The renewed Lisbon Strategy and social exclusion policy

In the light of its manifest mid‐term failure to make progress towards its key objectives, the EU introduced in 2005 a major ‘relaunch’ of its Lisbon Strategy for economic, employment and social development. The core aspect of this was ‘prioritisation’, involving an increased focus on growth and jobs. This raised the issue of whether the pursuit of greater competitiveness would lead to a downgrading of the importance of the original social objectives of the programme. In its focal concern on the fight against social exclusion, the EU's strategy involved both employment and social objectives. These emphasised in particular the creation not only of more but of ‘better jobs’ and the pursuit of actions to reinforce ‘social inclusion’ and ‘social cohesion’. This article considers whether a significant shift did occur in policy emphasis and the implications of the Lisbon reform for progress in reducing the risks of social exclusion. It reviews first the basic changes in the formulation of the strategy and then examines in turn the effectiveness of its policy initiatives with respect to employment, the quality of work and social inclusion.     

Sources of Durable Competitive Advantage in New Products

In this article, Michael Lawless and Robert Fisher propose a conceptual framework for analyzing durable sources of competitive advantage for new products. They assess various components of new product introduction strategies in terms of their degrees of competitive "imitability" (i.e., the ease with which competitors can imitate). The less imitable the component, the more durable the profits it generates. The authors identify seven strategic components based on bodies of research in strategy and promotion, distribution and firm characteristics. By selectively managing these components, an innovating firm can affect a new product's imitability and the duration of returns. Using a "resource mobility" perspective, the authors develop propositions that should lead to a more systematic focus on long-term profits in new product introductions.     

Supervision: Geliebt und gefürchtet

Zusammenfassung  Methode zur Weiterentwicklung pflegerischer Fachlichkeit — Die Einen halten sie für Zeitverschwendung, die „nichts bringt“, die Anderen sehen in ihr eine brauchbare Unterstützung zur fachlichen und pers?nlichen Entfaltung. Manche reden sich in ihr Belastungen von der Seele, manche schweigen sich dabei aus. Die einen bekommen sie wider Willen verordnet, die andern k?mpfen darum: Die Supervision.     

Turnierentlohnung im Versicherungsvertrieb

For insurance companies, tournaments are one of the most important incentives to motivate and control insurance sales agents. We analyse the efficiency of tournaments for insurance sales agents and show that the level of prize and its exclusiveness, as well as the presentation of rank during the tournament, increase efficiency.     

Geography and firm exports: new evidence on the nature of sunk costs

This paper presents an examination of the trading patterns of individual firms, looking at their coverage of export markets and movements into and out of destinations. This analysis is made possible by access to a new survey data set of Irish firms, which includes detailed information on firm characteristics and on the destinations of their exports over a 2-year period. In line with Eaton et al. (Am Econ Rev 94:150–154, 2004), we find that a large number of firms serve only the domestic market and many exporting firms export to a single foreign market. Although there is little movement of firms into and out of exporting, firms’ involvement in individual export markets is much more dynamic. Over one-third of firms change their market coverage, usually by entering or exiting one additional market. This is consistent with an interpretation where the bulk of any sunk cost encountered in exporting is incurred during the initial entry to the export market. Subsequent entry to additional markets may be made easier by prior export experience, which could help reduce the sunk cost of extending market coverage.     

Death spiral PIPEs: a reconsideration of the evidence

We challenge the view that PIPEs lead to unfavourable outcomes for issuing firms. We show that structured PIPEs do not have significant negative CARs when a matched firm benchmark is used for computing CARs and when sample selection bias is taken into account. Indeed, structured PIPEs have significantly higher positive skewness, indicating superior optionality, consistent with the real option argument. We also show that the 2002 intervention by the Securities and Exchange Corporation (SEC) has led to unintended consequences, with the substitution of ‘mom and pop’ investors for hedge fund investors in the structured PIPE market.     

FORMAL SEARCH AND REFERRALS FROM A FIRM'S PERSPECTIVE

We explore the relationship between firms' characteristics and recruitment strategies. We present a theoretical search model with two search channels: a costly formal channel and a costless informal channel (referrals). We empirically test the model predictions and find that: larger firms search more formally; firms search more formally for high-skilled workers; the positive relationship between firm's size and formal search intensity also holds for firms not using referrals; firms using referrals invest less into formal search compared to firms not using referrals; larger firms hire less often by referrals than smaller firms; and larger search effort leads to more applicants.     

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