Differentiation Strategy and Market Deregulation: Local Telecommunication Entry in the Late 1990s

The authors examine the role of differentiation strategies for entry behavior in markets for local telecommunication services in the late 1990s. Whereas the prior literature has used models of interaction among homogenous firms, this research is motivated by the claim of entrants that they differ substantially in their product offerings and business strategies. Exploiting a new, detailed data set of Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) entry into over 700 U.S. cities, the authors take advantage of recent developments in the analysis of entry and competition among differentiated firms. They test and reject the null hypothesis of homogeneous competitors. They also find strong evidence that CLECs account for both potential market demand and the business strategies of competitors when making their entry decisions. This suggests that firms' incentives to differentiate their services should shape the policy debate for competitive local telecommunications.

The Evolution of the U.S. Catholic Hospital: From Sisters in Habits to Men in Suits

In today’s ever-changing healthcare landscape, Catholic U.S. hospitals have undergone a change in their mission and thus their identity. This paper argues that Catholic hospitals need to rediscover the origins of their ministry. This can be accomplished by refocusing their efforts away from mergers with secular entities that deal strictly with life and death issues to mergers that more fully engage the care for the poor and vulnerable. To provide the context for this paper, Part One will present an overview of Jesus’ ministry, which is the foundation for Catholic health care. Part Two will address the history of the Catholic hospital in the United States in an attempt to show a rich past for attending to the needs of the underserved. Part Three will be a case study of St. Cloud Hospital in Minnesota which will be used to examine this history on a condensed scale. An interlude will highlight present day hospital mergers combined with the use of the principle of caritas and the theory of cooperation. Lastly, Part Four will provide a practical application piece in order to address what Catholic hospitals can do in order to better live out their mission derived from Christ, starting with a new kind of merger

PAPERLESS DEBATE: THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE

This paper details a complete program evaluation of a high school debate team’s transition from debating with paper to paperless debate. The study examines if switching to debate without paper has improved the success of the debate team by focusing on the team’s winning percentage, the cost of debate travel and participation, as well as the debaters’ views of the ease of debating before and after the paperless transition. The paper concludes that the transition was indeed a success, because it increased the team’s win percentage (though not by a statistically significant margin), saved the team thousands of dollars, and made debate easier for students

Analysis of international expansion as a Tier 2 supplier to the auto industry

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1997, and Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (p. 130).by David Greenstein, Jennifer Hsu.M.S

Differentiation Strategy and Market Deregulation: Local Telecommunication Entry in the Late 1990s

The authors examine the role of differentiation strategies for entry behavior in markets for local telecommunication services in the late 1990s. Whereas the prior literature has used models of interaction among homogenous firms, this research is motivated by the claim of entrants that they differ substantially in their product offerings and business strategies. Exploiting a new, detailed data set of Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) entry into over 700 U.S. cities, the authors take advantage of recent developments in the analysis of entry and competition among differentiated firms. They test and reject the null hypothesis of homogeneous competitors. They also find strong evidence that CLECs account for both potential market demand and the business strategies of competitors when making their entry decisions. This suggests that firms' incentives to differentiate their services should shape the policy debate for competitive local telecommunications