When more than one component or activity is needed to produce the final product, a firm may use proprietary standards or adopt a common standard to integrate these components. We call these closed and open firms respectively, and develop a model of industry evolution to study the process by...

The United Kingdom began deregulating its electric market years before the U.S. Thus, the UK provides the best example of what can be expected in the deregulated residential retail electric market in the United States. . An extensive review of the evidence found: Questionable price savings:...

We study the price adjustment practices and provide quantitative measurement of the managerial and customer costs of price adjustment using data from a large U.S. industrial manufacturer and its customers. We find that price adjustment costs are a much more complex construct than the existing...

Corporate venturing as a strategy for international business development has become significant in view of the process of globalization resulting into the free trade and business development opportunities for multinational companies. This study is based on empirical investigation through...

This paper empirically examines how changes in the hierarchical structure of a large organization can affect incentives. The empirical analysis exploits a change in the hierarchical structure of the Corporate Division of a private foreign commercial bank in Argentina between 1999 and 2001. Using...

The paper investigates the existence and extent of economies of scale in depository and settlement systems. Evidence from 16 settlement institutions across different regions for the years 1993–2000 indicates the existence of significant economies of scale. The degree of such economies,...

This essay brings fiscal federalism theory into contact with the knowledge perspective to economic organization. The question addressed is: can a central government be justified in the context of fiscal federalism on grounds of economic organization? We point out that if one looks at the...

Using unique retail and wholesale price data for 4,532 products carried by a major Midwestern grocery retailer, we find evidence of significant retail price rigidity during the Thanksgiving through Christmas holiday period relative to the rest of the year. We suggest that this pattern of holiday...

We argue that the optimal configuration of contractual and relational governance mechanisms in an alliance is contingent not only on the amount of asset specificity, but on the nature of the asset involved in the alliance. Physical assets are more suited to contractual controls, while knowledge...