Demand Fluctuations in the Ready‐Mix Concrete Industry

I investigate the role of demand shocks in the ready‐mix concrete industry. Using Census data on more than 15,000 plants, I estimate a model of investment and entry in oligopolistic markets. These estimates are used to simulate the effect of eliminating short‐term local demand changes. A policy of smoothing the volatility of demand has a market expansion effect: The model predicts a 39% increase in the number of plants in the industry. Since bigger markets have both more plants and larger plants, a demand‐smoothing fiscal policy would increase the share of large plants by 20%. Finally, the policy of smoothing demand reduces entry and exit by 25%, but has no effect on the rate at which firms change their size.     

The Costs of Environmental Regulation in a Concentrated Industry

The typical cost analysis of an environmental regulation consists of an engineering estimate of the compliance costs. In industries where fixed costs are an important determinant of market structure, this static analysis ignores the dynamic effects of the regulation on entry, investment, and market power. I evaluate the welfare costs of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act on the U.S. Portland cement industry, accounting for these effects through a dynamic model of oligopoly in the tradition of Ericson and Pakes (1995). Using the two‐step estimator of Bajari, Benkard, and Levin (2007), I recover the entire cost structure of the industry, including the distributions of sunk entry costs and capacity adjustment costs. My primary finding is that the Amendments have significantly increased the sunk cost of entry, leading to a loss of between $810M and $3.2B in product market surplus. A static analysis misses the welfare penalty on consumers, and obtains the wrong sign of the welfare effects on incumbent firms.     

Entry and Exit in OTC Derivatives Markets

We develop a parsimonious model to study the equilibrium and socially optimal decisions of banks to enter, trade in, and possibly exit, an OTC market. Although we endow all banks with the same trading technology, banks' optimal entry and trading decisions endogenously lead to a realistic market structure composed of dealers and customers with distinct trading patterns. We decompose banks' entry incentives into incentives to hedge risk and incentives to make intermediation profits. We show that dealer banks enter more than is socially optimal. In the face of large negative shocks, they may also exit more than is socially optimal when markets are not perfectly resilient.     

入世后中国企业的进入退出问题研究

作为WTO的成员国,中国经济已完全融入全球化竞争之中.入世对中国企业的影响,首先是一个进入退出的问题.入世后,无论是外商投资企业的进入还是外国产品的进口都会越来越普遍,从而必将对中国从事替代品经营的厂商形成冲击.本文利用比较优势和竞争优势假说,分析了入世后中国企业的进入退出以及如何打造中国企业的竞争优势问题.     

Market Structure and Multiple Equilibria in Airline Markets

We provide a practical method to estimate the payoff functions of players in complete information, static, discrete games. With respect to the empirical literature on entry games originated by Bresnahan and Reiss (1990) and Berry (1992), the main novelty of our framework is to allow for general forms of heterogeneity across players without making equilibrium selection assumptions. We allow the effects that the entry of each individual airline has on the profits of its competitors, its “competitive effects,” to differ across airlines. The identified features of the model are sets of parameters (partial identification) such that the choice probabilities predicted by the econometric model are consistent with the empirical choice probabilities estimated from the data. We apply this methodology to investigate the empirical importance of firm heterogeneity as a determinant of market structure in the U.S. airline industry. We find evidence of heterogeneity across airlines in their profit functions. The competitive effects of large airlines (American, Delta, United) are different from those of low cost carriers and Southwest. Also, the competitive effect of an airline is increasing in its airport presence, which is an important measure of observable heterogeneity in the airline industry. Then we develop a policy experiment to estimate the effect of repealing the Wright Amendment on competition in markets out of the Dallas airports. We find that repealing the Wright Amendment would increase the number of markets served out of Dallas Love.     

Advertising and the Dynamics of Market Structure: The UK Car Industry, 1958–1983*

This paper looks at the effect of advertising on market share dynamics, developing a model that describes the mechanism by which advertising affects consumer choice and illustrating it with reference to the UK car market. Advertising shares are observed to be highly positively correlated with market shares, suggesting that advertising has both pro- and anti-competitive effects. Advertising facilitates entry in as far as entrants can acquire market share through advertising, but it inhibits entry when an escalation in total industry advertising makes this acquisition prohibitively costly.     

A GAP FOR ME: ENTREPRENEURS AND ENTRY

We present a theory of entrepreneurial entry (and exit) decisions. Knowing their own managerial talent, entrepreneurs decide which market to enter, where markets differ in size. We obtain a striking sorting result: Each entrant in a large market is more efficient than any entrepreneur in a smaller market because competition is endogenously more intense in larger markets. This result continues to hold when entrepreneurs can export their output to other markets, thereby incurring a unit transport cost or tariff. The sorting and price competition effects imply that the number of entrants (and hence product variety) may actually be smaller in larger markets. In the stochastic dynamic extension of the model, we show that the churning rate of entrepreneurs is higher in larger markets. (JEL: L11, L13, M13, F12)     

增加价值分配结构现状及其决定因素分析——基于我国上市公司的实证研究

文章以教育部博士点基金项目(2011年)为依托,将企业增加价值在其主要利益相关者之间分配份额(分配结构)作为研究对象,构建了非竞争市场因素影响增加价值分配结构结的结构方程模型框架,并以2003-2010年上市公司微观数据为样本,运用结构方程分析方法对相关假设进行实证检验。实证结果表明:1、目前国企相对民企、欠发达地区相对于发达地区以及商业相对于工业和地产对增加员工所得份额、降低政府所得份额有显著影响,表现为对分配结构存在显著的负向影响;2、股权集中度与经营绩效对增加员工所得份额、降低政府所得份额有影响,表现为对分配结构有正向影响,但统计上不显著;3、研究发现政府所得率与员工所得率之间呈反向变动关系。结论表明:非竞争市场因素对我国增加价值分配结构存在重要影响,在解决分配结构问题的时候,应尽量消除非竞争市场因素的不利影响。     

FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND VERTICAL INTEGRATION: THEORY AND EVIDENCE

Existing evidence is mostly inconclusive on the relevance of financial development as a determinant of vertical integration. This paper presents evidence that, once industry heterogeneity in firm size distribution is taken into account, financial development is an important determinant of cross‐country differences in vertical integration. Financial development fosters entry of firms and increases competition in the industry. This reduces vertical integration of larger firms, but also leads smaller, non‐integrated, firms to exit the industry. As a result, higher financial development reduces vertical integration in industries where a high share of output is produced by small firms. The positive effect of financial development on entry also reduces vertical integration by fostering the development of input markets.     

Dimensions of Market Attractiveness: Competitively Interactive Spatial Models*

This paper presents a normative, multidisciplinary approach for evaluating market entry strategies with concern for the effects of spatial assumptions on performance expectations. An assessment framework is linked to a series of models that show the value of adding spatial and competitive perspectives to typical baseline conceptualizations of market opportunity. Criteria for assessing market attractiveness are discussed with special concern for the problems of field service firms whose market boundaries are not limited by fixed facility locations. The problem is conceptualized as the managerial decision to locate a new brokerage office in a highly competitive regional market area. Realistic constraints are established by focusing the market entry decision through aggregate data from secondary sources that are readily available to an outsider who had not been active in the geographic markets considered. A simple model based on market potential is progressively enhanced with spatially adjusted measures of market attractiveness and competitive resistance. Empirical tests highlight the impact of alternative model formulations and choice criteria on the decision-making process.     

基于信任和企业进入退出机制的产业集群规模演化研究

本文从信任演化的角度出发,以产业集群规模为研究对象,建立了基于信任和企业进入退出机制的演化模型,并利用计算机辅助语言,研究不同进入壁垒的集群规模演化的规律。结果发现,由于信任机制和进入壁垒对集群企业竞争与合作的调节作用,集群规模的演化呈现一定的规律性,演化过程可区分为生长、淘汰、震荡和稳定四个阶段,演化曲线呈倒"S"型,稳定成熟期规模的大小与进入壁垒的高低有关,且进入壁垒对企业进入和生存作用相反。     

Decades of research on market entry modes: What do we really know about external antecedents of entry mode choice?

The choice of a mode of market entry is a critical component of the internationalization strategy, and numerous empirical studies have focused on this topic. Prior research, however, has provided mixed empirical evidence and thus, is difficult to interpret and review.This study examines the external antecedents of the choice of entry mode by meta-analyzing data from 72 independent primary studies. We focus on the decision between wholly owned subsidiaries and cooperative entry modes. For each variable, hypotheses about the theoretically expected direction of effect are posited and tested.We find a strong positive relationship between power distance as a cultural trait of the firm's home country and the propensity to establish a wholly owned subsidiary. On the other hand, we find a negative association between country risk, legal restrictions, market growth, and market size and the preference for wholly owned subsidiaries. We extensively discuss the implications of the meta-analytical results and investigate moderating effects of industry type and the time of the study. The relationship between income level of the host country and entry mode depends, to some degree, on the industry type. Service companies exhibit a negative relationship between income level and wholly owned subsidiaries, while manufacturing companies show a positive relationship.     

Incumbent capability enhancement in response to radical innovations

Schumpeterian market disequilibrium marked by entrepreneurial entry and incumbent exit has long held an important place in management literature. The extant literature has overwhelmingly championed the newcomer, despite incumbents' obvious advantages in resources, experience and market knowledge. The current research provides evidence for the effectiveness of the incumbent's strategy of capability enhancement (along an established technological trajectory) while responding to radical technological innovations. We develop a cognitive process model that integrates managerial cognition with capability development and deployment views, depicting the dynamics of the incumbent's capability enhancement process. We analyze the cognitive drivers of organizational actions in all stages (rigidity, triggering event, and capability renewal) and elucidate the role of top management cognition in the processes of detecting and correcting errors in a strategic course of action. We ground our model in the case of a cork-stopper industry veteran's decline as corks ceded ground to screw tops and other stoppers in the wine industry. How a major company fought back in response to the emergence of these, in the industry context, radical technological innovations, provides the basis for our narrative. The proposed theoretical model contributes to literature on technology management (with regard to incumbent strategies in response to radical innovation threats) as well as the role of cognition in strategy (providing an explanation of the cognitive underpinnings of capability development).     

Last‐In First‐Out Oligopoly Dynamics

This paper extends the static analysis of oligopoly structure into an infinite‐horizon setting with sunk costs and demand uncertainty. The observation that exit rates decline with firm age motivates the assumption of last‐in first‐out dynamics: An entrant expects to produce no longer than any incumbent. This selects an essentially unique Markov‐perfect equilibrium. With mild restrictions on the demand shocks, sequences of thresholds describe firms' equilibrium entry and survival decisions. Bresnahan and Reiss' (1993) empirical analysis of oligopolists' entry and exit assumes that such thresholds govern the evolution of the number of competitors. Our analysis provides an infinite‐horizon game‐theoretic foundation for that structure.     

Advance Selling in the Presence of Speculators and Forward‐Looking Consumers

This article examines the pricing policy of a monopolist seller who may sell in advance of consumption in a market that comprises of myopic consumers, forward‐looking consumers, and speculators. The latter group has no consumption value for the goods and is in the market with the sole objective of making a profit by reselling the purchased goods shortly after. Consumers, although homogeneous in terms of their valuations, are different with respect to their perspectives. We show that in an “upward” market where the expected valuation increases over time, the optimal pricing policy is an ex ante “static” one where the seller “prices into the future” and prices the myopic consumers out of the advance market. However, in a “downward” market where the expected valuation decreases over time, the seller adopts a dynamic pricing strategy except for the case when higher initial sales can trigger more demand subsequently and when the downward trend is not too high. In this case, the seller prefers an ex ante “static” pricing strategy and deliberately prices lower initially to sell to speculators. We identify the conditions under which the seller benefits from the existence of speculators in the market. Moreover, although the presence of entry costs is ineffective as an entry deterrence, we determine the conditions under which exit costs can rein in speculative purchase.     

轿车细分市场中产品线定位的影响因素分析

从市场结构、企业能力和细分市场进入或定位的理论假设出发,基于1999年～2006年中国轿车产业和企业的微观数据,运用文献回顾、经验观察和Logit计量模型工具,结合本土企业与外资企业的行为比较,分析影响细分市场进入的主要因素。研究结果表明,细分市场的集中度越高企业的进入激励越小,企业总体占有率提高后会选择向下扩展产品线,合资企业和本土企业的细分市场定位有显著差异,相互进入会导致产品线的重叠和竞争的恶化,本土企业在实施品牌延伸战略时应避免过早全序列化模式对品牌声誉和市场份额的侵蚀。     

Competing on Time: An Integrated Framework to Optimize Dynamic Time‐to‐Market and Production Decisions

This study develops a comprehensive framework to optimize new product introduction timing and subsequent production decisions faced by a component supplier. Prior to market entry, the supplier performs process design activities, which improve manufacturing yield and the chances of getting qualified for the customer's product. However, a long delay in market entry allows competitors to enter the market and pass the customer's qualification process before the supplier, reducing the supplier's share of the customer's business. After entering the market and if qualified, the supplier also needs to decide how much to produce for a finite planning horizon by considering several factors such as manufacturing yield and stochastic demand, both of which depend on the earlier time‐to‐market decision. To capture this dependency, we develop a sequential, nested, two‐stage decision framework to optimize the time‐to‐market and production decisions in relation to each other. We show that the supplier's optimal market entry and qualification timing decision need to be revised in real time based on the number of qualified competitors at the time of market‐entry decision. We establish the optimality of a threshold policy. Following this policy, at the beginning of each decision epoch, the supplier should optimally stop preparing for qualification and decide whether to enter the market if her order among qualified competitors exceeds a predetermined threshold. We also prove that the supplier's optimal production policy is a state‐dependent, base‐stock policy, which depends on the time‐to‐market and qualification decisions. The proposed framework also enables a firm to quantify how market conditions (such as price and competitor entry behavior) and operating conditions (such as the rate of learning and inventory/production‐related costs) affect time‐to‐market strategy and post‐entry production decisions.     

The Impact of Trade on Intra‐Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity

This paper develops a dynamic industry model with heterogeneous firms to analyze the intra‐industry effects of international trade. The model shows how the exposure to trade will induce only the more productive firms to enter the export market (while some less productive firms continue to produce only for the domestic market) and will simultaneously force the least productive firms to exit. It then shows how further increases in the industry's exposure to trade lead to additional inter‐firm reallocations towards more productive firms. The paper also shows how the aggregate industry productivity growth generated by the reallocations contributes to a welfare gain, thus highlighting a benefit from trade that has not been examined theoretically before. The paper adapts Hopenhayn's (1992a) dynamic industry model to monopolistic competition in a general equilibrium setting. In so doing, the paper provides an extension of Krugman's (1980) trade model that incorporates firm level productivity differences. Firms with different productivity levels coexist in an industry because each firm faces initial uncertainty concerning its productivity before making an irreversible investment to enter the industry. Entry into the export market is also costly, but the firm's decision to export occurs after it gains knowledge of its productivity.     

How to beat early movers: The role of competitive strategy and industry dynamism on followers’ performance in the telecommunications industry

The idea of first-mover advantages is frequently used by both managers and academics alike. Despite its importance for understanding the performance of entry in new markets, the evidence remains mixed. Our study advances research on the entry timing-performance relationship by adopting a contingency perspective that includes both micro (competitive strategies) and macro (industry dynamics) dimensions to explain differences in entrants' profitability. In this paper we focus on follower firms and propose that cost leadership is the best strategy for them to successfully entering a market. In addition, recognizing the contingency effect of industry dynamism, we also examine how market growth and technology evolution affect the effectiveness of followers’ competitive strategies. Specifically, we propose that followers will be better off by using cost strategies in growing markets, while when operating in contexts of technological change the performance of the cost leadership strategy will be lower.     

基于创业团队先前经验的新技术企业市场进入战略选择研究

基于社会认知和战略选择等理论知识,探讨创业团队先前经验构成特征与进入战略创新性的逻辑关系,并探索技术独享性和环境宽松性对团队决策的影响。基于随机抽样的问卷调研方法,利用150份新技术企业样本进行实证分析。研究结果表明,新技术企业初始战略来源于创业团队基于先前经验而达成的集体认知决策,技术导向型团队倾向于通过产品或服务的创新进入市场,而市场导向型的团队则会竭力从交易结构的创新入手,兼顾技术和市场导向的团队,虽然拥有多元化的认知模式,却没能迸发出应有的创造力。技术独享性在创业团队经验构成与进入战略创新性之间发挥正向调节作用,但没有改变团队成员固有认知模式;环境宽松性改变了创业团队在选择市场进入战略时的关注点,当环境较为宽松时,技术导向型和市场导向型的创业团队都呈现出对产品或服务创新的忽视,而加大了在交易结构上谋求创新的力度。