Search

This paper reports an empirical study on the co-evolution of competitive conditions dominating firms and organizational forms in the paper industry. It has two main theoretical implications. First, with respect to research on national business systems and the societal effect, we suggest that the country of origin imprints firms especially by allowing them to develop distinctive organizational forms. Second, we show that the competitive conditions, dominant forms and dominant firms remain in constant flux even in mature industries. There is, therefore, a need for co-evolutionary research to continue to combine long-term perspectives and intensive research designs in the study of specific industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Promoting substitution of lower priced generics for brand drugs once the market exclusivity period for the latter expires is a key component of the US strategy for achieving value in prescription drugs., Objective: This study examines the effect of generic competition on drug prices by estimating the effect of entry of generic drugs, following a brand's loss-of-exclusivity (LOE), on the average price of competing drugs., Methods: Using the Medicare Part D drug event (PDE) data from 2007 to 2018, we utilize both fixed effects and random effects at the drug level to estimate the relationship of competitors and prices within each drug while controlling for factors across drugs. We follow a drug 24 months and 36 months after first generic entry to examine whether the relationship between number of suppliers and price would change over time. We also test the hypothesis that drugs with more recent LOE might face less competition than those with earlier LOE., Results: We find that drug prices fall with increasing number of competitors. Prices decline by 20% in markets with about three competitors (the expected price ratio of current generic to pre-generic entry brand average prices is 80%). Prices continue to decline by 80% relative to the pre-generic entry price in markets of ten or more competitors (the expected price ratio is about 30% following 2 years after entry, dropping to 20% following 3 years after entry). We also find that the impact of competition on relative prices is similar for generic drugs first entering the market in either 2007-11 or 2012-15., Conclusion: Promoting generic entry and maintaining effective provider competition are effective methods for containing drug prices., (© 2021. This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply.)

With the implementation of a series of pro-competition policies in China, the hospital market competition has been intensified dramatically over the past decade. Based on previous literature, such competition is very much likely to bring about an upgoing trend in the promotion and expansion of medical facilities among hospitals as an essential strategy for attracting patients, which is known as Medical Arms Race (MAR). Comprehensive evaluations have been conducted by previous studies on the consequences of the MAR, which, however, merely provided inadequate empirical evidence on the relationship between hospital competition and MAR. Utilizing the variations in hospital competition across various regions and through different time periods in Sichuan Province as a prototype representative of the nationwide situation, a dynamic panel data model was established and adopted in this study for investigating whether intensified hospital competition had resulted in the expansion of medical facilities in China during the corresponding time period. The geopolitical boundaries and Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) were respectively employed to define the hospital market and measure the competition degree. We found that a 10% reduction in HHI is associated with an 8.79% increase in regional total costs of advanced medical equipment per capita, suggesting that hospital competition would lead to medical equipment expansion. Our results provide novel evidence on MAR which is particularly applicable for the healthcare system in China, providing suggestions for nationwide healthcare reform in order to mitigate potential negative outcomes induced by the implementation of pro-competition policies., (© 2021. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

There are several types of pharmaceutical competition. In addition to competition among producers of the same chemical substance ("within-substance competition"), there may be competition among producers of different chemical substances in the same chemical subgroup ("between-substance competition"). There have been numerous econometric studies of the effect of within-substance competition on drug prices, but empirical evidence about the effect of between-substance competition is far more limited. The primary objective of this study is to assess the impact of the entry of new drugs in a drug's therapeutic class on branded drug prices, generic drug prices, and the generic market share, using publicly-available US data for the period 1997-2017. Two methods are used to estimate the effects of between-substance and within-substance competition on those variables. The first method is standard 2-way fixed effects estimation based on aggregate data. The second method, based on micro data, is estimation using the DID_MULTIPLEGT procedure developed by de Chaisemartin et al. (2021), which does not rely on, and allows us to test for, "parallel trends." Between-substance competition does not appear to have any effect on brand-name drug prices, although our inability to fully account for rebates may bias the estimates towards zero. (There is also little evidence for an effect of within-substance competition on brand-name drug prices.) However, between-substance competition has a significant negative effect on generic drug prices. We estimate that the 1985-2005 increase in the number of substances ever registered in a drug's ATC4 chemical subgroup reduced the 2017 price of generic drugs by 42%. (The ratio of the generic-price reduction attributable to rising between-substance competition to the generic-price reduction attributable to rising within-substance competition also happens to be 42%.) A striking finding is that the entry of imitators has no effect on the prices of brand-name drugs, but the entry of innovators has a significant negative effect on the prices of generic drugs in the same ATC4 chemical subgroup. In addition, between-substance competition has a significant positive effect on the generic market share: the 1985-2005 increase in the number of substances ever registered in a drug's ATC4 chemical subgroup increased the 2017 generic market share by 15.0 percentage points. Due to its effects on generic drug prices and the generic market share, the 1985-2005 increase in between-substance competition reduced the average 2017 price of drugs that were already sold in 1997 by 35%. We estimate that 36% of 2017 expenditure on drugs that were first registered during 1986-2005 was offset by reduced 2017 expenditure on drugs that were sold in both 1997 and 2017., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Forest Research is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Prior research on competitive dynamics has failed to offer tools to understand distorted patterns of competition that emerge from distinct institutional and historical contexts. Our analysis suggests that a joint effect of institutional rules, governance structures, and shared cognition plays a pivotal role in firm-level competitive behavior and capability development. We show how globally significant market positions can result from specific institutional arrangements between firms and governments, especially if coupled with interfirm contractual commitments. Our results call for more attention to these interfirm commitments that are built on formal rules and governmental support, but whose impact they yet exceed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growth in pharmaceutical prices is a major policy issue in the United States. Competition is encouraged to counteract such growth, yet less is known about the effect of brand competition on prices. We discover a unique feature of this market by studying the pricing strategies of incumbent drug manufacturers under tiered-insurance anticipating branded competition. Using the insulin market as a natural experiment, we exploit exogenous variation in several potential entrants' completion of clinical trials to identify the effect of drug pipeline pressure on the prices of incumbent drugs. We find that pipeline pressure exerts cumulative and significant upward pressure on prices of incumbent drugs. In the insulin market such pressure explained 10.5% of the growth of prices. We were able to replicate these findings among incumbents with other emerging biosimilars. Insurance designs that fail to promote price competition through negotiations and value-based principles may contribute to such price increases., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Do highly productive researchers have significantly higher probability to produce top cited papers? Or do high productive researchers mainly produce a sea of irrelevant papers—in other words do we find a diminishing marginal result from productivity? The answer on these questions is important, as it may help to answer the question of whether the increased competition and increased use of indicators for research evaluation and accountability focus has perverse effects or not. We use a Swedish author disambiguated dataset consisting of 48.000 researchers and their WoS-publications during the period of 2008–2011 with citations until 2014 to investigate the relation between productivity and production of highly cited papers. As the analysis shows, quantity does make a difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the print industry has been facing constant and increasing competition from the double onslaught of the Internet and the proliferation of television channels. In order to survive as a viable industry, print enterprises must streamline and exploit up-to-date economizing measures. A key cost element in the print industry is paper, representing between 20% and 30% of total printing expenditures. Thus, any improvement in the operational efficiency of paper reel management has the potential of yielding considerable cost savings. It is in this context that we analyze the effect of enhancing the available paper reel supply chain information through the use of semi passive Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology. Focusing on the printing house, we develop both simulation models and formulas that forecast savings from having better information. Thereafter we implemented the system and compared the forecasts to actual savings. Using standard economic evaluation techniques we unequivocally show the economic imperative of introducing semi passive RFID technology. Even though this study was carried out in a specific printing house, we argue that its implications are far wider, affecting other industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploiting a rich data set on the Dutch market for home help services, we find that larger providers obtain a higher price than do small providers. However, compared to other studies on market power in care markets this price difference is considered small to moderate. Our identification strategy relies on the exogenous variation in market shares in January'07, the very first month after home help was decentralized to municipalities. Zooming in on our main outcome, we obtain that the small but significant effect of market size on price is merely driven by the pricing behavior of for-profit providers., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

This paper summarizes some hot communication topics from January to February in 2013 by combining academic views of some scholars. These topics include the reasons for the failure of The Daily, big data and data mining, the transformation of newspapers and the two media markets in mainland China. The development of new media and the transformation of traditional media are always the topics that can draw lots of attention. The competition and cooperation between them can not only show the development of new techniques, but also play an important role in charging the habits of audiences, the mode of reporting news and some communication theories. More and more participation of pubic will bring much more challenges for the model of the guidance of public opinion in China. In order to adapt to the new broadcasting environment, the media needs more attempt and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Al- Mouhakiq Al-Hilly Journal for Legal & Political Science is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The market for new drugs is changing: personalised drugs will increase the heterogeneity in patients' responses and, possibly, costs. In this context, price regulation will play an increasingly important role. In this article, we argue that personalised medicine opens new scenarios in the relationship between value-based prices, regulation and industry listing strategies. Our focus is on the role of asymmetry of information and competition. We show that, if the firm has more information than the payer on the heterogeneity in patients' responses and it adopts a profit-maximising listing strategy, the outcome may be independent of the choice of the type of value-based price. In this case, the information advantage that the manufacturer has prevents the payer from using marginal value-based prices to extract part of the surplus. However, in a dynamic setting where competition by a new entrant is possible, the choice of the type of value-based price may matter. We suggest that more research should be devoted to the dynamic analysis of price regulation for personalised medicines.

The case study evidence in this paper suggests that management of technological change is more complicated than the existing literature has acknowledged. Rather than merely introduce or not introduce new technology, managers have to choose between more or less advanced technologies whose implications are difficult to assess. Moreover, the choice between advanced and conventional production technologies seems to be influenced more by situational determinants than by the habitual actions of managers or changes in management characters. Taking these situational determinants and firm-specific critical incidents seriously is essential, especially for an understanding of why managerial actors alter their approach to managing technological change. By adopting a longitudinal firm-in-sector perspective to technological change this paper demonstrates how coinciding increases in material resources and competitive pressures encourage management to adopt advanced instead of conventional technology. To justify this argument, the paper compares two consecutive technological change projects in the same firm and describes the background of their profoundly different degrees of sophistication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction of the sulfur emissions reduction directive for maritime transport has become a heavily debated policy issue in Northern Europe from the perspective of the future competitiveness of transport-dependent industries. The scientific value of this study is in its contribution to the scarce literature on the future of pulp and paper industry competitiveness from the tightening environmental regulation perspective, highlighting the complementary role of law-abiding and voluntary regulations. Using a Delphi-foresight method, the study evaluates the effectiveness of environmental regulation by identifying its positive and negative aspects for the future success of the pulp and paper industry, and uses the reduction of sulfur emissions as an example. From a business perspective, the panelists saw tightening regulation as both a threat and an opportunity, and stressed the role of the policy implementation in achieving actual environmental improvement. The strict regulatory measures were generally perceived as environmentally advantageous and more effective in the long term, but a rather divided view was seen in the ability of the sulfur emissions directive to effectively govern environmental sustainability. In discussion, the role of more voluntary alternatives to implementing command-and-control type policy measures is emphasized in complementing government legislation, to gain market benefits from greening the entire pulp and paper supply chain. To conclude, the development of sustainable transportation strategies has the potential to contribute toward long-term competitiveness in the pulp and paper industry, especially if new strategic innovation-oriented cross-sector partnerships develop in the production and use of transportation biofuels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge transfer is a phenomenon faced by many organizations especially when dealing with the challenges of globalization. Organizations develop valuable knowledge from time to time and this knowledge has to be shared among the organizational members so that the organizations can leverage it to achieve the competitive edge. This paper is meant to discuss the factors that contribute to the phenomenon of interest including communication, management, transfer process, and also the working process in a virtual organization as a study setting. This issue is chosen because of the difficulties in dealing with knowledge transfer within the virtual organization and to identify the right factors involved in the knowledge transfer process. Perhaps from this study, the best approach of knowledge transfer process could be recognized and adapted by the virtual organization to strive in a business competitive world. Organizations that failed to adapt to the changing business environment especially with regard to the knowledge transfer process will be phased out from the business competition. The implications of the study will also be discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the most direct way to guide and support the transformation and upgrading of grain enterprises, government subsidies have an important orientation for the transformation and development of Chinese grain enterprises and the improvement of new quality productivity. Based on the data of 136 grain listed companies and NEEQ listed companies from 2015 to 2022, this paper empirically tests the impact of government subsidies on the new productivity of grain enterprises and its transmission mechanism. The research results show that government subsidies have significantly improved the new productivity of grain enterprises. The analysis of the mechanism of action finds that government subsidies have promoted the improvement of new productivity of enterprises by optimizing the structure of human capital and improving the absorptive capacity of enterprises. Further research shows that the higher the degree of product market competition, the lower the tax burden of enterprises, and the government subsidy exceeds the threshold value of 8.9685, the greater the effect of government subsidy on the improvement of new quality productivity of enterprises. The economic consequence test shows that government subsidies can promote the new productivity of grain enterprises and effectively improve the total factor productivity of enterprises. The research in this paper provides relevant enlightenment for the Chinese government to strengthen project planning, strengthen resource coordination, and implement scientific and accurate policies in the new round of fiscal and taxation system reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, the interactions between accounting (and auditing) and corporate governance have been an important topic of academic research. They use audit hours to measure audit effort and find that audit effort alleviates stock market crash risk. The traditional audit quality indicators used in past research cannot accurately separate the respective roles of companies and auditors, which makes it difficult for researchers to draw effective causal inferences when studying the association between company characteristics and audit quality. [Extracted from the article]

XYZ is a company engaged in the paper industry, which is located in West Java. Since established in 1976, this company has produced photocopy paper in the form of reams. This company has advantages in terms of paper quality so that its products dominate the international market and the domestic market. With a very tight level of market competition, companies must continue to work optimally to continuously improve employee performance and company productivity. The purpose of this study is to plan an incentive-based employee wage system, which is suitable and in accordance with company conditions. Incentive wages are important as one of the main components to increase and maintain motivation, performance and work integrity. This research was conducted in the Finishing Department of the copy manual wrapping work unit. The method used are the Piecework method, the Halsey method, and the Rowan method. The result of this research is a comparison of the amount of wages between the wage system used by the company and the three methods of incentive pay as a company alternative. From the comparison of the three incentive wage design methods, the authors recommend the Halsey method as the best method that is able to provide benefits for both the company and for workers which we call dual mutualism. The Halsey method still guarantees a basic wage and a decent incentive wage for workers as a motivation to work faster and better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution investigates whether the 2014 White Paper on EU Merger Control adds value to the existing debate surrounding non-controlling minority shareholdings. In this respect, it evaluates whether the 2013 minority shareholdings consultation rationale is consistently followed through. This contribution analyses three important novelties put forward by the White Paper: the principles guiding the reform (plugging the enforcement/regulatory gap, observing the reform's proportionality, and its consistency with existing control systems), defining the standards that the transactions prone to investigation must meet ("competitively significant links"), and narrowing down the choices for intervention methods ("targeted transparency system"). The contribution concludes that while the White Paper's proposed amendments generally fit the reform principles scheme, certain problems may still be identified, especially in relation to the necessity of a waiting period for minority shareholdings, and to the benefits and drawbacks of the possibility to intervene ex post on such transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the continued relevance of competition for utility regulation, especially in the context of Britain. It does so in three steps. First, it considers the context in which RPI-X entered the policy debate and became a central aspect of subsequent utility reforms. Second, it considers the contemporary context of British utility regulation. Third, this paper points to some significant new departures in British utility regulation that might allow for an extension of the emphasis placed on 'discovery' in the initial 1983 report, namely growing emphasis on negotiated settlements and customer engagement. The paper assesses some recent experiences, with a specific emphasis on water regulation in Scotland. The paper concludes by suggesting the scope for competition in designing and setting price controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors describe the structure and assessment of a capstone course in economics. The outcomes are noteworthy for three reasons. First, among cited evidence to date, this is the only undergraduate economics program from a nonselective public university reporting similar achievements in undergraduate research paper publications. Second, the program reports learning outcomes of a relatively new instrument in standardized test (ETS MFT Economics) to measure attainment of proficiencies in economics. Finally, it introduces undergraduate research paper competition outcomes as a measure of student paper quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Agricultural Competitiveness Green Paper of the Agricultural Institute Australia (AIA) that provide strong, independent, balanced and factually based representation and advocacy on a wide range of issues affecting the profession and agriculture generally.

As an important way to expand financing channels, the listing can significantly improve the enterprises' comprehensive competitiveness. However, few studies pay attention to the continuous impact of listing years on enterprise innovation. Based on the sample data of Chinese enterprises before and after listing from 2004 to 2017, this paper discusses the relationship between the listing years and dual innovation. And analyzes the moderating effect of slack. The research shows that the listing years are related to the quantity and quality of innovation in the inverted U-shaped, but the inflection point of the innovation quantity is later than the innovation quality. Before listing, the innovation quantity and quality increased; after listing, the innovation quantity first increased and then decreased, while the innovation quality declined. High slack makes the inverted U-shaped relationship between the listing years and innovation quality steeper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]