Handelsrestriktionen gegen Russland belasten sektoral und regional unterschiedlich stark

Wirtschaftsdienst - Die militärische Eskalation in der Ukraine sowie die aufgrund der Sanktionen einsetzenden Bremseffekte für die Kapital- und Handelsströme werden die deutsche...     

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....     

Introduction to the Special Issue on “The Intersection Between Industrial Organization and Healthcare Economics”

This article introduces the special issue on the intersection between industrial organization and healthcare economics. This intersection has received increasing research interest, growing from 2% of the industrial-organization literature in 1991 to 6% in 2016. We describe the nine included articles, which cover a range of healthcare markets that include hospital services, insurance, and pharmaceuticals.     

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.     

Demystifying residents' walking behaviors: Active transport in South East Queensland,Australia

This study investigates the correlates of a resident's walking behaviors and aims to shed light on mechanisms through which walking may be encouraged. The results of this investigation paint a complex and nuanced picture of the residents’ walking behaviors in South East Queensland, Australia. The results suggest that sociodemographic characteristics separately may contribute greatly to whether or not one engages in walking behaviors. Further, cumulatively these differences might be greater for some groups of residents compared to others. One of the most prominent findings of the study is that the purpose, the characteristics of the origin, and the characteristics of the destination of a trip tended to be similar in the heterogeneity they exhibit over the distribution of time spent walking. For example, pick something up, undertake work, or engage in personal business, move to or from a workplace, shop, or social place are activities that tend to be associated with walking as a main mode of transport and a higher number of walking episodes. However, these trips tended to be short.     

University – industry collaboration in R&D: the role of labor market rigidity

We investigate how R&D university – industry collaboration (R&D UIC) is influenced by labor market rigidity. While it is well-established that an educated and skilled workforce will facilitate R&D UIC, another aspect of these alliances has been under-researched: the role of labor market rigidity, in particular the difficulties employers face in hiring and firing workers. We hypothesize that the size of the R&D labor pool in a country will encourage R&D UIC, and that the ease with which employers are legally allowed to hire and fire will directly and indirectly influence R&D UIC. Integrating data from various sources, we test our model on a sample of 73 countries for which information on the size of the R&D labor pool and labor market regulations are available. We also conduct a robustness test using a different proxy for R&D labor pool on a larger sample of 109 countries. Results confirm the strong link between a country's R&D labor pool and R&D UIC, as well as direct negative impacts of hiring and firing rigidity and an indirect negative impact of hiring rigidity. The findings have implications for managers, policy makers, and researchers of R&D collaboration between universities and industry.     

INSURANCE‐INDUCED MORAL HAZARD: A DYNAMIC MODEL OF WITHIN‐YEAR MEDICAL CARE DECISION MAKING UNDER UNCERTAINTY

This study quantifies the moral hazard effect of health insurance on medical expenditure by estimating a dynamic model of within‐year medical care consumption that allows for insurance selection, endogenous health transitions, and individual uncertainty about medical care prices in an environment where insurance has nonlinear cost‐sharing features. The results suggest that moral hazard accounts for 53.1%, on average, of total annual medical expenditure when insured. This estimate is significantly different, and generally larger, than that produced by an alternative model that is representative of the annual medical care decision‐making models commonly found in the literature.     

Does local political support influence financial markets? A study on the impact of job approval ratings of political representatives on local stock returns

Using data on job approval ratings of governors, U.S. senators, and the president, we find that firms located in states with high approval ratings outperform firms located in states with low approval ratings by .64% per month. Furthermore, this relationship is stronger when investors are actively involved in politics, when local politicians are closer to the center of political power, for small firms that have a larger proportion of local investors, and for financially strong areas where investors are ready to execute investments in local stocks. Overall, our study shows that investors’ political sentiment is important in determining stock returns.     

When and Why Do Takeovers Lead to Fraud?

This paper develops a model explaining how acquisitions of controlling block ownership can facilitate post‐takeover fraud by new managers when investor protection is poor. Based on disclosures of embezzlement or breach of fiduciary duty in Korean firms, we find that the probability of explicit looting in takeover targets is 13%, almost five times as large as a matched sample of non‐targets. Post‐takeover frauds are primarily driven by transfers of minority blocks, while the corresponding probability in majority acquisitions is statistically indistinguishable from the non‐targets. These findings may explain why minority acquisitions of controlling blocks are popular under poor investor protection.     

Conceptualizing businesses as social actors: A framework for understanding sustainability actions in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises

Small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) can play a crucial role in advancing environmental and social well‐being. Yet various—often conflicting—explanations have been offered to clarify why SMEs pursue sustainability. Some arguments foreground possibilities of profit maximization, whereas others emphasize individual values and convictions. Research supporting such contradicting explanations is often biased towards large enterprises or small, innovative frontrunners. In this article, we examine the underlying drivers of social and environmental interventions of SMEs by exploring empirical data from a survey of over 1,600 Canadian SMEs and complementary in‐depth interviews. We argue that sustainability actions of SMEs can be understood by viewing these firms as social actors—organizations that are shaped by individual values, internal and external interpersonal relationships, and are embedded in a social environment. This conceptualization directs attention to the full range of factors that shape sustainability engagement of SMEs and highlights frequently overlooked forms of sustainability‐oriented actions.