Soziale Kollektiva

Ohne ZusammenfassungDer vorliegende Aufsatz ist aus einem Vortrag, gehalten in der Nationalökonomischen Gesellschaft, Wien, im Juli 1928, entstanden.     

Bank risk proxies and the crisis of 2007/09: a comparison

The global financial crisis has again shown that it is important to understand the emergence and measurement of risks in the banking sector. However, there is no consensus in the literature which risk proxy works best at the level of the individual bank. A commonly used measure in applied work is the Z-score, which might suffer from calculation issues given poor data quality. Motivated by the variety of bank risk proxies, our analysis reveals that nonperforming assets are a well-suited complement to the Z-score in studies of bank risk.     

Increasing the relevance of mathematical approaches to demographic history

In this short paper we comment on recent efforts at formally modelling the interplay between demography and cultural evolution. We draw attention to the fact that, although these efforts are to be applauded, much work has already been done in this area, and that this work is being ignored. We build a case for tighter collaboration between different social science disciplines concerned with human behaviour and long-term demography, and argue that mathematical models must be paired with empirical data.     

Family businesses and non-family equity: literature review and avenues for future research

Family firms commonly prefer internal funding and retention of control. Under certain circumstances, however, equity investments from outside the family can be a relevant alternative source of capital. To facilitate further knowledge about the interaction of family-owned businesses and external equity investors, the present work reviews 42 studies and suggests possible directions for future research. Results reveal that extant studies focus mainly on five key areas—corporate finance, contract design and collaboration, succession and exit route, strategy and performance, and corporate governance. Moreover, the paper discusses various gaps in the extant work and presents three opportunities for future research in a detailed manner. These include a comparison of different types of investors in the context of family-owned businesses, an investigation of minority investor exits from family firms, and an analysis of the impact of investors on family firm boards. All in all, the findings can guide the future development of this emerging field of research and have implications for theory and practice.     

Investment coordination in network industries: the case of electricity grid and electricity generation

Liberalization of network industries frequently separates the network from the other parts of the industry. This is important in particular for the electricity industry where private firms invest into generation facilities, while network investments usually are controlled by regulators. We discuss two regulatory regimes. First, the regulator can only decide on the network extension. Second, she can additionally use a “capacity market” with payments contingent on private generation investment. For the first case, we find that even absent asymmetric information, a lack of regulatory commitment can cause inefficiently high or inefficiently low investments. For the second case, we develop a standard handicap auction which implements the first best under asymmetric information if there are no shadow costs of public funds. With shadow costs, no simple mechanism can implement the second best outcome.     

The Theory of Differential Overqualification: Does it Work?

The theory of differential overqualification, developed by Robert Frank (1978),claims that married women in smaller labour markets have a higher risk of workingin jobs for which they are overqualified. This stems from the problem of dual jobsearch for couples which is much more difficult to optimize than single job search.Here, for several reasons husbands tend to first optimize their individual job search.Their wives are `tied movers' or `tied stayers' in the sense that their job search isundertaken under the condition that the job search of their husbands is optimized.This leads especially in smaller labour markets to a higher risk of a mismatchbetween formal qualifications and job requirements. The only specific empiricaltest of this theory, until now, has been performed by McGoldrick and Robst (1996) . Their results, using US data, do not support the theory. Using Germanpanel data (GSOEP), we also test the theory of differential overqualification.Unlike previous studies we control for commuting distances and our own resultsprovide some mixed support for the differential overqualification hypothesis.     

Observable restrictions of general equilibrium models with financial markets

This paper examines whether general equilibrium models of exchange economies with incomplete financial markets impose restrictions on prices of commodities and assets given the stochastic processes of dividends and aggregate endowments. We show that the assumption of time-separable expected utility implies restriction on the cross-section of asset prices as well as on spot commodity prices. However, a relaxation of the assumption of time separability will generally destroy these restriction.     

Capabilities, innovation and competitive advantage

This special issue was aimed at advancing the literature examining the role of capabilities in innovation-based competitive strategy. Whilst the innovation literature has over the years moved away from its ‘product innovation’ pre-occupation to capture the role of other forms of innovation in value creation, the capability view has progressed from its ‘rigid’ or ‘static’ view to a ‘dynamic’ view in an effort to capture market dynamism. Despite the recent theoretical advancements the dynamic capability view still lacks a strong empirical base. Contributors to the capability literature over the recent years have adopted multiple research methods to capture capabilities that include cross-sectional designs, case studies and longitudinal studies. Within this backdrop, the articles that were selected for this special issue covers both conceptual and empirical approaches to examine the relationship between capabilities and technical and non-technical innovations and performance outcomes. This essay provides a future research agenda to advance this promising research field. It highlights the need for clearer conceptualizations and development of measures of dynamic capabilities, environmental conditions that underpin the development of dynamic capabilities within the firm and research into the much debated relationship between dynamic capabilities and competitive advantage and organizational performance.