Industry Effects on Individual Firm's Competitive Activity : 3rd Party Rivalry and Market Shocks

This paper initially explicates how 3rd party rivalry and industry-wide environmental shocks affect the individual competitive behaviors of firms. With applying event history analysis on more than 15'000 competitive moves, we present how the 63 leading global insurance firms navigated their industry over the period 1998 to 2007. In contrast to prior efforts, we simultaneously consider firm- and industry-level factors in explaining the competitive moves of firms. Our analyses thereby complement prior approaches, such as dyadic analyses, and offer a more comprehensive perspective on the competitive behavior of firms.