Determinants of technology cycle time in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry'

The focus of this study is to examine different factors that influence a firm's technology cycle time. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is analyzed from 1977–1991. Specifically, the sample includes 21 firms that (a) primarily produce brand ethical drugs, (b) are publicly-owned companies, and (c) have pharmaceutical sales account for a substantial portion of company sales.
Our measure of faster technology cycle time is positively correlated to measures of the knowledge base level of firms, the breadth of firms' knowledge bases, size, and age; it is negatively correlated to advertising expenditures and the percent of US. firm sales to total sales. However, the most notable finding is that technology cycle time is significantly faster for firms that predominantly generate new knowledge internally, and slower for firms that rely more on external sources of new knowledge.     

The division of labour in innovation management

Abstract
The literature shows a plethora of roles in innovation management. These roles have not provided a systematic and unique pattern of relationship which can serve as an instrument of organization. An analysis of the empirical findings shows the existence of division of labour in innovation management in a multiple role concept. The concepts like 'product champion', 'gatekeeper', 'sponsor', 'business innovator', 'technical innovator', 'promoter' etc. have some elements of commonality and complementarity. Two underlying principles can be delineated: division of labour according to phases of the innovation process and according to sources of power of the incumbents. An interaction model and a process linkage model for innovation management are developed to explain the different findings. These models help to integrate these empirical concepts and serve as guidelines for possible organization of the innovation process.     

The Differential Effects of Online Word-of-Mouth and Critics' Reviews on Pre-release Movie Evaluation

In this paper, we examine the persuasive influences of online user comments (or word-of-mouth) and of the reviews by movie critics on moviegoers' evaluation of to-be-released movies. Two distinctive features of this study are: (1) moviegoers are considered to be heterogeneous in their movie going frequency and (2) word-of-mouth and critical reviews are concurrently available, and the views expressed in the two messages are in conflict. Using three experiments with natural stimuli, we find that the persuasive effect of online word-of-mouth is stronger on infrequent than on frequent moviegoers, especially when it is negative (Study 1). The effect of negative word-of-mouth on infrequent moviegoers is enduring even in the presence of positive reviews by movie critics (Study 2). The relative influence of word-of-mouth and critical reviews are asymmetric with infrequent moviegoers more influenced by word-of-mouth, while frequent moviegoers more influenced by the reviews (Study 3). We validate this source–segment alignment through secondary data analysis.     

Variation in Health Expenditures: Is It Just Income or other Factors? Empirical Investigation Using a Panel of Indian States

The primary query of this paper centres on the role played by income in determining the extent of fund allocated by Indian states for improvement of health of its population. Drawing data from the fourteen major states of India over a time span of twenty-three financial years (1974–75 to 1996–97) and using recent advances in panel data time series econometrics, this paper documents the presence of a long run relationship between income and health expenditure. The long-run elasticity estimates reiterate that publicly provided health services should be considered as “necessities”. Results the panel error correction model demonstrate that ageing of the population and proportion of rural population are the only non-income factors, which exert a significant positive impact on real per capita health expenditure. This is particularly important given the demographic transition that India is passing through.

     

North–South Outsourcing,Immigration, and Skilled Wages: Through the Lens of Incomplete Contracts

The forces of immigration and offshore outsourcing are subject to factors that leave sufficient room for incompleteness in a contract. The authors present a model that allows one to compare the effects of immigration and offshore outsourcing, on skilled wage, when both are subject to contractual incompleteness. They capture the sensitivity of the effect on the skilled wage, of immigration and offshore outsourcing to complementarities between firm‐specific human capital and human capital that is transferable across firms manufacturing intermediate goods. In particular, the authors show that the North–South gap in skilled wages is likely to (i) increase through the forces of immigration when the intermediate goods' technology is super‐modular in the North but sub‐modular in the South and (ii) decrease through the forces of outsourcing when the intermediate goods' technology is sub‐modular in the North but super‐modular in the South.     

A NOTE ON NEGATIVE ELECTORAL ADVERTISING: DENIGRATING CHARACTER VS. PORTRAYING EXTREMISM

In this expository note, we extend the model of Harrington and Hess (1996) by incorporating valence advertising. There is a two‐candidate electoral contest. Candidates inherit a certain position indicating their ideological platform in an unidimensional policy space. They also inherit a certain valence index which is a comprehensive term for personal traits that are desirable to all voters such as integrity. The candidates can subsequently influence these using negative advertising with regard to both ideological and valence factors. We find that when the available resources are sufficiently small and certain reasonable assumptions are fulfilled, the candidate with the higher initial valence index will run a relatively personal campaign while the candidate with the lower initial valence index will run an ideological campaign.     

Technical performance and firm size: Analysis of patents and publications of U.S. firms

This study focuses on the scientific output of firms of different sizes in different industries in the U.S. Both patents, and papers and publications are used as measures of technical output. Data from two samples of firms, one consisting of 225 large firms (annual sales at least $250 million and minimum annual R&D budget of $1 million) and the other consisting of 248 small and medium sized firms (annual sales between $10 to $200 million and annual R&D budget at least $10 thousand) have been presented here. The study shows that determinants of R&D expenditure are different in firms of different sizes. For the large firms, R&D expenditure depends on net income as well as its size, measured in terms of annual sales. For small size firms, R&D expenditure is closely related with sales, rather than the net income. For large firms, R&D expenditure is related to both sales and income, the latter being more important than the former. The two output measures, patents and papers are correlated, but the correlation is not a very strong one for small firms. Patent and papers are correlated significantly with both R&D expenditure as well as annual sales. The firm's growth is not linked with patents. On the contrary, there is a negative relationship between patent and R&D growth and patent and income growth in the case of small firms. Papers are not linked with growth variables for small firms. Finally, this study confirms the hypothesis that small firms are more productive in innovation than the large firms. Small firms are more efficient than their larger competitors in terms of patents and papers per million dollars of R&D expenditure.     

Organizational adaptation in an economic shock: The role of growth reconfiguration

Studies suggest that firms navigating an economic shock can adapt and improve performance by targeting perceived growth opportunities. A puzzle, however, is that an economic shock increases environmental uncertainty and therefore the risk associated with growth reconfiguration. This study finds that growth reduced performance and increased the risk of firm failure during the Asian economic shock of 1997. Growing firms differed in the extent to which they were able to mitigate the constraints imposed by the shock. However, the presence of developed external institutions played a more systematic role in their adaptation than did organizational resources represented by financial slack or product diversification. The deliberate attempt to reconfigure augmented the adverse effect of the economic shock on firm performance and survival. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Network potentials

A network payoff function assigns a utility to all participants within a social network. In this paper we investigate network payoff functions that admit an exact network potential or an ordinal network potential. We also investigate exact and ordinal potentials of Myerson’s non-cooperative network formation game based on consent in link formation. We show that the admittance of certain of these network and game-theoretic potentials implies the existence of pairwise stable networks and the convergence of network formation processes. Our main results extend and strengthen the current insights in the literature on game theoretic approaches to social network formation. We thank Matt Jackson and Sudipta Sarangi for extensive discussions on the subject of this paper. Part of this research was done while S. Chakrabarti was at Bonn on a post-doctoral research fellowship. We thank the Department of Economics at the University of Bonn for their hospitality and financial support. Part of this research was done at the Center for Economic Research at Tilburg University, Tilburg, the Netherlands. R. P. Gilles financially supported from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), grant # 46-550, is gratefully acknowledged.     

An exploratory study on the impact of pro-market reforms on the Indian corporate sector

Pro-market reforms were expected to increase competition, improve efficiency and reduce agency costs by improving the institutional environment in emerging markets. In an attempt to establish the macro–micro linkages of these goals, this paper aims to analyse the impact of reforms on the performance of firms belonging to different ownership categories. We find that while state owned enterprises have shown signs of convergence, the performance of other domestic firms has stagnated. Meanwhile multinational subsidiaries have shown consistently better performance, raising questions on the motive and direction of reforms. We end by discussing the policy implications and avenues for future research.