Essays on durable goods consumption and firm innovation

This dissertation comprises three individual chapters. Chapter Two examines how free riding across neighbors influenced the diffusion of color television sets in rural China. Chapter Three tests for asymmetric information between a firm’s management and other investors concerning its patent output. Chapter Four discusses how knowledge stocks influence a patenting firm’s later diversification. Chapter Two documents the existence of a type of network effects—free riding across neighbors—in the consumption of color television sets in rural China, which reduces the propensity of non-owners to purchase. I construct a model of the timing of the purchase of a durable good in the presence of free riding, and test its key implications using household survey data in rural China. Chapter Three tests for asymmetric information between a firm’s management and other investors about its patent output by examining insider trading patterns and stock price changes in R&D intensive firms. It demonstrates that management has considerable information about its patent output beyond what is known to investors. It also shows that the predictive power of insider trading patterns on patent output comes from purchases rather than sales. Chapter Four discusses two sequential channels through which knowledge stocks may influence a firm’s later diversification. One is that firms with more knowledge are more likely to enter a new industry. The other is that firms’ businesses have a better chance of surviving, conditional on being formed. By examining U.S. public patenting firms in manufacturing sectors for 1984-1996, I find that knowledge stocks predict the likelihood of new industry entry when controlling for firm size. However, this predictive power is weakened when diversification effects are included. On the other hand, a survival study of newly established segments shows that initial knowledge stocks have significant positive effects on segment survival, whereas diversification effects are insignificant.

Past, Present, and Future: The Food Service Industry and Its Changes

In the article - Past, Present, and Future: The Food Service Industry and Its Changes - by Brother Herman E. Zaccarelli, International Director, Restaurant, Hotel and Institutional Management Institute at Purdue University, Brother Zaccarelli initially states: “Educators play an important role in the evolution of the food service industry. The author discusses that evolution and suggests how educators can be change agents along with management in that evolutionary progression.” The author goes on to wax philosophically, as well as speak generically about the food service industry; to why it offers fascinating and rewarding careers. Additionally, he writes about the influence educators have on students in this regard. “Educators can speak about how the food service industry has benefited them both personally and professionally,” says Brother Zaccarelli. “We get excited about alerting students to the many opportunities and, in fact, serve as “salespersons” for the industry to whoever (school administrators, legislators, and peers in the educational institution) will listen.” Brother Zaccarelli also speaks to growth and changes in food service, and even more importantly about the people and faces behind everything that food service, and hospitality in general comprise. The author will have you know, that people are what drive an educator. “What makes the food service industry so great? At the heart of this question's answer is people: the people whom it serves in institutional and commercial operations of all types; the people who work within it; the people who provide the goods, services, and equipment to it; the people who study it,” says Brother Zaccarelli. “All of these groups have, of course, a vested personal and/or professional interest in seeing our industry improve.” Another concept the author would like you to absorb, and it’s even more so true today than yesterday, is the prevalence of convergence and divergence within food service. For food service and beyond, it is the common denominators and differences that make the hospitality-food service industry so dynamic and vibrant. These are the winds of change presented to an educator who wants to have a positive impact on students. The author warns that the many elements involved in the food service industry conspire to erode quality of service in an industry that is also persistently expanding, and whose cornerstone principles are underpinned by service itself. “The three concerns addressed - quality, employees, and marketing - are intimately related,” Brother Zaccarelli says in stripping-down the industry to bare essentials. He defines and addresses the issues related to each with an eye toward how education can reconcile said issues.