The Interactive Effects of Labor‐Led Political Mobilization and Vote Propensity on Turnout: Evidence from Five Elections

The concept of unions as political mobilization groups is not well documented relative to the general determinants of voting behavior and labor’s traditional political roles. Specifically, scholars have yet to study the interaction between individuals’ propensities to vote and labor‐led mobilization. Does labor have a stronger influence on frequent, occasional, or non‐voters? Using data totaling 188,551 individuals in Los Angeles over five elections, this paper empirically studies the interaction between vote propensity and mobilization, finding that occasional voters are generally most receptive to labor’s efforts, particularly amongst Latinos, and that personal visits and phone calls are successful for occasional voters.     

报酬递增:特殊性向普遍性转化的分析

对报酬递增规律的研究虽然呈现不断向深入发展的趋势,但始终没有被纳入主流经济学的体系之中,报酬递增只是作为一种特殊现象而被研究。本文在对传统报酬递增研究进行梳理的基础上指出:基本生产要素的两大类别──有形生产要素和无形生产要素在总生产要素中的相对比重的变化直接决定了报酬变化的方向,在有形生产要素占主导地位的条件下,报酬递增作为一种特殊性往往被淹没在具有普遍性的报酬递减规律之中;随着无形要素在总生产要素中的比重不断提高,总边际收益所表现出来的递增趋势日益明朗化,报酬递增规律也从一个或某几个领域向其他众多的领域延伸,普遍性日益凸显。     

Unlocking solution provision competence in knowledge-intensive business service firms

Business services markets are very competitive and a key challenge for knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) firms is delivering effective solutions for business customers. As solution providers, KIBS firms need to invest competencies that supports their capacity to solve customers' problems. We examine how KIBS firms address this challenge by investigating how solution-provision competence (SPC), as a firm-level competence, contributes to the delivery of effective solutions, and how and when KIBS firms leverage SPC to transform knowledge gained from various search paths into effective solutions for customers. The results show that distal search enriches knowledge diversity, which helps foster solution-provision competence but only up to a point, after which the relationship turns negative, with distal search showing a diminishing effect on solution-provision competence. In addressing the diminishing returns of distal search to solution-provision competence, we show that higher levels of proximal search and strategic flexibility reverse the diminishing effect of high levels of distal search on solution-provision competence; however, employee collaboration did not help counter the diminishing returns (e.g., marginal benefits). Finally, we demonstrate that solution-provision competence helps KIBS firms offer effective solutions tailored to business customers' specific needs.     

Price Discovery in American and British Property Markets

This paper examines the securitized (public) and unsecuritized (private) commercial property markets in the United States and the United Kingdom for evidence of price discovery. Appraisal-based returns are corrected for smoothing, without presupposing the true returns to be uncorrelated or unpredictable across time. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and property company returns are corrected for leverage. We find evidence that price discovery occurs in the securitized market structure in both countries, and that this price information does not fully transmit to the unsecuritized markets for a year or more. In Britain, the unsecuritized market appears to be more closely and immediately linked to the securitized market than is the case in the U.S.     

Economic growth and broadband access: The European urban-rural digital divide

This paper estimates the regional effects of high-speed broadband coverage on economic growth in a panel of 1348 regions across all European Union Member States between 2011 and 2018. We distinguish between different connectivity speed levels by aggregating the available regional data across all existing broadband technologies, and investigate how regional differences in the contribution of broadband coverage to real economic growth can quantitatively explain the persistence of the European urban-rural digital divide. In order to make our results robust to endogeneity and disaggregated data availability issues, we employ a bootstrap-based bias correction for the dynamic fixed effects estimator. We find that expansions in the provision of lower-speed broadband access accelerated annual per capita growth in both urban and rural regions through diminishing returns to scale, but that the effects were weaker in those regions characterized by larger ruralization. High-speed broadband coverage, on the contrary, could only be significantly related to rural economic growth and had no impact within their urban counterparts. We find evidence that the costs of these high-speed rural connectivity expansions had not yet been offset, but that they exhibit increasing returns to scale with cut-off levels nearing full coverage. These results indicate that the high-speed digital expansion of rural Europe is a potential gamechanger for further rural development policies through its role as a general-purpose infrastructure, and consequently argue in favour of increased efforts to close the urban-rural digital gap.     

The propensity to patent

This paper analyzes the relationship between 1974 R&D expenditures and invention patenting by 4,274 narrowly-defined lines of business in 443 U.S. industrial corporations. The probability of non-zero patenting rose systematically with company-financed R&D outlays, as did the number of patents received. Within industries, patents tended most frequently to rise in proportion to R&D; among the exceptions, the tendency was toward diminishing returns. Variables measuring overseas sales, federal R&D support, diversification, scope of invention use, and invention type had only modest explanatory power. There was no significant evidence of disproportionate patent accumulation in the more highly concentrated industries.     

模块化组织价值创新:原理、机制及理论挑战

本文借鉴瀑布效应原理，通过对需求导向下协调生产规则的演变、生产控制权追逐下旗舰企业地位的形成．以及迂回生产链加长条件下报酬递增等模块化组织价值创新机制的研究．指出企业与市场握手地带是一种专业化分工与一体化分工并存、报酬递减与报酬递增并存和外生不确定性化解与内生不确定性提高并存的双重世界。这将使企业与市场握手地带的传统企业理论因双重性而受到挑战。     

Risk and Return in the U.S. Housing Market: A Cross-Sectional Asset-Pricing Approach

This article carries out an asset-pricing analysis of the U.S. metropolitan housing market. We use ZIP code–level housing data to study the cross-sectional role of volatility, price level, stock market risk and idiosyncratic volatility in explaining housing returns. While the related literature tends to focus on the dynamic role of volatility and housing returns within submarkets over time, our risk–return analysis is cross-sectional and covers the national U.S. metropolitan housing market. The study provides a number of important findings on the asset-pricing features of the U.S. housing market. Specifically, we find (i) a positive relation between housing returns and volatility, with returns rising by 2.48% annually for a 10% rise in volatility, (ii) a positive but diminishing price effect on returns and (iii) that stock market risk is priced directionally in the housing market. Our results on the return-volatility-price relation are robust to (i) metropolitan statistical area clustering effects and (ii) differences in socioeconomic characteristics among submarkets related to income, employment rate, managerial employment, owner-occupied housing, gross rent and population density.     

Valuing Stakeholder Governance: Property Rights,Community Mobilization,and Firm Value

Research summary : While research has shown that good stakeholder relations increase the value of a firm, less is known about how specific types of stakeholder governance affect firm value. We examine the value of one such governance mechanism—community benefits agreements (CBAs) signed by firms and local communities—intended to minimize social conflict that disrupts access to valuable resources. We argue that shareholders evaluate more positively CBAs with local communities with strong property rights and histories of institutional action and extra‐institutional mobilization because these communities are more likely to cause costly disruptions and delays for a firm. We evaluate these arguments by analyzing the cumulative abnormal returns associated with the unexpected announcement of 148 CBAs signed between mining companies and local indigenous communities in Canada. Managerial summary : With firms across many industries facing escalating costs associated with social conflict, new tools are emerging to help firms mitigate these risks by seeking the support of the local communities in which they operate. Community benefits agreements (CBAs) are contracts in which a community provides consent for a new investment in return for tangible benefits, such as local hiring and revenue sharing. We argue that although CBAs are costly for the firm, they are particularly valuable when communities can cause costly disruptions and delays for a firm. Our study of investor reactions to the announcement of 148 CBAs signed between mining companies and local indigenous communities in Canada shows that investors value more CBAs signed with communities with strong property rights and histories of protest. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A study on the effect of the extent and location of protective capacity in flow systems

This research investigated in depth the effect of the level and the location of protective capacity relative to the location of the constraint through a simulation experiment. A production line with four stages is simulated. Location of the constraint, level of protective capacity, processing time variation and system down time are included as experimental factors. ANOVA is used for the analysis of the results, followed by Tukey's means test. The results show that protective capacity has a significant effect on shop performance, however with diminishing returns. The location of the constraint resource also plays a significant role in shop performance. The results also indicate that the extent of benefits derived from protective capacity or constraint location depends on the level of variability and system downtime.     

Gains from Specialization and Free Agency: The Story from the Gridiron

In the field of personnel economics, there are few opportunities to convincingly test for salary returns to specialization as against versatility. This paper performs such a test by modeling returns to performance measures associated with two different skills practiced by running backs in the National Football League. We find gains to both specialization and free agency with substantial predicted differences in returns for alternative skills. These differences vary across the salary distribution. In the top half of the salary distribution, model simulations show that specialists in either particular skill generate higher marginal returns than do versatile players.     

Research notes and communications: The effect of product recall announcements on shareholder wealth

Previous research Has found that product recall announcements in the automobile industry are associated with negative abnormal returns. We extend this research by examining announcements of product recalls and products taken off the market outside the automobile industry. We find negative abnormal returns for these announcements and that the returns are significantly more negative when products are replaced (or the purchase price is returned) than when the products are checked and repaired. We find only limited evidence that government-ordered recalls produce more negative returns than voluntary recalls.     

A new productivity paradigm for competitive advantage

A decade of observed large differences in productivity driven competitive advantage cannot be explained by traditional productivity notions or conventional strategic analysis. We conclude on both empirical and theoretical grounds that most traditional sources of productivity have encountered diminishing marginal returns. Large competitive differences appear to arise from a new productivity source, nonlinear systems dynamics in business organizations. This has both theoretical and practical consequences for managing toward competitive advantage and requires a new approach to management, control, and organization.     

Estimating Returns on Commercial Real Estate: A New Methodology Using Latent-Variable Models

Despite their widespreao use as benchmarks of U.S. commercial real estate returns, indexes produced by the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) are subject to measurement problems that severely impair their ability to capture the true risk–return characteristics–especially volatility–of privately held commercial real estate. We utilize latent-variable statistical methods to estimate an alternative index of privately held (unsecuritized) commercial real estate returns. Latent-variable methods have been extensively applied in the behavioral sciences and, more recently, in finance and economics. Unlike factor analysis or other unconditional statistical approaches, latent variable models allow us to extract interpretable common information about unobserved private real estate returns using the information contained in various competing measures of returns that are measured with error. We find that our latent-variable real estate return series is approximately twice as volatile as the aggregate NCREIF total return index, but less than half as volatile as the NAREIT equity index. Overall, our results strongly support the use of latent-variable statistical models in the construction of return series for commercial real estate.     

Buyer (dis)satisfaction and process innovation: The case of information technology services provision

Studying buyer satisfaction within business services is important because if buyer expectations are not addressed, it can endanger the relationship. Dissatisfied buyers can remain silent or switch supplier without notice, damaging the supplier-buyer relationship. Therefore, suppliers often invest substantial effort in collecting feedback with an expectation that it will foster improvements and innovation in processes. However, using a mixed method sequential research design, we find that there is no direct association between the level of dissatisfaction and process innovation: this poses questions about redundancy of feedback collection. We find that there is a time lag between dissatisfaction identification and problem resolution. We also find that there is a cognitive gap between a supplier's interpretation of the buyer's expectations and the buyer's actual expectations. Further, existing processes that are improved repetitively using discontent feedback suffer from diminishing returns. Suppliers need to proactively seek solutions rather than reactively dealing with buyer problems.     

The Walkability Premium in Commercial Real Estate Investments

This article examines the effects of walkability on property values and investment returns. Walkability is the degree to which an area within walking distance of a property encourages walking for recreational or functional purposes. We use data from the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries and Walk Score to examine the effects of walkability on the market value and investment returns of more than 4,200 office, apartment, retail and industrial properties from 2001 to 2008 in the United States. We found that, all else being equal, the benefits of greater walkability were capitalized into higher office, retail and apartment values. We found no effect on industrial properties. On a 100‐point scale, a 10‐point increase in walkability increased values by 1–9%, depending on property type. We also found that walkability was associated with lower cap rates and higher incomes, suggesting it has been favored in both the capital asset and building space markets. Walkability had no significant effect on historical total investment returns. All walkable property types have the potential to generate returns as good as or better than less walkable properties, as long as they are priced correctly. Developers should be willing to develop more walkable properties as long as any additional cost for more walkable locations and related development expenses do not exhaust the walkability premium.     

Correlates of Union Support in NLRB Elections

Bargaining unit, union, industry, and geographic correlates of union support in NLRB certification and decertification elections for the period 1977 to 1979 are analyzed using similar regression specifications. Several relationships are found to be significant; however, an examination of the magnitude of the estimated coefficients suggests only unit size and union organizing effort affect outcomes in more than a small percentage of all certification elections.     

Beyond the Union‐Centred Approach: A Critical Evaluation of Recent Trade Union Elections in China

Many Western scholars have regarded union democracy and elections as affairs that are internal to trade unions and unconnected with outside forces. Going beyond the mainstream union‐centred approach, this study critically assesses one significant type of union election that has been emerging in China since 2010 and that has been driven by different forces from previous elections. Previous workplace union elections had been ‘top‐down’ — initiated by the party‐state or its apparatuses, or else transnational corporation‐induced — but this newer type of election has been driven by workers' strikes. This study illustrates how the dynamics among the quadripartite actors — party‐state, higher‐level trade unions, capital and labour — have shaped these strike‐driven elections. Contrary to the claim that these elections have been ‘direct’ and ‘democratic’, our case studies show that they have been indirect and quasi‐democratic in nature.     

Spatial Linkages in Returns and Volatilities among U.S. Regional Housing Markets

This article investigates spatial linkages in returns, idiosyncratic risks and volatilities across 19 U.S. regional housing markets. Using Case & Shiller housing price indices from 1995 through 2009, we find that interconnections across markets can be “wider” and “stronger” than would normally be expected. They are “wider” because, in addition to geographic closeness, economic proximity is also an important source of influence; they are “stronger” because of the significant contagion effects during the 2007–2009 subprime and financial crises. The increased comovement and interdependence, especially among more geographically diverse regions with similar economic conditions, may help explain the failure of geographic portfolio diversification strategies.     

Risk and Return on Real Estate: Evidence from Equity REITs

We analyze monthly returns on an equally weighted index of eighteen to twenty-three equity (real property) real estate investment trusts (REITs) that were traded on major stock exchanges over the 1973–87 period. We employ a multifactor Arbitrage Pricing Model using prespecified macroeconomic factors. We also test whether equity REIT returns are related to changes in the discount on closed-end stock funds, which seems plausible given the closed-end nature of REITs.
Three factors, and the percentage change in the discount on closed-end stock funds, consistently drive equity REIT returns: unexpected inflation and changes in the risk and term structures of interest rates. The impacts of these variables on equity REIT returns is around 60% of the impacts on corporate stock returns generally. As expected, the impacts are greater for more heavily levered REITs than for less levered REITs. Real estate, at least as measured by the return performance of equity REITs, is less risky than stocks generally, but does not offer a superior risk-adjusted return and is not a hedge against unexpected inflation.