Hayek on the essential dispersion of market knowledge

The Review of Austrian Economics - A key insight in Hayek’s thought is the importance of so-called “local knowledge” in economic activity. In The Fatal Conceit, he states that...     

Ensuring survey research data integrity in the era of internet bots

Quality & Quantity - We used an internet-based survey platform to conduct a cross-sectional survey regarding the impact of COVID-19 on the LGBTQ?+?population in the United States....     

Uncertainty perception in bidding for Product-Service Systems under competition

This research investigates what impact of uncertainty perception arising from the existence of competition has on the pricing decision for Product-Service Systems (PSS) under uncertainty. PSS provision is an increasingly important area for many businesses and competition increases cognitive pressures on providers even further. We present an experimental study with industrial costing and bidding experts from the defence and aerospace sector. The study consisted of an experimental set-up via two questionnaires which differed in the existence of competition in the bidding scenario. The findings showed that bidding decision makers changed their evaluation of the cost estimate due to the introduction of competition but kept their evaluations of the profit margin and price bids constant. Furthermore, the participants listed the relevant sources of uncertainty that influenced their decision-making process. This research contributes to the literature in two ways. First, our findings showed that predictions from current theory regarding decision-making of cost estimation and pricing are not confirmed when competitively bidding for PSS. Second, we show uncertainty sources that influenced the decision makers and identified p the importance of internal processes of the PSS provider and environmental uncertainty.     

First mover or higher quality? Optimal product strategy in markets with positive feedbacks

Conventional wisdom holds that in markets with positive feedbacks being first to market can matter more than product quality. In this paper, we test that intuition within a generalized Pólya urn model. We find that if we assume constant feedbacks, in the long run, higher quality products dominate the market regardless of initial market shares, contradicting the common wisdom. However, when we allow for variable feedbacks, initial advantages persist almost indefinitely. Thus, the choice of whether to rush to market or focus on quality depends on market characteristics such as whether the positive feedbacks result from more consistent returns to scale or from more variable social influences.     

Shifting Strategies: the Pursuit of Closure and the ‘Association of German Auditors’

Drawing on Weber’s [(1972). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie [Economy and society. An outline of interpretive sociology]. (5th ed.). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck] theories of social stratification and closure, and on Parkin’s [(1979). Marxism and class theory. London: Tavistock] development thereof, this paper contributes a case study of Germany to the literature on closure processes (rather than outcomes), and outcomes falling short of professionalization. It explores the early history of the first German association of auditors, the Verband Deutscher Bücherrevisoren (VDB), founded in 1896. The paper traces how closure was pursued, at various times, by different means and to different degrees, depending on the changing social, economic and political contexts and on changing perception of what would best serve the association’s interest. By thus focusing on the shifting aims and strategies of the VDB, the paper contributes new insights into the dynamics within professions and between professions and their environments, and the dynamics and conditions underlying failed professionalization projects. The paper shows that, while the VDB had a degree of success in creating many of the structure and processes of a modern professional body, its ambition to achieve market and professional closure was not fulfilled.     

CEO career horizon,corporate governance,and real options: The role of economic short‐termism

Research Summary: Combining studies on real options theory and economic short‐termism, we propose that, depending on CEOs’ career horizons, CEOs have heterogeneous interests in strategic flexibility, and thus, have different incentives to make real options investments. We argue that compared to CEOs with longer career horizons, CEOs with shorter career horizons will be less inclined to make real options investments because they may not fully reap the rewards during their tenure. In addition, we argue that long‐term incentives and institutional ownership will mitigate the relationship between CEOs’ career horizons and real options investments. U.S. public firms as an empirical setting produced consistent evidence for our predictions. Our study is the first to theoretically explain and empirically show that a CEO's self‐seeking behavior will impact real options investments. Managerial Summary: This article helps to explain how a CEO's self seeking‐behavior may shape a firm's real option investment, which could result in different level of strategic flexibility. We argue that CEOs with short career horizons have less time to exercise their firms’ real options, which should lower the investments in the firms’ real options portfolios relative to CEOs with long career horizons. We study a sample of U.S. public firms and find strong evidence that a CEO's expected tenure in the firm is positively related to the real options investments at the firm level. We find that this agency issue can be mitigated by adopting appropriate corporate governance mechanisms such as long‐term incentives and institutional investors.     

Young people with intellectual disabilities and sport as a leisure activity: notions from the Finnish welfare society

Although disability sports have recently received positive attention, little concern has been directed towards them in youth research. In this article, we discuss the free-time sports in which youth with intellectual disabilities engage as a part of their leisure and their association with their peers. We maintain that every young person has a principal right to leisure and question what kinds of access youth with intellectual disabilities have to local sports communities in the Finnish context. Our empirical data consist of notes collected during sports training; interviews with young sports participants, their supervisors, and their parents; and online survey responses. Almost all sports are equally accessible to everyone; however, practical engagement in sports is not equally easy for everyone because long distances, lack of transportation, unsuitable sporting occasions and teams, or incapable coaches limit individuals’ participation possibilities. Furthermore, symbolic structures, such as neglectful attitudes, restrict the visibility of youth with intellectual disabilities in leisure sports. In many ways, supporting networks become significant when access to sport is under scrutiny. The most important enabling and restricting factors are families’ symbolic and material capital, as well as the unequal, poorly guided, and occasional leisure possibilities in different localities.