Bargaining Power Research Articles

A bargaining perspective on vertical integration

AbstractWe analyze vertical integration incentives in a bilaterally duopolistic industry with bargaining in the input market. Vertical integration incentives are a combination of horizontal integration incentives upstream and downstream and depend on the strength of substitutability and complementarity and the shape of the unit cost function. Under particular circumstances, vertical integration can convey more bargaining power to the merged entity than a horizontal merger to monopoly. In a bidding game for an exogenously determined target firm, a vertical merger can dominate a horizontal one, while pre‐emption does not occur.

An analysis of the gender layoff gap implied by a gender gap in wage bargaining

The assumption that wage bargaining power is greater for men than for women yields a novel, mechanical implication regarding the gender wage gap: there should also be a gender layoff gap. If women with the same marginal product of labor as men exercise less bargaining power and consequently earn lower wages, then female workers should on average be more profitable for a firm. When conditions reduce labor demand, the firm should therefore prefer to lay off its male workers first. I show that this is consistent with the data for the United States from 1982–2019. A calibration exercise based on the gender gap in layoff rates suggests that the female bargaining share has risen from 14% lower to 6% lower than the male share over time.

Bank's balance sheet management as a bargaining tool: Evidence from Brazilian labor strikes

We investigate whether and how banks adjust their financial positions in the wake of labor strikes. Using hand-collected data at the bank-municipality level in Brazil during 2006–2016, we find that banks significantly increase loan loss provisions, reduce loans disbursed, and hold less liquidity just before the bank labor strikes. These results are consistent with a bargaining hypothesis, suggesting that banks account for fewer current earnings, reduce expected cash flows, and reveal less cash and cash equivalents to labor unions before the anticipated strikes to counter the rent-seeking behavior of unions and strengthen their bargaining power in upcoming wage negotiations.

Minority shareholder activism and its ex-ante monitoring role in corporate M&A decisions: Evidence from China

Minority shareholder protection is especially important in countries with weak institutions. Prior studies indicate that social media facilitates minority shareholder activism by connecting otherwise isolated individual shareholders and increasing their bargaining power against the controlling shareholders. Whereas prior studies focus on the ex-post monitoring role of social media in corporate governance, we investigate whether and how minority shareholder social media engagement could deter insiders' entrenchment incentives in an ex-ante fashion. Specifically, using high merger premiums and private placement financing as proxies for activities that reflect insider entrenchment incentives in M&As, we find that greater social media engagement lowers M&A premiums and the likelihood of using private placement to benefit the controlling shareholders. This result holds after we control for the governance role of conventional media or analyst coverage, and institutional investors. Our mechanism analysis reveals that the effectiveness of social media in curbing entrenchment incentives in M&A is conditional on the perceived capital market consequences and the perceived likelihood of proposal vetoes. Further analysis shows that minority shareholder activism plays a greater role in curbing entrenchment in M&As when the minority shareholder sentiment expressed on social media is more negative and is more M&A-specific, as well as when social media facilitates higher quality discussions following an exogenous regulatory shock. We also find that minority shareholder activism is associated with better M&A performance. Our study highlights the ex-ante governance role of minority shareholder activism in weak institutions and informs regulators on the critical need to provide a platform for minority shareholders to effectively voice their concerns.

AN ANALYSIS ON FIVE FORCES DAN BCG MATRIX FOR APPLE INC. COMPANY

This research aims to conduct an analysis of Five Forces and BCG Matrix for Apple Inc. The Five Forces analysis is used to evaluate the competitiveness of the industry in which Apple operates, while the BCG Matrix is employed to measure the company's product portfolio. Data for this study are sourced from reliable resources, including the company's financial reports, industry reports, and related publications. The Five Forces analysis reveals that the technology and software industry in which Apple operates is highly competitive. Threats from major competitors, the level of product substitution, and the bargaining power of buyers significantly impact the company's strategies and performance. However, Apple's strong brand equity and robust product ecosystem provide a competitive advantage in navigating the pressures from these five forces. In the BCG Matrix analysis, Apple's core products such as the iPhone, iPad, and Mac show a position of stars and question marks, indicating high growth potential. On the other hand, some older products and unproven innovations fall into the category of cash cows and dogs, with lower growth prospects. The results of the Five Forces and BCG Matrix analysis provide a comprehensive overview of Apple's market position and aid in formulating the company's long-term strategies. Apple's management can leverage these findings to optimize the product portfolio and address competitive challenges in the ever-evolving technology industry. While Apple holds a strong market position, new challenges will continually emerge, necessitating effective strategies to maintain competitiveness and ensure the company's growth in the future.

Networks and knowledge: Women's empowerment, networks, and health information-seeking behavior in rural Guatemala

Women in rural communities, with low access to healthcare and education, often rely on community-based networks, which can be an important source of knowledge, support, and resources. These networks can help women overcome barriers such as illiteracy in learning about child health. This paper uses primary data from Highland Guatemala to describe women's participation in health information networks, particularly as it relates to their decision-making power within the household. This study combines a fixed effects model with an instrumental variables approach to estimate the relationship between a multidimensional measure of empowerment, the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), and sources of health information. The findings suggest that increased bargaining power increases a woman's ability to participate in informal informational networks. The implication of this finding is that an increase in a woman's empowerment expands her social support network. The results also show that an increase in participation in more formal networks is what leads to greater child health knowledge, indicating that where and how women learn about child health matters.

Penerapan Alat Bantu Pengaduk dan Manajemen Rantai Pasok untuk UMKM Pembuat Rendang

This community service program aims to solve the unstandardized production process and the high bargaining power from suppliers in rendang making for Small, Micro, and Medium Businesses (MSMEs). The appropriate technology and consultation training implementation are the applied method in achieving the goal. Therefore, the main problems to be solved are uniformity mixture between seasoning and meat during cooking process within 4-5 hours and low management skill to organize the supply chain components. The results are a uniform mixture of all ingredients and SMMB has basic supply chain management skills. The stirring process with constant speed and intermittent monitoring process during the entire cooking process produces the uniformity mixture. The SMMB is equipped with the skill to identify the supply chain components in the form of compact map. This community service program can blend technology and management implementation into interconnected activities to increase the MSMEs competitiveness, unlike similar community service program.

Influencer selection and strategic analysis for live streaming selling

The increasing popularity of live streaming selling on e-commerce platforms, along with the expanding number of influencers. There are currently two primary categories of influencers: the first refers to top influencers who have a large fan base, resulting in increased popularity and bargaining power. The second category comprises regular influencers who have a smaller fan base, resulting in diminished popularity and bargaining power. Furthermore, sellers are required to consider two pricing strategies, namely the differential pricing strategy and the uniform pricing strategy. We develop a game model to analyze the preferences of the seller regarding influencer types and pricing strategies. We discover that the seller's preference for the influencer depends on the influencer profession's average bargaining power and the fixed payment of the top influencers. When both are less than a certain threshold, the seller prefers to cooperate with the top influencer, and the threshold of both increases under the differential pricing strategy. At the same time, the seller's tolerance for the top influencer's fixed payment increases as the top influencer's popularity increases. It is also observed that the implementation of a differential pricing strategy consistently leads to higher profits compared to a uniform pricing strategy. However, considering the social welfare, the seller tends to favor the uniform pricing strategy when the cost coefficient of the influencer exceeds a specific threshold. Our research presents some guidelines for the seller to make strategic decisions on live streaming selling.

Low‐carbon economic optimal operation strategy of rural multi‐microgrids based on asymmetric Nash bargaining

AbstractThe multi‐microgrids operation can greatly improve the proportion of renewable energy integration and power reliability of rural microgrids through energy trading between adjacent microgrids. Therefore, this paper proposes an optimization method for the low‐carbon economic operation of rural microgrids which contain wind power, photovoltaic, biogas, and other common rural renewable energy sources. Using the asymmetric Nash bargaining model which can form the non‐linear energy mapping function to quantify the bargaining power of each microgrid to establish the multi‐microgrids energy trading model, and the non‐convex trading optimization problem is equivalently transformed into two convex optimization subproblems, subproblem 1 is microgrids alliance costs containing the emission costs, and subproblem 2 is cooperative benefits distribution. Then, the accelerated Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) method is used to solve subproblem 1 and subproblem 2, respectively, and the privacy of transaction information is also protected. The results show that: compared with the single‐microgrid operation, the combined operation of rural multi‐microgrids with biogas can greatly improve the renewable energy consumption rate, reduce carbon emission, and improve the profit income of the alliance and each microgrid. Meanwhile, the accelerated ADMM algorithm used can greatly improve the solution speed.

The Influence of Demand Fluctuation and Competition Intensity on Advantages of Supply Chain Dominance

We studied a supply chain consisting of multiple suppliers and multiple retailers. We use the Cournot–Stackelberg game, the Market–Stackelberg game, and the Market–Nash game to simulate the situation where the upstream seller’s market dominance power gradually decreases while the downstream buyer’s market power increases. The equilibrium decision and supply chain performance under the three models are compared and analyzed, as well as their responses to external market changes such as demand fluctuation and market competition intensity. The research shows that (1) in a seller-dominated supply chain, the increase in buyer power reduces market equilibrium production and wholesale price; (2) in the face of strong demand fluctuations, equivalent power between upstream and downstream can contribute to the stabilization of production and wholesale prices; (3) when market demand fluctuation is small, market power brings a higher profit level, and supply chain participants would like to actively compete for market power. However, when the demand fluctuates greatly, the profit advantage brought by market dominance is no longer significant, and there is no need to spend much to fight for market dominance; (4) the fierce competition of upstream suppliers will induce upstream to give up the competition for market dominance, and make the market power less attractive to downstream retailers. While the fierce horizontal competition downstream will stimulate both suppliers and retailers to actively compete for market power, (5) sufficient market competition will improve total supply chain profit, so encouraging competition is conducive to the overall economic development of society.

Persaingan Bisnis Dalam Novel Gadis Kretek Karya Ratih Kumala

This study aims to determine the Business Competition in the Novel Gadis Kretek by Ratih Kumala. The novel was published in 2012. The data collection techniques used are reading techniques and analyzing techniques. The method used in this research is qualitative method and descriptive analysis method. The source of data used in this research is the literary work of the novel Gadis Kretek by Ratih Kumala. Based on the results of the study, it can be concluded that there are factors that affect business competition in the Gadis Kretek Novel, namely industry competition, bargaining power of buyers, and the threat of substitute products.

Shifting the Balance: Examining the Impact of Local Labor Market Opportunities on Female Household Bargaining Power in India

There has been considerable interest in studying the effect of female labor market outcomes on intrahousehold bargaining. This paper examines the effects of local labor market opportunities in India on a variety of female bargaining characteristics, including domestic violence and intrahousehold discussion of important issues. Specifically, I utilize district-level data on employment in various occupations to calculate an employment shift-share index that proxies gender-specific labor demand. I find that improvements in labor market conditions for women lead to a decrease in perceptions of domestic violence, whereas improvements in predicted demand for male employment have little or negative effects on women’s household bargaining power. When disaggregated by indicators of initial bargaining power, women that have lower levels of initial bargaining power either see no effect on bargaining or experience a backlash effect.

Green Investment Decisions and Coordination in a Green Agri-Product Supply Chain considering Risk Aversion and Bargaining Power under Different Channel Power Structures

With eco-friendly green agriculture becoming the development trend of modern agriculture, how to make green investments and how to coordinate the supply chain become the key issues of agricultural green development. Using game theory and optimization theory, this paper studies the green investment decision in a two-echelon agricultural supply chain composed of a risk-averse farmer and a risk-neutral retailer under different power structures including three kinds of decentralized decision making and three kinds of cooperative decision making and conducts the supply chain coordination based on generalized Nash bargaining model. The results show that under decentralized decision making, Nash vertical, farmer-led, and retailer-led maximizes green investment level, the expected utility of farmer and retailer, respectively. In addition, the cooperative decision increases the marginal revenue, sales price, and the expected utility of the retailer and decreases the expectations of farmers. Except for retailer-led cooperative decisions, all cooperative decisions have increased the level of green investment and wholesale prices; among the six decision models, the green investment level is negatively correlated with risk aversion, while it is positively correlated with the cost-sharing contract. The optimal cost-sharing ratio is positively correlated with risk aversion and bargaining power. The cost-sharing contracts are invalid when farmers have full bargaining power. Numerical analysis shows that a cost-sharing contract with equal bargaining power can achieve perfect coordination in the supply chain.

The United States facing allies’ populist blackmail: Why the Philippines and Turkey threatened to realign with China and Russia

Abstract Given China and Russia’s increasingly aggressive behaviour, balance of threat theory posits that formal US allies should close ranks behind the United States. The literature on alliance politics reinforces this logic by showing that alliances deter aggression and reduce the occurrence of war. Recent developments, however, have somewhat undermined these claims, as the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, and the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, publicly threatened to break ranks with Washington and to realign with China and Russia respectively. How can we make sense of such defiant behaviour? This article argues that populist blackmail elucidates this phenomenon and compares it to three alternative propositions: conventional bandwagoning, bandwagoning for profit, and hard hedging. Based on empirical evidence, the article reveals that the provocative statements of Duterte and Erdogan were not a genuine push for realignment with Beijing and Moscow, but rather political strategies designed to enhance their bargaining power with Washington in the hopes of securing certain concessions, while simultaneously galvanising domestic support to justify their raison d’être and to secure their hold on power. Furthermore, the article infers that two concomitant factors – political grievances and the perceived lack of security assurance – propelled both presidents to resort to blackmail.

Marketing and Value Chain Analysis of Mandarin at Jorayal Rural Municipality of Doti, Nepal

The yearly decline in mandarin production, one of the important citrus fruit in the mid-hills of Nepal could be attributed to underdeveloped and non-systematic market and lack of value-chain participation by farmers leading to low profitability and hence reducing their motivation. So, this research explores market and value chain of mandarin sub-sector through survey of 100 households from Jorayal rural municipality of Doti district using semi-structured questionnaires. Results showed that the average production of selected mandarin farmers is 1.8 Mt with income of Rs. 24,059 but considering family labor gross margins are negative. The dominant marketing channel is FarmersàCollectors, with around 92% of sales volume. Among the different types of collectors, local ones are dominant market players although price offered is higher for those coming from outside the district (Rs.58/kg) compared to local collectors (Rs. 50/kg), with producer's share being 40% and 35%, respectively. Monopoly of local collectors is high but for local relationship farmers are compelled to sell to them. Due to remoteness of the area, there are low/no value chain actors and hence marketing efficiency is also low. The major problem in marketing is found to be the low market price along with the unavailability of storage facilities or collection centers. Low networking of farmers is also contributing to reduction of the marketing efficiency and hence they are found not to be interested to scale-up their mandarin farms. Cooperative marketing may be one of the best options to increase the bargaining power of small-scale and scattered farmers.

Between the mountains, the city, and the world: the microhistory of a ‘Small Third Front’ Chinese arsenal during Revolution and reform

ABSTRACT This article presents a microhistory of Dongfang Arsenal, a Small Third Front project in Beijing, using archival sources, gazetteers, memoirs compiled by former workers, and oral history. It focuses on how the arsenal’s former workers engaged with socialist modernity and tangibly experienced the changing relationship between China and the outside world. It examines the military-industrial complex as a physical micro-space for employment, political mobilisation, and later a collective memory site. Built upon existing studies of the Third Front and emerging research on negotiated state power in socialist enterprises, the article demonstrates how the Third Front’s internally stratified industrial labour force creatively navigated the physical and institutional urban-rural divide by employing collective bargaining power. It also offers an insight into how an industrial, close-knit community and the society related to it experienced the Cultural Revolution. Additionally, it discusses the Front employees’ experience and the arsenal’s struggle for survival during the transition between various socio-economic regimes, bringing together the history of Maoist revolutionary modernisation and post-Maoist reform.

Linking Farmers’ Bargaining Power in Trade to their Plans for Future Economic Activities

Abstract This paper aims to examine the relationship between the bargaining power of farmers in trade and their plans for future economic activity. While there is existing evidence shedding light on the factors influencing trading power and its consequences, there remains a compelling exigency for scientific substantiation clarifying the aforementioned nexus. A questionnaire was designed and utilized to collect primary data from farmers in Albania (with a sample size of 640). Factor analysis, reliability test and non-parametric statistical methods were used. Evidence was found in support of the aforesaid relationships. Hence, farmers who have plans for investments reflect a higher bargaining power in trading, as opposed to those without such plans. Moreover, interest in increasing farm activity is significantly associated with improved bargaining power in trade. This study enriches the literature, especially in the agribusiness field, by offering additional insights from a transition and developing country.

Encounters of Syrian refugees and locals in the informal garment sector of Esenler district, Istanbul

This article focuses on relations between Syrian and local workers in the informal garment sector. It presents a framework showing the participation and integration of the Syrian refugees and the local workers’ response to this process. The findings are based on empirical materials collected in the Esenler district of Istanbul, including 60 interviews with Syrians and locals as well as participant observation in an informal garment atelier in 2020 to 2021. This study shows how Syrian refugees produce coping tactics and gain bargaining power. The research reveals different forms of relations.

Has COVID-19 changed the factors explaining the occupancy of Airbnb accommodation? Madrid as a case study

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the dynamics of short-term rental demand, particularly on Airbnb, have seen pivotal shifts. Using Madrid as a case study, this research used strategic sampling to investigate changes in occupancy, housing attributes, and online reputation. Leveraging a sup-likelihood ratio test and a hedonic-type pooled panel-data Logit regression, we identified a marked structural break. Findings revealed a diminished demand-side bargaining power, resulting in increased rental prices and reduced information transparency. These results offered critical insights for tourism industry stakeholders, especially destination managers and Airbnb hosts.

The catalysts of “Red for Ed”: Statewide teachers’ strikes as collective voice and conflict expansion for communities of fate

ABSTRACT In 2018 and 2019, public school teachers mobilized for strikes across a diverse set of states. Why did some states see massive teacher mobilizations, while others did not? We argue that declining resources for both teachers and students and restrictive collective bargaining laws, among other legal-political factors, catalyzed statewide teacher mobilization. We analyze which factors shaped the likelihood of a statewide teachers’ strikes, finding teachers were much more likely to strike in states with low per pupil spending and states where teachers are restricted in their collective bargaining power. Together, these results indicate that teacher mobilization was the result of the inability to voice concerns through institutionalized processes. Normal politics was replaced with mass mobilization and interruption of education. The results illuminate the conditions under which workers will mobilize outside of institutionalized processes to express voice.