The Diffusion of Innovations: Some Reflections

Abstract

This paper discusses a number of interrelated topics relating to the economics of innovation diffusion that merit further research and study. These topics encompass: how innovations are not just technological, may be horizontal or vertical, and may develop over time; the role in the diffusion process of complementarities across and substitutability between different technologies and innovations; how the many different sources of innovation other than R&D are given insufficient attention in the literature; the international dimensions of the diffusion process with emphasis on cross-country effects; the role played by different market structures in the industries supplying goods embodying new technologies; the imbalance in the relative emphases upon intra- and intra-firm diffusion in the existing diffusion literature; the need for more research on the relationship between firm performance and the diffusion of innovations, and government policy on diffusion.     

企业技术多样性、实质性社会责任信息披露与创新扩散

技术多样性是企业创新能力的重要表征，但现有研究对于技术多样性与创新扩散的关系存在争议。对此，区分相关和不相关技术多样性对创新扩散的异质性影响，并检验实质性社会责任信息披露作为一种信号传递机制对上述关系的调节作用。基于2008—2017年中国研发密集型上市企业数据进行实证分析，结果发现：相关技术多样性能够积极影响创新扩散；不相关技术多样性对创新扩散的影响存在滞后效应；实质性社会责任信息披露正向调节不相关技术多样性与创新扩散的关系。结论丰富了创新扩散理论与实证研究，可为企业创新实践提供决策依据。     

A Point Processes approach to bicycle sharing systems’ design and management

Public bicycle systems have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. The success of this service heavily depends on the topology of the city and on the locations of bike stations in relation to potential demand. In fact, it is primarily important that users find bike stations in convenient locations, sufficiently close both to the origins of their trips and to their destinations, and that each rental station guarantees the availability both of enough bicycles and of enough empty docking slots.This paper proposes a point processes approach to the study of bike-sharing systems, allowing us to quantify and control parameters having a key role in decisions both of strategic and operational type.Differently from previous studies, the point processes approach catches both the interdependence among the stations and the links between spatial and time aspects of the problem.The application of point processes, in particular spatial mixed Poisson processes, to this field requires the statement and proof of an invariance property of such processes under stochastic dependent transformations, that may be of interest also from a theoretical point of view.     

Do mergers really increase output? Evidence from English hospitals

The English hospital sector underwent a major restructuring program between 2000 and 2008 to centralize activity in fewer and larger hospitals. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effects of such consolidations on hospital outputs. As mergers occurred in a staggered way, treatment could start and end at every time and treatment duration varied over the years. As every time is a mix of hospital pre-treatment, treatment and post-treatment phases, the canonical difference-in-differences assumption of homogeneous policy effects is not only meaningless but also misleading, raising doubts about the appropriateness of the methods previously used in this literature and consequently the accuracy of its results. We instead adopt a new matching and difference-in-differences approach, the flexible conditional difference-in-differences approach, developed by Dettmann et al. in 2020, more appropriate for causal analysis of treatments characterized by varying start dates and varying treatment duration. Our results suggest that mergers downsize hospital activities, especially the most expensive ones. If the goal of hospital mergers is to gain efficiency by centralization of activity, our findings suggest this restructuring programme is not the most successful policy to pursue. Mergers reduce the scope for competition between hospitals and do not create any incentive for poorly performing hospitals.     

Exchange options for catastrophe risk management

In this paper, we investigate the pricing issue and catastrophe risk management of exchange options. Exchange options allow the holder to exchange its stocks for another at maturity and can be seen as an extended version of catastrophe equity put options with another traded asset price as strike prices. Since option holders have to issue new shares to exercise the option, we illustrate the differences between option prices calculated using pre-exercise and post-exercise share prices. The effects of default risk on option prices and risk management are also considered. Finally, risk management analysis shows that exchange options can effectively hedge catastrophe risk.     

Cross-national differences in big data analytics adoption in the retail industry

Big data analytics (BDA) has emerged as a significant area of research for both researchers and practitioners in the retail industry, indicating the importance and influence of solving data-related problems in contemporary business organization. The present study utilised a quantitative-methods approach to investigate factors affecting retailers' adoption of BDA across three countries. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from managers and decision-makers in the retail industry. Data of 2278 respondents were analysed through structural equation modelling. The findings revealed that security concerns, external support, top management support, and rational decision making culture have a greater effect on BDA adoption in developed countries UK than in UAE and Egypt. However, competition intensity and firm size have a greater effect on BDA adoption in UAE and Egypt than in UK. Finally, human variables (competence of information system's staff and staff's information system knowledge) have a greater effect on BDA adoption in Egypt than UK and UAE. The findings indicate that a “one-size-fits-all” approach is insufficient in capturing the heterogeneity of managers across countries. Implications for practice and theory were demonstrated.     

A supply chain management framework for services

While services represent the largest sector of the global economy, 86.8% in the United States, most supply chain management (SCM) research is focused on product flows. Executives in manufacturing firms have benefited from frameworks created to implement SCM processes, but this is not the case for their counterparts in service companies. The two most cited SCM frameworks for services have methodological and conceptual deficiencies. Drawing upon the service-dominant logic of marketing and using an empirical research approach, we developed supply chain structure maps for nine service firms. Our findings indicate that the supply chain structure maps of service companies are comparable to those in the product-based literature, which supports the service-dominant logic. Then, we identified the six key processes that constitute a framework to manage service supply chains. The customer relationship management and the supplier relationship management processes form the critical links in the supply chain, and the other four processes are coordinated through this linkage. The SCM framework for services provides direction for executives in service firms who need to increase cross-functional integration within their firms and with other members of the supply chain. For academics, 12 avenues for future research are identified.     

创业投资政府引导基金政策扩散研究——基于全国31省数据的事件史分析

创业投资政府引导基金是解决初创企业融资难等市场失灵问题的典型政策工具，本文以2005-2015年全国31个省份数据为例，利用事件史方法分析我国省级创业投资政府引导基金政策的扩散机制。研究发现：创业投资引导基金政策的总体扩散过程主要受到纵向府际关系和政府创新易感性的影响；省级创业投资引导基金政策在时间维度上符合阶梯型累积分布曲线规律，其背后逻辑是不同时期政策创新扩散的动力源和阻力源不同，前期扩散的动力源主要是纵向府际关系和政府创新易感性，经济发展水平对政策扩散存在阻滞作用，而后期扩散的动力源主要是纵向府际关系，企业研发经费支出和省长的相关工作经历对政策扩散存在阻滞作用。本文不仅从公共政策视角加深了对中国创业投资引导基金政策的认识，也丰富和拓宽了已有公共政策扩散的相关成果。     

Predictable forward performance processes: Infrequent evaluation and applications to human-machine interactions

We study discrete-time predictable forward processes when trading times do not coincide with performance evaluation times in a binomial tree model for the financial market. The key step in the construction of these processes is to solve a linear functional equation of higher order associated with the inverse problem driving the evolution of the predictable forward process. We provide sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness and an explicit construction of the predictable forward process under these conditions. Furthermore, we find that these processes are inherently myopic in the sense that optimal strategies do not make use of future model parameters even if these are known. Finally, we argue that predictable forward preferences are a viable framework to model human-machine interactions occurring in automated trading or robo-advising. For both applications, we determine an optimal interaction schedule of a human agent interacting infrequently with a machine that is in charge of trading.