Xiangkang Yin

Is firm size conducive to R&D choice? A strategic analysis of product and process innovations

Abstract Using a duopoly model of multiproduct firms, we show that different innovation incentives cause the larger firm to invest more in process (cost-reducing) innovations and the small one to allocate more resources to search for new products. Because of this heterogeneity of R&D behavior, the large firm remains dominant for the original product in the post-innovation market, but the small firm is more likely to be a leader in the new product market. These theoretical results are consistent with recent empirical findings.

Contract management responsibility system and profit incentives in China's state-owned enterprises

While the enterprise reform in China has provided incentives to its state-owned enterprises (SOEs), their poor performance relative to other forms of enterprises remains puzzling. This paper provides an answer to this puzzle by studying optimal managerial decisions under the enterprise reform.

Quantity Precommitment and Bertrand Competition Yield Cournot Outcomes: A Case with Product Differentiation

Using a simple model of two-stage duopoly game, this paper shows that Bertrand-like price competition on a differentiated goods market, following a simultaneous endogenous choice of production capacity, yields the Cournot-like outcomes.

Corrective Taxes under Oligopoly with Inter-Firm Externalities

Pollution externalities between polluters should be taken into account in the design of corrective taxes. When the externalities are substantial and/or the number of polluters is large, the effluent levies on these firms do not necessarily result in a deadweight loss. Consequently, the second-best tax exceeds the marginal social cost of pollution. A more general rule is that the tax rate should be greater than the marginal social cost of pollution if and only if a marginal increase in the tax rate results in opposite effects on the changes of equilibrium emission level and output.

A Dynamic Analysis of Overstaff in China's State-Owned Enterprises

Overstaff in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is a key and difficult issue in the Chinese economic reform. This paper models the transition process in the reform that SOE overstaff is gradually absorbed by private enterprises and the economy grows through converting redundant SOE workers into active labor force. It characterizes the steady equilibrium, where all overstaff has been completely absorbed, and the dynamic path from current state to the steady equilibrium. The optimal government strategy maximizing household utility in the transition is also discussed.

A Tractable Alternative to Cobb‐Douglas Utility for Imperfect Competition

This paper proposes a tractable alternative to Cobb-Douglas utility to resolve the problems of lack of reservation price and income effects in demand functions derived from Cobb-Douglas utility or quasilinear utility. Another advantage of this alternative is that it provides a closed-form general equilibrium in the case where some industries are monopoly while others are imperfectly competitive.

Competition Can Harm Consumers

Duopolists selling differentiated products can generate less consumer surplus than a monopoly selling one of the products. In a Hotelling-type model where a monopoly supplies more than half of potential consumers, but not all, entry by a rival leads to a duopoly price that is higher than the monopoly price. Consumers in aggregate will be made worse off by such entry when the effect of the price increase outweighs the benefit of extra variety. When consumers have continuous demand functions and firms use two-part tariffs, duopoly can also result in lower aggregate consumer surplus than monopoly.

Should Executive Stock Options be Abandoned

Recent corporate scandals around the world have led many to single out executive stock options as one of the main culprits. More corporations are abandoning stock options and reverting to restricted stock. This paper argues that such a change is not entirely justifiable. We first provide a critical review of the pros and cons of executive stock options. We then compare option-based contracts with stock-based contracts using a simple principal-agent model with moral hazard. In a general environment without restrictions on preferences or technologies, option-based contracts are shown to weakly dominate stock-based contracts. The weak dominance relation becomes strict if the manager is risk neutral. Numerical examples are provided to show that, even if the manager is risk averse, strict dominance is more likely the case.

The Effects of Product Ageing on Demand: The Case of Digital Cameras

The static differentiated product demand model when applied to products with rapid product turnover and declining prices, yields implausible results. One response is to explicitly model the inter-temporal choices of consumers but computational demands require restrictive assumptions on consumer heterogeneity and limits on the characteristics included in the model. We propose, instead, to supplement the static model with a control for the age that each product has been in the market. This approach is applied to the US digital camera market and we find we obtain more plausible estimates. Our results are consistent with inter-temporal price discrimination by firms. Furthermore, our results suggest that ignoring the effects of product ageing may result in substantially overestimated price elasticities and technological progress and underestimated price-cost markups.

Rumors of Mergers and Acquisitions: Market Efficiency and Markup Pricing

Rumors can be classified into two types, according to whether they can credibly predict impending events or not. The analysis of takeover rumors of publically traded US companies from 1990 to 2008 shows that these two types of rumors can be statistically distinguished by returns of rumored takeover targets before rumor publication. However, market responses to the rumors on the rumor day and the day after are statistically indifferent. Trading on such rumors can be profitable. Moreover, takeover premiums of sampled targets cannot be explained by markup pricing hypothesis although the hypothesis is supported by the view of efficient markets.