High tech firms can mitigate potential risks by diversifying their product–market portfolios. A key research question is how such diversification influences firm survival. A firm exits the market in two ways, specifically, dissolution and acquisition. Here, we model how the diversity of a new firm's product–market portfolio influences the times to both types of exits. Specifically, we allow for...

The integration of the internet into business activities is affecting the trucking industry both directly and indirectly. Direct influences involve changes in information brokerage in the highly fragmented trucking industry. Indirect influences arise as shippers and consignees, which are the customers of trucking firms, invoke demands for lower shipment prices, greater service quality, quicker ...

We examine product market behavior of retailers to determine if diversified or focused firms behave as weak competitors and are perceived as such. We do so in three distinct ways. We first test pricing predictions of a simple switching cost model of market competition, that weaker firms charge higher prices in equilibrium (and sacrifice market share). Not surprisingly, we find higher average pr...

This paper investigates the effect of increased diversification on the internal capital market. Previous literature examines the relationship of lowering diversification level and internal capital market. They find that internal capital market becomes more efficient as firms spin off poorly performing segments. This paper examines how the efficiency of the internal capital market changes after ...

Technological change can trigger industry ?convergence,? as a new technology enables firms from different industries to compete in each others? product-markets. We study the reactions of securities analysts, as sources of institutional pressures for firms, to the similar strategies undertaken by firms from different prior industries responding to industry convergence. We study the wireline tele...

The technology S-curve is a useful framework describing the substitution of new for old technologies at the industry level. In this paper I use information from the technological history of the disk drive industry to examine the usefulness of the S-curve framework for managers at thefirm level in planning for new technology development. Because improvements in over-all disk drive product perfor...

This paper provides firm-level evidence for the relationship between the age structure of the workforce and the adoption of new or significantly improved technologies in service sector firms. Furthermore, it closes a research gap by analyzing the joint impact of the age of the workforce and the enhancement of teamwork on the probability of adopting new technologies. The empirical analyses, that...

In this paper, the Cox proportional hazard model is used to answer several questions. In general, fourteen variables are applied in four groups: firm, industry, expenditure human resources specific characteristics as well. According to the previous literature in this field, the findings of this paper also show that the factors which affect life duration of firms are different between industries...

Innovation & Prosperity Fund (IPfund) in Iran as a governmental organization aims to develop new technology-based firms (NTBF) by its available resources through financing these firms. The innovative projects which refer to IPfund for financing are in a stage which can receive both fixed rate facilities and partnership in the projects, i.e. profit loss sharing (PLS). Since this fund must protec...

We examine how product similarity and competition influences mergers and acquisitions and the ability of firms to exploit product market synergies. Using novel text-based analysis of firm 10K product descriptions, we find three key results. (1) Firms are more likely to enter restructuring transactions when the language describing their assets is similar to all other firms, consistent with their...