A Schumpeterian theory of multi-quality firms

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Latzer, Helene
• 署名单位: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); University Saint-Louis - Bruxelles
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2018.03.005
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 766-802
• 关键词: growth; INNOVATION; income inequality; Multi-product firms

摘要

This paper introduces multi-quality firms within a Schumpeterian framework. Featuring non-homothetic preferences and income disparities in an otherwise standard quality-ladder model, it shows that the resulting differences in the willingness to pay for quality among consumers generate both positive investments in R&D by industry leaders and positive market shares for more than one quality, hence allowing for the emergence of multi-product firms within a vertical innovation framework. This positive investment in R&D by incumbents is obtained with complete equal treatment in the R&D field between the incumbent patent holder and the challengers: in this framework, the incentive for a leader to invest in R&D stems from a surplus appropriation effect specific to vertically-differentiated markets, i.e. the perspective of more efficient price discrimination when expanding the product portfolio. Such a framework makes it possible to analyse the impact of income distribution, as well as that of several possible R&D policies, both on long-term growth and on the allocation of R&D activities between challengers and incumbents. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.