Political contestability and public contract rigidity: An analysis of procurement contracts

Are public contracts less adaptable than private contracts? Using a comprehensive set of contracts for a standard product, we compare procurement contracts in which the procurer is either a public administration or a private corporation. We find that public‐to‐private contracts feature more rigidity clauses than private‐to‐private contracts and that the use of rigidity clauses in public contracts rises when political risks are more salient. We argue that a significant part of the increased rigidity of public contracts is a contractual adaptation to limit political hazards from political opponents and interested third parties.     

Rating Expatriate Leader Effectiveness in Multisource Feedback Systems: Cultural Distance and Hierarchical Effects

A critical challenge for global firms is to implement assessment tools to develop expatriate leaders who can effectively manage role relationships across different directions (upward, laterally, downward) in cross‐national contexts. Drawing on social categorization and relational demography theories and a data set of 360‐degree ratings of expatriates from 36 countries, we use multilevel modeling to investigate relationships between cultural distance and ratings of leadership effectiveness in task and contextual performance by colleagues with different hierarchical vantage points (subordinates, supervisors, peers). Cultural distance refers to the overall degree of difference in key cultural values identified in the GLOBE study between an expatriate's and coworkers’ countries of origin. Unlike supervisors as a rating group, results show that peer and subordinate raters as a group may be more likely to have their ratings negatively influenced by cultural distance, an effect that may be exacerbated for peer ratings from countries higher in power distance and lower in humane orientation. This study contributes to the understanding of multisource feedback systems to assess expatriate leadership effectiveness by identifying likely group ratings tendencies linked to cultural distance and hierarchical perspectives. Organizations should develop strategies to mitigate possible effects of cultural distance on subordinate and peer ratings of expatriates. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Analyst forecasts and price discovery in futures markets: The case of natural gas storage

We investigate analyst forecasts in a unique setting, the natural gas storage market, and study the contribution of analysts in facilitating price discovery in futures markets. Using a high‐frequency database of analyst storage forecasts, we show that the market appears to condition expectations regarding a weekly storage release on the analyst forecasts and beyond that of various statistical‐based models. Further, we find that the market looks through the reported consensus analyst forecast and places differential emphasis on the individual forecasts of analysts according to their prior accuracy. Also, the market appears to place greater emphasis on analysts' long‐term accuracy than on their recent accuracy. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:451–477, 2009     

Talent management and the relevance of context: Towards a pluralistic approach

This paper aims to contribute to the development of a broader, more balanced approach to talent management that will help in studying and implementing talent management across different contexts. The paper starts with an overview of the advances made in previous reviews and studies with respect to three central themes: the definition of talent, intended outcomes of talent management, and talent management practices. We identify the one-dimensional and narrow approach to the topic as a main limitation of the existing talent management literature. Through the use of theories from the organizational theory and the strategic HRM domain, we add new perspectives and develop a multilevel, multi-value approach to talent management. In so doing, we offer an in-depth discussion of the potential economic and non-economic value created by talent management at the individual, organizational, and societal level.     

About time: the narrowing gender wage gap in Austria

Empirica - We examine the gender wage gap in Austria from 2005 to 2017 using data from EU-SILC. The raw gap of hourly wages declined from 18.6 log points in 2005 to 14.9 log points in 2017. We use...     

Human capital, market imperfections, and labor reallocation in transition

In this paper, we investigate the effects of human capital and factor market imperfections on household decisions regarding labor use and reallocation in transition countries. We develop a model that accounts explicitly for heterogeneity in the supply of labor and analyze its impact on the allocation of labor. Furthermore, the effects of imperfections in the capital and labor markets on the reallocation process are modeled. Using a dataset based on a countrywide representative survey of Hungarian rural households, we estimate the effects empirically and find them to be important. Journal of Comparative Economics 32 (4) (2004) 745–774.     

CAP Subsidies and Productivity of the EU Farms

The paper investigates the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies on farm total factor productivity (TFP) in the European Union (EU). We employ a structural semi‐parametric estimation algorithm directly incorporating the effect of subsidies into a model of unobserved productivity. We empirically study the effects using the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) samples for the EU‐15 countries. Our main findings are clear: subsidies impact negatively on farm productivity in the period before the decoupling reform was implemented; after decoupling the effect of subsidies on productivity is more nuanced and in several countries it turned positive.