Attendance and the Uncertainty-of-Outcome Hypothesis in Baseball

Sports offer interesting insights into demand due to the added twist of fan preferences for outcome uncertainty. We add to and amend previous work by analyzing the time series behavior of Major League Baseball attendance (1901–2003) using break point analysis, exploring a wide variety of measures of game uncertainty, playoff uncertainty, and consecutive season uncertainty. Only playoff uncertainty is statistically significant, and it is economically significant only for (1) truly ambitious intervention and (2) recent history. The policy implication is that actual league choices may be motivated by wealth redistribution rather than concerns over competitive balance.      

The Year in Review: Economics at the Antitrust Division, 2005–2006

This paper covers the activities of the Economic Analysis Group (EAG) of the Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, during 2005–2006. It describes the economic analysis undertaken by EAG in several important investigations, appellate matters, and other activities as an advocate for competition.The views contained herein are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Department of Justice.     

Industrial Relations Climate, Attendance Behaviour and the Role of Trade Unions

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the impact of co-operative union–management relations on firm performance and organizational outcomes such as employee turnover and absenteeism. This paper seeks to identify the factors that affect the development of a co-operative industrial relations climate and analyses the effects of that climate on organizational and union allegiance and on employee attendance behaviour. The data are drawn from a study of a large automotive manufacturer in Australia. The results indicate that a positive union–management relationship is associated with higher levels of work attendance. Moreover, this outcome is consistent with the presence of strong and effective unionism at the workplace.     

Broadcasting discontent—freelancers, trade unions and the Internet

This paper examines the potential of web-based networks for representing the interests of freelance audio-visual workers. It suggests that while such networks provide fora for the expression and mobilisation of interests, their ability to represent workers is limited. Consequently, they provide an opportunity for trade unions to extend organisation.     

Social Status,Entry and Predation: The Case of British Shipping Cartels 1879–1929

The authors incorporate social status and regional affiliation—two variables of central sociological interest—into an economic analysis of entry and predation. They build on Scott Morton’s [1997] examination of entry and predation in the merchant shipping industry and examine whether the social status of an entrant owner impacts on the predation behavior of the incumbent cartels. They find that high social status entrants are significantly less likely (40%) to be preyed upon than the low social status entrants. They discuss several interpretations of this result. Subsequent analysis supports the hypothesis that cartel members use social status as an indicator of an entrant’s propensity to be a cooperative cartel participant.     

Cost Inefficiency and the Holding of Non-traditional Assets by Solvent Stock Thrifts

In contrast to greater restrictions on thrifts' non-traditional assets under FIRREA, Congress is considering new legislation forcing thrifts to convert to banks. Hence, the efficiency implications of product diversification for thrifts is an important issue. We examine the relation between thrifts' movement into non-traditional assets and the operating inefficiency of adequately capitalized stock thrifts in 1988 and 1994. We estimate inefficiency scores for individual thrifts for each year using a stochastic cost-frontier methodology. In a second step, we regress these scores against measures for movement into non-traditional assets. We find a significant fall in inefficiency with a rise in holdings of both traditional and non-traditional assets. Our results suggest that greater diversification privileges for thrifts should be beneficial to the health of the industry.     

走进中美广电传媒,看“制播分离”如何当家

制播分离是广播电视体制机制改革与创新的主要内容之一。美国是最典型的"制播分离"的国家,早已形成了完整的节目投资、生产机制、节目营销机制以及节目质量反馈机制。网台分离、制播分离是美国三大电视网的基本运作制度。本文通过对美国"制播分离"运作机制的深入剖析,引出其先进的广电传媒运行机制对我国广电媒体的启示。     

Managerial cognition and the mimetic adoption of market positions: what you see is what you do

Managers planning to abandon a market position need to find a promising alternative, and face a choice of inventing a new market position or entering an existing one. The great uncertainty on the consequences of different actions leads them to rely on other organizations for information on how to compete, making adoption of existing market positions likely. Their wish to avoid direct rivalry and maximize growth leads them to seek out information on new market positions with few incumbents. As a result, recently innovated market positions are mimetically adopted by organizations that can easily observe previous adoptions and see them as relevant to their market situations, increasing the market differentiation. This theory is tested and supported by analysis of the spread of new radio formats in the United States. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Antitrust,the Rule of Reason,and Democracy

Professor Barnes responds to William Curran's fictional dialogue between Senator John Sherman and philosopher John Rawls, with a fictional letter from Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Professor Barnes discusses the importance of the anarcho-socialist movement of the late nineteenth century to the adoption of the Sherman Act, the historical and logical inevitability of adoption of a rule of reason in antitrust law, the relevance of efficiency to the rule of reason, and the relationship between competition and the promotion of democratic ideals.     

Bureaucracy,economic regulation,and the incentive limits of the firm

This paper uses a transactions cost perspective to examine the development of organizational tendencies that plague the governance of unregulated subsidiaries by regulated parent companies. By focussing on what Williamson (1985) calls the ‘incentive limits’ of firms, conditions that should exacerbate the problems facing these firms as they diversify are identified. Empirical testing of hypotheses drawn from this discussion is conducted using a sample of nonutility, nonregulated subsidiaries of 54 electric utilities. The analysis, using both linear regression and event history methods, confirms the connection between the characteristics of the regulated parent company and subsidiary performance. The paper concludes with a discussion of how further research might extend the state of knowledge on the topic of the economic losses of bureaucracy.     

Envy,comparison costs,and the economic theory of the firm

An economic theory of the firm must explain both when firms supplant markets and when markets supplant firms. While theories of when markets fail are well developed, the extant literature provides a less than adequate explanation of why and when hierarchies fail and of actions managers take to mitigate such failure. In this article, we seek to develop a more complete theory of the firm by theorizing about the causes and consequences of organizational failure. Our theory focuses on the concept of social comparison costs that arise through social comparison processes and envy. While transaction costs in the market provide an impetus to move activities inside the boundaries of the firm, we argue that envy and resulting social comparison costs motivate moving activities outside the boundary of the firm. More specifically, our theory provides an explanation for ‘managerial’ diseconomies of both scale and scope—arguments that are independent from traditional measurement, rent seeking, and competency arguments—that provides new insights into the theory of the firm. In our theory, hierarchies fail as they expand in scale because social comparison costs imposed on firms escalate and hinder the capacity of managers to optimally structure incentives and production. Further, hierarchy fails as a firm expands in scope for the simple reason that the costs of differentially structuring compensation within the firm to match the increasing diversity of activities also rises with increasing scope. In addition, we explore how social comparison costs influence the design of the firm through selection of production technologies and compensation structures within the firm. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Globalization, new ecologies, new zoologies, and the purported death of the eclectic paradigm

This paper provides a commentary to John Mathews' article in issue 23(1) of the Asia Pacific Journal of Management. I discuss how globalisation is fundamentally altering the milieu within which international business is conducted, and this new ‘ecology’ may indeed require scholars to consider a new ‘zoology’ of firms in the future. However, his specific suggestions are based on sparse evidence, and his alternative to the eclectic paradigm is founded on a misunderstanding of some fundamental concepts.     

Opportunism,knowledge, and the performance of franchise chains

An important feature of most franchise chains is that they simultaneously use franchised and company‐owned outlets. In this study, I show that the relationship between the resources provided to outlet managers and the financial performance of franchise chains is contingent on their governance structure. Specifically, opportunism and knowledge considerations seem to prevent chains with a large proportion of franchised outlets from fully leveraging resources such as a valuable brand name and tacit business practices. On the other hand, brand name value and business practices tacitness are not directly related to the proportion of franchised outlets in chains. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Services, products, and the institutional structure of production

This paper revisits the product-service distinction from an institutional perspective. Much of the literature in marketing and management has focused on the intrinsic characteristics of services with a view to derive implications for the management of service-based firms. Our key argument is that the quest for foundational differences between products and services is misguided. What counts as a product or a service is dependent on the nature of producer-user interactions and the institutional structure of production rather than on any essentialist feature of products or services. Furthermore, we develop the argument that services play an increasingly important role in manufacturing firms and we explore the reasons that underpin this trend.     

Leaders,laggards, and the pursuit of foreign knowledge

This paper analyzes how firms in different technological and market share positions use foreign R&D to augment their technological capabilities. Technology transfer issues and absorptive capacity arguments are examined to analyze the different technological capabilities of leading and lagging firms. In addition, a new strategic rationale (in terms of non‐dominant market share firms) that has not been considered in prior studies analyzing knowledge‐seeking FDI is offered. From a panel dataset which includes information on all foreign R&D investments made by publicly traded Japanese manufacturing firms (from 1974 to 1994), I show that Japanese firms investing in foreign R&D tend to be the non‐dominant market share firms, but also the technologically leading firms across fairly diverse industries. By considering both the technological and market share positions of firms, this study reveals important characteristics that influence when firms use foreign R&D as part of a strategy to augment their technological capabilities. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Knowledge, internationalization of the firm, and inward-outward connections

Even though outward operations such as exports and foreign investment have received most of the attention so far, the internationalization of businesses also includes activities that are inwardly oriented. Inward activities like purchases of machinery, the procurement of raw materials and semifinished goods provide opportunities for building relations with foreign actors. They also offer opportunities to learn about foreign trade techniques and ways of using various operation modes, and by active use of such knowledge companies should be in a better position to start or extend outward foreign operations. This paper presents a case study of the Norwegian company Moelven Industrier ASA and its operations in the Russian market. It shows that the creation and utilization of knowledge through inward-outward connections face many obstacles and that, in Moelven's case, the full potential of such connections was seldom realized.     

High-Performance Workplaces, Training, and the Distribution of Skills

Using a data set based on a nationally representative sample of British establishments, the analysis suggests that those exhibiting high-performance work practices have higher levels of training and those with a comprehensive set of these (or bundle) exhibit much higher levels than those which do not. This mainly reflects a greater intensity rather than a greater breadth of training. There is little evidence that the presence of these practices at a workplacepromotes a polarization of skills.     

Mergers,acquisitions, and the pruning of managerial deadwood

This research investigates the role that mergers and acquisitions may play in the disciplining of entrenched and inefficient managers. The relationship between a company's performance history and its subsequent top management turnover is assessed for a sample of target companies, their parents, and a control group of companies not involved in merger and acquisition activity. The results reveal that target company top management turnover is higher than ‘normal’ in the 2 years immediately following a merger or acquisition, but there is no relationship between previous target company performance and its subsequent top management turnover. Further analyses indicate that first-year target company turnover rates are associated with a history of relatively poor parent company performance, while second-year turnover rates are associated with a history of relatively good parent company performance.     

Growth,Industrialization, and the Intergenerational Correlation of Advantage

The shift from feudalism to industrial capitalism was generally accompanied by an increase in social mobility. We ask whether such an increase has occurred in a developing nation currently undergoing rapid industrialization, Indonesia. It has, at least as measured by a declining intergenerational correlation of education. To highlight the effects of economic growth on intergenerational mobility, we contrast Indonesia's experience with that of Bangladesh, where industrialization has proceeded more slowly and the correlation between parents’ and children's education has been roughly stable. We also examine potential causal channels for the rising educational mobility we find in Indonesia, but cannot identify specific pathways related to above‐average school building or rapid industrialization in a region.