Essays on the theory of auctions and economic rents.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Transaction cost economics focuses on when firms should buy resources, whereas resource based view focuses on what resources firms should buy. This dissertation focuses on how firms should buy resources in factor markets to create competitive advantages.
In the first chapter, I model resource acquisition by operationalizing pricing as an endogenous component of competitive strategy and compare negotiation, auction and posted price mechanisms. I identify 5 factors, which affect a firm's choice between each market mechanism. Using a hypothetical entrepreneurial firm, I model the sale of a unique resource (a patent), and argue that the question of "how a firm should buy/sell resources" is critical for our understanding of firm competitiveness.
In the second chapter, I apply the model predictions of my first essay to market for firms, and study how an entrepreneurial firm should be sold. Using initial public offerings as auctions and mid-market mergers and acquisitions as negotiations, I examine the performance effects of the discrete choices entrepreneurial firms make when they sell their firm (e.g. a bundle of resources).
In the third chapter, I study an application of the auction theory in practice and I investigate business-to-business online auctions and auctioneers, and their effects on firm competitiveness using an in depth analysis of intermediary firms and exchange rules by analyzing 4 online auctioneers.
In my dissertation I focus on how firms should buy resources in factor markets to create competitive advantages. When competing in factor or product markets to acquire resources or sell goods, firms often have to make strategic decisions whether to use spot market transactions with posted prices, negotiation markets with bargaining, or auction markets with bidding. Given these three different market mechanisms, what are the firm and industry specific factors that determine different selling/buying devices to occur simultaneously in the market? By endogenizing pricing as a strategic variable, managers can choose among different market mechanisms in pursuit of rents. In this paper I model dynamic resource acquisition in equilibrium, simultaneously taking into account the characteristics of factor markets from both the sellers' and the buyers' perspectives. Auctions, negotiations and spot markets are compared given heterogeneity of expectations, bargaining power of the participants, market thickness, risk propensity and search costs.
I further investigated the use of auctions in buying and selling resources in the context of business-to-business online marketplaces. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).