complementarities in the search for innovation managing markets and relationships abstract extant research has characterized a firm s search for external knowledge in its innovation activities as either relational or transactional in nature the former implies that a firm chooses and develops collaborative relationships with knowledge sources like universities customers or suppliers while the latter suggests transactions governed by markets for technology we argue that prior literature has ignored that both search strategies are interrelated and complementary adopting one strategy has a higher marginal return on innovation performance if the other one is present moreover we suggest the benefits from complementarity to be higher when a firm is more distant to the technological frontier in the industry and when markets for technology in that industry are shallow we test our hypotheses on a sample of 3921 german firms from 2001 to 2009 and find support for our hypotheses

investment and coordination in oligopolistic industries we examine investment by firms in 24 chemical product industries to determine whether firms invest preemptively to achieve persistent increases in market share or whether there is evidence of behavior to maintain market share the data indicate that investment reduces the probability that rival firms will expand capacity but the effect is temporary large firms tend to maintain market share while smaller firms tend to invest simultaneously with rivals the role of preemptive investment is limited to that of permitting a firm to invest with a lower probability of redundant investment by rivals preemption does not allow a persistent increase in market share but instead acts as a means by which firms may coordinate capacity investment to help avoid episodes of industry overcapacity

china s balance of emissions embodied in trade approaches to measurement and allocating international responsibility international trade is characterized not only by the flow of capital and goods but also by the energy and emissions embodied in goods during their production this paper investigates the evolving role that chinese trade is playing in the response to climate change by estimating the scale of emissions embodied in china s current trade pattern and demonstrating the magnitude of the difference between the emissions it produces some of which are incurred to meet the consumption demands of the rest of the world and the emissions embodied in the goods it consumes estimating china s emissions on a consumption rather than a production basis both lowers its responsibility for carbon dioxide co2 emissions in 2006 from 5 500 to 3 840mtco2 and reduces the growth rate of emissions from an average of 12 5 per cent p a to 8 7 per cent p a between 2001 and 2006 the analysis indicates that a reliable consumption based accounting methodology is feasible and could improve our understanding of which actors and states are responsible for emissions for example recent emissions reductions by developed countries may lack credibility if production has merely been displaced to countries such as china moreover in the current institutional context production methodologies encourage leakages through trade that may do more to displace than to reduce emissions both equity and efficiency concerns therefore suggest that emissions embodied in trade should receive special attention in the distribution of post kyoto abatement burdens

the organizational foundations of x inefficiency a game theoretic interpretation of argyris model of organizational learning abstract this paper addresses the issue why does x inefficiency persist in many organizations when its existence nature and causes are known and when everyone stands to gain from correcting the errors that cause it and why are some organizations able to learn while others appear not to we construct a model of persisting x inefficiency based on argyris concepts of organizational learning it is argued that organizations succeed in eliminating x inefficiency by achieving a critical mass of individuals willing to admit and correct error once achieved this critical mass may lead to a new stable and efficient equilibrium

global markets for technology evidence from patent transactions abstract the paper analyses the recent evolution of international markets for technology by examining changes in ownership of us granted patents we study the effects of the geographical origin of patents proxied by their first priority country on the probability of patents being traded on the timing of the transaction and on the probability of observing a cross border transaction while controlling for the characteristics of the patents the time and sector specificities the analyses are based on a comprehensive dataset that covers all the patents granted by the uspto over the 2002 2012 period the data from the us patent reassignment database have been cleaned and processed and a subset of 95 542 granted patents that have been traded has been identified we obtain evidence from survival models that there has been an increase in the rate of patent transactions in recent years the obtained results indicate that patents with a first non us original applicant have less probability of being traded and show a longer time to transaction than us first priority patents we also find that more science based patents which are usually characterized by a higher technological uncertainty are more likely to be traded but are much less likely to be involved in cross border deals the results are discussed in light of the impact of asymmetric information and search costs on international patent transactions

excess capacity as a barrier to entry an empirical appraisal this paper examines excess capacity barriers to entry and investment dynamics in a sample of thirty eight chemical product industries logit and log linear models of investment behavior are estimated and specific case examples are considered the results show that incumbents rarely built excess capacity pre emptively in an effort to deter entry in general entrants and incumbents exhibited similar investment behavior

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

exchange rate fluctuations firm size and export behavior an empirical investigation in this paper we examine how changes in the exchange rate and its volatility affect the export behavior of manufacturing firms we also investigate whether both exchange rate changes and exchange rate volatility affect firms of different sizes differently applying the two step system generalized method of moment estimator on our data for a sample of 221 pakistani manufacturing firms we find that the real exchange rate depreciation has positive impacts whereas the exchange rate volatility has negative impacts on firms exports we also find that compared to large sized firms small and medium sized exporting firms are more likely to benefit from currency depreciations yet regarding the effect of exchange rate volatility we find that the adverse impact of exchange rate volatility is weaker for large sized firms as compared to small and medium sized firms our findings confirm the presence of nonlinearity in export deterring favoring effects of exchange rate volatility depreciation on exporting behavior depending on firm size pakistan should design and implement export favoring preferential policies by emphasizing on real exchange rate stabilization and providing incentives to large firms to come into being small and medium sized enterprises should develop such export strategies that help reduce their size disadvantages particularly in managing exchange rate risks

reputation and imperfect information abstract a common observation in the informal literature of economics and elsewhere is that is multistage games players may seek early in the game to acquire a reputation for being tough or benevolent or something else but this phenomenon is not observed in some formal game theoretic analyses of finite games such as selten s finitely repeated chain store game or in the finitely repeated prisoners dilemma we reexamine selten s model adding to it a small amount of imperfect or incomplete information about players payoffs and we find that this addition is sufficient to give rise to the reputation effect that one intuitively expects

capacity signals and entry deterrence abstract if potential entrant firms are well informed they will generally not believe incumbent s threats to expand output when experiencing entry but this expectation underlies most excess capacity models we demonstrate an asymmetric information equilibrium in which potential entrants rationally fear output expansion by oligopolists with excess capacity less effective collusive oligopolies may be destabilized expanding output upon entry one symptom of less effective collusion is excess capacity hence excess capacity becomes a signal of the potential for output expansion in a rational expectations equilibrium this signal may also be mimicked by oligopolies which would not otherwise carry excess capacity

market trade in patents and the rise of a class of specialized inventors in the 19th century united states it has long been recognized that one of the original aims of the u s patent system was to stimulate technological development by granting inventors temporary monopoly rights to their discoveries this paper argues that the u s system fostered inventive activity in another important way as well by providing the institutional infrastructure necessary for the growth of a market for technology early 19thcentury inventors often had to play a direct role in the commercial development of their ideas a situation that constrained their ability to focus on the generation of new technologies b zorina khan and sokoloff 1993 the growth of a market in patents not only made invention a more attractive activity by raising retums but also enabled creative individuals to extract income from their ideas by selling them off making it possible for them to specialize in the inventive activities for which they had a comparative advantage ever since adam smith economists have understood that one of the most fundamental processes at work in economic development is the specialization in the use of resources that the growth of market trade makes possible given the importance of the generation of new technologies to economic growth as well as the long standing recognition that investment in invention like other types of investment activity is responsive to material returns the lack of research on the dynamics of these processes for the case of technology is somewhat puzzling the answer may simply be that this topic did not seem very relevant in a world dominated by large scale businesses that integrated both the generation and commercialization of new technologies in recent years however venture capital has flowed to firms that focus on inventive activity and sell off or license the resulting intellectual property to enterprises better positioned to exploit its commercial advantages in other words it now seems that whatever the coordination benefits of conducting these various activities within a single large firm investors are realizing that there are also potential gains to be derived from a division of labor across organizations this specialization of function is not however a modern innovation in organization on the contrary as we will show such a division of labor was commonplace by the late 19th century a period which like the present age was characterized by rapid technological change the institutional foundation for market trade in technology was the u s patent system created in accordance with the commerce clause of the constitution although influenced by british law the framers of the u s system self consciously made a number of important innovations among them were dramatically lower fees impersonal administrative procedures for handling applications and the requirement that a patentee be the first and true inventor anywhere in the world patentees also had to be humans not firms these provisions extended the protection of property rights to a much broader range of inventions than obtained in britain or elsewhere in europe and when coupled with effective enforcement meant that inventors could advantageously reveal information about their ideas to prospective buyers even before they received a patent grant moreover uncertainty about the value of the patents decreased dramatically after the law was reformed in 1836 replacing a registration system which left to civil litigation the resolution of questions of originality novelty and appropriate scope by an examination system in which technically department of economics university of california los angeles 90095 and national bureau of economic research lamoreaux is also affiliated with the department of history at ucla we thank marigee bacolod lisa boehmer yael elad brian rivera ludmila skulkina matthew wiswall and tamara zavaliyenko for research assistance research support was provided by the national science foundation and the ucla academic senate

disciplining firms the impact of trade reforms on profit margins in indian industry the paper analyses the effects of increased trade exposure on the profitability of firms in indian industry while trade reforms are often expected to decrease profit margins as firms struggle to compete in international markets there is the possibility that increased competition may improve firm efficiency and provide a positive impetus to firm profitability this paper is different from many others in this area in that it considers both these possibilities an efficiency index is created to directly analyse the impact of changing efficiency levels on firm profit margins results indicate that liberalization significantly influenced profit margins however its main effect is through the impact that it has had on other firm variables market shares advertising r d and exports all of which changed after 1991 while exports have had a pro competitive effect on profit margins in the selected sample ad and r d both cause an increase in profit margins it is also found that neither capital nor manageri

on the relationship between firm size and export intensity export marketing literature supports the view that firm size is positively related to export intensity although the empirical findings have been mixed a number of theoretical arguments are used to support this proposition i e international marketing economies of scale limited managerial and financial resources of small firms decisionmaker s risk perception based on a large survey of the italian manufacturing industry the article falsifies the proposition and challenges some widely held assumptions in export marketing literature

on the measurement of capacity utilization capacity utilization is usually defined as the ratio of actual output to the output corresponding to 1 the minimum point on the short run average total cost curve and 2 the point of tangency between the long run average total cost and short run average total cost curves in practice however capacity utilization is often measured as the ratio of actual to the maximum potential output consistent with a given capital stock this paper demonstrates how to estimate the theoretical measures of capacity utilization and examines the correlation between three measures of capacity utilization and the mcgraw hill estimates of capacity utilization using data from a sample of u s privately owned electric utilities for 1961 83 copyright 1989 by blackwell publishing ltd

nonresponse and delayed response to competitive moves the roles of competitor dependence and action irreversibility competitive moves that are unchallenged or to which response is delayed are important weapons in a strategist s arsenal so variables that discourage or delay response are of great interest using

spatially correlated exit strategies in the baking industry this article uses a unique data set to analyse economic factors that explain firm exit and the interrelation across firms in space when exiting results show the effectiveness of modelling spatial correlation in a logit exit model indeed in our application reliable statistical results could only be drawn from our data when including spatial correlation in the model

foreign ownership and technology adoption evidence from indian firms abstract firms in developing countries rely on foreign technology purchases to improve their technology we use a theoretical framework developed by katz and shapiro to examine the ongoing technology adoption behavior of foreign owned and domestic firms using firm level data on indian firms from 1989 to 1993 we test this theoretical model we find that foreign ownership firm size and market structure are among the variables that impact a firm s probability of adopting new technology we also find that the 1991 liberalization of technology transfer policies in india appears to have had a larger impact on foreign owned firms than domestic firms

the adoption of incentive regulation and its effect on technical efficiency in telecommunications in the united states abstract incentive regulation has become an important regulatory tool in the telecommunications industry in the united states the issue explored here is whether incentive regulation has resulted in an increase in efficiency after providing an overview of the nature of incentive regulation a methodology for measuring technical efficiency and its change is introduced this is a multiple output multiple input distance function approach to measuring technical efficiency the results of implementing this approach for 19 local exchange carriers for the 1988 1999 period indicate that in the production of local service intrastate toll access service and interstate access to local loops there was no change in technical efficiency between the 1988 1990 period and the 1991 1999 period something that incentive regulation was specifically designed to promote

market growth economies of scale and plant size in the chemical processing industries what factors determine the size of new industrial plants this study uses data on twenty tw o chemical products to test alternative models of capacity expansion including the manne model and a scale frontier model the empiri cal results strongly support the scale frontier model the size of n ew plants increased along a time trend that was unrelated to market c oncentration market growth or the magnitude of investment scale eco nomies entrants typically built smaller plants than incumbents but all firms built plants closer to the technological frontier when smal l plants carried a higher relative cost penalty copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

excess capacity and entry some empirical evidence recent articles by spence i977 dixit i979 and schmalensee i98i have elaborated on wenders i97i1 proposition that excess capacity can act as a barrier to entry the intent of all of these treatments is to suggest that firms may rationally invest in excess capacity with the expectation that excess capacity will be seen by potential entrants either as a signal of aggressive intent or as a credible threat 2 when excess capacity does not lead to creation of a credible threat it may still act as a barrier to entry by shifting the risk return perceptions of potential entrants enough to divert the potential entrants investments into other industries 3 alternatively investment in excess capacity by incumbent firms may reduce the prospects of an active market for the used equipment of a defunct entrant and thereby help to convert fixed costs into sunk costs consequently raising entry barriers 4 this paper represents an exploratory effort to investigate empirically the prevalence and efficiency of excess capacity in deterring entry first a simple and traditional model of entry is presented this is followed by the description of the data used to explore the excess capacity investment concept a combined results and comments section follows the description of the data

promises and pitfalls in environmentally extended input output analysis for china a survey of the literature abstract as the world s largest developing economy china plays a key role in global climate change and other environmental impacts of international concern environmentally extended input output analysis ee ioa is an important and insightful tool seeing widespread use in studying large scale environmental impacts in china calculating and analyzing greenhouse gas emissions carbon and water footprints pollution and embodied energy this paper surveys the published articles regarding ee ioa for china in peer reviewed journals and provides a comprehensive and quantitative overview of the body of literature examining the research impact environmental issues addressed and data utilized the paper further includes a discussion of the shortcomings in official chinese data and of the potential means to move beyond its inherent limitations

multi factor agricultural productivity efficiency and convergence in botswana 1981 1996 abstract this paper applies the sequential malmquist index to calculate multi lateral multi factor productivity mfp indices for agriculture in the 18 districts and the commercial sector of botswana from 1981 to 1996 the mfp index grew at an average rate of 1 7 per annum led by the regions that specialize in livestock which grew at well over 3 per annum this growth was powered by technological change at 4 per year but offset by technical efficiency falling at 2 4 per annum as the commercial sector and the better regions exploited new technologies and infrastructure whereas the less productive areas fell further behind the best practice frontier thus convergence tests show that the gap between the more productive and the poorer regions widened

firm size and export behaviour an indian case study in the context of indian industry this article argues that in the presence of capital market imperfections and sub optimal contractual arrangements small firms face higher transaction or selling costs in the domestic market one of the strategic responses by small firms towards overcoming the mobility barriers imposed by high transaction costs in the domestic market is to break into the competitive world market small firms that could realise a critical level of production efficiency and possible information externalities that arise through inter firm linkages might be the ones that could succeed in exports the empirical observations derived from the analysis of firm level survey data provide reasonable support to the main arguments

capital as a commitment strategic investment to deter mobility abstract this paper analyzes how an early entrant in a market can exploit its head start by strategic investment the analysis is based on spence s paper investment strategy and growth in a new market bell j econ 10 1979 1 19 we frist study the investment game in the no discounting case which embodies the key features of mobility deterrence we establish the existence of a set of perfect equilibria and suggest that one particular equilibrium is most reasonable this equilibrium also valid with discounting involves the follower firm being forever deterred from investing to its steady state reaction curve in contrast to spence s proposed solution

technology expenditures factor intensity and efficiency in indian manufacturing the effects of expenditure on r d and purchase of technology on costs in indian manufacturing is investigated using firm level data expenditures for r d royalties and technical fees are treated as potentially inducing both hicks neutral efficiency shifts and substitution between capital and labor in an indirect cos t function framework the effects of technology expenditure are found to vary by industry by type of expenditure and by domestic or foreign origin of seller technology expenditures associated with higher levels of hicks neutral efficiency are generally also associated wit h higher capital labor ratios copyright 1992 by mit press

a theory of market structure with sequential entry this article sets out a theory of market structure with sequential entry we characterize the perfect nash equilibrium to the entry game in several propositions first equilibria never involve excess capacity second a sufficient statistic for the entry of any firm is that its profits are positive when computed myopically i e with no further entry third the equilibrium number of firms is the smallest number that can deter entry fourth aggregate output in equilibrium is no smaller than the limit output we calculate some explicit solutions to the model and examine comparative static properties

innovation threats and strategic responses in oligopoly markets this paper deals with the strategic reaction of firms to competitive threats stemming from newly developed products of actual competitors product innovation projects go through multiple time consuming stages with several continuation termination decisions hence competitors can react to the threat before the new product is introduced and thereby may prevent or facilitate the product s introduction we consider a duopoly model where firm 1 can start a two stage product innovation project for obtaining a horizontally and vertically differentiated product in between the two stages firm 2 can react by making an investment that improves the competitive position of the current product we find that under weak vertical differentiation firm 2 wants firm 1 to innovate horizontal differentiation softens competition and firm 2 over invests to induce firm 1 to launch the new product second under strong vertical differentiation firm 1 starts the product innovation project triggering under investment by firm 2 but never finishes it the under investment makes firm 2 a weaker competitor which induces firm 1 not to innovate third under very strong vertical differentiation firm 2 prevents a launch of the new product by over investing this results in a strong competitive position of firm 2 it therefore captures such a big market share that firm 1 will not introduce the new product the situation of firm 1 in the old market has worsened the option to complete the innovation created by initiating the first stage of the innovation project has a negative value for firm 1

production and consumption accounting of co2 emissions for xiamen china abstract consumption accounting of urban greenhouse gas emissions is preferable to production accounting because cities are open systems which depend on the import of large quantities of externally produced goods in this paper we use environmental input output analysis to construct co 2 production and consumption accounting inventories for xiamen a rapidly developing coastal city in southeast china we found that in 2007 total emissions embodied in production were 21 8 mt co 2 of which 17 1 mt co 2 were embodied in exports and 4 7 mt co 2 resulted from local demand on local production if the large amounts of emissions embodied in the xiamen reprocessing trade are excluded from the analysis total imported emissions were 12 2 mt co 2 consumption emissions were 16 9 mt co 2 and xiamen was a net exporter of 4 9 mt co 2 although xiamen s rapid economic growth is dependent on large scale flows of embodied emissions most of these emissions are not produced or consumed within the city system

who is interested in biotech r d strategies knowledge base and market sales of indian biopharmaceutical firms this paper addresses three main questions on indian pharmaceutical firms that have integrated biotechnology in their marketing production or research activities i what kind of labour stocks of the knowledge base have an impact on market sales ii which components of the r d strategy are strategic substitutes and which are strategic complements iii what are the distinguishing features of firms that have already integrated biotechnology in their research activities the paper shows that market sales are an increasing function of qualified labour stocks internal r d and foreign collaborations are strategic substitutes while patents and publications are strategic complements firms that are active in biotechnology research are likely to be younger and implementing more aggressive learning strategies

noncooperative entry deterrence uncertainty and the free rider problem previous authors who have considered the issue of noncooperative entry deterrence have not found the free rider problem to be a significant factor these authors however have only considered models in which the exact investment needed to deter entry is known with certainty in this paper i add uncertainty to the models investigated by these previous authors and demonstrate that the free rider problem can be significant but is not so in all cases that is for certain types of entry deterring investments the introduction of uncertainty causes the oligopoly to underinvest in entry deterrence however for other types no underinvestment result arises

on categorical variables and non parametric statistical inference in the pursuit of causal explanations this paper proposes a pragmatic alliance between critical realism and non parametric statistical techniques in pursuit of causal explanations of economic phenomena by retroductive means the alliance depends on clarifying the interpretive requirements for forming categories within nominal or classificatory scales or as ordinal or ranking scales it also depends on establishing the scope of demiregularities as something to be explained and as something that allows a rough and ready extension of experimental conditions the roughness and readiness of demiregularities is matched by the assumptions and conditions of non parametric analysis

strategic entry deterrence in analyzing deterrence of large scale entry two classes of entry barriers may be distinguished an innocent entry barrier is unintentionally erected as a side effect of innocent profit maximization in contrast a strategic entry barrier is purposely erected to reduce the possibility of entry two types of innocent barriers may also be distinguished a postentry absolute advantage has the property that if entry did occur the established firm would be at a profit advantage over the entrant examples are superior technology or product design patents and lower input prices a preentry asymmetry advantage arises from the fundamental preentry asymmetry between established firm and potential entrant before the entrant makes his entry decision the established firm has already committed resources this prior existence gives first move advantages the preentry asymmetry is independent of symmetry or asymmetry in the rules the equilibrium concept of the postentry game that might ensue even if the postentry game will be played according to nash cournot or entrant as leader rules the preentry leadership

modernizing the business of health pharmaceuticals in britain in comparison with germany and the united states 1890 1940 the pharmaceutical industry adopted technology in markedly different ways in germany the united states and britain during the early 20th century useful knowledge became a commercial asset but british intellectual property and drug regulation laws created neither pressures nor rewards for growth key differences emerged in the ways in which intellectual property was used in the development of testing and standardization and in the links between researchers and industry we show how firms sought to control the new knowledge assets that built the business of health this also helps to explain the choices made in the three countries as to what forms of investments best further industry goals

industrial growth in india performance and prospects abstract the objective of this paper is to analyse the trends in industrial growth since the mid fifties and examine the factors that contributed to industrial stagnation after the mid sixties more specifically the paper focuses on the pathology of the organised industrial sector while also documenting the broad trends in the unorganised sector section 1 presents a brief review of the long term trends in the growth of value added and productivity in the industrial sector section 2 analyses the major factors that contributed to the dual phenomenon of a slowdown in the growth of heavy industries and continued slow growth of consumer goods industries after the mid sixties in the light of this analysis an attempt is made in section 3 to draw some implications for policy if industrial growth is to be revived in the future

reconsidering the bayh dole act and the current university invention ownership model abstract the bayh dole act of 1980 provided u s universities with the right to commercialize employees inventions made while engaged in government funded research this paper argues that the current university invention ownership model in which universities maintain de jure ownership of inventions is not optimal either in terms of economic efficiency or for advancing the social interest of rapidly commercializing technology and encouraging entrepreneurship we argue that this model is plagued by ineffective incentives information asymmetries and contradictory motivations for the university the inventors potential licensees and university technology licensing offices tlos these structural uncertainties can lead to delays in licensing misaligned incentives among parties and obstacles to the flow of scientific information and the materials necessary for scientific progress the institutional arrangements within which tlos are embedded have encouraged some of them to become revenue maximizers rather than facilitators of technology dissemination for the good of the entire society we suggest two alternative invention commercialization models as superior alternatives the first alternative is to vest ownership with the inventor who could choose the commercialization path for the invention for this privilege the inventor would provide the university an ownership stake in any returns to the invention the inventor would be free to contract with the university tlo or any other entity that might assist in commercialization the second alternative is to make all inventions immediately publicly available through a public domain strategy or through a requirement that all inventions be licensed non exclusively both alternatives would address the current dysfunctional arrangements in university technology commercialization

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

strategic behaviour of incumbent firms in the uk abstract the main purpose of this paper is to examine the incidence of strategic behaviour in the uk by means of a questionnaire study performed across three broad manufacturing industries food electrical engineering and chemicals of the strategies which have received substantial theoretical attention r d and advertising appear widely used patenting pricing and excess capacity much less so vertical instruments such as purchasing policy also stand out as important but possibly only a minority of firms in our sample actively pursue strategic instruments

delving into the carbon footprints of singapore comparing direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions of a small and open economic system abstract small and open economic systems like cities face specific challenges for greenhouse gas accounting they typically import most of their energy requirements as secondary energy products based on conversion processes which caused emissions elsewhere emission estimates therefore already require attention not only to direct on site activities moreover for a comprehensive approach it is suggested to include upstream and downstream processes of connected socioeconomic systems and the indirect life cycle related emissions of imported and exported goods singapore is used in this longitudinal study as an example of an urban scale economy accounts for direct emissions are compared with trade corrected estimates of indirect emissions results indicate that direct emissions account for only about 20 of the overall upstream emissions necessary to sustain the input side of the economic production process domestic emissions plus indirect emissions embodied in imported goods if indirect emissions embodied in exports are considered and subtracted from the previous figure the trade corrected accounts for direct and indirect emissions still exceed direct emission accounts although by less than 40 given the increasing trends in world trade and urbanisation indirect pressures of urban systems should be included in discussions of effective and fair adaptation and mitigation strategies

firm size and export intensity a transaction costs and resource based perspective abstract this paper presents a unifying theory explaining the different relationships between firm sizeand export intensity that have been found in previous studies we propose that transactioncosts economies and different types of resources induce a moderating effect on the firm sizeand export intensity relationship data on international businesses in the netherlands are usedto test the theoretical framework empirically and support is found for different industries 5001 6182 business5410 5417 5 marketinglibrary of congressclassification lcc hf 1371 international tradem business administration and business economicsm 31c 44marketingstatistical decision theoryjournal of economicliterature jel d 23f 12f 23 production and organizations transaction costsmodels of trade with imperfect competition and scale economiesmultinational firms international business85 a business general280 g255 amanaging the marketing functiondecision theory general european business schoolslibrary group ebslg 195 b trade theorygemeenschappelijke onderwerpsontsluiting goo 85 00 bedrijfskunde organisatiekunde algemeen85 4085 03marketingmethoden en technieken operations researchclassification goo83 8383 42multinationalsinternationale handelbedrijfskunde bedrijfseconomiemarketing besliskundekeywords goobedrijfsgrootte export multinationals transactiekostenfree keywords firms size transaction costs export intensity international business strategyother information

testing for efficiency catching up we used advances in data envelopment analysis dea techniques to examine efficiency scores and investigate the issue of convergence and divergence in a cross country analysis specifically we used bootstrapping techniques to examine a data set of 52 developed and developing countries we found that when using the standard dea model some of the results were not robust further we broke the sample into groups to examine club convergence we found that efficiency scores were significantly different between groups and that there was some evidence of convergence of efficiency scores within each group

pioneering inventors or thicket builders which u s firms use continuations in patenting why do firms use continuations in the prosecution of their patents motivated by the widespread use of continuations by u s firms and the prominence of this procedure in u s patent policy debates we investigate the influence of corporate and patent characteristics on the use of continuations we employ novel data on applicants and their filings of three types of continuations the continuation application cap the continuations in part cip and divisions during 1981 2000 to distinguish among the motives for continuing patents we find that cips are disproportionately filed by research and development intensive firms that patent heavily and that these continuations are more common in chemical and biological technologies patents issuing from cips cover relatively important inventions and their use appears consistent with a strategy of protecting pioneering inventions in contrast caps and divisions are associated with less important patents assigned to capital intensive firms particularly in computer and semiconductor fields and appear to be used in defensive patenting strategies we analyze the effects of the 1995 change in patent term and find that the act reduced continuations overall and shifted the output of continuations toward less important patents

entry industry growth and the microdynamics of industry supply entry is widely discussed but rarely subjected to empirical study this study develops a competitive theory of entry with primary focus on the relationship between entry and industry growth the main ingredients are adjustment costs to firms already in the industry and the distribution of fixed entry cost to potential entrants the theory suggests sufficient conditions under which the entry rate is an increasing convex function of the industry growth rate a regression model correcting for severe heteroscedasticity is applied to data from swedish manufacturing industries the results are consistent with the theoretical prediction for growth and other key variables expected to influence entry significantly

changing productive efficiency in telecommunications in the united states abstract the issue explored is whether incentive regulation in the telecommunications industry in the united states has resulted in an increase in productive efficiency after providing an overview of the nature of incentive regulation the methodology for measuring the effects of incentive regulation on productive efficiency is reviewed this methodology is data envelopment analysis dea and allows for the measurement of both technical efficiency and allocative efficiency of individual local exchange carriers the results of empirically implementing the dea approach indicate that in the aggregate there is little change in technical efficiency in fact average technical efficiency in 1989 was the same as in 1998 next while outputs continued to grow at about their historical rate across lecs the sizeable increase in the two types of capital increased inputs well above their historical average rates for some lecs leading to short run allocative inefficiency on average however allocative efficiency shows no identifiable trend between 1988 and 1998 finally in the aggregate total economic efficiency what incentive regulation in the telecommunications industry in the united states was designed to promote does not have a demonstrable trend between 1988 and 1998

precommitment and financial structure an analysis of the effects of taxes while modern industrial organization theory predicts the use of sunk costs to deter entry this paper examines some factors that might act to moderate the commitment value of capital and hence the entry barring impact of these sunk costs to the point perhaps that empirical detection might be difficult the authors show that the tax system and financial contracts of the incumbent firm may affect its optimal precommitment decision and in fact may attenuate the strategic incentives for precommitment copyright 1992 by the london school of economics and political science

fighting city hall entry deterrence and technology upgrades in cable tv markets this article investigates how private firms respond to potential entry from public firms this paper uses a data set of over 3 000 u s cable tv systems to present evidence consistent with entry deterrence incumbent cable tv firms upgrade faster when located in markets with a potential municipal entrant however the same systems are then slower to offer new products enabled by the upgrade suggesting upgrades in these markets occur for strategic reasons incumbent cable systems also upgrade faster in response to municipal entry threats than to private entry threats understanding how private firms respond to potential entry from public firms is especially important in light of recent u s government entry into several industries this paper was accepted by bruno cassiman business strategy

technology production and technology purchase in indian industry an econometric analysis an econometric analysis of the decisions of indian firms to invest in their own r d and to purchase technology through licensing agreements is undertaken these decisions are treated as being jointly determined by characteristics of indian industries indian prices and the supply of purchasable foreign technology the study finds that industrial structure firm size and public and private ownership influence the mix of own r d and technology purchase the pool of purchasable foreign technology indices both increased adaptive r d and technology purchase by indian firms copyright 1989 by mit press

resolving the commitment versus flexibility trade off the role of resource accumulation lags we examine how time consuming resource accumulation influences the classic strategy trade off between commitment and flexibility in particular using 1975 95 data from the worldwide petrochemical

holding idle capacity to deter entry in this journal dixit i980 carefully analysed the extent to which an established firm facing a prospective entrant might make an investment in capacity beyond that which is optimal for its pre entry output in his model both the established firm and prospective entrants understand that a quantity setting nash equilibrium would be established in any post entry game dixit showed that spence i977 had studied an imperfect equilibrium that is an equilibrium that depended upon a threat that was not credible to obtain his result that firms might hold excess capacity to deter entry in a perfect equilibrium a firm would not wish to install capacity that would be left idle if entry did not occur dixit s conclusion however depends on his assumption that each firm s marginal revenue is always decreasing in the other s output this is quite a restrictive assumption for example it is never satisfied in the relevant range for economists second favourite demand curve constant elasticity demand the basic point is unchanged if the firms anticipate price competition with differentiated products rather thanquantity competition in any post entry game under quite plausible conditions rational firms facing rational potential entrants may install capacity that will certainly be left idle we are thus able to rehabilitate spence s original proposition in a perfect equilibrium setting

capacity output and sequential entry two crucial assumptions frequently made in industrial organization are that an established firm deters entry either by a constant high output the sylos postulate or by high excess capacity the excess capacity hypothesis these assumptions may be an accurate description of the observed conduct of firms in some industries however when the rules of the post entry game are clearly specified the optimal output and investment strategies of an established firm may depart considerably from these behavioral assumptions because of this possible inconsistency with rational behavior any conclusions about the formation of industry based upon either assumption are highly suspect what is more these assumptions avoid the main issue of whether entry deterrence is worthwhile at all this paper presents a dynamic model of entry in which established firms pursue a cournot nash alternatively stackelberg strategy toward a potential entrant the entrant behaves in cournot nash fashion and chooses output on the basis of expected postentry profits at the equilibrium of the post entry game within this framework a constant output entry deterring strategy would involve maintenance of an entry deterring output level before and after entry is threatened an excess capacity entry deterring strategy would involve holding excess capacity at an entry deterring level and increasing output to that level after entry is threatened special conditions are presented under which the sylos postulate or the excess capacity hypothesis will accurately describe optimal entry deterring strategies in addition special conditions are examined under which the established firm maintains a constant output or holds pre entry excess capacity when large scale entry does in fact take place the analysis shows that in general established firm reactions to entry are quite different from these special cases the sylos postulate see joseph bain paolo sylos labini franco modigliani 1958 asserts not only that potential entrants expect established firms to maintain their output constant as entry occurs but that established firms keep output constant at a level that deters entry whether or not it is profitable to do so hailed as a welcome major breakthrough on the oligopoly front modigliani 1958 the sylos postulate underlies many papers in the large theoretical and empirical literature on limit pricing yet the sylos postulate ignores both the strategic interaction between firms and the dynamic aspects of entry 2 unless the established firm s monopoly output exceeds the entrydeterring level the established firm with a general cost function able to choose an entry deterring output level will instead always desire a lower output level before entry for the special case where capacity is an upper bound on output and the established firm is a stackelberg leader in the post entry game

firm size and technical efficiency applications of production frontiers to indian survey data abstract this paper is an empirical investigation of the relationship between relative technical efficiency and firm size in four indian manufacturing industries a frontier translog production function is used to derive measures of technical inefficiency at the enterprise level given the properties of the estimated production frontier these indices of technical efficiency are also indices of total factor productivity tfp which is the single most widely accepted measure of productive efficiency variations in technical efficiency are correlated with several explanatory variables including size of firm firm size is found to be positively associated with relative productive efficiency in only one of the four industries

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

structure organizational behavior and technical efficiency the case of an indian industry abstract the differences in certain aspects of organizational behavior across large and small firms could be explained as a response mechanism to structural conditions like capital market imperfections and high market transaction costs this in turn could explain the relative production efficiency of large and small firms this paper examines the issue on the basis of firm level survey data for an indian industry

the welfare loss due to strategic investment in excess capacity abstract this paper explores a linear model of excess capacity as a barrier to entry the resultant welfare cost is compared with that of a simple monopolist who does not face an entry threat the threat of entry may actually reduce social welfare when potential consumer surplus is high economies of scale have a non linear effect reducing social cost if there is exces capacity but having the opposite effect when limit pricing is optimal empirical measures of the social cost of monopoly power are found to be poor proxies in the presence of strategic behaviour

capacity and entry under demand uncertainty this paper examines the decision to enter into a sector dominated by a monopoly if demand is random at entry time given a two period world the monopolist enters initially and enjoys an uncontested monopoly for one period while the entrant may enter and compete during the second period demand is random one period earlier and independently distributed in both periods and enitry corresponds to an irreversible capacity choice made under certain deimand all other production decisions take place after demand has been revealed risk neutrality is assumed on both sides if entry occurs then there is a cournot duopoly in the second period it is shown that concurrently with this cournot production game there is a separate stackelbergtype game with capacities as decision variables entry deterrence conditions are derived under general demand and cost assumptions it is shown that demand uncertainty changes several of the results of similar certain demand models

inventory holding as a strategic weapon to deter entry recent papers by dixit 1980 and eaton and lipsey 1981 have explored the strategic use of committed product specific capital by an incumbent firm in order to influence a post entry equilibrium and in some cases make entry unattractive by committing or sinking part of the production costs prior to entry the incumbent creates a credible shift in its own reaction function if entry should occur in this way the payoffs in the post entry equilibrium can be influenced to the incumbent s advantage the entry game thus consists of two stages the first in which the incumbent is able to strategically commit itself prior to entry and the second or post entry period in which a duopoly equilibrium is realized the more costs that are put up front by the incumbent the greater is the post entry output it will wish to sell for a given output of the entrant and the lower will be the resulting equilibrium price if the set up or fixed costs of entry are sufficiently high entry may be rendered unprofitable this paper extends the idea in a natural way all the production costs of a quantity of output can be sunk or committed by stockpiling inventory of the product the stock of inventory held by the incumbent firm represents a credible shift in its reaction function in response to entry in the following way the inventory is a stock that can be sold off over time in a way consistent with intertemporal profit maximization constrained by the presence of the entrant moreover the threat to sell off the inventory in response to entry is credible since given that entry has occurred the opportunity cost of the inventory is zero it seems reasonable to require that any strategic asymmetry between incumbent and entrant should be restricted to commitments made by the former prior to entry conditional on such commitments the post entry game should give neither firm a strategic advantage this requirement is the same as the game theoretic concept of perfectness 1 entry can be credibly deterred because the entrant knows that were entry to take place it would be in the incumbent s own interest to follow the anticipated sales programme of inventory in order to demonstrate that entry may be deterred by holding a stock of inventory that is sufficiently large that deterrence can be made the perfect equilibrium of the complete entry game the properties of the equilibrium with entry must be derived the post entry equilibrium is modelled here as a pair of nash strategies in sales programmes if the sales programme anticipated by the entrant in the post entry equilibrium implies a negative present value entry will be deterred thus successful entry deterrence implies that the equilibrium with entry is never realized the incumbent can then continue to receive monopoly profits less the holding cost of the inventory which serves as a credible deterrent to entry but is never sold

does the adoption of new technology boost productive efficiency in the public sector the case of icus system abstract in the last decade a significant amount of financial resources has been devoted by the greek government and the european union to provide the intensive care units icu of the greek public health care system with high tech medical equipment in order to improve their productive efficiency using a unique data set we employ the dea bootstrap of simar and wilson 2007 approach to estimate the efficiency of each icu and to explore the impact of these investments on their efficiency our results indicate that although the technical efficiency is benefited from the embodiment of new medical technology the scale efficiency remains unaffected the role of the asymmetric information of the icus proximity to pools of knowledge and of the composition of the medical personnel seems to be the crucial factors for the improvement of their productive efficiency