Trade Credit or Financial Credit? An International Study of the Choice and Its Influences

Trade credit financing has usually been assumed to be an expensive source of funds. Recent studies, however, suggested that it can be available at either low or no cost. Using an international panel of firms, we provide an empirical answer to this matter. We analyze the type of firms and financial environments that are associated with a relatively more intense use of financial credit and, consistent with the mainstream literature, we find that trade credit financing is chosen by firms that have more restricted access to financial credit. These results appear to be stronger for firms located in emerging markets.     

The origins of external knowledge inflows and the impact of university technologies

This paper analyses how universities leverage knowledge coming from different technological, institutional, and geographical domains to develop technologies exerting a relevant impact for firms’ technological advancements. The analysis is based on a panel of 219 worldwide universities that filed, at least, a patent belonging to the alternative energy production sector in the period 2002–2010. Results show that using external knowledge originating in different technological and institutional domains exerts an inverted U‐shaped effect on the firms’ subsequent technological progress, while the geographical origin seems to do not exert any influence.     

Strategic technology alliances and networks

This paper briefly reviews the literature on strategic technology alliances (STAs) and networks, allocating the contributions to ‘micro’ (firm) and ‘meso’ perspectives (the network). The focus is on a logical reconstruction of important themes in the literature pertaining to the role of STAs in boosting innovation and in promoting the survival and growth of partners and their environments. Overall, the literature points to a quite important role of alliances and networks especially in knowledge-intensive industrial activities combining the production and utilization of technological knowledge for competitiveness and growth. Not unexpectedly, important differences are pointed out in terms of incentives and benefits from alliances across different types of firms and industries. Network structure evolves in accordance with the nature of the industry and with the type of technological advancement sought by participating organizations.     

Business model shifts: a case study on firms that apply high technology to cultural goods

Business models (BMs) in high-tech industries are analysed from a dynamic point of view in the context of cultural goods. Despite the increased interest in BMs, there is still a gap in terms of the generally accepted definition and of how BMs are analysed within an integrated framework. The aim of this paper is twofold: to provide a theoretical framework to understand BMs and how they change over time, and an empirical investigation of the characteristics of firms that apply high technology to cultural goods (HTCGs). Having defined what an HTCG firm is, within- and cross-case analyses are carried out on 30 firms that operate in the field of the cultural goods in Tuscany (Italy). The results showed interesting patterns of evolution of BMs, thus providing useful insights into the unexplored field of HTCGs.     

E-Index for measuring concentration

The goal of measuring the existing concentration of an economic magnitude among the elements in which it is distributed has been over the past years one of the major worries in the economic statistics arena. Among all the concentration indexes, the Gini index has been applied to a greater extent. This study considers that the traditional Gini index definition, according to a wide array of introductory statistics textbooks, is only applicable in the case of unitary frequency distributions. When dealing with nonunitary frequency distributions, it is possible to convert them into unitary ones, allowing for the application of the Gini index. Nevertheless, it can be appreciated how laborious such a task will be in those cases where the number of elements of the distribution is of considerable magnitude. The aim of this paper is to avoid this handicap by presenting an alternative index, the E-index.     

Why So Unhappy? The Effects of Unionization on Job Satisfaction*

Using linked employer–employee data we investigate the job satisfaction effect of union membership in Britain. We develop a model that simultaneously controls for the determinants of individual membership status and for the selection of employees into occupations according to union coverage. We find a negative association between membership and satisfaction. However, having accounted for selection effects, we find that the negative association is confined to non‐covered employees. This is consistent with ‘voice’ effects, whereby non‐covered members voice dissatisfaction to achieve union goals, and with the possibility that membership increases preferences for collective bargaining, thus lowering members’ satisfaction in non‐covered environments.     

Risk assessment and profit sharing in business networks

Nowadays network is the preferred governance form to conduct economic transactions. Network solution allows to reach flexibility maintaining cost and quality level. Since network concept refers to a great variety of organizational hybrids it is possible to choose the one that fits better market requirements. The new trends in inter-organization relationships push towards network solutions: companies are interested in relationships with partners and customers to overcome resource dependence, to enter too risky market or simply differentiate their business portfolio. The proposed research focuses on the network concept aiming at highlighting threats and opportunities to investigate the double nature of the risk concept. Network structures offer flexibility and higher profit as a consequence and business risk sharing opportunity.These two aspects (profit and risk) are strictly related and have to be considered together to depict a complete scenario; this implies that risk assessment and management in network environment cannot neglect profit sharing or, in other words, that profit sharing mechanisms should use risk as driver. In this context our research proposes a methodology to measure risk taking into account network peculiarities; risk estimation is a basic step to evaluate the opportunity cost of capital needed to compute the network Net Present Value (NPV) that is assumed as base in the profit sharing process. The profit sharing process has been tackled using the Shapley value approach that is inspired to the fairness principle while the opportunity cost of capital is assessed using the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM).     

Exchange rate variability and trade: why is it so difficult to find any empirical relationship?

This paper discusses why previous literature has found little evidence of any effect of exchange rate variability on international trade. Methodological and statistical issues are discussed. In particular, comparisons are made of estimations based on different specifications or using different data sets and changes in the results depending on the method used are shown.     

An evolutionary model with best response and imitative rules

We formulate an evolutionary oligopoly model where quantity setting players produce following either the static expectation best response or a performance-proportional imitation rule. The choice on how to behave is driven by an evolutionary selection mechanism according to which the rule that brought the highest performance attracts more followers. The model has a stationary state that represents a heterogeneous population where rational and imitative rules coexist and where players produce at the Cournot–Nash level. We find that the intensity of choice, a parameter representing the evolutionary propensity to switch to the most profitable rule, the cost of the best response implementation as well as the number of players have ambiguous roles in determining the stability property of the Cournot–Nash equilibrium. This marks important differences with most of the results from evolutionary models and oligopoly competitions. Such differences should be referred to the particular imitative behavior we consider in the present modeling setup. Moreover, the global analysis of the model reveals that the above-mentioned parameters introduce further elements of complexity, conditioning the convergence toward an inner attractor. In particular, even when the Cournot–Nash equilibrium loses its stability, outputs of players little differ from the Cournot–Nash level and most of the dynamics is due to wide variations of imitators’ relative fraction. This describes dynamic scenarios where shares of players produce more or less at the same level alternating their decision mechanisms.