Wong, Ching Chuen. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-46). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Spatial Competition in Two-Dimensional Product Space --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- First model: Ordinal characteristics --- p.5 / Chapter 1.3 --- Second model: Categorical characteristics --- p.14 / Chapter 1.4 --- Conclusion --- p.18 / Spatial Competition with Demand Uncertainty --- p.21 / Chapter 2.1 --- Introduction --- p.21 / Chapter 2.2 --- Model --- p.26 / Chapter 2.3 --- Revelation of market density before transportation --- p.29 / Chapter 2.4 --- Revelation of market density after transportation --- p.36 / Chapter 2.5 --- Perfectly informed consumers --- p.38 / Chapter 2.6 --- Application: Negative externality --- p.40 / Chapter 2.7 --- Conclusion --- p.42 / References --- p.45

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the influence of knowledge on the export performance of firms in different regions. More specifically, this study focuses on the impact of knowledge on the structure of regional export flows, in terms of horizontal and vertical product differentiation, as well as the geographical distribution of export flows. The thesis consists of four separate papers, which contribute to the overall analysis of knowledge, product differentiation and international trade in different ways. The second chapter presents a study of the effects of regional accessibility to R&D on the diversity of export flows with regard to goods, firms and destination markets. Chapter 3 provides an empirical analysis of vertical product differentiation, i.e. differentiation in terms of product quality, and examines the impact of educated labor and R&D on regional comparative advantages in goods of relatively high product quality. Chapter 4 contains a study of how the regional endowment of highly educated workers affects the structure of export flows, i.e. how the endowment of educated workers impacts on the number of product varieties exported, the average price per variety and the average quantity shipped out. The final chapter presents a micro-level analysis of firms’ propensity to participate in international markets and their propensity to expand export activities by introducing new export products or establishing export links with new destination countries. In summary, the empirical results of this thesis convey the message that regional accessibility to knowledge, embodied in highly educated labor and/or developed through R&D activities, plays a fundamental role in shaping the content and structure of regional export flows. More specifically, the present empirical observations suggest that the regional endowment of knowledge stimulates the size of the export base in terms of exporting firms and number of product varieties. The recurring significance of the accessibility variables in explaining spatial export patterns show that the knowledge endowment of a region must be defined in such ways that it captures sources of potential knowledge spillovers from inside as well as outside its own regional boundaries. This outcome shows that regional variations in knowledge endowments originate both in the actual spatial distribution of a nation’s knowledge labor across regions, and in regional differences in the geographical accessibility to internal and external knowledge labor.

This thesis consists of two parts. The first part includes two essays that deal with the pharmaceutical market, and one essay that looks at strategic incentives that arise in optimal treatment involving untried drugs. The second part, consisting of two essays, examines some implications of altruism. Part I: Two of the essays (joint with Mats Ekelund) are empirical studies of the pharmaceutical market in Sweden. We consider all New Chemical Entities (NCEs) introduced in Sweden between 1987 and 1997. In the first essay, we examine drug pricing in the price regulated Swedish market and compare the results with a previous study of the US market, where no such regulation exists. Similar to the US study, we find that relative launch prices are positively correlated with the degree of therapeutic advance. In contrast to the US study, the presence of substitutes has a negligible effect on both launch prices and price dynamics. In the second essay, we consider the empirical relation between therapeutic advance and market shares. We use a model of horizontal and vertical product differentiation to derive a hypothesis that is tested on the NCE data. Vertically differentiated drugs on average gain larger market shares and command higher prices than horizontally differentiated drugs. Moreover, as a general rule competing substitutes have less influence on the former than on the latter. In the third essay, we develop a simple model of strategic interaction in which two agents learn about a common payoff relevant parameter. The motivating example considers two physicians who choose between two treatments, one of which has an unknown success rate. The physicians learn about the unknown treatment by prescribing it (experimenting). We contrast two information scenarios, one in which the physicians can observe the outcomes of their own treatments only, and the other in which they also can observe the outcomes from the other physician’s treatments. The pure equilibria entail an efficient amount of experimentation in both scenarios. However, strong free riding effects arise in the latter case. These are likely to cause Pareto dominated outcomes in which learning is completely thwarted. Part II: The fourth essay (joint with Jörgen W. Weibull) examines the behavior on insurance markets in a large economy when individuals have altruistic concerns for others’ welfare. The main question we address is whether strategic incentives to free ride on others’ altruism can cause insurance market failure. We also study the interaction between altruism and the adverse selection effects that arise when there is asymmetric information about the individuals’ loss probabilities. We find that if the individuals differ in their risk, and if the individual risks are observable by insurers, the degree of altruism must be (perhaps unrealistically) high in order to cause market failure. A more complex pattern is found in the case of asymmetric information: low levels of altruism increase the number of equilibria (compared to the case without altruism), while high levels of altruism cause complete market failure. The fifth essay (joint with Magnus Johannesson) also considers behavior consistentwith preferences for others’ welfare. We are concerned with how subjects allocate moneybetween themselves and others in a dictator game experiment. Deviations from the standard game theoretic prediction of the outcome in this game have been observed in numerous experiments. One possible explanation for this behavior is that individuals have altruistic concerns for others; another explanation is that individuals are motivated by reciprocity. We perform a standard double blind procedure and another design in which anonymity is guaranteed between dictators and recipients, thus removing any remaining reciprocity from the standard procedure. We could not reject the null hypothesis of no difference between the experimental groups in the two procedures. We interpret this finding as evidence of other-regarding behavior not motivated by reciprocity. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2001

Hybrid Make-To-Stock (MTS)-Make-To-Order (MTO) manufacturing is a well known policy that captures the benefits of both MTS and MTO policies. This manufacturing policy is adopted by many manufacturing firms because it allows for production based on customer specifications while keeping short response times. We study a hybrid MTS-MTO manufacturing system which consists of two processing stages and an intermediate buffer between these two stages. We propose two separate scenarios for ordering and replenishment of components from the first stage which will give more realistic guidance for practitioners. The first scenario is batching customer orders before being released to the first stage. The second scenario is batch replenishment of common components from the first stage. Most existing MTS-MTO models focus on one-for-one ordering and replenishment strategies. We enhance these models by introducing a batch ordering policy to account for economies of scale in ordering when there is an ordering cost associated with each order placed for common components. We use queueing theory to model the system behavior and use the matrix-geometric method to evaluate system performance under the new ordering policy. Afterwards, we develop an optimization model with the objective to minimize the system overall costs. The purpose of our optimization model is to find the optimal intermediate buffer size and the optimal order quantity for the system. In the second scenario, we introduce the batch replenishment policy from stage 1. This policy is suitable when stage 1 and stage 2 are physically distant and there is a shipping cost incurred when components are transferred from stage 1 to stage 2. The decision variables in this model are the intermediate buffer size and the shipping quantity. We show that the base stock policy is sub-optimal when there is an ordering cost incurred for ordering components. The savings from adopting the batch ordering policy are high and the response time for most customer orders is not affected. When there are shipping costs and shipping time between the two stages, we show that the right selection of the system decision variables can have a large impact on the total cost incurred by the system.

Multi-brand portfolios are characterized by comprising many brands in the same product category. Companies that have chosen to organize their products according to this strategy are facing both possibilities, such as expanding the accessible market size, and challenges such as how to organize the brands, their individual roles and their relation and position to the other brands in the category to maximize revenues. To address these aspects of multi-brand portfolios, I have investigated four product categories where multiple brands are represented at Mölnlycke Health Care, Unilever, Fagerhult and L’Oréal; how the multi-brand portfolios are organized, how the segmentation, positioning and product differentiation are done and what advantages and disadvantages that are associated with this strategy. My conclusions are that multi-brand portfolios can be organized in many different ways and to become successful, they have to be set in relation to the company’s whole brand architecture. Segmentation, positioning and product differentiation are important tools to differentiate the brands and to match them against distinct and specific customer needs. However, the importance and the function of each of them may depend on the overall brand and product organization. The main benefits of having many brands in the same product category are the opportunity to offer a complete solution for the customer and to reach a larger market by meeting diverse customer needs and preferences. The drawbacks are the risks for cannibalization, high marketing and administration costs and confusion among customers if they cannot distinguish between the multiple brands.

Hybrid Make-To-Stock (MTS)-Make-To-Order (MTO) manufacturing is a well known policy that captures the benefits of both MTS and MTO policies. This manufacturing policy is adopted by many manufacturing firms because it allows for production based on customer specifications while keeping short response times. We study a hybrid MTS-MTO manufacturing system which consists of two processing stages and an intermediate buffer between these two stages. We propose two separate scenarios for ordering and replenishment of components from the first stage which will give more realistic guidance for practitioners. The first scenario is batching customer orders before being released to the first stage. The second scenario is batch replenishment of common components from the first stage. Most existing MTS-MTO models focus on one-for-one ordering and replenishment strategies. We enhance these models by introducing a batch ordering policy to account for economies of scale in ordering when there is an ordering cost associated with each order placed for common components. We use queueing theory to model the system behavior and use the matrix-geometric method to evaluate system performance under the new ordering policy. Afterwards, we develop an optimization model with the objective to minimize the system overall costs. The purpose of our optimization model is to find the optimal intermediate buffer size and the optimal order quantity for the system. In the second scenario, we introduce the batch replenishment policy from stage 1. This policy is suitable when stage 1 and stage 2 are physically distant and there is a shipping cost incurred when components are transferred from stage 1 to stage 2. The decision variables in this model are the intermediate buffer size and the shipping quantity. We show that the base stock policy is sub-optimal when there is an ordering cost incurred for ordering components. The savings from adopting the batch ordering policy are high and the response time for most customer orders is not affected. When there are shipping costs and shipping time between the two stages, we show that the right selection of the system decision variables can have a large impact on the total cost incurred by the system.

This thesis will compare and examine three different chainsaw models with re-spect to price, elasticity, price discrimination, product differentiation and durabili-ty. The three different saws are all aiming at different customer groups; hobby users, leisure users and professional users. The demands and needs of this groups differs a lot. The hobby users have the largest amount of different saws to choose from, this is a field with many different brands and the quality varies a lot, this implies that here is a fierce competition with respect to price. This indirect affects the elastic-ity and possibilities to price discriminate and product differentiation. I found that this model has the highest elasticity which is perfectly inline with the theory. Here is also a low possibility to price discriminate and the durability is the low-est. The other two models examined, the leisure and professional, are located in less competitive segments and from this follows that the professional model which has the smallest amount of competitors also has the lowest elasticity. Here was also the possibility to price discriminate the highest, durability the best and the product were viewed as differentiated.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-96). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Economides (1986) has shown that within a linear city an equilibrium exists in a two-stage location-price game when the curvature of the transportation cost function is sufficiently high. One important point is that not all of these equilibria are at maximal differentiation. In this paper we include an additional stage with decentralized wage bargaining. This intensifies price competition resulting in locations that are nearer to the extremes of the city. The magnitude of this effect depends on the bargaining power of the unions. (author's abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Syracuse University, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-63).