{"title":"The role of public external knowledge for firm innovativeness","authors":"María García-Vega , Óscar Vicente-Chirivella","doi":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2024.103056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijindorg.2024.103056","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Public research organizations (PROs) and universities receive large amounts of public funding for the generation and transmission of knowledge, and companies contract external knowledge from both. An important question for the management of a firm's R&D and for public innovation policies is: What is more beneficial for the generation of firm innovations, external knowledge created by PROs or by universities? In this paper, we assess the impact of external knowledge from PROs versus universities on firm innovativeness. We use information on R&D acquisitions from a panel dataset of more than 10,000 Spanish firms from 2005 to 2014. We show that external knowledge from PROs and universities increases firm innovativeness. Our results suggest that knowledge generated by PROs is more sensitive to the absorptive capacity of the firm than knowledge generated by universities. This has implications for research policy, R&D management, and organizational strategies of firms’ knowledge activities. Firms with low absorptive capacities benefit relatively more from knowledge generated by universities than from knowledge generated by PROs. Moreover, R&D managers should plan both their external and internal R&D if they acquire external R&D from PROs.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Industrial Organization","volume":"93 ","pages":"Article 103056"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139743486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effects of franchising on stores, competitors, and consumers","authors":"Jeff Ackermann","doi":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2024.103055","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2024.103055","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Following a corporate acquisition, a casual dining chain sold all of its company-owned stores to franchisees. I exploit this change in franchise status to estimate the effects of franchising. I use a utility-based choice model to predict alcohol sales for all liquor-selling bars and restaurants in Texas over a 10-year period. Using this model, I find that franchising a restaurant increases its revenues by 7 percent. A substantial share of this revenue increase comes at the expense of competing national chains. I also find that franchising a store produces a consumer utility gain equal to the gain that would result from a 2.8-mile reduction in distance from the individual's home to the store.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Industrial Organization","volume":"93 ","pages":"Article 103055"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139590434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Missing data and the effects of market deregulation: Evidence from Chinese coal power","authors":"Tom Eisenberg","doi":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2024.103054","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2024.103054","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>A series of market reforms were introduced in 2002 in the Chinese wholesale coal power sector. The period immediately after extremely volatile for this industry, and it is generally accepted that many of the reforms were not fully enacted. Yet, researchers consistently find that these reforms resulted in efficiency gains for power plants. Using new physical and matched financial data, as opposed to only financial data, I find no evidence that there were efficiency gains at the plant-level. I also find that in the aggregate there were large productivity declines over this period. Any measurable gains in either case are mainly due to input and output price fluctuations.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Industrial Organization","volume":"93 ","pages":"Article 103054"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139633208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bridging the digital divide in the US","authors":"Augusto Espín, Christian Rojas","doi":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2024.103053","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2024.103053","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The internet plays a vital role in everyday life across the world. The US, however, has seen a slowdown in household broadband adoption since 2010, creating a gap between connected and unconnected households usually referred to as the “digital divide.” While prior studies have documented how the digital divide is related to income, demographics, and geographic location, this paper takes a different approach and focuses on the mechanisms that could help bridge this gap. To this end, we use a two-stage approach. First, we construct a comprehensive and detailed dataset on household internet usage and prices to estimate broadband demand. Second, we employ the estimated income-dependent demand elasticities to assess multiple counterfactuals aimed at evaluating a number of public policy initiatives designed to reduce the digital divide. Central to our analysis are policies recently approved in the 2021 Biden Infrastructure Act. We contrast the effectiveness of the policies on three metrics: a) policy costs, b) reduction of the digital divide, and c) increases in consumer surplus<span>. We find that affordability policies (i.e., subsidies) can have a larger impact on decreasing the gap vis-à-vis infrastructure deployment policies (i.e., increased coverage or greater bandwidth). We discuss how income-varying subsidies can be particularly effective at reducing disparities in broadband access across the income distribution.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":48127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Industrial Organization","volume":"93 ","pages":"Article 103053"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139515068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Innovation incentives in technical standards","authors":"Gastón Llanes","doi":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2024.103046","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2024.103046","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>I study the incentives to develop complementary technologies and include them in a technical standard. I find that the standardization process may lead to insufficient or excessive innovation. Patent pools increase innovation incentives, while price caps may increase or decrease them. Although both policies increase user surplus and welfare, price caps dominate (are dominated by) patent pools if the incremental value of technologies is small (large). Preventing the coordination of price caps guarantees that the socially-optimal policy is implemented in equilibrium. However, from innovators' perspective, patent pools are more profitable than price caps. This finding helps explain why patent pools are more prevalent than price caps, even though price caps may imply higher welfare. Cooperative R&D agreements increase innovation and welfare when technologies are highly complementary. The paper's results contribute to the discussion of the effects of recent policy changes in the VITA and IEEE standard-setting organizations.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Industrial Organization","volume":"93 ","pages":"Article 103046"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139421079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The behavioral additionality of government research grants","authors":"Rainer Widmann","doi":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.103045","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.103045","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>There are different forms of public support for industrial R&D. Some attempt to increase innovation by prompting firms to undertake more challenging projects than they otherwise would. Access to a dataset from one such program, the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, allows me to examine the effect of research grants on firms' patenting outcomes. My estimates suggest that a government research grant increases the propensity to file a patent application with the European Patent Office by around 12 percentage points. Stronger effects appear for more experienced firms of advanced age. Additional evidence indicates that grants induce experienced firms to develop unconventional patents and patents that draw on knowledge novel to the firm. I interpret the findings in a “exploration vs. exploitation” model, in which grants are targeted at ambitious projects that face internal competition from more conventional projects within firms. The model shows that this mechanism is more salient in experienced firms, leading to a stronger response in behavior for this group of firms.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Industrial Organization","volume":"93 ","pages":"Article 103045"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718723001145/pdfft?md5=576a34312bce5cacb25d131d124e0ff8&pid=1-s2.0-S0167718723001145-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139078682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Demand forecasting, signal precision, and collusion with hidden actions","authors":"Simon Martin , Alexander Rasch","doi":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.103036","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.103036","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We analyze how higher demand-forecasting precision affects firms' chances of sustaining supracompetitive profits, depending on whether actions are observable or hidden. We identify a dual role of improving forecasting ability for situations in which actions are hidden. Improved forecasting ability increases the temptation for firms to deviate, reducing profits; at the same time, such ability reduces and eventually eliminates the uncertainty over whether deviations are occurring. Our framework, in which firms decide on prices and promotional activities, reveals a U-shaped relationship between profits and predictive ability. Generally, collusive profits may increase or decrease in signal precision, depending on action observability, highlighting the importance of industry-specific considerations for regulatory interventions and competition policy.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Industrial Organization","volume":"92 ","pages":"Article 103036"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138685979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gaétan de Rassenfosse , Gabriele Pellegrino , Emilio Raiteri
{"title":"Do patents enable disclosure? Evidence from the invention secrecy act","authors":"Gaétan de Rassenfosse , Gabriele Pellegrino , Emilio Raiteri","doi":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.103044","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.103044","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper provides empirical evidence suggesting that patents may facilitate knowledge disclosure. The analysis exploits the Invention Secrecy Act, which grants the U.S. Commissioner for Patents the right to prevent the disclosure of new inventions that represent a threat to national security. Using a two-level matching approach, we document a negative and large relationship between the enforcement of a secrecy order and follow-on inventions, as captured with patent citations and text-based measures of invention similarity. The effect carries over to after the lift of the secrecy period, suggesting a lost generation of inventions. The results bear implications for innovation and intellectual property policy.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Industrial Organization","volume":"92 ","pages":"Article 103044"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718723001133/pdfft?md5=282b9e1251693cbd41d59fa9245d0e3a&pid=1-s2.0-S0167718723001133-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138823508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nonlinear pricing in multidimensional context: An empirical analysis of energy consumption","authors":"Xintong Han , Zimin Liu , Tong Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.103034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.103034","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Modern business practices frequently employ a blend of pricing strategies to segment markets effectively. As a result, consumers may encounter pricing schedules that are nonlinear and multidimensional. This paper presents a structural approach for estimating multidimensional nonlinear pricing models involving multiple decision variables in an energy market. Using a unique, rich panel dataset of Chinese household electricity consumption, we structurally estimate consumer preferences under the influence of an Increasing Block Price (IBP) and a Time-of-Use (ToU) system. Our structural approach allows us to distinguish and evaluate household-level price elasticities of demand, presenting a novel explanation for consumers' feedback on marginal price changes. Through model-based simulations, we demonstrate that a 1% increase in price corresponds to a 0.7% reduction in total electricity demand. However, our analysis indicates that practical opportunities for optimization within multi-dimensional pricing systems are limited. Our findings offer distinct insights into the complex interplay between intricate pricing structures and energy consumption behavior, thereby providing valuable guidance for policymakers and regulators.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Industrial Organization","volume":"91 ","pages":"Article 103034"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718723001030/pdfft?md5=2afaed12f739191dd3c4c9afadd19f61&pid=1-s2.0-S0167718723001030-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138413539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Wind power expansion and regional allocative efficiency among fossil-fuel electricity generators","authors":"Yin Chu , Juanxia Gao , Haoyang Li","doi":"10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.103035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.103035","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Integrating wind power demands more generation fleet flexibility and incurs more incidences of transmission congestion, which may impose a negative effect on how efficiently regional production is allocated among fossil fuel electricity generators (we call it “regional allocative efficiency”). Exploring exogenous variations in wind power generation conditional on wind turbine capacity, we analyze wind-induced allocative efficiency loss by comparing the average cost sensitivity of fossil-fuel generator utilization between periods of different wind generation levels in a US regional electricity market. Results show that the utilization of fossil fuel generators becomes less sensitive to their costs as the share of wind power increases. This effect is more pronounced when wind power is more volatile and when transmission capacity is less sufficient. The back-of-envelope calculation based on our empirical findings suggests that the private inefficiency cost is nontrivial: taking it into account would increase the levelized cost of wind energy by $12/MWh, amounting to approximately 17% of the traditional estimates. Further incorporating the social damage of carbon dioxide in the calculation implies that the privately inefficient substitution from cheap coal to expensive gas units instead brings a net social benefit; nonetheless, our estimated private cost is still policy-relevant since it is a local burden while the carbon abatement benefit is shared globally.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48127,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Industrial Organization","volume":"91 ","pages":"Article 103035"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138397375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}