Job Characteristics and Labor Market Discrimination in Promotions

We extend promotion signaling theory to generate new testable implications concerning racial differences in promotions. In our model, promotions signal worker ability. When tasks differ substantially across job levels, the opportunity cost of not promoting qualified non‐whites/non‐Asians is large, so employers are less likely to inefficiently withhold their promotions. Thus, given prepromotion performance, the extent to which non‐whites/non‐Asians have lower promotion probabilities decreases when tasks vary more across levels. Racial differences in wage increases at promotion diminish when tasks vary more across levels. Evidence from a single firm's personnel records supports the model's predictions concerning promotion probabilities.     

R&D Partnerships and Innovation Performance: Can There Be too Much of a Good Thing?

R&D collaboration facilitates the pooling of complementary skills, learning from the partner as well as the sharing of risks and costs. Research therefore stresses the positive relationship between collaborative R&D and innovation performance. Fewer studies address the potential drawbacks of collaborative R&D. Collaborative R&D comes at the cost of coordination and monitoring, requires knowledge disclosure, and involves the risk of opportunistic behavior by the partners. Thus, while for lower collaboration intensities the net gains can be high, costs may start to outweigh benefits if firms perform a higher share of their innovation projects collaboratively. For a sample of 2735 firms located in Germany and active in a broad range of manufacturing and service sectors, this study finds that increasing the share of collaborative R&D projects in total R&D projects is associated with a higher probability of product innovation and with a higher market success of new products. While this confirms previous findings on the gains for innovation performance, the results also show that collaboration has decreasing and even negative returns on product innovation if its intensity increases above a certain threshold. Thus, the relationship between collaboration intensity and innovation follows an inverted‐U shape and, on average, costs start to outweigh benefits if a firm pursues more than about two‐thirds of its R&D projects in collaboration. This result is robust to conditioning market success to the introduction of new products and to accounting for the selection into collaborating. This threshold is, however, contingent on firm characteristics. Smaller and younger as well as resource‐constrained firms benefit from relatively higher collaboration intensities. For firms with higher collaboration complexities in terms of different partners and different stages of the R&D process at which collaboration takes place, returns start to decrease already at lower collaboration intensities.     

Workplace organization and innovation

Abstract This study uses panel data on Canadian establishments to explore the relationship between the organization of work – in particular decentralization, information‐sharing, and incentive pay schemes – and innovation. Like other studies, ours finds a clear positive link between these factors. However, the data give strong indications that this relationship is not causal. We show that: (1) the correlation between workplace organization and innovation holds for information‐sharing but is much weaker for decentralized decision‐making or incentive pay programs, (2) controls for unobserved heterogeneity significantly weaken results, and (3) lagged variables give no clear evidence that organizational changes predate innovation.     

Accession to the euro-area: a stylized analysis using a NK model

This paper analyses the accession to the euro-area by new members using a stylized new-Keynesian model. We analyze macroeconomic adjustment in the pre- and post-accession case and calculate welfare in both situations to obtain net benefit/loss from accession. It is shown how the effects of accession is related to the conduct of monetary policy and fiscal policy in the pre- and post-accession case. The simulation examples point at the potential costs that accession might entail due its consequences on monetary and fiscal policy design. These consequences from accession in terms of macroeconomic stabilization ability of monetary and fiscal policies have not always been fully acknowledged and may need more attention.     

Deception in Computer-Mediated Communication

An integrated model of interpersonal deception, focusing on the particular characteristics and impacts of computer-mediated modalities, is derived and presented. Although there is a wealth of research investigating both mediated communication and deception, there has been relatively little empirical work at the intersection. Our purpose is to provide a model that spans these areas, to summarize relevant literature, and to advance a set of empirically testable propositions to guide future work.     

How do consumers’ perceptions differ across dimensions of corporate social responsibility and hotel types?

This study develops three hypotheses regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the context of the hotel industry. First, the study examines a ranking of consumers’ perceived importance of the four CSR dimensions proposed by Carroll’s hierarchy of CSR in 1991, expecting the following orders: philanthropic, ethical, legal, and economic dimensions, from most to least important. Second, the study investigates the relationship between consumers’ perceived importance of and their overall support for CSR. Third, the study introduces the type of hotel (for example, economy, mid-scale, and upscale) as a moderator to provide a better explanation of the relationship between consumers’ perceived importance of the CSR dimensions and support for CSR. Contributions to the CSR literature in general, and also specifically relating to the hotel context, and managerial implications are discussed.     

MCMC ESTIMATION OF LÉVY JUMP MODELS USING STOCK AND OPTION PRICES

We examine the performances of several popular Lévy jump models and some of the most sophisticated affine jump‐diffusion models in capturing the joint dynamics of stock and option prices. We develop efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for estimating parameters and latent volatility/jump variables of the Lévy jump models using stock and option prices. We show that models with infinite‐activity Lévy jumps in returns significantly outperform affine jump‐diffusion models with compound Poisson jumps in returns and volatility in capturing both the physical and risk‐neutral dynamics of the S&P 500 index. We also find that the variance gamma model of Madan, Carr, and Chang with stochastic volatility has the best performance among all the models we consider.     

Predicting the level of B2B e-commerce in industrial organizations

Through the use of business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B e-commerce), leading companies are transforming interorganizational transaction processing, trading, and collaboration into a competitive advantage. The research empirically examines several models with B2B e-commerce overall use as the dependent variable and innovation characteristics, context, channel factors, and organizational structure as the predictor variables. The results demonstrate that compatibility with existing systems, cooperative norms with customers, lateral integration within a firm, technocratic specialization, and decentralization of information technology decisions facilitate B2B e-commerce overall use. In addition, large firms are more likely than small firms to have greater levels of B2B e-commerce and firms are more likely to use B2B e-commerce with customers that use recommendations rather than threats to encourage e-commerce use.     

Effects of pricing and promotion on consumer perceptions: it depends on how you frame it

This research examined the extent to which different promotional frames increased perceptions of deal value. Price discounts dominate the sales promotions employed by marketers. The framing literature suggests discounts have robust positive effects on consumer perceptions of deal value. However, the current research showed that negative quality inferences moderated discount framing effects and undermined deal value, particularly when no assurance of product quality was provided. Every-day-low-price offers were also vulnerable to negative quality inferences, while free gift frames maintained quality perceptions and increased deal value. Product trial acted to further magnify promotional framing effects, according to a confirmation bias. These findings were consistent with an attribute framing mechanism.