Patent-investment games under asymmetric information

This paper analyzes preemptive patenting in a two-stage real options game where an incumbent firm competes with a potential entrant firm for the patent of a substitute product in a product market with profit flow uncertainty. The incumbent suffers loss of monopoly in the product market if the entrant acquires the patent of a substitute product and later commercializes the product. Our patent-investment game model assumes that the entrant has complete information on the incumbent’s commercialization cost while the incumbent only knows the distribution of the entrant’s cost. We investigate the impact of information asymmetry on the preemption strategies adopted by the two competing firms on patenting the substitute product by comparing the optimal preemption strategies and the real option value functions of the two competing firms under complete information and information asymmetry. Our analysis reveals that the informationally disadvantaged incumbent always suffers from loss in its real option value of investment since it tends to act more aggressively in competing for the patent. On the other hand, the real option value of investment of the informationally advantaged entrant may be undermined or enhanced. The incumbent’s aggressive response under information asymmetry may lead to reversal of winner in the patent race. We also examine how information asymmetry may affect the occurrence of sleeping patent and the corresponding expected duration between the two stages of patenting and product commercialization.     

Resource allocation to defensive marketing and manufacturing strategies

In this paper, we investigate the coordinated use of marketing and manufacturing strategies to formulate a defensive business strategy for an incumbent firm upon market entry. While defensive marketing strategies have been researched extensively, little has been done on defensive manufacturing strategies and even less on coordinating these two. We propose a formulation for the joint formation of a defensive strategy by the marketing and production functions under budget constraint considerations. The incumbent firm may allocate its resourcesto advertising and distribution expenditures, as well as to manufacturing investments to reduce the unit production cost. The incumbent firm has also the option of simply allocating all of its resources purely to advertising and distribution. We show that while there exist cases where the optimal reaction to entry involves investments in manufacturing improvements, there are also cases where defense is in marketing strategies alone. We identify the market conditions that promote such reactions to entry and also provide sensitivity analysis.     

消费者偏好下的两在位制造商阻止策略选择研究

讨论生产高质量产品和生产低质量产品的两个在位制造商阻止生产中等质量产品的潜在制造商进入市场策略,考虑消费者产品质量偏好,分别建立了两个在位制造商采取不改变定价策略、采取联合定价阻止策略以及采取联合产量阻止策略模型,分析不同阻止策略对产品价格、在位制造商利润和潜在制造商进入成本的影响.数值分析结果研究表明,当进入成本高于某个阈值时,在位制造商不用采取任何阻止策略潜在制造商都不会进入市场.当进入成本适中时,相比其他两种阻止策略,两个在位制造商采取联合产量阻止策略会使潜在制造商的最低进入成本最大,这种策略下生产高质量产品的在位制造商利润最大,而生产低质量产品的在位制造商的利润最小.     

New product advertising in dynamic oligopolies

The success of the introduction of a new product in a market is very sensitive to the marketing decision variables adopted by the firm. In the present paper we are concerned with the question of new product advertising in a heterogeneous oligopoly market consisting of N firms. A dynamic game is formulated to model strategic as well as sales interactions in such a market. Optimal advertising strategies are identified as open-loop Nash solutions.The comments of two anonymous referees are appreciated. The first author wishes to acknowledge support from NSERC (Grant No. OGP0037342).     

Quality and entry deterrence

We analyze the role of quality, which we define as an attribute of a product that increases consumers’ willingness to buy, as a competitive tool in a quality-price setting. We consider an incumbent’s entry-deterrence strategies using quality as a deterrent when faced by a potential entrant. We investigate settings motivating the incumbent to blockade the entrant (i.e., prevent entry without extra effort), deter the entrant (i.e., prevent entry with extra effort), or accommodate the entrant (i.e., allow the entry to take place). We identify conditions under which the incumbent may actually over-invest in quality to deter entrance. More interestingly, we also identify conditions under which the incumbent may decrease his quality investment to make it easier for the entrant to penetrate the market. Our model sheds light on entry scenarios of particular platform product markets such as the entry of Xbox to the video game console market.     

Optimal production in a competitive market under yield uncertainty

Motivated by the U.S. influenza vaccine market, we study the impact of random yield and production capacity on the number of firms, total supply, consumer surplus and social welfare in a market with identical suppliers. We formulate a two-stage game with endogenous entry, where each entering firm aims to maximize its profit under yield uncertainty subject to a production capacity constraint. We show that if firms produce full capacity in the equilibrium, then there are fewer firms in the equilibrium compared to the social optimum even for small levels of yield uncertainty. Furthermore, we prove that if firms do not produce full capacity in the equilibrium, they will not produce full capacity in the social optimum.     

Dynamic strategic interaction between an innovating and a non-innovating incumbent

This paper analyzes the effects of product innovation on the firms’ investment behavior in a dynamic duopoly framework. A differential game setting is considered where initially two firms are active on a homogeneous product market. One of the firms has an option to introduce a new product that is horizontally and vertically differentiated from the established product. The resulting differential game has three states corresponding to three capital stocks: one for each firm to produce the established product, and one for the innovating firm to produce the new product. We numerically derive Markov perfect equilibria. One of the most remarkable results is that in most cases the non-innovating firm benefits when the other firm carries out the innovation option. The intuition is that, to increase demand for the innovative product, the innovative firm reduces capacity on the established market, which increases the price of the established product and thus the payoff of the non-innovating firm.     

Price and quality competition: The effect of differentiation and vertical integration

This paper studies an instance of price and quality competition between firms as seen in the recent Internet market. Consumers purchase a product based on not only its price but also its quality level; therefore, two firms compete in determining their prices and quality levels to maximize their profits. Characterizing this competition from a microeconomic viewpoint, we consider two possible business strategies that firms can utilize to overcome the competition—the differentiation and the vertical integration with another complementary firm. We show an interesting result not seen in the well-known Bertrand price competition: not only does the differentiation always increase the firms’ profits, but also it can increase the consumer’s welfare in a quality-sensitive market. We further derive that under some mild conditions the monopolistic vertical integration that excludes the combination-purchase with a competitor’s product is beneficial for both the integrated firm and its consumers.     

需求风险下套期保值与市场进入分析

需求风险是企业面临的主要风险之一,对企业的生产经营和管理决策具有重要影响。本文考虑由多个风险厌恶企业构成的产品竞争市场,分析了需求风险下企业参与套期保值和市场进入的决策问题。文章首先通过Cournot博弈分析了套期保值对于规避需求风险的作用和意义;然后,探讨了企业参与套期保值和市场进入的决策过程,并给出了三种情形下的市场均衡结构;最后,通过数值实验对结论进行了验证。研究表明:套期保值提高了企业应对需求风险的能力,使企业获得更高的产量和收益;参与套期保值企业数量随着进入市场企业数量的增加而减少;当市场竞争程度或市场费用增加时,将会有更多的企业选择参与套期保值,而选择进入市场的企业会减少。     

成本约束下不可再生资源开采微分对策问题研究

研究开采成本等重要因素对不可再生资源开采的影响.假定有N个厂商对不可再生资源进行开采,其面临的市场需求价格弹性为常数,开采成本是开采量的线性函数.利用微分对策理论,分析该寡头市场中各个厂商的均衡开采策略.研究表明,开采成本对是否开采、开采速度、结束时点等有重要影响.同时,本文还与某些经典论文进行了简要比较.     

Strategic Experimentation in Financial Intermediation with Threat of Entry

We study how the threat of entry affects financial contracting between an incumbent firm and a bank, in a stochastic and dynamic environment. Contracts are short term and public. We determine the effects of the first period financial contract on the first period outputs in face of the threat of entry. Specifically, it is shown that the distance between first period outputs is increased due to potential entry. This is due to two underlying effects: first, the threat of entry reduces the signal dampening effect and thus the surplus left to the low cost incumbent is reduced. Second, learning is more valuable as it decreases the probability of entry. Indeed, experimentation takes on a strategic form, since the bank must take into account the impact of the possible game on its expected profits. This work integrates the agency problem between a firm and its financial intermediary with the issue of entry-deterrence under uncertainty.     

Strategic multi-store opening under financial constraint

This paper analyzes strategic store openings in a situation in which firms can open multiple stores depending on the financial constraints of the firm. Specifically, given any upper limit of the number of store openings that two potentially symmetric firms can open, they sequentially determine the number of store openings, including their locations, to maximize their profits. As a result of our analysis in a microeconomic framework, we show that the equilibrium strategy can be wholly classified into only two following opposite strategies according to the level of their financial constraints involved. When firms can afford to invest significant amounts of money in the market, the leader chooses “segmentation strategy,” in which a part of the market can be monopolized by opening a chain of multiple stores and deterring the follower’s entry. In contrast, when the leader has a severe financial constraint so that it can only monopolize less than half of the market, the leader chooses “minimum differentiation strategy,” where firms open each of their stores at exactly the same point as the rival’s. Under this strategy, the leader necessarily captures just half of the market. Furthermore, we show that regardless of potential symmetry between firms, both first and second mover advantages in terms of profit can occur in the equilibrium.     

MONOPOLY,POTENTIAL COMPETITION AND PRIVATE STOCK INFORMATION IN EXHAUSTIBLE RESOURCE MARKETS

ABSTRACT. This paper develops an exhaustible resource model with an incumbent monopolist that faces future potential entry of a single rival or backstop technology. The model is characterized by private stock information in the sense that firms do not know with certainty the size and/or quality of their rival's reserve stock. Results indicate that if such information is private, the strategic response of the monopolist to an entry threat is to extract reserves in the pre‐entry era at a rate faster than would a pure monopolist in an uncontested market, and thus could lead to an improvement in economic welfare relative to the situation where entry is restricted.     

Controlled predatory pricing in a multiperiod Stackelberg game: an MPEC approach

We analyze a multiperiod oligopolistic market where each period is a Stackelberg game between a leader firm and multiple follower firms. The leader chooses his production level first, taking into account the reaction of the followers. Then, the follower firms decide their production levels after observing the leader’s decision. The difference between the proposed model and other models discussed in literature is that the leader firm has the power to force the follower firms out of business by preventing them from achieving a target sales level in a given time period. The leader firm has an incentive to lower the market prices possibly lower than the Stackelberg equilibrium in order to push the followers to sell less and eventually go out of business. Intentionally lowering the market prices to force competitors to fail is known as predatory pricing, and is illegal under antitrust laws since it negatively affects consumer welfare. In this work, we show that there exists a predatory pricing strategy where the market price is above the average cost and consumer welfare is preserved. We develop a mixed integer nonlinear problem (MINLP) that models the multiperiod Stackelberg game. The MINLP problem is transformed to a mixed integer linear problem (MILP) by using binary variables and piecewise linearization. A cutting plane algorithm is used to solve the resulting MILP. The results show that firms can engage in predatory pricing even if the average market price is forced to remain higher than the average cost. Furthermore, we show that in order to protect the consumers, antitrust laws can control predatory pricing by setting rules on consumer welfare.     

Signaling advertising by multiproduct firms

We consider the use of advertising expenses as quality signals in multiproduct firms, extending previous results on single product firms. In our model, a firm introduces sequentially two products whose qualities are positively correlated. We investigate whether there exist information spillovers from the first to the second market. We show that, when correlation is high, the equilibrium in market 2 depends on the quality reputation the firm has gained in market 1. Moreover, if a firm with a high-quality product 1 wants to separate from its low-quality counterpart, it needs to advertise more in this market than if the qualities of the two products are unrelated. This advertising level signals not only high quality in the first market, but also the likely quality of the second product. Thus, advertising in the first market has information spillovers in the second market.     

Service quality,outsourcing and upward channel decentralization

We build a model to analyse the benefit of upward channel decentralization for a firm choosing service outsourcing and integration. The key findings of this paper are as follows. First, we formulate an upward channel decentralization problem as a game incorporating consumer behaviour of willingness to pay in a channel duopoly. Our model considers (i) service quality, (ii) consumer marginal willingness to pay (MWTP), and (iii) consumer perceivable difference. A supply chain firm’s preference of outsourcing strategy depends on the monotonicity of both the failure rate (or Mills Ratio) and CDF-PDF ratio of MWTP distribution function. Second, we use this model to explore the benefit of retailer strategy of upward channel decentralization. An equilibrium can be achieved by benefiting the low-label product with low quality service but deteriorating the high-label channel product with high quality.     

Strategic wholesale pricing in a supply chain with a potential entrant

This paper develops an adverse selection model for a two-stage supply chain with one supplier, one retailer, and a potential outside entrant supplier who makes a partially substitutable product. The work is different from most research on entry deterrence that only considers a single-stage model. Our main interest is to investigate how the incumbent supplier can strategically maximize her profit by a wholesale pricing policy when facing the potential entrant. We focus on a model where the entrant supplier will sell her product through the same incumbent retailer. We derive the optimal decisions for each player and study the comparative statics of the equilibrium. To investigate how the supply chain structure may affect the deterrence strategy of the incumbent supplier, we also consider three alternative models with different channel structures, when both suppliers sell their products directly, when the entrant has another independent retailer, and when the entrant sells her product directly. Through the comparison, we find that the existence of the common downstream retailer often enhances the deterring motivation of the incumbent supplier.     

网络效应影响下品牌商与模仿者的竞争策略

近年来,品牌商与模仿者的竞争问题引起了社会的广泛关注。本文构建了包含一个品牌商和一个潜在模仿者的两周期动态博弈模型,且消费者具有策略性行为。品牌商在第一周期是市场的垄断者,若模仿者在第二周期进入市场,那么第二周期会变成双寡头市场。模仿者入侵市场除了会引起竞争效应外,与品牌产品的相似性也会引起网络效应,从而增加品牌产品的市场接受度。因此,面对模仿者入侵,品牌商需要同时权衡竞争效应与网络效应两方面的影响。研究结果表明:(1)网络效应并不总是对品牌商和模仿者的价格和需求等产生积极影响。(2)模仿产品质量不可提升过高,当模仿产品质量和品牌产品质量过分接近时,两个企业的利润都会降低。(3)当网络效应较小或者模仿产品质量过高时,品牌商在双寡头市场的需求可能会高于垄断市场的需求。     

Decentralized job matching

This paper studies a multi-stage decentralized matching model where firms sequentially propose their (unique) positions to workers. At each stage workers sequentially decide which offer to accept (if any). A firm whose offer has been declined may make an offer to another worker in the next stage. The game stops when all firms either have been matched to a worker or have already made unsuccessful offers to any worker remaining in the market. We show that there is a unique subgame-perfect equilibrium outcome, the worker-optimal matching. Firms in this game have a weakly dominant strategy, which consists of making offers in the same order as given by their preferences. When workers play simultaneously any stable matching can be obtained as an equilibrium outcome, but an unstable matching can obtain in equilibrium.     

不确定竞争市场投资决策

本文针对不确定的竞争市场 ,分析现在作一个数量为 I的不可逆投资 ,产生一个生产容量 k,以在将来不确定竞争市场中比潜在进入的竞争对手具有某种占先优势这样一个投资机会的策略投资行为和机会的价值。用博奕论方法分析和给出了基于现在投资可获得将来增长期权价值的决策方法。