IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amerec/v42y1998i1p42-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

R&D Rivalry in the U.S. Automobile Industry: A Simultaneous Equation Model Approach to Bain's Hypothesis

Author

Listed:
  • Lall B. Ramrattan

Abstract

This paper investigates rivalry in R&D expenditures for firms within the U. S. Automobile industry. It attempts to falsify Bain's paradigm that firms in that industry collude in price, and compete primarily in advertising and secondarily in R&D expenditures. We start with a single equation model of an earlier specification that falsified R&D rivalry for the auto industry, using a smaller sample size. The result also was insignificant, lending credence to Bain's idea that a more concerted effort is needed to ascertain R&D rivalry. To accommodate Bain's hypothesis, we embedded the R&D equation within a system of equations framework, where interactions between advertising, dividend, investment, and finance are co-determined. The system model gained efficiency through explicit specifications for technological and marketing constraints. The results corroborate Bain's hypotheses that R&D rivalry is present only when R&D expenditure is foiled with advertising and other financial ratios.

Suggested Citation

  • Lall B. Ramrattan, 1998. "R&D Rivalry in the U.S. Automobile Industry: A Simultaneous Equation Model Approach to Bain's Hypothesis," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 42(1), pages 42-55, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:42:y:1998:i:1:p:42-55
    DOI: 10.1177/056943459804200104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/056943459804200104
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/056943459804200104?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anonymous, 1991. "The Automobile Industry," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(4), pages 1-1, January.
    2. Grabowski, Henry G & Baxter, Nevins D, 1973. "Rivalry in Industrial Research and Development," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(3), pages 209-235, July.
    3. Phoebus J. Dhrymes & Mordecai Kurz, 1967. "Investment, Dividend, and External Finance Behavior of Firms," NBER Chapters, in: Determinants of Investment Behavior, pages 427-485, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. James A. Brander & Barbara J. Spencer, 1983. "Strategic Commitment with R&D: The Symmetric Case," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(1), pages 225-235, Spring.
    5. F. M. Scherer, 1967. "Research and Development Resource Allocation Under Rivalry," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 81(3), pages 359-394.
    6. Switzer, Lorne, 1984. "The Determinants of Industrial R&D: A Funds Flow Simultaneous Equation Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 66(1), pages 163-168, February.
    7. Cohen, Wesley M & Klepper, Steven, 1992. "The Anatomy of Industry R&D Intensity Distributions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 773-799, September.
    8. Merton H. Miller & Franco Modigliani, 1961. "Dividend Policy, Growth, and the Valuation of Shares," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34, pages 411-411.
    9. Kim B. Clark & W. Bruce Chew & Takahiro Fujimoto, 1987. "Product Development in the World Auto Industry," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 18(3, Specia), pages 729-782.
    10. Steve A. Lippman & Kevin F. McCardle, 1987. "Dropout Behavior in R&D Races with Learning," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 18(2), pages 287-295, Summer.
    11. Fred Mannering & Clifford Winston, 1985. "A Dynamic Empirical Analysis of Household Vehicle Ownership and Utilization," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(2), pages 215-236, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cohen, Wesley M., 2010. "Fifty Years of Empirical Studies of Innovative Activity and Performance," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 129-213, Elsevier.
    2. Alex Coad, 2017. "Persistent heterogeneity of R&D intensities within sectors: Evidence and policy implications," JRC Working Papers on Corporate R&D and Innovation 2017-04, Joint Research Centre (Seville site).
    3. Coad, Alex, 2019. "Persistent heterogeneity of R&D intensities within sectors: Evidence and policy implications," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 37-50.
    4. Lall B. Ramrattan, 2001. "Dealership Competition in the U. S. Automobile Industry," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 45(1), pages 33-45, March.
    5. Albert N. Link & John T. Scott, 2018. "Propensity to Patent and Firm Size for Small R&D-Intensive Firms," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(4), pages 561-587, June.
    6. Gugler, Klaus, 2003. "Corporate governance, dividend payout policy, and the interrelation between dividends, R&D, and capital investment," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 1297-1321, July.
    7. Havas, Attila, 2006. "Private Sector R&D in the New Member States: Hungary," MPRA Paper 55786, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Yu, Chih-Ping, 2015. "Financial policies on firm performance: The U.S. insurance industry before and after the global financial crisis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 391-402.
    9. Ron N. Borkovsky, 2017. "The timing of version releases: A dynamic duopoly model," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 187-239, September.
    10. Cockburn, Iain & Henderson, Rebecca, 1994. "Racing to Invest? The Dynamics of Competition in Ethical Drug Discovery," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(3), pages 481-519, Fall.
    11. Vekstein, Daniel, 1998. "Managing Knowledge and Corporate Performance: an Empirical Analysis of the World Automobile Industry," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 551-568, October.
    12. Deng, Lu & Li, Sifei & Liao, Mingqing & Wu, Weixing, 2013. "Dividends, investment and cash flow uncertainty: Evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 112-124.
    13. Cardenas, Mauricio & Escobar, Andres, 1998. "Saving determinants in Colombia: 1925-1994," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 5-44, October.
    14. Sebastiano Cattaruzzo & Agustí Segarra-Blasco & Mercedes Teruel, 2024. "Firm-level contributions to the R&D intensity distribution: evidence and policy implications," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(1), pages 45-65, January.
    15. Gietzmann, Miles B., 1996. "Incomplete contracts and the make or buy decision: Governance design and attainable flexibility," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 611-626, August.
    16. Douglas Nelson, 1996. "The Political Economy of U.S. Automobile Protection," NBER Chapters, in: The Political Economy of American Trade Policy, pages 133-196, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Attila Havas, Attila, 1995. "Hungarian car parts industry at a cross-roads: Fordism versus lean production," MPRA Paper 79305, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. P. S. Sanju & P. S. Nirmala & M. Ramachandran, 2011. "Are dividend and investment decisions separable?," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(20), pages 1515-1524.
    19. Frankfurter, George M. & Wood, Bob Jr., 2002. "Dividend policy theories and their empirical tests," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 111-138.
    20. Poulomi Lahiri, 2019. "Dividend and Investment Decisions of Indian Corporate Firms Under Cash Flow Uncertainty," Jindal Journal of Business Research, , vol. 8(2), pages 128-141, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:42:y:1998:i:1:p:42-55. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/aex .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.