Intensity and Importance of Competition for a Grass (Festuca rubra) and a Legume (Trifolium pratense) Vary with Environmental Changes

How plant competition varies across environmental gradients has been a long debate among ecologists. We conducted a growth chamber experiment to determine the intensity and importance of competition for plants grown in changed environmental conditions. Festuca rubra and Trifolium pratense were grown in monoculture and in two- and/or three- species mixtures under three environmental treatments. The measured competitive variations in terms of growth （height and biomass） were species-dependent. Competition intensity for Festuca increased with decreased productivity, whilst competition importance displayed a humpback response. However, significant response was detected in neither competition intensity nor importance for Trifolium. Intensity and importance of competition followed different response patterns, suggesting that they may not be correlated along an environmental gradient. The biological and physiological variables of plants play an important role to determine the interspecific competition associated with competition intensity and importance. However, the competitive feature can be modified by multiple environmental changes which may increase or hinder how competitive a plant is.

The Strategic Analysis of Demand Forecast-Sharing in a Hybrid-Format Online Platform Supply Chain

This paper examines the optimal forecast-sharing strategy in a hybrid-format online platform supply chain where a supplier sells a product through agency format and reselling format provided by a platform retailer who possesses demand forecasts from two channels.Forecast asymmetry and co-opetitive relationship arise between the platform retailer and the supplier,which affect their operational decisions and the supply chain’s performance.To improve supply chain efficiency,we compare different forecast-sharing strategies(i.e.,no forecast sharing,sharing a single forecast,and sharing two forecasts),and analyze the effects of co-opetitive parameters on the optimal forecast-sharing strategy.Our analysis shows that forecast sharing is always beneficial to the supplier,and sharing two forecasts is more beneficial than sharing a single forecast.Whereas for the platform retailer and the whole supply chain,forecast sharing is beneficial only under certain conditions,depending on the co-opetitive parameters.The optimal forecast-sharing strategy is the result of a combination of the negative effect of double marginalization in reselling channel and the positive effect of responding pricing to demand uncertainty in agency channel.We illustrate the parameter regions of the platform retailer’s voluntary sharing,contract sharing,and no sharing,and also find that higher channel competition intensity,higher market share of agency channel,and higher commission rate can promote the platform retailer’s voluntary sharing.Our study extends the research scope of demand forecast-sharing and sheds light on the decision-making processes for managing a hybrid-format online platform supply chain.

What Drives Up Land Price in China?Evidence from Bidding Processes of Land Auctions in Beijing

The land price in big cities draws much attention and discussion for its skyrocketing appreciation.Most researches are from the macro perspective due to data restriction.This paper aims to investigate the critical factors in the price formation process of a land auction,using the listing auction micro bidding-level data in Beijing from 2013 to 2018.We construct a model for the relationship between quitting price and land,bidder's characteristics,housing market conditions and competitive intensity(including private and public signals),then we use OLS for identification.We find that competitive intensity increases the quitting price by causing competition and interaction between bidders.More importantly,we find evidence of cheating behavior in the land market.Results show that bidders have higher quitting prices when they are in a joint venture,and when a central SOE developer or a top 10 developer exist in the joint venture.We also find different behavior of developers in the short run and long run.Our research contributes to the literature of land auctions by analyzing the price formation process and developers'behavior.We also provide supporting evidence for the government to make adjustments of the auction system and identify the cheating developers.

Competition Networks as a New Insight into the Determinants of Firm Technological and Market Performance

Based on the global patents of 109 mobile phone vendors filed from 1992 to 2016 and sales data from 2002to 2016, this study formulates technological and market competition networks. We find that an increasingly large number of firms joined the market, leading to a competition network of increasingly larger scale and greater density. We also propose indicators to measure competitive intensity, which reflects the extent to which the firms are competing against each other. We examine the role of competitive intensity in mediating firms’ performance. We employ a weighted least squares regression model for the empirical analysis. The empirical results confirm the significant role of competitive intensity in determining firm performance. However, in technological and market competition networks, competitive intensity generates essentially different mediating impacts. For technological competition, competitive intensity positively mediates the impact between the leaders’ and followers’ technological performances. There is an asymmetric mediating effect that enlarges the gap between the technological performances of leading vendors and their followers. Accordingly, competitive intensity may generate different impacts on the technological performance of leaders and followers. In comparison, the competitive intensity embedded in the market competition network has a symmetrical role in mediating the mutual impact between the leaders’ and followers’ market performances, that is, it neither enlarges nor narrows the market performance gap between leaders and followers. Therefore, when creating a development strategy, firm managers need to account for their competitors’ behaviors, carefully analyze the significance of these behaviors, and adjust their strategic arrangements in a timely manner.