Did institutions herd during the internet bubble?

We examine the trading behavior of institutional investors during the internet bubble and crash of 1998–2001, and its impact on stock prices. Similar to some recent findings concerning the trading behavior of hedge funds and NASDAQ 100 stocks, we find that during the bubble all types of institutions herded with great intensity into internet stocks for a comprehensive sample of institutional investors and internet stocks. In addition to this, we present three entirely new results. First, institutional herding was much greater than what can be explained by momentum trading. Second, institutions as a group continued to increase their holdings of internet stocks for two quarters past the market peak during the first quarter of 2000, and three quarters past the peak for individual stock prices, suggesting that institutions were unable to time the price peaks. Finally and most importantly, we find positive abnormal returns contemporaneous with institutional herding and negative abnormal returns (reversals) at the point that herding ceased. This finding suggests that institutions’ trading created temporary price pressures, and may have contributed to the bubble.     

Business Strategy and Firm Reorganization: Role of Changing Environmental Standards,Sustainable Business Initiatives and Global Market Conditions

My study is framed against the backdrop of increasingly stringent environmental demands on the pulp and paper industry to reduce water and air pollution, and the changing global market conditions. I first present an observation‐based analysis conducted by visiting selected paper mills in Finland, the US, Germany and Sweden. Interesting differences and similarities emerge. Some of the observed differences lie in their focus on achieving incremental efficiency gains from better management of production processes, inventories, supply‐chain, product distribution and timing of modernization investments such as information technology. In the second part of the paper I present evidence on firms' productivity paths and the heterogeneity in productivity among relatively similar firms, and selected evidence of firms' investments in specific areas and how these affected productivity. My findings have implications for organizational behavior and business strategies employed by firms to improve their performance and productivity under changing environmental standards and market conditions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Will Gradualism Work When Shock Therapy Doesn’t?

When shock therapy is politically infeasible, will gradualism work? This paper takes up this question by: (i) building a political economy model in which it makes sense; (ii) stating the relevant political economy constraint rigorously; and (iii) analyzing the question in the context of a neoclassical model of adjustment, based on Mussa (1978). The paper answers the question in the affirmative, thus contributing to the scientific and policy literature on the economic analysis of policy reform.     

Efficiency and productivity in the Indian unorganized manufacturing sector: did reforms matter?

This paper analyzes total factor productivity growth of the unorganized manufacturing sector in India using several rounds of the large scale national sample survey state level data for 15 major Indian states for the period 1978–1979 to 2000–2001. Data envelopment analysis is used to compute Malmquist total factor productivity index and its components. The impact of economic reforms on efficiency and productivity is examined. Evidence suggests that total factor productivity registered a positive growth during the period in the country as a whole. Most states in the country witnessed higher total factor productivity growth in the post 1990s reforms period than in the pre-reforms period. Decomposition of the Malmquist productivity index shows that improvement in technical efficiency rather than technical progress had contributed to the observed acceleration in the growth rate. Econometric analysis of the determinants of total factor productivity growth demonstrates that ownership, literacy, farm growth and infrastructure availability significantly influence total factor productivity growth in the sector.

On the importance of boundary objects for virtual collaboration: a review of the literature

In this paper, we explore the phenomenon of boundary objects in the process of virtual collaboration. Virtual collaboration is an interactive act that interconnects jointly and voluntarily collaborating individuals that are electronically linked. We regard them as virtual communities (VCs). VCs are characterised by its aim to conduce to shared understanding through an effective use of boundary objects. Artefacts that serve two or more VC members to establish collaboration are seen as boundary objects. The study at hand uses the socio-technical systems theory as a framework to categorise extant research. It draws on the concept of Carlile’s three tiers of boundary objects (syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic) to further sub-categorise scholarly publications between 2004 and 2014. This leads to an in-depth analysis on the use of boundary objects, its effect on the collaboration process as well as a first research agenda for subsequent endeavours in the field of boundary objects and virtual collaboration.     

In the Name of Merit: Ethical Violence and Inequality at a Business School

Journal of Business Ethics - This study examines how meritocracy as a collective social imaginary promoting social justice and fairness reproduces class and caste inequalities and fosters ethical...     

Trade and labour standards: theory and new empirical evidence

Recent trade negotiations, both at the regional and multilateral level, have seen a resurgence of the issue of trade and labour standards. Labour interests in high-standards countries argue that low labour standards are an unfair source of comparative advantage, and that increasing imports from low-standards countries will have an adverse impact on wages and working conditions in high-standards countries, thus leading to a race to the bottom of standards. For low-standards countries, there is the fear that this is just a form of disguised protectionism and that the imposition of high labour standards upon them is equally unfair since it will erode their competitiveness, the latter being largely based on labour costs. Our objective in the present paper is to cast some light on the above debate from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. In particular, we first discuss some possible theoretical links between labour standards and comparative advantage through their effects on the terms of trade. We then investigate empirically the relationship between labour standards, comparative advantage and export performance. Overall, our empirical results suggest that caution should be exercised before drawing broad conclusions on the magnitude and direction of these effects.     

Corporate Value, Managerial Stockholdings and Investments of Japanese Firms

We use a simultaneous equation model which treats firm value, investments and management ownership as endogenous to the firm. Our results show a feedback relation between corporate value and management ownership, i.e., corporate value is positively impacted by management ownership, which in turn is positively impacted by corporate value. Corporate value also affects investments made by the firm. We also find that the effect of the main bank on corporate value is positive but only up to a certain point; then, it turns negative. Supporting the argument that keiretsu firms have lower agency cost, we find that firms belonging to a keiretsu have higher valuations during the sample period. Finally, we find that management ownership increases as the ownership of the main bank, ownership of institutional holders and cross‐holdings decreases, suggesting a substitution effect among these monitoring forces. Our results indicate that ignoring the web of these relationships leads to incorrect inferences.     

Analysis of interactions among core,transaction and relationship-specific investments: The case of offshoring

Through the use of core, transactional and relational specificity constructs, the paper studies how the emphasis of clients’ who move business processes offshore, changes over time to represent complex relationships between investments in core, transaction and relationship-specific assets. The complex combination of these investments helps clients attain evolving objectives in offshoring alliances. Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) has been used to establish changing emphases of the specific elements in offshoring alliances.