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ItemInnovation and business strategy in healthcare markets(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-11-06) Zhai, ZheIn the first chapter, we use patent and financial data from the pharmaceutical industry to examine the effects of international innovation on profitability and the channels through which the effects take place. Positive impacts of internationalization are found for both innovation performance and financial performance. In the second chapter, we examine the impact of uncertainty on firms’ decisions related to R&D expenditures, patenting, and physical capital investments using a sample of firms in the global pharmaceuticals industry. Our results indicate that uncertainty has mixed effect on the innovation variables: it affects R&D negatively, but has a weak and ambiguous effect on patents. The estimated impact on capital investment is negative. In the third chapter, using U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recall data from 2001-2013, we examine various factors that may determine recalls. We consider a wide range of firm-specific and device-specific measures such as their R&D expenditures, foreign versus domestic ownership, size of firms, degree of vertical integration, device complexity, profitability, among several other variables. In our empirical analysis, we examine whether there are systematic longer-run differences in recalled devices across the firms in our sample, and whether firm-specific and device-specific attributes can explain why some firms systematically have a higher or lower number of recalls.
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ItemInvesting in high-speed passenger rail networks: insights from complex international supply chain, technologies and multiproduct firms(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012-05-07) Zheng, WenThe growth of population and business during the rapid urbanization process in the twentieth century has generated significant demand for transportation. As the demands have grown, road and air transportation are suffering from significant congestion and delays. Continuing expansion of highways and airports has become both expensive and difficult, along with not being able to provide adequate solutions to the growing congestion. One alternative, which is being pursued by many countries, is to invest in efficient high-speed rail networks to meet the pressing demand for mass passenger transportation. This alternative is also one that may have beneficial impacts by reducing energy consumption and alleviating some of the environmental concerns. But to make these infrastructure investments, governments need to make difficult decisions due to the complexity of the industry and technologies involved. This thesis examines decision making by government for such investments. In order to carefully study the industry, we use a two part approach. First, we examine the HSR industry supply-chain. We create a detailed taxonomy of the industry supply-chain and highlight various aspects of the advanced technologies being used, the sophisticated multiproduct nature of the firms, and the diverse international location of the companies. Second, we gather information on all the international HSR contracts between 2001-2011. These contracts enable us to examine business strategies pursued by the major HSR trainset suppliers and component manufacturers, insights into the size of the orders and type of trainsets being delivered, and the formation of partnerships and collaborations to meet the complex demands imposed by Governments when they invite bids for these expensive projects. A detailed examination of the supply-chain shows that the core technologies and competencies are highly concentrated in those countries which historically have had high demand for high-speed rail. Germany, Japan, France, for example, have the highest number of trainset and component suppliers. In more recent years, South Korea and China have emerged as the new frontiers of trainset and components suppliers. This implies that countries who are outside of this group are highly dependent on either importing these technologies and investments or make a concerted effort to develop them via partnerships and technology transfer agreements. Our examination of contracts shows that the size of HSR investment order is important for both business and government strategy. The order size determines the extent of domestic content and production. While many components will inevitably be imported, a larger order size may allow for various components to be manufactured domestically. Order size also appears to influence the nature of partnerships among the firms in the industry. We observe a growing number of HSR investment partnerships among trainset suppliers over time, possibly due to the need to pool risk in these highly complex and uncertain investments, as well as the changing competitive dynamic of HSR markets.
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ItemThe diffusion of health information technology: practice characteristics and competition as drivers of adoption(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010-04-22) Callaway, BrantThis paper considers the adoption of Health Information Technology (HIT) by physician clinics with ten or fewer physicians. The paper considers the theoretical economics literature on technology adoption for a new technology and has a place in the empirical tests of these models. The two major hypotheses tested in the paper are that the probability of adopting HIT increases with the number of physicians working at the clinic and if the clinic is part of a chain of clinics, and that it also increases with increased competition at the market level measured by the number of clinics per 10,000 residents in a county. To test these hypotheses, the paper first estimates a baseline logit model followed by three hazard rate models. In each case, clinic size is found to have positive though not significant effect on the probability of adoption (in the logit model) or to decrease the predicted time to adoption for the clinic (in the hazard rate models), being in a chain of clinics is found to have a strong positive and significant on the probability of adoption, and increased competition is found to have a positive though not significant effect on the probability of adoption.
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ItemEffect of oil prices on returns to alternative energy investments(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-12-02) Schmitz, AnthonyThis paper presents the role of alternative energy technologies in displacing fossil fuels as the world's primary energy source. To that end, a CAPM-GARCH multi-factor market model is used to investigate the relationship between returns on oil and alternative energy stocks. Results show that an increase in oil prices and the broad market have a statistically significant and positive impact on alternative energy stock returns. Furthermore, the alternative energy sector is substantially more risky than the broad market but has the potential for higher returns. This highlights the infancy and inherently risky nature of the alternative energy sector today, but demonstrates the potential for substantial future investment gain as alternative energy technologies become more mature and widely available. Interestingly, estimation of the alternative energy index model indicated the presence of abnormal returns which was not the case for the solar index model, implying that the abnormal returns were generated from a different sectoral component of the alternative energy index.
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ItemThe U.S. passenger car industry in the 1980's(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-02-15) Yang, LingAmerican automobile manufacturers experienced a bitter-sweet time during the 1980s. On one hand, they gained support from the government to prevent mass imports of small cars from Japan; while on the other hand, they still lost market share to their Japanese counterparts and ever since then, they have been facing fierce competition from the Japanese auto-makers. To better understand today s competition in the automobile market, it is crucial to study the industry in the 1980s when the scope of the market began to change. This paper focuses mainly on studying the compact car market in the 1980s, which was the primary competition field then. It first briefly introduces the rise of Japanese automobile industry, and the economic background of the decade. Then it examines the U.S. compact car segment in detail, and finally constructs a model to explain consumer decisions on purchasing compact cars. In the end, it gives suggestion to the Big Three companies according to the findings presented in this paper.