research development and firm growth empirical evidence from european top r d spending firms abstract following recent literature we present a model of endogenous firm growth with r d investment as one of the main mechanisms of growth our study evidences a positive effect of r d intensity on the sales growth by using ols quantile regressions and gmm system estimators for a sample of 754 european firms for the 2003 2007 period we also find this association is more intense in high growth firms and is especially significant when referring to high technology sectors this paper gives empirical support to those recommendations from policy makers and business leaders for maintaining the r d expenditures especially in high technology sectors even when facing a recession

on the transfer of technology from universities the impact of the bayh dole act of 1980 on the institutionalization of university research abstract while the academic and policy literature has focused on patent counts and patent quality as possible outcome measures to evaluate the impact of the u s bayh dole act of 1980 we argue that the impact of the act on university effort to transfer its technology to the private sector might be seen more accurately by examining the trend in the initial establishment of technology transfer offices ttos using an econometric framework to identify the presence of multiple structural breaks in data on the annual number of university ttos we find multiple break dates over the period 1925 to 2014 one break date was in the late 1960s and a second break date occurred about 1982 we suggest in contrast to previous findings in the literature that the act did have an impact on the formal internal transfer of technology from universities through patenting by providing an incentive for universities to invest in a tto research infrastructure we also suggest that our empirical methodology is applicable to an assessment of the impact of legislation similar to the bayh dole act in the many countries with such legislation

a competitive analysis of fail fast shakeout and uncertainty about consumer tastes abstract contemporary business strategy advocates fail fast the practice of launching a product early before the resolution of uncertainty about how product characteristics matter to consumers we consider how uncertainty about consumer preferences can contribute to shakeout when moving from the infant stage of an industry when this uncertainty is large to the mature stage of an industry when this uncertainty is small we find that consistent with the empirical literature due to firms uncertainty about consumers preferences there is excessive entry initially and on average positive shakeout in the number of firms in the market in the mature phase of the industry the paper also presents a new way to model uncertain preferences in product differentiation models that may prove useful in other applications

product diversity in asymmetric oligopoly is the quality of consumer goods too low we analyse an oligopoly model incorporating horizontal differentiation and quality differences high quality goods are overpriced and underproduced when the market is fairly well covered low quality products may be profitable when their net social contribution is negative implying excessive entry in a relatively uncovered market even low quality goods are underproduced and there may be underentry when fixed costs are independent of quality the market tends to select the right firms otherwise the market may produce low quality products when it should produce high quality ones the model is calibrated using market data for yoghurt

japanese and american management theory z and beyond this article analyzes studies comparing japanese and american managers workers and societies in order to consider questions raised by william ouchi s book theory z how american business can meet the japanese challenge the analysis results in 2 general observations 1 theory z management is not likely to become the accepted norm in american companies to the extent that it has in japan and 2 the major conceptual or theoretical lesson we can learn from the japanese is the potential values of developing a management system that is internally consistent that fits societal norms and expectations and that obtains support from the major institutional actors in the world of work

fitness and age review of carroll and hannan s demography of corporations and industries the demography of corporations and industries 2000 by glenn r carroll and t michael hannan is a welcome addition to a body of empirical analysis of firms and industries that studies the effects of technological change and other changes that occur over time the book contains a wealth of facts and some new insights too it will make useful secondary reading in some graduate courses in economics and i would recommend it to anyone whose research relates to the concept of creative destruction

the evolving state of the art in technology transfer research revisiting the contingent effectiveness model the purpose of our study is to review and synthesize the rapidly evolving literature on technology transfer effectiveness our paper provides a lens into relatively recent work focusing particularly on empirical studies of us technology transfer conducted within the last 15 years in doing so we update and extend the contingent effectiveness model of technology transfer developed by bozeman 2000 specifically we include the growing interest in social and public value oriented technology transfer and thus the contingent effectiveness model is expanded to consider this literature we categorize studies according their approaches to measuring effectiveness draw conclusions regarding the current state of technology transfer evaluation and offer recommendations for future studies

the learning curve in a competitive industry we consider the learning curve in an industry with free entry and exit and price taking firms a unique equilibrium exists if the fixed cost is positive although equilibrium profits are zero mature firms earn rents on their learning and if costs are convex no firm can profitably enter after the date the industry begins under some cost and demand conditions however firms may have to exit the market despite their experience gained earlier furthermore identical firms facing the same prices may produce different quantities the market outcome is always socially efficient even if it dictates that firms exit after learning finally actual and optimal industry concentration does not always increase in the intensity of learning

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

free entry and social inefficiency our goal is to provide a simple yet general exposition of the conditions under which the number of entrants in a free entry equilibrium is excessive insufficient or optimal our analysis compares the number of firms that enter a market when there is free entry with the number that would be desired by a social planner who is unable to control the behavior of firms once they are in the market that is we consider the second best problem of choosing the welfare maximizing number of firms while we take as given their noncompetitive behavior after entry we demonstrate that the crucial conditions for establishing the presence of an entry bias can be stated quite simply in terms of the outcome of the postentry game played by entrants in contrast to previous work we do not need to model this postentry game explicitly

public technology transfer commercialization and business growth abstract this study analyzes the conditions for the commercialization of public technologies transferred to the private sector and the subsequent effect on business growth we focus on the commercial exploitation of technologies transferred by universities and public research institutes u pris to companies the empirical analysis uses detailed information regarding an extensive set of actual instances of public private technology transfer in korea 514 cases of technologies transferred by 43 major u pris to highlight the role of company absorptive capacity and internal innovation capabilities cooperation with u pris and the intensity of market competition in determining commercialization success and business growth we find that the intensity of market competition significantly influenced the paths along which absorptive capacity and internal innovation capacity affected successful commercialization and successful commercialization in turn affected business growth effective partnership is a key factor of the successful commercialization of transferred technologies irrespective of market situations absorptive capacity contributes to their short term success and long term growth when market competition is strong

dominance by birthright entry of prior radio producers and competitive ramifications in the u s television receiver industry the u s television receiver industry evolved to be an oligopoly dominated by firms that produced radios prior to tvs data on the experience of all u s radio manufacturers and on the length of survival and rate of innovation of all u s tv entrants are collected to analyze how radio experience influenced entry firm performance and the evolution of market structure in the tv industry consistent with a model of the evolution of an oligopolistic industry more experienced radio firms were more likely to enter tv manufacturing had higher innovation rates and in turn had greater market shares and longer survival suggesting that firm capabilities and the evolution of the tv industry s market structure were critically shaped by firms experience prior to entry copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

innovation and firm growth does firm age play a role this paper explores the relationship between innovation and firm growth for firms of different ages we hypothesize that young firms undertake riskier innovation activities which may have greater performance benefits if successful or greater losses if unsuccessful using an extensive spanish community innovation survey sample for the period 2004 2012 we apply panel quantile regressions to study the effect of r d activities on firm growth i e sales growth productivity growth and employment growth our results show that young firms face larger performance benefits from r d at the upper quantiles of the growth rate distribution but face larger decline at the lower quantiles r d investment by young firms therefore appears to significantly riskier than r d investment by more mature firms which suggests some policy implications

cost reducing investment competition and industry dynamics textabstractwe demonstrate the possibility of shake out of firms and emergence of inter firm heterogeneity along the socially optimal dynamic equilibrium path of a competitive industry with free entry and exit even when there is no uncertainty and all firms are ex ante identical with perfect foresight atomistic firms with upward sloping marginal cost curves undertake investment in firm specific cost reduction they earn negative net profit in early periods compensated later by strictly positive net profits no entry occurs after the initial time period some firms may exit before others even while other firms earn positive net profit

a comparison of canadian and japanese cognitive styles implications for management interaction many american and canadian companies seeking to form joint ventures and alliances with japanese companies or to negotiate contracts with them have discovered that the interaction can be difficult and frustrating value differences and preferences for different management practices have been identified that contribute to these interaction problems however little research has investigated potential differences in cognitive style that might also contribute to intercultural conflict this study compares samples of canadian and japanese mba students using the myers briggs type inventory mbti and links the findings to interaction difficulties reported in the literature

an empirical analysis of dynamic nonprice competition in an oligopolistic industry this article develops a dynamic model of nonprice competition in an oligopolistic industry and uses it to analyze advertising competition in the u s cigarette industry the model generalizes existing studies by allowing advertising to affect both firm market shares and the total size of the market the model also allows dynamic conjectural variations to arise from the intertemporal links created by the durability of advertising we use these dynamic conjectural variations to distinguish alternative models of competitive interaction we estimate the complete model of firm production demand and advertising choice by using data for u s cigarette producers the results indicate that firm advertising primarily affects the level of market demand with a firm s effect on rival firms market shares arising through variations in the number of brands sold empirical results on firm behavior suggest that firms act as if their advertising choices will alter the future advertising choices of rival firms in both the high tar and low tar cigarette markets

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

in search of complementary assets the determinants of alliance formation of high tech start ups abstract why do new technology based firms ntbfs cooperate starting from teece s teece d j 1986 profiting from technological innovation implications for integration collaboration licensing and public policy research policy 15 285 305 conceptual framework and taking advantage of subsequent literature on alliance formation in the resource and competence based tradition and in the social structure perspective we derive an empirical model that aims at highlighting the inducements and obstacles that these firms face in alliance formation according to firm specific characteristics and the nature of the alliance in particular a distinction is made between exploitative commercial alliances and explorative technological alliances the econometric estimates based on a large sample of italian young high tech firms that are observed from 1994 to 2003 provide strong evidence supporting two key intuitions of teece s work first the combination of specialized complementary assets appears to be a key driver of the formation of exploitative commercial alliances by ntbfs more specifically patent holding affects positively the likelihood to establish commercial alliances but this propensity is found to rapidly decrease with firm size suggesting that as long as ntbfs become larger and possess specialized commercial assets their urge for commercial alliances diminishes second following the parallelism set forth by teece between search for alliance partners and access to external financing the analysis indicates that potentially beneficial alliances may not take place because of the high transaction costs faced by smaller ntbfs in this respect our results clearly support the view that sponsor institutions as public research organizations venture and corporate venture capitalists may sensibly reduce these costs and that their role crucially depends on both the identity of the sponsor and the type of alliance

oligopolistic competition and the optimal provision of products this paper considers the theory of market versus optimal product diversity in the light of two recent advances in oligopoly theory the first is the development of discrete choice models to describe heterogeneous consumer tastes and the application of such models to oligopolistic competition the second advance is the proof that logconcavity of the consumer taste density guarantees the existence of a price equilibrium we analyze an oligopoly model with price competition and free entry taking explicit account of the integer constraint under the chamberlinian symmetry assumption that tastes are i i d we first show that logconcavity of the taste density implies there is excessive market provision of variety when each consumer buys one unit of the product from one of the firms we then show that this result extends to price sensitive individual demands by proving that the equilibrium number of firms is at least as great as that which would be provided at the second best social optimum subject to a zero profit constraint for firms our results call into question previous findings for representative consumer models that left open the possibility of insufficient product diversity

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 life cycle of a competitive industry firm numbers first rise then later fall as an industry evolves this nonmonotonicity is explained using a competitive model in which innovation opportunities fuel entry and relative failure to innovate prompts exit equilibrium time paths for price and quantity also share features of the data the model is estimated using data from the u s automobile tire industry a particularly dramatic example of the nonmonotonicity in firm numbers

welfare losses in oligopoly and monopolistic competition estimates of the magnitudes of monopoly welfare losses mwl appearing in the economics literature have tended to differ quite widely at one end of the spectrum we find figures of the order of o i of gnp quoted by harberger i 954 in his pioneering study while at the other extreme cowling and mueller i 978 have derived estimates of around i o of gross corporate product from some of their measures two of the major sources of such differences lie in the treatment of a the general equilibrium aspects of deviations between prices and marginal costs and b the impact of market power on the cost levels of firms but unfortunately the tendency of writers to adopt rather different analytical frameworks often makes it difficult to accurately assign the variations in the estimates to specific factors in the present paper the issue of monopoly welfare loss is considered in the context of a differentiated goods model based upon work on monopolistic competition by spence i976 and by dixit and stiglitz i977 within a set of common assumptions about demand the effects of varying cost conditions and differing equilibria on the level of mwl are examined on this basis four major factors connected with suboptimal resource allocation can be identified a supernormal profits b product differentiation c suboptimal scale and d factor bias the first of these needs little explanation its association with welfare loss has been well explored in structure conduct performance theory and is used extensively in applied anti trust economics attention will therefore be focused upon the remaining three all of which can produce mwl in zeroprofit equilibria the paper is organised as follows section ii sets out and discusses the differentiated goods framework which will be used throughout the rest of the analysis it is also shown how a simple transformation of variables reduces the model to the homogeneous goods case and thereby makes immediately available a number of familiar results from the structure conduct performance literature in section iii the focus is on welfare analysis of monopolistic competition the results here are essentially restatements of earlier work although the transformation of variables helps to clarify their foundations section iv extends the analysis to incorporate additional decision variables such as advertising research and development etc while section v considers the case where market conditions will not sustain a large number of firms in equilibrium and suboptimal scale effects become important factor bias is analysed in

australian and japanese value stereotypes a two country study australians and japanese working in australian and japanese organizations in both countries were involved in a research project that estimated stereotypical views of national culture respondents rated the importance of cultural values in australia and japan using the list of values lov instrument the results of a discriminant analysis suggested that potentially detrimental misunderstandings about their respective cultures may exist between australians and japanese engaged in mutual international business

optimal r d investment strategies under the threat of new technology entry abstract this paper studies the r d investment decisions of a firm facing the threat of new technology entry the r d project is subject to technical uncertainty the incumbent can successfully prevent entry by innovating however in an entry deterrence situation the resulting monopoly is different from a monopoly without an entry threat because potential competition means that the monopolist completes the r d project which it otherwise would not have done greater technical uncertainty stimulates initiating exploratory r d and can result in implementation of more expensive research projects this is a result of the limited downside risk of the project it does not matter whether the outcome of an initial r d stage is disappointing or very disappointing since in both cases the firm will simply abandon the project the welfare analysis shows that the threat of entry may reduce welfare in case of entry deterrence