Wage councils,product markups and wage markdowns: Evidence from Uruguay

In 2005, after a leftist coalition won the national election for the first time, Uruguay returned to sector-level wage bargaining councils with active government participation. We estimate product markups and wage markdowns using firm-level data for the period 2002–2016, and report decreasing wage markdowns and increasing -to a lesser extent- firm-level product markups. We find statistically significant impacts of minimum mandated wages on product markups and wage markdowns, and additional effects of unions on wage markdowns. The evidence suggests that firms operate in monopsonistic labor markets. Though their bargaining power in the labor market was reduced over time as a result of wage councils, firms were able to pass a sizable part of the increases in labor costs to consumers.     

Institutional common ownership and firm value: Evidence from real estate investment trusts

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about whether and how institutional common ownership (ICO) affects firm behavior. Using a sample of equity real estate investment trusts (REITs), which provide significant advantages for isolating a monitoring channel, we find a robust and positive relation between ICO and REIT firm value. The positive relation between ICO and firm value is driven mainly by motivated investors and becomes stronger when we construct our ICO measures using blockholdings. Our difference‐in‐differences analysis, using mergers between institutional investors, suggests a causal relation exists between ICO and firm value. After investigating various channels through which ICO could affect firm behavior, we conclude that asset allocation decisions and performance are the most plausible explanations. Our finding that the monitoring associated with ICO aids managers in their portfolio disposition strategies further supports this conclusion. This enhanced monitoring leads to increased property portfolio returns, as well as more geographic diversification.     

Common ownership,market power,and innovation

I examine the effects of overlapping ownership on market power when there are external effects across firms. This is done in an oligopoly model with cost-reducing innovation with technological spillovers where firms have an overlapping ownership structure based largely on López and Vives (2019). The model allows for Cournot competition with homogeneous product and for Bertrand with differentiated products as well as for strategic effects of R&D investment. It derives positive testable implications and normative results to inform policy.     

Mixed duopoly, inefficiency, and public ownership

If a publicly-owned firm has a higher marginal cost than a private firm, partial public ownership may be welfare-improving, if the public firm acts is Stackelberg leader. If the private firm's marginal cost is private information a simple transfer function is truth-eliciting. If the stock market is efficient, the cost of renationalization is “small”.     

Technological overlap,technological capabilities,and resource recombination in technological acquisitions

The performance of technological acquisitions depends heavily on the overlap between the knowledge bases of the target and acquirer. We argue that overlap is best viewed as two distinct constructs: target overlap, the proportion of the target's knowledge base that the acquirer already possesses, and acquirer overlap, the proportion of the acquirer's knowledge base duplicated by the target. Each affects the value created from the firms' technological capabilities differently due to absorptive capacity, knowledge redundancy, and organizational disruption. Further, the low quantity of innovations observed in acquisitions with low target overlap may conceal an offsetting increase in their novelty. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Institutional ownership,capital structure,and firm performance

In most studies of ownership and firm performance, researchers have assumed different forms of ownership do not interact in their effect on firm strategy or performance. Focusing on the role of institutional owners, this study poses two related questions: (1) What are the relationships between outside institutional shareholdings, on the one hand, and a firm's capital structure and performance, on the other? and; (2) Does the size of stockholdings by corporate executives, family owners, and insider-institutions modify those relationships? The data, collected from 40 pairs of manufacturing firms selected from as many industries over a 3-year period, shows that the size of outside institutional stockholdings has a significant effect on the firm's capital structure. We have also found that family and inside institutional owners' shareholdings moderate the relationship between outside institutional shareholdings and capital structure. Likewise, corporate executives' shareholdings supplement the relationship between outside institutional shareholdings and firms' performance. These findings suggest that internal and external coalitions interact with each other to influence the firm's conduct.     

Employment,technological diffusion and oligopoly

This paper takes a simple model of the diffusion process and analyses the employment implications. Two factors tending to make employment fall to a low point at some intermediate position along the diffusion path are identified. It is argued that the path of industry employment during diffusion will in general not be monotomic.     

Excess market value,market power,and inside ownership structure

This study is an empirical investigation of whether principal-agent problems do in fact significantly affect corporate managers' decision making, and hence the price of the firms' securities. If inside ownership structure of firms is reflected in firm market value, then agency theory leads one to expect that market value will be a positive function of the degree of inside ownership. This study demonstrates that rational investors recognize inside ownership and its resultant effect on market value. Furthermore, it is shown that excess market value as measured by the Tobin's Q-ratio is related to the level of advertising and R&D expenditure, the degree of market power as proxied by the Lerner Index, leverage, and firm size.     

Affiliation, integration, and information: ownership incentives and industry structure

This paper presents theory and evidence on horizontal industry structure. At issue is the question: what makes industries necessarily fragmented? The theoretical model examines trade‐offs associated with affiliation and integration, and how they are affected by the contracting environment. I show how contractual incompleteness can lead industries to be necessarily fragmented. I also show that contractual improvements will tend to lead to a greater concentration of brands, but whether they lead industries to be more or less concentrated depends on what becomes contractible. I then discuss the propositions generated by the model through a series of case study examples.     

Risk management, project success, and technological uncertainty

In times of increased competition and globalization, project success becomes even more critical to business performance, and yet many projects still suffer delays, overruns, and even failure. Ironically, however, risk management tools and techniques, which have been developed to improve project success, are used too little, and many still wonder how helpful they are. In this paper we present the results of an empirical study devoted to this question. Based on data collected on over 100 projects performed in Israel in a variety of industries, we examine the extent of usage of some risk management practices, such as risk identification, probabilistic risk analysis, planning for uncertainty and trade-off analysis, the difference in application across different types of projects, and their impact on various project success dimensions. Our findings suggest that risk management practices are still not widely used. Only a limited number of projects in our study have used any kind of risk management practices and many have only used some, but not all the available tools. When used, risk management practices seem to be working, and appear to be related to project success. We also found that risk management practices were more applicable to higher risk projects. The impact of risk management is mainly on better meeting time and budget goals and less on product performance and specification. In this case, we also found some differences according levels of technological uncertainty. Our conclusion is that risk management is still at its infancy and that at this time, more awareness to the application, training, tool development, and research on risk management is needed.     

Literacy,technology and ‘technological literacy’

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - The shortcomings of the ‘technological literacy’ metaphor are reviewed. The lack of an agreed meaning for this concept...     

Overlapping ownership and product innovation

We characterize the effect of overlapping ownership (OO) on investments in drastic product innovation. The success probability of innovation increases with investment. We analyse two opposing forces: (1) OO induces firms to internalize that success on their own behalf erodes the rivals’ business, reducing investments; (2) OO softens competition in the product market, enhancing investments. Our analysis reveals that the competition-softening effect, by stimulating investments, can induce OO to benefit consumers, in particular when the R&D projects are complex. We also show that an incumbent technology raises the threshold required for OO to stimulate investments in innovation.     

区域冲突、区域合作与中部崛起

区域冲突与区域合作是区域关系的两种重要表现形式。由于受地方利益最大化的驱动,以及在区域利益协调、要素流动及分工合作等领域还缺乏相应的制度基础,中部地区各省间的各种区域利益冲突时常出现,区域合作严重缺失。在“中部崛起”及区域合作日益深化的背景下,中部各省需要化解区域冲突,加强区域合作,实现中部地区的协调发展和共同发展。     

Institutional framework,corporate ownership structure,and R&D investment: an international analysis

We combine agency theory with the law and finance approach to analyze how the legal protection of investors and the corporate ownership structure affect corporate investment in research and development (R&D). We use information from 956 firms from the five most R&D-intensive industries in 19 developed countries. Our results show that better protection of investors’ rights by the institutional environment has a positive influence on corporate R&D. We also find that corporate ownership concentration works as a substitute for legal protection. This finding means that R&D investment of the firms in the countries with poor legal protection increases as ownership becomes more concentrated. Our results also show that the identity of shareholders has a relevant effect: Whereas banks and nonfinancial institutions as shareholders result in lower R&D, institutional investors as shareholders increase corporate investment in R&D.     

Entrepreneurship and paths to business ownership

Alternative paths to ownership are examined, including starting, purchasing or inheriting a firm, as well as being promoted or brought in by existing owners. It is hypothesized that these involve different ‘degrees of entrepreneurship’, which will be reflected in the profiles of owner-managers who have followed each path. Data on 1756 owner-managers are used to test hypotheses relating path to ownership to: the entrepreneurs' background characteristics; motivations and attitudes; and previous careers, incubator organizations and processes of starting.     

Fast Internet: An analysis about capacities,price structures and government intervention

While about 20% of all private households in the US had access to the Internet in 1997, the Internet penetration in Western Europe was significantly lower with little more than 5%. A key factor to explain the different penetration levels in the US and Western Europe is the pricing policy. In the US the pricing is heavily influenced by regulation. The flat rate pricing for local service stimulated rapid growth of the Internet. However, the regulatory regime that helped the Internet to succeed is now threatened by the same success. A comparison of the Internet in the US and the videotex systems deployed in France and Germany in the 1980s reveals an astonishing number of similarities. But there remains one significant difference, the pricing policy. Today, the telephony access network is perceived as a bottleneck by Internet users. Users demand more speed. Given the expected growth of the Internet and the demand for speed, the US telecommunications industry invests heavily in the local loop and sets up another four national long-distance networks. These investors do believe that demand for capacity will make a quantum leap.     

Family ownership and firm performance: Influence of family management,family control,and firm size

This study examines the relationship between family ownership and firm performance by considering the influence of family management, family control, and firm size. Using proxy data of 786 public family firms in Taiwan during 2002–2007, this study found that family ownership is positively associated with firm performance. The positive association is strong particularly when family members serve as CEOs, top managers, chairpersons, or directors of the firms; however, the association becomes weak when family members are not involved in firm management or control. The findings suggest that the potential family-ownership effects are more likely to be realized when family ownership is combined with active family management and control. In addition, the association between family ownership and firm performance is stronger in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) than in large companies.     

Human, technological and organizational aspects influencing the production scheduling process

This study of scheduling work in practice addresses how the production-scheduling processes in four companies are influenced by human, technological, and organizational aspects. A conclusion is that the outcome of the scheduling process is influenced by the scheduler adding human capabilities that cannot be automated, by technical constraints in the scheduled production system and by the available scheduling software tools. Furthermore, the outcome is influenced not only by how the scheduling process is formally organized, but also by the scheduler's informal authority and the role taken to interconnect activities between different organizational groups. The findings from the study support a number of previous studies done on scheduling in practice whilst giving new insights into their interpretation.     

技术创新的特点、障碍及应对策略

科学技术的发展与进步使技术的生命周期大大缩短,企业在生产经营过程中,如果不能"早到五分钟",就可能使企业在市场竞争中处于被动地位.企业只有通过技术创新,使所生产的产品不断更新换代,满足市场不断变化的需求,才能在竞争中获胜.