Entry,Standards and Competition: Firm Strategies and the Diffusion of Mobile Telephony

This paper studies the effects of a countrys regulatory setting and competitive environment the performance of second-generation (2G) mobile on telecommunication. We consider three dimensions of sector performance: entry time, service prices and diffusion. We address the question of non-random selection arising from cross-country differences in the timing of the commercialization of new technologies. Our empirical exploration shows that this type of sample selection may indeed be a substantial problem in cross-country studies on technology diffusion and yield biased estimates of the policy variables of interest. Our estimation results suggest that standardization accelerates 2G entry and diffusion, although within-standards competition triggers less aggressive price competition than between-standards competition. We also find that an early monopolist will price more aggressively to build up an installed base. Furthermore, we find that liberalizing markets for incumbent technologies (i.e., fixed line telephony) has accelerated the commercialization of 2G.     

太原市城中村现象及其根治对策

城中村是在我国工业化与城市化进程中普遍出现的一种特殊怪异现象.它不仅对城市规划建设带来重大影响,而且引发了许多社会问题.本文以太原市为例,深入剖析了城中村现象及其问题所在、产生根源,指出城中村改造不是简单地解决农民转制和改善居住条件,而是从解决城中村农民生活出路入手,统筹协调城乡发展,在方法上进行分类指导,针对具体情况区别对待.     

财政补贴和税收优惠对新能源汽车产业R&D投入的影响

采用倾向得分匹配法,实证对比分析财政补贴和税收优惠对新能源汽车上市公司R&D投入的激励作用。结果表明:财政补贴能够有效促进新能源汽车产业的R&D投入,而税收优惠效果不佳。据此,可采取财政补贴为主,税收优惠为辅的财税政策,并逐渐完善财政补贴形式和补贴监管方式,从而最大限度地发挥财税政策对新能源汽车产业R&D投入的促进作用。     

Firm‐specific knowledge resources and competitive advantage: the roles of economic‐ and relationship‐based employee governance mechanisms

The resource‐based view of the firm emphasizes the role of firm‐specific resources, especially firm‐specific knowledge resources, in helping a firm to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, the deployment of firm‐specific knowledge often requires key employees to make specialized human capital investments that are not easily redeployable to other settings. Thus, in the absence of effective safeguards and trust building devices, employees with foresight may be reluctant to make such specialized investments. This study explores both economic‐ and relationship‐based governance mechanisms that might mitigate this underinvestment problem. Effective use of these governance mechanisms enables a firm to obtain greater performance from its efforts to deploy firm‐specific knowledge resources. Empirical results further support these key arguments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Real options and real value: the role of employee incentives to make specific knowledge investments

Real options reasoning emphasizes the strategic value of making flexible investments in a turbulent environment. Employees' investments in specific human capital are often critical to the success of a real option project, but the very flexibility that allows a firm to change course in response to new information also affects employees' incentives to make such specific human capital investments. We develop a model of real option investment that explicitly incorporates the role of employee incentives. The model suggests that the effect of investing in a real option project on employee incentives may be positive, further increasing the value of the project, or negative, sometimes more than offsetting the benefit of flexibility and resulting in reduced project value. Therefore, firms and managers should take into consideration the role of employee incentives when applying real options logic to investment decision making. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of age on shopping orientation—choice orientation types of the ageing shoppers

Traditionally, ageing consumers have been considered and treated as a rather homogeneous group. The appropriateness of this way of conduct is increasingly challenged when the baby-boom generation is reaching the retirement age. In the near future, 55+ consumers will be the dominant consumer segment in Western societies. Therefore, retailers should be more aware of the heterogeneous needs and wants of the “new old”. In the current study, six segments of ageing (55–75 years old) consumers were formed based on choice orientation in the specialty retailing context. The findings were compared to those obtained using the sample of younger (18–54 years old) consumers. The study was based on the household survey collected in Helsinki metropolitan area in 2009. The results indicate that the ageing market is formed of different consumer types which are rather similar to those found among younger age cohorts.     

科技企业创业主体及其创业意愿影响因素分析

科技企业具有一定的技术含量和创业门槛,其创业主体主要为在职科技人员。科技人员在创业决策中有诸多顾虑,包括放弃现有工作的机会成本、技术入股的利益分配模式、创业中可能面临的各种难题等。虽然影响科技人员创业意愿的因素有多种,但归纳起来主要是两个方面的因素：个人特质和创业环境。构建了科研人员创业意愿影响模型并进行了实证分析。研究发现,科研人员的创业能力、资源获得能力、风险承受力,以及良好的政策环境、投融资环境、营销支持体系、创业教育支持体系,均与科研人员的创业意愿正相关。但大部分科研人员在创业态度上仍偏谨慎。所以,政策上应该支持多种创业形式,消除科研人员的创业顾虑。     

Corporate social performance,analyst stock recommendations,and firm future returns

This study posits that security analysts heed corporate social performance information and factor it into their recommendations to general investors. In particular, as corporate social performance is often uncertain and ambiguous to general investors, analysts may serve as the informational pathway connecting corporate social performance to firm stock returns. Thus, we argue that analyst recommendations mediate the relationship between corporate social performance and firm stock returns. On the basis of not only a qualitative study with literature searches and interviews of stock analysts but also a quantitative study with two longitudinal samples of large firms, we find support for these arguments. Our findings uncover an information‐based underlying mechanism for the link between corporate social performance and financial performance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Environmental decisions and theories of justice: Implications for economic analysis and policy practice

This article examines the implications of pluralism for environmental decision-making and governance in the globalizing world. It first discusses how environmental governance is needed to deal with environmental conflicts and interdependencies caused by the attributes of environmental resources and their users. The article argues that globalization engenders large-scale interdependencies and conflicts that involve increasingly heterogeneous individuals and organizations. The article suggests that the resulting radical pluralism will underline the role of justice in providing reasons and justifications for collective environmental decisions and will shift emphasis from distributive justice to procedural justice. The article concludes by discussing solutions that would take justice concerns into account in environmental governance. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A03DH034 00004     

The Installed Base Effect: Some Empirical Evidence From The Microcomputer Market

The penetration rate US network technologies is not only determined by the indigenous qualities of these technologies, but also by the adoption behaviour of other actors using the same network technology. This paper provides empirical evidence for the importance of network externalities and suggests that the econonmic consequences of network externalities - as they affect the diffusion speed of network technologies at an aggregate level - may be considerable.When the market offers incompatible network technologies, the relative share of previous adopters of the technologies plays a critical role in determining the diffusion speed of network technologies. This paper provides empirical evidence from the European microcomputer market between 1985 and 1994 which supports this hypothesis. Our analysis suggests that the diffusion speed of microcomputers at an aggregate level has varied with the relative order of magnitude of the network size of the two incompatible operating systems: a higher variation between the number of users of different microcomputers sold is positively relaled to a higher diffusion speed of microcomputers in general.