Diversification Strategies and Corporate Coherence Evidence from Italian Leading Firms

This paper investigates the determinants of coherence and coherence change usinga sample of Italian leading firms in the period 1993–1996. Consistently with thehypotheses advanced by Teece et al. (1994), the econometric analysis highlightsthat relatedness between pairs of sectors and coherence of diversification strategiesare higher when firms are active in sectors sharing similar technological and marketingcharacteristics, and when they are positioned at different stages of the productive chain.Moreover, the findings that firms which enter the group of top 5 industry leaders aremore coherent than the average and that coherence is increasing for firms active insectors more sensitive to EU integration are consistent with the prediction that coherentfirms tend to outperform less coherent ones and that coherence is increasing in morecompetitive environments. Finally, the results show that a deepening of vertical integration strategies is good for coherence change, while an increase of diversification brings a reduction in coherence.     

Some reflections on past and future of nonlinear dynamics in economics and finance

This paper offers an overview of the literature on the economic and financial applications of theory of nonlinear dynamics, especially bifurcation theory. After a short introductory discussion of the first nonlinear dynamic models in social sciences and the economic relevance of the zoo of bifurcations and complicated dynamics that such models can generate, we present an overview of the literature on nonlinear dynamic models in the areas of underdevelopment, environmental poverty traps, the management of common goods, industrial organization and financial markets. The review of the literature is enriched by reflections and ideas for future research.     

Sense and sensibility: Testing an attention-based view of organizational responses to social issues

According to attention-based theories, to explain organizational attention is to explain organizational behavior. In our study, we test the model of situated attention and firm behavior by examining the effects of attention structures and allocation of attention on organizational outcomes. We hypothesize a positive relationship between attention structures and the allocation of organizational attention that, in turn, has an effect on financial performance. Using a unique data set composed of indicators of social responsibility published by 338 Brazilian organizations between 2001 and 2007, we find support for our hypotheses. Our findings suggest that organizational attention to social issues fully mediates the relationship between attention structures and financial performance.     

The food neophobia scale and young adults’ intention to eat insect products

In the coming years, the new EU Regulation on Novel Food is likely to facilitate the development of a niche market for insects and insect‐based ingredients in many European countries. In this research, the aim is to explore the relationship between willingness to try (WTT) and behavior of eating insects, where the independent variables are food neophobia, sensory property expectations, and previous consumption. In total, 88 Italian participants took part in the study. The food neophobia scale (FNS) was constructed using 9 of the 10 items from the original FNS, and a Structural Equation Modeling approach was used to test the research hypotheses. The results show that males are more open to trying insects than females, and food neophobia is negatively correlated with the willingness to eat insects. Findings also indicate that the first exposure to insects positively increases consumers’ sensory property expectations. Intention to try is a strong predictor of the behavior of eating insects. People who scored lower on the FNS were more likely to try (intention) and consequently eat insects (behavior). These findings enhance knowledge about factors which could lead to lower levels of negative prejudice and greater willingness to taste edible insects among Western consumers. Finally, some marketing implications are discussed, like the need of information campaigns to emphasize positive sensory attributes of edible insects to increase the WTT this unfamiliar food.     

Designing business models in circular economy: A systematic literature review and research agenda

The concept of circular economy is increasingly receiving attention in different domains, including strategic management, operations management, and technology management. It requires companies to design their business model (i.e., the value network, the relationships with the supply chain partners, and the value propositions towards customers) around a new concept of sustainable development that reduces consumption of natural resources and preserves the environment. However, extant research falls short in terms of explaining how companies design their business model according to the circular economy principles. Starting from this premise, the present paper provides a systematic review of the literature on the design of business models in the context of circular economy, aiming to offer an overview of the state of research and outline a promising research agenda.     

The effects of COVID-19 containment measures on the Asia-Pacific region

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the world, governments introduced significant containment measures to control the spread of the virus. In this paper, we leverage inputs from IMF desk economists to construct a novel narrative index of containment measures for 11 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. A key innovation in our index is that it distinguishes between economic sectors (services, industry, retail), thus providing a more granular view of restrictions related to economic activity. Using this index, along with other high-frequency data, we find that containment measures have been successful in reducing the spread of the virus (though with some heterogeneity) but have also been associated with large short-term economic costs. Furthermore, exploiting the granularity of our index, we find that differences in strategies across countries regarding the closing of the industrial sector have mattered: imposing less severe restrictions on industry has been associated with lower economic costs without leading to worse health outcomes, possibly reflecting the less contact intensive nature of industrial activity.     

Looking into the abyss? Brazil at the mid-2010s

In 2015, the Brazilian economy was afflicted by a lethal combination of a falling level of activity and accelerating inflation. Expectations for 2016 are equally or even more adverse, since the effects of rising unemployment emerge only after a lag. The domestic debate has opposed analysts who believe the crisis is due exclusively to past policy mistakes to analysts who believe that all was well until the government decided to implement austerity policies in 2015. A closer examination of the evidence shows that in fact both reasons contributed to causing the crisis, but it also suggests that its depth has a more proximate cause in the political collapse of the federal government in 2015, which led Brazilian society to an impasse for which a solution is not yet in view.     

Financial Education Interventions Targeting Immigrants and Children of Immigrants: Results from a Randomized Control Trial

We document that immigrants in the United States differ from natives in several aspects relevant for their financial decision making. Based on these differences, we designed novel financial education materials targeted at US immigrants and their children and evaluated their effectiveness using a randomized control trial. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first rigorous evaluation of financial education programs targeted at this population. Compared to a control group, the groups that received the one‐time educational intervention were more likely to correctly answer financial knowledge questions immediately after the intervention. The estimated effects of this one‐time intervention on knowledge were large, but most of them faded away after six months. Moreover, we find little effect of the treatments on intended financial behavior measures, both immediately and six months later. Our results point to the efficacy of this type of educational material in informing immigrants and their children about important financial information that they are unfamiliar with, including information related to their immigrant status. However, they also suggest that a priority for future research should be to test whether repeated opportunities for learning can increase financial knowledge retention and lead to behavior change.     

Analysis of the Service Dominant Logic network,authors, and articles

The present study analyses research conducted in Service Dominant Logic (S-D logic), providing an overview of its intellectual structure. For that purpose, a structured approach was adopted through the implementation of bibliometric methods, using co-citation analysis combined with performance analysis and an integrative science mapping approach, which considered a timeline, a graph, and a distance-based perspective. This allowed the identification of the leading authors and of six clusters of articles based on bibliographic coupling, along with the most prominent research themes clustered in five subdomains of research based on co-occurrence of terms. The networks extracted show the associations between the main articles and concepts treated by the S-D logic community, unveiling the salient challenges and prospective expansion facing its future theoretical and practical context.     

The impact of production offshoring on the skill composition of manufacturing firms: evidence from Italy

In this work we explore how the international outsourcing of production impacts the skill composition of employment within Italian manufacturing firms. In particular, our aim is to assess whether the choice to offshore production activities to cheap‐labour countries implies a bias in the employment of skilled workers relative to unskilled ones.

Using a balanced panel of firms covering the period 1995–2003, we set up a counterfactual analysis in which, by using a difference‐in‐differences propensity score matching estimator, we compare the dynamics of skill demand for treated and control firms while addressing the possible problem of selection bias.

Our results identify a ‘potential’ skill bias effect of production offshoring. In particular, we find that treated firms tend to show an upward shift in the skill ratio with respect to the counterfactual sample, but coefficients are not significantly different from zero. When we look at the elements of the skill ratio separately, we find that the skill bias is driven by a fall in the employment of production workers (blue collars), rather than by the increase in the employment of non‐production workers (white collars), thus providing further evidence on the unskilled labour‐saving nature of international outsourcing.