Exploring the Role of Ownership Structures in the Results of Professional Health Care Franchises from a Multi-Actor Perspective

This paper explores how the ownership structure of professional health care franchises contributes to the achievement of positive results with franchising for the franchisor, the franchisee, professional service provider, and clients. We conducted a comparative embedded case study with three health care franchises in the Netherlands using data from 101 interviews, observations, and document analyses. We show that different ownership structures at the system-level (i.e., plural form, pure franchise, cooperative franchise) and the unit-level (i.e., stand-alone versus fractional, active versus passive, single versus multi-unit) have different effects as perceived by franchisors, franchisees, and professionals. Moreover, we reveal how this variation in experienced effects can be explained by differences in dynamics in regard to management, decision making, control, steering, support, interests, learning, and adaptation. Based on these analyses, we develop new typologies of ownership structures and show how combinations of system-level and unit-level structures can have mutually weakening or strengthening effects.     

Natural disasters and countries' exports: New insights from a new (and an old) database

This paper is the first to uncover in details the impact of different families of disasters on exports from 1979 to 2000 (storms, floods, earthquakes and changes in temperatures). Besides, our paper is the first to compare in a quasi‐systematic way the results across the two data sets at hand, the standard EM‐DAT data and GeoMet data, a newly available data set based on geophysical and meteorological data (European Economic Review, 2013, 58, 18; Journal of Development Economics, 2014, 111, 92). We run series of regressions while accounting progressively for the characteristics of products (all traded goods v/s agriculture ones), the characteristics of the country (size, level of development) and the intensity of the catastrophes. When pooling all countries, and all types of disasters, we do not find any statistical impact on exports. But when focusing on each of them separately and on agricultural goods, the occurrence of an earthquake appears to reduce exports of about 3%, regardless of its location. A windstorm shock, even when it happens to be very severe, has hardly any impact. A flood, on its side, is estimated to reduce export flows of a small country by nearly 3%. The effect of changes in temperatures is ambiguous. All in all, except for temperature‐related disasters, the results are consistent across both data sets, EM‐DAT and GeoMet, although they appear to be slightly more in line with our expectations in the case of GeoMet.     

Productivity and Wage Effects of Firm-Level Collective Agreements: Evidence from Belgian Linked Panel Data

How do firm-level collective agreements affect firm performance in a multi-level bargaining system? Using detailed Belgian-linked employer–employee panel data, our findings show that firm-level agreements increase both wage costs and labour productivity (with respect to sector-level agreements). Relying on approaches developed by Bartolucci and Hellerstein et al., they also indicate that firm-level agreements exert a stronger impact on wages than on productivity, so that profitability is hampered. However, this rent-sharing effect mostly holds in sectors where firms are more concentrated or less exposed to international competition. Firm agreements are thus mainly found to raise wages beyond labour productivity when the rents to be shared between workers and firms are relatively big. Overall, this suggests that firm-level agreements benefit both employers and employees — through higher productivity and wages — without being very detrimental to firms’ performance.     

Information Acquisition and Choice Under Uncertainty

This paper presents a model where individuals have imperfect information and there is an opportunity cost of learning. It shows that the endogenous decision to collect costly information before taking an action has a systematic effect on choices. More precisely, consider two alternatives with ex ante identical expected payoff but different variances. The model predicts that, after the learning process is stopped, a majority of individuals will select the alternative with largest payoff-variance. The result persists when agents have multiple sources of information. Applications to entrepreneurial investments, composition of advisory committees, and judicial decision-making are discussed.     

Going liquid: French food retail industry experiencing an interregnum

ABSTRACT

By calling the present condition of the French food retail industry an interregnum, this research considers the impact of liquid modernity on this sector and looks for signs of a new order at a designing stage. Nine experts representing large retailers and entrepreneurs using alternative modes of food retailing were interviewed. An interpretive analysis reveals a wide diversity of changes. Following Bauman’s liquid metaphor, we identify shock, transformations, and crisis in food retailing, which we describe as phases that mark the dynamics in the shift from solid to liquid retailing. We discuss how retailers are adapting and deploying tactics both to respond and belong to these liquid times and how retailers can regain some legitimacy by claiming a role in territorial sovereignty.     

Is there a pilot in the chain? Identifying the key drivers of change in the fresh pineapple sector

High-value export-oriented agriculture is today considered as a means of integrating smallholders into the world economy. This paper examines the geographic and organisational changes that have taken place in the fresh pineapple sector over the past 50 years. We begin with a historical analysis of the changes in leadership among producer countries, namely the dethroning of Côte d’Ivoire by Costa Rica. We show that this geographical shift has been accompanied by massive organisational changes: the pineapple sector is increasingly driven by large downstream actors who derive their power from the ability to impose their definition of quality to the whole chain, and from economies of scale and scope. Although varietal innovation plays a key role throughout the period, commercial and logistical innovation are of increasing strategic importance. However, because of the constraints imposed by the concerned supply chains, small farmers risk being excluded or marginalized.     

The paradox of resource vulnerability: Considerations for organizational curatorship

Resource‐based scholars have focused on the properties of resources and the isolating mechanisms that sustain their rents in the face of competition. Unfortunately, they have devoted far less attention to the sources of vulnerability of many of these resources. We argue that, paradoxically, sources of rent such as isolating mechanisms often have a dark side that renders resources more vulnerable. We highlight three categories of challenges to managing resource vulnerability—protecting them from erosion, coping with their ambiguity, and preserving their required alignment—and identify sources of vulnerability within each. We address these via three primary functions of curatorship: preservation, connoisseurship, and orchestration, respectively. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Structural Econometrics of First-price Auctions: A Survey of Methods

Over the past decade, the structural analysis of auction data has attracted considerable attention. The structural approach relies on the hypothesis that observed bids are the equilibrium bids of the gametheoretic auction model under consideration. In this paper, we survey econometric methods that have been recently developed for estimating first-price auction models within the private value paradigm. In particular, we focus on two important issues. A first question is to know whether the structural elements of the model, mainly the underlying latent distribution of bidders private values, are identifiable from observations, usually the observed bids. A second issue concerns the estimation of the underlying density. This can be performed through different methods ranging from parametric to nonparametric ones. After a brief review of basic auction models, we first consider the simple first-price auction model with- in the symmetric independent private value paradigm with a nonbinding reserve price. In a second part, more advanced models are considered allowing for a binding reserve price, affiliation among private values, and asymmetry among bidders. The conclusion presents some future lines of research. Depuis une dizaine d'années, I'analyse structurale des mécanismes en jeu dans la conduite des enchères suscite une attention considérable. Cette démarche structurale sefonde sur I'hypothèse selon laquelle les offres observées constituent les offres à l'équilibre d'un modèle d'enchères basé sur la théorie des jeux. Dans le présent exposé, nous pas sons en revue les méthodes économétriques qui ont été mises au point ces derniéres années pour construire des modéles d'enchéres au premier prix dans le cadre du paradigme des valeurs personnelles. Nous nous intéressons en particulier à deux questions importantes: la première est de savoir si les éléments structuraux du modèle, essentiellement la distribution latente sous-jacente des valeurs personnelles des enchérisseurs sont identifiables à partir des observations, c'est-à-dire habituellement les offres observées. La deuxième question concerne l'estimation de la densité sousjacente. Elle peut se faire par différentes méthodes allant des paramétriques au non paramétriques. Après une brève revue des modèles d'enchères de base, nous considérons d'abord le modèle d'enchère, simple au premier prix dans le cadre du paradigme des valeurs personnelles indépendantes symétriques, assorti d'un prix minimum non liant. Dans la seconde partie, nous examinons des modèles plus avancés, autorisant unprix minimum liant, Vaffiliation parmi les valeurs personnelles et I'asymétrie parmi les enchérisseurs. En conclusion, nous proposons quelques avenues de recherches futures.     

Family ownership and acquisition behavior in publicly‐traded companies

Much of the literature on corporate acquisitions has focused on managerial incentives for making acquisitions but has underemphasized the role played by the social context of major shareholders. This study of Fortune 1000 firms argues that the priorities and risk preferences of family owners can have important implications not only for the volume but also for the diversifying nature of their acquisitions. Agency and family business perspectives are used to derive expectations concerning the acquisitions behavior of family owners. Consistent with both perspectives, and owners' desire to reduce business risk, we find that family ownership is inversely related to the number and dollar volume of acquisitions. However, whereas agency theorists differ about how ownership concentration influences whether acquisitions are diversified, the family firm literature is more definitive. The latter suggests that given family owners' desire to retain control of their firms for offspring, their wealth must remain concentrated. Hence they can most easily reduce the risk of their wealth portfolio by diversifying the business—that is, through diversifying acquisitions. Consistent with this logic, we found the propensity to make diversifying acquisitions to increase with the level of family ownership. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.