Competition and Innovation in Markets with Technology Leaders

In this article, we consider technology leaders (which are innovators) and technology followers (which are non-innovators) to provide a new theoretical explanation for the well-cited empirical evidence of an inverted-U relationship between competition and aggregate innovation. We consider a two-stage game with a deterministic Research and Development (R&D) process, where the leaders first determine their R&D investments simultaneously and then all leaders and followers determine their outputs simultaneously. We show that the inverted-U relationship between competition and aggregate innovation occurs if competition is affected by the number of technology followers. However, the presence of more technology leaders decreases individual R&D investments while increasing aggregate R&D investments. If the total number of firms remains the same but the composition of technology leaders and followers changes in favor of leaders (followers), individual R&D investments decrease (increase) but aggregate R&D investments increase (decrease). The relationship between competition and R&D investments can be U-shaped if the intensity of competition is measured by product substitutability. Contrary to the standard expectation, the presence of more firms may reduce welfare.

Can Decentralization Drive Green Innovation? A Game Theoretical Analysis of Manufacturer Encroachment Selection with Consumer Green Awareness

With the increase of public environmental awareness and the growth of e-commerce, sustainable development promotes the manufacturer to increasingly participate in green innovation and make full use of the online sales channel to enhance competitiveness. Despite decentralized encroachment being widely adopted in business reality, the current literature has commonly paid more attention to centralized encroachment. To complement related research, a dual-channel green supply chain composed of a manufacturer (its retail subsidiary) and a retailer is investigated. We focus on what encroachment strategy (centralization vs. decentralization) drives the green innovation and analyze the impact of consumer green awareness and product substitutability on the manufacturer’s encroachment strategy, green innovation efforts and supply chain performance. Under each encroachment strategy, we build a Stackelberg game model and derive the equilibrium outcome. Then, we theoretically analyze the effects of consumer green awareness and product substitutability on green innovation and each party’s profitability. Our comparative analysis shows what encroachment strategy drives green innovation and what encroachment strategy benefits both parties and social welfare. Numerical studies are also conducted to support the analytical results. Our key findings reveal that decentralization improves the green innovation and achieves a both-win situation for the manufacturer and the retailer. Besides that, decentralization can reduce the environmental damage and increase social welfare as well.

Supplier Encroachment in a Nonexclusive Reselling Channel

We consider a setting in which a nonexclusive reseller procures partially substitutable products from two suppliers, one of whom introduces a direct channel. We find that the presence of the second supplier alters many of the existing results about the interactions between a reseller and an encroaching supplier. For instance, the reseller’s and the supply chain’s benefit from the direct channel disappears when the product substitutability is sufficiently large. In addition, when the reseller is nonexclusive, the encroaching supplier may either sell exclusively through its direct channel even when that channel is less efficient than the reselling channel, or sell through both channels even when its direct channel is more efficient than the reselling channel. Neither of these would occur in an exclusive reselling environment with only one supplier. This paper was accepted by Jayashankar Swaminathan, operations management.

Intra-brand competition in a differentiated oligopoly

In this paper we consider a differentiated oligopoly with two product varieties that are supplied by two groups of firms. After computing the Cournot solution of the game, we study its sensitivity to different sources of competition, namely the degree of product substitutability and market composition. Market composition can change either via new firms entering one industry or via firms switching production techniques, thus modifying the intensity of intra-brand competition. After studying the welfare consequences of an intensification of competition, we identify the equilibrium market composition when firms are driven by profit considerations. All the results are expressed in terms of the degree of product substitutability and of what we define “weighted relative efficiency” (WRE), which is a parameter combining both firm characteristics and market conditions.

Product Market Competition and Managerial Pay

ABSTRACT In this study I find that product substitutability has a negative relation with pay-earnings but no relation with pay-stock return sensitivity, whereas market size and ease of entry have no relation with pay-earnings but a positive relation with pay-stock return sensitivity. These findings collectively imply that firms in more competitive industries place less reliance on earnings-based and greater reliance on stock-based measures to determine managerial compensation than firms in less competitive industries. I also find that product substitutability has a positive relation whereas market size and ease of entry have negative relations with managerial pay levels, suggesting different dimensions of product market competition may have independent influences on managerial pay design. Finally, I find that industry regulation has a positive relation with pay-earnings but a negative relation with pay-stock return sensitivity. This study's findings suggest a contextual approach to examining the relation between industry attributes and managerial pay. JEL Classifications: D4; G34; J33; L1; M40; M41; M46. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

Game Theoretical Perspectives on Pricing Decisions in Asymmetric Competing Supply Chains

This paper investigates a dual exclusive channel model in which each manufacturer distributes its goods through a single exclusive retailer, but two goods are substitute. The decision rule between two channels is Nash game in Case 1, while it is Stackelberg game in Case 2. From manufacturer Stackelberg (MS), retailer Stackelberg (RS), and Nash game (VN) theoretic perspectives, nine game models are developed to examine the effect of product substitutability and relative channel status on pricing decisions at both horizontal competition and vertical competition levels. The analysis suggests that the type of price leadership scenarios, the level of product substitutability, and the relative channel status play a significant role in decision making. For instance, in case 1, the symmetric leadership (two manufacturers or two retailers are leaders) is always the dominant strategy and equilibrium for either two manufacturers or two retailers regardless of product substitutability and relative channel status. Nevertheless, the asymmetric leadership may lead channel members to encounter a prisoner’s dilemma if the relative channel status is small. By contrast, in Case 2, the symmetric leadership is not the unique dominant strategy for either two manufacturers or two retailers. In contrast to many earlier results, we also show that whether the first-mover and the late-mover advantages exist, depending on the level of related channel status.