As assistant director of the Electrical Services Unit of Duke's Facilities Management Department, Aurel Selezeanu knows that rapid response is critical to avert costly and possibly life threatening consequences of a major electrical problem. A variety of built-in connectivity options saves on cabling and installation, and allows integration with legacy...
A supply stream is a continuous version of a supply chain. It is like a series inventory system, but stock can be held at any point along a continuum, not just at discrete stages. We develop two such models, one with Poisson demand and the other with Brownian-motion demand. For...
This paper investigates the hypothesis that an RBC Real Business Cycles model driven by permanent and transitory productivity shocks accounts well for business cycles in emerging markets. Existing studies that make this claim use short time series to estimate the parameters of the underlying driving forces. This practice is problematic,...
Most supermarket firms choose to position themselves by offering either "Every Day Low Prices" EDLP across several items or offering temporary price reductions promotions on a limited range of items. While this choice has been addressed from a theoretical perspective in both the marketing and economic literature, relatively little is...
Despite widespread enthusiasm for Foreign Direct Investment FDI as an engine for development, there are significant differences among countries' national policy frameworks governing the entry and operations of foreign-owned companies. What explains the variation in governments' choices of national policies regulating foreign investments? Building upon a combination of Bueno de...
This paper uses simultaneous equation modeling to examine the inter-relationships between R&D, exporting and growth of newly listed firms in the UK, Germany, Italy and France. Using panel data for 1110 IPOs during the period 1985-2004, it shows that R&D and export intensities are positively associated with growth in sales....
In this paper, one uses a mechanism design approach to study these questions. The main advantage to this approach is its generality: in view of the Revelation Principle, any equilibrium of any conceivable game can be induced by the truth-telling equilibrium of an incentive-compatible revelation mechanism. Thus, ones approach allows...
This paper considers the problem of outlet pricing and location in the context of unobserved spatial demand. The analysis presented in this paper constitutes a scenario wherein capacity-constrained firms set prices conditioned on their location, demand and costs. This analysis enables one to develop maps of latent demand patterns across...
This paper shows how strategic alliances and their impact on future competitive incentives can motivate inter firm equity sales. In the model, an alliance between an entrepreneurial firm and an established firm improves efficiency for both. However, the requisite knowledge transfer heightens the established firm's incentive to enter one of...
In 2004, over $2 trillion were spent worldwide on over 30,000 Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) transactions. While the negotiation of confidentiality agreements represents only a small portion of this activity, the quantity of time and money it expends is considerable. A comparison to similar agreements in other areas (namely Reporter-Source...
This paper relies on a Cobb-Douglas production function to assess the relationship between the development of innovation capabilities by firms and their labor productivity. Intra-organizational capabilities relate to firms' corporate culture and work organization, generation of innovative ideas and selection of projects, and innovation funding sources. Inter-organizational capabilities relate to...
Traditional inventory and supply-chain models typically assume that materials only flow in a forward direction. In reality, however, supply chains often include reverse flows as well. For example, customers may change their minds about purchases and return the items to the store where they bought them (or perhaps a different...
This paper integrates content-based predictions of the resource-based view of strategy with process-based predictions of dynamic capabilities theory to study the success of firms' internal development activities. This paper argues that firms that select internal development projects in theoretically appropriate conditions - consistent with the prescriptions of resource based and...
Strategic alliances are long-term contracts between legally distinct organizations that provide for sharing the costs and benefits of a mutually beneficial activity. In this paper, a model has been developed and tested that helps explain why firms sometimes prefer alliances over internally organized projects. It introduce managerial effort into a...
This paper develops a model of trading in stocks and options based on differences of opinion of public information among risk-averse investors. It is shown that when investors disagree about the precision of a signal, options are not redundant assets. Even when the disagreement about the precision is arbitrarily small...
This paper studies firms' choices of internal versus external sources of new capabilities. This paper first compares transaction cost, knowledge-based, and institutional arguments, which all emphasize the attributes of capabilities, including contractual hazards, capability gaps, and legitimacy. It next contrasts these arguments with propositions that emphasize constraints on external availability...
This paper argues that corporate integration processes influence long term corporate performance, particularly as a firm comprising interdependent business units becomes geographically diffuse. This paper argues that acquisitions increase system and goal diversity across business units. Incompatible differences in financial and management reporting structures are examples of system diversity, while...
Did you ever notice how some people seem to find the time to get everything done while others are constantly scrambling to complete projects at the last minute? Everyone is allotted the same amount of time each day - 24 hours - and how we manage those twenty-four hours can...
This paper conducts a detailed analysis of 125 strategic alliance contracts, all of which concern early-stage research at small, biotechnology R&D companies. Staged investment is ubiquitous, but solutions to agency problems vary. The cycle of equity participation in alliances resembles what is observed in venture capital contracts: they involve convertible...
Globalization presents mixed benefits, for different groups and different specific activities. Given its importance it is tempting to concentrate on the 'anti-globalization' research agenda, namely the many ways in which it may cause harm. However, from a policy point of view it is important to understand what is good as...
