Difference-form contest success functions and effort levels in contests

We examine players' equilibrium effort levels in a contest with difference-form contest success functions in which two players compete with each other to win a prize. We show the following. At the pure-strategy Nash equilibrium of a simultaneous-move game, and in the subgame-perfect equilibrium of a sequential-move game, only one of the players expends effort or neither player expends effort. If one player's composite strength is far greater than the other player's, only the player with greater composite strength expends effort whether they move simultaneously or sequentially. If the players' valuations for the prize and their marginal probabilities of winning at (0, 0) are sufficiently small, neither player expends effort whether they move simultaneously or sequentially.     

Prospective measures of competitive balance application to money lines in the national hockey league

The authors have previously introduced the concept of utilizing point spreads to measure competitive balance in professional sports and a methodology for doing so. They assessed competitive balance in the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. This methodology was extended to measuring competitive balance utilizing money lines in major league baseball. This study starts by applying the same model to the money lines for the 2005–2015 seasons to measure competitive balance in the National Hockey League. It then statistically adjusts the money lines under various scenarios to estimate the effects of overtime rules and shootouts on competitive balance. Similar analyses of overtime effects on competitive balance of other sports are also completed for comparison purposes. The results indicate that competitive balance in the National Hockey League increased rather substantially during this period and that overtime rules and shootouts have had a much larger positive impact on competitive balance in the NHL than overtime approaches have had on the competitive balance of any of the other sports examined.     

The distance to competitive balance: a cardinal measure

Competitive balance is a key variable in the analysis of sports competitions. There are several indexes that measure competitive balance but, either they are not a mathematical metric or they do not have the unit interval as a range. Therefore, these indexes do not indicate the magnitude of the differences, and the measurements cannot be interpreted as percentages. We characterize the space of all admissible configurations of the results of a competition. Then, we construct a new index, based on the concept of distance, whose range is the unit interval, and define it as a function in a metric space. So, it solves issues linked to the limited cardinality of most existing indexes, and we can answer this question: What is the meaning of the differences between the levels of competitive balance? We applied this index to the major European soccer leagues over the last twenty seasons.     

Bargaining, binding contracts, and competitive wages

In a model where many workers bargain with one firm and sign binding contracts, we show existence of a stationary subgame perfect equilibrium. If the production function satisfies decreasing returns, each worker receives a share of his marginal product (treating all other workers as employed) in equilibrium. Thus, wages are competitive. This is in contrast to Stole and Zweibel (1996, Rev. Econ. Stud. 63, 375–410), who assume that contracts are non-binding and find that the payoff of a worker is a weighted average of the inframarginal contributions. Hence, binding contracts imply lower wages than non-binding contracts.     

On competitive balance in the group stage of the UEFA Champions League*

This article examines competitive balance in the group stage of the UEFA Champions League over the last two decades (1999/2000–2017/2018). Competitive balance is considered both before and after a competition. Have the groups been designed in such a way as to ensure similar levels of competitive balance ex ante? Have the demonstrated strengths (ex post competitive balance) of the different groups been similar over each season? What is the relationship between the competitive balance in the designed groups and that achieved in the same groups after the competition? Are the performance achieved in terms of ex post competitive balance similar to ex ante competitive balance levels? We found that, despite expectations, the groups' ex ante competitive balance was not homogeneous. Although ex ante competitive balance serves as a good predictor, on average, of ex post competitive balance, we observed significant differences at the levels of group and seasons. Therefore, it is possible to improve the design mechanism of the groups that make up the group stage of the champions so that they are composed homogeneously in terms of ex ante competitive balance.     

Revenue Sharing,Competitive Balance and the Contest Success Function

Abstract. This paper investigates revenue sharing in an asymmetric two‐teams contest model of a sports league with Nash behavior of team owners. The innovation of the analysis is that it focuses on the role of the contest success function (CSF). In case of an inelastic talent supply, revenue sharing turns out to worsen competitive balance regardless of the shape of the CSF. For the case of an elastic talent supply, in contrast, the effect of revenue sharing on competitive balance depends on the specification of the CSF. We fully characterize the class of CSFs for which revenue sharing leaves unaltered competitive balance and identify CSFs ensuring that revenue sharing renders the contest closer.     

A note on the competitive search model of Azariadis and Pissarides

In this short note, I reinvestigate a recent paper of Azariadis and Pissarides (Unemployment dynamics with international capital mobility, European Economic Review, 2007(51), 27–48) where wages are determined in a competitive search setting. I show that their equation on the equilibrium wage rate is incorrect. I derive a correct wage equation and perform the numerical analysis. The correction does not change their result and high capital mobility still raises the variability of the unemployment rate.     

Just looking for a good game: competitive balance in the Korean Professional Baseball League

Rottenberg’s uncertainty of outcome hypothesis is about preferences that can vary across fans and sports. We provide the first evidence of the empirical power of the hypothesis in the Korean Professional Baseball League (KPBL). In a panel data set, team-level aggregation over years shows that fans of this league attend in ways consistent with the hypothesis at the level of game uncertainty and consecutive season uncertainty, but only the first is statistically significant. KPBL fans appear to just be looking for a good game. This is consistent with the nearly complete concentration of post-season participation among a very few teams outside of the major population centre in Seoul and a lack of local team identification among KPBL fans. Our work adds to the diversity of league structures in the competitive balance literature since talent levels in KPBL are the result of parent company advertising choices rather than geographic identification. There are research questions and a policy implication.     

Sustainable competitive advantage and stock performance: the case for wide moat stocks

‘In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable “Moats”’. Warren Buffett Companies that have sustainable competitive advantages should be able to create a barrier (Moat) to prevent or lessen competition from other firms. The wider the Moat the greater the barrier and the more secure the company’s profitability. Using the Morningstar classification of ‘Wide Moat’ stocks, we construct annually rebalanced equal- and value-weighted portfolios to analyse their performance in order to determine if they deliver superior performance relative to standard benchmark portfolios. The period for our analysis extends from June 2002 through May 2014. We find that the ‘Wide Moat’ portfolios outperform both the S&P 500 and Russell 3000 indices generating higher average monthly and annualized returns, Sharpe Ratio, Sortino Ratio, Treynor Ratio, Omega Ratio, Upside Potential Ratio, M², M² Alpha, and cumulative returns. When we compute alpha using Carhart four-factor and Fama–French five-factor models, we find that ‘Wide Moat’ portfolios had significantly positive risk-adjusted alphas with both the models. ‘Wide Moat’ portfolios also lost less value during the 2007–2009 financial crisis compared to both S&P 500 and Russell 3000. In conclusion, we find that ‘Wide Moat’ stocks have created significant value for their investors over the course of our study.     

Competition,benchmarking, and electoral success: Evidence from 69 years of the German Bundestag

The German electoral system ensures that there is always at least one federal legislator per constituency. This legislator can face competition from additionally elected competitors to the Bundestag from precisely the same constituency. The existence of several legislators per constituency allows voters to benchmark their quality against each other. We analyze the causal impact of having more elected competitors from the same constituency on legislators’ personal success versus the success of their parties. Our data cover the legislative terms in the German Bundestag and federal elections in the period 1953–2021. In our analysis, we rely on exogenous variation in elected competitors by investigating changes induced by legislators who leave the Bundestag during the legislative period and their respective replacement candidates as instrumental variables. We find that legislators are less successful in elections when they are exposed to elected competitors from the same constituency. The results suggest that benchmarking possibilities are relevant for voters to evaluate their representatives.     

Application capability of e-business, e-business success, and organizational performance: Empirical evidence from China

Previous research efforts suggested that firms' overall e-business success tends to deliver greater organizational performance. However, few researchers examined how a firm leverages e-business investment to gain greater e-business success. Even fewer researchers investigated the different impacts of different levels of e-business success on organizational performance. This paper addresses two questions: (1) what capabilities influence a firms' ability to build e-business success and enjoy greater organizational performance, where firm-level e-business success is measured by e-business service capability and IT-enabled collaborative advantage; and (2) whether the two ways of measuring e-business success result in different impacts on organizational performance? We propose that a firm's application capability of e-business involving systems development and systems usage is positively related to a firm's overall e-business success, thus having a positive impact on organizational performance. We use survey data from 152 Chinese manufacturing firms and their B2B e-business systems participants to test our theoretical hypotheses and proposed model. The findings suggest that both systems development and systems usage have significant and positive impacts on e-business service capability, which in turn leads to greater IT-enabled collaborative advantage. This finding could be translated into the important role of a firm's application capability of e-business on e-business success. It is concluded that the application capability of e-business acts as one of the main mechanisms through which the e-business investment leads to greater e-business success. We also find that IT-enabled collaborative advantage, compared with e-business service capability, has a more significant and greater impact on organizational performance. This study extends prior e-business success research by opening up the ‘black box’ between a firm's e-business investment and its e-business success, and by distinguishing the relative impacts of e-business service capability versus IT-enabled collaborative advantage on organizational performance. Another contribution of this study is that the effect of context factors (firm size, industry, and system duration) in developing country on our proposed model.     

个人信用征信与保护的冲突与平衡

个人征信行业和制度的发展是市场经济发展的必然,是市场交易安全的保障,其本质要求个人信用信息的开放和共享,而个人信用信息的私密性的特征决定了个人信用征信机制的构建与个人隐私权保护的冲突不可避免。可以说,个人信用隐私权的适度限制与个人征信信息的适当公开,二者的平衡与协调是个人征信体系建立成败的关键问题。在个人信用信息的征集、管理及使用过程中,都应注重个人信用信息保护的平衡。     

Organisational regulatory legitimacy,entrepreneurial orientation,and SME innovation: an optimal distinctiveness perspective

The optimal distinctiveness perspective argues that firms face competing pressures to be both ‘like’ and ‘different from’ their peers. On the one hand, institutional scholars assert that firms need to be similar to peers in order to gain legitimacy. On the other hand, strategy scholars insist that firms need to strive to be different to gain competitive advantage. In order to enrich the optimal distinctiveness perspective, the present study builds a conceptual model that addresses the relationships among organisational regulatory legitimacy, entrepreneurial orientation, and SME innovation under the context of China’s transition economy. Our empirical results show that organisational regulatory legitimacy has an inverted-U relationship with SME innovation. Further, entrepreneurial orientation strengthens this inverse-U shaped relationship. That is, entrepreneurial orientation magnifies both the positive and the negative effect of organisational regulatory legitimacy on SME innovation. This study echoes to the call to conduct broader optimal distinctiveness research by integrating institutional theory and strategic management. Furthermore, our findings provide new evidence for the strategic balance perspective of optimal distinctiveness.     

A consumer-based model of competitive diffusion: the multiplicative effects of global and local network externalities

Competitive diffusion of two incompatible technologies, such as PC vs. Macintosh, VHS vs. Betamax and so on, is studied under the framework of a spatial game in which consumers are distributed on a two-dimensional square lattice network. The consumers play coordination-like games with their nearest neighbors and imitate the most successful strategy in their neighborhood in terms of aggregated payoffs after each round. The effects of global network externality are realized in the dynamic payoff matrix of the game, and the framework of spatial game provides the model with the effects of local network externality. These two types of externalities are set as multiplicative, that is, as nonlinear. Both simulations and mean-field approximation show that not only total but also partial standardization (robust polymorphic equilibrium) occurs depending upon the parameters and initial configurations, even when there are positive effects of both global and local network externalities. Moreover, effects of innovation factors that alter paths toward a lock-in situation are studied. It is shown that both the timing and the size of the innovation factors matter for a disadvantaged technology in order to overwhelm a market.JEL Classification: C7, D8, O3We are obliged to Professor John Paul Boyd at the University of California, Irvine and our anonymous referees for their constructive comments.     

How trade and capital restrictions affect the probability of a balance of trade disturbance

Free market economists argue that national authorities avoid restrictions on the free movement of goods, services and financial capital between countries. Yet, countries continually choose to restrict the flow of capital both into and out of the country. Why is this done? Is it done to protect the domestic banking system, to control the domestic money supply, to manage the exchange rate, to provide stability for internal markets or to avoid wide swings in the availability of capital? Are these controls effective in precluding wide swings in a country's international trade balance? This article uses panel data in a logit model to analyse policy choice with respect to an international trade and/or investment regime. The goal is to identify choices effective in reducing the likelihood of a severe Balance of Trade Disturbance (BTD) and determine if the appropriate choice is related to per capita income (pci).     

Fiscal shocks and budget balance persistence in the EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe

This article analyses the time series properties of the fiscal balance in the 10 EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe. The persistence of the fiscal balance is analysed by means of unit root tests that account for possible nonlinearities and structural changes. The linear and nonlinear unit root tests find only mild evidence in favour of the stationarity hypothesis, with asymmetric effects present in a few cases. After controlling for structural changes in the Data Generation Processes (DGPs), the results point to stationarity of the series. Thus, in spite of relatively steady headline figures, the budget balance processes in the EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe exhibit substantial instability.     

所有权结构、自私性努力与投资阻塞问题

许多学者基于代理人和代理人之间的关系分析了国有企业的"内耗"和地方政府的"内拼",但他们分析的只是次级"内耗"和次级"内拼",是给定所有权安排下的"内耗"和"内拼",他们没有注意到委托人和代理人之间的初级"内耗"和初级"内拼"。本文从投资阻塞的视角分析了国有企业的初级"内耗"和地方政府的初级"内拼"。我们的分析表明,通过议价力量配置来解决国有企业的初级"内耗"问题是可以奏效的,但是通过议价力量配置来解决地方政府的初级"内拼"问题却是很难奏效的,必须在"立宪"层次上界定好中央政府和地方政府的控制权边界,否则就会带来不断重复的试错性成本(比如宏观调控成本)。     

Externalities, monopoly and the objective function of the firm

This paper provides a theory of general equilibrium with externalities and/or monopoly. We assume that the firm’s decisions are based on the preferences of shareholders and/or other stakeholders. Under these assumptions a firm will produce fewer negative externalities than the comparable profit maximising firm. In the absence of externalities, equilibrium with a monopoly will be Pareto efficient if the firm can price discriminate. The equilibrium can be implemented by a two-part tariffWe would like to thank John Fender, Herakles Polemarchakis, Les Reinhorn, John Roberts, John Roemer, Colin Rowat, Erkan Yalcin two anonymous referees and participants in seminars at the Universities of Birmingham, Durham, Heidelberg, Mannheim and Queens, the Public Economic Theory conference at the University of Warwick, July 2000, and the EEA congress, Lausanne 2001 for comments and suggestions     

The effects of government spending shocks on the real exchange rate and trade balance in Turkey

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of government spending shocks on the real exchange rate and foreign trade balance in Turkey for the period of 2002:01–2012:04 within a structural VAR framework. The analysis shows that a positive shock to the government spending tends to induce real exchange rate appreciation and deterioration in trade balance. We also find that the composition of the government spending matters. Although shocks to the government nonwage consumption generate an appreciation in the real exchange rate and worsening of the trade balance, the effects of government investment shocks remain insignificant. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that shocks to government spending are associated with a rise in taxes, which is indicative of a spending-driven tax adjustment process in Turkey.     

Pro-social motivation,effort and the call to public service

We investigate the interaction of pro-social motivation and wages in pro-social organizations with a novel subject pool, 1700 students destined for the private and public sectors in Indonesia, using a measure of pro-social motivation that exactly matches the mission of the organization. Three novel conclusions emerge. Consistent with a common, but untested, assumption in the theoretical literature, workers with greater pro-social motivation exert higher real effort. However, high pay attracts less pro-socially motivated individuals. Furthermore, we also test whether a real world pro-social organization (the Indonesian Ministry of Finance) attracts pro-socially motivated workers. We find that prospective entrants into the Indonesian Ministry of Finance exhibit higher levels of pro-social motivation than a comparable sample of general workers.