How Excessive Stage Time Reduction in NPD Negatively Impacts Market Value

We empirically investigate how time reductions in particular product development stages impact market value. Using longitudinal project data from 107 firms, we compare stage times prior to and following investments in new product development process changes. Our analysis reveals a predominance of focus on time reduction in the late stages of product development. We also find support for the existence of an inverted‐U relationship between market performance and time reductions for some of these stages: beta testing and technical implementation. Therefore, while time reductions can improve time to market, we observe a clear limit to the benefits associated with stage time reductions at particular stages. We also investigate the role of strategic contextual factors such as the extent to which a firm's patented innovations rely upon a variety, as opposed to a limited range, of diverse technology classes. The extent of this technology‐span impacts optimal stage time reductions. We perform an in‐depth post hoc analysis with a small set of firms to uncover how they should invest in stage time reduction given our empirical results. The post hoc analysis highlights that some firms are likely overinvesting in stage time reductions and destroying market value.     

Product Design Awards and The Market Value of The Firm

Product design has increasingly been recognized as an important source of competitive advantage. This study empirically estimates the impact of effective design on the market value of the firm. We use a firm's receipt of a product design award as a proxy for its design effectiveness. Based on data from 264 announcements of design awards given to commercialized products between 1998 and 2011, we find that award announcements are associated with statistically significant positive stock market reactions. Depending on the benchmark model used to estimate the stock market reaction, the market reaction over a two‐day period (the day of announcement and the preceding day) ranges from 0.95% to 1.02%. The market reaction is more positive for smaller firms and for firms whose award winning products are consumer goods. However, a firm's growth potential, industry competitiveness, and whether a firm is a first time or repeated award winner do not significantly affect the market reaction.     

Impact of secondary market on consumer return policies and supply chain coordination

In this paper, we develop a unified model to study the inventory management problem of a product and the coordination of the associated supply chain consisting of a single supplier and considerably many retailers in the presence of a secondary market. Specifically, consumer returns are allowed in the initial sales. Then, we introduce a secondary market to salvage the returns and the leftovers from the initial sales. In this secondary market, a discount price will be offered to the consumers but no returns are accepted. Moreover, between the primary and the secondary market, there is an internal market where retailers can trade among themselves so that they are able to adjust their inventory levels to prepare for the sales in the secondary market. We study the retailers' and the supply chain's inventory decision in this case and highlight the impact of the secondary market on the sales as well as on the supply chain coordination contracts. We conclude that the secondary market helps us to increase the total wholesale volume. Numerical examples show that the total sales profit is also increased. However, the secondary market aggravates the incentive conflict between the retailers and the supply chain on deciding the optimal inventory levels and hence requires the supplier to offer more generous buyback or sales rebate contracts for coordination of the supply chain. Finally, we extend our analysis to more general cases and also show that our results are robust to some of the modeling assumptions.     

Macroeconomic Implications of Agglomeration

Cities exist because of the productivity gains that arise from clustering production and workers, a process called agglomeration. How important is agglomeration for aggregate growth? This paper constructs a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of cities and uses it to estimate the effect of local agglomeration on aggregate growth. We combine aggregate time‐series and city‐level panel data to estimate the model's parameters via generalized method of moments. The estimates imply a statistically and economically significant impact of local agglomeration on the growth rate of per capita consumption, raising it by about 10%.     

Optimal Policies for Recovering the Value of Consumer Returns

This study characterizes the class of Pareto optimal returns policies between a manufacturer and a retailer who receives consumer returns. The manufacturer may take a costly hidden action that reduces the expected number of products returned by consumers, which when realized is hidden information known only to the retailer. When faced with consumer returns, the retailer must decide whether to send the product back to the manufacturer, who harvests a low salvage value, or to engage in costly refurbishment that permits the returned product to be resold to consumers. We find that the optimal returns policies may be implemented through the payment by the manufacturer of a full refund to the retailer of the wholesale price for any returns as well as a bonus paid to the retailer that is decreasing in the number of returns to the manufacturer.     

When to Carry Eccentric Products? Optimal Retail Assortment under Consumer Returns

To understand whether retailers should consider consumer returns when merchandising, we study how the optimal assortment of a retailer is influenced by its return policy. The retailer selects its assortment from an exogenous set of horizontally differentiated products. Consumers make purchase and keep/return decisions in nested multinomial logit fashion. Our main finding is that the optimal assortment has a distinct structure for relatively strict return policies: it is optimal to offer a mix of the most popular and most eccentric products when the refund amount is sufficiently low, which can be viewed as a form of risk sharing between the retailer and consumers. In contrast, if the refund is sufficiently high or when returns are disallowed, the optimal assortment is composed of only the most popular products (a common finding in the literature). We provide preliminary empirical evidence for one of the key drivers of our results: more eccentric products have higher probability of return—conditional on purchase. In light of our analytical findings and managerial insights, we conclude that retailers should take returns into account when merchandising.     

随礼、求雨、扭秧歌：东北Z村村民自治的民俗背景分析

从Z村及农民K的实际出发,考察随礼、求雨及扭秧歌活动过程中村干部与群众之间的互动情况。试图说明：大多数农民对随礼并不排斥,随礼是农民实现情感交融和经济互助的重要途径,村干部积极参加村中红白事并随礼,目的之一是为了方便其日后开展工作,随礼中干群互动的方式是间接的。对于求雨,村干部虽然不参加,但也不反对,他们以妥协和默许的方式实现与求雨者之间的隐形互动。扭秧歌是直接的干群互动,它表现为村干部对参加者在资金、场地等方面的支持和帮助。文章认为,民俗对村庄成员能产生强大向心力和凝聚力,对随礼、求雨等欠科学的民俗,只能依赖劝导和教育的方法规范而非强制手段,对扭秧歌等健康的民俗,应该通过各种方式传承发扬。     

市场信息集聚效应与交易效率的研究

本文从市场交易这个角度来研究信息和效率问题.主要结果,1)提出了市场信息多样化和集聚的概念,并给出了信息集聚的数学表述;2)建立了不完全市场交易的讨价——还价交易谈判动态博弈模型,得到多阶段交易的贝尔曼方程;3)以此证明了市场信息的集聚效应,产生报酬递增和提高市场流动性.这是市场信息更重要的价值和作用机理,而不仅仅是通...     

东西部地区企业职工培训投资与收益的实证分析

通过对东西部地区制造业企业在职培训投资与收益的实证研究,发现,东西部地区企业在职培训与工资收入密切相关。东西部地区培训投资的差距可以部分地解释工资收入差距。西部企业较低的生产技术水平,不利于企业长期的培训投资和工资收入的增加。     

建立协作关系，增强企业核心竞争力

我国加入WTO后，企业将面临激烈的市场竞争，企业的核心竞争力是企业在竞争中求生存、求发展的关键。文章从理论和实践两个层面，论述了建立大企业与中小企业之间的分工协作关系，是增强企业核心竞争力的途径之一。