AMBIVALENT INVESTMENT AND THE HOLD‐UP PROBLEM

In this paper we add to the foundations of incomplete contracting literature. We study the hold‐up problem with ambivalent investment, where investment benefits the investing party if ex post the right decision is undertaken but harms the investing party if the wrong decision is made. In this context, we show that the power of contracts to provide investment incentives depends on three factors: the commitment value of contracts, the amount of quasirents that the investing party can expect in the case of out‐of‐contract renegotiation, and the degree of ambivalence of investment. First, contracts provide first‐best investment incentives when parties can commit to a contract regardless of the type of investment. Second, with sufficiently ambivalent investment, if parties cannot commit not to renegotiate a contract and if the investing party's bargaining power is intermediate, contracts cannot improve investment incentives above those provided by no contract. In contrast, a simple buyer or seller option contract is optimal when the investing party's bargaining power is extreme. (JEL: D23, K12, L22)     

Internationalization of Developing Country Firms into Developed Countries: The Role of Host Country Knowledge-Based Assets and IPR Protection in FDI Location Choice

Foreign direct investment (FDI) from developing to developed countries is a widespread phenomenon in the global economy. The literature suggests that such investments frequently follow a motive to seek knowledge-based assets, with the goal of augmenting the firm's resource base through internationalization. We argue that the prevalence of this motive may direct developing country firms' FDI toward developed countries with relatively stronger knowledge-based assets and weaker intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and that this effect is amplified when both conditions coincide. Furthermore, we suggest that the respective importance of knowledge-based assets and IPR protection diminishes as developing countries augment their own knowledge-based assets and that the importance of asset seeking as an internationalization motive for the country's firms declines compared with other motives such as institutional escapism. We investigate our model with FDI data including investment flows from 85 developing countries to 35 developed countries during 2009–2014. We find that developing country firms prefer investing in developed countries with stronger knowledge-based assets and weaker IPR protection. These criteria attract even more FDI when both co-occur. Furthermore, the influence of weaker host country IPR protection on the location decision diminishes for firms originating from home countries with higher stocks of knowledge-based assets.     

Investing in a Shared Supplier in a Competitive Market: Stochastic Capacity Case

When firms invest in a shared supplier, one key concern is whether the invested capacity will be used for a competitor. In practice, this concern is addressed by restricting the use of the capacity. We consider what happens when two competing firms invest in a shared supplier. We consider two scenarios that differ in how capacity is used: exclusive capacity and first‐priority capacity. We model firms' investment and production decisions, and analyze the equilibrium outcomes in terms of the number of investing firms and capacity levels for each scenario; realized capacity is a stochastic function of investment levels. We also identify conditions under which the spillover effect occurs, where one firm taps into the other firm's invested capacity. Although the spillover supposedly intensifies competition, it actually discourages firms' investment. We also characterize the firms' and supplier's preference about the capacity type. While the non‐investing firm always prefers spillovers from the first‐priority capacity, the investing firm does not always want to shut off the other firm's access to its leftover capacity, especially when allowing spillover induces the other firm not to invest. The supplier's preference depends on the trade‐off between over‐investment and flexibility.     

MADE IN THE WORLD: THE GLOBAL SPREAD OF PRODUCTION

We are moving rapidly into an age of transnational manufacturing, where things made in one country are shipped across national borders for further work, storage, sales, repair, remanufacture, recycle, or disposal; but our laws, policies, and management practices are slow in adjusting to this reality. They are often based on inaccurate premises. This article examines these premises and suggests what they imply for management of manufacturing. First, a common view is that manufacturing investment in the industrialized nations is declining and shifting to the developing countries. This is not true. Investment in manufacturing in both industrialized and developing nations is increasing and, in absolute value, there is a lot more investment in industrialized countries than in developing countries. Second, a related view argued by many is that manufacturing does not have a bright future in the rich countries. I argue that manufacturers can thrive in the industrialized countries if they learn how to add more value for the end users. They must go beyond productivity improvement to producing more technologically advanced and customized products, responding faster to changing customer demands, and appending more services to their products. Doing all this is easier in the industrialized countries because the needed skills and infrastructure are more readily available there. Third, another potentially misleading notion is related to why companies invest in manufacturing abroad. Access to low-cost production is not the main motivation in most cases; rather it is access to market. Superior global manufacturers use their foreign factories for much more: to serve their worldwide customers better, preempt competitors, work with sophisticated suppliers, collect critical marketing, technological, and competitive intelligence, and attract talented individuals into the company. They build integrated global production networks, not collections of disjointed factories that are spread internationally. Thus their investment in manufacturing abroad is not a substitute for investment at home, it is a complement. Building and managing such integrated global factor networks is the next challenge in manufacturing.     

RELATIVE FACTOR ENDOWMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL PORTFOLIO CHOICE

We present a model of international portfolio choice based on cross‐country differences in relative factor abundance. Countries have varying degrees of similarity in their factor endowment ratios, and are subject to aggregate productivity shocks. Risk‐averse consumers can insure against these shocks by investing their wealth at home and abroad. In a many‐good setup, the change in factor prices after a positive shock in a particular country provides insurance to countries that have dissimilar factor endowment ratios, but is bad news for countries with similar factor endowment ratios, since their incomes will worsen. Therefore countries with similar relative factor endowments have a stronger incentive to invest in one another for insurance purposes than countries with dissimilar endowments. The importance of this effect depends on the size of countries. Empirical evidence linking bilateral international equity investment positions to a proxy for relative factor endowments supports our theory: the similarity of host and source countries in their relative capital–labor ratios has a positive effect on the source country’s investment position in the host country. The effect of similarity is enhanced by the size of host countries.     

Assessing country risk for foreign investment decisions

Foreign investment decisions are typically taken using mainly economic evaluation criteria. Nowadays many companies are becoming aware that there are additional risks associated with foreign investment that arise as a direct consequence of choosing to operate in a different environment. Country risk assessment as an emerging function in international business reflects a growing recognition of the need to include an evaluation of these additional risks in any comprehensive foreign investment proposal. So far the emphasis has been on assessing the risk associated with factors such as political and economic stability. Little attention has been given to the risks that could arise from the effects of basic socio-cultural differences between the domestic and the proposed foreign environments. How can socio-cultural differences be structured into country risk assessment procedures? This paper develops a framework to answer this need and demonstrates its application to a typical foreign investment scenario.     

非线性技术演化条件下的专利研发投资决策研究

本文将基于TRIZ理论的非线性技术演化规律引入到专利研发投资的期权博弈模型中,分别在完全垄断市场和双寡头竞争市场条件下,讨论了受技术演化影响时企业所蕴含的实物期权特征,并基于博弈均衡分析了企业于技术演化时间轴上进行专利研发投资的最优投资时机选择和面对具有不同投资风险技术时的应对方案。研究结果表明：在非线性技术演化条件下,完全垄断市场中的企业投资临界值会随技术发展下降,进而促使企业对高技术风险专利展开提前投资;在双寡头竞争市场中,企业会为争当领导者而选择放弃其期权价值,将投资提前至专利价值较低的技术发展初期执行,形成非帕累托最优的同时投资均衡;此外,企业会对高风险高收益的技术呈现优先投资的偏好。本文的结论能够在一定程度上解释企业在技术发展初期就进行高额研发投资的动机,以及技术自身属性如何对投资决策造成的影响,可以为现实中企业在面临类似投资问题时做出理性决策提供参考。     

Resilience Analytics with Application to Power Grid of a Developing Region

Infrastructure development of volatile regions is a significant investment by international government and nongovernment organizations, with attendant requirements for risk management. Global development banks may be tasked to manage these investments and provide a channel between donors and borrowers. Moreover, various stakeholders from the private sector, local and international agencies, and the military can be engaged in conception, planning, and implementation of constituent projects. Emergent and future conditions of military conflict, politics, economics, technology, environment, behaviors, institutions, and society that stress infrastructure development are prevalent, and funding mechanisms are vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse. This article will apply resilience analytics with scenario‐based preferences to identify the stressors that most influence a prioritization of initiatives in the electric power sector of Afghanistan. The resilience in this article is conceived in terms of the degree of disruption of priorities when stressors influence the preferences of stakeholders, and ultimately a prioritization of initiatives. The ancillary results include an understanding of which initiatives contribute most and least across strategic criteria and which criteria have the most impact for the analysis. The article concludes with recommendations for risk monitoring and risk management of the portfolio of stressors through the life cycle and horizon of grid capacity expansion.     

A Multifactorial Risk Prioritization Framework for Foodborne Pathogens

We develop a prioritization framework for foodborne risks that considers public health impact as well as three other factors (market impact, consumer risk acceptance and perception, and social sensitivity). Canadian case studies are presented for six pathogen‐food combinations: Campylobacter spp. in chicken; Salmonella spp. in chicken and spinach; Escherichia coli O157 in spinach and beef; and Listeria monocytogenes in ready‐to‐eat meats. Public health impact is measured by disability‐adjusted life years and the cost of illness. Market impact is quantified by the economic importance of the domestic market. Likert‐type scales are used to capture consumer perception and acceptance of risk and social sensitivity to impacts on vulnerable consumer groups and industries. Risk ranking is facilitated through the development of a knowledge database presented in the format of info cards and the use of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) to aggregate the four factors. Three scenarios representing different stakeholders illustrate the use of MCDA to arrive at rankings of pathogen‐food combinations that reflect different criteria weights. The framework provides a flexible instrument to support policymakers in complex risk prioritization decision making when different stakeholder groups are involved and when multiple pathogen‐food combinations are compared.     

The Firm as a Means of Concealing Information

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that a firm may owe its continued existence to its attempts to conceal information from its competitors about the unknown characteristics of a certain factor, not just to its savings on market transaction costs, its team‐working, risk‐sharing, or the encouragement of ex ante specific investment. This is because the existence of a firm contract severs the relationship between the factor market and the product market, thereby making it difficult for outsiders to observe the marginal contribution of the intermediate factor and make statistical inferences about the factor's unknown characteristics. Furthermore, an optimal contract is determined by a trade‐off not only between traditional risk‐sharing and incentive, but also between the incentive and information concealing. Finally, we show that this latter kind of trade‐off also affects the position of the optimal boundary of the firm.     

The Implications of Utilizing Market Information and Adopting Agricultural Advice for Farmers in Developing Economies

To alleviate poverty in developing countries, governments and non‐governmental organizations disseminate two types of information: (i) agricultural advice to enable farmers to improve their operations (cost reduction, quality improvement, and process yield increase); and (ii) market information about future price/demand to enable farmers to make better production planning decisions. This information is usually disseminated free of charge. While farmers can use the market information to improve their production plans without incurring any (significant) cost, adopting agricultural advice to improve operations requires upfront investment, for example, equipment, fertilizers, pesticides, and higher quality seeds. In this study, we examine whether farmers should use market information to improve their production plans (or adopt agricultural advice to improve their operations) when they engage in Cournot competition under both uncertain market demand and uncertain process yield. Our analysis indicates that both farmers will use the market information to improve their profits in equilibrium. Hence, relative to the base case in which market information is not available, the provision of market information can improve the farmers' total welfare (i.e., total profit for both farmers). Moreover, when the underlying process yield is highly uncertain or when the products are highly heterogeneous, the provision of market information is welfare‐maximizing in the sense that the maximum total welfare of farmers is attained when both farmers utilize market information in equilibrium. Furthermore, in equilibrium, whether a farmer adopts the agricultural advice depends on the size of the requisite upfront investment. More importantly, we show that agricultural advice is not always welfare improving unless the upfront investment is sufficiently low. This result implies that to improve farmers' welfare, governments should consider offering farmer subsidies.     

基于碳限额与交易机制的上下游企业可再生能源投资策略研究

本文在碳限额与交易机制的背景下,构建了由发电商与售电商组成的二级电力供应链,考虑了发电商投资可再生能源与售电商投资可再生能源两种不同情形。在此基础上,研究了电价与可再生能源投资决策问题。通过比较不同情形下的均衡结果,主要的研究结果如下：(1)相对于发电商投资可再生能源的情形而言,售电商投资可再生能源的情形中将有更多的投资量。(2)在发电商投资可再生能源的情形中,售电商的利润低于发电商的利润;而在售电商投资可再生能源的情形中,售电商的利润高于发电商的利润。(3)可再生能源投资成本系数的增加,将降低可再生能源的投资量、电价和电力需求量,从而导致售电商利润会减少,但发电商利润会增加。(4)可再生能源偏好系数的增加使得售电商利润增加,发电商利润减少。     

竞争环境下双边平台增值服务质量投资竞争研究

为了提高竞争环境下双边平台效益与竞争优势,讨论了平台企业对双边用户增值服务质量投资竞争决策问题。在考虑三种不同用户归属条件的基础上,构建了双边平台增值服务投资竞争模型。通过比较分析发现：当双边用户单归属时,无论对平台单边还是双边进行增值服务投资,投资高质量增值服务均是两平台的占优策略。当单边用户多归属时,若对消费者边进行增值服务投资,则投资低质量增值服务为平台的占优策略;若对供应商边或双边进行增值服务投资,则投资高质量增值服务为平台的占优策略。当双边用户多归属时,无论对平台单边还是双边进行增值服务投资,投资低质量增值服务均是两平台的占优策略。     

How Safe Is Safe Enough for Self‐Driving Vehicles?

Self‐driving vehicles (SDVs) promise to considerably reduce traffic crashes. One pressing concern facing the public, automakers, and governments is “How safe is safe enough for SDVs?” To answer this question, a new expressed‐preference approach was proposed for the first time to determine the socially acceptable risk of SDVs. In our between‐subject survey (N = 499), we determined the respondents’ risk‐acceptance rate of scenarios with varying traffic‐risk frequencies to examine the logarithmic relationships between the traffic‐risk frequency and risk‐acceptance rate. Logarithmic regression models of SDVs were compared to those of human‐driven vehicles (HDVs); the results showed that SDVs were required to be safer than HDVs. Given the same traffic‐risk‐acceptance rates for SDVs and HDVs, their associated acceptable risk frequencies of SDVs and HDVs were predicted and compared. Two risk‐acceptance criteria emerged: the tolerable risk criterion, which indicates that SDVs should be four to five times as safe as HDVs, and the broadly acceptable risk criterion, which suggests that half of the respondents hoped that the traffic risk of SDVs would be two orders of magnitude lower than the current estimated traffic risk. The approach and these results could provide insights for government regulatory authorities for establishing clear safety requirements for SDVs.     

基于绿色投资效率的港航供应链投资策略研究

在IMO环境政策约束日趋严格的背景下，绿色投资成为港航企业提升自身竞争优势的方式之一。本文以港口主导的供应链为研究对象，分析三种投资场景与不同成员投资的利益关系，即从绿色技术投资效率对港航供应链的成本效应、绿色技术投入效应、经济效应和市场效应等方面展开分析，最后分析不同投资策略对消费者剩余和社会福利的影响。研究表明：港口绿色技术投资在一定程度上会增加整体供应链的成本投入；当绿色技术投资效率逐步提高时，绿色投入水平不断下降，降低了绿色投入的成本，从而达到“投入高效率，投入水平低增长，整体收益高增长”的投资效果；无论是承运人或是港口进行绿色技术投入，均会增加市场的服务价格，相较于非绿色技术投入，绿色技术投入时会增加整体市场的需求数量；从消费者剩余的角度考虑，承运人绿色技术投入相较于港口绿色技术投入产生的消费者剩余大，也会在一定程度上减少因价格“传递效应”带来的不利影响；从社会福利的角度考虑，虽然绿色投资可能会降低社会福利，但承运人投资产生的社会福利优于港口绿色投资时产生的社会福利；从保护环境的角度，政府的政策制定具有较高的优先级，有助于提升环境收益。研究结果进一步丰富了港航企业绿色投资的研究成果，可为合理权衡绿色技术投资效率，为港口供应链成员的绿色投资决策提供一定的参考，对绿色港口供应链的良性发展具有一定的指导意义。     

CAPITAL INFLOWS,FINANCIAL STRUCTURE AND HOUSING BOOMS

We use a panel VAR to study the effect of shocks to capital inflows, which are identified using sign restrictions, on the housing market in OECD countries. To explore how effects of these shocks change with the structure of the mortgage market and the degree of mortgage securitization, we allow the VAR coefficients to vary with mortgage‐market characteristics. Our results indicate that capital‐inflow shocks have a significant and positive effect on real house prices, real credit available to the private sector, and real residential investment. The responses of these variables are stronger in countries with more developed mortgage markets and in countries where securitization is allowed.     

When Gray is Good: Gray Markets and Market‐Creating Investments

Gray markets arise when an intermediary buys a product in a lower‐priced, often emerging market and resells it to compete with the product's original manufacturer in a higher priced, more developed market. Evidence suggests that gray markets make the original manufacturer worse off globally by eroding profit margins in developed markets. Thus, it is interesting that many firms do not implement control systems to curb gray market activity. Our analysis suggests that one possible explanation lies at the intersection of two economic phenomena: firms investing to build emerging market demand, and investments conferring positive externalities (spillovers) on a rival's demand. We find that gray markets amplify the incentives to invest in emerging markets, because investments increase both emerging market consumption and the gray market's cost base. Moreover, when market‐creating investments confer positive spillovers, each firm builds its own market more efficiently. Thus, firms can be better off with gray markets when investments confer spillovers, provided the spillover effect is sufficiently large. These results provide a perspective on why firms might not implement control systems to prevent gray market distribution in sectors where investment spillovers are common (e.g., the technology sector) and, more broadly, why gray markets persist in the economy.     

基于CRRA效用准则的资产负债管理

本文在连续时间不完备市场框架下,考虑了投资者终端时刻资产负债比率的期望效用最大化问题。假设金融市场由1个无风险资产与多个风险资产构成,其中风险资产的价格过程由几何布朗运动刻画;投资者在整个投资时间水平内面临一个由几何布朗运动刻画的外生负债。利用随机动态规划方法,给出了相应的HJB方程与验证定理,并得到了最优投资策略与最优值函数的解析表达式。进一步,通过敏感性分析与数值算例发现：（1）外生负债的预期增长率与当前时刻的资产负债比率对最优投资策略没有影响;（2）在不考虑外生负债时,在最优策略下,投资到风险资产上的资金比例随着风险资产波动率或相对风险厌恶系数的增大而减小,而在考虑外生负债时,并非如此,只有满足一定条件时最优投资策略才是风险资产波动率或相对风险厌恶系数的减函数;（3）不考虑外生负债时,最优值函数是投资时间水平与风险资产预期收益率的增函数,风险资产波动率的减函数,但在考虑外生负债时该结论只在各参数满足一定关系时才成立,否则结论相反。     

Capacity Investment and Product Line Decisions of a Multiproduct Leader and a Focus Strategy Entrant

In this article, I investigate the capacity investment cost conditions where a multiproduct market leader may respond to a focus strategy entrant by using different strategies such as changing the product mix, production volumes, quality levels, and/or by investing in more capacity. The products offered in the market are quality differentiated and customers are heterogeneous in their willingness to pay for quality. The capacity investment costs of the two firms (i.e., the leader and the entrant) may also be different. The classical Stackelberg model predicts that an incumbent does not change its position in response to entry. However, when heterogeneous customer base, product differentiation, and capacity costs are taken into consideration, I find that the leader with a low capacity cost may choose to expand its product line and increase its production. The leader with low capacity cost may introduce a product that it was holding back when the entrant has to bear the high‐capacity cost and cannibalization threat is relatively small. Nevertheless, the extent of production volume strategies reduces as the capacity cost increases for the leader. I also find that when the leader has the power to set the industry standards by deciding the quality levels, as a response to a high‐quality focused entrant, the leader increases both levels of quality and production of the low‐quality product. Moreover, when the capacity investment cost is high for both the entrant and the leader, I find that market prices may increase with entry.     

投资机会变动与风险收益关系实证研究

应用跨期资本资产定价模型研究股市投资机会变动时的风险收益关系和跨期风险对冲策略。以25个规模-账面市值比组合以及扩展组合作为检验资产,以经济、情绪和市场指标作为状态变量反映投资机会,以DCC-MVGARCH方法估计的资产超额收益与市场超额收益的条件协方差衡量市场风险,以DCC-MVGARCH方法估计的资产超额收益与状态变量新息的条件协方差衡量跨期风险,应用面板回归方法检验资产超额收益与风险的关系。研究结果表明,在单状态变量中,货币供应增长率、房地产投资增长率、宏观经济景气指数、规模溢价等新息降低,投资机会出现不利变动,与这些新息负相关的资产能对冲投资机会的不利变动;存贷差增长率、利率、股市波动等新息增加时,投资机会出现不利变动,与这些新息正相关的资产能对冲投资机会的不利变动;各模型具有良好的解释能力,其中规模溢价、股市波动和货币供应的解释能力较高。还对多状态变量进行检验、比较,并提供了相应投资策略。