Monoculture versus diversity in competition economics

Economics rightfully represents the major basis for competition policy. Next to generating knowledge about competition and its welfare effects, the currently popular 'more-economic approach' is charged with a number of additional hopes and expectations, leading to a reduction of the ambiguities of real-world competition policy. While this article highlights the benefits of economics-based competition policy, it takes a cautious stance towards excessive expectations in particular regarding the idea that a monocultural, 'unified' competition theory as an exact, objective, and unerring scientific approach to antitrust makes normative assessment and generalizations superfluous. In a combination of two lines of argumentation, diversity in competition economics is advocated. Firstly, competition economics is empirically characterized by a considerable pluralism of theories and policy paradigms. This includes deviating views on core concepts like the nature of competition, the meaning of efficiency, or the goals of antitrust. Secondly, it is demonstrated that diversity of theories represents no imperfection of the state of science. In contrast, it is theoretically beneficial for future scientific progress. Therefore, no ultimate competition theory can ever be expected. As a consequence, the 'more-economic approach' must be extended in order to embrace diversity. This does not decrease its meaning and importance but instead puts some of the related high hopes into perspective. --antitrust,more-economic approach,competition policy paradigms,industrial economics,methodology of science

Collective Invention during the British Industrial Revolution The Case of the Cornish Pumping Engine

In this paper, we argue that together with individual inventors and firms, what Robert C. Allen (1983) has termed as collective invention settings (that is settings in which rival firms freely release each other pertinent technical information), were also a crucial source of innovation in the industrial revolution period. Until now, this has been very little considered in the literature. This paper focuses on one of these cases: the Cornish mining district. In Cornwall, during the early nineteenth century, a notable collective invention setting, gradually emerged. This case is particularly remarkable because it was capable of generating a continuous and sustained flow of improvements in steam pumping technology which in the end greatly contributed to improve the thermodynamic efficiency of the steam engine. In this paper we study in detail the specific economic circumstances that led to the formation of this collective invention setting and we analyses its consequences for the rate of technological innovationCollective inventions, information sharing, case study

Who performs a stronger response to whom? Detecting individual competitive actions and reactions

This study analyzes the degree of competition through individual actions and reactions. Empirical support for this analysis has derived mainly from structural econometric models describing the nature of competition. This analysis extends the existing literature by empirically considering a direct measurement of competition through the analysis of the competitive actions and responses, and describing how firms compete within and between strategic groups. We estimate the firms’ conduct in the Spanish deposits market with 146 firms and 18,888 observations. This is a specially compelling context for the banking industry, in which a deregulation process gives rise to the adoption of aggressive strategies seeking to increase the market shares of deposit accounts; thus, producing a turbulent situation of increasing rivalry. Our results offer a deeper understanding of the firms’ competitive behavior, since we identify different patterns of actions and reactions depending upon the strategic group the firm belongs to

The Foundations of the Economics of Innovation

During the last forty years, economics of innovation has emerged as a distinct area of enquiry at the crossing of the economics of growth, industrial organization, regional economics and the theory of the firm, becoming a well identified area of competence in economics specializing not only in the analysis of the effects of the introduction of new technologies, but also and mainly in understanding technological change as an endogenous process. As the result of the interpretation, elaboration and evolution of different fields of analysis in economie theory, innovation is viewed as a complex, path dependent process characterized by the interdependence and interaction of a variety of heterogeneous agents, able to learn and react creatively with subjective and procedural rationality.

Modeling the Dynamics on the Effectiveness of Marketing Mix Elements

The objective of this study is to conduct a marketing mix modeling to measure the effectiveness of past marketing activities on the product sales using a time-varying effect model (TVEM) approach. The longitudinal intensive data for this study has come from a large ice cream manufacturer in USA. Traditionally, static regression models have been used to measure the effectiveness of marketing mix variables to predict sales. And, these models used to find the time independent effect of the covariate on the dependent variable. On the other hand, a dynamic model such as time-varying effect model takes time into consideration. Researchers can model the changes in the relationship between dependent and independent variables over time using time-varying effect model. This is the first study, where a time-varying effect model approach has been used to measure the effectiveness of marketing mix elements in the ice cream industry. In addition, we have compared the predictive validity of both static and dynamic models using this data set

Modeling the growth of multicellular cancer spheroids in a\ud bioengineered 3D microenvironment and their treatment with an\ud anti-cancer drug

A critical step in the dissemination of ovarian cancer cells is the formation of multicellular spheroids from cells shed from the primary tumor. The objectives of this study were to establish and validate bioengineered three-dimensional (3D) microenvironments for culturing ovarian cancer cells in vitro and simultaneously to develop computational models describing the growth of multicellular spheroids in these bioengineered matrices. Cancer cells derived from human epithelial ovarian carcinoma were embedded within biomimetic hydrogels of varying stiffness and cultured for up to 4 weeks. Immunohistochemistry was used to quantify the dependence of cell proliferation and apoptosis on matrix stiffness, long-term culture and treatment with the anti-cancer drug paclitaxel.\ud \ud Two computational models were developed. In the first model, each spheroid was treated as an incompressible porous medium, whereas in the second model the concept of morphoelasticity was used to incorporate details about internal stresses and strains. Each model was formulated as a free boundary problem. Functional forms for cell proliferation and apoptosis motivated by the experimental work were applied and the predictions of both models compared with the output from the experiments. Both models simulated how the growth of cancer spheroids was influenced by mechanical and biochemical stimuli including matrix stiffness, culture time and treatment with paclitaxel. Our mathematical models provide new perspectives on previous experimental results and have informed the design of new 3D studies of multicellular cancer spheroids

MNCs’ Ownership Advantage, Developing Countries, And New Regionalism

Since the mid-1980s, more regional trade arrangements (RTAs) have arisen between developing and developed countries than before. The evidence shows that MNCs are the major driving force of the new regionalism. The puzzle presented in this paper is why MNCs would like to propel new RTAs between developing and developed countries. The paper believes that the emergence and development of new regionalism is, to a great extent, related to the situation that MNCs wish to enter into developing countries markets. However, it is not easy for MNCs to access to this developing market. MNCs still have to be faced with challenges brought about by both their more and more public-good-like ownership advantages and the increasing cost of producing ownership advantages. If MNCs did not extend their market to the developing countries, they would not spread the cost of producing ownership advantages. However, if they did, they would face the risk that their property of public goods is freely ridden by developing countries due to no effective intellectual property protection (IPP). Therefore, MNCs have to produce much demand for building up new RTAs including developing countries to protect their ownership advantages, especially when they meet the difficulties in multinational negotiation in IPP.Regional Trade Agreements, Multi-National Corporations, East Asia