Inflation Risk?

Intereconomics - Inflation is on the rise again in the industrialised world. This has led to fears of a sustained surge in inflation. This article argues that while such fears may make sense in the...     

Entrepreneurial orientation and innovation in family SMEs: Unveiling the (actual) impact of the Board of Directors

Drawing on stewardship and resource dependence theories, we examine how the board of directors (BoD) influences the link between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and ambidextrous innovation in small and medium sized family firms (family SMEs). Our analysis of 230 Spanish family SMEs shows that family involvement in the BoD has a negative effect on their ability to turn EO into innovation. Moreover, we show that the BoD's strategic involvement in service and control tasks and the provision of knowledge and skills have positive effects, whereas the intensity of BoD activity has a surprisingly negative effect. These findings underscore that the effects of the BoD on the entrepreneurship-innovation link are more complex than previously thought, pointing to the important role of both BoD composition and BoD functioning for enabling innovation in family SMEs.     

An Empirical Analysis of Entrant and Incumbent Bidding in Road Construction Auctions

This paper explores differences in the bidding patterns of entrants and incumbents in road construction auctions. We find that entrants bid more aggressively and win auctions with significantly lower bids than incumbents. The differences in their bidding patterns are consistent with a model of auctions in which the distribution of an entrant's costs exhibits greater dispersion than that of an incumbent's and relations of stochastic dominance in the distributions do not persist for the entire range of estimated costs. We also find that more efficient firms bid, on average, more aggressively and firms with greater backlogs bid less aggressively.     

Intraday Lead-Lag Relationships Between the Futures-, Options and Stock Market

In rational, efficiently functioning and complete markets, returns on derivative and underlying securities should be perfectly contemporaneously correlated. Due to market imperfections, one of these markets may reflect information faster. The use of high-frequency data and the choice for a small unit time interval to measure these lead-lag relations comes at the cost of some or many missing observations, causing traditional estimators to either under- or overestimate covariances and correlations. We use a new estimator to estimate lead-lag relationships between the cash AEX index, options and futures. We find that futures returns lead both options and cash index returns by approximately 10 minutes. The relationship between options and the cash market is not completely unidirectional.     

Information styles of marketing and R&D personnel during technological product innovation projects

Abstract The research question in the present article can be phrased in the following way: what are the elements which influence the perception of the utility of information received from another function? A field study research has been conducted in 40 Belgian companies. In each company, we have studied two on-going innovation projects (one planning project, one development project). Crossfunctional communication behaviours at the R&D/marketing interface have been measured by means of mailed structured questionnaires. Three-hundred and eighty-six questionnaires have been returned. The data analyses show that there are four underlying information dimensions, i.e. the perceived relevance, the perceived comprehensibility, the perceived novelty and the perceived credibility of information. We also discuss some contingency variables (function of the message receiver, stage in the innovation process) that might moderate the impact of these dimensions. It will be shown that the interaction between source and receiver has a significant impact on the perceived credibility, the perceived comprehensibility and the perceived novelty of the received information.     

通货膨胀的各种成因及其在我国的实证分析

本文不仅总结了当前主要的实证研究文献提出的我国通货膨胀的种种成因,而且对每种原因给予了比较分析和新的实证分析,并在此基础上尝试进行了综合分析,以得出一些有益的结论。     

European Sugar Policy Reform and Agricultural Innovation

In July 2006, the European Union's (EU) Common Market Organization (CMO) for sugar underwent the first radical reform since its establishment in 1968. In this article, we study the incentives for adoption of new technologies before and after the policy reform. We build a stochastic partial equilibrium model and use it to analyze the effect of the policy reform on the adoption incentives of genetically modified herbicide tolerant sugar beet. Our findings show that the adoption incentives of high‐cost sugar beet farmers are significantly reduced under the new CMO. Medium‐cost producers, in contrast, have greater incentives to adopt new technologies, while low‐cost producers are largely left unaffected. The reduced adoption incentives of high‐cost farmers lead to lower flexibility and competitiveness of these farmers and therefore coincides with the goals of the reform to crowd out high‐cost producers and increase competitiveness of the European sugar market. En juillet 2006, l'Organisation commune du marché (OCM) du sucre a subi sa première réforme radicale depuis sa mise en place par l'UE en 1968. Dans la présente étude, nous avons examiné les incitatifs offerts pour l'adoption de nouvelles technologies, avant et après la réforme. Nous avons élaboré un modèle stochastique d'équilibre partiel et l'avons utilisé pour analyser les répercussions de la réforme sur les incitatifs offerts pour l'adoption de variétés de betteraves sucrières génétiquement modifiées résistantes aux herbicides. Selon nos résultats, les incitatifs offerts aux producteurs de betterave sucrière ayant des coûts marginaux élevés ont significativement diminué depuis la réforme de l'OCM du sucre. Par contre, les incitatifs offerts aux producteurs ayant des coûts marginaux moyens se sont accrus, tandis que ceux offerts aux producteurs ayant de faibles coûts marginaux n'ont pas changé. La diminution des incitatifs offerts aux producteurs ayant des coûts marginaux élevés entraîne une diminution de la souplesse et de la capacité concurrentielle de ces producteurs et, par conséquent, coïncide avec les objectifs de la réforme qui visent àévincer les producteurs ayant des coûts marginaux élevés et à accroître la capacité concurrentielle du marché européen du sucre.     

R&D–Marketing Integration Mechanisms, Communication Flows, and Innovation Success

Rudy Moenaert, William Souder, Arnoud De Meyer, and Dirk Deschoolmeester report the results of their study of forty technologically innovative Belgian companies to examine the interaction between marketing and R&D. They studied one commercially successful and one commercially unsuccessful technological product innovation project in each participating company and collected data from one marketing and one R&D respondent per project. Communication flows between marketing and R&D are increased under conditions involving formalization of projects, decentralization, positive interfunctional climate, and role flexibility.