Indicative and Updated Estimates of the Collective Bargaining Premium in Germany

This study provides updated evidence on the union contract differential in Germany using establishment‐wide wage data and two estimation strategies. It provides pairwise estimates of the union differential based on separate samples of collective bargaining leavers and joiners vis‐à‐vis the corresponding counterfactual groups. We report that average wages increase by 3 to 3.5 percent after entering into a collective agreement and decrease by 3 to 4 percent after abandoning a collective agreement. Excluding establishments that experience mass layoffs does not significantly influence these net findings, although such establishments record wage losses—statistically insignificant for joiners but up to 10 percent in the case of leavers, as compared with the counterfactuals. The backdrop to these new indicative estimates, which are properly conditioned on establishment size and industry affiliation, inter alia, is one of wage stagnation and continuing union decline.     

WHAT CENTRAL BANKERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT FORECASTING OIL PRICES

Central banks routinely use short‐horizon forecasts of the quarterly price of oil in assessing the global and domestic economic outlook. We address a number of econometric issues specific to the construction of quarterly oil price forecasts in the United States and abroad. We show that quarterly forecasts of the real price of oil from suitably designed vector autoregressive models estimated on monthly data generate the most accurate real‐time forecasts overall among a wide range of methods, including quarterly averages of forecasts based on monthly oil futures prices, no‐change forecasts, and forecasts based on regression models estimated on quarterly data.     

Industry relatedness in trade sales and venture capital investment returns

We investigate relationships between the industry relatedness of venture capital-backed companies and their strategic acquirer in trade sales and the achieved investment returns of venture capitalists. Using a proprietary data set of 716 trade sales, we analyze return differences between lateral and synergetic trade sales, as well as between horizontal and vertical trade sales. We find that venture capitalists achieve higher returns with lateral rather than synergetic trade sales, and that the difference is greater for deals involving early stage companies characterized by strong information asymmetries. In addition, horizontal trade sales yield higher returns than vertical trade sales; however, in boom phases of the venture capital market, this effect reverses. Finally, we find that experienced venture capitalists are able to overcome disadvantageous situations in trade sales, resulting in comparable returns across all trade sale categories.     

How and when taking pictures undermines the enjoyment of experiences

The consumption of experiences (as opposed to products) has seen an increasing amount of research attention in recent years. A key aspect of the experiential consumption journey is how the experience is consumed. For instance, people almost invariably take pictures during highly enjoyable experiences such as vacations or important family events. Although past research has suggested that taking pictures may enhance the enjoyment of moderately enjoyable experiences, the effect of picture taking on the real‐time enjoyment of highly enjoyable experiences is not clear. To address this matter, the authors investigate whether taking pictures affects consumers’ enjoyment of highly enjoyable hedonic experiences. A series of laboratory studies demonstrate that taking pictures (compared with not taking pictures) can decrease enjoyment of highly enjoyable experiences. This study suggests that, by constantly striving to document their experiences, consumers may unwittingly fail to enjoy those experiences to the fullest. These results have implications for how firms may best stage experiential offerings to enhance their customers’ experiences.     

Synchronisation von Nachricht und Werbung

Advertiser pressure has always been seen as a potential source of bias in the coverage of ad-financed media. The effects of advertiser pressure, however, have seldom been subject to systematic empirical research. Content analyses on the subject are particularly rare. This study for the first time scrutinizes on how the representation of firms by the leading German political weeklies Der Spiegel und Focus correlates with the amount of advertising by those firms. For this purpose all ads and the full news coverage on selected firms during the year of 2011 were analyzed. Central findings show that firms will receive more coverage, friendlier coverage and a larger share of product coverage, the higher their volume of advertising both in Der Spiegel and in Focus.     

Co-alignment of supplier quality management practices and cognitive maps – A neo-configurational perspective

Much of the previous research on the ‘purchasing practice–performance link’ rests on the notion of “net effects,” which assumes that specific practices independently of each other impact outcomes. This study challenges this core tenet by adopting a neo-configurational perspective, exploring how different combinations of factors (called “configurations”) affect outcomes. Another limitation of extant studies on the ‘purchasing practice–performance link’ is the narrow focus on practices; more recent behavioral supply management research finds the behavior of managers to be critically influenced by cognitive maps—the lenses through which managers perceive, simplify, and interpret the world. Focusing on supplier quality as a core aspect of the broader ‘purchasing practice–performance link’, this study explores how configurations of different supplier quality management (SQM) practices and SQM-related cognitive maps help firms to manage supplier quality. It uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify SQM configurations and a cognitive-linguistic approach for the computerized text analysis of purchasing managers’ cognitive maps in the context of Western companies sourcing from Chinese suppliers. The configurational fsQCA analysis identifies four different configurations associated with overcoming barriers to SQM in emerging markets. SQM-related cognitive maps prove to be a critical component in these four configurations.     

Does Gender Inequality Reduce Growth in Sub‐Saharan African and Arab Countries?*

Abstract: This paper uses 1974 to 2001 panel data for 31 sub‐Saharan African and 10 Arab countries and Arellano–Bond estimations to empirically assess the impact on growth of an important indicator associated with MDG 3; namely the ratio of 15–24‐year‐old literate females to males. Our findings indicate that gender inequalities in literacy have a statistically significant negative effect that is robust to changes in the specification. In addition, it seems that gender inequality has a stronger effect on growth in Arab countries. Interestingly, we find that the interaction between openness to trade and gender inequality has a positive impact. This result suggests that trade‐induced growth may be accompanied by greater gender inequalities.     

Business Policies on Human Rights: An Analysis of Their Content and Prevalence Among FTSE 100 Firms

The new millennium has witnessed a growing concern over the impact of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on human rights. Hence, this article explores (1) how wide-spread corporate policies on human rights are amongst large corporations, specifically the FTSE 100 constituent firms, (2) whether any sectors are particularly active in designing human rights policies and (3) where corporations have adopted such policies what their content is. In terms of adoption rates of human rights policies, evidence of exemplary approaches in individual companies contrasts with a less satisfactory engagement pattern across the sample, as 42.8% of firms do not seem to address human rights at all. With regard to the content of corporate human rights policies, the study found shallow commitments to dominate, where companies focus on a narrow range of negative rights, i.e. on respecting human rights, rather than positive ones, i.e. initiatives to protect or fulfil human rights.     

Public subsidies and new ventures’ use of bank loans

Access to financial resources is crucial for young firms to strive. To foster innovation and growth in these firms, governments address financing constraints by initiating public support programs. For such financial support to be effective, it is, however, important that firms are able to augment publicly provided resources with additional means. This study examines the relationship between new ventures’ subsidy receipt and long-term bank loans. Studying new ventures founded between 2005 and 2009 in Germany, we test whether the subsidy itself facilitates use to bank financing. Applying econometric techniques that account for the endogenous nature of a subsidy receipt, we find that subsidized young firms are more likely to use bank loans and to have obtained a larger share of their financing mix from banks. We further show that this effect is stronger in highly information-opaque sectors. These results suggest that the effect may be attributed to an information value carried by the grant that is relevant to banks’ loan assessment procedures, especially when new venture value is difficult to judge.