G. Parker - Research |
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Parker's current research interests fall into the following tracks:
In addition to funds provided by Tulane and the Entergy Tulane Energy Institute, these research tracks are supported by the following grants: National Science Foundation Grant SES-0323227 (2003-2007): "Organizational Mechanisms for Supply Chain Integration during Product and Process Development." $245,000 grant over three years to investigate how firms can most effectively manage outsourced product and process development across supply chain boundaries. Collaborators: Alison Davis-Blake and Edward Anderson of University of Texas at Austin. National Science Foundation Grant IIS-0338662 (2003-2005): "Promoting Free Market and Open Source Software Innovation Through Better Licensing." $50,500 grant to investigate how copyright length and degrees of openness affect software innovation rates, producer surplus, and social welfare. Collaborator: Marshall Van Alstyne of University of Michigan. The learning, integration, and outsourcing track examines learning and integration in supply chains. (1) The first sub-track explores the training and retention of highly skilled employees such as engineers, information management professionals, and skilled trades. It also explores when firms should develop sub-components internally, and when work should be farmed out to the supply base. These are complex questions due to the effects of learning, technological change, agency, and scale economies. (2) A second sub-track addresses the “humpty-dumpty” problem. Improved information technology has contributed to the new virtually-integrated firm, composed of an inter-linked network of small specialized firms. Once a lead firm sources design and production of products or services to a supply network, how does the firm ensure the integration of all of its disaggregated knowledge bases to produce a coherent product or service that satisfies customer expectations? And, as a key leverage point to that question, how does one put boundaries on the pieces to be outsourced in the first place? Do we need a new class of professional integrators to act as the glue to put humpty-dumpty back together again? (3) The third sub-track examines the interfaces between organizations to ask if they are designed for the efficient transfer of information necessary to design and build complex products with supply chain partners. The information economics track explores the economics of information products and industries. (1) The first sub-track examines the pricing and design of information goods. In particular, the work considers internetwork externalities that create two-sided markets, to predict when firm profits can be increased by giving away information goods. Two reasons for free information goods are considered. First, firms can increase profits in related markets where they enjoy oligopoly or monopoly positions. Second, firms might use free information goods to foreclose markets and reduce the profits of rival firms. (2) The second sub-track explores the structure of returns to investments in internet firms. The structure of these markets can be described using options and auction theory to predict highly variable and skewed returns, aggressive marketing behavior, and losses to most market participants. (3) The third sub-track examines intellectual property protection for information goods. Specifically, we consider the trade-off between the incentives to create which are promoted by strong copyrights versus the product adoption, which open source intellectual property regimes promote. Instead of strong copyright protection versus no copyright protection, we explore the profit and social welfare implications of the middle ground where incentives to create are maintained through temporary copyrights which then revert to open source licenses. The energy markets design track examines existing and theoretical markets to analyze the efficiency of the market and potential design changes to improve market performance. |
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