National science foundation funding in economics and chemistry

Conclusion Despite equivalent success rates, the probability of obtaining an NSF grant is substantially higher for chemists than for economists. The evidence indicates that NSF funds are more scarce for economists and that the quality of funded proposals as measured by institutional affiliation is greater for economists than for chemists. Administrators should be aware that when the supply of funds varies among disciplines, the probability of being funded and the expected value of an award will also vary among departments.     

May business mentors act as opportunity brokers and enablers among university students?

Networks are recognized as a central component of the entrepreneurial process, in particular with regard to opportunity identification and exploitation. In this study, we specifically analyze the role of mentors who are in business as opportunity brokers and enablers among university students with entrepreneurial intentions. Our investigation on 1022 students from 13 French-language universities based in Canada, France, Belgium and Algeria indicates that mentors in business, contrary to other mentors, support opportunity identification and exploitation among university students. Although student gender, entrepreneurial experience and education have a more pronounced effect, mentoring is the only element that can be controlled for through the creation of formal support programs. These results call on public authorities, and universities in particular, to implement formal mentoring programs to support students who are interested in starting their own business, and who would not otherwise have access to business mentors in their environment.     

The effect of marketing regulations on efficiency: LeChatelier versus coordination effects

Government regulations designed to promote social welfare can have unintended consequences on efficiency. According to the LeChatelier Principle, regulations that effectively limit substitution possibilities among inputs will reduce firm and industry-wide efficiency. In imperfectly competitive markets, however, government constraints on a strategic variable can facilitate coordination. An advertising restriction, for example, would improve efficiency if it enables firms to produce the same level of sales with less advertising spending. We use data envelopment analysis to estimate the effect of marketing regulations on efficiency in the U.S. cigarette industry. Unlike previous studies, we do not assume that marketing and production technologies are separable. Our results demonstrate that coordination effects dominate LeChatelier effects. Cigarette producers have benefited from advertising restrictions, a result consistent with the capture theory of regulation.

Career plateauing reactions: the moderating role of job scope,role ambiguity and participation among Canadian managers

The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating effect and the interactive effect of job scope, role ambiguity and participation in decision-making on relationships between career plateauing and outcomes. A cross-sectional survey of 3,065 Canadian managers shows that these job characteristics can contribute to limiting the negative consequences associated with career plateauing. Moreover, in accordance with the theory of work–situation fit, some double moderating effects are found. The attitudes and behaviours of plateaued managers are significantly more positive when their job is richer and offers an opportunity to participate in decision-making. However, contrary to evidence in the literature, results show that reactions to career plateauing are more positive for managers who perceive that their job is richer and their role more ambiguous. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on “The Intersection Between Industrial Organization and Healthcare Economics”

This article introduces the special issue on the intersection between industrial organization and healthcare economics. This intersection has received increasing research interest, growing from 2% of the industrial-organization literature in 1991 to 6% in 2016. We describe the nine included articles, which cover a range of healthcare markets that include hospital services, insurance, and pharmaceuticals.     

PLATFORM COMPETITION WITH ENDOGENOUS HOMING

We consider two-sided markets in which consumers and firms endogenously determine whether they single-home, multi-home, or exit the market. We find that the competitive bottleneck allocation in which consumers single-home and firms multi-home is always an equilibrium. In addition, we find equilibria with multi-homing and single-homing on each side of the market. However, unlike the standard pricing result where the side that multi-homes faces higher prices, we find that lower prices coincide with multi-homing: agents find multi-homing more attractive when faced with lower prices. We also show that endogenous homing can induce straddle pricing which deters price undercutting between platforms.     

Introduction: Firms with Behavioral Biases

Review of Industrial Organization -     

Challenges facing international projects for entrepreneurial development in South Africa

International development projects that support entrepreneurship face a number of challenges, not least because they need to integrate different paradigms. Based on the case study of a Canadian non-governmental organisation in South Africa, this paper provides an exploratory assessment of these challenges and highlights four major factors that affect the success of such international projects: transposing a northern business model to the south; developing local roots and adapting to the local context; balancing the allocation of resources between managing the project and providing services to entrepreneurs; and aligning the cultures of the private sector and international development agencies. In practical terms, the findings provide benchmarks for the success of these projects and could help improve interventions that encourage entrepreneurship in developing countries.