Targeted Transfers, Investment Spillovers, and the Tax Environment

We examine the informational role of targeted tax transfers used by local governments to attract corporate investment projects. The transfer may potentially be used to solve an information externality in which subsequent investments that follow the initial project may fail to occur even though they are profitable. The targeted transfer may be used to signal the profitability of such ancillary investments and thereby attract them. We show that this signaling role implies that an environment of either generally high corporate tax rates or low gains from secondary investments paradoxically yields an equilibrium in which the necessary government subsidy is lower.taxes, transfers, externalities

Product Differentiation, Cost-Reducing Mergers, and Consumer Welfare

Cost synergies are an explicitly recognized justification for a two-firm merger and empirical techniques are now widely used to assess the impact of cost-reducing mergers on prices and welfare in the postmerger market. We show that if the merger occurs in a vertically product differentiated market then the merger will lead to a reduction in product offerings that limits the usefulness of pre-merger empirical estimates. Indeed, we further show that in such markets, two-firm merges will lead to higher prices regardless of the merger’s cost-savings. We show that our results may obtain even when we allow for post-merger entry.mergers, cost synergies, vertical product differentiation

Merger Wars: Bidding for Complementary Assets

We examine the bidding competition for a set of complementary assets arising between two firms who also compete in a differentiated product market. The bidding contest takes the form of an acquisition battle for a third firm initially holding the assets. Depending on the nature of product competition between the bidding firms, either both bidding firms are made worse off by the availability of these assets or, paradoxically, the firm winning the bidding contest is less profitable than is the firm losing it. Our analysis is relevant to the many recent mergers in telecommunications, finance, and transportation, e.g., Viacom’s purchase of CBS.mergers, product differentiation, bidding

Versioning, Brand-Stretching, and the Evolution of e-Commerce Markets

This paper offers an analysis of the evolution of e-commerce markets. We develop a model in which an initial group of small, no-name click firms create such markets by offering horizontally differentiated customized or versioned products and competing in prices. Subsequently, a traditional brick firm enters by stretching its brand name into the digital marketplace. Such entry causes many initial entrants to exit. Contrary to much popular and formal literature, we show that the volume of initial entry may well be inefficiently low despite the anticipated later exit. In addition, the conventional relationship between sunk cost and market structure is substantially weakened.versioning, brand-stretching, price discrimination, market structure

Knowledge Spillovers, Mergers and Public Policy in Economic Clusters

This paper investigates how market concentration affects research activity in an economic cluster. The firms in the cluster play a two-stage game. In the first stage the firms choose whether or not to engage in costly research that generates technological improvements that spill over to the other firms in the cluster. The more firms engaged in research the richer or more profitable is the pool of knowledge that spills over. In the second stage after the knowledge spillovers have occurred, firms compete in quantities. We solve for the symmetric mixed strategy equilibrium to the first stage of the game, and find that too low a degree of concentration in the cluster will destroy firms’ incentives to undertake research and so the cluster stagnates. We then explore whether a merger by increasing concentration can stimulate research activity in the cluster. Finally, we consider a public policy response to stagnation and compare whether a direct public subsidy to stimulate research is preferable to a self-financing arrangement.agglomeration, research, perfect spillovers, mergers

Advertising: "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"

We model the choice of firms competing in prices in a differentiated products market to bundle advertising messages with their goods in return for payment from advertisers. From the firms’ perspective, the potential to earn revenue from advertisers, makes advertising a “good”. However, because consumers in the product market dislike such advertising, the bundling dampens demand and in this sense is a “bad”. There is also a third role played by advertising, however. Since a firm that bundles advertisements with its good sells a less attractive good, it has to price more aggressively than one that does not do such bundling. Thus, bundling advertisements with the good can lead to more aggressive product pricing and thereby intensify product market competition. In this sense, advertising can make things “ugly”.