Exploring the effect of diversification strategy on R&D intensity using quantile regression: evidence from France

This study examines the relationship between firm diversification strategy and R&D intensity for a sample of large French companies between 2008 and 2012. Applying quantile regression, we provide evidence that the choice of diversification affects R&D intensity in a differentiated way. The results indicate that a low level of diversification (below the twentieth quantile) has no significant impact on R&D intensity. Conversely, a moderate or high level of diversification has a negative and significant impact on R&D intensity. These findings suggest that R&D intensity seems to be significantly higher in related-business firms than in unrelated-business firms.     

Paradigms in Industrial Relations: Original,Modern and Versions In‐between

This article argues that the industrial relations (IR) field has had two distinct paradigms — an original paradigm centred on the employment relationship, and a modern paradigm centred on unions and labour–management relations. In practice, IR scholars in the decades after the Second World War frequently adopted the former as a broad principle but followed the latter in research and teaching. The narrower labour–management paradigm has created a significant survival challenge for the IR field, given the marked long‐term decline in union density in most countries. I join with others in arguing that to survive and prosper in the years ahead, the field needs to return to an updated version of the original ‘employment relationship’ paradigm. To promote this end, I describe the major features of the original paradigm, including its core positive and normative principle. I also outline how this core principle provides the foundation for an integrative IR theory of the employment relationship, which the field greatly needs to move ahead.     

Multimarket contact and sales growth: evidence from insurance

Research on pricing, profits, and firm survival has shown that multimarket contact causes mutual forbearance against competition, but has not considered the consequences of imperfect observability of competitive moves. Here, predictions are developed to explain how mutual forbearance occurs—but sometimes fails—in markets with imperfect observability. Mutual forbearance means that firms do not seek to take market share from each other through price cuts or nonprice competition, and thus that sales grow at uniform rates. Firms defect from mutual forbearance, and hence have higher sales growth, if the potential rewards are high and the likelihood of being discovered is low. This theory is tested on a panel of firms operating in the Norwegian general insurance industry. The evidence suggests that sales growth is most rapid in firms that do not meet many multimarket competitors in a given market and firms that are economically troubled. Growing or highly concentrated markets have higher heterogeneity of growth rates. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gender gap in self‐employment: The role of risk attitudes

This paper examines the link between the willingness to take risk and the gender gap in self‐employment in the transition economy, where for decades entrepreneurship was considered a crime. Using rich data on risk preferences and entrepreneurial activities, we show that male–female risk tolerance differential is the main determinant of the gender gap in self‐employment in Ukraine. The decomposition results indicate that up to 38% of the gap can be attributed to this factor. Robustness tests support the validity of the baseline findings by suggesting that the results are not confounded by such factors as being unemployed before starting a current job, having a self‐employed household member, or living in a relatively wealthy household before transitioning to self‐employment.     

The seasonal unit root structure in New Zealand Macroeconomic variables

ADF unit root tests are generally applied to macroeconomic data prior to testing theoritical models to ensure that all relevant variables are integrated of the same order. Not only is it important to test that these variables are integrated of the same order but also that a cointegrating relationship exists; failure to do so raise the specture of false inference associated with the spurious regression problem. The seasonal nature of quarterly data adds a further proplem which has generally been overcome by seasonally adjusting the data using procedure such as the census X-11 rather than suppressing it, have attempted to determine whether the seasonal component in each variable exhibits stochastic non-stationary. This paper analysisunit roots in a seasonal setting and compares the recently developed tests for seasonal unit roots as well as the standard augmented Dickey-Fuller zerop frequency unit root tests. Of the variables tested relatively few paper to be integrated at the seasonal frequenciues and, as other studies suggest,determinstic seasonal effects are typically more important than stochastic ones.     

Review of Microstructural Evidence of Magmatic and Solid-State Flow

Evidence of magmatic flow includes: (a) parallel to sub-parallel alignment of elongate euhedral crystals (e.g., of feldspar or hornblende) that are not internally deformed, (b) imbrication (‘tiling’) of elongate euhedral crystals that are not internally deformed, (c) insufficient solid-state strain in regions between aligned or imbricated crystals to accommodate phenocryst rotation, (d) elongation of microgranitoid enclaves without plastic deformation of the minerals, (e) magmatic flow foliations and elongate microgranitoid enclaves deflected around xenoliths, and (f) schlieren layering (if due to flow sorting) in the absence of plastic deformation of the minerals involved. These features are consistent with rotation of crystals in a much weaker medium, namely a melt phase, at a stage when the magma has become viscous enough to preserve the alignment. Evidence of solid-state flow includes: (a) internal deformation and recrystallization of grains, (b) recrystallized “tails,” (c) elongation of recrystallized aggregates (e.g. of quartz and mica), (d) grainsize reduction, (e) fine-grained folia anastomosing around less deformed relics, (f) microcline twinning, (g) myrmekite, (h) flame perthite, (i) boudinage of strong minerals, typically with recrystallized aggregates of weaker minerals (e.g. quartz and mica) between the boudins, (j) foliation passing through, rather than around enclaves, and (k) heterogeneous strain with local mylonitic zones. Several criteria suggest “submagmatic flow,” including recrystallized feldspar, inferred transitions from magmatic imbrication to solid-state S/C arrangements, evidence of c-slip in quartz, and especially evidence of migration of residual melt into lower-pressure sites. Recent experimental studies indicate that a change from grain-supported flow to suspension flow typically occurs in deforming magmas at melt contents of between 20% to 40%, and that large amounts of strain may accumulate in magmas without being recorded by the final fabric. At lower melt percentages, perhaps as low as a few percent, depending on the minerals and their shapes, strain may be accommodated by: (a) melt-assisted grain-boundary sliding, (b) contact-melting assisted grain-boundary migration, (c) strain partitioning into melt-rich zones, (d) intracrystalline plastic deformation (c-slip in quartz indicating plastic deformation at temperatures near the granite solidus), and (f) transfer of melt to sites of low mean stress. The only indication of strain in the absence of crystal plasticity may be an alignment of crystals. Moreover, magmatic flow microstructures may be destroyed by fracturing, crystal plasticity and recrystallization before the magma reaches its solidus. Many rocks show evidence of solid-state flow superimposed on magmatic flow. Evidence of magmatic flow is commonly preserved in deformed felsic metamorphic rocks: for example the alignment of rectangular K-feldspar megacrysts and of microgranitoid enclaves. However, absence of alignment does not preclude a magmatic origin for K-feldspar megacrysts in felsic gneisses, as magmatic flow may cease before the magma becomes viscous enough to preserve an alignment.     

Distortion of preferences and the Nash theory of bargaining

It is shown that in Nash bargaining over division of a single good, when agents are allowed to distort their von Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions into any (weakly) concave form, reporting linear utility functions constitutes a unique dominant-strategy Nash equilibrium.     

A Note on Forecasting Emerging Market Exchange Rates: Evidence of Anti‐herding

Using survey forecasts of a large number of Asian, European, and South American emerging market exchange rates, we studied empirically whether evidence of herding or anti‐herding behavior of exchange‐rate forecasters can be detected in the cross‐section of forecasts. Emerging market exchange‐rate forecasts are consistent with herding (anti‐herding) if forecasts are biased towards (away from) the consensus forecast. Our empirical findings provide strong evidence of anti‐herding of emerging market exchange‐rate forecasters.