When should firms choose a risky new technology? An oligopolistic analysis

How to choose technology type in a competitive environment is an important and challenging problem, which has received little attention from scholars. To fill this gap, this paper builds a game-theoretic model to examine whether a firm should choose to adopt a risky new technology or to adopt a safe new technology to reduce its marginal cost. I find that the result that each firm should always choose the risky technology in a duopoly may be invalid when more firms enter the market. In this scenario, some firms should adopt the safe technology for relatively high product substitutability because the advantage of employing the risky technology is threatened by the business stealing externality, finally forming heterogeneous equilibria in which both types of technologies are present. Furthermore, I show that the heterogeneous technology choice equilibria are more likely to arise when increasing number of firms enter the market, and that in these equilibria more firms always choose the risky technology than the safe technology. This study conveys relevant economic insights for competitive firms confronted with a dilemma between taking risks in pursuit of greater technology rewards and taking no risks for conservative technology returns.     

When is betweenness centrality useful to firms pursuing technological diversity? An internal-resources view

This study examines situations in which betweenness centrality (BC) is useful for firms pursuing technological diversity. Given the role of BC in firms’ access to external technological knowledge, the study explores the extent to which R&D and manufacturing resources, technological strength, and financial slack moderate the relationship between BC and technological diversity. The results show that BC alone does not exert a positive effect on technological diversity. Furthermore, R&D resources, technological strength, and financial slack each positively moderate the relationship between BC and technological diversity, whereas manufacturing resources do not. Identifying the influential moderators of internal resources should enable firms to harness the benefits of BC. Thus, firms should possess such internal resources to further their technological diversity through BC.     

Which factors improve the performance of the internationalization process? Focus on family firms

This study aimed to analyse the impact that the financial features and characteristics of the ownership structures of international companies exert on the performance of their internationalization process, as perceived by managers, and attempted to detect differences between family firms (FF) and nonfamily firms (non-FF). In addition, the impact of these characteristics and others related to FF, such as family ownership and generation, on the perceived performance of their internationalization is analysed. Based on a sample of Spanish companies with direct investment in China, the results indicated that, from the managers’ perspective, being an FF and having lower financial leverage exerted a positive effect on the performance of the internationalization process. Moreover, the study proved that this performance was strongly and positively related to the financial results of the company, and this positive effect was even stronger in the case of FF. Finally, the findings also showed that FF with a higher involvement of the family in their ownership recognized a better performance of their internationalization process. These results will be useful for companies that are considering the value of internationalization as a strategy to improve or maintain their financial results, and they also highlight certain differences between FF and non-FF.     

What should you pay to host a party? An economic analysis of hosting sports mega-events

Governments all over the world put huge amounts of money into bidding for, and then hosting, sports events like Football’s World Cup or the Olympic Games. They also give money to professional sports teams and other mega-events to encourage them to locate within a particular constituency. This article examines the statistical relationship between tourism and three Football World Cups and five Olympic Games, finding very little positive effect. Given this conclusion, the article looks at why governments continue to bid for these competitions. It presents evidence that shows that these sports contests make people happy, and argues that politicians capitalize on this feel-good factor; harnessing the hubris associated with these events for political gain. The article then contends that the best way to reduce the politics associated with bidding for mega-events is to allocate them via an auction, rather than the wasteful rent-seeking methods that are currently used.     

How does spatial crowdedness affect patenting performance in industrial clusters? An empirical study on the moderated U-shaped relationship

ABSTRACT

Prior literature suggests the coexistence of the positive and the negative externalities of agglomeration. However, with a focus on the production system side of industrial cluster, the extant studies less explore the root of the above mixed findings from the knowledge system side of clusters. Thus, this study aims to establish a coherent theoretical framework to reconcile the mixed findings on the relationship between spatial crowdedness and cluster-level patenting performance. Specifically, we expect a U-shaped relationship between spatial crowdedness and cluster-level patenting performance. From a perspective of knowledge based view, we argue that the interplay of two underlying mechanisms, i.e. knowledge spillover exploitation and knowledge safeguarding, will lead to this U-shaped relationship. We also propose the moderation effect of technological complexity on this U-shaped relationship. Using a longitudinal dataset from a sample of 171 industrial clusters in China during the period of 2011–2015, we find strong supports to our hypotheses.     

An analysis of ＂eco-centric management＂ in China and methods to improve it

The essay focuses on the question ＂what does the evideace on environmental regulation and its implementation tell us about the extent of eco-centric management in China and how to improve it＂. The first part will introduce ecocentrism, eco.centric management, and one major way to achieve eco-centric management in reality. Second. the environmental regulations of United Nation （UN） and China will be analyzed and compared to find out whether they are eco-centric. Moreover, the implementation of environmental regulation in China will be analyzed because regulatitm cannnt exist without proper implementation. Three suggestions were given to improve eco-centric management in China： natural science research and public administration, environmental education, international cooperation.     

Can open innovation improve firm performance? An investigation of financial information in the biopharmaceutical industry

Over the past decade, open innovation has seemingly become the dominant approach for revitalising a company’s innovation process. Can open innovation improve firm performance? This study optimises the measures for open innovation based on existing literature and by considering the actual situation in China. We draw conclusions from an analysis of 516 annual reports and data from Wind of 172 biopharmaceutical companies from 2013 to 2015. Result indicates that open innovation strategies have different effects at different times: (1) Inbound open innovation has a negative impact on short-term (1–2 years) firm performance, but an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship will develop after about 3 years. (2) Outbound open innovation has a negative impact on short-term firm performance, but leaves a positive effect in the long run. Therefore, enterprises should maintain a moderate inbound open innovation level and improve the degree of outbound open innovation to improve long-term performance.     

Should I stay or should I go? An econometric analysis of retirement decisions by couples

This article analyses retirement decisions from a household perspective, treating the retirement timing of spouses as potentially interdependent choices. To identify the determinants of retirement decisions by couples and the effects of spousal retirement, this research estimates bivariate probit models in a multi-country setting. The results show a significant joint retirement trend: both men and women are more likely to retire if their spouse already has retired. Strong asymmetric behaviours arise by gender though, with high crosscountry heterogeneity, reflecting institutional differences in both pension and public health systems.     

How do different motives for R&D cooperation affect firm performance? – An analysis based on Swiss micro data

The starting point of our analysis is the empirical fact that firms pursue different goals when getting engaged in R&D collaborations, often more than one goal at the same time. Given that firms are driven by different motives for R&D cooperation, the aim of this article is to investigate the differences related to different motives with respect to the impact of R&D cooperation on firm innovativeness and firm productivity. Not only R&D cooperation in general but also cooperation driven by each of the seven motives considered in this paper correlate positively with the sales share of innovative products. With respect to innovativeness, the characterization of cooperation by the driving motive did not add much more than could be gained through the overall variable ‘R&D cooperation yes/no’. Technology-motivated collaborative activities show a weaker tendency to positive direct effects on productivity than cost-motivated cooperation. In this case, the distinction of several cooperation motives yields some additional insights as compared to the overall cooperation variable. On the whole, distinguishing various cooperation motives appears to be fruitful because it allows more differentiated insights that would remain hidden behind the overall variable “R&D cooperation yes/no”.     

How does the entrepreneurial orientation of scientists affect their scientific performance? Evidence from the quadrant model

In order to identify the effect of academic entrepreneurship on science, this work compares the publication performance of entrepreneurial scientists with that of conventional scientists. Using Stokes's ‘quadrant model’, this paper examines how the entrepreneurial orientation affects scientific performance. The results on advanced materials research in Japan found that (i) entrepreneurial scientists publish more papers than conventional scientists do; (ii) the papers of conventional scientists demonstrate better citation performance than those of entrepreneurial scientists do, on average; (iii) coming to the top-cited papers, entrepreneurial scientists show higher propensity for publishing high-impact papers than conventional scientists do; and (iv) the portfolio interdisciplinarity of papers authored by entrepreneurial scientists is higher than that of conventional scientists. Although the influence of academic entrepreneurship on scientific performance is still unclear, our findings suggest that entrepreneurial scientists could make a relatively large contribution to furthering the scientific frontier by relying on innovation rather than convention.     

Do innovative firms rely on big secrets? An analysis of IP protection strategies with the CIS 4 survey

Innovative companies have a variety of instruments at their disposal to protect themselves from imitators, and this paper investigates the determinants of the protection choices with a focus on highly innovative respondents. While the patent system's aim is that firms apply to patent their innovations, especially the most important ones, theoretical results in the existing literature suggest that large innovations will rather be protected by secrecy because of the legal uncertainty surrounding intellectual property rights. In line with the predictions of their model, our probit analysis conducted using data from the Community Innovation Survey 4 shows that, in the intermediate goods industry, small innovations are patented while secrecy is used to protect large ones. For very innovative small firms, the share of innovative sales in total sales has a negative effect on patent application. These findings support the view that many innovative firms regard patent filing as no more secure than secrecy, which therefore limits the diffusion of knowledge.     

Does belief in objective morality lead to coercion? An analysis of the arguments of Kelsen and Buchanan

Two leading scholars of the 20th century – Hans Kelsen and James Buchanan – both suggested that belief in an objective morality entails a disparaging attitude towards political and individual freedom. The main point was similar: Why let people decide for themselves, whether in politics or ordinary life, if what is objectively right is known? This paper presents their arguments and evaluates them, both by specifying three conditions that need to be met for the arguments to hold (the objective morality must be believed to be known, a belief in a known morality must entail a motivation to see it followed and the content of the known morality must not block coercion) and by relating them to recent experimental research (which nevertheless provides some empirical support).     

How can nurses help patients work more effectively with nurses to improve the safety of patient care?

The literature seems quite clear that patients still regard the nurse as the principal link between the technical and interpersonal aspects of their care. The often-discussed medical error crisis tends to create in the patient mistrust of all care providers. The health care industry is driving towards a system that requires patients to be self-reliant in managing their care, without allowing for factual limitations in patient capability, ability, and interest in such an enterprise. Unfortunately for the overworked, understaffed nurse, patients still look to them to provide quality compassionate care without the patient having to police them. Health care providers have been mandated to provide assessment and intervention for pain management. It was mandated because we as health care professionals failed to perform this vital function in a consistent, quality manner. It did add to the workload of the nurse. However, if done properly, it is a valuable communication tool for the nurse and the patient to comfortably discuss pain and its management--the interpersonal part of care.     

How widespread are nonlinear crowding out effects? The response of private transfers to income in four developing countries

This article investigates the relationship between household income and private transfers received in developing countries. If private transfers are unresponsive to household income, there is less likelihood of expansions in public social security crowding out private transfers. Most literature finds that private transfers are unresponsive, but this may be because responses have been obscured by the methods that ignore nonlinearities. Threshold regression techniques find such nonlinearity in the Philippines and scope for serious crowding out, with 30–80% of private transfers potentially displaced for low-income households (Cox et al., 2004). To see if these nonlinear effects occur more widely, semiparametric and threshold regression methods are used to model private transfers in four developing countries – China, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Vietnam. The results reported in this article suggest that nonlinear crowding out effects are not important features of transfer behaviour in these countries. The transfer derivatives under a variety of assumptions only range between 0 and ?0.08.     

Do core-selecting Combinatorial Clock Auctions always lead to high efficiency? An experimental analysis of spectrum auction designs

For many years the Simultaneous Multi-Round Auction (SMRA) has been the primary auction design for spectrum sales worldwide. Recently, the core-selecting Combinatorial Clock Auction (CCA) has been used as an alternative to the SMRA in a number of countries promising strong incentives for truthful bidding and high efficiency as a result. We analyze the efficiency and auctioneer revenue of the CCA in comparison to SMRA and examine bidding behavior in both formats. The experiments are based on two value models, which resemble single- and multiband spectrum sales in the field. Such applications often allow for thousands of possible bundles. Bidders in the CCA submitted bids for only a fraction of all bundles with a positive valuation. Bundles were selected based on synergies and payoff after the primary bid rounds. As a consequence, we found efficiency of the CCA to be significantly lower than that of SMRA in the multi-band value model and auctioneer revenue of the CCA to be lower in both value models. In addition, we characterize several properties of the auction format, which result from the two-stage design and the payment and activity rules.