Marx,Lenin and the Cooperative Movement

Drawing upon the writings of Marx and Lenin, this article refutes the widely shared but incorrect assumption that Marx and Lenin rejected cooperation even as a mode of production for the transitional period. It reviews Marx's belief that cooperatives would gradually supplant capitalistic firms, and that the generalised growth of cooperation would give rise to a new mode of production; the article also analyses Lenin's 1923 article on cooperation in which not only is cooperation described as a major step in the transition to socialism, but even equated with socialism at large. The hypotheses of this article are supported through a close reading of these works and also shed light on numerous implications arising from this reading.     

ECONOMIES OF SCOPE FOR MICROFINANCE: DIFFERENCES ACROSS OUTPUT MEASURES

In banking, scope economies of mobilizing deposits and lending are often estimated, while consideration of the same measures for microfinance institutions (MFI) is still in its infancy. An open issue remains regarding what characterizes an output of an MFI. Moreover, depending on the output used, do estimated scope economies differ? We use a novel data set for over 800 MFI across more than 70 countries to estimate economies of scope. Our findings suggest that statistical differences arise between estimates of scope economies. However, our qualitative findings indicate that both of these measures provide similar overviews of the landscape of scope economies for MFI.     

Stress that Doesn't Pay: The Commuting Paradox*

People spend a lot of time commuting and often find it a burden. According to standard economics, the burden of commuting is chosen when compensated either on the labor or on the housing market so that individuals' utility is equalized. However, in a direct test of this strong notion of equilibrium with panel data, we find that people with longer commuting time report systematically lower subjective well‐being. This result is robust with regard to a number of alternative explanations. We mention several possibilities of an extended model of human behavior able to explain this “commuting paradox”.     

Exporting to new destinations and the effects of tariffs: the case of meat commodities

This study uses a random parameter probit estimation to examine the effects of tariff liberalization on the probability of establishing new trading relationships in meat commodities. Our simulation results indicate that the effects of tariff reductions decrease with distance, but increase with the level of development. The probabilities of trade increase at an increasing rate with the size of tariff reductions thus justifying calls for ambitious liberalization schemes. Canada and Mexico are the NAFTA countries that are most likely to export in response to EU tariff reductions on bovine and poultry meats, while Brazil and Argentina emerge as the MERCOSUR countries most likely to penetrate the EU bovine meat market after EU tariff reductions. Uruguay's probability to export poultry meat is most responsive to EU tariff reductions.     

Probing the Group Faultline Concept: An Evaluation of Measures of Patterned Multi-dimensional Group Diversity

The article provides a conceptual and analytical discussion of the group faultline notion introduced to organizational research by Lau and Murnighan (1998). Group faultlines can be thought of as patterned multi-dimensional diversity, and recent attempts to measure faultline strength differ in the way they specify and operationalize this patternedness. I evaluate the comparative validity of these competing measures by scrutinizing their analytical strengths and weaknesses and by applying them to a number of illustrative group constellations that represent different faultline strengths. I conclude that at the current early stage of group faultline research, and given the shortcomings of the available indices, scholars are well advised to use multiple measures of faultline strength in empirical studies so as to better gauge the validity and reliability of both their results and the indices applied. I also caution against excessive hopes with regard to the explanatory power of the faultline concept in empirical research. This article was written while the author was teaching at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and an earlier version was presented at the Academy of Management annual meeting in New Orleans, August 6–11, 2004.     

CHOOSY SEARCH AND THE MISMATCH OF TALENTS*

This article proposes a multi‐sector matching model where workers have (symmetric) sector‐specific skills and the search market is segmented by sector. Workers choose the range of markets they are willing to participate in. I identify a composition externality: Workers do not take into account the impact of their choice on sector‐specific mean productivity among the pools of job‐seekers. Consequently, workers prospect too many market segments, and there is room for public policy even when the so‐called Hosios condition holds.     

The CEO Arms Race

This article constructs a game‐theoretic model in which high chief executive officer (CEO) pay emerges as the outcome of an arms race, with each firm hiring a highly paid CEO to protect its competitive position against rivals who also hire highly paid CEOs. For an arms race to emerge, highly paid CEOs must generate idiosyncratic, privately known internal effects on profit, and CEO pay disparities must also generate asymmetric profit differences from external effects beyond the simple differences in pay. If the distribution of internal effects satisfies a key uniformity condition, an arms race emerges as the only equilibrium of the game.     

Consumers’ preference modeling to price bundle offers in the telecommunications industry: a game with competition among operators

Network operators are merging their services, such as fixed or wireless telephony, internet or television, into single offers, called bundles. It is essential to understand consumers’ preferences to define the most profitable bundles, with their associated prices, especially in the fierce competitive current market. We start by defining a random linear utility model and then, analyze the competition between an integrated operator and new entrants proposing substitutable services. Each operator ignores the consumers’ reservation prices for his offers and has to deal with uncertainties about the marketing strategies of competitors, due to potential different size and cost structure. A two-level game is introduced and solved by backward induction. In the second level, the operators determine their optimal offer prices for each possible combination of marketing strategies while the consumers select their most profitable purchasing processes; the natural framework is that of Bayesian game theory. Finally at the top level, knowing the outcome of the other level, the operators identify which marketing strategy to use between market share expansion, segment targeting or multi-level price discrimination, to maximize their expected utilities conditionally to their private informations.