Interaction of spectrum auctions and mobile market competition: Review of theory and evidence from European 4G auctions

Theory suggests that intraspecific competition and kin competition are keys processes shaping the evolution of dispersal. Based on a review of the empirical literature we derived the following generalizations. The plasticity within taxa in the presence and direction of sex-biased dispersal revealed by recent empirical studies argues against a single factor accounting for interspecific patterns in dispersal. If they can be parameterized, models exploring the interactions between competitive interaction and inbreeding avoidance will provide rigorous predictions for different groups.

This paper develops and tests different theoretical models of competition in a vertically linked market assuming different production arrangements for retailer private label brands (PL). We then empirical estimate retailer manufacturer competitive behavior based on best-fit games and determine the impact of PL production arrangements on pricing strategies for PLs and NBs. Retailers are using different production arrangements to produce PL products. In fact, a retailer may own a production facility, a national brand manufacturer (NB) produces the PL product exclusively for the retailer or the retailer outsources PL production to a non-NB manufacturer. These possible, different production arrangements can have significant implications for the competitive interactions and market outcomes between retailers and NB manufacturers. Existing economic literature has identified a significant degree of variation in the type of competitive interactions across grocery product categories. However, the majority empirical studies in IO have typically imposed assumptions about the nature of vertical production arrangement without formally and explicitly investigating the nature of PL-NB competitive interaction under different production arrangements. The analysis builds on the Non-Nested Model Comparison (NNMC) approach and employs weekly store-level retail scanner data, for a major North American retail chain. The findings from different theoretical models and their empirical application reveal that no consistent pattern of competitive interactions exists between PLs and NBs across different food product categories. Competitive patterns and outcomes vary depending on the nature of the PL production arrangement. Our study contributes to the IO literature by being the first to consistently derive and estimate the impact of PL production arrangement on brand-level competition.

Diagnosing the nature and magnitude of competitive interactions among firms is important for developing effective marketing strategies. In this paper, we formulate a game-theoretic model of firm interaction to analyze the dynamic price and advertising competition among firms in a given product market. Firm (or brand) level demand functions account for the contemporaneous and carry-over effects of these marketing activities, and also allow for the effects of competitor actions. Firms take into consideration the actions of their rivals, as well as their own demand and cost functions (both production and advertising) when determining the profit-maximizing price and advertising levels. Our formulation enables us to quantify not only the direction and magnitude of competitive reactions, but also to identify the underlying form of market conduct that generates the particular pattern of interaction. We specify and estimate a fully structural econometric model for three firms constituting a distinct sub-market within a personal-care product category. We estimate the demand and competitive interaction parameters, as well as the production and advertising cost functions for each firm. We then derive implications for competitive interactions and market structure. Interestingly, we find that while firms seem to compete on advertising, they price cooperatively, thereby enhancing their price-cost margins.

Effective competition and ineffective mobile industry regulation in South Africa

Differential Neural Activation for Updating Rule versus Stimulus Information in Working Memory

The value of innovation: The interaction of competition, R&D and IP

The relationship between market competition and network investment in the mobile telecommunications industry has always been one of the focuses for scholars and regulatory agencies. The conclusions of previous studies on this topic remain ambiguous. Infrastructure sharing has become a noticeable trend in the global mobile telecommunications industry, but its impact on operators’ investment and innovation behaviors is controversial. This paper uses fixed effects and dynamic panel data models to empirically examine the relationship among the market competition, infrastructure sharing, and network investment in China’s mobile telecommunications industry. The results show that market competition has a significant positive impact on the total industry network investment, but the interaction of market competition and infrastructure sharing has undermined network investment, which indicates that the competitive strategy of rational operators will shift from facility-based competition to service-based competition when both deep infrastructure sharing and fierce market competition appear at the same time, and this is likely to cause insufficient incentives for investment in advanced technology. This paper suggests that China’s regulators should improve the market structure, enhance market competitiveness continuously, and support infrastructure sharing, but at the same time they should exercise caution when conducting in-depth infrastructure sharing. In addition, they should accelerate the development of 5G vertical industry applications to expand the market space for industry development.

PurposeThis study aims to unravel the complex coopetitive interactions in supply chains. It delves into the paradoxical relationship between cooperative and competitive interactions among supply chain entities, offering a comprehensive exploration of coopetition’s manifestations and management across various supply chain types.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses a three-phase methodology, beginning with a scoping review to establish a theoretical framework, followed by a systematic literature review yielding 130 papers and concluding with correspondence analysis using similarity indexes. This approach facilitates a deep dive into the diverse aspects of coopetition, including its drivers, practices, outcomes and associated risks.FindingsThe research identifies three distinct types of coopetition in supply chains: technology-based, socially based and channel-based. These models are underscored by specific drivers and outcomes, with technology-based coopetition focusing on market competitiveness and operational capacity, socially based on trust and power dynamics and channel based on product characteristics. The study introduces five propositions for further investigation and provides a comprehensive typology of coopetition within supply chains.Research limitations/implicationsThe study’s findings are limited by the scope of the existing literature and the chosen academic databases. Future research should empirically validate the proposed coopetition configurations and propositions, exploring their applicability in other, less studied supply chains.Practical implicationsThe study offers practitioners a valuable typology and framework to understand and manage coopetition in their respective supply chains. This typology serves as a decision-making tool for identifying suitable coopetition strategies and maximizing their benefits while mitigating associated risks.Originality/valueThis study stands out for its unique approach to categorizing coopetition in supply chains, offering a novel typology that goes beyond the manufacturer’s perspective. It fills a significant gap in the literature by providing a broad view of coopetition, considering various supply chain types and their respective coopetitive dynamics.

In contrast to traditional enterprise rivalry, the construction market competition is irregular on the surface due to the randomization of client targets and the one-time competition organization, which conflicts with construction businesses’ perceptions of the nature and future trend of rivalry. Therefore, contractors urgently need to accurately understand the competitive environment in which they will operate. In construction, few empirical studies exist on competitive environments from the standpoint of enterprise-to-enterprise competitive interactions. Based on market commonality, several hypotheses concerning the competitive pattern of the construction market have been proposed. To test these, a model of competing relationship networks is created using 7402 bid-winner notices for construction projects in Chongqing, China, from 2015 to 2018, followed by quantitative analysis and discussion of the model’s characteristic features. The findings suggest that there is a “community-type” rivalry in the building market, which represents the essential characteristics of market commonality. The research shows that the competitive action of construction enterprises is affected by construction technology, industrial division of labor and regional markets, and the competitive relationship between them tends to be “strong-strong”. This study reveals that the “community” competitive relationship in the construction industry may be a unique phenomenon, expands the application and development of market commonality and enterprise clusters in the construction economy, and provides theoretical guidance for construction enterprises to accurately recognize competitive behavior and decision making.

An important ingredient of the Swedish railway system is the increased involvement of public actors in the provision of local and regional railway services. The local and regional railway services show the strongest growth of all market segments in the Swedish passenger railway market. The strong growth is due both to changes in travel patterns and improved subsidized railway services. One important factor in the success of the regional public transport authorities’ (PTA) railway services is the redefinition of the scope of these railway services by interconnecting regional railway networks into bigger entities.In 2017, nearly all local and regional railway services in Sweden's most populated region, Mälardalen, became part of a network of railway services subsidized by the PTAs in the greater region. We analyse the cooperative and competitive interactions between the stakeholders in the greater region using the key concepts in the theory of hybrid organizations. We find that despite moving towards a unified public transport market covering many counties the hybrid organizations use different governance structures and have different principles for sharing value creation. The closer cooperation paradoxically enhances competition in the regional railway market, both between subsidized travel cards and between subsidized and commercial railway services.

In this paper, we deal with the renowned problem of plastic pollution caused by food consumption and its conservation. Specifically, we consider the producer/reseller decision problem of industrial organizations in conditions of perfect competition within small oligopoly clusters. Indeed, very often, one major sustainability problem is that the presence of direct competitors in the same market determines entrepreneurship choices which lower production costs and packaging costs at the expense of the environment and public health. For this purpose, in order to show economic scenarios in which the respect and preservation of the environment and natural resources are quantitatively compatible with profits and economic growth, we present a provisional coopetitive model of the strategic interaction of two food enterprises, in direct duopoly competition, through investments in sustainable-packaging technologies. The macroeconomic goal is to propose possible actions to reduce carbon footprints and the inflow of plastics to the marine environment, following the environmental targets established by the United Nations, also in the presence of direct perfect oligopolistic competition in the same market. From a microeconomic point of view, we assume the existence of two competitors selling a very similar type of food in the same market; therefore, within a competitive interaction, we adopt a classic “Cournot duopoly” core upon which we define a parametric game, namely, a coopetitive game, together with its possible dynamical scenarios and solutions. We should notice that beyond the parameter arising from the cooperation construct, we introduce a matrix of stochastic variables, which we can also consider as the state of the world. Moreover, we numerically examine one possible state of the world to exemplify our model proposal. We determine, analytically and graphically, the optimal investment in the cooperative strategy, the purely coopetitive solution and some super-cooperative solutions. The cooperative strategy represents the common investment chosen to acquire advanced green technologies for innovative packaging, while the fourth component of any solution in the strategy space represents the state of the world at the end of the coopetitive process in which, finally, we can see the profits and costs deriving from the adoption of the green technologies.

Assigning Spectrum Fairly: Managing Spectrum Using Long-Term Nationwide and Short-Term Local Spectrum Licenses

Competition and Corporate Governance

This paper examines how product market competition and strategic interactions among peer firms influence analyst coverage. First, we hypothesize that product market competition increases both the demand and supply of analyst coverage. Using three variations of industry concentration ratios and a firm specific measure of competition, we test and find a positive and significant effect of market competition on analyst coverage. Second, we explore an information transfer channel through which product market affects analyst coverage. We hypothesize that information flows more freely among firms selling similar products. Such information flows lowers analyst information collection and processing costs, which in turn increases analyst coverage. Using product similarity index developed by Hoberg and Phillips (J Polit Econ 124(5):1423–1465, 2016) to capture the effect of information transfer, we find that analyst coverage increases with product similarity. Third we examine the role of competitive strategy in analyst coverage. We split our sample into markets of strategic complements and strategic substitutes. We find that the effect of market competition and analyst coverage is more pronounced in markets where firms compete as strategic complements.

Intra-industry group formation has largely focused on strategic group formation, and has been based on similarity of strategic resource and scope commitments, and on the basis of mobility barriers. In this paper we present a study where competitive/cooperative interaction group identification is based on the patterns of tactical and strategic interactions as found in market competition and cooperation. We posit that patterns of competitive and cooperative interactions among firms provide in-depth information on the configuration of the inter-dependence interaction patterns in an industry. The interaction patterns are mapped onto competitive/cooperative interaction groups using a strategic interaction (action-response) matrix. Clustering techniques are used to partition the firms in the industry into groups, which maximally interact with each other. The partitioning technique was applied to the airline industry resulting in four competitive/cooperative interaction groups. The largest of the four competitive/cooperative interaction group was sub-divided into four clusters of firms exhibiting similar interaction patterns.