BMAN31881 ECONOMIC ANALYSIS II 2020
Hello, dear friend, you can consult us at any time if you have any questions, add WeChat: daixieit
BMAN31881
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS II
SECTION A
Question 1
Answer ANY FOUR PARTS of the question (10 marks each)
a) How will an increase in international trade likely to affect the concentration of firms in an industry? Would your analysis shed light on the declining number of public firms in advanced economies? Your analysis should refer to historical cases, and explain how increasing market concentration may affect corporate investment in R&D. (10 Marks)
b) Discuss two demand creation strategies that firms have used in the past to grow. Your analysis should benefit from economics concepts. (10 marks)
c) What relationship would you expect to find between the level of development of a country’s financial system and its level of corporate investment? Explain it in terms of the country’s level of savings and level of investment spending. How might your analysis differ for multi-national firms? (10 marks)
d) Reflect on the wide-body aircraft market case to explain how learning-by-doing has led to the dominance of firms such as Boeing. Explain how learning-by-doing can give rise to the first mover advantage, generate strong barriers to entry and help incumbents establish their market position. (10 marks)
e) Use the ideas of multi-tasking, high-power incentives and efficiency to explain why Alphabet has set up Google X. What lessons might Google have learnt from the commercial failures of the Bell lab, Xerox PARC and 3M? (10 marks)
f) Corporate failures often come in waves – a number of firms in a sector fail during a short period. Technological advances or industry deregulation often trigger corporate failure waves. Why? Explore the mechanisms behind failure waves. (10 marks)
g) Robots are becoming increasingly flexible and capable of being adapted to a variety of products. Using the concept of complementarity, explore the consequences of such technological changes on corporate organizational design. (10 marks)
SECTION B
Answer ONE question (30 marks)
Question 2
a) Identify basic characteristics of the pharmaceutical industry and explore some of their consequences for the dynamics of the market and corporate strategy. Whenever relevant, use economic graphs to explain key points. (10 marks)
b) Major pharmaceutical firms engage in brand proliferation by marketing similar drugs and spend a high percentage of their sale on advertising. How may these strategies affect market competition and the market for generic drugs? (10 marks)
c) Explain how legacy airliners have responded to the entry of low-cost carriers. Why does increasing concentration in the airline sector appear to have benefited both airliners and customers? (10 marks)
Question 3
a) How do ideas differ from intellectual property (IP) rights? Why does the market for IP rights not operate efficiently? Explain two proposals for increasing the efficiency of the IP market. Could we employ auctions to price IP rights? (10 marks)
b) Using a simple formal model explain why there are so many sleeping patents? Why are there fewer sleeping patents in the software sector? (10 marks)
c) Electric car maker, Tesla, has given its patents to the “open source movement” . Explain the rationale behind the move. How does the move fit with the firm’s growth strategies? (10 marks)
Question 4
a) Explain how limited managerial attention, multi-tasking challenges and incentives may give rise to corporate aging. Propose a strategy that can slow down the ageing process. How might competition in the product market and the market for corporate control affect corporate aging? (12 marks)
b) What is the general lesson that one may learn from the successful turnaround stories of IBM and Apple. Use the lesson to explain why Yahoo!’s turnaround efforts failed. (8 marks)
c) Use the theories of network effects and learning-by-doing to explain why Blackberry and Nokia failed to recover their fortune and lost their market share to Apple and firms such as Samsung. (10 marks)
Question 5
a) What factors do determine firm vertical boundaries? Your analysis should refer to the double marginalisation and hold-up problems, and draw on historical cases. (10 marks)
b) How may the emergence of information technologies and capabilities such as cloud computing, internet, intranet, and analytics alter the organization of the firm? Will the IT revolution lead to smaller or larger firms? (10 marks)
c) Recent data on the US economy reveal increasing concentration across many industries where a small number of firms have begun to dominate the industry. Using economic theory, explain how increasing concentration can affect firms’ advertising behaviour. (10 marks)
SECTION C
Answer ONE question (30 marks)
Question 6
Two firms compete in a Cournot-type duopoly. The industry demand is given by P = 210 – 0.5Q. The production costs for firm 1 and 2 are given by C(qi) = 10 + 50qi, where qi is the output of firm i (i = 1, 2). Each firm has a constant marginal cost of £50.
a) What is the Cournot equilibrium quantity for each firm, product price, and profit of each firm? (10 marks)
b) Suppose one firm discovers a procedure that lowers its marginal cost to £30.
i) If the innovator does not license its product but competes as the low-cost firm, what will be the innovator’s profit? (4 marks)
ii) What will the innovator’s profit be if it licenses the technology to its competitor at a royalty rate of £20? (4 marks)
iii) Suppose the innovator licenses the technology for a fixed fee. What is the highest fee that the non-innovator will be willing to pay? What will the innovator’s profits be if it can charge the highest possible such fee? (4 marks)
c) Explore the implications of the analysis for the decision whether to licence a technology with a royalty rate or for a fixed fee. Does the model offer any insights on making such decisions? How will decisions on how to licence innovations affect the price, demand and competition in the output market? (8 marks)
Question 7
Read the case carefully and answer all the questions at the end.
T-Mobile US, Inc. is the third largest wireless carrier in the United Sates with 83.1 million customers as of end of Q2 2019. Sprint is the third largest wireless carrier, with around 59 million customers. In April 2018, T-Mobile (TMUS) and Sprint (S) announced their plans to merge. The $26.5 billion merger deal has been given the green light.
In the past, the US government had rejected similar deals, using the theory that four competitors are necessary to ensure competition in the marketplace. On July 26, the U.S. Department of Justice (or DOJ) approved the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint. The approval comes with conditions. The two companies have agreed to divest Sprint’s prepaid businesses like Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile to Dish Network. Dish would acquire a certain wireless spectrum from the new T-Mobile. T- Mobile will offer Dish access to about 20,000 cell sites and multiple retail locations. Dish will receive help to become the fourth nationwide wireless mobile operator.
Currently, about 15 states oppose the merger deal of the nation’s third- and fourth- largest wireless carriers. The multistate court challenge is led by New York and California. This lawsuit is the last major obstacle that the T-Mobile and Sprint merger faces. The lawsuit alleges the merger deal “is bad for consumers, bad for workers, and bad for innovation.” The court trial is scheduled to begin in December.
Critics have argued the spinoff of Boost with its prepaid 9 million customers is not enough to maintain competition. Prepaid customers can walk away anytime. Further, while Dish has plenty of spectrum, they do not have a network. The idea to let Dish ``use T-Mobile’s network while they build their own network’’ sounds quite optimistic. How can a small player such as Dish ever grab market share from financially strong incumbents?
T-Mobile firebrand CEO, John Legere, has countered the critiques. In his view, emerging 5G technologies are capital intensive and require scale. If they remain unrivalled, AT&T and Verizon will further strengthen their dominance. A mightier T- Mobile can better compete with AT&T and Verizon. The merger will give T-Mobile access to Sprint’s wideband spectrum, which is ideal for 5G services, enabling T- Mobile to speed up the diffusion of 5G technologies that benefit customers.
Critics have fought back that T-Mobile’s incentives will change post-merger. While T- Mobile has so far innovated to undercut and steal market from the incumbents, the firm will likely become less aggressive, and charge customers higher prices.
a) Explain factors that may contribute to the success or failure of horizontal mergers. Your analysis should define “merger failure” and “merger success” and refer to “merger-specific” synergies, and “strategic” factors. (8 marks)
b) Identify considerations that might have led T-Mobile and Sprint to merge with each other. Are these considerations compelling? How might the merger affect competitors, particularly smaller rivals such as Dish? (8 marks)
c) The US merger guidelines suggest a merger can proceed if the post-merger Herfindahl-Hirschman index IHH remains below 1800. Consequently, the US authorities have required T-Mobile to help a small player, Dish, to gain market share and grow as the fourth largest player. Discuss shortcomings of merger guidelines that solely consider changes in indices such as IHH. Will the rise of the fourth player and thus lower IHH increase consumer welfare? (7 marks)
d) Explain how the merger could help T-Mobile to grow in size. (7 marks)
2024-01-11