Exploring purchasing integration in product development

With increasing outsourcing and the growing importance of product innovation as a means for creating competitive advantage, the integration of purchasing and product development processes has become a key issue for many firms. Although, consequently, the integration of purchasing and suppliers in product development has attracted growing attention from practitioners and researchers, most research on the topic remains limited to the context of single development projects. The integration with long-term issues such as technological alignment between supplier and manufacturer is often neglected. This limited conception and the lack of a coherent definition of what purchasing integration in product involvement is form a major impediment to the advancement of knowledge in this field. Therefore, this article develops a framework encompassing various activities across different management levels, which embody the alignment and integration of purchasing and product development processes.     

Other-regarding preferences and giving decision in a risky environment: experimental evidence

Review of Economic Design - We investigate whether and how an individual giving decision is affected in risky environments in which the recipient’s wealth is random. We demonstrate that,...     

Keynes and a post-Keynesian controversy over the effect of debt on income expansion

The paper considers arguments of Robertson (1938) and Asimakopulos (1983) that the Keynesian multiplier expansion of output may be constrained by debt implicitly incurred in the financing of autonomous investment necessary to start the multiplier process. The task of this essay is to show that within the ‘short-period’ and static analytical framework of Keynes, this line of reasoning regarding the adverse effects of debt on multiplier-induced expansions of output is unwarranted. Nevertheless it is concluded that if the Keynesian framework is abandoned in favour of a dynamic framework in the manner of a steady trend rate of growth - a choice dependent on how one conceives of the economy, as inherently static or dynamic - then such arguments have troubling implications. In particular, the dependence of Keynes's approach on credit and hence debt forges links between ‘short-periods' whose distinctness from one another is crucial to Keynes's result.     

Social Security and Early Retirement: The Relationship Between Workers,Firms and Governments

In this paper we survey a number of theoretical and empirical studies in order to propose explanations to the fall of labour force participation at older age. Starting from the largely studied effect of social security schemes on labour supply, we explore the employers behaviour and the role of governments in the development of early retirement schemes. We show that early retirement is the result of a global agreement between firms and government where workers have incentives to early exit the labour market due to generous non actuarial benefits. Firms have an advantage to separate older workers because they are costly compared to young workers and governments hope that by pushing elderly into early retirement they will solve the massive unemployment problem.     

Persistent misalignments of the European exchange rates: some evidence from non-linear cointegration

The asymmetric and persistent adjustment of the European real exchange rates is investigated using the framework of non-linear cointegration. The episodes of slow mean-reversion dynamics over the period from 1979 to 1999 are explained. A test of unit root against STAR cointegration is proposed and some complete estimations and stochastic simulations of ESTAR models are presented. The presence of effective non-linear adjustment during the moving of the currencies to their long-run fundamental equilibrium exchange rate value is discussed.     

Integrating ecosystem services into conservation assessments: A review

A call has been made for conservation planners to include ecosystem services into their assessments of conservation priority areas. The need to develop an integrated approach to meeting different conservation objectives and a shift in focus towards human wellbeing are some of the motivations behind this call. There is currently no widely accepted approach to planning for ecosystem services. This study contributes towards the development of this approach through a review of conservation assessments and the extent to which they include ecosystem services. Of the 476 conservation assessments identified by a set of search terms on the Web of Science, 100 were randomly selected for this review. Of these only seven had included ecosystem services, while another 13 had referred to ecosystem services as a rationale for conservation without including them in the assessment. The majority of assessments were based on biodiversity pattern data while 19 used data on ecological processes. A total of 11 of these 19 assessments used processes, which could be linked to services. Ecosystem services have witnessed an increase in attention received in conservation assessments since the year 2000, however trends were not apparent beyond this date. In order to assess which types of ecosystem services and how they have been accounted for in conservation assessments, we extended our review to include an additional nine conservation assessments which included ecosystem services. The majority included cultural ecosystem services, followed by regulatory, provisioning and supporting services respectively. We conclude with an analysis of the constraints and opportunities for the integration of ecosystem services into conservation assessments and highlight the urgent need for an appropriate framework for planning for ecosystem services.     

The interplay between target firm R&D,acquirer debt financing and takeover premia

The level of acquisition premia is of paramount importance in light of the vast sums paid to target shareholders and the often disappointing returns realized by corporate buyers. In this letter, we focus on the impact of R&D investments by targets on the acquisition premium contingent upon the acquirer’s financing choices. Based on a unique hand-collected sample of 407 listed European transactions, we find a positive effect of target R&D on premia paid. Yet, when acquirers finance the acquisition of an R&D intensive target with debt, the positive relation disappears. Consequently, we establish that financing sources affect bidding strategies of acquiring companies in case of difficult-to-value targets.     

Does accessibility to local public employment agencies matter? Answers from a French quasi-experiment

We question whether accessibility to local public employment agencies impacts exits from unemployment. We deal with the potential endogeneity of the residential location of jobseekers by using the unanticipated creation of a new agency in the French region of Lyon as a quasi-natural experiment. We use exhaustive and geo-located individual data on jobseekers and local public employment agencies. Contrary to past evidence based on aggregated data, we find no evidence that jobseekers with improved accessibility to the local public employment services experience an improvement of their probability of exiting unemployment. We however find evidence of transitory organizational effects. These findings strongly question the costly strategy of a fine distribution of local public employment agencies across the territory while suggesting that institutional issues are key.     

Influence of acquirer boards on M&A value creation: Evidence from Continental Europe

We examine how the size and the composition of acquirer boards are associated with shareholder abnormal returns for 2,230 M&As made by listed firms in Continental Europe. Although board size proves insignificant, our findings do offer some evidence as to a beneficial effect of board diversity on M&A value creation. Gender diversity appears marginally positively associated with acquirer shareholder abnormal returns. The fraction of foreign directors is in general not significantly positive, unless the rule of law in the acquirer country is weak. Nonetheless, nationality diversity in the board turns out harmful in purely domestic takeovers. The influence of age diversity is marginally positive, yet only in domestic and horizontal takeovers. Next, the fraction of independent directors has a robust positive effect on the acquirer CAR, while directors with multiple board appointments prove valuable especially through preventing firms from pursuing poor takeovers. Finally, CEO duality is detrimental only in industry‐diversifying deals initiated by acquirers that are not controlled by an individual or a family shareholder. Any negative CEO‐duality effect is mitigated when the acquirer‐country rule of law is strong.     

Commodity markets through the business cycle

From 2008 to 2011, commodity markets experienced growing attention from the banking industry for various reasons: the summer 2008 oil price swing, the price surge in an ounce of gold, or sharp variations in agricultural prices. As a consequence, can we hypothesize the existence of a global connection between commodities and economic cycles? If these recent events suggest that commodity markets are strongly related to the business cycle, this evidence goes nevertheless against the widespread intuition that commodity markets are a strong source of diversification in a standard cash–bond–equity portfolio. Based on a data-set from 1990 to present, this paper investigates this issue by (i) looking at the reaction of commodity markets to economic news, and (ii) using a Markov regime-switching model to analyse economic regimes and commodity markets as an asset class.