Firm Recruitment Behaviour: Sequential or Non‐sequential Search?

In the extensive job search literature, studies assume either sequential or non‐sequential search. This article introduces a novel method to test the hypothesis that firms search sequentially based on the relationship between the number of rejected job applicants and the number of filled vacancies. We distinguish between ten different search methods. For most search methods, including methods that rely on social networks and temporary help agencies, we find that sequential search cannot be rejected. However, when firms use advertising or public/private employment agencies, sequential search is rejected. Hence, we find that both forms of search are relevant for our understanding of the labour market. Further, the form of search is closely related to the search method used.     

Public procurement in the presence of capital taxation

This paper considers governments’ public procurement decisions as a way of influencing industry structure. In a federation in which capital is mobile and capital taxation is harmonized, a home bias in public procurement can potentially be explained as an effort to increase the capital intensity of local production and to attract taxable capital. As a result, governments may prefer domestic firms to more efficient foreign firms.     

Evidence on Caste Based Discrimination

Caste based quotas in hiring have existed in the public sector in India for decades. Recently there has been debate about introducing similar quotas in private sector jobs. This paper uses a correspondence study to determine the extent of caste based discrimination in the Indian private sector. On average low-caste applicants need to send 20% more resumes than high-caste applicants to get the same callback. Differences in callback which favor high-caste applicants are particularly large when hiring is done by male recruiters or by Hindu recruiters. This finding provides evidence that differences in callback between high and low-caste applicants are not entirely due to statistical discrimination. High-caste applicants are also differentially favored by firms with a smaller scale of operations, while low-caste applicants are favored by firms with a larger scale of operations. This finding is consistent with taste-based theories of discrimination and with commitments made by large firms to hire actively from among low-caste groups.     

A theory of minimum wage compliance (or voluntary recognition of unions)

An urn-ball matching model of the labor market is used to develop a theory of minimum wage compliance or voluntary recognition of unions. Workers can direct their search but, in the absence of wage commitment from the firms, they have no basis to do so. The default means of wage formation in one-on-one matches is Nash bargaining. When there are multiple applicants competition drives the workers down to their continuation value. By attracting more applicants, a binding wage floor provides a means for firms to increase matching rates and improve match quality. An otherwise poorly enforced minimum wage acts as a commitment device for the payment of more generous wages.     

Technical skill bias as a response of firms to unemployment: A matching model with applicant ranking and endogenous skill requirements

This paper considers an economy with heterogeneous workers where identical firms optimally decide on the degree of complexity of jobs. Meetings are depicted by an urn-ball process where firms rank their applicants and pick the best one. We show that a general rise in unemployment induces an increase in the employment shares of high-skilled workers which, in turn, makes firms choose more complex jobs, leading then to a decrease in the output of low-skilled workers. The technical skill bias is therefore related to the usual explanations of unemployment. Next, we state that a decentralized equilibrium is efficient in terms of job complexity but inefficient in terms of job creation when firms internalize the usual congestion effect. We then extend the analysis to a dynamic model.     

How to get firms to invest: A simple solution to the hold-up problem in regulation

Abstract. Many governmental programs are effective only if firms make costly investments. The inability of authorities to precommit to a regulatory scheme creates incentives for firms not to invest and to hold-up the regulator. This paper describes a simple subsidy/tax scheme embedded in a four-stage mechanism that solves the hold-up problem. We design a self-financing subsidy/tax scheme which benefits a complying firm at the expense of a non-complying firm. In order to be credible, the subsidy and tax rates must maximize social welfare for any combination of investment decisions. We show that there exists a unique subgame perfect equilibrium in which all firms invest and no actual implementation with subsidies and taxes is required. We discuss in which cases the mechanism can work under incomplete information. Received: 30 December 1998 / Accepted: 12 October 2001     

Tapping Deep Pockets: The Role of Resources and Social Capital on Financial Capital Acquisition by Biotechnology Firms in Biotech–Pharma Alliances

Strategic alliances with pharmaceutical firms allow small biotechnology firms to acquire needed financial capital in exchange for sharing new, cutting‐edge technologies. This study draws from aspects of resource‐based view and social capital theory to examine the factors that influence the extent of financial capital biotech firms acquire when forming an alliance with pharmaceutical firms. Using a sample of 184 alliances from the period 1995–2000, we found that alliances where the pharmaceutical firm has greater management control are associated with greater acquisition of financial capital by the biotech firm. We also found that the credibility of the pharmaceutical firm is positively associated with the extent of financial capital acquired by the biotechnology firm and that the number of patents that the biotech firm has is negatively associated to the financial capital the biotech firm receives. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, research, and management practice.     

Option Contracts in Supply Chains

This paper considers optimal contracts in supply chains that consist of   n ≥ 2  firms and face a potential investment hold-up problem. We show that option contracts may solve the incentive problems. First, we provide case-study evidence for the use of option contracts in the semiconductor industry. As our second contribution, we generalize the earlier option contract approach by introducing continuous quantities. Third, we extend the setting to n parties. For long supply chains, the first-best allocation can be achieved if there is a particular order of renegotiations .     

Production functions and productivity of family firms: Evidence from the S&P 500

This paper examines whether the higher profitability and valuation of family firms is related to differences in production technologies and production efficiency. Using data on S&P 500 manufacturing firms, we find that family firms are more productive than comparable non-family firms. Furthermore, our results show that the production technologies of family and non-family firms do not differ per se, thereby suggesting that the differences in the level of production output are caused by higher production efficiency of family firms. These findings indicate that the superior performance of family firms is related to their more efficient use of labor and capital resources.     

Pretty Vacant: Recruitment in Low-Wage Labour Markets

This paper is a study of the process by which employers in five relatively low-wage British firms fill vacancies. It studies the determinants of the number and quality of applicants, the way in which these applicants are selected for interviews and offered jobs. The main conclusions are that thenumber of applicants is relatively small, the monetary and non-monetaryaspects of jobs are important determinants of the number of applicants forjobs, but that firms do eventually fall virtually all vacancies. Non-employedjob applicants have more difficulty in getting a job interview than those whoare currently employed but, once interviewed, do not appear to face any further difficulties in getting employment.     

Customer concentration and corporate innovation: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the impact of customer concentration on corporate innovation in China. We hypothesize that a more concentrated customer base increases a supplier’s operational risk and causes firms to become more cautious with regard to investment in innovation. Moreover, a more concentrated customer base gives such customers stronger bargaining powers and makes suppliers less willing to make relationship-specific investments. Hence, the hold-up costs of customer concentration in China exceed the benefits that accrue from the economies of scale associated with such concentrations, which impede a supplier’s corporate innovation. Our results reveal that suppliers with higher customer concentrations produce fewer patents and invention patents. Moreover, our results are robust after adopting an instrumental variables approach. We further show that the effect is more pronounced in firms with lower business diversification and in firms that have lower stability in their major customers. Our paper sheds lights on the hitherto underexplored unfavorable impact of customer concentration on innovation.     

Alliance Dynamics for Entrepreneurial Firms

abstract    Small firms are thought to encounter various difficulties implementing strategic alliances. Due to these problems, they may be less able to reap the benefits of alliance adaptation, and the changes that do occur in alliances may not coincide with a small firm's interests. The evidence we present on contractual renegotiations in alliances suggests that small firms are no more or less likely to adjust their alliances' contracts in general. However, small firms tend to bear inefficiencies of two kinds in their collaborations. First, they are less likely to adapt alliances in the presence of governance misalignments. Second, our sampled small firms were more prone to make transaction-specific investments, which can stimulate ex post hold-up in the form of contractual renegotiations.     

政治联系、市场化进程与权益资本成本——来自中国民营上市公司的经验证据

以中国民营上市公司为样本,文章实证检验不同市场环境下政治联系对企业权益资本成本的影响,研究发现:政治联系对权益资本成本的影响在不同地区是有差异的;在市场化程度较低地区,由于政府干预导致企业经营业绩有较高的不确定性,有政治联系企业承担着较高的权益资本成本;在市场化程度较高地区,政府干预相对较少,政治联系更多地体现为一种荣誉或良好的政商关系,此时有政治联系企业享有较低的权益资本成本;当上市公司存在控股股东利益输送时,投资者预期到无法共享政治联系为企业带来的利益,此时有政治联系企业要承担较高的权益资本成本。本研究为厘清政治联系对企业和投资者的利弊影响提供了一个有益的视角。     

Commitment, advertising and efficiency of two-sided investment in competitive search equilibrium

Competitive search entails both commitment to and advertising of pay-off relevant aspects of market participants. This paper considers incrementally the implications of each in a labor market where both workers and firms invest prior to market entry. A wide range of institutional arrangements are addressed within the same general framework. When the characteristics of jobs or workers are advertised the efficient outcome pertains. Commitment without advertising typically leads to market unravelling: the Diamond paradox. But, whenever wages and human capital are advertised, firms become residual claimants; the private and social returns to investment coincide. Absent wage commitment, the Hosios condition implies efficiency when investments are advertised.     

Discrimination,technology and unemployment

I study the interaction between discrimination and investment using a directed search model where firms decide the capital intensity of their production technologies before being matched. Discrimination makes some workers cheap to hire. As a consequence, some firms might save on capital costs adopting labour intensive technologies. This framework allows one to reconcile search models with three well-known facts regarding the labour market outcomes of minority workers: low wages, high unemployment and occupational segregation. Furthermore, the model questions the role of equal pay legislation in reducing inequality since removing this restriction, i.e., allowing firms to post type-contingent wages, eliminates the negative effects of discrimination on investment and wages.     

Expatriate selection: back to basics?

Expatriate assignments are becoming increasingly unattractive to potential candidates making the unwieldy myriad of proposed selection criteria of decreasing practical value to internationally assigning firms. When the issue is more to find anyone willing to do the job rather than selecting the best candidate from a large pool of applicants, maybe basic personal characteristics can better guide corporations in their search for suitable expatriate candidates. To examine this proposition, a large sample of Western business expatriates in Hong Kong responded to a mail survey about their sociocultural and psychological adjustment. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis indicated that age had a positive association with general, interaction and work adjustment of the expatriates as well as with psychological adjustment. Gender was not associated with any kind of adjustment whereas being married had a positive relation with work adjustment. The implications for international firms of these results are discussed in detail.     

Bank capital regulation,loan contracts,and corporate investment

This paper studies the link between bank capital regulation, bank loan contracts and the allocation of corporate resources across firms’ different business lines. Credit risk is lower when firms write contracts that oblige them to invest mainly into projects with highly tangible assets. We argue that firms have an incentive to choose a contract with overly safe and thus inefficient investments when intermediation costs are increasing in banks’ capital-to-asset ratio. Imposing minimum capital adequacy for banks can eliminate this incentive by putting a lower bound on financing costs.     

Does organisational capital influence environmental strategies? Evidence from environmental innovation

As a result of increasing consumer awareness and stakeholder demands about environmental management, firms face stricter challenges surrounding the impact of business operations on the environment. In this regards, environmental innovation is one of the important ways of acting in harmony with the environment. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of organisational capital on environmental innovation measured as the process innovation and product innovation. Using environmental innovation data from ASSET4 for the US listed firms between 2002 and 2018, our empirical results reveal a significant positive association between organisational capital and both the process innovation and product innovation. Furthermore, the relationship is stronger in high-profitability and sensitive industries subsamples. These results are robust to additional control variables and endogeneity tests. This study, while endorsing the resource-based view (RBV), provides important implications for the top management teams that organisational capital could be an important channel through which managers can boost environmental innovation.     

Social and cultural capital in project marketing service firms: Danish architectural firms on the German market

This article analyses the marketing activities of three Danish architectural firms in Germany during the 1990s from a perspective that is new to project marketing, in that the Bourdivan concepts of social and cultural capital are applied to the offerings and activities of firms. In architecture, cultural capital accumulation entails such things as building visible buildings, winning design competitions, or obtaining important tenders, whereas social capital is accumulated through the recognition by other construction industry actors that one is a member of their circles. The cases presented provide support for our claim that the accumulation of social and cultural capital is crucial to acquiring architectural projects, while also indicating that cultural and social capital are internationally transferable to a limited extent only. This in turn suggests that national construction industries are best viewed as distinct project marketing milieus.     

Measuring the impact of work reorganization on firm performance: evidence from French manufacturing, 1995–1999

In this paper, we apply the method of selective matching to estimate the causal effect of organizational changes on employment, stock of capital, value added, and factor productivity. Derived from a panel of 2404 French manufacturing firms in 1997, our estimates show that work reorganization improves firm performance overall through a more efficient use of labor and capital, without requiring any increase in the factors of production.