IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wsu/wpaper/espinola-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

When Should a Firm Expand Its Business? The Signaling Implications of Business Expansion

Author

Listed:
  • Ana Espinola-Arredondo
  • Esther Gal-Or
  • Felix Munoz-Garcia

    (School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University)

Abstract

We examine an incumbent's trade-off between the improved efficiency that business expansion facilitates and the signaling role that business expansion plays in conveying information to potential entrants about the state of demand. We demonstrate that both separating and pooling equilibria survive the Intuitive Criterion. Essentially, in contrast to models with asymmetric information about unit cost, incumbents' benefits from investing in a signal are not necessarily monotonic in the state of demand. We investigate how the extent of in formativeness of the outcome depends on the enhanced efficiency that the incumbent's expansion facilitates and the priors of the entrant. Revised November 2009.

Suggested Citation

  • Ana Espinola-Arredondo & Esther Gal-Or & Felix Munoz-Garcia, 2009. "When Should a Firm Expand Its Business? The Signaling Implications of Business Expansion," Working Papers 2008-16, School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsu:wpaper:espinola-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://faculty.ses.wsu.edu/WorkingPapers/AnaEspinola/WP2008-16.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2008
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mata, Jose & Portugal, Pedro, 1994. "Life Duration of New Firms," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 227-245, September.
    2. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1982. "Limit Pricing and Entry under Incomplete Information: An Equilibrium Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(2), pages 443-459, March.
    3. Dixit, Avinash, 1980. "The Role of Investment in Entry-Deterrence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 90(357), pages 95-106, March.
    4. Dennis, William Jr., 1997. "More than you think: An inclusive estimate of business entries," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 175-196, May.
    5. David B. Ridley, 2008. "Herding versus Hotelling: Market Entry with Costly Information," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(3), pages 607-631, September.
    6. Asher Wolinsky, 1983. "Retail Trade Concentration Due to Consumers' Imperfect Information," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(1), pages 275-282, Spring.
    7. Matthews, Steven A & Mirman, Leonard J, 1983. "Equilibrium Limit Pricing: The Effects of Private Information and Stochastic Demand," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(4), pages 981-996, July.
    8. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    9. Antonio E. Bernardo & Ivo Welch, 2001. "On the Evolution of Overconfidence and Entrepreneurs," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(3), pages 301-330, September.
    10. B. Curtis Eaton & Richard G. Lipsey, 1980. "Exit Barriers are Entry Barriers: The Durability of Capital as a Barrier to Entry," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(2), pages 721-729, Autumn.
    11. A. Michael Spence, 1977. "Entry, Capacity, Investment and Oligopolistic Pricing," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 8(2), pages 534-544, Autumn.
    12. Stahl, Konrad, 1982. "Differentiated Products, Consumer Search, and Locational Oligopoly," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1-2), pages 97-113, September.
    13. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1986. "A "Signal-Jamming" Theory of Predation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(3), pages 366-376, Autumn.
    14. Dan Lovallo & Colin Camerer, 1999. "Overconfidence and Excess Entry: An Experimental Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 306-318, March.
    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. Espínola-Arredondo, Ana & Gal-Or, Esther & Muñoz-García, Félix, 2011. "When should a firm expand its business?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 729-745.
    2. Michael Waldman, 1987. "Underinvestment in Entry Deterrence: When and Why," UCLA Economics Working Papers 456, UCLA Department of Economics.
    3. Bagwell, Kyle & Wolinsky, Asher, 2002. "Game theory and industrial organization," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 49, pages 1851-1895, Elsevier.
    4. Kyle Bagwell & Garey Ramey, 1991. "Oligopoly Limit Pricing," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 22(2), pages 155-172, Summer.
    5. Majumdar, Sumit K. & Mishra, Birendra & Chang, Hsihui, 2007. "Technology investment strategy in the presence of competitor entry: Broadband deployment in the US telecommunications industry," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 422-430.
    6. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, September.
    7. Luigi Brighi & Marcello D'Amato, 2017. "Strategic Effects of Investment and Private Information: The Incumbent’s Curse," Department of Economics 0121, University of Modena and Reggio E., Faculty of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    8. Michael Waldman, 1983. "Limited Collusion and Entry Deterence," UCLA Economics Working Papers 306, UCLA Department of Economics.
    9. Luigi Brighi & Marcello D'Amato, 2017. "Strategic Effects of Investment and Private Information: The Incumbent’s Curse," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 134, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    10. Michael Waldman, 1987. "Noncooperative Entry Deterrence, Uncertainty, and the Free Rider Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(2), pages 301-310.
    11. Flavio Toxvaerd, 2017. "Dynamic limit pricing," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 48(1), pages 281-306, March.
    12. Iñaki Aguirre, 1999. "Information transmission and incentives not to price discriminate," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 1(3), pages 283-299.
    13. Dennis W. Carlton & Michael Waldman, 2002. "The Strategic Use of Tying to Preserve and Create Market Power in Evolving Industries," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 33(2), pages 194-220, Summer.
    14. Rupayan Pal & Vinay Ramani, 2017. "Will a matchmaker invite her potential rival in?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 806-819, December.
    15. Le Coq, Chloé & Sturluson, Jon Thor, 2012. "Does opponents’ experience matter? Experimental evidence from a quantity precommitment game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 265-277.
    16. Ajay Kalra & Surendra Rajiv & Kannan Srinivasan, 1998. "Response to Competitive Entry: A Rationale for Delayed Defensive Reaction," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(4), pages 380-405.
    17. Jeitschko, Thomas D. & Normann, Hans-Theo, 2012. "Signaling in deterministic and stochastic settings," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 39-55.
    18. Jin‐Hyuk Kim, 2014. "Employee Poaching: Why It Can Be Predatory," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(5), pages 309-317, July.
    19. Cesaltina Pacheco Pires & Margarida Catalão‐Lopes, 2020. "Does asymmetric information always help entry deterrence? Can it increase welfare?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 686-705, July.
    20. Barbara J. Spencer & James A. Brander, 1983. "International R & D Rivalry and Industrial Strategy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 50(4), pages 707-722.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Business expansion; Signaling; Entry deterrence. Failure rates;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L12 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Monopoly; Monopolization Strategies
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:wsu:wpaper:espinola-4. 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: Danielle Engelhardt (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecwsuus.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.