IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cir/cirwor/98s-36.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Observability, Commitment and Flexibility

Author

Listed:
  • Marcel Boyer
  • Armel Jacques
  • Michel Moreaux

Abstract

We show that whether observing technological choices made by competitors is possible or not has significant impacts on the equilibrium technological configurations. Depending upon the industry characteristics, the strategic value of technological flexibility may be either positive or negative, and it is sometimes better to observe than to be observed, and sometimes to be observed than to observe Nous montrons que la possibilité qu'ont, ou non, les entreprises d'observer leurs choix technologiques respectifs a des impacts significatifs sur les technologies qu'elles adopteront à l'équilibre. Selon les caractéristiques de l'industrie, la valeur stratégique de la flexibilité technologique peut être positive ou négative, et il est parfois préférable d'observer plutôt que d'être observé, parfois plus profitable d'être observé que d'observer.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcel Boyer & Armel Jacques & Michel Moreaux, 1998. "Observability, Commitment and Flexibility," CIRANO Working Papers 98s-36, CIRANO.
    • Handle: RePEc:cir:cirwor:98s-36
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cirano.qc.ca/files/publications/98s-36.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marcel Boyer & Armel Jacques & Michel Moreaux, 1998. "Better Observability Promotes the Adoption of More Flexible Technologies," CIRANO Working Papers 98s-38, CIRANO.
    2. Marcel Boyer & Michel Moreaux, 1997. "Capacity Commitment versus Flexibility," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(1), pages 347-376, June.
    3. Vives, Xavier, 1989. "Technological competition, uncertainty, and oligopoly," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 386-415, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marcel Boyer & Armel Jacques & Michel Moreaux, 1998. "Better Observability Promotes the Adoption of More Flexible Technologies," CIRANO Working Papers 98s-38, CIRANO.
    2. Marcel Boyer & Armel Jacques & Michel Moreaux, 2001. "Bankruptcy Cost, Financial Structure and Technological Flexibility Choices," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-27, CIRANO.
    3. Marcel Boyer & Armel Jacques & Michel Moreaux, 2002. "On the Relationship Between Financial Status and Investment in Technological Flexibility," CIRANO Working Papers 2002s-14, CIRANO.

    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. Barla, Philippe & Constantatos, Christos, 2005. "Strategic interactions and airline network morphology under demand uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 703-716, April.
    2. Liu Yang & Chi To Ng & Yaodong Ni, 2017. "Flexible capacity strategy in an asymmetric oligopoly market with competition and demand uncertainty," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(2), pages 117-138, March.
    3. Marcel Boyer & Armel Jacques & Michel Moreaux, 2001. "Bankruptcy Cost, Financial Structure and Technological Flexibility Choices," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-27, CIRANO.
    4. Boyer, M. & Jacques, A. & Moreaux, M., 1998. "Better Observability Promotes the Adoption of more Flexible Technologies," Papers 98.505, Toulouse - GREMAQ.
    5. Gal-Or, Esther, 2002. "Flexible manufacturing systems and the internal structure of the firm," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(8), pages 1061-1096, October.
    6. Dewit, Gerda & Leahy, Dermot, 2006. "Investment timing under uncertainty in oligopoly: Symmetry or leadership?," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 1-19.
    7. Inderst, Roman & Wey, Christian, 2003. "Bargaining, Mergers, and Technology Choice in Bilaterally Oligopolistic Industries," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(1), pages 1-19, Spring.
    8. Boyer, Marcel, 2020. "L’économie des organisations : Mythes et réalités," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 96(4), pages 471-498, Décembre.
    9. Boyer, Marcel & Moreaux, Michel, 2000. "Flexibilité et stratégies d’impartition," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 76(2), pages 199-224, juin.
    10. Boyer, Marcel, 1996. "L’économie des organisations," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 72(3), pages 247-274, septembre.
    11. Carlos Ocaña Pérez de Tudela, 1993. "Modelos dinámicos de competencia estratégica y cambio técnico: una panorámica," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 17(1), pages 43-63, January.
    12. Rabah Amir & Filomena Garcia & Malgorzata Knauff, 2006. "Endogenous Heterogeneity in Strategic Models: Symmetry-breaking via Strategic Substitutes and Nonconcavities," Working Papers Department of Economics 2006/29, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    13. Neary, J Peter & Leahy, Dermot, 2000. "Strategic Trade and Industrial Policy towards Dynamic Oligopolies," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(463), pages 484-508, April.
    14. Antoci, A. & Sacco, P.L. & Scarpa, C., 2005. "Flexibility choices and oligopolistic competition in an evolutionary environment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 29(10), pages 1643-1671, October.
    15. Krishnan S. Anand & Karan Girotra, 2007. "The Strategic Perils of Delayed Differentiation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(5), pages 697-712, May.
    16. Kyung Hwan Baik & Sang-Kee Kim, 2020. "Observable versus unobservable R&D investments in duopolies," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 37-66, June.
    17. Latzer, Hélène, 2018. "A Schumpeterian theory of multi-quality firms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 766-802.
    18. Erin Baker, 2006. "Increasing Risk and Increasing Informativeness: Equivalence Theorems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 54(1), pages 26-36, February.
    19. Marcel Boyer & Séverine Clamens, 1997. "Strategic Adoption of a New Technology under Uncertain Implementation," CIRANO Working Papers 97s-40, CIRANO.
    20. David Martimort & Stéphane Straub, 2011. "How to Design Public-Private Partnerships in a Warming World? - When Infrastructure Becomes a Really “Hot” Topic," Working Papers 2011/25, Maastricht School of Management.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Flexibility; observability; duopoly; Flexibilité; observabilité; duopole;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cir:cirwor:98s-36. 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: Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciranca.html .

    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.