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Information Acquisition and Innovation under Competitive Pressure

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  • Andrei Barbos

    (Department of Economics, University of South Florida)

Abstract

This paper studies information acquisition under competitive pressure and proposes a model to examine the relationship between product market competition and the level of innovative ac- tivity in an industry. Our paper offers theoretical support for recent empirical results that point to an inverted-U shape relationship between competition and innovation. The model presents an optimal timing decision problem where a firm endowed with an idea trades the benefits of waiting for additional information on whether this idea can be converted into a successful project against the cost of delaying innovation: a given firm's profit following innovation is decreasing in the number of firms that invested at earlier dates. By recognizing that a firm can intensify its innovative activity on two dimensions, a risk dimension and a quantitative dimension, we show that firms solve this trade-off precisely so as to generate the inverted-U shape relationship.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrei Barbos, 2013. "Information Acquisition and Innovation under Competitive Pressure," Working Papers 0713, University of South Florida, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:usf:wpaper:0713
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    Cited by:

    1. Barbos, Andrei, 2013. "De-synchronized clocks in preemption games with risky prospects," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 203-216.
    2. Catherine Bobtcheff & Jérôme Bolte & Thomas Mariotti, 2017. "Researcher’s Dilemma," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(3), pages 969-1014.
    3. Samuli Leppälä, 2020. "Innovation, R&D Spillovers, and the Variety and Concentration of the Local Industry Structure," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 122(3), pages 1231-1255, July.
    4. Yang, Jinrui, 2016. "Monopoly VS Competition: Market Structure’s Impact on Product Innovation-with Endogenous Quality of New Product," MPRA Paper 70094, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Krasteva, Silvana & Sharma, Priyanka & Wang, Chu, 2020. "Patent policy, imitation incentives, and the rate of cumulative innovation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 509-533.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Innovation; Information Acquisition; Timing Games; Preemption;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General
    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General

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