Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Regulatory Protection And The Role Of International Cooperation, Yuan Mei

Research Collection School Of Economics

I develop a general equilibrium framework to analyze the welfare consequences of product regulations and their international harmonization. In my model, raising product standards reduces a negative consumption externality, but also increases the marginal and fixed costs of production. When product standards are set noncooperatively, the effects of standards on other countries' wages and number of firms are not internalized, giving rise to an international inefficiency. The World Trade Organization's nondiscrimination principle of national treatment only partly addresses this inefficiency. Welfare losses from abandoning national treatment average 2.8%, whereas the maximum welfare gains from efficient cooperation average 11.8%.

Obfuscation And Rational Inattention, Aljoscha Janssen, Johannes Kasinger

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study the behavior of duopolistic firms that can obfuscate their prices before competing on price. Obfuscation affects the rational inattentive consumers' optimal information strategy, which determines the probabilistic demand. Our model advances related models by allowing consumers to update their unrestricted prior beliefs with an informative signal of any form. We show that the game may result in an obfuscation equilibrium with high prices or a transparency equilibrium with low prices and no obfuscation, providing an argument for market regulation. Obfuscation equilibria cease to exist for low information costs and if one firm seems a priori considerably more attractive.

The Slogans And Goals Of Antitrust Law, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a comparative examination of the slogans and goals most advocated for antitrust law today – namely, that antitrust should be concerned with “bigness,” that it should intervene when actions undermine the “competitive process,” or that it should be concerned about promoting some conception of welfare. “Bigness” as an antitrust concern targets firms based on absolute size rather than share of a market, as antitrust traditionally has done. The bigness approach entails that antitrust cannot be concerned about low prices, or the welfare of consumers and labor. Nondominant firms could not sustain very high prices or cause significant reductions …

The Role Of Filipino Conglomerates In The Nation's Development, Jesus Felipe

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

Could the country's small and medium companies be the engines of transformation that it needs to attain and sustain the 6.5-8 percent annual growth targeted in the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028? I doubt it. They have neither the knowledge nor the financial muscle to do it.

There is another group of companies that could lead the way. These are the large conglomerates of the nation. They have much better knowledge of the economy and financial power. Yet, in general, they do not innovate or export. Instead, they are into non-tradable activities (real estate, banking, distribution, insurance, construction, telecommunications and food). …

The Distributional Impacts Of Transportation Networks In China, Lin Ma, Tang Yang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper evaluates the distributional impacts of transportation networks in China.We show that the quality of roads and railroads vary substantially over time and space, and ignoring these variations biases the estimates of travel time. To account for quality differences, we construct a new panel dataset and approximate quality using the design speed of roads and railroads that varies by vintage, class, and terrain at the pixel level. We then build a dynamic spatial general equilibrium model that allows for multiple modes and routes of transportation and forward-looking migration decision.We find aggregate welfare gain and less spatial income inequality led …

The Future Of Enterprise Information Systems, Ali Sunyaev, Tobias Dehling, Susanne Strahringer, Li Da Xu, Martin Heinig, Michael Perscheid, Rainer Alt, Matti Rossi

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

[First paragraph] Enterprise information systems (EIS) have been important enablers of crossfunctional processes within businesses since the 1990s. Often referred to as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, they were extended in line with electronic businesses to integrate with suppliers as well as customers. Today, EIS architectures comprise not only ERP, supply chain, and customer relationship management systems, but also business intelligence and analytics. Recently, the move towards decentralized technologies has created new perspectives for EIS. Information systems (IS) research has already addressed opportunities and challenges of these developments quite well, but what will be the pressing opportunities and challenges for …

R&D Subsidies In Permissive And Restrictive Environment: Evidence From Korea, Yumi Koh, Gea M. Lee

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper investigates the extent to which a regulatory environment for R&D subsidies shapes the magnitude and direction of R&D subsidies set by a government and consequent innovation paths. When the WTO adopted a permissive regulatory environment, we find that the Korean government increased R&D subsidies significantly (89.21%) and selectively so for firms and industries with higher returns. Recipient firms conducted less basic research and more development research. Improvements in innovations were mostly incremental and minor. However, such changes did not persist once the WTO switched to a restrictive regulatory environment. Our findings show that the regulatory environment imposed by …

Retail Pharmacies And Drug Diversion During The Opioid Epidemic, Aljoscha Janssen, Xuan Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This study investigates the role of retail pharmacy ownership in the opioid epidemic. Using data of prescription opioid orders, we show that compared with chain pharmacies, independent pharmacies dispense 39.1% more opioids and 60.5% more OxyContin. After an independent pharmacy becomes a chain pharmacy, opioid dispensing decreases. Using the OxyContin reformulation, which reduced non-medical demand but not the legitimate medical demand, we show that at least a third of the difference in the amount of OxyContin dispensed can be attributed to non-medical demand. We show that differences in competitive pressure and whether pharmacists own the pharmacy drive our estimates.