The forgotten competitive arena: Strategy in natural resource industries

Despite their importance in the global economy, the complex competitive dynamics of natural resource industries and their implications for business performance remain largely understudied in strategic management. This article identifies major traits that are highly relevant in natural resource industries, including the standardized nature of their products, their emphasis on process-based innovations, the presence of dual physical and financial derivative markets, and the importance of nonmarket forces that affect the creation and appropriation of rents from natural resources. We propose a general framework that guides our observations, and we discuss research opportunities for the study of firm strategy in natural resource industries.Fil: Casarin, Ariel. Universidad Adolfo Ibañez; ChileFil: Lazzarini, Sergio G.. Institute of Education and Research; BrasilFil: Vassolo, Roberto Santiago. Universidad Austral. Instituto de Altos Estudios; Argentina. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; Chile. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Post-privatisation developments in network industries : the case of downstream gas markets in Argentina

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Gas market integration

Gas market integration is the focus of Strategic Guideline 3 of the current Triennium and work in this area is being coordinated by a special Task Force. Past issues of the IGU Magazine have included papers on the energy relationship between Russia and Germany, and cooperation between Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil. In this issue we have two more case studies and the first looks at South America’s Southern Cone

Price freezes, durables, and residential electricity demand. Evidence from Greater Buenos Aires

This paper examines the determinants of residential electricity demand in Greater Buenos Aires between 1997 and 2006. During the second half of this period, residential electricity tariffs remained nominally fixed, while rising incomes increased sales of durables. Our study is one of few that use monthly data to examine the contribution of prices to residential consumption growth, and it appears to be the first time-series study to explicitly consider the impact of air conditioners on residential demand. Results indicate that durables have an impact on residential electricity demand. Simulations illustrate how prices, income, and durables impact future demand.Residential electricity Durable goods Error correction models Short- and long-run elasticities

Market power absent merger review: Brewing in Perú

We examine the extent of market power in the brewing market of Perú, where the absence of preventive merger review eased consolidation into a single industrial brewer. We use a standard oligopoly model and exploit both seasonality in demand and atypically large and frequent variations in the structure and level of excise taxes to identify variations in market power. Our results provide evidence of the inefectiveness of competition policy as uncontested mergers resulted in a degree of market power that decreased only with the entry of new frms.Fil: Casarin, Ariel. Universidad Adolfo Ibañez; ChileFil: Cornejo Tonnelier, Magdalena. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. Escuela de Gobierno; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Delfino, María Eugenia. Universidad de Los Andes; Chil

Discussion Paper No. 2001/74 The Reform of the Utilities Sector in Argentina

The Privatization of the national public utilities that took place almost a decade ago in Argentina seem to be explained by the persisting deficits of the enterprises, a general dissatisfaction with their performance and the difficulties government faced in their control. During the period of private management, companies restructured their revenues by both regrouping consumers and raising their two-part tariffs unevenly, increased the number of customers and achieved perceptible quality improvements. For assessing the impact of the reforms in the telecomunications, electricity, natural gas and sanitation services upon residential consumers ’ economic well being, welfare changes of the initial consumers and the surplus of the newcomers are estimated using household level data from the Gran Buenos Aires. The results obtained suggest that the direction as well as the intensity of welfare changes differ across income groups and services and that magnitudes vary according to the rigidity of demands; the benefits for the newcomers also differ across services but they seem to have had little significance in all cases, except in water and sewage

Time Variation in Mutual Fund Style Exposures

Despite the wide acceptance of return-based style analysis, the method has several limitations. One important drawback is the assumption that style exposures are time-invariant. We apply results on break tests developed in Bai and Perron (1998, 2003) to test for style breaks. We find strong evidence against the hypothesis of constant time exposures in daily return data for European equity funds. All funds exhibit at least one break, and 60% exhibit more than one break. We show that the main reason for style breaks is the mutual funds' reliance on conditional investment strategies based on public information and volatility estimates. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.