A study of firm's behavior in the B2B e-business regime

Thesis (S.M.in Construction Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 131-132).The economic essence of Internet-based B2B business has become an ever-important market concern after the dot-com mania collapsed in early 2001. Many theories have been developed to understand this new business pattern. Nevertheless, lots of puzzles remained unsolved. So far, even whether B2B e-business is a temporary phenomenon; or is it just the extension of the old VAN-EDI system is still under debate. This research tries to answer some of the most fundamental questions of why and how companies adopt e-business application by studying the e-business fast mover's behaviors in the following three domains: the initiative for firm to adopt e-business, the business model and strategy developed to leverage Internet-based network system, and the barriers to implementing e-business practice. (1) The initiative for firm to adopt B2B e-business: the improvement of economic efficiency is used to measure firm's incentive in adopting E-business. Internet-based business tends to reduce production and distribution cost; and increases market transparency. It is argued that benefits from lowered cost are offset by buyer's higher bargaining power. Nevertheless, study shows that market power is critical as advanced computation capacity improves firm's ability to detect buyer's behavior, firms with larger market power have access to better quality data and gain substantial edge over smaller competitors. (2) The business models and strategy developed by firms to leverage e-business: Strategies of existing large firms are to pay their suppliers to link to their system in order to leverage the reduced production cost. They can, however, increase revenue by improving IT-based marketing and service quality. Small firm's strategy is to link their system with large firm's interface to gain competitive advantage over rivals. Start-up's strategy has been to reinforcing network externality to gain market share as markups are thin. The new trend for start-ups will be to differentiate their functionability and create new value-added for production firms. (3) The barriers for firms to adopt e-business: In the industry level, major barriers including fragmented market structure, unstandardized product and production process. In the firm level, the major barriers including organization and culture restructuring, interoperability between ebusiness application and with legacy system, lack of qualified personnel and knowledge, and the interoperability with complementary companies.by I-Tsung Tsai.S.M.in Construction Engineering and Managemen

Financial structure and incentive in public-private partnership contracts

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 98-102).This research explores the functional relationship between financial structure and agent's cost-reducing effort in the realm of public-private-partnership (PPP) contracting. I consider a canonical contracting problem where incomplete financial provisions are used to govern the execution of a project that involves uncertain cost. The existing literature shows that debt (as opposed to external equity) is the better financing alternative in terms of effort induction. I show, on the other hand, that internal equity (as opposed to debt) is the better financing alternative for effort induction when the parties are allowed to achieve ex post Pareto improvement through self-enforcement, renegotiation, and replacement. Under the assumptions that the consumer surplus is always greater than the realized cost, and that the social cost of public funds (the tax rate) is greater than the private agent's cost of capital, I show that: (1) Ex ante capital structure and control rights regime jointly determine the equilibrium game form of the contract (the agent's effort level and the uncertainty of cost don't matter). (2) The agent's optimal cost-reducing effort is determined by a hold-up factor and a self-enforcement factor. The former is a strict disincentive to the agent's effort, whereas the latter can be an incentive or a disincentive to the agent's effort depending on the capital structure of the contract.(Cont.) (3) For any given initial capital investment, the agent's optimal cost-reducing effort decreases with the magnitude of debt. (4) For any given initial capital investment, the agent's optimal cost-reducing effort increases with the magnitude of a performance bond when the contract is one with no positive self-enforcement effect. The theoretical result is consistent with the conventional wisdom that internal equity and performance bond generally enhance the agent's devotion to a PPP contractual relationship. This research also contributes a (subjective) PPP contract valuation method that takes into account the underlying agency problem.by I-Tsung Tsai.Ph.D