Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This paper studies owners' optimal designs of incentive schemes in a market with managerial firms competing in prices as well as in product research and development (R&D) investment in which owners use a linear combination of gross profits which are defined to be sales revenue minus production costs, sales revenue and R&D costs to evaluate managers' performances. The main contribution of our research is showing that owners not only deflate R&D costs to induce managers to invest more in product R&D but also place different weights on production costs and R&D costs optimally. If product R&D is highly efficient, managerial delegation improves consumers' surplus at cost of firms' profits which is sharply contrasting to the standard conclusion of sales delegation under price competition. Moreover, managerial delegation may achieve Pareto efficiency if product R&D is mildly inefficient. Finally, we find that copyright protection benefits consumers' surplus but could reduce social welfare.

AbstractThis paper investigates competition between open‐source software (OSS) and proprietary software (PS) which possesses an installed base. We find that an increase in PS installed base does not necessarily induce the PS producer to increase price or reduce intrinsic quality. Specifically, if OSS is weakly (moderately) compatible with PS, then an increase in PS installed base induces the PS producer to invest less (more) in intrinsic quality. Regarding the price of PS, if OSS is highly compatible with PS possessing a large installed base, then an increase in installed base induces the PS producer to sell products for a lower price.

Abstract
Progress of hardware technologies and diffusion of computer knowledge enable consumers to crack software if they decide to use software illegally. This paper constructs a software market in which consumers are horizontally differentiated in accordance with social norms of copyright protection to examine the monopolistic producer's software protection behaviors with considering partial compatibility between genuine and cracked software as well as utility loss from using cracked software. Our research presents the following results. First, when network externalities are weak, the monopolist would set a degree of protection which induces existence of software cracking to enhance consumers' willingness to pay for genuine software by improving network benefits. Conversely, if network externalities are sufficiently strong, then software producer would set a degree of protection which stop software cracking completely. This implies that stopping software cracking is not possible without network effects. Second, if utility loss from using cracked software is severe (mild), then strengthening (weakening) network externalities or lowering (raising) compatibility may reduce the number of consumers using cracked software and increase software producer's profits consequently. Finally, we show that the monopolistic producer tends to over-protect software when genuine and cracked software are highly compatible or network externalities are relatively weak which results in inadequate consumers using cracked software for social optimum.

Abstract
This paper analyzes duopolistic firms' vertical integration decisions with considering costs of sales forces and sales delegation under vertical integration. The main contribution of our research is showing that full vertical integration (separation) is more common when competing products are highly (weakly) substitutable. Second, contrary to conventional wisdom, an asymmetric vertical structure may not only be an equilibrium outcome but may also be optimal for consumers' surplus in spite of yielding higher retail prices than those arising under full vertical integration. We also examine the impacts of vertical structures on welfare which have vertical merger policy relevance. First, when products are weakly substitutable, keeping vertical merger costs low may induce full vertical integration to be an equilibrium outcome which optimizes consumers' surplus and social welfare simultaneously. Second, imposing a vertical merger tax increasing with substitution between products on firms may induce firms' vertical integration decisions to be optimal for social welfare.

AbstractCoexistence of open‐source (OS) and proprietary (PP) platforms observed in several industries motivates us to study the equilibrium structure of a two‐sided market when platforms can commit to OS strategically. This paper considers a symmetric market with simultaneous arrival of content providers and hardware users, and discovers that coexistence of OS and PP platforms is the unique equilibrium outcome in which the PP platform prefers to commit to a license fee before hardware price competition. The above result delivers three contributions to the literature of two‐sided markets. First, the OS platform owns more content provision, but gets a smaller share in the hardware device market. Second, OS commitments may induce coexistence of asymmetric platforms as well as network size or price commitments do which were presented in literature. Third, social welfare increases with the numbers of OS platforms; whereas consumers' surplus decreases with them.