Search results for "Competitive pressure"

Costly punishment prevails in intergroup conflict.

2011

Understanding how societies resolve conflicts between individual and common interests remains one of the most fundamental issues across disciplines. The observation that humans readily incur costs to sanction uncooperative individuals without tangible individual benefits has attracted considerable attention as a proximate cause as to why cooperative behaviours might evolve. However, the proliferation of individually costly punishment has been difficult to explain. Several studies over the last decade employing experimental designs with isolated groups have found clear evidence that the costs of punishment often nullify the benefits of increased cooperation, rendering the strong human tenden…

Wage leadership models: A country-by-country analysis of the EMU

2014

Abstract According to the theory of wage leadership, if there is free inter-sectoral labor mobility, changes in the level of the wage in the leading sector cause changes in the same direction in other sectors' wage. Moreover, since the traded sector (i.e. Industry) is affected by international competitive pressure, it should act as the leader, because this would be conducive to wage restraint. We apply a Vector Error Correction Model on four macro sectors (Industry, Services, Construction and the Public Sector) in ten EMU countries to test for wage leadership and wage adaptability. Our results show significant cross-country differences, with the Public Sector acting as the leader in Germany…

Competitive Pressure and Innovation at the Firm Level

2015

This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between market competitive pressure and firms' innovation using panel data of Spanish manufacturing firms for 1990–2006. We depart from standard measures of competition, and construct variables capturing the fundamentals of competitive pressure (product substitutability, market size and entry costs) to test the theoretical predictions of Vives [2008, The Journal of Industrial Economics] for free entry. Our results line up favourably with these predictions. We obtain that greater product substitutability and higher costs of entry lead to more process innovation but less product innovation, whereas market enlargement spurs both produc…

TQM, innovation and the role of cultural change

2013

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to better understand the influence of total quality management (TQM) practices on incremental and radical innovation, examining the role of diverse cultural change as a mediator, particularly in firms where ever‐increasing competitive pressure demands a combination of quality and innovation.Design/methodology/approachFrom previous research on the influence of TQM practices on innovation, the paper proposes a model which is tested through a survey carried out on a sample of 72 Spanish firms that have been drastically hit by competition from Asian companies, achieving a 51.42 percent valid return rate.FindingsNone of the sets of TQM practices directly affec…

THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN ACCOMPLISHING THE HEDGING OF ECONOMIC COMPETITION

2013

Competitive Pressure and Diversification into Green R&D

2019

Based on representative firm-level survey data for Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, we investigate the relationship between quick obsolescence of products, unpredictable technological development, and easy substitution of products and the probability to diversify into green R&D. We find that product obsolescence and technological uncertainty are positively related with green R&D diversification. These types of competition are usually positively related with low barriers to market entry. Hence, policies that support open markets should stimulate diversification into green R&D. peerReviewed