Selected Work in Progress
“Competition, Firm Financial Pressure, and Location Strategy: Evidence from the Micro-Mobility Industry”
This paper examines firms’ expansion timing and location choice as a function of firm capabilities, including firm financial pressure, and location traits. While mature, public firms typically make expansion decisions based on earnings and profits, new startup firms are rarely profitable at first, and instead revenue growth is used as a proxy for traditional measures of performance (e.g. EBITDA or non-GAAP earnings). Thus, startup firms are incentivized to expand quickly, gain new users and revenue, to attract more investment, and continue to expand. I formally model the expansion behavior of firms—including startup firms which face revenue pressure—based on Cournot competition that is driven by heterogeneity in focal firm, competitor, and location traits. Variation in firm traits and location traits lead to different expansion outcomes including whether firms expand at all, whether firms enter a market early or later, and which geographical location firms choose. I identify firm best responses using Monte-Carlo simulation. While similar firms experience similar rents and expansion behavior, rents differ as firms’ relative capabilities and revenue pressure differ, making staggered entry more appealing. I focus on a subset of propositions that map to my empirical setting: expansion into metropolitan areas of the US by firms in the micro-mobility industry (scooter, bike, and moped share companies). The empirical results support model predictions that more capable firms expand before less capable firms, but that pressure for revenues will push firms to expand earlier than they would prefer. The data also highlights several areas to extend the model.

“Multinational Firms’ International Expansion: Effect of Intangible Types and Foreignness” (with Wilbur Chung and Siddharth Sharma)
Multinational firms expand abroad based upon their knowledge-based, intangible assets, which can be technical and/or marketing in nature. When applying intangibles abroad, firms face a liability of foreignness – additional costs due to differences between the home and host environments. We argue that there are greater foreignness costs for firms’ marketing versus technical activities. We expect that this differential and firms’ firm-specific stocks of intangible assets affect multinational firms’ international expansion choices. We examine how intangible type and foreignness affect firms’ location choice and entry mode when expanding internationally.

“A Formal Model of Foreign Market Entry Order”
The entry order and location of firm expansion is a complex decision as it depends on location, firm, and competition heterogeneity. This paper examines foreign market entry order in a competitive environment. For international expansion, firms must weigh the challenges associated with liability of foreignness, including competing with domestic firms. I build a formal model of firm expansion into foreign markets based on Cournot competition. There are trade-offs to entering foreign locations early (before competition), or later (after competition). While expansion abroad may increase revenues from exposure to new customers, there are potential drawbacks associated with both early and later international market entry: later foreign entrants face competitors with location specific capabilities, while early entrants to foreign locations face tremendous start-up costs, exceeding those of early domestic entrants. I find that more efficient, capable firms are more likely to enter foreign locations early, but that increasing liability of foreignness makes early expansion less appealing. I highlight a set of model predictions using case studies from the micro-mobility industry including scooter and bike share companies.

Other Media
“Are Bike-shares and E-scooters Rebounding? Evidence from the DC Metro Area” (May, 17, 2021)