京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第20869号 / 経博第564号 / 新制||経||283(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 照山 博司, 教授 神事 直人, 教授 柴田 章久 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DGAM

This dissertation investigates the impact that a duopoly of a multinational firm and local firm has on a closed economy as they engage in Bertrand competition involving quality and price. It answers the question: Does helping a minor firm reduce welfare? Using a different framework than the existing literature, I examine the following: 1. The welfare effect of a reduction in the R\&D cost parameter induced by ``help'' from the government to one of the firms within a closed economy. 2. The effects of government policy instruments (taxes or subsidies) on welfare considering different ownership of the firms and trade pattern - closed economy and export-oriented economy as government institutes a unilateral policy, discriminatory policy, or non-discriminatory policy. 3. How marginal cost of production of the local firm affects welfare within a closed economy when all consumers are either served or partially-served. In chapter 1, we provide a review of past literature that have studied the endogenous choice of quality by firms and describe how this dissertation is organized. In chapter 2, we examine effect on national welfare from competition in quality between a multinational firm and a local firm operating in a vertically differentiated oligopolistic industry given their strategic use of R\&D costs without any possibility of spillover effects. The model assumes that the multinational firm produces high quality product and the local firm produces low quality product. Both firms have zero marginal production cost. Assuming a closed-economy, we determine the effect of a change in the local firm's R\&D cost parameter on the endogenous variables (prices and qualities) as well as national welfare. We found that a reduction in the cost parameter of the local firm do increase national welfare. Chapter 3 extends the work of Chapter 2. It investigates the incentives to a government for instituting strategic trade policy (unilateral, discriminatory or non-discriminatory) mechanism that would induce R\&D within the duopoly of a multinational and local firms and thereby promote national welfare, under varying assumptions with respect to the ownership structure of the firms and their trade patterns. It determines which policy mechanism would be socially optimal to strategically affect the quality of the target firm (local). We find under an open-economy situation when government policy is unilateral, the optimal policy tool to pursue is a subsidy for the local firm. When the economy is partially-closed, it is optimal for the government to tax the local firm. Besides, under a discriminatory policy mechanism, it is best for government to subsidize the local firm and tax the foreign firm when both export to a third country. However, if both sell to a third country, but profit is retained in the domestic economy, it becomes optimal for the government to tax the local firm. Under a non-discriminatory policy by government when the firms operate within an open-economy, the optimal tool is a tax policy for government that affects both firms. Moreover, when the firms operate within a partially closed-economy, the optimal policy is also a tax policy on both firms. Whereas, given a non-discriminatory policy under a closed-economy framework, it is optimal for the government to subsidize the firms. As a result, these mechanisms by government do promote social welfare as well as correct any distortion that might result into making the multinational firm having a significant market power within the industry. In Chapter 4, we relax the assumption of Chapter 2 that the firms have zero production cost. The duopoly is considered to operate under the condition that one of the firms (local firm) has a production cost disadvantage. The firms are assumed to served the entire market. Hence, the firms compete within a fully covered market scenario. Considering a variable unit (constant marginal) cost of production of the local firm, we determine the effect of an increase in production cost of the local firm on national (total) welfare. We find that within a closed-economy, due to strategic substitutability of the products of both firms, an increase in the marginal cost of production by the local firm would bring about reduction in national social welfare. Chapter 5 continues our welfare analysis. It assumes the firms have asymmetric production costs. The cost of production depends on investment in R\&D to produce an output of quality, $q_i$. Now, we do not associate the output quality to a specific firm in the beginning of our analysis. Notwithstanding, we assume the firms are required to meet a minimum quality standard in the industry. Then, we seek to find the effect of the marginal cost of production of the local firm on national welfare. We find unlike previous chapters, an increase in marginal cost of production by the local firm results into increase benefits to consumers. Hence, national social welfare is improved (positive).

The importance of product design has been getting attention in the past decade from scholars and practitioners. Design plays a critical role in firms’ product development and business strategies. In recent years, scholars began to see design innovation as another vital innovation element of a new product. A new product should encompass at least two innovation elements: technology innovation and design innovation. While technology points to the function of a product, design points to the form of a product. Despite the advocacy of scholarly examination of design innovation, there are few studies of design innovation. In this dissertation, two empirical studies have been conducted to examine the outcome of design innovation and the antecedents of design activities, respectively. Study 1 examines the effect of design innovation (as well as technology and service innovation) on new product performance. Additionally, the study examines the roles of marketing innovation and process innovation in mediating the relationships between these innovation activities and new product performance. Study 2 examines how firms’ absorptive capacity, competitive responsiveness, and product development resources drive design and R&D activities. Design and R&D activities typically lead to the introduction of design and technology innovation. Regarding the findings from this dissertation, the first study shows that design, technology, and service innovation (which, argued by this study, are the three main innovation elements of a new product) all contribute to new product performance. Additionally, marketing innovation and process innovation are found to mediate the relationship between these innovation elements and performance. The second study shows that a firm’s competitor responsiveness, absorptive capacity (captured by “institutional sources” and “market sources of information”), and product development resources (captured by “cross-functional design team”, “design or information control technologies”, and “concurrent engineering”) are positively related to firms’ design and R&D activities. / Thesis / Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) / Design plays a critical role in firms’ product development and business strategies. Traditionally, technology innovation has been the focus of new product development. In recent years, scholars have begun to see design innovation as another vital innovation element of a new product. In this dissertation, two empirical studies have been conducted to examine the outcome of design innovation and the antecedents of design activities, respectively. There are two key goals of this dissertation. The first goal is to understand the outcome of design innovation and what other factors jointly contribute to the outcome. The second goal is to understand what strategies that firms adopt lead to design activities. Answers to the first question show the performance implication of design innovation and the factors that drive the performance. Meanwhile, answers to the second question shed light on the firm strategies that drive design activities, which may lead to the introduction of design innovation. Empirical studies that tackle these questions are sparse.

There is a general consensus in the literature that carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that controls CO2 emissions from fossil fuel power plants, figures to be a critical technology to reduce CO2 emissions to CO2 concentration stabilization levels prescribed in the literature. We completed three projects that advance the understanding of how technical change in carbon capture affects both near-future costs of CCS and the economy in the long term. First, we conducted a literature review of near-future capture cost estimates in order to get an idea of how expensive carbon capture will be in the near-future. The literature indicates that pre-combustion capture is the least expensive carbon capture technology because its combustion process best facilitates carbon capture. Second, we explored the limits of incremental technical change in each near-future capture technology using a performance-cost model. The results of the sensitivity analysis showed that pre-combustion capture could be the least expensive capture technology after incremental technical change has occurred. Third, we used an integrated assessment model (IAM) to investigate how rapid incremental and breakthrough technical change in carbon capture could impact the electric energy market, total CO2 abatement cost and CO2 price over time. We modeled breakthrough technical change using data from a paper in the literature that provides cost and performance estimates for a radical carbon capture technology still in the early stages of research and development (R&D) (Baker, Chon, & Keisler, 2009). CCS dominates electricity market share over time given a chemical looping breakthrough.

The dissertation consists of three chapters examining U.S. public firms' innovation and patenting activities and their relationship with patent policy and economic growth. In the first chapter, I empirically study the effect of patent publications on firm-level innovation and patenting. Previous works have studied the effect of patent monopoly rights and knowledge disclosure on innovations. The proposed chapter supplements these studies by analyzing the disincentive effect of patent publications on firm innovations through costly knowledge disclosure. Exploiting the American Inventors’ Protection Act of 1999 as a natural experiment that shortened the time it took for patents to get published, I show the negative effect of earlier patent publications on manufacturing firms' patenting and innovation activities. The benchmark analysis shows that the average decline of 10 months in patent publication lag resulted in 13 percentage points lower firm-level patent growth rate during 2001-2005. In the second chapter, I build an endogenous growth model with a patent system. By modeling patenting decisions endogenously, I also introduce patent protection and information disclosure mechanisms through patents. Traditional innovation and growth models assume that innovators patent whenever they innovate and consider patenting and innovating as the same. However, this assumption is no longer innocuous if patenting has an implicit cost to the innovator e.g., the cost of disclosing valuable information. Therefore, to analyze the impact of the patent system’s disclosure mechanism on firm innovation, one must at a minimum work with a model distinguishing between the two concepts. Using my model, I show that a higher patent disclosure policy reduces firm patenting intensity as firms strategically opt out of patenting. In the absence of patents, there is less knowledge diffusion in the economy, which leads to less industry competition and growth. The third chapter studies the effect of firms' ability to build on their previous innovation on firm growth. While innovating, firms can either develop fully novel exploratory ideas or exploit their existing ideas. Using firm patent data, I document that U.S. manufacturing firms' innovation became more exploitative and that their patent growth rate simultaneously declined after 2000. To rationalize these changes in firm innovation, I build a firm-level endogenous growth model with both initial exploratory and subsequent exploitative innovations. Estimating my model using 1990-2000 microdata, I show that a decline in the usefulness of exploratory innovations as a foundation for future exploitation can match a shift in the composition of innovation we saw over this period, resulting in a 0.8 percentage point decline in firm average growth and a 9% decline in firm market value post-2000.

The primary reason for mergers and acquisitions is to achieve synergy and establish competitive advantages. A firms’ innovation in form of intangible assets gets accumulated over time depending upon its R&D intensity. Such a strategic bundle of intangible assets that a firm possesses is an indicator of future synergies if the firm were to merge. The current study examines whether intangible intensive firms more likely to make acquisitions or are more likely to be acquired and how the market reacts to M&A deals involving intangible intensive acquirers and targets. We explore these issues with a sample of U.S. M&A deals over a period of 2001-2017. We find that intangible assets serve as one of the primary motives for the M&A and are the drivers of M&A activity in recent times. The results from the event study show that target firms’ intangible assets have a significant negative effect on target firms’ cumulative abnormal returns. Subsequently, we carry out further analyses to understand various drivers of market reaction to M&A deals. We find that, for target firms, the relation between target firms’ intangible assets and market reaction is positively influenced by the use of cash and negatively impacted when the target firm is from high-tech industry. For the acquiring firms, we find that the relation between acquirer firms’ intangible assets and market reaction is negatively impacted when the acquirer is from high-tech industry and positively impacted when a public target is acquired. It appears that market reactions to the acquisition of high intangible targets are primarily driven by investor skepticism about the prospects of the deal. Lastly, the study does not find any significant effect of (mis)valuation on M&A deals by intangible intensive firms.

This dissertation investigates the structure of incentive contracts in which adverse selection problems are more severe. Specifically, I examine the moderating effect of R&D intensity on the relative weights placed on signals of ability and on performance measures in executive compensation. Furthermore, I also investigate the determinants on the compensation of university presidents. I find that that more weight is placed on signals of ability in R&D intensive firms and less weight is placed on performance measures. I find that R&D intensive firms pay more to executives with technical work experience and/or relevant educational degrees. Additionally, in the context of university presidents, the positive association between organizational complexity and executive compensation is driven by the role of managerial ability rather than by effort. This result also suggests that considering measures of organizational complexity (such as firm size and diversification) as control variables in empirical studies of executive compensation is the appropriate means by which to account for the impact of organizational complexity. / Business Administration/Accounting

Yes / Technologies can help strengthen the resilience of our economy against existential climate-risks. We investigate climate change adaptation technologies (CCATs) in US patents to understand (1) historical patterns and possible drivers of innovation; (2) scientific and technological requirements to develop and use CCATs; and (3) CCATs’ potential technological synergies with mitigation. First, in contrast to mitigation, innovation in CCATs only slowly takes off, indicating a relatively low awareness of investors for solutions to cope with climate risks. We discuss how historical trends in environmental regulation, energy prices, and public support may have contributed to patenting in CCATs. Second, CCATs form two main clusters: science-intensive ones in agriculture, health, and monitoring technologies; and engineering-intensive ones in coastal, water, and infrastructure technologies. Analyses of technology-specific scientific and technological knowledge bases inform directions for how to facilitate advancement, transfer and use of CCATs. Lastly, CCATs show strong technological complementarities with mitigation as more than 25% of CCATs bear mitigation benefits. While not judging about the complementarity of mitigation and adaptation in general, our results suggest how policymakers can harness these technological synergies to achieve both goals simultaneously.

知識經濟時代與全球化潮流下，創新是廠商提升自我競爭力的重要途徑。創新乃原始概念到將知識商業化的一連串過程，而過去探討廠商創新的研究取向多元，研究觀點則以經濟地理學、企業管理學為主，綜合相關研究，大致可將影響廠商創新的因素歸類為三大面向：廠商內部屬性、對外網絡連結關係、廠商所處地區的環境條件。其中，創新氛圍乃是特定地區的行動者透過偕同作用及集體學習過程所產生的社會關係，提升了地區的創新能力，同時提供有利於廠商創新的環境條件，是近來區域發展的重要議題。本研究即綜合上述三大面向因素來探討廠商創新活動(研發投入與研發合作)與創新成效之影響因素。 創新氛圍理論從早期”某種東西之地方化”的探討，演變到後期關注於地方生產系統的運作是受到地區創新氛圍的影響所致；其中，創新氛圍量化指標的缺乏、探討領域的侷限，乃是本研究所要突破之處。本研究以工業區分佈情形、自然與人文界線、通勤圈範圍等原則，先將台灣地區分為46個地區分析單元，再參酌地方生產系統概念，以兩個指標：LQ大於1與製造業就業員工數大於50000人，篩選出26個地區作為研究範圍，最後以科技與傳統產業LQ大於1指標，區別出9個科技產業群聚地區、17個傳統產業群聚地區，藉以比較不同產業領域、地區發展程度不同之創新氛圍。準此，本研究以8個創新氛圍的相關指標，經過因素分析後萃取出2個創新氛圍因素：「創新綜效」、「創新成效」；藉此將台灣46個地區劃分為4種創新氛圍類型：創新氛圍、有創新無氛圍、有氛圍與創新、無創新無氛圍。 於廠商創新活動與成效實證分析方面，本研究採取兩個階段進行，分別皆以三個面向因素(廠商內部屬性、研發合作、地區創新氛圍)的影響因素來探討廠商創新活動與成效之差異。針對創新氛圍方面，於第一階段以不同產業群聚地區的虛擬變數作為隱含地區創新氛圍的概念，測試其對廠商創新活動與成效的影響，第二階段則以地區創新氛圍因素(創新綜效、創新成效)進行科技與傳統產業群聚地區的廠商創新成效之測試。整體研究結果顯示，科技產業群聚地區的廠商傾向自身的研發投入，而傳統產業群聚地區的廠商則多以研發合作居多，但科技產業群聚地區的廠商創新成效較佳；地區創新氛圍確實對於廠商的創新活動與成效有顯著的影響，尤其對於科技產業群聚地區的廠商創新成效更有顯著的貢獻；而研發合作對於廠商創新成效的影響則不如預期。因此，從基礎產業發展環境、知識設施的聚集、地區網絡的建構等方面，來促使各地區創新氛圍之形塑，將有利於地區廠商的創新，特別應加強傳統產業群聚地區的創新氛圍；此外，提倡廠商強化內部基本體質亦是促進廠商創新效率之關鍵所在。 / Under the wind of the knowledge-based economics and globalization, innovation is an important way for firms to increase their own competitiveness. Innovation is the process from original concept to business. The past researches on firm innovation branch widely, most focus on economic geography and corporation management. From those related researches, we can simplify the elements which can influence the innovation of the firm into three: firms’ inner attributes, relation of the connection to outside network, and the environment of the area which firms located. Innovation milieu is the social relationship which actors in the area could make it happen through interactions and group learning, which can advance the area’s innovation ability, and give the good environment condition for firms to innovate. Innovative milieu is the important issue in the present regional development researches, this research will integrate the three elements to discuss the influence on firms innovation activities and innovation success. The theory of the innovative milieu have transformed from discussion of “the localization of something” to focus on the relation of the work of the regional production system and the local innovative milieu. But, the lack of the quantification indicator, and the territory of the research field still need to break through, and is the focus of this research. This research divide Taiwan into 46 analysis area unit, then bring into the concept of the local production system, use two indicators to choose 26 elements as the scope of the research, and farther define 26 analysis area unit into 9 technology industry cluster area, and 17 traditional industry cluster area, to compare the differences of the industry field and the level of the development of the innovation milieu. This research take 8 innovative milieu related indexes, and compress into 2 indexes: “innovation synergy” and “innovation success” through the content analysis; this research use these two indexes to divide 46 areas of Taiwan into 4 types of innovation milieu: innovative milieu, no innovative milieu, innovation but without milieu, and milieu but without innovation. On the analysis of the firms’ innovation activities and the success, this research take two steps to discuss. At the first step, this research use the dummy variables of the different industry cluster area as the concept of the regional innovative milieu, to check the influence it could make on the firms innovation activities and the success; At the second step, this research use regional innovative milieu indexes to check the firms’ innovation success of the traditional and technology industry cluster area. The whole research shows that the firms of technology industry aggregation area are tend to invest on their own R&D, which the firms of traditional industry aggregation area often do their R&D by cooperating with others, and the innovation outcome of firms of the technology industry aggregation area is better. The regional innovative milieu has the conspicuous influence on the firms innovation activities and the success, especially to the technology industry cluster area, but the influence which the R&D cooperation could make on the innovation outcome is not good as expect. Thus, the making of the basic environment of the industry development, the aggregation of the knowledge facilities, and the build of the local network is the good impact for local firms to innovate, especially for the traditional industry aggregation area ones. At the same time, to reinforce the firms’ inner constitution is also the key to promote the firms innovation.

La thèse a pour but d’étudier la possibilité et la faisabilité économique de démarches de diversification des produits et d’amélioration des caractéristiques qualitatives des aliments par les entreprises, dans un contexte dans lequel ces modifications sont soumises à des contraintes techniques induisent des coûts non négligeables, non nécessairement valorisés par le marché. Dans ce cadre, nous cherchons à comprendre dans quelle mesure il est possible pour les autorités publiques d’intervenir pour inciter les entreprises à consentir des efforts suffisants (en termes d’investissement en amont) de façon à favoriser la mise en marché de produits conformes à la qualité voulue par la société. Nous avons appliqué ces perspectives de recherches à deux problématiques sociétales importantes et d’actualité, à savoir la coexistence des filières OGM et non OGM et la question de la santé et de la nutrition à travers l’enjeu de l’entrée de gammes de produits plus acceptables d’un point de vue nutritionnel (moins de sucre, de gras, …). Ces problématiques qui occupent les deux parties de la thèse sont élaborées en mobilisant des outils de la Théorie de l’Organisation Industrielle. Les résultats montrent que les choix spontanés de gammes de produits par les firmes ne sont pas toujours socialement satisfaisant, ce qui implique dans certaines conditions une intervention publique. Dans le cas de la coexistence OGM/non-OGM, le produit non-OGM peut ne pas avoir la caractéristique souhaitée en absence de régulation. Pour ce qui est des enjeux nutritionnels, les firmes présentes sur le marché n’offrent pas systématiquement des aliments favorables sur le plan de la santé en l’absence d’intervention publique. La thèse aboutit à la conclusion générale qu’il est souvent nécessaire de combiner plusieurs instruments publics. Dans le cas de la coexistence OGM/non-OGM, les pouvoirs publics peuvent gérer de manière efficace la coexistence en agissant simultanément sur le seuil d’étiquetage, les conditions de réalisation des tests et contrôles et le niveau de la pénalité. Dans le cas de la question nutritionnelle, l’intervention par le biais d’une subvention à la R&D présente certaines faiblesses telles que le risque d’instrumentalisation de la subvention par la firme ou induit des distorsions au détriment de la santé publique. Ceci suggère de combiner la subvention à la R&D avec un autre instrument tel que la taxation. / Our research aims at analyzing the economic feasibility of approaches for product diversification and quality characteristics improvement by firms, in a context where these modifications are subject to technical constraints that induce high costs not necessarily valued by the market. In this context, we try to understand how it is possible for public authorities to intervene in order to encourage firms to make sufficient efforts (in terms of upstream investment) and facilitate the marketing of products in response to the needs of society. We apply these research perspectives to two important issues, namely the GM/non-GM coexistence and the health and nutrition issue through the development of product lines which are more acceptable from a nutritional point of view (for example, less sugar, fat, salt…). These two research issues are developed by mobilizing the tools of the Theory of Industrial Organization. The results show that the spontaneous choice of product lines by firms is not always socially satisfactory, which implies that in certain conditions, public intervention is desirable. In the case of GM/non-GM coexistence, non-GM products may not have the desired characteristics in the absence of regulation. In terms of health issues, companies in the market do not offer high nutritional value foods in the absence of public intervention. Overall, this thesis concludes that it is often necessary to combine several public instruments. In the first study, we show that the public authorities can effectively manage the GM/non-GM coexistence by acting simultaneously through the labelling threshold definition, the quality tests and controls, and the level of the penalty cost in case of non compliance. In the second study, we show that an intervention through Research and Development (R&D) subsidies has some weaknesses such as the risk of manipulation of the grant by firms, or the possibility of triggering distortions to the detriment of public health. This suggests combining the R&D subsidies with another instrument such as taxation