Standard media economics models imply that increased platform competition decreases ad levels and that mergers reduce per-viewer ad prices. The empirical evidence, however, is mixed. We attribute the theoretical predictions to the combined assumptions that there is no advertising congestion and that viewers single-home. Allowing for crowding in viewer attention spans for ads may reverse standard results, as does allowing viewers to multi-home.
We propose that the effect of market concentration on firm survival is different according to whether an industry is static (low entry and exit) or dynamic. In our empirical analysis we find support for this hypothesis. Industry concentration rates reduce the survival of new plants but only in markets marked by low entry and exit rates. Specifically, a 10 percent increase in the 5-firm concentration ratio in a dynamic market raises the survival rate of new ventures by approximately 2 percent. Our results have implications for the antitrust/competition law indicating less need for regulation of dominant firms in dynamic industries characterized by high entry and exit rates. We use a unique dataset comprising the population of new ventures that enter the UK market in 1998.
We study a policy game between exporting and importing countries in vertically linked industries. In a successive international Cournot oligopoly, we analyse incentives for using tax instruments strategically to shift rents vertically, between exporting and importing countries, and horizontally, between exporting countries. We show that the equilibrium outcome depends crucially on the relative degree of competitiveness in the upstream and downstream parts of the industry. With respect to national welfare, a more competitive upstream industry may benefit an exporting (upstream) country and harm an importing (downstream) country. On the other hand, a more competitive downstream industry may harm exporting countries.
This paper explores the impact of R&D subsidies on the concentration of R&D in an economy. First, governments are often criticized of subsidizing predominantly larger firms and thus contribute to persistence of leadership in markets and higher barriers to entry, and, hence, reduced competition eventually. Second, theoretical literature, such as endogenous growth literature, has also shown that governmental intervention in the market for R&D affects the distribution of R&D which finally affects product market concentration. We test the relationship between R&D subsidies and R&D concentration employing treatment effects models on data of German and Finnish manufacturing firms. The data and estimations allow calculating concentration indices for the population of firms for both the actual situation where some selected companies receive R&D subsidies and the counterfactual situation describing the absence of subsidies. We find that R&D subsidies do not lead to higher concentration of R&D. On the contrary, we even find that R&D concentration is significantly reduced because of subsidies. This result may be attributed to the fact that technology policy maintains special funding schemes for small and medium-sized companies. The fact that the larger companies benefit from a higher likelihood of a subsidy receipt is offset by the phenomenon that smaller firms may be completely deterred from any R&D activity if they would not receive governmental support.
Die vorliegende Studie wurde im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Technologie erstellt und im Oktober 2006 abgeschlossen. Gegenstand der Studie ist die Untersuchung des Globalisierungs- und Anpassungsprozesses sowie seiner Ergebnisse in Deutschland, Frankreich, Großbritannien, Italien, Japan, Spanien und den USA. Insbesondere die Konsequenzen für Wachstum und Beschäftigung waren herauszuarbeiten. Mögliche Ursachen dieser Entwicklung wie Konzentrations-, Outsourcing- und Offshoringprozesse waren zu analysieren. Die Branchenauswahl orientierte sich an Wertschöpfungs- und Beschäftigungsanteilen in Deutschland. Neben dem Verarbeitenden Gewerbe insgesamt wurden die Branchen Chemische Industrie, Maschinenbau, Elektrotechnik und Fahrzeugbau ausgewählt. Neben der Analyse internationaler Daten wurde eine Befragung von 3945 deutschen Unternehmen des Verarbeitenden Gewerbes über Konsolidierungsstrategien durchgeführt, die 1205 auswertbare Antwortbogen erbrachte. Vertiefend wird der Einfluss von Industrieunternehmen, die als Systemführer tätig sind, auf vor- und nachgelagerte Bereiche und ihre Rolle im Konsolidierungsprozess betrachtet. Es war zudem zu prüfen, wie sich die Verlagerung von Firmenzentralen auswirkt, welche Rolle institutionelle Anleger in diesem Prozess spielen, und welche Bedeutung in diesem Zusammenhang die Eigentümerstrukturen haben.
