a review of the recent empirical literature on displaced workers this article reviews the empirical literature on job displacement job displacement is widespread and strongly countercyclical tending to peak during economic downturns but concentrated in indus

why do suppliers charge larger buyers lower prices the phenomenon of input suppliers charging larger buyer firms relative to smaller buyer firms lower prices is commonly explained in terms of supplier economies of scale supplier competition for larger buyers and the larger bargaining power of larger buyers this paper provides an alternative explanation and shows that the observed direction of differential pricing can benefit the supplier by lowering the level of tacit collusion its buyers can sustain in their output market this result also provides a new mechanism through which a ban on price discrimination by input suppliers may lower consumer welfare

what happens to wages after displacement faced with limited resources policymakers need to know when and where to target support for displaced workers the academic literature offers little support presenting wide ranging results with no consistent explanation for the observed differences in wages after workers are displaced in this paper we demonstrate that the heterogeneity found in the literature is consistent with varying market conditions the results suggest that support for displaced workers can be more efficiently allocated by considering the timing and location of displacement

price wars in price setting supergames this paper presents a method of generating price wars in price setting supergames the market is one where symmetric oligopolists produce a differentiated product and use price as a strategic variable prices are posted and can be observed by all there is thus little uncertainty or scope for secret price cutting nevertheless price wars occur they are precipitated by periodic but infrequent demand shocks firms use the wars to learn about changed conditions in the market so that they can calculate the new stationary nash equilibrium learning is modeled in a bayesian fashion via the kalman filter copyright 1989 by the london school of economics and political science

interfirm rivalry in a repeated game an empirical test of tacit collusion rivalry in the vancouver retail gasoline market is modeled as a repeated game service station demand cost and intertemporal reaction functions are estimated from daily data on individual station prices costs and sales these functions are then used to calculate noncooperative and cooperative solutions to the constitutent game and the actual outcome of the repeated game the actual outcome is found to be substantially less lucrative than the monopoly solution nevertheless all stations are better off than if they played their noncooperative strategies in every period copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

a study of cartel stability the joint executive committee 1880 1886 this article employs weekly time series data on the joint executive committee railroad cartel from 1880 to 1886 to test empirically the proposition that observed prices reflected switches from collusive to noncooperative behavior an equilibrium model of dynamic oligopoly with asymmetric firms together with explicit functional form assumptions about costs and demand determines the estimating equations and stochastic structure of the econometric model the hypothesis that no switch took place so that price and quantity movements were solely attributable to exogenous shifts in the demand and cost functions is then tested against this alternative and rejected

earnings losses and unemployment of displaced workers in germany data from the german socio economic panel are used to examine the experiences of german workers following job displacement due to plant closure in the year of displacement annual earnings decline

brand popularity country image and market share an empirical study this study examines how brand popularity in conjunction with other marketing variables influences market share directly as well as indirectly by interacting with country related intangible assets or simply country image the results of our empirical analysis show that a competitive analysis without the recognition of country image would be misleading we found that country specific intangible assets exist and that they significantly interact with marketing variables differently for u s and japanese brands in the subcompact car market in the usa brand popularity and advertising were found to be key factors for intangible assets for both the u s and the japanese brands brand popularity was the most significant factor for market share in both the short run and the long run japanese firms direct investment fdi in the target country directly influenced market share only in the short run several important implications for international marketing are presented

negative country of origin effects the case of the new russia with the political and economic changes in eastern europe there is an increasing need to market successfully products from these countries in the industrialized world this paper explores the extent to which the risk attitudes political convictions and country of origin associations of individuals affect the buying decision of a product from a controversial source country on a theoretical level it is investigated where in the decision making process political convictions and country of origin effects emerge most forcefully hypotheses are tested empirically against survey data on farmers evaluations of tractors from several countries including the russian made belarus the data analysis involves the specification of a recursive system encompassing the steps the buyer goes through from product evaluation to purchase the effects of political convictions risk attitudes and the country of origin connection are evaluated at each stage in the process implications are derived for potential strategies on the part of russian manufacturers

choosing a control group for displaced workers the vast majority of studies on the earnings of displaced workers use a control group of continuously employed workers to examine the effects of initial displacements this approach implies long lived earnings reductions following displacement even if these effects are not persistent overstating the losses relative to the true average treatment effect this paper s approach isolates the impact of an average displacement without imposing continuous employment on the control group in a comparison of the standard and alternative approaches using psid data the estimated long run earnings losses fall dramatically from 25 percent to 5 percent model simulations reinforce these empirical findings

pricing strategies in supergames with capacity constraints some evidence from the u s portland cement industry abstract theory demonstrates that demand variations can have nonmonotonic effects on pricing in supergames with capacity constraints furthermore this nonmonotonic relationship can be a function of capacity utilization rates time series data from 25 regional cement markets are used to examine this results empirically no statistically significant relationship is found between demand variations pricing and excess capacity

on the detection of collusion and predation abstract this lecture not only shows how game theory can contribute to the detection of collusion and predation but also how experts for the defense can use game theoretic arguments to make such detection difficult a few important european anti trust cases are discussed to illustrate

scar effects of unemployment an assessment of institutional complementarities this article uses panel data from the survey of income and program participation sipp and the european community household panel echp for a comparative analysis of workers post unemployment earnings trajectories in the united states and 12 western european countries across the study sample of industrialized countries results of difference in difference propensity score matching show post unemployment earnings losses to be largely permanent and particularly significant for high wage and older workers as well as for women the analyses also show that negative effects of unemployment on workers subsequent earnings are mitigated through either generous unemployment benefit systems or strict labor market regulation these effects stem partly from favorable behavioral responses that prevent downward occupational and industrial mobility and partly from changes in the overall structure of labor markets favoring the transferability of worker skills between jobs these positive effects materialize despite t

in pursuit of monopoly power recent quantitative work in industrial economics this paper reviews empirical work in industrial organization devoted to the question of inferring the existence of monopoly power from data on observed market outcomes like profits and prices the discussion covers inter industry work long conventional in the area newer developments in intra industry analysis and case studies and concludes with some remarks on a small but growing body of work assessing market dynamics the wide range of studies reviewed all generally reveal that market power exists in many industries

country of origin effects in developed and emerging markets exploring the contrasting roles of materialism and value consciousness despite growing evidence about differences in the attitudes and behaviors of consumers in emerging and developed markets there is little research on the differences in country of origin coo effects on their evaluation behavioral intentions bis and actual purchase of imported products this paper introduces a new conceptual framework incorporating consumer ethnocentrism cet materialism mat and value consciousness vc to hypothesize several differences in the influence of coo effects on consumers from developed and emerging markets a web based study with 1752 consumers in four countries representing two developed markets the uk and the usa and two emerging markets china and india shows significant differences in the moderating influence of cet mat and vc on the effects of coo on the evaluations and bis for a fictitious passenger car brand and on the actual choice of car brands owned by them the findings highlight the importance of looking beyond cet at other relevant psychographic variables to understand the differences in motivations underlying consumer perceptions and behavior towards imported products

in the right place at the wrong time the role of firms and luck in young workers careers we examine administrative data on young german workers and their employers to study the long term effects of an early career job loss to account for nonrandom sorting of workers into firms with different turnover rates and for selective job mobility we use changes over time in firm and age specific labor demand as an instrument for displacement we find that wage losses of young job losers are initially 15 percent but drop to zero within five years only workers leaving very large establishments suffer persistent losses a comparison of estimators implies that initial sorting negative selection and voluntary job mobility biases ordinary least squares estimates toward finding permanent negative effects of early displacements

conspiracy at the pump abstract on the basis of evidence of price fixing in may 2006 the canadian competition bureau targeted retail gasoline outlets in some local markets in the province of quebec in june 2008 criminal charges were filed against many individuals and companies operating in those local markets we employ a differences in differences approach to determine whether the public announcement of the antitrust investigation triggered a reaction in one of the targeted markets we find that the price of gasoline in the targeted market fell by 1 75 cents per liter after the public announcement of the investigation we also briefly discuss how well the stiglerian theory of collusion performs in this real world conspiracy

conjectures firm characteristics and market structure abstract this paper makes use of a unique data set to investigate how firms in the vancouver british columbia retail gasoline market view their rivals and how consumers in turn view these firms own and rival price elasticities of demand conjectural variations and lerner indices are estimated for thirteen service stations in a submarket of vancouver these variables are then related to firm characteristics such as type of ownership degree of horizontal and vertical integration and type of service in this way systematic patterns in seller behavior and in buyer attitudes are revealed

a social institutional approach to identifying generation cohorts in china with a comparison with american consumers identifying distinctive target segments is a fundamental challenge faced by international marketers this paper describes an approach to understanding consumer market structures in an important international market china and to segmenting chinese consumers by integrating insights from generational cohort and social institutional theories we conduct two empirical studies to verify how china s recent momentous ideological events could give rise to and affect the life experiences of different generation cohorts in the country the results of study 1 support the conceptual framework and establish three distinct cohorts in china red guards modern realists and global materialists study 2 builds on the findings of study 1 it links cohort differences to differences in consumer values materialism and choice behaviors foreign vs local brands and then compares them with parallel consumers in the united states this paper outlines and tests an approach to segmentation that can help international firms identify distinct segments in and design effective marketing strategies for china

multinational production effect on brand value direct foreign investment in manufacturing abroad has a number of consequences for the firm one aspect particularly salient when the company s image is tied to its home country is the impact of the dfi upon customer perceptions of the brand the present study shows how changes in perceptions can be assessed prior to the investment decision and how the brand value consequences of a particular location can be estimated the proposed method is illustrated using data from a japanese company s entry into the u s

international product positioning one of the cornerstones of a firm s marketing strategy in any market is the development of an appropriate product positioning plan this paper argues that may of the same considerations that go into the positioning strategy in the home country are directly relevant for international markets there is an added elements of complexity in that the country of origin of the imported product will often be a salient factor in the buyer evaluation process the effect of country stereotype will be to shift the position of the product in the perceptual space and alter the overall evaluation of its merits the competitive strength of the product will thus be affected by country biases the paper shows how these factors can be dealt with in the management of the international product positioning task

switching costs in the wholesale distribution of cigarettes recent theories of price wars triggered by entry assign a critical role to switching costs in explaining price and output changes earlier elzinga and mills 1998 showed that actual switching patterns following an episode of new entry in an industry are driven by the fact that buyers have different switching costs the current paper draws on transaction specific price and shipments data surrounding the 1984 1985 price war in generic cigarettes to explore the size and determinants of switching costs among wholesale cigarette distributors results show that switching costs vary across firms and are nontrivial in magnitude several implications of the findings are discussed

cross national laws and differences in market response international differences in general and cultural differences in particular exert profound influence on what people buy in modeling market response highly visible international differences in purchase behavior seem to lead to an assumption by management scientists that there are large parallel international differences in market response to such things as price and advertising in an interpretive review of market response models we do find international differences in response parameters but we also find that parameter differences due to cross national factors tend to be smaller than differences related to technical characteristics of the model or to product market specifics we suggest two new intermediate categories of generalizability between the extremes of everything is the same and everything is different we also argue that one promising approach to international generalization is through appropriate statistical adjustment of parameters from existing models

attitudes towards foreign products and international price competition in this paper we analyse price competition between firms established in different countries when demand is sensitive to national biases the intensity of this bias varies across consumers in this context trade arises because of the dispersion of consumers perception of the foreign good when consumer attitudes are diverse enough one firm concentrates on consumers with an intensive bias leaving room for the other which will serve consumers with a low bias next an increase in import tariff will unambiguously lead to a general increase in price since in equilibrium the domestic firm will decide to increase margins finally we identify conditions under which buy domestic campaigns increase local welfare and output attitudes envers les produits etrangers et concurrence internationale par les prix dans ce memoire les auteurs analysent la concurrence par les prix entre firmes etablies dans divers pays quand la demande est sensible a certaines preferences de caractere national l intensite de ce biais varie selon les consommateurs dans ce contexte le commerce international est possible parce que il y a une certaine dispersion de la perception du produit etranger par les consommateurs locaux quand les attitudes des consommateurs varient beaucoup une firme se concentre sur les consommateurs qui ont un biais important laissant assez d espace a l autre firme pour qu elle puisse servir les consommateurs qui ont un biais plus faible un accroissement du niveau des droits de douane entraine inevitablement un accroissement general du niveau de prix puisque en equilibre la firme locale va decider d augmenter ses marges on identifie les conditions qui vont faire que les campagnes d achat chez soi vont accroitre les niveaux de bien etre et de production dans l economie locale

income after job loss the role of the family and the welfare state that displaced workers suffer long lasting earnings losses is a stylized fact raising the question whether these losses are replaced by other means for married men increased labour supply by the wife may be one way another possibility is that the public welfare system offsets the same losses i used a swedish longitudinal data set containing married couples where the husband was either employed or made redundant in 1987 by an establishment closure there was no evidence that husbands job loss positively affected wives annual earnings although husbands utilization of unemployment insurance increased significantly government transfers including also sickness insurance disability insurance and means tested social benefits did not fully replace husbands long run earnings losses hence displaced workers seem to suffer also from long lasting losses in family income which in many respects is a better measure of economic welfare than individual earnings or wages

are workers permanently scarred by job displacements this paper investigates whether workers suffer lasting scars following job displacements using david t ellwood s 1982 terminology scars represent persistent effects whereas blemishes are transitory adjustments which dissipate over time more precisely dislocated individuals are defined as scarred if they continue to earn less or to be unemployed more than their nondisplaced counterparts even after the conclusion of a several year adjustment period