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Selected Works

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Articles 1 - 30 of 297

Full-Text Articles in Industrial Organization

Dynamic Competition With Network Externalities: Why History Matters, Hanna Halaburda, Bruno Jullien, Yaron Yehezkel Dec 2019

Dynamic Competition With Network Externalities: Why History Matters, Hanna Halaburda, Bruno Jullien, Yaron Yehezkel

Hanna Halaburda

This paper considers dynamic platform competition in a market with network externalities. A platform that dominated the market in the previous period becomes ``focal" in the current period, in that agents play the equilibrium in which they join the focal platform whenever such equilibrium exists. We ask whether a low-quality but focal platform can maintain its focal position along time, when it faces a higher quality competitor. Under finite horizon, we find that when platforms are patient enough, the unique equilibrium is efficient. With infinite horizon, however, there are multiple equilibria in which either the low or the high quality …


Hunting Unicorns, Aaron Edlin Dec 2019

Hunting Unicorns, Aaron Edlin

Aaron Edlin

We study the effects of above-cost exclusionary pricing and the efficacy of three policy responses by running experiments involving a monopoly incumbent and a potential entrant. Our experiments show that under a laissez-faire regime, the threat of post-entry price cuts discourages entry, and allows incumbents to charge monopoly prices. Current U.S. policy (Brooke Group) does not help. In contrast, a policy suggested by Baumol (1979) lowers post-exit prices, while Edlin’s (2002) proposal reduces pre-entry prices and encourages entry. While both policies have less competitive outcomes after entry than laissez-faire does, they nevertheless both increase consumer welfare. For Edlin’s proposal this …


On The Optimality Of One-Size-Fits-All Contracts: The Limited Liability Case, Felipe Balmaceda Assoc Prof. Jun 2019

On The Optimality Of One-Size-Fits-All Contracts: The Limited Liability Case, Felipe Balmaceda Assoc Prof.

Felipe Balmaceda

This paper studies a principal-agent relationship when both are risk-neutral and in the presence of
adverse selection and moral hazard. Contracts must satisfy the limited-liability and monotonicity conditions. We provide sufficient conditions under which the optimal contract is simple, in the sense that each type is offered the same contract. These are: the action and the agent's type are complements, and the output's cumulative distribution function is such that the marginal rate of substitution between the action and the agent's type is the same for each possible output realization. Furthermore, under the average monotone likelihood ratio property, the optimal contract …


Strategic Ignorance In Sequential Procurement, Silvana Krasteva, Huseyin Yildirim Apr 2019

Strategic Ignorance In Sequential Procurement, Silvana Krasteva, Huseyin Yildirim

Huseyin Yildirim

Should a buyer approach sellers of complementary goods informed or uninformed of her private valuations, and if informed, in which sequence? In this paper, we show that an informed buyer would start with the high-value seller to minimize future holdup. Informed (or careful) sequencing may, however, hurt the buyer as sellers "read" into it. The buyer may, therefore, commit to ignorance, perhaps, by: overloading herself with unrelated tasks; delegating the sequencing decision; or letting sellers self-schedule. Absent such commitment, we show that ignorance is not time-consistent for the buyer but it increases trade. Evidence on land assembly supports our findings.


Toward A Theory Of Entry In Moral Markets: The Role Of Social Movements And Organizational Identity, Brandon Lee, Panikos Georgallis Jul 2018

Toward A Theory Of Entry In Moral Markets: The Role Of Social Movements And Organizational Identity, Brandon Lee, Panikos Georgallis

Brandon Lee

A growing body of research on moral markets—sectors whose raison d’être is to offer market solutions to social and environmental issues—has offered critical insights into the emergence and growth of these sectors. Less is known, however, about why some firms enter moral markets while others do not. Drawing from research on market entry, organizational identity, and social movements, we develop a theory that highlights the potential of organizational identity to explain variation in entry into moral markets. We then expand our framework by theorizing about contingencies that alter the shape of the relationship between organizational identity and market entry: the …


Re-Imagining The Labor Movement As A Social Movement, James Patin Mar 2018

Re-Imagining The Labor Movement As A Social Movement, James Patin

James Patin

This paper presents a new theoretical contribution which seeks to provide a framework
for the labor movement to be rebuilt by engaging both in traditional labor struggles and in social
movements. I argue that the labor movement must use labor power to fight for social change on
all fronts, using demands which bridge member consciousness to social movement
consciousness, as well as framing and organizing tactics which unite the community around the
union. This paper provides a theoretical analysis of labor movement and social movement theory
and practice. We demonstrate that Marxist Theory has been historically present, but that it …


Competing By Restricting Choice: The Case Of Search Platforms, Hanna Halaburda, Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Pinar Yildirim Dec 2017

Competing By Restricting Choice: The Case Of Search Platforms, Hanna Halaburda, Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Pinar Yildirim

Hanna Halaburda

We show that a two-sided platform can successfully compete by limiting the choice of potential matches it offers to its customers while charging higher prices than platforms with unrestricted choice. Starting from micro-foundations, we derive the strength and direction of network effect, and find that increasing the number of potential matches not only has a positive effect due to larger choice, but also a negative effect due to competition between agents on the same side. Agents with heterogeneous outside options resolve the trade-off between the two effects differently. For agents with a lower outside option, the competitive effect is stronger …


Bringing Emotions Into Social Exchange Theory, Edward J. Lawler, Shane R. Thye Dec 2017

Bringing Emotions Into Social Exchange Theory, Edward J. Lawler, Shane R. Thye

Edward J Lawler

We analyze and review how research on emotion and emotional phenomena can elaborate and improve contemporary social exchange theory. After identifying six approaches from the psychology and sociology of emotion, we illustrate how these ideas bear on the context, process, and outcome of exchange in networks and groups. The paper reviews the current state of the field, develops testable hypotheses for empirical study, and provides specific suggestions for developing links between theories of emotion and theories of exchange.


The Theory Of Relational Cohesion: Review Of A Research Program, Shane R. Thye, Jeongkoo Yoon, Edward J. Lawler Dec 2017

The Theory Of Relational Cohesion: Review Of A Research Program, Shane R. Thye, Jeongkoo Yoon, Edward J. Lawler

Edward J Lawler

In this paper we analyze and review the theory of relational cohesion and attendant program of research. Since the early 1990s, the theory has evolved to answer a number of basic questions regarding cohesion and commitment in social exchange relations. Drawing from the sociology of emotion and modem theories of social identity, the theory asserts that joint activity in the form of frequent exchange unleashes positive emotions and perceptions of relational cohesion. In turn, relational cohesion is predicted to be the primary cause of commitment behavior in a range of situations. Here we outline the theory of relational cohesion, tracing …


Activating Actavis, Aaron Edlin, C. Scott Hemphill, Herbert J. Hovenkamp, Carl Shapiro Oct 2017

Activating Actavis, Aaron Edlin, C. Scott Hemphill, Herbert J. Hovenkamp, Carl Shapiro

Aaron Edlin

In Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc., the Supreme Court provided fundamental guidance about how courts should handle antitrust challenges to reverse payment patent settlements. The Court came down strongly in favor of an antitrust solution to the problem, concluding that “an antitrust action is likely to prove more feasible administratively than the Eleventh Circuit believed.” At the same time, Justice Breyer’s majority opinion acknowledged that the Court did not answer every relevant question. The opinion closed by “leav[ing] to the lower courts the structuring of the present rule-of-reason antitrust litigation.”This article is an effort to help courts and counsel …


Actavis And Error Costs: A Reply To Critics, Aaron S. Edlin, C. Scott Hemphill, Herbert J. Hovenkamp, Carl Shapiro Oct 2017

Actavis And Error Costs: A Reply To Critics, Aaron S. Edlin, C. Scott Hemphill, Herbert J. Hovenkamp, Carl Shapiro

Aaron Edlin

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. provided fundamental guidance about how courts should handle antitrust challenges to reverse payment patent settlements. In our previous article, Activating Actavis, we identified and operationalized the essential features of the Court’s analysis. Our analysis has been challenged by four economists, who argue that our approach might condemn procompetitive settlements.As we explain in this reply, such settlements are feasible, however, only under special circumstances. Moreover, even where feasible, the parties would not actually choose such a settlement in equilibrium. These considerations, and others discussed in the reply, serve to confirm …


Crop Residues: The Rest Of The Story, Douglas L. Karlen, Rattan Lal, Ronald F. Follett, John M. Kimble, Jerry L. Hatfield, John A. Miranowski, Cynthia A. Cambardella, Andrew Manale, Robert P. Anex, Charles W. Rice Jun 2017

Crop Residues: The Rest Of The Story, Douglas L. Karlen, Rattan Lal, Ronald F. Follett, John M. Kimble, Jerry L. Hatfield, John A. Miranowski, Cynthia A. Cambardella, Andrew Manale, Robert P. Anex, Charles W. Rice

Douglas L Karlen

Synopsis In the February 15, 2009 issue of ES&T Strand and Benford argued that oceanic deposition of agricultural crop residues was a viable option for net carbon sequestration (43 [4], 1000−1007). In reviewing the calculations and bringing their experience to bear, Karlen et al. argue in this Viewpoint that crop residue oceanic permanent sequestration (CROPS) as envisioned by Strand and Benford will not work. They further propose alternative possibilities in agricultural methods to achieve a net decrease of CO2 emissions.


Conservatism And Switcher's Curse, Aaron Edlin Dec 2016

Conservatism And Switcher's Curse, Aaron Edlin

Aaron Edlin

This paper formally models the virtues of Edmund Burke's conservatism, characterizes the optimal level of conservatism, and applies the model to management, law, and policy.  I begin by introducing ``switcher's curse,'' a trap in which a decision maker systematically switches too often. Decision makers suffer from switcher's curse if they forget the reason that they maintained incumbent policies in the past and if they naively compare rival and incumbent policies with no bias for incumbent policies.   Conservatism emerges as a heuristic to avoid switcher's curse. The longer a process or policy has been in place, the more conservative one …


Workplace Deviance And Recession, Aniruddha Bagchi, Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay Nov 2016

Workplace Deviance And Recession, Aniruddha Bagchi, Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay

Aniruddha Bagchi

We examine the relationship between the incidence of workplace deviance (on-the-job crime) and the state of the economy. A worker's probability of future employment depends on whether she has been deviant as well as on the availability of jobs. Using a two period model we show that the net impact on deviant behavior to changes in unemployment can go either way depending upon the nature of the equilibrium. Two kinds of equilibria are possible. In one, a non-deviant's probability of being employed increases as expected market conditions improve which lowers the incentive to be a deviant. In contrast, in the …


An Empirical Analysis Of Manufacturing Overhead Cost Drivers, Rajiv D. Banker, Gordon S. Potter, Roger G. Schroeder Oct 2016

An Empirical Analysis Of Manufacturing Overhead Cost Drivers, Rajiv D. Banker, Gordon S. Potter, Roger G. Schroeder

Gordon Potter

Empirical validity of the claim that overhead costs are driven not by production volume but by transactions resulting from production complexity is examined using data from 32 manufacturing plants from the electronics, machinery, and automobile components industries. Transactions are measured using number of engineering change orders, number of purchasing and production planning personnel, shop- floor area per part, and number of quality control and improvement personnel. Results indicate a strong positive relation between manufacturing overhead costs and both manufacturing transactions and production volume. Most of the variation in overhead costs, however, is explained by measures of manufacturing transactions, not volume.


Manufacturing Performance Reporting For Continuous Quality Improvement, Rajiv D. Banker, Gordon S. Potter, Roger G. Schroeder Oct 2016

Manufacturing Performance Reporting For Continuous Quality Improvement, Rajiv D. Banker, Gordon S. Potter, Roger G. Schroeder

Gordon Potter

Recently many plants have implemented the new manufacturing strategy of continuous quality improvement. The central hypothesis in this paper is that the implementation of a policy of continuous quality improvement results in a shift in the management control system. This article tests this hypothesis by examining the shop floor reporting policies of forty-two plants located in the United States. The paper documents that the extent of information concerning the current status of manufacturing, such as charts on defect rates or schedule compliance and productivity information, provided to workers on the shop floor is positively related to the implementation of continuous …


The Structural Transformation Of The Agricultural Sector, Neil E. Harl Jul 2016

The Structural Transformation Of The Agricultural Sector, Neil E. Harl

Neil E. Harl

A major concern as we move into the Twenty-first Century is the structure of the agricultural sector. By structure, is meant considerations of size and scale as well as who is to manage, control and finance farming and agribusiness operations.


Opec, The Seven Sisters, And Oil Market Dominance: An Evolutionary Game Theory And Agent-Based Modeling Approach, Aaron Wood, Charles F. Mason, David C. Finnoff Dec 2015

Opec, The Seven Sisters, And Oil Market Dominance: An Evolutionary Game Theory And Agent-Based Modeling Approach, Aaron Wood, Charles F. Mason, David C. Finnoff

Charles F Mason

No abstract provided.


The Role Of Coordination Bias In Platform Competition, Hanna Halaburda, Yaron Yehezkel Dec 2015

The Role Of Coordination Bias In Platform Competition, Hanna Halaburda, Yaron Yehezkel

Hanna Halaburda

This paper considers platform competition in a two-sided market that includes buyers and sellers. One of the platforms benefits from a favorable coordination bias in the market, in that for this platform it is less costly than for the other platform to convince customers that the two sides will coordinate on joining it. We find that the degree of the coordination bias affects the platform's decision regarding the business model (i.e., whether to subsidize buyers or sellers), the access fees and the size of the platform. A slight increase in the coordination bias may induce the advantaged platform to switch …


Affordable Housing In Cleveland And Its Suburbs, Richard Bingham, Kathryn Hexter, Charles Post Dec 2015

Affordable Housing In Cleveland And Its Suburbs, Richard Bingham, Kathryn Hexter, Charles Post

Kathryn W. Hexter

No abstract provided.


Where Is Cuyahoga County's Affordable Housing?, Richard Bingham, Kathryn Hexter, Charles Post Dec 2015

Where Is Cuyahoga County's Affordable Housing?, Richard Bingham, Kathryn Hexter, Charles Post

Kathryn W. Hexter

No abstract provided.


Affordable Housing In Cuyahoga County: Exploring The Relationship Between Rent And Value, Richard Bingham, Kathryn Hexter, Charles Post Dec 2015

Affordable Housing In Cuyahoga County: Exploring The Relationship Between Rent And Value, Richard Bingham, Kathryn Hexter, Charles Post

Kathryn W. Hexter

No abstract provided.


An Evaluation Of Competitive Industrial Structure And Regional Manufacturing Employment Change., Joshua Drucker Aug 2015

An Evaluation Of Competitive Industrial Structure And Regional Manufacturing Employment Change., Joshua Drucker

Joshua Drucker

This paper examines the relationships between several aspects of regional industrial structure and employment change in the United States manufacturing sector and 19 subsectors from 1987 to 1997. Economic diversity, industrial specialization, and competitive structure are considered together in a non-causal regression framework in order to assess their relative associations with economic performance. The innovative features of the research are considering together multiple distinct facets of industrial structure at the regional scale, emphasizing the less commonly studied characteristic of industrial competitive structure, and exploiting confidential microdata to construct and evaluate detailed metrics across broad geographic and industrial ranges. The findings …


Ports And Ladders: The Nature And Relevance Of Internal Labor Markets In A Changing World, Paul Osterman, M. Diane Burton Jul 2015

Ports And Ladders: The Nature And Relevance Of Internal Labor Markets In A Changing World, Paul Osterman, M. Diane Burton

M. Diane Burton

[Excerpt] Many believe that the nature of careers has changed dramatically in the past twenty years. One scholar writes that internal labor markets have been 'demolished', while a human resources manager at Intel comments that, in contrast to the past, today, 'You own your own employability. You are responsible' (Knoke 2001: 31). The idea of the 'boundaryless career' seems increasingly popular (Arthur and Rousseau 1996). If it is in fact true that the old rules for organizing work have disappeared, this would represent a fundamental change for employees. It would also have major implications for how scholars think about the …


Endogenous R&D And Intellectual Property Laws In Developed And Emerging Economies, Aniruddha Bagchi, Abhra Roy May 2015

Endogenous R&D And Intellectual Property Laws In Developed And Emerging Economies, Aniruddha Bagchi, Abhra Roy

Abhra Roy

The incentive of providing protection of intellectual property has been analyzed, both for an emerging economy as well as for a developed economy. The optimal patent length and the optimal patent breadth within a country are found to be positively related to each other for a fixed structure of laws abroad. Moreover, a country can respond to stronger patent protection abroad by weakening its patent protection under certain circumstances and by strengthening its patent protection under other circumstances. These results depend upon the curvature of the R&D production function. Finally, we investigate the impact of an increase in the willingness-to-pay …


Where Have All The Michigan Auto Jobs Gone?, Randall W. Eberts, George A. Erickcek Feb 2015

Where Have All The Michigan Auto Jobs Gone?, Randall W. Eberts, George A. Erickcek

George A. Erickcek

No abstract provided.


The Debate Over The State Of U.S. Manufacturing: How The Computer Industry Affects The Numbers And Perceptions, Susan N. Houseman Feb 2015

The Debate Over The State Of U.S. Manufacturing: How The Computer Industry Affects The Numbers And Perceptions, Susan N. Houseman

Susan N. Houseman

No abstract provided.


That Used To Be Us: Through The Eyes Of The Aviation Industry, Kelly A. Whealan-George Jan 2015

That Used To Be Us: Through The Eyes Of The Aviation Industry, Kelly A. Whealan-George

Kelly Whealan George

The U.S. economic success was rooted in an industrial policy which had five pillars of a prosperity formula that served as a catalyst for development and growth: 1) public/private cooperation on education, 2) immigration policy, 3) infrastructure, 4) risk/capital management, and 5) government-funded scientific research. In this paper, the development and growth of the aviation industry is viewed in the framework of such a prosperity formula in order to face the four areas that the entire economy will need to face in the current market in order to be competitive in the global market in the 21st century. Since the …


Where Have All The Michigan Auto Jobs Gone?, Randall W. Eberts, George A. Erickcek Jan 2015

Where Have All The Michigan Auto Jobs Gone?, Randall W. Eberts, George A. Erickcek

Randall W. Eberts

No abstract provided.


The Value Capture Model: A Strategic Management Review, Michael D. Ryall, Joshua Gans Jan 2015

The Value Capture Model: A Strategic Management Review, Michael D. Ryall, Joshua Gans

Michael D Ryall

This paper provides the first review of recent work that uses cooperative game theory to deepen our understanding of persistent performance heterogeneity among firms. Since its initiation in 1996, this stream has grown considerably. The work it contains is notable on several dimensions, including its mathematical foundation, its aggregate cohesion, its interplay between theory and empirical work, the subtlety of its insights, and its potential for idea migration from strategy to other disciplines. Here, we: provide a careful discussion of the theory; review the key theoretical findings; highlight a number of insights that both challenge and clarify the conventional wisdom; …