sacrifice and stigma reducing free riding in cults communes and other collectives this paper presents an economic analysis of religious behavior that accounts for the continuing success of groups with strange requirements and seemingly inefficient prohibitions the analysis does not presuppose any special motives for religious activity rather religion is modeled as a club good that displays positive returns to participatory crowding the analysis demonstrates that efficient religions with perfectly rational members may benefit from stigma self sacrifice and bizarre behavioral restrictions the model also addresses sacrifice in nonreligious social clubs fraternities communes political parties work groups and families

integrating behavioral choice into epidemiological models of aids increased hiv risk creates incentives for people with low sexual activity to reduce their activity but may make high activity people fatalistic leading them to reduce their activity only slightly or actually increase it if high activity people reduce their activity by a smaller proportion than low activity people the composition of the pool of available partners will worsen creating positive feedbacks and possibly multiple steady states early public health efforts may allow societies to reach more favorable steady states excerpt

pioneering plus a broad product line strategy higher profits or deeper losses previous research suggests firms can build a market share advantage by preempting later entrants with a broad product line and expanding rapidly into related markets whether such a strategy leads to a pioneering profit advantage relative to followers also depends on its cost effects in this paper we examine when the market share advantage of a pioneering firm with a broad product line strategy translates into a profit advantage by examining the cost effects of this strategy using the profit impact of marketing strategies data and an estimation method that controls for various unobserved factors we find significant differences between different industry settings from these contrasting findings we generate an emerging theoretical framework that we subject to empirical testing we conjecture and empirically verify that creating a broad product line with a versioning strategy creating variety from a standard product in anticipating customer demand does not increase the pioneering cost disadvantage and thus results in a pioneering profit advantage on the other hand with a tailoring strategy creating variety by customizing a product to actual customer demand a broad product line substantially increases the pioneering cost disadvantage thereby making a preemption strategy counterproductive

disentangling pioneering cost advantages and disadvantages existing literature discusses a number of possible pioneering cost advantages and disadvantages in this paper we empirically test three different sources of long term pioneering cost advantage experience curve effects preemption of input factors and preemption of ideal market space and three different sources of pioneering cost disadvantage imitation vintage effects and demand orientation we disentangle these sources by breaking total cost of a business unit into three different components purchasing production and selling general and administrative sg a costs and identifying conditions that intensify or reduce the effect of the proposed source using two samples of business units one for consumer goods and one for industrial goods we find support for five of the six sources of pioneering cost advantage and disadvantage in both samples while the advantage due to preemption of ideal market space is limited to the consumer goods sample the unconditional analysis shows a pioneering purchasing cost advantage but even larger pioneering production and sg a cost disadvantages the complexity of our obtained findings suggests that managers need to think carefully about their particular conditions before making assumptions about the cost and therefore profit implications of a pioneering strategy

aggregate impact of different brand development strategies current branding literature investigates the spillover effects and extension effects due to the introduction of product extensions however no study so far has evaluated the aggregate market impact of these effects across different brand development strategies or accounted for the strategic decision to introduce the extension it is important to examine the above given the significant investments and the high failure rates associated with the introduction of new product extensions in this study we develop an analytical framework that derives revenue outcome due to an extension introduction as a function of spillover and extension effects we empirically estimate the above effects through a bayesian endogenous switching model that jointly models market shares of the extension and its parent brand along with the strategic decision to introduce the extension and the endogeneity in prices by using a data set that covers 155 extensions introduced across 20 u s geographic markets we obtain several new gen

the effect of standardized information on firm survival and marketing strategies we argue that standardized information disclosure information using a common format and uniform metrics creates asymmetric opportunities for firms which affects their strategies and survival we test our predictions using a longitudinal quasi experimental field study involving the nutrition labeling and education act of 1990 nlea and we focus on firm market share within a category as a key asymmetry findings indicate that in general the nlea had no effect on firm responses however when accounting for firm differences we observe that the nlea led to 1 an increase in small share firm exits and 2 a greater increase in distribution for large share firms no concurrent increase in price by large share firms following the nlea was observed we conclude by discussing the implications of these effects for firm strategy the design of public policy and theories regarding the impact of information on markets

deconstructing the pioneer s advantage examining vintage effects and consumer valuations of quality and variety several studies have demonstrated an order of entry effect on market share suggesting that pioneers outperform later entrants however other research has pointed out the limitations of these studies and found evidence that many pioneers fail or have low market share given this background the purpose of this research is to understand the conditions under which pioneers are more likely and also less likely to have an advantage we propose a game theoretic model that includes important sources of pioneer advantages as well as disadvantages specifically we incorporate a pioneer advantage due to preemption in markets with heterogeneous tastes in addition we incorporate a potential pioneer disadvantage due to technology vintage effects where later entrants utilizing improved technology can have lower costs and higher quality the model allows us to evaluate the extent of vintage effects necessary to overcome a pioneer s advantage key relationships are found between the magnitude of the pioneer advantage or disadvantage and consumer valuations of product attributes e g variety and quality we empirically validate the model with vintage effect data in 36 product categories and measures of consumer valuations of product variety and quality for 12 of these 36 categories the results show that pioneers do better in product categories wherevariety is more important and worse in categories where productquality is more important pioneers in categories with high vintage effects are shown to have lower market shares and higher failure rates similar results appear when analyzing persistence of market leadership over time further validating our model s major implications we also present two case studies that illustrate key elements of the model

unobservable effects and business performance while unobservable factors such as corporate culture access to scarce resources management skill and luck can be postulated to be principal determinants of business success their effects are all but ignored in studies of business performance this study making use of the pims data base reports empirical evidence indicating that failure to control for unobservable factors influencing profitability both biases and exaggerates the effect of strategic factors indeed the influence of unobservable factors is so pervasive as to invalidate many of the conclusions drawn from studies failing to control for their effects

a look on the cost side market share and the competitive environment in this paper we develop a model relating market share to average costs we start with a theoretical model of the factors that affect the firm s average cost curve partitioning these factors into a measurable firm and competitive environment characteristics and b unobserved factors that are either fixed random or follow a first order autoregressive process we then link this theoretical model to an empirical model in which we specify three average cost equations for the organizational areas of purchasing production and marketing main effects for initial lagged market share position as well as their interactions with factors characterizing the firm s competitive environment represent the variables of key theoretical interest in our equations we estimate these equations using pims data and control for fixed contemporaneous and autoregressive unobservable factors our results suggest that market share can often lead to market power in the form of lower average costs however the firm s operating environment greatly moderates the effect of market share on average cost in particular we find that market share position only leads to lower average costs when the organizational unit operates in a competitive environment that gives it both motivation and ability to realize power from its market share position

order of market entry established empirical generalizations emerging empirical generalizations and future research three established and four emerging empirical generalizations are identified below the first established generalization is that there is a negative relationship between order of market entry and market share second for consumer packaged goods and prescription anti ulcer drugs the entrant s market share divided by the first entrant s share roughly equals one divided by the square root of order of market entry third in mature markets market pioneer share advantages slowly decline over time while the emerging generalizations require additional research support the initial findings suggest 1 for consumer packaged goods order of market entry has a stronger negative relationship with trial penetration than with repeat purchase 2 market pioneers have broader product lines than late entrants 3 skill and resource profiles differ across market pioneers early followers and late entrants and 4 order of market entry is not related to long term survival rates future research topics are also dis

first versus second mover advantage with information asymmetry about the profitability of new markets is it better to move first or second to innovate or to imitate we show that if one player s information about the profitability of new markets is only modestly superior the possibility of foreclosing the market can lead to a first mover advantage on the other hand more extreme information superiority can reverse this leading to a second mover advantage knowing more surely what is the best choice the better informed player wants to delay to keep his information private and the less informed player wants to delay to learn because of this more accurate information can actually lead to inefficiency by increasing the incentive to delay and exogenous costs of delay can aid efficiency by neutralizing that strategic incentive in fact in some circumstances a player may purposely coarsen his information to deter imitation

learning and payoff externalities in an investment game abstract this paper examines the interplay of informational and payoff externalities in a two player irreversible investment game each player learns about the quality of his project by observing a private signal and the action of his opponent i characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium in a timing game that features a second mover advantage allowing for arbitrary correlation in project qualities despite private learning the game reduces to a stochastic war of attrition in contrast to the case of purely informational externalities all investments happen at the same real time instant irrespective of the sign of the correlation and beliefs never get trapped in a no learning region provided that the second mover advantage is sufficiently high

overcoming the early entrant advantage the role of alignable and nonalignable differences prior research has focused on early entrant advantage rather than on theories that explain and predict how late entrants can surpass the early entrant s performance in this research the authors p

the invisible hand plays dice multiple equilibria in sects markets religious participation is much more widespread in the united states than in europe while europeans tend to view sects more suspiciously than americans we propose an explanation for these patterns without assuming differences in preferences or market fundamentals we study a religious market where both demand and supply of spiritual services are endogenous such markets may have multiple equilibria further equilibria with more sects result in higher welfare and lower membership costs as secular societies tend to host on average more demanding sects

costly search with adverse selection solicitation curse versus acceleration blessing we analyze a dynamic trading model of adverse selection where a seller can increase the frequency of strategic price quotes a low quality seller benefits more from trade and therefore searches more intensively than a high quality seller this makes a seller s contact carry negative information but a seller s availability become a stronger indicator of high quality in the stationary environment the two effects exactly offset each other and reducing search costs is weakly beneficial to the seller in the nonstationary environment the relative strengths of the two effects vary over time and reducing search costs can be detrimental to the seller

endogeneity in marketing decision models there are many critical concerns including the accounting for endogeneity when one is properly estimating response functions however it is sometimes certainly not always better to leave some variables exogenous when building mathematical models intended to help decision makers the exogenous variables allow the decision maker to better adapt the mathematical model to different situations and to incorporate myriad variables and constraints outside of the model

search with adverse selection this paper analyzes a sequential search model with adverse selection we study information aggregation by the price how close the equilibrium prices are to the full information prices when search frictions are small we identify circumstances under which prices fail to aggregate information well even when search frictions are small we trace this to a strong form of the winner s curse that is present in the sequential search model the failure of information aggregation may result in inefficient allocations

pioneering and market share is entry time endogenous and does it matter dogenous variable they test the model by reestimating a recent empirical pioneering model using hausman s specification test they find statistically significant bias in the exogenous pioneering model in assessing the effect of pioneering on market share they find substantive differences between the biased and inconsistent exogenous pioneering estimates and the consistent endogenous estimates in terms of both statistical and practical significance

overcoming adverse selection how public intervention can restore market functioning as illustrated by liquidity support equity injections and asset repurchases in financial crises and by imf credit lines to countries authorities often intervene in orderto revive markets that have dried up or to create newones in suchsituations agents participate only if they receive from the governmental scheme more than in the marketplace while the market outcome depends on who joins the scheme the paper provides a first analysis of market jumpstarting and its two way interaction between mechanism design and participation constraints in the model sellers in need of cash have private information about the value of their legacy asset the absence of buyer confidence forces authorities to intervene to jump start the market we characterize the optimal intervention and draw two main implications first the government should clean up the market through buybacks of the weakest assets and then through some equity injections and leave the agents with the strongest legacy assets to the market in particular authorities should not substitute fully for the market even when they have no comparative disadvantage in acquiring assets or shares thereof second the government creates its own competition by cleaning up the market from its most toxic pieces at the optimal intervention the government always strictly overpays for the legacy asset yet and unlike what would be suggested by coasian profit evasion the existence of a later market imposes no welfare cost while it is cast in a public intervention context the analysis of mechanismdependent reservation utilities also admits important private sector applications

social identity market memory and first mover advantage considerable attention goes to whether there is a first mover advantage among organizations technical mechanisms have been considered for this advantage such as learning and occupancy of preferred market segments we argue that first movers may also benefit from a social identity advantage because being identified as the original in a market implies authenticity when first mover advantage is based on such an identity market memory is important initially audiences distinguish the originality of the first mover but as time passes such differences are less recognizable we find evidence of this pattern and that organizations are constrained from expanding beyond where their identity is established the results suggest the usefulness of a sociological approach to understanding the first mover strategy copyright 2013 the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

investing to access an adverse selection market abstract i analyse a market with asymmetric information and interdependent values accessing the market is costly and stochastic e g requires lobbying licences or r d for a range of parameter values interventions that raise production or entry costs for all seller types increase trade investment and payoff for all types this effect is driven by a novel feedback loop between the market composition and the investment in access

identifying generalizable effects of strategic actions on firm performance the case of demand side returns to r d spending this paper provides an approach for assessing generalizable effects of strategic actions on firm performance we identify five key issues that need to be addressed before one can have confidence in the obtained strategic generalization in addition we suggest a methodology for attacking each of these five issues we then illustrate this framework using the example of demand side returns to r d spending we document two empirical generalizations in this research first and foremost we show that demand returns to r d spending depend on whether the firm has ability and motivation to take advantage of the r d investment thus only firms with high ability and motivation leverage the r d investment into monopoly rents in the form of subsequent price increases second we show that the concept of a firm needing both ability and motivation to sustain returns from a strategic action generalizes across strategic actions we make two other conclusions about empirical approaches to strategy research first to pro

sustainable pioneering advantage profit implications of market entry order there is strong theoretical and empirical evidence supporting the idea that first to market leads to an enduring market share advantage in sharp contrast to these findings we find that at the business unit level being first to market leads on average to a long termprofit disadvantage this result holds for a sample of consumer goods as well as a sample of industrial goods and leads to questions about the validity of first mover advantage in and of itself as a strategy to achieve superior performance we replicate the typical demand side pioneering advantage but find an evengreater average cost disadvantage which is the source of the pioneering profit disadvantage in an extended analysis we show that first to market leads to aninitial profit advantage which depending on the sample or profit measure lasts for about 12 to 14 years before turning into a disadvantage moreover we show that pioneers differentially benefit from a lack of consumer learning a strong market position and patent protection these three moderating factors together can actually help pioneers achieve a sustainable profit advantage over later entrants finally we find strong support for the theoretical argument that the entry order decision should be treated as endogenous in empirical estimation

human capital social capital and public schooling abstract public education contributes to growth not only by building human capital but also by instilling common norms that increase social cohesion this is modeled in the context of a political economy framework in which social cohesion reduces wasteful rent seeking and thus strengthens incentives for investment in human captial the political decisions that determine whether different social groups retain separate schooling systems or adopt an integrated system weigh these material advantages against the psychic cost to parents of alienating their children from traditional values this aspect of public education helps explain why commonly education is publicly administered as well as publicly financed

first mover advantage through distribution a decomposition approach whereas the extant literature on entry order effects establishes that first entrants often earn higher market shares market share advantage the literature on distribution suggests that increased distribution has a positive effect on sales can distribution help us better understand entry order effects on market shares this paper examines how the first entrant in a geographical market achieves a market share advantage through distribution for this purpose i propose a simple method of decomposing sales into physical distribution and sales performance the data come from a manually collected panel on six major japanese convenience store chains from 47 geographical markets between 1991 and 2007 using an instrumental variable approach to address the potential endogeneity of entry order i find first entrants have a positive market share advantage over later entrants specifically the physical distribution measured by the number of outlets in a market drives most of the advantage meanwhile the pos