Browsing by Subject "Competition"

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Competition across space : from metacommunities to social body-snatching trematodes
(2019-09-13) Resetarits, Emlyn Jane; Jha, Shalene; Bolnick, Daniel; Farrior, Caroline E; Leibold, Mathew A; Mueller, Ulrich G
This dissertation is composed of two sections. The first section focuses on experimentally testing the keystone community concept using protist microcosms. I found that habitat loss can cause structural changes in how communities are assembled, even when diversity measures appear unchanged. This work has important implications for reserves management and conservation efforts. The second section is composed of three chapters on social body-snatching trematodes residing in the California horn snail. First, I investigated the tradeoff between reproduction and defense to determine if social trematode colonies increase their soldier investment in areas of high intraguild predation (IGP). I found that colonies appear to respond to IGP as predicted and do so at the site-level. Second, I conducted a reciprocal transplant experiment to determine if differences in soldier investment are due to phenotypic plasticity. Unfortunately, our results were inconclusive but provided us with valuable information on natural variation in these colonies within an estuary. Finally, I investigated how individual soldier attributes and colony composition might explain a linear competitive dominance hierarchy between six species of social body-snatching trematodes. I found that the dominance hierarchy was not explained by attributes of the colony that we measured. All totaled, there are over 20,000 trematode species, in league with the diversity of social insect groups, like ants. The trematode system is rich with opportunity to study the evolution and ecology of sociality outside of insects.
Competition and collaboration issues in technology development and deployment
(2007) Erzurumlu, Sadik Sinan; Gilbert, Stephen M.
In today's marketplace firms have to become specialized in specific technological aspects in product development due to intensifying competition. Further, the increasing complexity of offerings make firms become more dependent on other value-chain contributors such as providers of complementary and component technologies. Therefore, in addition to the inherent market of appeal of product, a successful introduction may depend on the firm's interactions with suppliers and even "competitors". These interactions with other firms in the marketplace present a unique set of challenges to firms. In this dissertation, we explore how a firm's approach to interacting with supply chain partners and/or competitors may depend upon how its product provides value to customers. In the first essay, we look into how a firm should design the interdependence between a durable good and a consumable such as a printer and a cartridge and utilize the benefits of an industry of generic consumable suppliers. In the second essay, we analyze the different approaches that firms adopt while commercializing their technologies to competitors in a networked environment (such as telecommunications). We identify the impact of the competitor's development capabilities on the trade-off between the increased competition and network benefits. In the third essay, we explore situations in which firms collaborate to develop a component innovation that they later market individually; they codevelop and jointly market; and they choose to individually develop and market. We consider how competitive strategies between development partners should consider the influence of supplier formation on the investment incentives of an OEM. In summary, this dissertation examines how the management of interactions with supply chain partners and competitors can play an important role in technology development and deployment. Our results highlight key trade-offs and provide insights for managers who are involved in developing and deploying new products.
Essays on competition in the freight railroad industry
(2019-05-09) Pus, Daria; Miravete, E. J. (Eugenio J.); Ackerberg, Daniel; Town, Robert; Williams, Jonathan
This dissertation addresses open issues in complementary goods mergers and tacit collusion as it relates to the freight railroad industry. It provides a broad overview of the freight railroad industry, its leading players, the rate-setting process, and describes dynamics in the markets of different commodities shipped. The standard literature on tacit collusion concentrates on how it influences the pricing of substitutes. However, collusion is also likely to influence the pricing of complements. For example, in static equilibrium, if two local monopolists were selling complementary products, they would charge a higher price than if both products were offered by a single multiproduct monopolist, reducing both the industry profits and the consumer surplus. However, if firms were able to coordinate, they could reach a Pareto improvement by lowering prices to the monopolist level. Therefore, in the markets where firms sell both substitutes and perfect complements, the welfare effect of coordination is ambiguous. The dissertation analyses this question in the context of the US freight railroad industry. Using rail waybill data, I find evidence that prices are higher on average in markets where the route is served jointly by two or more railroads, and thus inefficiency from the pricing of complements is present. I then estimate a structural model where firms set prices a la Bertrand and conduct merger simulations for the firms that sell complements in many markets. I find that mergers are welfare enhancing. They benefit the consumer and merging parties but hurt outsiders. In the last chapter, I estimate a structural model of competition with conduct parameter defined as a function of multimarket contact. I compare industry welfare to the counterfactual of breaking tacit collusion and full monopoly and find that the former is welfare enhancing. The latter reduces the welfare but the effect if smaller in magnitude.
Essays on investment in the hotel industry
(2019-05-06) Kuo, Fang-Chang; Miravete, E. J. (Eugenio J.); Ackerberg, Daniel; Town, Robert; Duan, Jason
This dissertation studies issues on investments in the hotel industry. The first two chapters empirically investigate the relationship between investment and competition. My study shows that competition negatively impacts firms' investment decisions. The third chapter focuses on the reputation effects on hotel investment, and shows that better online ratings are associated with lower investment expenditures. In the first chapter, I use data from Taiwanese hotel industry to investigate the relationship between competition and investment in a reduced-form analysis. Competition intensity is measured by the number of hotels in a market. Regression analysis indicates that investment is negatively correlated with the number of hotels. I then use a structural model of demand to recover unobserved demand shocks and control for future demand shocks in regression analysis. The results also show a negative relationship. The second chapter develops a dynamic model of investment and entry and conducts four counterfactual experiments to analyze competition policies and long-run equilibrium investments. Hotels make static pricing, and dynamic investment decisions in every period. Potential entrant could enter a market by comparing entry cost and value function of an incumbent. My counterfactual experiments show that competition effects from entry reduce the return from investment and weaken investment incentives. Reducing entry cost by 20% actually leads to 13% decrease in average investments, and thus average unobserved qualities decrease. Consumers still benefit from increased product variety and lower prices. The net changes in consumer surplus are positive. However, ignoring the negative competition effects on investments will overestimate consumer surplus under such a policy. In my third chapter, I investigate the impact of reputation on investment in Taiwanese hotel industry. Specifically, how do reputation affect endogenous product characteristics, quality, through investment decisions? The empirical strategy consists of a reduced-form analysis. I supplement the hotel financial performance data with with a panel of consumer ratings from major review platforms: TripAdvisor, Agoda, Expedia, and Bookings.com. The regression results indicate that hotels with better online ratings tend to invest less or less frequently. Controlling for past investments also show similar results
Essays on model selection
(2022-04-27) Schulman, Eric H.; Kline, Brendan Andrew; Han, Sukjin; Xu, Haiqing; Abrevaya, Jason; Donald, Stephen G.
This dissertation discusses model selection and evaluation in economics from a variety of perspectives, and techniques. Chapter 1 approaches model selection from the perspective of non-nested hypothesis testing. I explore how bootstrapping can improve inference for the Vuong test. I establish that the suggested bootstrap has uniformly valid asymptotic size control in the case of both non-overlapping and overlapping models. I also show that the new test achieves an asymptotic refinement for non-overlapping models. The suggested test is easy to implement and similar to bootstrapping the standard Vuong test. When compared with other existing Vuong tests in Monte Carlo simulations, the suggested test controls size equally well and achieves higher power. Finally, I illustrate selecting models with the bootstrap in four stylized empirical examples from various fields of economics. The new test selects a model at lower significance levels in all examples. Chapter 2 is joint work with Sukjin Han, Kristen Grauman and Santosh Ramakrishnan. This chapter focuses on model evaluation in the presence of high-dimensional unstructured data on product attributes (e.g., design, text). Quantifying these attributes is important for economic analyses. We consider one of the simplest design products, fonts, and quantify their shapes by constructing embeddings using a modern convolutional neural network. The embedding maps a font's shape onto a low-dimensional vector. Importantly, we verify the resulting embedding is economically meaningful by showing that the mutual information is large between the embedding and descriptions assigned to each font by font designers and consumers. This paper then conducts two economic analyses of the font market. We first illustrate the usefulness of the embeddings by a simple trend analysis of font style. We then study the causal effect of a merger on the merging firm's creative product differentiation decisions by using the embeddings in a synthetic control method. We find that the merger causes the merging firm temporarily to increase the visual variety of font design. Chapter 3 is joint work with David Sibley. This chapter considers model selection in the context of Nash-in-Nash bargaining model with one hospital, two competing insurers, and linear demand. We find an externality related to the entry of a second insurer. This externality is directly proportional to the hospital's profit in the event of a disagreement with an insurer. We explore how different assumptions about the hospital's disagreement profit, such as passive beliefs, influence the extent of this externality thereby increasing prices and premiums. Additionally, we explore how the hospital can benefit from the externality associated with the entry of another insurer by bargaining sequentially -- one insurer before the other. We show the hospital has higher profit in a sequential negotiation. Sequential bargaining creates a second mover advantage among the insurers compared to simultaneous bargaining. Lastly, we derive empirical implications of beliefs and timing in our model, to help evaluate whether insurer competition may increase prices in practice.
Essays on non-price strategies in firm competition
(2006-05) Lee, Seokhoon, 1971-; Stinchcombe, Maxwell
This dissertation studies on firm competition in two industries, airline industry and banking industry. Firms compete not only in price but also in non-price strategies. The first essay examines cost structure decision of airlines as a non-price strategy theoretically, and the second essay examines branching decision of banks as a non-price strategy using Korean banking data empirically. The first essay examines the equilibria of a duopoly game modelling airline competition. Two ex ante identical firms choose a cost structure in the fist stage and then compete in price. I assume that airlines with undifferentiated service (i.e., only having one “economy class”) have lower costs, while airlines differentiating their products have higher costs. There are three types of subgame perfect equilibria (SPE): symmetric higher-cost SPE, symmetric lower-cost SPE, and asymmetric SPE. Without cost advantages, entry of an airline with undifferentiated service is not profitable. Examples illustrate the market conditions that induce the asymmetric equilibrium in which the two ex ante identical airlines choose different cost structures. I show that in asymmetric equilibria, an airline running a low-cost airplane may have higher profits than an airline running a normal airplane, except when tourists are not price sensitive and the social benefit of business class service is high. Although both the subgame perfect equilibria and the equilibria maximizing social welfare are affected critically by the cost advantage and social benefit of business class service, they differ for some parameter ranges. Not only symmetric equilibria but also asymmetric equilibria may maximize social welfare for some parameters. The second essay examines the effect of competition between Korean commercial banks with widely divergent branch network structures in the period between 1994 to 1996. It develops a discrete choice model in a competitive framework and allows for banks to choose their deposit interest rate and branch network as well as for depositors to choose a bank for deposit services. The estimates show that branching competition did not change a bank’s market power. They also show that regional banks with locally intensive branch networks had much higher markups than did the nationwide banks. The results indicate that overlap between different banks’ branch networks increases competition between them and that nationwide banks have a higher cross price elasticity of demand than regional banks. The results show that banks located their branches more in markets with higher branch elasticities
Essays on strategic interactions between firms in the presence of competition
(2020-08) Hotkar, Parshuram Sambhajirao; Gilbert, Stephen M.; Gupta, Diwakar; Balakrishnan, Anantaram; Rao, Raghunath
Strategic interactions between competing players of supply chains are studied in this dissertation in the context of supplier encroachment and forced information sharing. Although there has been extensive study of supplier encroachment, our study is the first to explicitly consider the possibility that a reseller sells more than one product, which occurs often in practice. In the first two essays, we develop a model of two suppliers who sell partially substitutable products through a single reseller, and allow for one of them to introduce its own direct channel. We find that the presence of the second supplier alters many of the existing results about the interactions between a reseller and an encroaching supplier. In the third essay, in the context of drug shortages, we investigate the role of information sharing between manufacturers about their supply disruptions. The quality problems and disruptions in capacity are the most prevalent cause of shortages of sterile injectable drugs. The capacity decision in the manufacturing facility has a significant impact on the availability of the drug, and thereby on the drug shortages. Therefore, we model the capacity decisions of manufacturing firms in terms of reliable and unreliable capacities, and study their impact on the supply of drugs. We quantify the benefit of the mitigation strategies such as forced information sharing and tax subsidies.
Essays on the industrial organization and regulation of recreational cannabis markets
(2021-05-06) Larsen, Ivan; Ackerberg, Daniel A.; Balat, Jorge; Miravete, Eugenio; Hollenbeck, Brett
This dissertation addresses open questions in economics surrounding the industrial organization and regulation of recreational cannabis markets. The first chapter empirically studies how the impact of location restrictions on strategic cannabis retailers affects market outcomes and resident welfare. The second chapter provides a different method to measure the externality that cannabis retailers impose on heterogeneous residents and how it varies with different land-use policies. The third chapter investigates the presence of consumer demand response and inertia in vertical relationships among buyers and sellers in a new market. The first chapter studies the welfare impact of land-use regulations, such as location restrictions for businesses, which generally involves a trade-off between market growth and the harm on affected parties and is ultimately an empirical question. I study how location restrictions near sensitive-use areas affect recreational cannabis retailers' decisions in Washington State and their effects on residents, consumers, and taxation. Using property sales data, I first show reduced-form evidence that cannabis retailers act as a disamenity when close to homes and to their assigned schools. Then, I develop a structural model of consumer demand and firm entry and location and estimate it on a comprehensive dataset of retail sales and inventory transfers. The model incorporates the various market regulations as constraints on the firms’ strategic decisions. I use the estimated model to conduct counterfactual land-use policies. Relaxing buffers around sensitive-use areas, like schools, from 1000 ft down to 100 ft benefits consumers and harms residents but, on net, results in welfare and tax revenue improvements. The second chapter is a more in-depth study of the other side of the coin, resident disamenities of cannabis retailers, where I develop a discrete-choice, static model of housing demand and supply, and estimate it with property sales and mortgage applicants data from King County, Washington. By allowing for heterogeneous households, I can incorporate the role of cannabis retailers as a potential (dis)amenity to households. I then compute the welfare impact of various alternative location configurations for retailers that arise from the counterfactual land use policies studied in \cite{Larsen2020a}. I find that resident surplus decreases on average but that the valuation for cannabis retailers is heterogeneous, with residents with children being the main demographic negatively affected. Lastly, the third chapter studies the supply chain of the market to understand the factors that make-or-break vertical relationships and how a market matures. The third paper uses a rich dataset of inventory transfers for the Washington State recreational cannabis industry to assemble a novel dataset of vertical relationships between producers and retailers starting from the market’s inception. In the early stages of the market, I find substantial structural state dependence within vertical relationships, suggesting firms are reluctant to sever their existing business links due to poorly performing products and serves as a cautionary tale against making assumptions about firms when not in equilibrium. As the market reaches an equilibrium, product performance becomes the leading factor for producer-retailer matching. A theoretical model of consumer demand and link formation is provided to rationalize these findings.
Essays on vertical mergers, advertising, and competitive entry
(2008-05) Ayar, Musa, 1979-; Hendricks, Kenneth
This dissertation consists of three independent essays. We briefly introduce these essays in chapter 1 and leave a comprehensive introduction to each essay. Chapter 2 considers a vertically separated industry where production takes time and vertical mergers shorten production time. We investigate the impact of vertical mergers on the downstream firms' ability to collude and show that vertical mergers facilitate downstream collusion. Chapter 3 provides a theoretical foundation for a puzzling empirical observation that advertising follows an inverted U shape for some new products. Chapter 4 analyzes an incumbent's response to a competitive entry. We show that if the quality of the entrant is uncertain, the incumbent can "jam" the quality signalling of the entrant. Finally, chapter 5 summarizes main conclusions of three essays.
Financing competitors : essays on shadow banks' funding
(2020-05-05) Jiang, Xuewei; Starks, Laura T.; Matvos, Gregor; Fracassi, Cesare; Nehuann, Daniel; Seru, Amit
This dissertation provides an overview of the interaction between banks and shadow banks in the two markets: the warehouse lending market, in which banks supply funding to shadow banks, and in the mortgage origination market, in which banks and shadow banks compete with each other. It studies how their interaction in one market affects their interaction in the other market, the equilibrium feedback between the two markets, and the implications for policy pass-though. I collect shadow bank call reports through FOIA requests and document that most of shadow banks’ warehouse funding is obtained from the banks that compete with them in the mortgage market. I provide evidence that banks trade off information advantage in warehouse lending against the loss in profits from increased mortgage market competition: (i) warehouse lending is clustered between competitors in local mortgage markets, especially in regions where public information of local housing value is less reliable; (ii) shadow banks cannot easily substitute to alternative funding sources if their relationship banks exogenously reduce warehouse lending; and (iii) a bank lends less to shadow banks in regions where it has greater market share in mortgage origination. To study the net effect on mortgage market competition in equilibrium, I calibrate a quantitative model that links warehouse lending and mortgage market competition. Warehouse lending market power is substantial. Banks charge 30% extra markups to the competing shadow banks relative to non-competitors. In the counterfactual, a faster GSE loan purchase program, which changes the warehouse lending market structure, would increase mortgage market competition, improving consumer welfare by $3.5 billion.
Friends and lovers : competition for social partners
(2019-09-19) Wyckoff, Joy Plumeri; Markman, Arthur B.; Buss, David M; Cormack, Lawrence K; Hofmann, Johann
Social relationships grant access to a variety of resources relevant to survival and reproduction. Such resources include access to mates, resources that influence one's mate value (e.g., social status), and direct or indirect benefits provided by mates themselves. Similar resources exist for non-mating social domains as well (e.g., friendships, kinships, business relationships). However, given constraints on time, energy, and cognitive resources, people can only hold a finite number of individuals in their social networks. Therefore, we must strategically deploy competitive tactics in order to acquire and maintain cooperative social relationships. The strategies and tactics employed in competing for social relationships are explored here through an evolutionary lens. In Chapter 1, I introduce the topic of competition for mating and non-mating relationships from an evolutionary perspective. In Chapter 2, I present two studies demonstrating that people are motivated to share information about a rival when it has greater potential to thwart their rival’s mating attempts. I argue that this pattern of findings is indicative of psychological mechanisms for derogating mating rivals. In Chapter 3, I provide two studies that examine sex differences in reactions to victimization of online aggression, which we predicted from evolved defenses for competitor derogation for mates. In Chapter 4, I apply theories derived from mate competition to study competition for friends and strategies to defend relationships from third-party interlopers (i.e., friend poachers). I develop and validate measures for friend attraction, retention, and poaching. In doing so, I demonstrate that tactics used in competition for friends overlap with those used for mate competition (e.g., competitor derogation) and highlight tactics unique to friendships (e.g., including an interloper in one’s social network).
History and analysis of eSport systems
(2014-12) Snavely, Tyler Louis; Todd, Jan
As video games have increased in complexity from simple arcade machines to modern home consoles, the potential for skill development and competition have increased simultaneously. The result has been an eSport system that utilizes digital technology to provide gamers with a platform for intense competition capable of generating spectator appeal. The modern eSport market contains the three sectors of the traditional sport market capable of supporting recreational gamers, spectator sport events, and a large peripheral accessory market. This report draws a comparison between the digital and traditional sport system while summarizing the general development of video games into a viable platform for competition. It notes the initial development of modern professional gaming in South Korea, and analyzes the current state of eSports in North America by reviewing Major League Gaming and their techniques for advancing the eSport system. The report concludes with a discussion of threats to the eSport industry as it continues to gain relevancy in the Western hemisphere.
Issues in operations management and marketing interface research : competition, product line design, and channel coordination
(2010-05) Chen, Liwen, 1974-; Gilbert, Stephen M.; Gutierrez, Genaro J.; Balakrishnan, Anant; Feng, Qi; Xia, Yusen
This dissertation studies important issues in supply chain management and marketing interface research: competition, product line design, and channel efficiency, at the presence of vertically differentiated products. Vertical differentiation as a means of price discrimination has been well-studied in both economics and marketing literature. However, less attention has been paid on how vertical differentiation has been operationalized. In this dissertation, we focus our study on two types of vertical differentiation: the one created by a product line which is produced by the same firm, and the one created by products from different firms. We especially are interested in the so-called private label products vs. the national brand products. Specifically, this dissertation explores how vertical differentiation can affect the interactions among the members of a supply chain in several different contexts. In the first piece of work, we use a game theoretic model to explore how the ability of a retailer to introduce a private label product affects its interaction with a manufacturer of a national brand. In the second essay, we are investigating how an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) will be affected by the entry of a competitor when there are strategic suppliers of a critical component. If these suppliers behave strategically, it is not clear that the entry of other players will necessarily be harmful to the incumbent. In the last work, we pay our attention to an emerging change happening in the industry: some retailers begin to sell their private labels through their competitors. We investigate the strategic role of a retailer selling her own private label products through another retailer. In summary, this dissertation illustrates how vertical differentiation play a crucial role in firms' supply chain as well as marketing strategies. Therefore, it is important for firms to recognize these strategic issues related to vertically differentiated products while making operations/marketing decisions.
Mechanisms driving species interactions and community structure on the phytochemical landscape
(2023-04-20) Morrison, Colin Richard; Gilbert, Lawrence E.; Sedio , Brian E; Wolf, Amelia A; Smiley, John T
Identifying how variation in abiotic factors and species traits influence the outcome of ecological interactions is fundamental to our understanding of which processes affect community assembly and structure. My goal in this PhD was to describe how nutrient dynamics, plant physical traits, and chemistry affect plant-insect and plant-plant interactions. I pursued this goal in three different systems with natural history observations, comparative field studies, manipulative greenhouse experiments, analytical chemistry, and bioinformatics. I found that investing nitrogen in one tropical passion vine survival strategy did not come at the cost of strategies. Rather, increased soil nitrogen resulted in richer metabolomes, higher leaf toxin concentrations, longer vines, greater biomass, and more leaves with a superior ability to capture sunlight. Next, I investigated how plant traits facilitate the spread of invasive species in Texas, and what consequences their spread has for local communities. I found that lack of variation among native prickly pear nutritional qualities makes them suitable resources to an invasive cactus moth (Cactoblastis cactorum) that recently established in Texas. These findings have serious implications for prickly pear, and their associated food webs that will soon interact with the expanding invasive moth population. I also studied how competition and allelochemical weapons interact to facilitate spread of Guinea grass, a globally distributed invasive pasture grass, in Texas. I found that shading and allelochemistry by Guinea grass interacted to significantly reduce the recruitment and growth of native plants which results in communities with significantly reduced plant diversity. Finally, I compared passion vine phylogenetic, metabolomic, and quantitative traits to describe the drivers of host specialization by sympatric beetles and caterpillars in Costa Rica. I found that passion vine relatedness correlated with host usage in both groups, and different plant characteristics explained how similar each herbivore assemblage was among available hosts. These studies demonstrated the effects of resource availability on plant trait expression and specialized trophic interactions in different environments. Moreover, this dissertation showcased how the mechanisms which govern individual species interactions scale up to influence community structure on a mosaic phytochemical landscape.
Predictors of eating disorders in college-aged women : the role of competition and relational aggression
(2012-08) Scaringi, Vanessa; Rochlen, Aaron B.; Rude, Stephanie S.; Whittaker, Tiffany; Awad, Germine H.; Denoma, Jill H.
The serious consequences and high prevalence rates of eating disorders among women have been well documented (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Birmingham, Su, Hlynasky, Goldner, & Gao, 2005; Crow, Praus, & Thuras, 1999; Steinhausen, 2009). Factors linked to the development of an eating disorder include competitiveness and group membership (Basow, Foran ,& Bookwala, 2007; Striegel-Moore, Silberstein, Grunberg, & Rodin, 1990). The purpose of this study was to further examine risk factors associated with eating disorder symptomatology by examining the role of sorority membership, different forms of competition, and relational aggression. Sorority membership was hypothesized to impact a participant’s eating disorder symptomatology, competitiveness, and relational aggression. Additionally, this study looked at three different forms of competition (Hypercompetition, Female Competition for mates, and Female Competition for status) and sought to understand which form of competitiveness best predicts eating disorder symptomatology. Female Competition for mates was hypothesized to best predict disordered eating. Lastly, relational aggression was expected to moderate the relationship between competition among women and eating disorder behaviors. An increase in relational aggression was hypothesized to strengthen the relationship between competition among women and eating disorder symptomatology. The reasoning for this relationship was based on an evolutionary framework that proposes aggression is needed to drive competition (Shuster, 1983). Participants included 407 undergraduate women, with a split of 211 sorority members and 196 non-sorority women. Measures included four subscales from the Eating Disorder Inventory (Garner et al., 1983), the Hypercompetitive Attitudes Scale (Ryckman et al., 1996), the Female Competition for mates scale, the Female Competition for status scale (Faer et al., 2005), and the Indirect Aggression Scale (Forrest et al., 2005). Separate regression analyses were conducted to answer each research question. Participants also answered qualitative questions after completing the surveys. Analyses revealed sorority membership significantly predicted a participant’s Female Competition for status. Female Competition for mates was found to best predict both body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness such that the higher a participant’s competition for mates score, the lower these eating disorder symptoms. No moderating effects of relational aggression were found in the model. Additionally, social desirability was included in the regressions as a means of controlling for a participant’s tendency to self-report desirably. An important surprise finding was that social desirability was a significant predictor of eating disorder symptomatology, competition, and relational aggression. Exploratory qualitative analyses suggested women’s acceptance of their bodies, while their conversations with friends included self-deprecating ways of discussing their appearance. Findings also suggest sorority membership predicts higher female competition for mates and status. Results reveal a relationship between competition and disordered eating which suggests important considerations for clinicians to explore with clients who may experience eating disorder symptomatology.
Price experimentation in confidential negotiations
(2021-05-07) Lee, Jangwoo; Fuchs, William, 1977-; Almazan, Andres; Alti, Aydogan; Titman, Sheridan; Wiseman, Thomas
I develop a model in which a long-lived seller concurrently negotiates with multiple long-lived buyers over two periods. Within this framework, I consider two protocols: a public negotiation process and a confidential negotiation process. In the confidential negotiation process, buyers competitively engage in “price experimentation”: they sacrifice part of initial profits so that they can enjoy informational advantages over competitors later. Due to this channel, the seller benefits from (1) maintaining confidentiality over past offers and (2) reducing the number of buyers in the confidential negotiation process, even without any entry cost.
Selling strategy under capacity constraint in perishable good markets
(2006) Wu, Ruhai; Whinston, Andrew B.; Stinchcombe, Maxwell
This dissertation studies the monopoly seller’s optimal selling strategy under a capacity constraint in perishable good markets. The three chapters focus on the resale market, channel competition and rationing phenomena respectively. Chapter one studies ticket resale using a two-period model where a monopoly seller sells tickets in both periods. Three scenarios of resale are considered, namely no resale, where resale is infeasible in both periods; complete resale, where resale in feasible in both periods; and partial resale, where resale is feasible in the advance period but not in the spot period. The essay shows that, if the seller has limited capacity, the number of high-valuation buyers is small enough and the number of early arrivers is not too large, partial resale can lead to a higher profit for the seller than complete resale or no resale. Chapter two studies the symbiotic competition relationship between a supplier and an independent reseller, in which while the supplier relies upon the reseller in distribution, the supplier’s direct channel inevitably competes with the reseller’s channel. The essay compares two mechanisms that the supplier can use to control the potential channel competitions, i.e. the low-price guarantee and the capacity control mechanism. The essay illustrates the drawbacks of the widely-adopted low-price guarantee mechanism, and shows how the capacity control mechanism can avoid the potential channel conflicts and increase the supplier’s profit. Chapter three provides a theory of rationing, where rationing functions as an effective mechanism for second degree price discrimination. Rationing in the lower price market segment forces buyers with high valuations to buy at the higher price. Rationing’s impact on the seller’s profit depends on the shape of the demand curve and on the sellers’ capacity constraint. The essay presents the necessary conditions and sufficient conditions on the demand curve and capacity constraint for rationing to be beneficial to the seller. The essay further shows that rationing can help the seller through different discrimination strategies.
Soil microbial community structure and allocation are critical drivers of ecosystem functioning
(2015-08) Averill, Colin; Hawkes, Christine V.; Bennett, Phillip; Juenger, Thomas; Keitt, Timothy; Leibold, Mathew
The functioning of terrestrial ecosystems is entirely dependent on the activity of autotrophic primary producers and microbial decomposers, and how they are affected by climate, mineralogy and anthropogenic change. Ecosystem ecology has classically focused on how allocation and community composition of plant primary producers may alter predictions of future ecosystem functioning in the face of environmental change. Little attention has been paid to allocation and community composition of microbial decomposers. The functioning of microbial decomposers has been considered implicitly, in the context of plant traits; primarily plant biomass chemistry. However, soil microbial communities represent a vast diversity of taxa spanning multiple kingdoms of life and an array of functional groups. It is not only likely, but probable that understanding ecological aspects of soil microbial community structure, activity, and allocation will fundamentally change how we understand and predict ecosystem function in the future. In chapters 1-3 of this dissertation, I explicitly considered how microbial activities varied based on microbial community structure and the resulting impacts for biogeochemical cycling. Specifically, in chapters 1 and 2, I manipulated the relative abundance of symbiotic root fungi to demonstrate that competition between symbionts and free-living decomposers for nitrogen slowed soil carbon cycling. In chapter 3, I scaled how nitrogen is partitioned between plants, mycorrhizas and free-living decomposer microbes to demonstrate how shifts in microbial community structure could explain how forests productivity is sustained over centuries. In chapter 4, I developed a microbial allocation framework that explicitly considers microbial resource environments. I demonstrated that past microbial allocation frameworks based on plant ecological mechanisms cannot explain allocation patterns of decomposer microbial life. Throughout this dissertation I attempt to put soil microbial life in an explicit ecological context that challenges current understanding of ecosystem process and will allow for deeper understanding and prediction of ecosystem functioning. Incorporating microbial community structure, allocation, and simple ecological mechanisms into models will improve the predictive power of ecosystem ecology.
The Tao of coopetition in organizations: culture and categorization of competitive behaviors in teams and working relationships
(2009-05) Keller, Josh Wheatly; Huber, George P.; Loewenstein, Jeffrey
This dissertation provides a cultural-cognitive perspective on the relationship between cooperation and competition within organizations. Instead of explicitly defining the relationship between cooperation and competition, I examine lay beliefs about the relationship and the impact of these beliefs on perceptions and behavior. This dissertation consists of two studies. In the first study, I examine the role of peoples’ categorization of competitive behaviors as cooperative or non-cooperative in teams. I assess the influence of dialectical reasoning, a culturally-shaped reasoning style, on the categorization of competitive behaviors and the reaction to competitive behaviors within teams. I test my predictions with a laboratory experiment with participants in the US and China. The analyses from this study reveal cultural differences in perceptual and behavioral reactions to competitive behaviors, with differences partially attributed to reasoning style and categorization. In the second study, I examine the role of people’s categorization of competitive behaviors as cooperative or non-cooperative in working relationships. I assess the influence of culture and categorization on people’s ego-centric network of working relationships. I test my predictions with a survey of working professionals in the US and China. The analyses from this study demonstrate that people who categorize certain competitive behaviors as cooperative are more likely to be more cooperative with people they are more competitive with instead of having exclusively cooperative or competitive relationships. The analyses also reveal national cultural differences in people’s networks of working relationships that are partially attributable to categorization of competitive behaviors. By empirically connecting culture and reasoning style to cooperative and competitive behavior in teams and working relationships, this research enhances our understanding of fundamental aspects of organizations, suggesting a new approach to examining the influence of societal factors in behavior within organizations.
The effects of ecology and climate change on the conservation of eastern Himalayan avifauna
(2018-06-21) Surya, Gautam Sankar; Keitt, Timothy H.; Jha, Shalene; Miller, Jennifer; Liebold, Mathew; Hillis, David
The existence of biodiversity is central to all biological sciences, and especially ecology. Without it, an entire branch of knowledge would cease to exist. Despite this centrality, there is considerable debate on the mechanisms that create and maintain diversity. This is especially true of high-diversity areas. There is also considerable debate on how we can best protect biodiversity, in order to allow the science of biology to flourish into the future. Here, I present an investigation of the processes that allow biodiversity to be maintained in the Eastern Himalayas, a critically understudied high-diversity region, as well as a systematic analysis of the conservation priorities there. I focus on birds as a charismatic, speciose and conspicuous set of taxa. I spent several months gathering fine-scale occurrence data for the breeding bird community in Arunachal Pradesh, a state in Northeast India that is at the heart of the Eastern Himalayan ecoregion. Using this data, I first show that bird species on the steep elevational gradient present in the region segregate into narrow elevational bands. I also show that this segregation can best be explained by evolutionary processes resulting from interspecies competition in the long term, and by continued interspecies competition in the short term. I then go on to demonstrate that these narrow ranges of climate tolerance will be greatly affected by climate change, with species’ ranges shifting and contracting over the next 50 years. Moreover, when interspecies competition is taken to account, these extent of these predicted changes is intensified. Finally, I use these predicted distributions to create a spatially explicit map of conservation priorities. I present alternatives based on different conservation goals, as well as different projections of the extent of global climate change. I also present an idealized map of areas most in need of protection, and compare that to the existing set of formally protected areas. Taken in their entirety, these studies present a cogent explanation for the existence of high biodiversity in one of the most special regions of the planet, as well as a roadmap toward protecting that diversity for future generations.