Most prior event studies find that the announcement of a new alliance is accompanied by a positive stock market response for the partners. This result has usually been interpreted as evidence for the prevailing view that alliances are effective vehicles for partners to acquire or access new...

This study examines how firms choose organizational form for their R&D alliances. Encouraging cooperation in these alliances is often challenging, given the difficulties in knowledge sharing between partners and protecting the property rights over partner knowledge. Interestingly,...

Transaction cost economics argues that aligning transactions with governance structures leads to more efficient outcomes. While empirical evidence demonstrates that firms choose governance consistent with transaction cost predictions, the performance implications of governance choices are less...

We consider extensive-form games in which the information structure is not known and ask how much of that structure can be inferred from the distribution on action profiles generated by player strategies. One game is said to observationally imitate another when the distribution on action...

This paper presents the first formal examination of role of causal ambiguity as a barrier to imitation. Here, the aspiring imitator faces a knowledge (i.e., "capabilities-based") barrier to imitation that is both causal and ambiguous in a precise sense of both words. Imitation conforms to a...

Two finite extensive-form games are empirically equivalent when the empirical distribution on action profiles generated by every behavior strategy in one can also be generated by an appropriately chosen behavior strategy in the other. This paper provides a characterization of empirical...

How does competition among economic actors determine the value that each is able to appropriate? We provide a formal, general framework within which this question can be posed and answered, and then provide several results. Chief among them is a condition that is both required for, and...

The broker profits by intermediating between two (or more) parties. Using a biform game, we examine whether such a position can confer a competitive advantage, as well as whether any such advantage could persist if actors formed relations strategically. Our analysis reveals that, if one...

This paper presents a formal theory of subjective rationality and demonstrates its application to corporate strategy. An agent is said to be subjectively rational when decisions are consistent with the available facts and, where these are lacking, with the agent's own subjective assessments. A...