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Do Socioeconomic Regulations Discriminate against Small Firms?
... First, firms in high-technology industries engage in R&D activities much more frequently than the firm in low-technology industries (Audretsch and Feldman, 1996). As an implication of this, firms in these industries employ a larger proportion of scientists, engineers and technicians in comparison to the firms in other manufacturing industries (Dung, 1990). Secondly, firms in high-tech industries face short product cycles. ...
In this essay I assess the role that is played by the two characteristics of high-tech firms in shaping their corporate strategies: short product cycles and the involvement of intangible assets in production. Short product cycles impose high-tech firms to seek complementary assets for entering new markets quickly and compete. The involvement of intangible capital in high-tech production, on the other hand, is related to the distinguishing characteristic of high-tech industries for which R&D activities are observed frequently and firms employ a large proportion of scientists, engineers and technicians. In this essay, I hypothesize and show that as a result of these two characteristics high-technology firms are likely to engage in vertical mergers more often than low-technology firms and vertical mergers are likely to involve firms that employ intangible assets in production.
This article considers the impact of mandatory worksite modifications for handi-Abstract capped workers on optimal employment at the competitive firm. The authors argue that worker impairments introduce production uncertainty, and they demonstrate that for firms with decreasing absolute risk aversion, mandatory worksite modifications reduce the optimal employment level. Simulation exercises suggest that the employment reduction could be substantial, particularly in smaller firms. They also show that by using appropriately coordinated tax policies, the undesirable employ ment effect of mandatory worksite modifications can be mitigated. However, if the government relies on these policies to eliminate the effect entirely, firms lose any incentive to minimize modification costs.
The paper examines the effects of firm-specific taxes on an oligopoly composed of firms of unequal sizes, holding different conjectures, operating with non-identical costs. Four types of effects are analysed: on profits, on industry concentration, on total tax revenue, and on social welfare. We derive (i) the revenue-maximizing taxes, (ii) the welfare-maximizing taxes, and (iii) welfare-maximizing taxes subject to a revenue constraint. /// Fiscalité optimale et oligopole hétérogène. Ce mémoire examine les effets de taxes spécifiques à une firme sur un oligopole composé de firmes de tailles inégales, ayant des conjectures différentes, et opérant avec une structure de coûts qui n'est pas identique d'une firme à l'autre. Quatre types d'effets sont analysés: effets sur les profits, sur la concentration industrielle, sur les revenus fiscaux globaux, et sur le niveau de bien-être social. L'auteur dérive (i) les impôts qui maximisent le revenu, (ii) les impôts qui maximisent le bien-être, et (iii) les impôts qui maximisent le bien-être sous une contrainte de revenu.
The consequences of a horizontal merger are typically studied by treating the merger as an exogenous change in market structure
that displaces the initial Cournot equilibrium. In the new equilibrium the merged firm is assumed to behave like a multiplant
Cournot player engaged in a noncooperative game against other sellers. The purpose of this article is to evaluate an unnoticed
comparative-static implication of this approach: some exogenous mergers may reduce the endogenous joint profits of the firms
that are assumed to collude. Cournot's original example is used to illustrate this and other bizarre results that can occur
in the Cournot framework if the market structure is treated as exogenous.
Many government contracts with or policies towards oligopolistic sectors essentially involve private firms selling a given proportion (ϑ), or quantity, of output to the government at a fixed price (PR) with the remainder being sold on the open-market. Often this is combined with consumer rationing. Examples include cement and sugar in India, and health, housing and defence in many countries. The paper investigates the effects of these schemes (including sales and excise taxation) on prices, output and household welfare under oligopoly and monopolistic competition. Less government control (reduced ϑ) may raise prices and tax shifting can be above or below 100 percent.
The problem of entry receives a great deal of attention in presentday Industrial Economics. The main question typically asked in this connection, ever since the work of Bain and Sylos-Labini, is what the best strategies are for oligopolists facing the threat of entry into their industry, that is, the implications of potential entry on their optimal policies regarding pricing, investment, R & D, advertising and so on. Were entry to occur, conventional wisdom says, the effects woulod be unambiguous : profits per firm, and perhaps also outputs per firm would fall, while the industry as a whole becomes "more competitive" in some sense, in particular expanding output. These effects are commonly taken for granted in discussions of entry, as obvious truths or, at best, as underlying assumptions. The natural question arises of whether this deep-rooted piece of conventional wisdom is in fact correct for the general case, as the behaviour of oligopoly is, alas, complex enough to keep many surprises in store.
This article examines "consistent" conjectural variations in an oligopoly model with a homogeneous product. A conjectural variation is consistent if it is equivalent to the optimal response of the other firms at the equilibrium defined by that conjecture. When the number of firms is fixed, we find that competitive behavior is consistent when marginal costs are constant, but that when marginal costs are rising, the consistent conjectural variation will be between competitive and Cournot behavior. Finally, if we allow free entry and redefine consistency to account for such, then only competitive behavior will be consistent.