Competition, Regulatory Policy, and Firms’ Resource Investments: The Case of Renewable Energy Technologies
研究了监管政策如何调节竞争对企业新资源投资的影响，发现监管会削弱竞争对手投资对自身投资的促进作用，且这种削弱效应在技术距离旧资源越远、政策越成熟时越强。
We study the interplay between regulatory mandates and competition on a focal firm's new resource investments. While prior literature has separately pointed to the influence of competition and regulatory policy on a focal firm's resource decisions, less is known about how the policy effect interacts with the competitive effect. Studying how regulatory mandates moderate the effect of competition on a focal firm's new resource investments, we show that resource redeployment is not simply a function of internal firm decisions but a response to external forces. We find that regulatory mandates dampen the effect of competitors' new resource investments on a focal firm's new resource investments. Distinguishing between different clean technology types, we show that this dampening effect is the stronger, the more distant the new resource is from incumbents' old resource base, and the more established the mandate is. We test our hypotheses in the context of renewable energy investments in waste-to-energy, wind, and solar in the U.S. electricity industry. Our data comprise 1542 utilities and private energy firms and their renewable investments from 1999 to 2010.