Schumpeter's ghost: Is hypercompetition making the best of times shorter?

At the center of Schumpeter's theory of competitive behavior is the assertion that competitive advantage will become increasingly more difficult to sustain in a wide range of industries. More recently, this assertion has resurfaced in the notion of hypercompetition. This research examines two large longitudinal samples of firms to discover which industries, if any, exhibit performance that is consonant with Schumpeterian theory and the assertions of hypercompetition. We find support for the argument that over time competitive advantage has become significantly harder to sustain and, further, that the phenomenon is limited neither to high‐technology industries nor to manufacturing industries but is seen across a broad range of industries. We also find evidence that sustained competitive advantage is increasingly a matter not of a single advantage maintained over time but more a matter of concatenating over time a sequence of advantages. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Cointegration Model of Age-Specific Fertility and Female Labor Supply in the United States

Cointegration methods suitable for estimation and testing with nonstationary data are applied to U.S. time-series data on age-specific fertility rates, female labor force participation rates, women's wages, unemployment rates and educational attainment, and male relative incomes. Likelihood ratio tests indicate the existence of two cointegrating relations that are identified as a fertility equation and a labor supply equation, respectively. Estimated long-run relations are consistent with economic models of fertility and female labor market behavior, and these results are robust across both age-groups and several alternative model specifications.     

Investment under Trade Policy Uncertainty: an Empirical Investigation*

The link between trade policy uncertainty and the share of investment in GDP per capita is investigated using panel data drawn from over a hundred countries for the period 1960–2000. Five indicators of trade policy are used. Two specifications of volatility for each of the trade policy indicators are constructed as measures of trade policy uncertainty. Panel regression results suggest a robust correlation between the volatility of trade policy indicators and the investment share. A significant negative impact of trade policy volatility on the investment share is found in most trade policy indicators with an exception—the volatility of the trade share indicator more closely associated with volatility in quantity than in prices has a significant positive impact on the investment share.     

From Impartial Advocates to Political Agents: Role Switching and Trustworthiness in Consultancy

Consultancy firms inform, advise, implement and mediate in their own interests and in the interests of their clients. We can only guess if their work is also in the interest of the public. There is no critical and systematical assessment of the behavior of consultancy firms. What roles do consultancy firms chose? And what arguments do they use? In the nineties the international consultancy firm Hill &; Knowlton took on two assignments that showed a remarkable difference in the required role the firm had to play. In the first role the firm acted as an impartial advocate, in the second role the firm acted as a political agent. An analysis of the argumentation for both roles shows us the familair short-sighted choice for the annual turnover at the cost of internal and external trustworthiness. In this decade consultancy firms will need to develop ethical assessments that meet more professional standards.     

Statistical Analysis of Choice Experiments and Surveys

Measures of households' past behavior, their expectations with respect to future events and contingencies, and their intentions with respect to future behavior are frequently collected using household surveys. These questions are conceptually difficult. Answering them requires elaborate cognitive and social processes, and often respondents report only their “best” guesses and/or estimates, using more or less sophisticated heuristics. A large body of literature in psychology and survey research shows that as a result, responses to such questions may be severely biased. In this paper, (1) we describe some of the problems that are typically encountered, (2) provide some empirical illustrations of these biases, and (3) develop a framework for conceptualizing survey response behavior and for integrating structural models of response behavior into the statistical analysis of the underlying economic behavior.     

Contagion effects of electronic commerce diffusion: Perspective from network analysis of industrial structure

This study presents a quantitative method for investigating the diffusion of e-commerce adoption using social network analysis methodologies. The contagion effects on innovation diffusion are examined by two different social network models: the cohesion model, which is based on diffusion by direct communication, and the structural equivalence model, which is based on diffusion by similarity of network position. This study then empirically examines a sample of e-commerce diffusion taken from the Taiwan's industrial structure in 2001. The analytical results show that e-commerce diffusion among firms in Taiwan exhibits both contagion effects, but that the mimetic behavior is predicted better by network position than by interactions with others.     

Toward a National Market System for U.S. Exchange–listed Equity Options

In its response to the 1975 Congressional mandate to implement a national market system for financial securities, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) initially exempted the option market. Recent dramatic changes in the structure of the option market prompted the SEC to revisit this issue. We examine a sample of actively traded, multiply listed equity options to ask whether this market's characteristics appear consistent with the goals of producing economically efficient transactions and facilitating “best execution.” We find marked changes between June 2000, when quotes are often ignored, and January 2002, when the market more closely resembles a national market.     

On the robustness of simple and optimal monetary policy rules

This is a discussion of the paper “Simple versus Optimal Rules as Guides to Policy” by Brock, Durlauf, Nason and Rondina (BDNR) presented in November 2006 at Carnegie-Mellon University under the auspices of the Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy. I review the authors’ arguments, present a few suggestions for extension and outline where I think at least one strand of the literature should be heading.     

Antecedents of Budget Participation: Leadership Style,Information Asymmetry,and Evaluative Use of Budget

This study explores the causes or antecedents of budget participation to understand more fully the role of participation in the workplace. The study focuses on the reasons why superiors encourage the budget participation of their subordinates and draws upon several theoretical perspectives including leadership theory, agency theory and organizational justice. To examine the issues, a survey was administered to managers and supervisors in several companies. Results of path analysis suggest that superiors encourage subordinate participation when the superior's leadership style is considerate. This implies that budget participation may mediate the relation between leadership style and work outcomes. Results also suggest that superiors encourage participation when budget goals are used in the performance evaluation of subordinates, in which case, the study argues, the superiors encourage participation because of concerns about organizational justice. This finding implies that budget participation may mediate the relation between the evaluative use of budget and those work outcomes that prior research has linked to organizational justice. The proposed relation between information asymmetry and budget participation is not supported.