multiple case study methodology to examine 17 hungarian western icvs results show that a majority of the icvs adopted the vpss of the western partner we develop a theoretical model of integration process and outcomes and suggest future research directions

existence and persistence of price dispersion an empirical analysis the hebrew university of jerusalem and nber using a unique data set on store level monthly prices of four homogenous products sold in israel i study the existence and characteristics of the dispersion of prices across stores as well as its persistence over time i find that price dispersion prevails even after controlling for observed and unobserved product heterogeneity moreover intra distribution mobility is significant stores move up and down the cross sectional price distribution thus consumers cannot learn about stores that consistently post low prices as a consequence price dispersion does not disappear and persists over time as predicted by varian s 1980 model of sales

it takes two to tango equilibria in a model of sales we show that the varian model of sales with more than two firms has two types of equilibria a unique symmetric equilibrium and a continuum of asymmetric equilibria in contrast the 2 firm game has a unique equilibrium that is symmetric for the n firm case the asymmetric equilibria imply mixed strategies that can be ranked by first order stochastic dominance this enables one to rule out asymmetric equilibria on economic grounds by constructing a metagame in which both firms and consumers are players the unique subgame perfect equilibrium of this metagame is symmetric

theorising from case studies towards a pluralist future for international business research the literature on case studies both in the field of international business ib and in the social sciences more generally has tended to focus on the methods of data production and analysis suited to this research strategy in contrast in this paper we investigate methods of theorising from case studies we seek to understand how case researchers theorise and how future ib research might utilise case studies for theorising by means of a qualitative content analysis of case studies published in journal of international business studies academy of management journal and journal of management studies we construct a typology of theorising from case studies two dimensions of the case study namely causal explanation and contextualisation form the basis for our typology we distinguish four methods of theorising inductive theory building interpretive sensemaking natural experiment and contextualised explanation only the first of which has been widely used in jibs in the period that we investigate on the basis of our own qualitative analysis we show the limitations of inductive theory building and argue that greater utilisation of the other methods of theorising would enhance the case study s explanatory power and potential for contextualisation we argue for a more pluralist future for ib research

the impact of managerial networking intensity and market based strategies on firm growth during institutional upheaval a study of small and medium sized enterprises in a transition economy varying institutional environments provide the foundation for a great deal of international business research yet relatively little empirical work has examined the determinants of small and medium sized enterprise sme growth during institutional upheaval although the importance of sme development for economic transition and growth is widely acknowledged our paper addresses this gap in the literature by examining how the competitive strategies of smes evolve during institutional transitions and assessing the implications for firm growth using data collected from 135 smes in 1993 and 200 smes in 2001 we find that managerial networking intensity i e developing and maintaining relationships that may be used for business purposes declines markedly over time whereas the importance of market based strategies increases managerial networking intensity is strongly associated with firm growth early in the institutional transition process but not later market based strategies are not associated with firm growth in either time period drawing on convergent insights from multiple theoretical perspectives we argue that changes in strategy are concurrently driven by socially constructed norms that legitimize new ways of competing and delegitimize old ones and by knowledge acquisition and learning which provide managers with a more diverse set of tools with which to exercise their strategic choices

understanding the differences in korean and u s executives strategic orientations competitive positioning in a global market requires an understanding of the decision processes and behavioral attributes of executives from different countries these attributes reflect the executives cultural background the national policies under which they have worked and their home country s level of economic development institutional context the current research compared strategic decision models of u s and korean executives and the results suggest that criteria employed by the executives from the two countries differ differences in institutional context between korea and the u s a were reflected in the weightings of objective criteria used by the executives korean executives emphasized industry attractiveness sales and market share because of policies that encourage growth and u s executives emphasized projected demand discounted cash flow and roi because of policies and institutions that focus on profitability the results suggest the importance of understanding the strategic orientations of international competitors partners in international strategic alliances and managers of international subsidiaries or divisions 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

a cross national assessment of the values of latin america managers contrasting hues or shades of gray we draw upon studies from the social sciences to develop and test hypotheses about similarities and differences in the importance of values among managers in 12 latin american countries using the rokeach value survey data from 1015 owner managers of small businesses indicated convergence among values relating to group interests but significant variation among values serving individual interests in addition several groups of countries were identified as culturally similar whereas brazil and mexico remained culturally discrete the results suggest that common perceptions of latin america as a culturally homogeneous region are stereotypical and incorrect and that divergence in the importance of values can explain differences in business phenomena across the region

oligopolistic pricing with sequential consumer search n identical stores compete by choosing prices for a homogeneous good with constant marginal costs consumers search sequentially with perfect recall for the lowest price one class of consumers called shoppers have zero search costs while all other consumers have a positive search cost c there is a unique symmetric nash equilibrium price distribution with the property that it changes smoothly from marginal cost pricing when all consumers are shoppers and or c 0 and monopoly pricing when no consumers are shoppers remarkably as the number of stores increases the nash equilibrium becomes more monopolistic copyright 1989 by american economic association

separation and hedging results with state contingent production a state contingent model of production under uncertainty is developed and compared with more traditional models of production under uncertainty producer behaviour with both production and price risk in the presence and in the absence of futures and forward markets is analysed in this state contingent framework conditions for the optimal hedge to be positive or negative are derived we also show that under plausible conditions a risk averse producer facing price uncertainty and the ability to hedge price risk will never willingly adopt a nonstochastic technology new separation results which hold in the presence of both price and production risk are then developed these separation results generalize townsend s spanning results by reducing the number of necessary forward markets by one

producer attitudes toward output price risk experimental evidence from the lab and from the field a number of agricultural and food policy instruments are predicated on the idea that producers dislike output price risk we test experimentally some theoretical predictions about the behavior of producers in the face of output price risk namely sandmo s 1971 prediction that price risk at the extensive margin causes risk averse producers to decrease how much they produce and batra and ullah s 1974 prediction that price risk at the intensive margin causes producers whose preferences exhibit decreasing absolute risk aversion to further decrease how much they produce we do so in labs with us college students as well as in the field with peruvian farmers first as regards price risk at the extensive margin we find no support for sandmo s prediction second consistent with batra and ullah s prediction we find that output decreases in response to price risk at the intensive margin when imposing a linear relationship between output and price risk when relaxing the assumption of linearity between output and price risk however we find a nonmonotonic relationship between output and price risk taken together these results are broadly inconsistent with expected utility theory alternative models of behavior in the face of risk such as prospect theory may explain the behavior we observe

the optimal allocation of prizes in contests we study a contest with multiple not necessarily equal prizes contestants have private information about an ability parameter that affects their costs of bidding the contestant with the highest bid wins the first prize the contestant with the second highest bid wins the second prize and so on until all the prizes are allocated all contestants incur their respective costs of bidding the contest s designer maximizes the expected sum of bids our main results are 1 we display bidding equlibria for any number of contestants having linear convex or concave cost functions and for any distribution of abilities 2 if the cost functions are linear or concave then no matter what the distribution of abilities is it is optimal for the designer to allocate the entire prize sum to a single first prize 3 we give a necessary and sufficient conditions ensuring that several prizes are optimal if contestants have a convex cost function

expected utility violations implications for agricultural and natural resource economics nomic toolkit they compare the dogged defense of eu by economists to that of a monty python character playing the role of a petstore owner disputing the state of an obviously dead parrot the shop owner goes through incredible machinations to avoid replacing the bird let us consider another analogy the behavior of a caged parrot can likely tell us very little about the behavior of parrots in the wild a biologist may want to incorporate the behavior of caged parrots into the study of wild birds but would undoubtedly need to be extremely careful about understanding the underlying differences in the opportunities and constraints faced by caged versus wild birds before inferring much about wild parrot behavior to some extent experimental violations of eu present us with the same problem as the hypothetical parrot biologist subjects in these risk experiments are in a setting and are completing tasks very different from the setting and tasks they face in their everyday economic and social context what is missing relates to the power of the rationality assumption discussed in friedman that relies not only on the person s skill but also on the feedback they receive from the market friedman s expert billiards players are selected by a market because of their skill in billiards and th se are the players who fit friedman s as if description 1 risk researchers should not ignore experimental data however before we eliminate eu we should more fully understand the underlying reasons for the experimental behavior that violates eu agricultural and natural resource economists are well suited to assess

prices and heterogeneous search costs we study price formation in a model of consumer search for differentiated products in which consumers have heterogeneous search costs we provide conditions under which a pure strategy symmetric nash equilibrium exists and is unique search costs affect two margins the intensive search margin or search intensity and the extensive search margin or the decision to search rather than to not search at all these two margins affect the elasticity of demand in opposite directions and whether lower search costs result in higher or lower prices depends on the properties of the search cost density

complementarity status similarity and social capital as drivers of alliance formation using data on u s investment banking firms syndication in underwriting corporate stock offerings during the 1980s this study explores the factors that drive alliance formation between two specific firms we compare resource complementarity status similarity and social capital as a basis of alliance formation the findings indicate that the likelihood of investment banks alliance formation is positively related to the complementarity of their capabilities as well as their status similarity social capital arising from banks direct and indirect collaborative experiences also plays a very important role in alliance formation the number of deals given by a lead bank to a potential partner over the past three years has an inverted u shaped relationship to the probability that the lead bank will invite the potential partner to form an alliance our findings indicate that status similarity and social capital have a stronger effect on alliance formation in initial public offering deals than in secondary offering deals as the former are more uncertain than the latter using these findings we discuss the role of complementarity status similarity and social capital in alliance formation copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

retail gasoline pricing what do we know abstract we use a data set consisting of a three year panel of prices from a sample of gasoline stations located in suburban washington dc and a corresponding census of the region s stations to develop three new empirical findings about retail gasoline pricing first while average retail margins vary substantially over time by more than 50 over the three years we analyze the shape of the margin distribution remains relatively constant second there is substantial heterogeneity in pricing behavior stations charging very low or very high prices are more likely to maintain their pricing position than stations charging prices near the mean third retail gasoline pricing is dynamic despite the heterogeneity in station pricing behavior stations frequently change their relative pricing position in this distribution sometimes dramatically we then relate these three findings to relevant theories of retail pricing while many models of retail pricing are consistent with some of our findings we find that all have serious shortcomings

conceptions of self and performance related feedback in the u s japan and china effective international management requires knowledge of culturally patterned self concepts and concomitant feedback desires this paper argues that the cultural forces of individualism versus collectivism shape the self concept and by extension individual performance evaluation and feedback seeking we present a comparative study to test the hypotheses that u s respondents desire success feedback whereas japanese and chinese desire feedback show more initiative and perceive more direct workplace feedback than do either japanese or chinese respondents strong support was found for comparisons between the u s and japan but the chinese consistently departed from predictions we interpret these results in terms of recent reforms in the people s republic of china and discuss implications of the study for international management

cross national empirical generalization in business services buying behavior we examine cross national generalization of the relative importance of factors that affect supplier selection and level of usage for global business services providers tests indicate that the majority of the response coefficients for a model of foreign exchange markets are equal across the four countries studied u s canada u k and germany inter country differences in buyer response seem most related to competitiveness and identifiable country specific institutional factors

interfirm diversity organizational learning and longevity in global strategic alliances organizational theorists have correctly argued that the emergence and maintenance of robust cooperation between global strategic alliance partners is related to the diversity in the partners characteristics yet previous research has failed to systematically delineate the important dimensions of interfirm diversity and integrate the dimensions into a unified framework of analysis this paper develops a multilevel typology of interfirm diversity and focuses on organizational learning and adaptation as critical processes that dynamically moderate diversity s impact on alliance longevity and effectiveness

on the future of international joint venture research international joint ventures ijvs are an important type of international strategic alliance isa and have been studied by scholars for decades resulting in a plethora of empirical studies publications and reviews yet an inadequate accumulation of knowledge exists as a closer look reveals much more than providing a summary and critical assessment of past contributions this paper develops an expansive research agenda based upon a deep understanding of past research and comprehensive frameworks that distill this research we identify a number of research opportunities that would not only advance ijv research but also closely related literatures and disciplines such as isas theories of the multinational firm international business research and strategic management

are all the good men married uncovering the sources of the marital wage premium a longstanding and yet unsettled question in labor economics is does marriage cause men s wages to rise cross sectional wage studies consistently find that married men earn significantly higher wages than do men who are not currently married however it is well known that inferring causal relationships from crosssectional analysis is inappropriate because of the biases introduced by unobserved heterogeneity as a means of circumventing this problem this paper uses data on identical twins to control for unobserved heterogeneity our estimates suggest that marriage increases men s wages by as much as 27 and that little if any of the cross sectional relationship between marriage and wages is due to selection in addition we find little evidence that the marital wage premium is a consequence of household specialization

the international business ethics index european union the present study expands the systematic measurement of consumers sentiments towards business ethical practices to the international arena data for the business ethics index bei were gathered in three countries of the european union uk germany spain the germans were the most pessimistic while the british were the most optimistic about the future ethical behaviour of businesses

complexity context and governance in biotechnology alliances this study explores the effect of coordination needs on alliance governance we examine coordination needs that arise as a consequence of the characteristics and the context of the alliance we posit that alliance characteristics and contextual factors influence alliance form and equity investment levels we evaluate the effects of the complexity of technology transfer and strategic complexity of the alliance we also study contextual factors represented by the distance between the intellectual property protection regimes of the home countries of the participants the focal firm s prior presence in the alliance country and its primary expertise in the industry we offer contrasting predictions based on appropriation and coordination perspectives our results demonstrate support for a dominant coordination perspective with alliance characteristics and some contextual factors influencing alliance form appropriation concerns play a weaker role and receive less support

price dispersion and competition with differentiated sellers i measure price dispersion among differentiated retail gasoline sellers and study the relationship between dispersion and the local competitive environment significant price dispersion exists even after controlling for differences in station characteristics and price differences between sellers change frequently the extent of price dispersion is related to the density of local competition but this relationship varies significantly depending on the type of seller and the composition of its competitors these findings are consistent with interactions between seller and consumer heterogeneity that are not well understood in the existing price dispersion literature

an empirical model of search with vertically differentiated products this paper presents a nonsequential search model that allows for vertical product dierentiation in the unique symmetric equilibrium firms with dierent characteristics draw utilities from a common utility distribution because the firms dier in their characteristics this leads to dierent price distributions the model therefore provides a theoretical rationale for explaining price dispersion as a result of quality dierences and search behavior of consumers together using the equilibrium conditions derived from the model it is shown how to estimate search costs by maximum likelihood using only price data a data set on prices from dutch supermarkets reveals that the amount of search has decreased over the sampling period moreover ignoring vertical product dierentiation results in an overestimation of search costs

strategic pricing consumer search and the number of firms discover prices there are three distinct price dispersed equilibria characterized by low moderate and high search intensity the effects of an increase in the number of firms on search behaviour expected prices price dispersion and welfare are sensitive i to the equilibrium consumers search intensity and ii to the status quo number of firms for instance when consumers search with low intensity an increase in the number of firms reduces search does not affect expected price leads to greater price dispersion and reduces welfare in contrast when consumers search with high intensity increased competition results in more search and lower prices when the number of competitors in the market is low to begin with but in less search and higher prices when the number of competitors is large duopoly yields identical expected price and price dispersion but higher welfare than an infinite number of firms a question that has received much attention in economic theory is how the number of competitors and market outcomes are related despite the existence of work showing the contrary see e g satterthwaite 1979 rosenthal 1980 the prediction that emerges from a market where firms interact in a cournot fashion has come to dominate economic thought namely that an increase in the number of competitors leads to larger aggregate production lower market price and improved market performance measured in terms of some social welfare criterion ruffin 1971 this paper challenges the generality of this belief by presenting an oligopoly model with consumer search where the equilibrium expected price may be constant increasing or nonmonotonic in the number of firms we present an economy with two types of consumers consumers who search for prices at no cost fully informed and consumers who must pay a fixed search cost for each price quotation they observe less informed 1 all buyers have the same willingness to pay for the good and buy either a single unit or nothing at all on the supply side of the market there are n firms producing a homogeneous good at constant marginal cost we analyse a one shot simultaneous move game firms set prices and consumers decide how many prices to search for at the same moment in time our model is essentially an oligopolistic version of burdett and judd 1983 where some consumers search costlessly in this model consumers search using a fixed sample size search strategy i e they choose the number of prices to observe before receiving any offer nonsequential search is appealing when consumers find it more advantageous to gather price information quickly morgan and manning 1985 this occurs when the search outcome is observed with delay and delay is costly for instance an mba graduate looking for a job 1 the presence in the model of consumers who search costlessly captures the fact that some people have a

management style and productivity in two cultures global competition has motivated an increasing number of united states firms to set up production facilities in mexico this study examines productivity and management style differences in a mexican maquiladora operation and its u s parent plant likert s system 4 theory was used as the theoretical basis of comparison as hypothesized significant differences were found in the management systems while productivity at the two facilities was equal

competitive screening under heterogeneous information we study the interplay between informational frictions and second degree price discrimination our theory recognizes that consumers differ in their tastes for quality as well as in the information they possess about available offers which leads to dispersion over price quality menus in equilibrium while firms are ex ante identical we show that their menus are ordered so that more generous menus leave more surplus to consumers of all valuations we explore the cross section of equilibrium menus and variations in market conditions to generate empirical predictions on prices qualities and markups across firms and within a firm s product line for instance more competition may raise prices for low quality goods yet consumers are better off as the qualities they receive also increase the predictions of our model illuminate empirical findings in many markets such as those for cell phone plans yellow pages advertising cable tv and air travel

the importance of work goals an international perspective the paper probes into the basic question of what individuals seek from working results from a representative sample of the labor force in seven countries n 8192 showed that the two most dominant work goals are interesting work and good pay these were consistent internationally across different organizational levels between the genders and among different age categories

consumer protection and the incentive to become informed we discuss the impact of consumer protection policies on consumer incentives to become informed of the best deals available in the market in a market with costly consumer search we find that imposing a cap on suppliers prices reduces the incentive to engage in search with the result that prices paid by consumers both informed and uninformed may rise in a related model where consumers have the ability to refuse to receive marketing we find that this ability softens price competition and can make all consumers worse off

output price subsidies in a stochastic world this article studies the comparative statics of output subsidies for firms with monotonic preferences over costs and returns that face price and production uncertainty the modeling of deficiency payments support price schemes and stochastic supply shifts in a state space framework is discussed it is shown how these notions can be used via a simple application of shephard s lemma to analyze input demand shifts once comparative static results for supply are available a range of comparative static results for supply are then developed and discussed

enhancing the obsolescing bargain theory a longitudinal study of foreign ownership of u s and european multinationals this research attempts to enhance the obsolescing bargain theory for manufacturing companies by statistically testing the effects of nine explanatory variables on the static and dynamic manifestations of bargaining success with longitudinal firm level data in order to highlight those effects it develops a conceptual framework that provides a broader context in which the primary variables operate it demonstrates that the obsolescing bargain took effect in india over a fifteen year period following restrictive legislation unlike previous research this study measures the effect of benefits received by multinationals from the host government in exchange for equity dilution american companies are found to retain a smaller share of their foreign ownership over time than british and other european multinationals some explanatory variables that have previously been found to influence level of foreign ownership static bargaining success are found to be less important or have a different effect in explaining proportion of foreign ownership retained dynamic bargaining success

a cross cultural comparative study of managerial job attitudes effective managerial performance is influenced by the types of rewards which managers seek in their work environment and by their perceptions of the degree to which their job expectations are being satisfied this research provides empirical evidence on the nature of job related values and outcomes in 4 countries canada france japan and the uk the survey data reveal that the types of job outcomes sought by managers differ significantly from one culture to another the results should be of practical value to companies seeking to develop more effective management motivational devices in the countries studied moreover the approach and methodology may provide a useful model for further cross cultural studies

the informational divide we propose a model of price competition where consumers exogenously differ in the number of prices they compare our model can be interpreted either as a non sequential search model or as a network model of price competition we show that i if consumers who previously just sampled one firm start to compare more prices all types of consumers will expect to pay a lower price and ii if consumers who already sampled more than one price sample even more prices then there exists a threshold the informational divide such that all consumers comparing fewer prices than this threshold will expect to pay a higher price whereas all consumers comparing more prices will expect to pay a lower price than before thus increased search can create a negative externality and it is not necessarily beneficial for all consumers

price price dispersion and number of sellers at a low entry cost shopbot abstract shopbots function as market intermediaries by providing unprecedented quantities of information to buyers and sellers this paper explores the role of market structure across shopbot mediated markets using an unbalanced panel of 399 digital camera models it extends prior work by using an ultra low entry cost site additionally allowing controls for life cycle and popularity effects we find a robust negative relationship between seller number and price which persists even as markets become crowded with sellers the results are capable of either an scp or a carlson mcafee heterogeneous cost interpretation but observed entry behaviour here is consistent with the latter

an experimental study of price dispersion abstract we report an experiment examining a simple clearinghouse model that generates price dispersion according to this model price dispersion arises because of consumer heterogeneity some consumers are informed and simply buy from the firm offering the lowest price while the remaining consumers are captive and shop based on considerations other than price in our experiment we observe substantial and persistent price dispersion we find that as predicted an increase in the fraction of informed consumers leads to more competitive pricing for all consumers we also find as predicted that when more firms enter the market prices to informed consumers become more competitive while prices to captive customers become less competitive thus our experiment provides strong support for the model s comparative static predictions about how changes in market structure affect pricing

determinants of managerial performance a cross cultural comparison of the perceptions of middle level managers in four countries this paper examines differences in what affects managerial performance of middle level managers in four countries china n 204 india n 184 the philippines n 220 and the united states n 176 important differences were predicted and found in factors affecting managerial performance as perceived by the respondents while east west differences exist significant differences are noted among the three asian countries specifically chinese and american managers represented two extremes in their beliefs about what determines managerial performance of middle level managers both filipino and indian managers were found more similar to their u s counterparts than their chinese counterparts implications of the findings are discussed

commodity price stabilization in a peasant economy the peasant household s preferences for price stabilization are shown to depend on observable parameters describing consumption and production decisions a measure of willingness to pay is obtained for the case where the household is engaged in both the production and the consumption of the commodity in question for plausible parameter values it appears likely that the peasant household will prefer price stabilization and that stabilization of the producer price alone dominates complete stabilization

product differentiation search costs and competition in the mutual fund industry a case study of s p 500 index funds we investigate the role that non portfolio fund differentiation and information search frictions play in creating two salient features of the mutual fund industry the large number of funds and the sizeable dispersion in fund fees in a case study we find that despite the financial homogeneity of s p 500 index funds this sector exhibits the fund proliferation and fee dispersion observed in the broader industry we show how extra portfolio mechanisms explain these features these mechanisms also suggest an explanation for the puzzling late 1990s shift in sector assets to more expensive and often newly entered funds an influx of highinformation cost novice investors

managerial behaviors and job performance a successful manager in los angeles may not succeed in hong kong few studies have attempted to examine how american managers actually manage while on assignment in foreign countries or the effectiveness of these managerial behaviors this study compared the self reported managerial behaviors of american expatriate managers in hong kong to a sample of american managers in the u s and hong kong chinese managers in hong kong the results from the study indicated that american expatriate managers in hong kong exhibit very similar managerial behaviors to the sample of managers in the u s however while these managerial behaviors were positively related to job performance for the managers in the u s they were not related to job performance for the expatriates in hong kong nor were these managerial behaviors related to job performance for hong kong chinese managers in hong kong

a cross national study of managerial values this study investigated cross national differences in managerial values a total of 567 managers from twelve nations participated in the study managerial values were assessed by means of rokeach s value survey factor analysis of the eighteen instrumental values included in rokeach s value survey revealed four underlying value dimensions the value dimension that included the instrumental values broadminded capable and courageous was ranked as the most important value dimension by managers from all twelve nations national differences were found on three of the four value dimensions