Competition

Résumé

Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, individuals, economic and social groups, etc. The rivalry can be over attainment of any exclusive goal, including recognition. Competition occurs in nature, between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. Animals compete over water supplies, food, mates, and other biological resources. Humans usually compete for food and mates, though when these needs are met deep rivalries often arise over the pursuit of wealth, power, prestige, and fame when in a static, repetitive, or unchanging environment. Competition is a major tenet of market economies and business, often associated with business competition as companies are in competition with at least one other firm over the same group of customers. Competition inside a company is usually st

Source officielle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition

À propos de ce résultat

Cette page est générée automatiquement et peut contenir des informations qui ne sont pas correctes, complètes, à jour ou pertinentes par rapport à votre recherche. Il en va de même pour toutes les autres pages de ce site. Veillez à vérifier les informations auprès des sources officielles de l'EPFL.

Publications associées (100)

Chargement

Afficher plus

Publications associées

Chargement

Personnes associées (33)

Personnes associées

Chargement

Unités associées (18)

Unités associées

Chargement

Concepts associés (65)

Concepts associés

Chargement

Cours associés (75)

Cours associés

Chargement

Séances de cours associées (156)

Séances de cours associées

Chargement

Publications associées (100)

As an important policy instrument for guiding innovation, the patent system involves a long-standing tension between creating economic rewards for the original innovators and stifling subsequent R&D activities. The availability of new data allows us to provide unique sights into understanding how effective patents are in providing incentives for innovation and how firms' disclosure of proprietary assets affects the dissemination of knowledge. On the other hand, innovation per se is the fruit of human intellect. The knowledge workforce is, therefore, a crucial component of a country's innovative capacity. The persistent gap in the participation in innovative activities between men and women reflects a misallocation of talented human capital and leaves opportunities for policy implementation. This dissertation ties the questions mentioned above and presents novel evidence on the incentives, diffusion, and disparity in innovative activities. The first essay (chapter 2), in collaboration with Gaétan de Rassenfosse, provides empirical evidence on the real effect of patent expiration on monopoly prices and explores how this effect varies with product market competition. We compile a novel dataset that links patents to consumer products and retail prices for these products from Amazon.com. We find that patent expiration leads to a 7--8 percent drop in product prices. This effect is heterogeneous by patent type and importance and starts one year in advance. We also find a more substantial decline in prices in product markets where competition is intense, consistent with evidence from the pharmaceutical industry. We argue that incumbent innovators lower prices preemptively in the face of generic competition. The second essay (chapter 3), in collaboration with Gaétan de Rassenfosse, studies how firms' disclosure of innovative assets affects the diffusion of inventions. We focus the empirical setting on firms' provision of constructive notice through virtual patent marking (VPM) and exploit patent-level variation in the marking dates. With data collected on marked patents from the VPM web documents of 16 firms, we find an overall effect of VPM is small. However, conditional firms' strong reliance on patents as an appropriability regime, our findings suggest that while VPM induces firms to build subsequent internal inventions on the ones that are commercially valuable, it fends off diffusion to external firms and reduces similarity between inventions. Last but not least, in the third essay (chapter 4), collaborated with Mary Kaltenberg, we explore the role of family policies in closing the innovation gender gap. By matching inventor data to web-scraped inventor age information, we exploit the staggered passage of maternity leave policies across the U.S. and evaluate its impact on the retention and productivity of female inventors. Our findings suggest that maternity leave policy supports women of reproductive ages stay longer in patenting but has little impact on their productivity.

EPFL2021

Chargement

L'événement proxémique : étude des relations de circulation entre piétons aux heures de pointe à Delhi, Los Angeles, Paris et Tokyo

Lucas François Tiphine

In a context of traffic networks saturation related to urbanisation acceleration, this research is aimed at contributing to the scientific debate on this issue by building a model to describe dynamic pedestriansâ physical distances regulation behaviours in public places. The urban dimension of Edward T. Hallâs theory of proxemics is taken as an initial inspiration. This author argues that a correlation exists between the organisation of space at the macro level of Society and the micro level of individual behaviours. It leads him to a synthetic distinction between âcontact culturesâ and ânon-contact culturesâ. The former tends to prefer smaller distances at all scales of space organisation compared to the latter. This hypothesis is considered seriously in the research. Nonetheless, Hallâs macro culturalist anthropological area distinction (e.g.: the âArab Worldâ = âcontact cultureâ) is not relevant anymore in the urban globalization era. Therefore, a new âmicromacroâ theory, based on 4 macro orientations expected to have an influence on micro behaviours, is proposed: equality between urban citizens, individualisation, relative urbanity and urban planning regulation. Two other scalar correlation theories of spatial relations description are also tested. One, called âmicromesoâ, is based on Roger Barkerâs behaviour setting theory. It states that proxemical behaviours are correlated with intermediate units related to a specific place and time such as âthe subway at peak hoursâ. The other theory, called âmicroâ, states that any form of scalar correlation is an ecological fallacy. Accordingly, the description process has to remain at the very level of physical distance relations between individuals. These different theories are tested empirically in Delhi, Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo which all answer differently to the macro orientations of the micromacro theory. Behaviours inside the metro and outside of it are observed (micromeso theory). In each condition, similar levels of spatial competition for places are taken into consideration (micro theory). The results lead to conclude that traffic relations between pedestrians are best described when considered cumulatively as micro > micromeso > micromacro by order of efficiency. Eventually, I defend the thesis that urban dwellers should debate of traffic relationships micro conditions improvements rather than focusing on micromacro and micromeso explanations of the networks breakdowns which can be found for instance in the competition promoted between individuals on civil behaviours.

EPFL2018

Chargement

This thesis aims to provide novel analyses and data that improve the understanding of the financing of investments in clean technologies. In particular, this thesis explores the role that private and public actors play in supporting young innovative firms. The first chapter of this thesis exploits original data on about 1000 startups that have participated in Venture Kick, the leading Swiss venture competition. We study the circumstances under which venture competitions' certification and cash prize impact startups' future survival and funding prospects. On the one hand, we observe that the certification only has a significant effect on startups whose quality can be more objectively assessed by experts (e.g., hard sciences startups). On the other hand, we find that the competition's cash prize only extends the runway of startups with low running costs (e.g., internet & mobile). These results highlight industry-specific heterogeneity in the effect of early-stage startup support, which bears implications for the design of entrepreneurial programs.The second chapter takes a step back and looks into the role of two prominent actors involved in financing new clean technologies: venture capital (VC) and governments. This essay examines the reasons behind the failure of the VC boom in clean energy startups in the early 2010s. We find that lackluster demand for clean energy products and a lower potential for outsized returns make clean energy firms less attractive to VC than startups in ICT or biotech. Conversely, characteristics such as high-capital intensity or long development timeframe seem to be less important. These findings suggest that the most effective way for governments to improve the attractiveness of early-stage clean energy investments is to implement demand-side policies rather than to provide direct financial support. With demand-side policies in place, governments could then try to plug the remaining funding gaps themselves by targeting startups with limited potential for outsized returns.In the second half of this thesis, the focus shifts onto governments' environmental policies and how they affect private investments in clean technologies. In the third chapter, we develop novel news-based indices of US environmental policy using text-mining techniques. We show that our general environmental policy index and sub-topic indices (e.g., renewables or climate negotiation) meaningfully capture the evolution of environmental policy in the United States. Using these indices, we find that greater salience of environmental policy is associated with increased VC investments in clean technologies and reduced stock returns for high-emissions firms. In the fourth and last chapter, we study the impact of policy uncertainty on private investment decisions. To do so, we construct a novel index of environmental policy uncertainty (EnvPU). This index reveals that uncertainty is pervasive in the history of environmental policy and is often synchronized with election cycles. We find that increases in our EnvPU index are associated with lower VC investments in cleantech startups and higher volatility in green firms' stocks. The findings from Chapters 3 and 4 suggest that, while the increased salience of environmental policy can boost investments, policymakers should ensure that their actions do not exacerbate policy uncertainty and hinder investments towards a low-carbon economy.

EPFL2022

Chargement

Afficher plus

EPFL2021

EPFL2022

L'événement proxémique : étude des relations de circulation entre piétons aux heures de pointe à Delhi, Los Angeles, Paris et Tokyo

Lucas François Tiphine

EPFL2018