We investigate the relation between perceived competition and voluntary disclosure in the absence of capital market incentives by examining private UK companies, which have the option to withhold sales and costs of sales information from their publicly-filed accounts. We survey managers about their companies’ competitive environments and we calculate archival measures of industry competition. W...

Firms can motivate workers by offering them social status. Much of the literature argues that a rise in status is a powerful work incentive while ignoring its impact on coordination. However, when workers need to collaborate while having individual vested interests, too large a difference in status distorts how workers coordinate, i.e., one worker compromises too much with respect to his most p...

The literature on technology licensing has ignored the importance of market power of the input supplier. In this paper we examine the impact of licensing in the downstream industry when the firms in the upstream industry have market power. We show that licensing in the downstream industry can make the upstream industry more competitive. However, licensing in the downstream industry is profitabl...

We study the impact of internal decision-making structures on the stability of collusive agreements. To this end, we use a three-firm spatial competition model where two firms belong to the same holding company. The holding company can decide to set prices itself or to delegate this decision to its local units. If collusion breaks down, the holding company may relocate its two local units. It t...

A two-country model of oligopoly in general equilibrium is used to show how changes in market structure accompany the process of trade and capital market liberalisation. The model predicts that bilateral mergers in which low-cost firms buy out higher-cost foreign rivals are profitable under Cournot competition. With symmetric countries, welfare may rise or fall, though the distribution of incom...

This study draws on the institutional and resource-based theories of the firm and examines whether multi-product firms use mergers as a strategic tool to reconfigure their product-mix toward high-profit products. We propose that mergers facilitate product-mix reconfiguration by relaxing institutional and organizational constraints on resource redeployment. Analysis of data from the U.S. hospita...

This paper hypothesizes that Chilean firms had a competitive advantage in operating businesses in other Latin American countries because of their knowledge of business strategy during economic reform. This hypothesis is explained through case studies of Provida, a Chilean pension fund, and Endesa, a Chilean electricity generator, and then tested empirically using data on foreign affiliates of C...

A two-country model of oligopoly in general equilibrium is used to show how changes in market structure accompany the process of trade and capital market liberalisation. The model predicts that bilateral mergers in which low-cost firms buy out higher-cost foreign rivals are profitable under Cournot competition. With symmetric countries, welfare may rise or fall, though the distribution of incom...

I introduce and analyze an equilibrium model of invention, patenting and infringement under monopolistic competition. Profitable use of inventions requires adaptation to complementary technologies. With patents, a thicket of conflicting rights emerges and costly infringements occur. This taxes invention and lowers welfare. When an inventor may be a “troll”—patent without inventing—the rate of i...

Small manufacturers often experience great volume variability of potential orders. Orders can make up a greater percent of the firm’s volume than in larger firms. Order acceptance strategies based on traditional accounting techniques, or even newer techniques such as Activity Based Costing may not yield the best results. With large orders and high variability, the wisdom of accepting an order i...