Outsourcing versus technology transfer: Hotelling meets Stackelberg

This paper considers a Hotelling duopoly with two firms A and B in the final good market. Both A and $B$ can produce the required intermediate good, firm B having a lower cost due to a superior technology. We compare two contracts: outsourcing (A orders the intermediate good from B) and technology transfer (B transfers its technology to A). First we show that an outsourcing order acts as a credible commitment on part of A to maintain a certain market share in the final good market. This generates an indirect Stackelberg leadership effect, which is absent in a technology transfer contract. We show that compared to the situation of no contracts, there are always Pareto improving outsourcing contracts but no Pareto improving technology transfer contracts. Finally, it is shown that whenever both firms prefer one of the two contracts, all consumers prefer the other contract.

COOPERATIVE R&D WITH DIFFERENTIATED PRODUCTS IN VERTICALLY RELATED INDUSTRIES

This paper studies the impact of cooperative R&Don innovation, welfare, and profitability in vertically related industries with differentiated products. The model incorporates two vertically related industries, with horizontal spillovers within industries and vertical spillovers between them. Upstream firms produce a homogeneous intermediate good, while downstream firms provide differentiated products. Three types of R&D cooperation are studied: no cooperation, horizontal cooperation, and vertical cooperation. The comparison of cooperation settings in terms of R&D and profitability shows that although vertical cooperation yields higher innovation and welfare, it may lead to over– investment in R&D.

Price Bargaining and the Business Cycle

This paper models a segmented production sector with price bargaining between the intermediate good firm and the final good firm. We show how to incorporate price bargaining in an otherwise standard New Keynesian model and discuss its macroeconomic implications. Estimating the model on U.S. data using Bayesian methods, we find that the intermediate good firm has 50 percent of the bargaining power. We find that the size of the bargaining power determines the quantitative and qualitative macroeconomic effects. Further, we quantify the size of switching costs: they are equal to about two percent of output. Shocks to switching costs are specific to this model and generate sizable macroeconomic fluctuations.

The Choice of Prices versus Quantities under Outsourcing

This paper establishes a duopoly model with product differentiation and outsourcing in order to analyze the equilibrium competition strategies (choice of prices versus quantities) when the outsourcer outsources its intermediate good to a final product competitor. We show that: (1) both firms choose the quantity strategy when the cost efficiency of the subcontractor is low; (2) the choice of competition strategy is the price strategy for the subcontractor and the quantity strategy for the outsourcer when the cost efficiency of the subcontractor is moderate; (3) both firms choose the price strategy when the cost efficiency of the subcontractor is sufficiently high.