New Economics Papers
on Industrial Organization
Issue of 2005‒11‒09
three papers chosen by



  1. Does geography play a role in takeovers? Theory and Finnish micro-level evidence By Petri Böckerman; Eero Lehto
  2. A comparison between office rent determinants of Istanbul and other major metropolitan areas By V.Atilla Oven; Dilek Pekdemir
  3. Airline Price Competition: A Time Series Analysis of 'Low-Cost' Carriers. By David Edward Pitfield

  1. By: Petri Böckerman; Eero Lehto
    Abstract: This study explores domestic inter-regional merger flows. Theoretical considerations based on monitoring are developed. The empirical part of the study is based on the comprehensive public data on domestic mergers and acquisitions that is matched to the micro-level data sources maintained by Statistics Finland in order to obtain several variables that help to characterize the companies involved. The Finnish evidence reveals that geographical closeness matters a great deal for inter-regional merger flows. This means that a great number of domestic mergers occur within narrowly defined regions. Domestic merger flows substantially reinforce the core-periphery dimension. The most important finding from matched data is that the strong ability by an acquiring company to monitor the target (measured by the knowledge embodied in human capital) is able to support mergers that occur across distant locations, other things being equal. Geographical closeness and proximity across industries are not related, based on the Finnish evidence.
    Date: 2004–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa04p15&r=ind
  2. By: V.Atilla Oven; Dilek Pekdemir
    Abstract: Office rent determinants are well established for various metropolitan areas in the US [2, 3, 25] and some other international centres in Europe, especially in the UK [12, 17, 28]. The site selection and investment decisions for new office construction will largely depend on the information how office rent determinants are ranked according to their importance. For this purpose, the ranking of 52 office rent determinants for the metropolitan area of Istanbul are presented using the technique of factor analysis, and later compared with the reported findings of available major metropolitan areas. It has been found that, the only parameter commonly found significant is the vacancy rate. The results point out that regional differences and different economic conditions can significantly alter the perceived importance of rental determinants. Keywords: office rent determinants, factor analysis.
    Date: 2004–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa04p166&r=ind
  3. By: David Edward Pitfield
    Abstract: This paper, after providing an introduction to the operating context of low cost carriers in Europe, examines the competitive pricing behaviour of airlines. Data is collected by route for cases where more than one airline is in direct competition. Data on fares is obtained from the internet for two airlines with competing services to Alicante, Prague and Malaga, departing from Nottingham East Midlands Airport in the UK, for the six working weeks up to and including the actual departure. These destinations represent leisure traffic. Two domestic business destinations were also selected to illustrate price competition on business demand where departure times were within a maximum of 20 minutes of each other and a further examination of competing services from London Gatwick (LGW) was made. Cross Correlation Analysis is used to examine whether, subject to a variety of lags, the prices offered by one airline can be seen to be both correlated with the other price series and to lead it. This provides some insight into the pricing strategy adopted by the competitors. Autocorrelation Functions (ACFs) and Partial Autocorrelation Functions (PACFs) can also be produced on the prices offered by each airline. These suggest the nature of the ARIMA model that can be fitted to the series and these models can show the degree to which series values are correlated with their own past values and whether a reasonable model could be based on an ARIMA approach. The relative strength of these two relationships is examined; are prices more closely explained by the competitor's actions or the airlines own past price setting?
    Date: 2004–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa04p680&r=ind

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