Sponsored Content Advertising in a Two-Sided Market

Sponsored content advertising, also known as native advertising, is a new ad format in which a brand’s content takes the same form and qualities of the publisher’s original content. Although many advertisers have largely embraced this new advertising format, consumers seem to react negatively toward sponsored content ads. In this paper, we present an analytical model that studies the strategic role of sponsored content advertising in a two-sided media market. We identify conditions under which competing platforms would choose sponsored content advertising over traditional advertising. Despite consumers’ negative sentiment toward sponsored content ads, they can be better off together with the advertisers when both platforms choose this ad format. In fact, we show that a certain degree of consumer disliking is necessary to make both advertisers and consumers better off with sponsored content ads. However, both competing platforms offering sponsored content ads may also result in a Prisoner’s Dilemma equilibrium outcome generating suboptimal profits. We further show that two symmetric media platforms can choose different advertising strategies, leading to an asymmetric equilibrium outcome. Lastly, we analyze how the presence of multihoming advertisers as well as an incomplete ad market coverage would affect the sponsored content ad equilibrium. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

Investment Choice with Managerial Incentive Schemes

In this paper, we show that firms might get an additional strategic benefit from using marginal-cost-reducing investments in conjunction with strategic delegation. While both these instruments allow firms to “aggressively” participate in product market competition, we show that they act as substitutes or complements depending on whether they are chosen simultaneously or sequentially. Given that the use of such instruments is inseparably linked with a Prisoner’s Dilemma kind of situation, our analysis shows a way to mitigate at least to some extent such effects, through their simultaneous use. We find that the unique Nash equilibrium of the game with commitment comprises both players choosing the instruments simultaneously. In case the instruments are chosen without commitment, an asymmetric equilibrium is shown to exist in addition to the simultaneous protocol, yielding unequal payoffs.

Inflexible Repositioning: Commitment in Competition and Uncertainty

We study the value of commitment in a business environment that is both competitive and uncertain, in which two firms face stochastic demands and compete in positioning and repositioning. If the future demand tends to disperse or the demand uncertainty is sufficiently large, one firm chooses rigidity (i.e., commits not to change its positions), and the other chooses flexibility (i.e., to reposition freely). We find that a firm’s rigidity can benefit not only itself, but also its flexible rival. When uncertainty is larger, rigidity becomes more valuable relative to flexibility. These results arise because the asymmetric equilibrium generates two collective gains in addition to the usual individual gain (in terms of competitive advantages) accrued to the committing firm. A firm’s rigid repositioning can soften competition and generate a commitment value, and the other firm’s flexible repositioning generates an option value. Both values then spill over to competitors within the ecosystem. These results suggest that, when firms compete under uncertainty, commitment and options are valuable not only for the party that is making the choice, but also for all competing parties collectively. Commitment value and option value do not have to be mutually exclusive; they can coexist and even strengthen each other through unilateral commitment, which achieves the best of both strategies. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

Effects of passive phospholipid flip-flop and asymmetric external fields on bilayer phase equilibria

Compositional asymmetry between the leaflets of bilayer membranes is known to couple strongly to their phase behaviour, in addition to having important effects on, e.g., mechanical properties and protein activity. We address how phase behaviour is affected by passive phospholipid flip-flop, such that the compositional asymmetry is not fixed. We predict transitions from “pre flip-flop” behaviour to a restricted set of phase equilibria that can persist in the presence of passive flip-flop. Surprisingly, such states are not necessarily symmetric. We further account for external symmetry-breaking, such as a preferential substrate interaction, and show how this can stabilise strongly asymmetric equilibrium states. Our theory explains several experimental observations of flip-flop mediated changes in phase behaviour, and shows how domain formation and compositional asymmetry can be controlled in concert, by manipulating passive flip-flop rates and applying external fields.

EFFECTS OF SWITCHING COSTS ON INNOVATIVE INVESTMENT

Switching costs and innovation are two major issues in economics. Prior research demonstrates the effects of switching costs on competition, but ignores the influence of switching costs to firm innovation. So the purpose of this study is to reveal the relationships between switching costs and cost-reducing innovation by considering brand loyalty. All our theoretical conclusions are captured by game theory based on a two-stage duopoly model. The conclusions of this study show that under moderate conditions, switching costs improve competition. Strong firms implement lower price when switching costs are present than when they are not present. Second, at the asymmetric equilibrium, lower-efficiency firms with switching costs launch less innovative investments than do those without switching costs, while higher-efficiency firms with switching costs launch more innovation. But under symmetric equilibrium, switching costs have no effect on innovative investment. The novel contributions of this paper are that we find switching costs and loyalty have vertical impacts on firms’ cost-reducing innovation, which extends the theory of switching costs.

Scrape-off-layer current loops and floating potential in limited tokamak plasmas

We investigate the question of how plasma currents circulate and close in the scrape-off-layer (SOL) of convection-limited tokamak plasmas. A simplified two-fluid model describes how currents must evacuate charge at the sheaths due to cross-field currents that are not divergence-free. These include turbulence-driven polarization currents and poloidally asymmetric equilibrium diamagnetic currents. The theory provides an estimate for the radial profile of the floating potential, which reveals a dipolar structure like the one observed experimentally. Simulations with a fluid turbulence code provide evidence for the predicted behaviour of currents and floating potential.

Trade Openness and Real Investment: Is there Asymmetric Cointegration Relationship? Evidence from Jordan

<p>The paper attempts to test the long-run asymmetric equilibrium relationships between real investment and trade openness. Using Jordanian data, over the period 1976 to 2014, the study has failed to reject the null hypothesis of no cointegration with threshold at a conventional level of significance among variables. Therefore, cannot find evidence of asymmetry in the relationship between real investment and trade openness.</p>

Two-vortex equilibrium in the flow past a flat plate at incidence

The two-dimensional inviscid incompressible steady flow past an inclined flat plate is considered. A locus of asymmetric equilibrium configurations for vortex pairs is detected. It is shown that the flat geometry has peculiar properties compared to other geometries: (i) in order to satisfy the Kutta condition at both edges, which ensures flow regularity, the total circulation and the force acting on the plate must be zero; and (ii) the Kutta condition and the free vortex equilibrium conditions are not independent of each other. The non-existence of symmetric equilibrium configurations for an orthogonal plate is extended to more general asymmetric flows.