The IT age is marked by innovative approaches to the online commerce. Technology as the core of innovation has undergone numerous evolutions through the “creative destruction." Motivated by the phenomena and the challenges in the technology-driven markets, I explore the economic role of innovation from different angles in the following essays. Chapter 1 focuses on firms’ competitive strategies while constructing novel business models in delivering online services. In particular, I am interested in their bundling of marketing services with the core business. In a game theoretic model, I derive competing firms' equilibrium strategies with choices between three business models, no ad-support, ad-support with the optional advertising strategy, and the mandatory advertising strategy, and find that competitive business models can be differentiation-driven or advertising driven depending on market ad aversion. Interestingly, mandatory advertising weakly dominates optional advertising under certain market conditions. My findings offer new insights to the bundling literature. Chapter 2 examines the performance-based auction model in the iconic online advertising innovation, keyword auctions. I analyze advertisers' decision of utilizing their existing reputation from a primary auction upon entering a new auction. The short-term and long-term setups are modeled for analyzing seasonal marketing in a new auction and branding a new product, in examining the impact of new market size, performance, and risk on advertisers' decisions. While an optimistic new market encourages reputation stretching, in the long-term setup it further depends on the performance difference between the two markets. A higher risk is found to induce stretching under intensive competition for both cases; in the long-term, stretching decision is determined by the market size. Chapter 3 examines the connection between business cycles and innovation and offers insights for regulatory innovation policies. Combining endogenous market structure with the dynamic game framework, I study the Markov perfect equilibrium where heterogeneous firms choose their innovation rates. I find that increased per-capita income tends to improve aggregate innovation, while income inequality shocks may reduce innovation conditional on the market structure. I also find subsidies to dampen innovation incentives, and policies such as tax credits that reduce the variable R&D costs to have positive effects on innovation. / text

The first chapter of this thesis gives a detailed picture of commonly used structural estimation techniques for several types of auction models. Next chapters consist of essays in which these techniques are utilized for empirical analysis of auction environments. In the second chapter we discuss the identification and estimation of the distribution of private signals in a common value auction model with an asymmetric information environment. We argue that the private information of the informed bidders are identifiable due to the asymmetric information structure. Then, we propose a two stage estimation method, which follows the identification strategy. We show, with Monte-Carlo experiments, that the estimator performs well. Third chapter studies Outer Continental Shelf drainage auctions, where oil and gas extraction leases are sold. Informational asymmetry across bidders and collusive behavior of informed firms make this environment very unique. We apply the technique proposed in the second chapter to data from the OCS drainage auctions. We estimate the parameters of a structural model and then run counterfactual simulations to see the effects of the informational asymmetry on the government's auction revenue. We find that the probability that information symmetry brings higher revenue to the government increases with the value of the auctioned tract. In the fourth chapter, we make use of the results in the multi-unit auction literature to study the Balancing Energy Services auctions (electricity spot market auctions) in Texas. We estimate the marginal costs of bidders implied by the Bayesian-Nash equilibrium of the multi-unit auction model of the market. We then compare the estimates to the actual marginal cost data. We find that, for the BES auction we study, the three largest bidders, Luminant, NRG and Calpine, have marked-down their bids more than the optimal amount implied by the model for the quantities where they were short of their contractual obligations, while they have put a mark-up larger than the optimal level implied by the model for quantities in excess of their contract obligations. Among the three bidders we studied, Calpine has come closest to bidding its optimal implied by the Bayesian-Nash equilibrium of the multi-unit auction model of the BES market.

Submitted by Wagner de Freitas Ciarelli null (wciarelli@gmail.com) on 2017-07-02T13:15:18Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2017_07_01 - Dissertação Wagner Ciarelli_Final.pdf: 2232658 bytes, checksum: 885a606f3526bdd97c7e591dd627c97d (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luiz Galeffi (luizgaleffi@gmail.com) on 2017-07-04T17:23:32Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 ciarelli_wf_me_bauru.pdf: 2232658 bytes, checksum: 885a606f3526bdd97c7e591dd627c97d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-04T17:23:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ciarelli_wf_me_bauru.pdf: 2232658 bytes, checksum: 885a606f3526bdd97c7e591dd627c97d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-05-26 / No ambiente regulado, o planejamento da geração de energia é coordenado por um operador do sistema, que procura minimizar os custos da energia gerada e garantir a segurança energética para os consumidores e o atendimento da demanda. Este tipo de planejamento de geração não representa a lei de oferta e procura que ocorre em mercados de energia elétrica. No ambiente de mercado, os agentes apresentam suas ofertas de compra e venda em um ambiente competitivo que promove a livre concorrência. Este trabalho propõe um modelo de planejamento de geração de médio prazo, baseado na concorrência pela geração/consumo, em que empresas geradoras e consumidores fornecem lances em um leilão de energia de médio prazo. O modelo proposto é comparado ao modelo de planejamento centralizado de geração de energia. Os testes realizados no software GAMS, com pacote de solução CPLEX, indicam que o modelo proposto é uma alternativa para promover uma matriz energética mais variada e robusta a variações climáticas, além de manter a concorrência justa tanto para os consumidores quanto para os produtores de energia. / In regulated hydrothermal electricity markets, power generation dispatch is coordinated by an independent system operator, that works to guarantee energy for consumers in the long-term, to meet the demand and to minimize the cost of generation. This type of dispatch does not represents the laws of supply and demand in the electricity market. In the deregulated auction market, the participants present their bids to purchase and sell, without the guarantee of being accepted, promoting free competition. This work presents a bibliographical research on electricity markets and the existing uncertainties of energy planning. Through optimization models, regulated dispatch is compared to an auction model for medium-term planning horizons. The tests performed in the GAMS software, with CPLEX solution package, indicate that the energy auction model is an alternative to promote the variation of the energy matrix, to turn it more robust to climate changes, in addition to maintaining fair competition for both the consumer and the producer.

The growth of business-to-business auctions presents the quality-focused business organization with many opportunities and some serious challenges. In this context, the absence of a well-designed organizational e-business auction-based strategy has the potential to promote business practices which may erode organizational quality gains. This article presents a conceptual open system approach designed to improve the quality focus of business-to-business auctions practices. The open system approach advocated in this article is quality focused and supply-chain sensitive.