Music for a Song: An Empirical Look at Uniform Pricing and Its Alternatives

With digital music as its context, this paper quantifies how much money would be made using alternatives to uniform pricing. Using survey‐based data on nearly 1,000 students' valuations of 100 popular songs in early 2008 and early 2009, we find that various alternatives can raise both producer and consumer surplus. Digital music revenue could be raised by between a sixth and a third relative to profit‐maximizing uniform pricing. While person‐specific uniform pricing can raise revenue by over 50 per cent, none of the non‐discriminatory schemes raise revenue's share of surplus above 40 per cent of total surplus.     

Growing into Export Markets: The Impact of Exporting on Firm‐level Investment in Indonesia

This paper documents the impact of exporting on capital accumulation across heterogeneous manufacturing firms in Indonesia. The findings show that entering export markets significantly increases investment behavior during the year of initial entry and for as much as three years after entry. The results imply that the investment rate among new exporters is 37% higher than non‐exporters in the year of entry and 14–26% higher in the three years after entry. Using detailed data on firm ownership, the paper further show that foreign‐owned affiliates invest at systematically higher rates upon entry into export markets. The estimates indicate that domestically owned exporters are potentially credit constrained and suggest that improving credit market access may increase the investment rate among domestic exporters by as much as 40% in the year of entry.     

Financial Market Turmoil： Implications for Monetary Policy Transmission in China

The recent financial market turmoil has initiated another search for insightful understanding of the interactions between the financial market and monetary policy. This paper explores these interactions in terms of the transmission mechanism of monetary policy in China. We argue that evolving financial development, enhanced by the expansion of the financial market, has altered the conventional channel for monetary transmission in China. Analyzing marked changes in the financial landscape and taking into account policy regime shifts in China, the paper provides clear evidence showing that the financial market has become a new and important channel for transmission of monetary policy in China.     

Rational Strategic Reasoning: An Unnatural Act?

We review recent literature on competitive reactions and strategic thinking and offer several observations. Evidence is mounting that strategic thinking is an unnatural act, made difficult by natural individual biases and organizational roadblocks. In addition, it is possible that uncertainty about competitive behavior is caused by and contributes to informal and incomplete competitive intelligence. We propose a simple model which suggests a potential path dependency in a firm's intelligence gathering, driven by the inertia of its past decision-making. Such a path dependency can be broken, however, as evidenced by several examples of firms who have overcome barriers to strategic thinking in creative ways. Paradoxically, though, there are circumstances in which competition is overemphasized in decision-making. Research priorities are discussed.     

Gender Comparisons in Strategic Decision-Making: An Empirical Analysis of the Entrepreneurial Strategy Matrix

The strategic decision-making of male and female small businesspersons and entrepreneurs has been investigated in prior research, but the findings are mixed. This article reports on a gender comparison testing of the Entrepreneurial Strategy Matrix, a situational model which suggests strategies for new and ongoing ventures in response to the identification of different levels of venture innovation and risk. A national sample of 184 small firm owers (59 percent male/41 percent female) was tested. Results indicate that there are no significant gender differences in venture innovation/risk situation or in strategies chosen by business owners. Male respondents did indicate a higher overall satisfaction with venture performance than did females.     

Urban air pollution progress despite sprawl: The “greening” of the vehicle fleet

Growing cities, featuring more people with higher incomes who live and work in the suburbs and commute by private vehicle, should be a recipe for increased air pollution. Instead, California's major polluted urban areas have experienced sharp improvements in air quality. Technological advance has helped to “green” the average vehicle. Such quality effects have offset the rising quantity of miles driven. This paper uses several vehicle data sets to investigate how California's major cities have enjoyed air pollution gains over the last 20 years.     

Progressive Revenue Sharing in Major League Baseball: The Effect on Player Transfers and Talent Distribution

Major League Baseball’s system of sharing revenue between clubs was altered significantly in 1997. The arrangement progressively redistributes income from the highest toward the lowest revenue-generating clubs. The purpose of the new method was to alleviate growing disparity in revenue generation. However, under the progressive system the lowest revenue producing clubs bear the highest marginal tax rates, and theoretically problems of competitive imbalance may be amplified. Changes in talent distribution are observed by analyzing player mobility; an empirical model of player transfers is developed and tested. Confirmation is obtained that low revenue clubs acted on increased incentives to divest talent.     

A Reexamination of Yardstick Competition

This paper shows that yardstick competition does not assist a regulator when lump-sum transfers are not costly and the regulator does not care about the distribution of income. Yardstick competition may discourage investment that would make efficient operation possible. The paper characterizes optimal regulatory schemes in a simple model and demonstrates that it may be optimal to limit the amount of information available to the regulator.     

Issues in diversity in recreation and leisure studies: perspectives from US educators at a public institution of higher education

The value of academic and professional role models cannot be overestimated for today's college and university students of all races. Students are the generational link in the perpetuation of the leisure services profession and 'belong' to the profession via their initial enculturation in educational encounters. Accredited programmes in leisure studies at comprehensive US public colleges have missions that mandate attention to diversity. The following article integrates and synthesizes thought from the most contemporary literature on diversity in higher education, and writings in the discipline of recreation and leisure studies. The authors describe how the instruction of students in leisure studies programmes can benefit from faculty/staff who either represent, or deliberately emphasize, diversity. Positive potential outcomes are presented as they enhance the act of teaching and the process of learning for recreation and leisure studies majors in an increasingly complex, multicultural world.     

Determinants of Success of Employer Branding in a Start‐up Firm in Nigeria

This article aims at providing an understanding of factors that determine the success and failure of employer branding. An African steel‐producing start‐up company developed an employer brand image, which enabled it to effectively attract and hire talent from the labor market and inspired high engagement and productivity. A few years later, the firm lost its attractive brand image and its employer brand loyalty also declined. The study is a longitudinal investigation, and data were collected from policies and through structured interviews with the employees, ex‐employees of the organization, and prospective employees. Findings show amazing success of the employer brand in the first six years in talent attraction, hiring, engagement, and retention. Thereafter, the brand lost its potency, and its dysfunctionality significantly impacted on the future of the firm—employee dissatisfaction, decline in productivity, and increase in turnover. The reasons include a toxic organizational environment, overbranding, failure to keep promises, disconnect between employer branding and human resource strategy, shift of emphasis by senior management from people to production, and lack of a dynamic and differentiated employee value proposition. The study offers practical lessons to managers. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.