Mika Tapani Widgrén

Obituary

Mika Tapani Widgrén     

Insurance for Technology Adoption: An Experimental Evaluation of Schemes and Subsidies with Maize Farmers in Mexico

For farmers in developing countries, the combination of both risk aversion and the lack of insurance is often a major impediment to adoption of productivity‐enhancing technologies, such as higher yielding hybrid seed. In a framed field experiment with Mexican maize farmers, we investigate whether bundling hybrid seed with an insurance scheme can increase its adoption, while also controlling for risk aversion. We test insurance schemes with different levels of risk coverage and premium subsidies and find that (1) all schemes significantly increase the degree of adoption of the higher yielding seed, (2) partial insurance schemes perform worse than full insurance, (3) weather index insurance with geographical basis risk performs no worse than indemnity insurance, and (4) premium subsidies significantly increase the adoption effect of indemnity insurance, but not that of index insurance.     

Does the choice in valuation method matter in the judicial appraisal of private firms?

This paper investigates empirical relations between the redemption values of minority shares and valuation methods used by dissenting parties in the judicial valuation of private firms. We examine a comprehensive data set of Finnish judicial appraisal cases in which the judge decides the valuation of the minority stake in a private firm after learning the valuation estimates put forward by the controlling shareholder(s) and the minority shareholder(s). Rationality in valuation will be achieved if a valuation estimate incorporates all the available information regardless of the valuation method adopted. Conversely, the measurement perspective argues that biases inherent in valuation approaches determine the information content in a valuation estimate. Our statistical analyses suggest that the choices made concerning the valuation method are statistically correlated with the appraisal outcomes. We interpret this as evidence consistent with the measurement perspective.     

Following the story: narrative mapping as a mobile method for tracking and interrogating spatial narratives

Museums and heritage tourism sites are highly curated places of memory work whose function is the assembling and ordering of space and narrative to contour visitors’ experiences of the past. Variations in such experiences within and between sites, however, necessitates a method that: (1) captures how guides, visitors, and exhibits interact within spaces when representing and performing history and (2) allows researchers to document those variations. We developed narrative mapping, a mobile and geographically sensitive form of participant observation, to enable museum scholars and professionals to systematically capture, visualize, and interpret tendencies and variations in the content, affective qualities, and spatial arrangements of museum narratives over multiple sites and across multiple tours at the same site. Two antebellum plantation museum case studies, Laura Plantation in Louisiana and Virginia’s Berkeley Plantation, demonstrate the method’s utility in documenting how stories are spatially configured and materially enlivened in order to analyze the ways enslaved persons are placed within these narratives.     

IQ and corporate insiders’ decisions to time insider and outsider trading

We examine how corporate insiders’ cognitive ability (IQ) affects their decisions to time insider and outsider trading before abnormal stock price changes. Our analysis of archival data on male corporate insiders in Sweden shows they are less prone to time their insider selling and to sell in larger amounts, before abnormal stock price declines as IQ increases. We also find that insiders with a higher IQ are better at timing their outsider buying. Taken together, our results show that corporate insiders’ IQ affects their trading decisions differently, depending on whether they are trading in their insider or outsider stocks.     

Focality advantage in platform competition

We consider a methodology for studying how beliefs shape platform competition based on the notion of a partial focality. The concept of focality is useful for modeling platform competition when the presence of network effects results in multiple equilibria for a certain set of prices. We illustrate how to implement this methodology in both static and dynamic competition between platforms that differ in their basic quality. The initial degree of focality affects the ability of the high‐quality platform to win the market. Yet, dynamic considerations may have a positive or negative effect on this ability.     

R&;D investment and financing constraints of small and medium-sized firms

This study tests for financial constraints on R&D investment and how they differ from capital investment. To identify constraints in the access to external capital, we employ a credit rating index. Our models show that internal constraints, measured by mark-ups, are more decisive for R&D than for capital investment. For external constraints, we find a monotonic relationship between the level of constriction and firm size for both types of investment. Thus, external constraints turn out to be more binding with decreasing firm size. On the contrary, we do not find such monotonic relationships for internal constraints. Differentiation by firms’ age does not support lower constraints for older firms.     

The projected destination brand personalities of European capital cities and their positioning

ABSTRACT

Capital cities are significant drivers of visitation to their countries and therefore it is important to understand how the destination brand personalities (DBP) of capital cities are projected and positioned. Hence, the aim of this research is to develop a projected DBP scale for European capital cities, and to investigate their relative positioning. Content analysis of the cities’ main tourism websites was used to develop a projected brand personality scale. This was followed by correspondence analysis to investigate the relative positioning of the city brand personalities. The DBP scale included six dimensions: excitement, malignancy, peacefulness, competence, ruggedness and conservatism. Excitement is the most strongly communicated dimension across all cities, followed by peacefulness and competence. No city rated highly on ruggedness. The correspondence analysis clusters cities into three projected DBP groups: (1) Warsaw and Moscow, (2) Athens, Rome, Madrid, and Berlin, (3) Amsterdam, Paris and Vienna.     

Women on the board and executive tenure

The participation of women in top‐level corporate boards is subject to intense public debate. Countries are considering binding quotas to increase the share of women on boards or have already implemented such rules. Although research on board diversity suggests positive effects on corporate governance and firm performance, the mechanisms through which these benefits materialize remain mostly speculative. This study focuses on boards of directors in a large sample of listed companies in 15 European countries and finds that female representation on nonexecutive boards is associated with reduced turnover, an increase in tenure, and also a higher performance‐turnover sensitivity of executives.