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Tries to assess the place of Da Empoli’s Theory of Economic Equilibrium, a book on the development of thinking on market structures and price theory. It is an early and important, though almost neglected, contribution. Neglected because the main developments in the 1930s and later on were on market classifications and theories of pricing within these market structures, as developed by Chamberlin, Robinson, Stackelberg, Triffin, and de Jong. Chamberlin and Robinson who knew the study either did not pay attention to and/or did not understand the true nature of the work. The approach was too different from theirs. Da Empoli’s work is on the process of competition. In this he has affinity to work of Knight and Clark written in the 1920s. This approach had some later defenders in the 1940s in Clark, Eucken and Hayek. Around 1960 it got a more prominent place in the work of Clark, Hayek, de Jong and Stigler. At almost the same time the other approach petered out, casu quo came to a close.

The extant literature suggests that an increasing number of organisations are adopting manufacturing strategies such as JIT practices to continuously improve provision of products and associated services desired by customers. The authors aim to investigate the relationship between adoption (implementation) of JIT practices and organisational performance taking into account the role of market competition and managerial use of management accounting system (MAS) information.

Data for the study were collected from 92 general managers of Australian manufacturing organisations. Mailed questionnaire and personal interviews were used to collect the data.

The results reveal that market competition and managerial use of MAS (hereafter, the use of MAS) information impact the relationship between an organisation's adoption of JIT practices and its financial performance. The results reported in prior studies on the relationship are mixed; some studies report a positive relationship while others report no relationship. This study explains with empirical evidence when adoption of JIT practices provides financial benefits and when it does not.

The results are of interest to researchers and managers to understand performance implications of adoption of JIT practices and the use of MAS information. For researchers, the results make an incremental contribution to knowledge by revealing that adoption of JIT practices is beneficial in situations where it is supported by the use of MAS information in high competition market. For managers, the results highlight that an organisation will perform better in competitive market if it adopts JIT practices and its managers' information needs are met by its MAS. Specifically, the results will help managers to decide when adoption of JIT practices is beneficial, thereby help prevention of suboptimal decisions and the associated costs.

The study challenges the inconclusive results reported in previous studies on the relationship between firms' adoption of JIT practices and financial performance and offers explanations for those results. The results show that benefits from an organisation's adoption of JIT practices are not universal. Rather, the benefits occur in situations where the use of MAS information and market competition are high.

This paper aims to examine the effect of product market competition on firms’ unethical behavior (FUB) in the Chinese insurance industry and to further explore the boundary conditions of the main effects. On the basis of China’s commercial foundation, the study constructs a conceptual framework of FUB by drawing from the perspective of horizontal competition.

Data were collected from 52 property insurance firms at the branch level observed over the six-year period, 2011-2016. Within this framework, market power and market concentration were used to describe product market competition at firm and industry levels, respectively. The moderating effect of market munificence was analyzed to reveal the theoretical boundaries of the main effect. By drawing upon cost–benefit analysis and social network theory, the study used negative binomial model and Poisson model to quantitatively examine the relationship.

The relationship between product market competition and FUB is curvilinear. Especially at the firm level, market power exhibits a U-shape relationship with FUB; at the industry level, market concentration exhibits a U-shape relationship with FUB. In addition, market munificence positively moderates the impact of firm’s market power on FUB, whereas, market munificence negatively moderates the impact of industrial market concentration on FUB.

This paper explored a new type of unethical behavior that concerns consumers or the third party by emphasizing horizontal competitive contexts; it also provides a better understanding of the FUB–financial performance relationship from the perspective of competition. The moderating effects suggest that when the cause of FUB is different (market power vs market concentration), firms may make opposite ethical choice. However, the sample is from a single industry; it will be fruitful to further verify these findings in other industries such as the manufacturing sector. Moreover, the definition of FUB is confined to explicit forms such as participation or collusion but there is no way to measure the implicit forms of FUB.

First, the governance of FUB should not only focus on the firms themselves, but also take into account the industrial market structure. Second, proper use of governance measures for FUB can increase firms’ benefits from “compliance with the law”, enticing firms to decrease FUB. The third, firms with weak market positions, facing fierce competition, should not be involved in FUB for short-term benefit; indeed, a low-cost strategy can be adopted as the dominant competitive strategy. While, in cases of highly concentrated market structure, firms should strive to avoid involvement in FUB through collusion with other rivals.

As it is a very common phenomenon that firms in competitive relationships may adopt FUB toward third parties or consumers, this trend has become a hot topic in the economic and social development in China. The study’s conclusions reveal that a more proactive and ambitious ethical decision is desirable for all kinds of firms; moreover, firms should make a rational choice between “short-term interest” and “long-term survival”. When firms identify the compliance of business ethics as an opportunity to differentiate themselves and perceive the benefits of decreasing FUB as outweighing the costs, the level of FUB will be inhibited, and social welfare will increase.

The primary contribution of this research resides in identifying product market competition as a previously unexplored predictor of FUB, thus revealing the dark side of product market competition. In addition, nonlinear relationships between product market competition and FUB indicate that situations of competition exert an important influence on FUB both at the firm and industry level. This paper’s conclusion provides a more meticulous theoretical explanation for FUB. This research demonstrates that the traditional ethical framework is not sufficient to explain FUB in a horizontal competitive context. Indeed, resource constraints and competitive pressures should also be considered.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of competition in financial markets on the frequency of portfolio disclosures by mutual funds and its implications for consumer search costs.

The empirical analysis merges the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) survivorship bias-free mutual fund database, the Thompson Financial CDA/ Spectrum holdings database and the CRSP stock price data. The sample covers the time period between 1993 and 2010 and OLS and logistic regressions are used to investigate the impact of competition on fund disclosures.

This paper finds that mutual fund disclosures decrease with market competition and this effect is amplified for funds holding illiquid assets. These results provide empirical support for the findings of Carlin et al. (2102). Mutual funds use portfolio disclosures as a marketing tool to attract investments in a tournament-like market, where superior relative performance and greater visibility are rewarded with convex payoffs. With competition, the likelihood of receiving new investments decreases for each fund and funds respond by reducing costly voluntary disclosures. The disclosure costs are higher for funds holding illiquid assets, and hence, the effect is stronger for them.

This paper has important policy implications for disclosures in a market where relative performance matters. The traditional view is that competition induces voluntary disclosure because entities would like to differentiate themselves from competitors, and hence, competition should increase market transparency. However, this paper sheds light on the negative consequence of competition in a tournament-like mutual fund market.

Multimarket competition is an area of competitive dynamics focused on studying situations where firms compete against each other simultaneously in more than one market. The intensity of competition depends on the aggressiveness and the market contingencies, influencing the competitive strategies. Particularly, the purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of multimarket competition and market contingencies on innovation.

An exploratory qualitative approach using the Grounded Theory is applied with conceptual purposes. The data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews and additional observations with senior strategies and decision-makers. The paper follows an extensive narrative to understand decision-taking processes on competitive strategy with the support of analytical software. The paper was performed in the automotive components industry making seats in two different countries to acknowledge the influence of market contingencies.

The results suggest that multimarket competition does not reduce the level of aggressiveness, but it offers a background that favors opportunities for companies and new business in circumstances of crisis associated to innovation. Depending on the market contingencies, strategies can foster a higher technological innovation, in those cases of high development in the industry, or diversification, when the development is lower.

This paper contributes to enrich multimarket competition theory with the study of innovation strategies in different market conditions, a topic not much explored in multimarket literature. Additionally, it suggests implications for managers attending to different market contingencies.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of investor sentiment on the supply of trade credit, and further explores the difference of the effect of investor sentiment on the supply of trade credit in the environment of strong market competition and weak market competition.

The authors use panel estimation techniques to examine the impact of investor sentiment in the Chinese securities market on the supply of corporate trade credit.

This paper finds that investor sentiment has positive impact on trade credit through three channels of motivation, willingness and ability. At the same time, this paper finds that investor sentiment has stronger impact on enterprises in strong market competition than enterprises in weak market competition.

This paper expands the research on the influence of virtual economy on the real economy, analyzes the difference of the influence of investor sentiment on the supply of trade credit under different market competition conditions.

The paper perfects the mechanism of trade credit decision-making at this stage, and provides more evidence for the virtual economy to act on the real economy.

This paper provides a theoretical basis for the government functional departments to use the investor sentiment to play a positive role in trade credit to improve the market competition and guide the development of China’s capital market in the direction of rationalization and health.

In combination with market competition environment and industry characteristics, this paper investigates external irrational factors and studies how investor sentiment affects trade credit supply.

Fears over public accounting becoming increasingly concentrated have inspired several attempts to study the relationship between competition and audit quality. These studies have yielded conflicting results without a clear reason as to why. This paper aims to propose a new approach and empirically demonstrate a non-monotonic association between competition and audit quality.

Using metropolitan statistical area level data from the USA over the period of 2000–2014, the author shows that the effect that changes in the competition will have on audit quality depends upon the current competitive state of the market.

Audit quality is at its highest level when competition is neither too high nor too low. In addition, the point of inflection at which competition turns from being helpful to harmful is influenced by the saturation of the Big 4 auditors in the market.

These findings can help explain the mixed results of the literature and provide insight into the role that regulators can play in modulating competition.

This is the first paper to document a non-monotonic relationship between competition and audit quality. By introducing and exploring the validity of a non-monotonic component in the audit quality equation, the authors can better determine, which competitive structures generate desired levels of audit quality.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the outcome of European Union (EU) deregulation and competition policies on the competitive conditions of the main EU banking markets.

After a review of deregulation and competitition policies in the EU banking industry, the degree of competition in the largest five EU banking markets using is tessted both structural (concentration ratios and Herfindahl‐Hirshman indices) and non‐structural (H‐statistics and Lerner index) approaches.

Results indicate that EU banking markets are becoming progressively more concentrated and that there is no evidence of an increase in competitive pressure. Country differences are also apparent thereby indicating that despite the sustained regulatory interventions, significant barriers to the integration of EU retail banking markets remain. In line with recent literature, the analysis also seems to provide further evidence that concentration is not necessarily a good proxy for competition.

Increased market concentration and its effects on competition are of relevance in a period of renewed EU regulatory efforts to remove the remaining barriers to the integration of financial markets. The evaluation of competitive conditions and market power in EU banking are therefore of interest to policy‐makers and regulators.

During the last two decades there have been significant policy changes in the banking system, primarily in the emerging market economies. These changes have impacted the competitive structure of banking. In India, since 1991, gradual reform measures have been initiated to improve efficiency, productivity, competition and stability of the banking sector. There is a requirement for a formal approach to examine level of competition in Indian banking sector after the liberalization. This paper aims to address this issue.

The article applied the conjectural variation method using 2‐stage least square for assessing the degree of competition in the Indian banking system.

The paper finds that competitive condition in the Indian banking sector has been improving 1996. However, big banks with market share more than 1 per cent have been exercising some degree of price mark‐up over their marginal cost.

Due to the paucity of data competition at the regional level is not analysed which is a limitation of the article.

Analysis of competition allows the policy formulators to design proper liberalization measures to ensure greater competition in the banking sector so as to prevent any cartel formation.

Since the Indian banking sector is monopolistically competitive, the article advocates for more liberalization measures to improve competition in the Indian banking sector.

To assess competition the article has covered 53 banks involving more than 90 per cent banking sector assets of the country. Through Lerner Index the article has found that big banks are able to charge a price which is about 30 per cent more than their marginal cost. The conjectural variation method is a monopolistic market structure prevailing in the Indian banking sector.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate if and how firm performance in corporate social responsibility (CSR) is related to corporate payouts and how competition in product markets influences this relation.

Logit and Tobit regressions are used to estimate the relation between firm performance in CSR and corporate payouts.

The empirical results show that firm performance in CSR is positively related to the propensity and level of dividends, repurchases and total payouts (dividends plus repurchases). However, the positive relation between CSR performance and corporate payouts is significant only for firms that operate in low competition markets. In high competition markets, CSR performance does not seem to have any significant relation with corporate payouts.

This study uses MSCI social ratings data to measure net scores on CSR. There is no systematic conceptual reason for measuring social performance using MSCI social ratings. Future research should use other measures of social performance (e.g. Dow Jones Sustainability Index, Accountability Ratings and Global Reporting Initiative to estimate the relation between CSR and corporate payouts).

CSR firms are more likely to choose higher payouts when they operate in low competition markets.

This study contributes to the stream of research that evaluates the payout choices of CSR firms and competition in product markets. To the author's knowledge, this is the first study that documents the impact of market competition on the relation between firm performance in CSR and corporate payouts.