Confidence building on Euro convergence: Evidence from currency options

We study the evolution of investor confidence in 1992-1998 over the chance of individual currencies to converge to the Euro, using data on currency option prices. Convergence risk, which may reflect uncertainty over policy commitment as well as exogenous fundamentals, induces a level of implied volatility in excess of actual volatility. This volatility wedge should gradually decrease as confidence grows over time as convergence policy is maintained, and the risk of a reversal is progressively resolved. Empirically, we indeed find a positive volatility wedge which declines over time only for currencies involved in the Euro convergence process. The wedge and other convergence risk measures are correlated with both exogenous fundamentals and proxies for policy commitment uncertainty. We also find that the wedge responds to policy shocks in an asymmetric fashion, suggesting that policy risk is resolved at different rates after negative and positive shocks. Finally, we estimate a regime-switching model of convergence uncertainty, using data on interest rates, currency rates, and currency option prices. The results confirm the time-varying and asymmetric nature of convergence risk, and indicate that investors demand a risk premium for convergence risk.     

Resource interaction in inter-organizational networks: Introduction to the special issue

This article introduces the special issue of Journal of Business Research on the topic of resource interaction in inter-organizational networks. Both networks and resources receive considerable attention in the field of business studies. As companies specialize further and rely on cooperative agreements with external parties, the importance of networks is gaining increasing recognition. Resources are typically a key factor for identifying a company's competencies, or its sources of growth, profitability, and sustained competitive advantage. This special issue takes a novel approach by directing attention toward the processes of interaction in which companies combine and recombine resources at the network level. This approach provides new insights into the development, production, exchange, and use of resources. The introductory article also reviews the 13 articles in this special issue and concludes by discussing their contributions to the fields of marketing, innovation, entrepreneurship, and logistics.     

Creative industries, new business formation, and regional economic growth

In this article we explore the impact of a series of factors, including creativity, intellectual property rights activities, new business formation, and the provision of amenities, on economic growth for 103 Italian provinces over the period spanning 2001 to 2006. Provincial growth rates are measured in terms of employment growth and value-added growth. The findings reveal that an increase in the number of firms active in the creative industries and net entry have a positive effect on regional employment growth. The share of legal immigrants is also found to positively impact employment growth. A high number of university faculties is found to lead to less employment growth, whereas trademarks, patents, cultural amenities, and industrial districts have no significant effect. Value-added growth is for a large part determined by employment growth, but no additional productivity-enhancing effects of the factors discussed are found.     

Tourism competitiveness of Italian municipalities

Quality & Quantity - The purpose of the paper is the study of tourism competitiveness and its determinants for the almost 8000 Italian municipalities. The partial least squares method...     

Liberal parentalism

What normative constraints should bind parents (or policy makers) if they intervene in the choices of children (or constituencies) whose preferences evolve over time? For a sophisticated child who anticipates correctly his preference change, we prove that generically there exist parental interventions that are Pareto improving over the backward induction path that the child will follow on his own. If, in contrast, the child misperceives his future preferences, Pareto improving interventions might not exist, and even nudges might be painfully sobering. The parent may then choose to minimize the maximal disappointment along time that her benevolent intervention would cause.     

Customer satisfaction and service domains: a further development of PROSERV

Quality & Quantity - This paper aims to represent that levels of customer satisfaction of tourist accommodation are an important prerequisite when the goal is building a loyal relationship with...     

Examining the process of performance measurement system design and implementation in two Italian public service organizations

In the last two decades, the adoption of new public management (NPM) practices in the public sector has increased as public sector organizations seek to improve efficiency, effectiveness and public accountability. We present case study findings of a NPM initiative to implement balanced scorecard (BSC) performance measurement systems in two Italian public sector organizations. This study considers the question of whether the BSC development process can be effectively translated into the public sector context. Our findings highlight the importance of aligning the development of performance management systems with a greater understanding of the internal and external environment of public sector organizations. Our results further emphasize the significant role of emergent stakeholders and management culture for the success of NPM performance management initiatives.     

Age dependency and labour productivity divergence

This study finds strong empirical evidence in favour of the hypothesis that the age composition of population matters for labour productivity growth. We applied the fixed effects panel model using data on a large number of countries over the period 1980–2010. Our results suggest that higher age dependency not only directly impacts negatively on labour productivity but also modifies the impact of other determinants of labour productivity. Child dependency has a more adverse effect on labour productivity than old age dependency. We specifically find that the marginal effects of gross capital formation, information and communication improvement, and labour market reforms are significant at lower levels of age dependency. However, the marginal effect of savings on labour productivity is high at a high level of age dependency. The impact of age dependency varies between developed and developing economies. Diversity in the size and nature of age dependency across regions and different income groups help to explain the labour productivity differential across them.