Search

At present, the vast majority of Chinese farmers' income comes from factor income. The distortion of factor market affects the sustainable growth of farmers' income and the optimization of income structure to a certain extent. The development of factor market is particularly important to solve the problem of increasing farmers' income. Based on the panel data of 28 provinces (cities, autonomous regions) in China from 1997 to 2021, this study constructs a spatial panel model to empirically analyze the spatial impact of the three major factor market distortions on Farmers' income growth. The results show that Chinese farmers' income has a strong spatial dependence, and there is a significant spatial correlation effect in different regions. There are serious market distortions, which have significantly hindered the growth of farmers' income. The distortion of China's factor market not only inhibits the growth of farmers' income in this region, but also has a significant negative spatial spillover effect. The distortion of factor market restricts the improvement of farmers' income in adjacent areas. In the future, we need to further straighten out the influencing factors and give full play to the income increasing efficiency of various factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding hiring difficulties and the nature of hiring frictions that employers face is important for the promotion of economic growth and the individual success of both firms and workers. This study sheds light on this issue by presenting evidence from an original, nationally representative survey of information technology (IT) helpdesks that contains detailed measurements of skill requirements, organizational characteristics, and market structure. The results indicate that the incidence of persistent hiring difficulties is modest, and that measures of technology and technical skill demands are not associated with greater hiring problems. Organizational attributes and market structure are generally more predictive of hiring frictions than are skill requirements. Human resource practices, management strategy, and labor-market monopsony power all play key roles. These results cast doubt on simple stories about technology-driven hiring problems and point to the importance of examining a broader range of organizational and market factors when addressing workforce challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to combine and systematise the reasons why guests opt to use (or reject) peer-to-peer hospitality services according to recent literature, thus providing practical solutions to strengthen this industry. In this regard, this study performed a comprehensive literature review of 24 studies in the field of tourism and hospitality by (i) applying their findings (Nreasons = 115) to a broad model of predicted consumption (behavioural perspective model), (ii) recognising the incidence of utilitarian and informational outcomes in the industry, (iii) identifying a pattern of reinforcement attached to it, and (iv) implementing the marketing mix structure to develop growth strategies. The results show that guests opt for these services primarily for utilitarian reasons, such as feeling welcomed by their host and comfortable in the neighbourhood (interaction), and that the level of security introduced by these services (safety) either attracts or turns away consumers. Furthermore, the high utilitarian/low informational pattern of reinforcements attached to these services reveals opportunities to develop the industry, which may be covered by extending accommodation that prompts individuals' need for self-promotion and uniqueness (place strategy). This study contributes to past peer-to-peer hospitality research focussed on guests' perspectives by linking their findings and providing a broad-theme overview. It also extends the behavioural perspective model literature to hospitality analysis, providing managers with a further consumer predictive tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large organizations mold technological advance in countries and even more so in cities. External economies of scale and invention are closely linked, but the organizational strategies of individual firms cannot be overlooked in understanding the geography of patenting. Market structures and inventive intensity are properties of complex systems featuring endogenous multi-directional interactions. Oligopolistic firms are pivotal in many large inventive cities, especially outside Silicon Valley. The more these firms dominate technological advance the higher the patenting rate. Less inventive large cities are frequently reliant on individuals and employees of universities and federal agencies to procure grants. Some implications of organizational structure and granularity for urban policy are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discrete games provide the means to analyze market dynamics with limited data. However, computing such games with many players—especially in a complete information setting—is computationally infeasible because the strategy space increases exponentially with the number of players. This study presents a novel and practical method to compute and estimate discrete games. To do so, the study introduces two methodological innovations. First, we develop an efficient simulator that requires fewer random draws to evaluate the likelihood of discrete games with multiple equilibria. The augmented simulator avoids random draws that are not compatible with the observed equilibrium outcome and, thus, efficiently uses all draws to evaluate the likelihood. Second, we utilize general‐purpose computing on graphics‐processing unit (GPGPU), using multiple processing cores in a graphics‐processing unit, to increase computational speed. The two features allow us to estimate the model significantly faster compared to traditional methods. The study's empirical application examines the effect of Apple's company‐owned stores on the retail market structure. The results show that agglomeration effects exist between Apple and upscale firms. The presence of an Apple store attracts high‐income customers, promoting the entry of upscale firms and the exit of discount firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since economic analysis of the workings of the online economy is in its early stages, detecting anticompetitive behavior remains challenging. There have been some insights from models that explain how two-sided markets work, but the practical uses of these models are limited thus far. More research is necessary on the definition and operations of platforms of different sizes and with different objectives, for example, the identification of data clustering and flows related to product clustering and information production and the relationships between data, information, and innovation. Furthermore, corporate culture, which can produce cultural clashes within an organization, may influence both (anti)competitive behavior and innovation. The cultural issue becomes even more complex when evaluating whether a merger would result in both innovation and the abuse of market power. This paper develops an overview of the technology and operations of the online economy as a start toward informing competition and antitrust policy. We present a technical overview that becomes a starting point for understanding potential areas of excessive market power. We also examine market dynamics from the large platforms' points of view to understand where they believe the online economy is heading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Should product disparagement give rise to an antitrust claim of monopolization or attempted monopolization? Majority of the courts have said no while some scholars are skeptical of these decisions. This article examines how conflicting visions of the consumer inform this debate. The conventional wisdom is that antitrust claims should adopt the principle of consumer welfare maximization with the assumption of the rational consumer, protected by product disparagement laws independent of antitrust. But if the consumer is not rational, the application of the consumer welfare standard needs to be re-examined. Specifically, product disparagement and antitrust claims are not independent or separable. This article examines the implications of the consumer division and examines both the consumer welfare assumption of conventional antitrust and its neo-Brandeisian critiques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to debates within the financialization literature by examining the rise of monopolies in the US' rental housing market. Drawing on a dataset of multifamily real estate transactions taken from the poorest census tracts in the US (so-called Opportunity Zones), we develop an antitrust framework and methodology for measuring market structure in housing using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. After detailing the geography of these market dynamics, we assess the specific strategies firms use to acquire market power and extract monopoly rents. This analysis reveals three critical aspects of real estate investors' anticompetitive conduct: integration between housing subsectors, acquisition strategies that rapidly scale up ownership, and corporate forms that promote cooperation. The framework developed in this article and subsequent findings offer three directions policymakers, regulators, and activists can take to reform antitrust law and better ensure affordable housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acquisitions are competitive moves that disrupt an industry's competitive structure. As a result, firms are often not passive observers of their rival's acquisitions, but actively retaliate against such competitive moves. In this study, we explore these dynamics by analyzing one way in which multimarket contact may influence acquisition strategies, namely, the type of targets acquired. We contribute to the acquisition literature by clarifying the role that pre -acquisition competitive interdependencies play in firms' acquisition strategies. Specifically, we suggest that high multimarket contact firms do not necessarily avoid acquisition activity. Instead, these firms are more likely to acquire targets that are less likely to incur retaliation from interconnected rivals. We also explore two important boundary conditions to this relationship: (1) the market's competitive structure and (2) the location of the target firm. Our empirical tests of a sample of 741 bank holding companies from 1995 to 2014 offer support for our hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the debates on 'due impartiality' provided to far-right leaders in Swedish media, this article uses a Lacanian approach to address the relationship between the practices of normalisation of far-right discourses and fantasies, and the evolution of emotional governance at the interstice of old (i.e. traditional) and new (e.g. social media) media. Emotional governance refers to the everyday emotionally charged utterances and statements made by political leaders. However, this phenomenon can also be read in a larger Foucauldian sense as techniques of surveillance, control and manipulation and as related to narrative representational fantasies. Studies dealing with the normalisation of far-right discourse from a media perspective tend to focus on framing, journalistic norms, market structures and business incentives. We aim to expand these perspectives by opening a discussion on the interplay between the ontological (in)securities attached to the emotional governance of far-right leaders, and the techno-social affordances and roles provided to (and by) 'old' and 'new' actors in the hybrid media ecosystem. We further analyse this interplay by looking at the particular fantasies embedded in it and the consequences of the enactment of 'due impartiality' and equal footing' norms and practices in the Swedish media landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online consumer behavior has become a valuable and viable source of consumer insights. Consumer comments in online forums, or discussion groups, have proven useful as a source to extract brand similarity data from. Apart from the cost and speed advantages, such data can be captured easily over different time periods. Both online consumer-generated data (CGD) and surveys have their pros and cons. To date, little is known as to how these two data sources compare in terms of brand insights. In this study, we discuss the results from analyzing survey and consumer-generated online data pertaining to the U.S. skincare market. Our study included 57 brands, and we used multidimensional scaling (MDS), t-stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE; an alternative to MDS), hierarchical clustering, and additive similarity trees (an extension of hierarchical clustering) to analyze the data. We show that the outcomes vary between CGD and surveys. As an additional insight, we show that, rather than the spatial scaling methods, additive trees result in a much better fit of brand similarity data in cases where we have many brands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article exploits long time series of industry-level data in a group of OECD countries to analyze the short-term labor market effects of reforms that lower barriers to entry and dismissal costs. Estimates show that both policies induce non-negligible transitory employment losses. The strength of these effects varies depending on the underlying industry and labor market structure, and on cyclical conditions: The employment cost of deregulation is higher in economic downturns and negligible in good times. These findings prove robust to a set of specification and sensitivity checks and are confirmed after standard reverse causality and falsification tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the pricing behavior of sellers in a market undergoing a significant restructuring, using data from the ongoing introduction of self-service technology in the Korean gasoline market in the 2000s. I provide evidence that full-service premium increased during the market transition. I further show that a monopolistic competition model is not enough to explain the increasing premium. The pricing behavior of sellers differs by product position: self-service sellers compete for price-sensitive consumers, whereas full-service sellers differentiate their product by offering a variety of bundled products and services, such as coffee, carwash or even nail salons, to compete for less-price-sensitive consumers. Taken together, the strategic choices of sellers evolve in different ways when the market structure changes, with each type of seller using its unique position, resulting in an increase in full-service premium during the market transition from full-service to self-service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers' online activities such as keyword searching and writing reviews can provide valuable information that reflects their perception of the market. This study proposes ways to analyze market structure and draw a perceptual map from the following two types of online data: keyword search and online consumer forum data. We apply our methodology to the imported car brands in South Korea automobile market. The multidimensional scaling (MDS) results provide different consumer insights depending on the nature of data. The inter-brand similarity values derived from the proposed two metrics are shown to be correlated. Especially, using consumer forum data, we apply our metric to analyzing the market structure of two sub-markets: midsize sedan and compact crossover sport utility vehicle (SUV). Furthermore, utilizing the proposed measures, we calculate the prototypicality of a brand and demonstrate its positive effect on sales. Marketing managers can apply our technique to understand the market structure and perform longitudinal studies to monitor consumers' perceptual changes without conducting a time-consuming, traditional survey method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the role of science and technology studies (STS) journal editors in organizing and maintaining the peer review economy. We specifically conceptualize peer review as a gift economy running on perpetually renewed experiences of mutual indebtedness among members of an intellectual community. While the peer review system is conventionally presented as self-regulating, we draw attention to its vulnerabilities and to the essential curating function of editors. Aside from inherent complexities, there are various shifts in the broader political–economic and sociotechnical organization of scholarly publishing that have recently made it more difficult for editors to organize robust cycles of gift exchange. This includes the increasing importance of journal metrics and associated changes in authorship practices; the growth and differentiation of the STS journal landscape; and changes in publishing funding models and the structure of the publishing market through which interactions among authors, editors, and reviewers are reconfigured. To maintain a functioning peer review economy in the face of numerous pressures, editors must balance contradictory imperatives: the need to triage intellectual production and rely on established cycles of gift exchange for efficiency, and the need to expand cycles of gift exchange to ensure the sustainability and diversity of the peer review economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the ongoing battle between brick‐and‐mortar stores and e‐commerce shops escalates, managers of the former are becoming more cautious regarding their strategic store site selection and decoration decisions, particularly if foreseeable competition from rival companies exists. This paper investigates a bilevel competitive facility location (BCFL) problem, where two companies, a leader and a follower, plan to enter a market sequentially. Each company has a budget to open and design facilities. The goal is to maximize expected revenue that is forecasted through a discrete choice model. To reflect a practical environment, we further consider a situation with elastic demand, explaining the market expansion effect when customers are offered better service due to the opening of new facilities. We formulate the problem as a nonlinear 0‐1 bilevel program. Because of the bilevel structure and the market expansion effect, this problem is so challenging that we are unaware of any exact algorithms in the literature. Motivated by this gap, we develop an exact framework that leverages the state‐of‐the‐art value‐function–based approach. However, this framework requires solving a mixed‐integer nonconvex optimization problem (MINOP) at each iteration, which is computationally prohibitive even for medium‐scale instances. To mitigate the intractability, we propose a new framework that avoids MINOP and tackles instances with hundreds of location variables. Finally, we conduct extensive computational studies to show the efficiency and effectiveness of our method as well as provide insightful guidance for managers to have win–win/dominate outcomes and choose an appropriate market size function when dealing with expansion decisions in chained business operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s critical marketing scholars have called for systemic change to overcome the ethical problems generated by consumption, such as unsustainable resource use, industry-induced climate change, and social inequities. Mainstream marketing research has instead problematised the individual consumer and sought ways to diminish the so-called gap between ethics and consumption. The current conceptual paper follows Carrington et al. (2016) and other contemporary critical marketing scholars in redirecting attention away from individual (un)ethical consumers and toward the (im)moral market structures that inflect their decision-making. Its first contribution to this line of thinking is to propose an ethical consumption cap rather than an ethical consumption gap. This subtle but significant shift in emphasis suggests that contemporary capitalism creates conditions in which ethical consumption is costly in terms of money, time and effort. Rather than the responsibilising rhetoric of the 'gap', the 'cap' acknowledges the plethora of systemic pressures that make it difficult for consumers to consume ethically and invites researchers to look elsewhere for solutions. The second contribution of this paper is to follow Grayling (2019) in delineating the character of ethics from the concept of morality, which is more suggestive of obligations and duties. With this etymology in mind, it is argued that other market actors can do much more to remove problematic choices from the market and thus raise the mean market morality. Attending to the average morality of markets instead of emphasising capped ethical consumerism treads a difficult conceptual path between conflicting political positions, but may buy enough time for viable socioeconomic alternatives to neoliberalism to emerge and expand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current rapid development of online car-hailing services creates a serious challenge to the existing paradigm of market governance and antitrust policy. However, the debate on the market structure of the car-hailing platform requires more empirical evidence to uncover its functions. This research adopts an interdisciplinary methodology based on computer science and economics, and including software reverse engineering tools applied to the interoperability of the terminal application and resource allocation model, to demonstrate the topological market structure of personal data resources allocation in China's car-hailing industry. Within the discussion of the hybrid nature of technology and economy, the analysis results clearly show that China's car-hailing platform services present a multi-sided market structure when seen from the perspective of personal data resource allocation. Personal data resource (PDR), that is considered an essential market resource, is applied as an asset transferred unhindered between platforms via the application programming interface, and thus, creating a new market allocation mechanism. The connection between the car-hailing platforms and social media platforms is an essential aspect of the market competition in the domain. As applications of online platforms increase in the global context, this research offers a new perspective in personal data resource allocation with implications for the governance of the platform economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adding renewable energy sources (RES) to an electricity market has an ambiguous effect on wholesale prices. The merit order effect (MoE) has a downward pressure on prices while, with market power, higher inframarginal rents will tend to increase prices. We quantify the interaction of the two effects in the Ontario electricity market. We identify the market power effect by simulating transfers of RES capacity from the fringe to larger firms: these transfers increase prices by up to 24%. We then add RES capacity and allocate it to players with varying levels of market power. Following a net expansion of RES capacity of 5% relative to total capacity, prices decrease by 30% when new capacity is assigned to the fringe, but only by 7% when assigned to the largest firm. Our findings show that the MoE is largely mitigated by market power, hence the importance of the market structure in the design of uniform incentives for RES adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some Chinese local governments include informal workers in their welfare systems while others exclude them? This article argues that local officials attempt to balance multiple, conflicting, top-down career-evaluation criteria by developing different inclusion mechanisms. The central mandate to build an inclusive welfare regime incentivizes local officials to embrace welfare "outsiders" (informal workers and nonlocal workers). However, other top-down policy goals and the locally defined citizenship (hukou) system disincentivize the full integration of outsiders. Faced with this political dilemma, local officials have strategically incorporated different types of outsiders into their welfare regimes. Their strategies depend on local labor market structures—specifically, the extent to which informal workers overlap with nonlocal workers. This hypothesis is tested using an original data set derived from thirty-one Chinese provinces, covering the period between 2005 and 2015, as well as two rounds of national-level survey data. Findings suggest that recent Chinese welfare expansion has ironically consolidated, even exacerbated, regional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the involvement of business groups in consolidation activity. An important component of the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act was "the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few" which has been de-emphasized as per the amendment made in 1991. The new Competition Act mainly deals with the case-by-case analysis of market competition rather than ownership concentration. The competition regulation in its current form is mainly focusing on the concept of "economic efficiency" and not addressing the "social fairness" concept. The involvement of business groups in consolidation activities results in multiplier effects as they are already part of a diversified and well-structured umbrella of business with horizontal and vertical linkages. This article observes the active involvement of big business groups in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) activity across various product lines. Further, many such M&As are leading to capacity expansion not only in various overlapping products (i.e., horizontal linkages) but also in the vertical line of business, in which the affiliate firms of the group are engaged. This may be beneficial to the group as a whole since the cost of intermediary inputs supplied to various affiliate firms can be reduced. The study points to consider the "ownership and group effect" and the resulting synergy creation more carefully while assessing competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France and South Korea have implemented voucher programs to counter energy poverty. In contrast to goods that traditional voucher programs target, the market structure that dominates energy supply is the oligopoly. In this paper, we study the price impact of vouchers in this market structure. We first state conditions on demand elasticities that make the choice of vouchers consistent with the regulator's objective of eliminating energy poverty. We then model a game between energy suppliers and the regulator, where suppliers maximize profit while the regulator ensures that no consumer spends more than a given share of income on energy. From a benchmark case without vouchers, we show that vouchers reduce the energy price under simultaneous decision making or when the regulator moves first. However, the price impact of vouchers is ambiguous if firms move first. This scenario's price is above the price of the simultaneous decision scenario's price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, as an alternative to the surplus utility, we propose a performance‐price‐ratio (PPR) utility and specialize the customer choice model with a PPR maximization criterion. With the PPR‐based choice model, we investigate a pricing game between retailers in a competitive market. Through transferring the decision variable from price to performance‐price ratio, the first‐order condition of the game becomes a linear equation system, which enables us to develop a closed‐form equilibrium solution. The solution reveals how product performance and price sensitivity affect equilibrium pricing, market share, and revenue. With the developed theoretical results, we carry out empirical studies with a rich data set obtained from the China TV market. At the individual product level and the brand level, we calibrate the PPR‐based choice model and the widely used surplus‐based model with a Bayesian information criteria‐based stepwise multivariate regression method. The regression results suggest that the PPR‐based model fits both the product‐level and brand‐level data better than the surplus‐based model. Through the stepwise selection of independent variables, we find that the leading features affecting a TV's performance are 3D TV functionality and its screen size. Moreover, we explore how the market equilibrium evolves with the game decision sequence, market structure, and new product entry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nursing home (NH) care is arguably the most significant financial risk faced by the elderly without long-term care insurance or Medicaid coverage. Annual out-of-pocket expenditures for NH care can easily exceed $70,000. However, our understanding of private-pay prices is limited by data availability. Utilizing a unique data set on NH prices from 2005 through 2010 across eight states, we find that NH price growth has consistently outpaced growth in consumer and medical care prices. After adjusting for geographical and facility differences, for-profit chains charge the lowest prices, independently operated for-profit and nonprofit NHs have similar prices, and nonprofit chains charge the highest prices. Adjusted prices are also likely to be higher when NHs have higher occupancy rates and markets are more concentrated. The significant differences in price across organizational and market structures suggest private-pay prices can be an important factor when evaluating and comparing the value of NH care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a visual method for representing the complex labor market internal structure from the perspective of similar occupations based on shared skills; and a prototype tool for interacting with the visualization, together with an extended description of graph construction and the necessary data processing for linking multiple heterogeneous data sources. Since the labor market is not an isolated phenomenon and is constantly impacted by external trends and interventions, the presented method is designed to enable adding extra layers of external information. For instance, what is the impact of a megatrend or an intervention on the labor market? Which parts of the labor market are the most vulnerable to an approaching megatrend or planned intervention? A case study analyzing the labor market together with the megatrend of job automation and computerization is presented. The source code of the prototype is released as open source for repeatability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is motivated by the ubiquitous practical existence of common retailer distribution channels (e.g., a grocery store offering multiple brands of the same product). Demand interdependence (product substitutability) among various brands is critical and thus we investigate its impact on firms' profits. Using an economic framework with manufacturers operating as Stackelberg leaders, our analysis reveals unique and substantive insights dependent on the underlying market demand structure, and in some cases, the extent of supply coverage. For the Spence–Dixit–Vives demand structure, we find that competing manufacturers prefer to offer brands with low levels of substitutability while retailer's preferences are moderated by the interaction effect between the number of competing brands and level of product substitutability (essentially the retailer prefers high levels of substitutability when the number of brands is "small," and vice versa). For the Shubik–Levitan demand structure, manufacturers may prefer high or low levels of product substitutability depending on the extent of supply coverage while the retailer always prefers high levels of product substitutability. These findings offer useful prescriptions for category management and persuasive advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the spirit of dystopian science fiction, this story imagines marketing in a near future. A reader might recognise that there is a relationship between aesthetic forms (stories) and the dramas that play out in society and so although this is fiction, it is also about the critical concerns that are emerging in the use of corporate technologies. The story draws from theory that suggests our most intimate relationships are embedded in and create market structures, and on theory that accounts for how technology (and especially AI) has significant impact on market practices. Core ideas also reference my previous and ongoing research on the imagination, on marketplace relationships and on digital virtual consumption, and from previous accounts of AI and market/political systems in speculative fictions. I invite the reader to reflect on the sorts of dominating human–technology–market relationships that may be with us soon, and on the risk of perverse instantiations in commercial AI deployment. Overall the tone is critical, but themes are also presented as ambiguous, recognising the seductive quality of marketing technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the impact that flight-centric air traffic control (ATC), a concept under development, has on ATC market structure and ATC business models. Flight-centric operations bring forth changes in how the stakeholders adapt their roles to the emerging ATC market. We compared current ATC and market structures with the emerging flight-centric concept and analyzed the market changes in structure and competition from the emergence of flight-centric operations using Porter's five forces model. Four potential business models for flight-centric ATC are identified and described: current air navigation service providers adapt, vertical integration by airlines, new ATC providers, and the network manager as capacity-demand manager. In the final chapter, we briefly describe the future regulation of the market for flight-centric operations. We conclude that new concepts and technologies, such as flight-centric operations, create the necessary dynamics for change in the current market structure by unbundling of the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a standard model is used to examine the economic effect of market structure in travel destinations. We show that favorable changes in the push and pull factors are good for enhancing local hospitality business to the extent that they stimulate external tourism demand. We also find that rising competition in the hospitality industry, albeit boosting its sales, may have no effect on its revenue but can affect its profitability adversely due to resulting price drops that are desirable only to incoming visitors. Our policy implication is that there is no need to push for competitive industry structure, which is locally inefficient given that hospitality business catering to nonresident tourists is for profit and not for altruism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electric power industry is undergoing dramatic change driven by rapid technological transformation, concern over climate change, and evolving market structures. As a result, there is a need for new models to help the industry better utilize resources in a time of increasing uncertainty and to help government policy makers better understand the impacts of their regulatory decisions. We provide a structured review of the operations research and management science literatures to describe the current operational and policy issues in the electric power industry, with a particular focus on issues surrounding electricity market design, renewable integration, effects of climate policy on electric power infrastructure, rise of electric powered vehicles, energy storage, and the growing interdependence between natural gas and electric power sectors. We identify the current research frontier and classify the existing research into clusters with respect to managerial issues addressed. We offer a forecast for where the electric power industry is going and describe some important public policy issues. Finally, we highlight research opportunities and discuss how the management science community can contribute by considering the interaction between operational considerations and electric power policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antitrust review of mergers and merger remedies, in particular, have been the topic of much recent conversation both in the legal world and popular political discourse. A recent string of failed divestitures has driven the U.S. antitrust agencies to analyze proposed remedies and proposed divestiture buyers with increasing scrutiny as they seek to avoid similar outcomes. This article details the history of recent divestiture failures and explores how the agencies have adapted their remedy vetting process in response through longer investigations, enhanced focus on particular aspects of buyers' qualifications, and an increased insistence on up-front buyers, as well as the agencies' success in persuading courts that proposed divestitures and/or buyers were inadequate in a series of recent litigated merger challenges. Against this backdrop, this article offers practical guidance for merger parties and would-be buyers to navigate the approval process amid the agencies' heightened sensitivities to the qualifications of divestiture buyers. Finally, it suggests that there is little empirical support for the notion that the most concrete, observable agency responses will reduce the risk of divestiture failures in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how research on the social structure of markets may contribute to the analysis the growing income inequality in contemporary capitalist economies. The author proposes a theoretical link between embeddedness and social stratification by discussing the role of institutions and networks in markets for the distribution of economic profits between firms. The author claims that we must understand profit and free competition as opposites, as economic theory does. In the main part of the article the author illustrates six typical mechanisms of rent extraction from networks or formal and symbolic rules that embed markets. They emerge from material as well as symbolical access to and influence on the orientation of other market actors. Social structures in markets lead to unequal chances for rent extraction, even if actors produce them for coordination rather than for accumulation purposes. This is how market sociology and theory of capitalism can be linked more closely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consistently accounting for more than 50% of the nursing homes in the United States, corporate chains have played an important role in the industry for several decades. However, few studies have explicitly considered the role of chains in measuring competition in nursing home markets. In this study, we use a newly developed database tracking common ownership over a period of nearly two decades to compare chain-adjusted and unadjusted measures of competition at the county and 25 km fixed-radius levels and explore how the differences would affect the assessment of local market structure. On average, the chain-adjusted Herfindahl-Hirschman Indexes (HHIs) are about 0.02 higher than the unadjusted HHIs. Each year, about 20% to 22% of the counties would appear more concentrated when recalculating HHIs accounting for common ownership. Evidence suggests that nursing home chains tend to focus more on expanding access to new markets within a state than to increasing market power within a smaller local market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between exogenous demand shock and market structure in India's influenza vaccine markets. Using a novel dataset of detailed purchasing information for vaccines in India, and exploiting the 2009–10 global H1N1 pandemic as an exogenous demand shock, we provide evidence of heterogeneous responses to the shock by domestic and multinational vaccine manufacturers in the influenza vaccine market relative to our control group of all other vaccine markets. We find that such a shock results in a reversal of the market structure for influenza vaccines in India, with a decline in the market share of multinational vaccine manufacturers and significant gains in the market share of domestic vaccine manufacturers. This reversal of the market structure is driven by increased efforts at new product introduction among domestic vaccine manufacturers, the effects of which persist even after the pandemic has ended. Our results remain robust to the use of alternative controls, synthetic control method, coarsened exact matching method, and other relevant estimation methodologies. These results provide new evidence on the role of a pandemic‐induced demand shock in the context of an emerging economy by creating differential incentives for domestic and multinational vaccine manufacturers to bring new products to market. We also conduct additional analysis to explore the impact of targeted policy instruments on the new product introduction efforts of domestic vaccine manufacturers. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings and offer insights into the role of policy on pandemic preparedness in emerging markets facing adverse welfare effects from pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ongoing debate on the introduction of capacity markets in most European countries while a few of them have already established capacity markets. Since the implementation of independent national capacity markets is not in line with the target of a pan-European internal electricity market we investigate the impacts of uncoordinated capacity markets compared with coordinated capacity markets. A probabilistic approach for the determination of capacity requirements is proposed and a European electricity market model (E2M2s) is applied for evaluation. The model simultaneously optimizes investments and dispatch of power plants. Besides the impact on generation investments, market prices and system costs we analyze effects on production and security of supply. While coordinated capacity markets reveal high potentials for cross-border synergies and cost savings, uncoordinated and unilateral implementations can lead to inefficiencies, in particular free riding effects and endanger security of supply due to adverse allocation of generation capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we extend theory relating to the imagination and markets by reviewing explicit and implicit work in marketing, consumer research and sociology, drawing on a broader literature that provides a more comprehensive characterization of imagining. We map consumption in the imagination in order to better define the concept and to differentiate forms of imagining according to a number of characteristics that are identified in the literature. These are as follows: (1) temporal location, (2) range of emotions, (3) degree of elaboration, (4) level of abstraction (5) purpose, and (6) prompts. We also consider the role of consumption in terms of its level of presence and absence in the imagination. We then present a trajectory of consumption in the imagination that seeks to account for the relationships and movements between forms of imagining and the marketplace, noting the importance of the imagination in terms of implications for macro-level market structures and individual consumption practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to develop a critical understanding of marketing measures. Marketing measures inform a variety of marketing practices and have been subject to ethical, discursive and epistemological critique. Informed by a range of theoretical work, this study sheds light on the construction of a key marketing measure in digital advertising: viewability. It shows how a range of competing interests can be mobilized and aligned; how an object of interest can be stabilized; and how standards for measurement can be reconciled. Across this account, we can see how issues of accuracy, ideology and ethics are bracketed off as participants agree on which things matter and which things count. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how various dimensions of market structure, often used to measure organizational crowding, affect the fiscal health of nonprofit organizations. Using 2011 National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) nonprofit sector data, our findings generally support population ecology's model of a curvilinear relationship between density and days of spending. However, we also find that single dimensions of market structure do not fully capture the effects of market competition. Increasing density has a negative effect on the fiscal health of organizations in markets in which resources are more evenly distributed among actors, whereas increasing density of organizations has a positive effect on organizational fiscal health in markets in which resources are less evenly distributed among actors. These results are sensitive to different specifications of fiscal health and field of nonprofit activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although across-platform parity agreements (APPAs) are increasingly scrutinized, their exclusionary effects remain ambiguous. This article posits that the practice can either prevent entry or lead to the exit of rival platforms. Assessing this foreclosure effect presupposes, however, using one of the available tests, namely, the no economic sense test, the as efficient competitor test, and the consumer welfare test. Whether APPAs lead to the foreclosure of rivals depends ultimately on the applied test and, sometimes, on the way the test is applied. This reflects the paradox of APPAs. In an effort to identify the most appropriate test to deal with APPAs' foreclosure effect, this article also suggests that the consumer welfare test is far superior to the others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Well-designed electricity liberalization has delivered efficiency gains, but political risks of decarbonizing the sector have undermined investment incentives in energy-only markets, while poorly designed regulated tariffs have increased the cost of accommodating renewables. The paper sets out principles from theory and public economics to guide market design, capacity remuneration, renewables support and regulatory tariff setting, with an illustration from a high capital cost low variable cost electricity system. Such characteristics are likely to become more prevalent with increasing renewables penetration, where poor regulation is already threatening current utility business models. The appendix develops and applies a method for determining the subsidy justified by learning spillovers from solar PV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government increasingly relies on complex arrangements of providers to deliver public services. There is burgeoning public administration literature on contract management and performance. This literature emphasizes contract management strategies such as contract design and ex post monitoring and relationship building to promote contractor performance. The literature does not examine effects of structural variables on contract performance in ex post contract markets, though work on interorganizational networks has long established that structural factors influence individual performance. This study examines the influence of structural variables on publicly funded contract performance in networked structures of exchange using 5 years of state-level contract data. Network concepts are used to develop contracts as networked exchange structures and develop measures of structural embeddedness for individual programs. Findings include that the structural embeddedness of individual programs influences individual contract performance on quality and cost dimensions over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining previous work on market formation and regulation with a case study of the emerging legal cannabis markets in the United States, we develop the argument that interrelations to other markets contribute significantly to constitute the social systems of regulated markets. Specifically, market interrelations enacted during legitimation and regulation influence who becomes involved in the market formation process and direct attention to specific issues in that process. After successfully (re)regulating a market, new interrelations are enacted via practices borrowed from historic, parallel and auxiliary markets, and via material influences based on complementarity and substitutability. While these multiple interrelations to other markets complicate market delineation, they are also a historical precondition for it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of our article is to propose that compromising is a constitutive characteristic of those marketing systems that entail matters of public interest or concern. In such markets, actors design compromises as they encounter criticisms of and contending justifications for the market’s products, as these refer to price, efficiency in production and use, regulatory compliance or ecological sustainability. Tests and justifications are vital in order to determine what is valuable and by which measure. As a theory framework, the economic sociology of conventions provides a basis for assessing these contests, compromises, and justifications over the issue of worth in a marketing context. Through an ethnographic study of the regulated activities of chemicals service companies supporting the upstream petroleum industry, we assess how actors evaluate and justify the market’s products and services in this environmentally sensitive setting by means of tests drawing from different orders of worth: the green, the industrial and the market order. Our contributions show that by artful and pragmatic compromising around exchanges, actors in marketing systems can balance several conflicting orders of worth over the question of worth without needing to converge on an overriding institutional logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a coordinated modelling assessment that incorporates European energy efficiency and renewable policies with two potential gas market scenarios. First, the impact of EU energy efficiency and renewable policies on natural gas demand is calculated using the PRIMES model 2014 Baseline projection, the Fraunhofer ISI Low Policy Intensity Energy Efficiency scenario, and the Green-X model for renewable deployment. Next, the effect of these policies on the natural gas markets is assessed, using the European Gas Market Model. The model tests scenarios for different positions on long-term gas contracts with Russia assuming different stages of European gas infrastructure development. The findings show that dependency on Russian natural gas can be reduced to low levels without triggering a significant increase in natural gas prices for any single EU member country. In an extreme scenario whereby energy efficiency savings, higher renewable energy sources deployment and the assumed positive gas market developments take place simultaneously, gas cost savings can reach as high as 37%. Benefits arise not only in the most recent round of EU Member States (12 MS) targeted in the study, but are visible across most EU gas markets. This underlines the interlinkages of the whole EU gas market, and the results suggest that security of gas supply is not only a challenge for new Member States, but in the broader European markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between law including competition policy and the goal of advancing innovation and entrepreneurship is complex. Bert Foer’s chapter identifies the many ways that competition law and policy directly and indirectly can affect positively or negatively the advancement of that goal. The comment seeks to highlight that range and complexity by using the categories from the traditional I-O Paradigm to show where and how antitrust law and policies it seeks to advance can be used to shape the conditions, structure, and conduct in markets to facilitate outcomes that will advance the public interest in innovation and entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze incentives to invest in renewable energy technologies induced by the overlap of two types of policies: feed-in schemes and carbon mitigation instruments. We find that results differ markedly depending on the specific types of policies in place, reflecting different impacts of uncertainty. As a result, the recent reform to the EU-ETS system that has established the Market Stability Reserve (MSR), effective in 2019, requires to appropriately fine-tune the direct RES-E support schemes. We show that this may involve moving away from feed-in tariffs towards feed-in premia. Our results suggest that the schemes currently adopted in Germany and in Italy, broadly based on feed-in premia for large generators and on feed-in tariffs for the small ones, could well fit also the post-MSR EU carbon mitigation policy. To the contrary, other countries (e.g. France and the U.K.) may have to modify their support schemes as the MSR will become operational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the empirical and theoretical background to high shares of renewables in the electricity system. First we examine what is meant by "high shares" of renewables; next we consider what we mean by electricity "markets"; then we discuss what the term "cope with" implies; before returning to the suitability of "current" electricity markets. Second, we turn to three examples of jurisdictions--Germany, the UK and the State of New York in the US--with specific aspirations for decarbonisation and the role of renewables. Each exhibits very different approaches to the way they are adjusting their electricity market design to cope with high shares of renewables. We suggest that a new wave of electricity experiments is beginning around the theme of how to incorporate large shares of intermittent renewable generation in to electricity systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public support for renewables has led to an unexpected investment momentum in Germany. A consequence is reduced wholesale electricity prices, the so-called merit order effect of renewables. We estimate this reduction using an econometric approach and give a quantitative overview of the financial situation of conventional generators. Our results indicate that investments in new conventional capacities are economically unviable. With the current market design, this situation is going to impact supply security at least in the long run. A popular approach to address this issue is the introduction of additional public support for conventional power plants. However, we believe that subsidizing renewable and conventional capacities contradicts the idea of a liberal market. We present two alternatives: State control of investments in renewables through auctions (as proposed by the European Commission), and a premium paid to representatives of the demand side (such as retailers) independence of their shares of renewables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the share of fluctuating renewable energy resources is constantly increasing, the centralized, hierarchical organization of the current energy system and markets cannot adequately accommodate such decentralized electricity generation. New ideas have been developed and discussed for improved integration, also in Germany, one of the lead markets. Examples in this context are virtual power plants and microgrids. This paper presents a new local reserve energy market design (applied to residential households), which can facilitate the operation and allow trading within these constructs. Emphasis is put on the regulatory options and current market framework, mainly from a European and a German perspective, which serve as a basis for implementing the local market. It can be shown that using existing regulatory structures, a local market with simple rules (comparable to an "energy-eBay") can be easily installed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss at the European example how power market design evolves with increasing shares of intermittent renewables. Short-term markets and system operation have to accommodate for the different needs of renewable and conventional generation assets and flexibility options. This can be achieved by pooling resources over larger geographic areas through common auction platforms, realizing the full flexibility of different assets based on multi-part bids while efficiently allocating scarce network resources. For investment and re-investment choices different technology groups like wind and solar versus fossil fuel based generation may warrant a different treatment -- reflecting differing levels of publicly accessible information, requirements for grid infrastructure, types of strategic choices relevant for the sector and shares of capital cost in overall generation costs. We discuss opportunities for such a differentiated treatment while maintaining synergies in short-term system operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]