Industry sunk costs and entry dynamics

We explore an investment game where industry sunk costs provide anincentive for a firm to be a follower into the market as opposedto a leader. For some parameter values, every firm could have adominant strategy to wait, even though immediate entry is sociallyoptimal - this is a like prisoners' dilemma. In equilibrium, afirm is more likely to have a dominant strategy to wait with anincrease in the number of potential entrants. Finally, theequilibrium can display an entry cascade.coordination game

Who Decides about Change and Restructuring in Organizations?

We model the determinants of who makes decisions, the principal or an agent, when there are multiple decisions. Decision making takes effort and time; and, once implemented, the expected loss from a particular decision (or project) increases with the length of time since the last decision was made. The model shows delegation is more likely as: (i) controllable uncertainty increases; (ii) uncontrollable uncertainty decreases; (iii) the number of plants in the firm decreases; (iv) the complexity of the decision increases; and (v) the importance of the decision increases. The theoretical predictions are consistent with our novel empirical results on the delegation of major organizational change decisions using workplace data. Our unique data allows us to identify who made a decision to implement a significant change, as well as key internal and external factors highlighted as potentially important in our theory. Empirically, delegation is more likely in organizations that: face a competitive product market; export; have predictable product demand; have a larger workplace; and that have fewer other workplaces in the same organization producing a similar output. We find business strategy is not related to the allocation of decision making authority; delegation, however, is associated with the use of human resource techniques such as the provision of bonuses to employees.decision making authority, decentralization, delegation, competition, exports, uncertainty, principal and agent

Coordination games and the option to wait

We take a coordination game and add the option to wait each player can opt to take an action in the standard game or they can decide to wait. If one player has taken a standard option, the waiting player can adopt their best response to this action. Interpreting the payoff in the final period (when there is no waiting possible) as a outside option or default, we show that a party's equilibrium payoff can be decreasing in their default. Further, a player''s role of leader or follower alternates as the number of waiting periods changes.

Ownership, access and sequential investment

We extend the property-rights framework to allow for: a separation of the ownership rights of access and veto; and sequential investment. Parties investing first (ex ante) do so before contracting is possible. Parties that invest second (ex post) can contract on (at least some) of their investment costs. Along with this cost-sharing effect, the incentive to invest is affected by a strategic effect generated by sequential investment. Together these effects can overturn some of the predictions of the property-rights literature. For example, the most inclusive ownership structure might not be optimal, even if all investments are complementary.property rights; access; veto; firm organization; sequential investment; holdup

Innovation in a generalized timing game

We examine innovation as a timing game with complete information and observable actions in which firms decide when to enter a market. We characterize all pure strategy subgame perfect equilibria for the two-player symmetric game. In particular, we describe all subgame perfect equilibria when both the leader’s and the followers’ payoff functions are multi-peaked, non-monotonic and discontinuous. We find that there are potentially multiple equilibria, which could involve: joint adoption by both firms, with and without rent equalization; and, alternatively, single-firm adoption with a second-mover advantage. Economic applications are discussed including process and product innovation and the timing of the sale of an asset

Who decides about change and restructuring in organizations?

The authors of this paper model the determinants of who makes decisions, the principal or an agent, when there are multiple decisions. Decision making takes effort and time; and, once implemented, the expected loss from a particular decision (or project) increases with the length of time since the last decision was made. The model shows delegation is more likely as: (i) controllable uncertainty increases; (ii) uncontrollable uncertainty decreases; (iii) the number of plants in the firm decreases; (iv) the complexity of the decision increases; and (v) the importance of the decision increases. The theoretical predictions are consistent with the authors\u27 novel empirical results on the delegation of major organizational change decisions using workplace data. Their unique data allows them to identify who made a decision to implement a significant change, as well as key internal and external factors highlighted as potentially important in their theory. Empirically, delegation is more likely in organizations that: face a competitive product market; export; have predictable product demand; have a larger workplace; and that have fewer other workplaces in the same organization producing a similar output. The authors find business strategy is not related to the allocation of decision making authority; delegation, however, is associated with the use of human resource techniques such as the provision of bonuses to employees

Ownership, access and sequential investment

We extend the property-rights framework to allow for: a separation of the ownership rights of access and veto; and sequential investment. Parties investing first (ex ante) do so before contracting is possible. Parties that invest second (ex post) can contract on (at least some) of their investment costs. Along with this cost-sharing effect, the incentive to invest is affected by a strategic effect generated by sequential investment. Together these effects can overturn some of the predictions of the property-rights literature. For example, the most inclusive ownership structure might not be optimal, even if all investments are complementary

A Swarm of Innovators: Information, Leadership and Innovation

We study the interplay between innovation, communication in an organization and leadership. Although a firm requires both strong leadership and sufficient communication in order to innovate, we posit that frequent communication – particularly amongst strong leaders and in larger firms – can lead to disagreement and innovation breakdown. Using a survey of 3000 French firms we find that, on their own, firm size, regular communication and result-oriented leadership are all positively associated with innovation. However, there is a negative relationship between successful innovation and: (i) frequent communication in larger firms; and (ii) frequent communication with result-oriented leadership

On Broadway and strip malls: how to make a winning team

A successful organization – or Broadway production – needs the right team. A potential issue is that an existing synergy between complementary agents (or assets) can reduce the marginal return of effort, creating a disincentive to invest. While agents always prefer to be in a team of complementary workers, a principal may wish to use non-complementary agents; this can occur if the loss from lower investment is sufficiently large. A principal, however, may opt for non-complementary agents when complementary workers would produce greater surplus. These insights have implications for job rotation, the central­ization versus decentralization of decision making and mergers