Pricing electricity risk by interest rate methods

We address a method for pricing electricity contracts based on the valuation of the ability to produce power, which is considered as the true underlying factor for electricity derivatives. This approach shows that an evaluation of free production capacity provides a framework where a change-of-numeraire transformation converts the electricity forward market into the common settings for money market modelling. Using the toolkit of interest rate theory, we derive explicit option pricing formulas.     

Anchors in Rough Seas: Understanding Category Spanning as a Source of Market Coordination

Prior research has deemed products that span market categories a source of cognitive and institutional disruption. Portraying spanning products as purely disruptive elements, however, does not consider their large presence in markets and, consequently, the fact that producers and consumers continue to coordinate their activities on established categories despite pervasive spanning. Our paper addresses this gap by focusing on commercial success as an important condition under which spanning products, rather than being a source of disruption, sustain market coordination. From the producer side, an increasing number of commercially successful products spanning a focal category stimulates mimicry. From the consumer side, this mimicry, net of the overall level of spanning observed in the category, improves consensus. We test these arguments by focusing on the styles that map electronic music as the established categories of a market. Empirical analyses lend support to our hypotheses.     

Beyond the line: exploring the HRM responsibilities of line managers,project managers and the HRM department in four project-oriented companies in the Netherlands,Austria, the UK and the USA

The topic of what human resource management (HRM) responsibilities are devolved from the HRM department to line managers has attracted much interest in recent years. We report findings from a study on the devolution of HRM practices in four project-oriented companies (POCs) and argue that although HRM practices are carried out beyond the HRM department, they are also carried out beyond the line. While the literature on devolving HRM responsibilities to line management is burgeoning, the HRM responsibilities of managers beyond the line organization are neglected. We make two contributions to the literature. Firstly, our study reveals that some HRM practices are the domain of the project manager rather than either the line manager or the HRM department. The complex interplay of the roles of the HRM department, line management and project management creates challenges and pitfalls where people are managed across the boundaries of the permanent and temporary organization. We identify a potentially powerful role for the HRM department in both monitoring and guiding the different players from the line and the project organizations, and in protecting the well-being of employees whose work traverses these organizational boundaries. Our second contribution is that we map the diversity of practices in different POCs for managing the interplay between the three main parties delivering HRM practices and offer project orientation as a contextual indicator that contributes to diversity in HRM practices.     

On Two Existing Approaches to Statistical Analysis of Social Media Data

Using social media data for statistical analysis of general population faces commonly two basic obstacles: firstly, social media data are collected for different objects than the population units of interest; secondly, the relevant measures are typically not available directly but need to be extracted by algorithms or machine learning techniques. In this paper, we examine and summarise two existing approaches to statistical analysis based on social media data, which can be discerned in the literature. In the first approach, analysis is applied to the social media data that are organised around the objects directly observed in the data; in the second one, a different analysis is applied to a constructed pseudo survey dataset, aimed to transform the observed social media data to a set of units from the target population. We elaborate systematically the relevant data quality frameworks, exemplify their applications and highlight some typical challenges associated with social media data.     

Corporate tax and location choice for multinational firms

This article examines the effects of corporate tax on these location decisions of newly established multinational subsidiaries across 26 European countries over an 8-year period. We contribute to the existing literature by examining the effects of a non-linear response of firm location decisions to changes in the tax rate. We also show that there are large variations in the sensitivity to tax rates across sectors and firm size groups. In particular, financial sector firms are more than twice as sensitive to changes in corporation tax rates relative to other sectors. Our baseline result is a finding that a 1% increase in the statutory or policy rate of corporation tax would lead to a reduction in the conditional location probability of 0.68%. Using the effective average tax rate, the marginal effect implies a reduction in the location probability of 1.15% following a 1% increase in the tax rate. Although overall tax has the expected negative effect on location probability, the marginal effect of an increase is lower at higher rates of tax.     

Bayesian Conjoint Choice Designs for Measuring Willingness to Pay

In this paper, we propose a new criterion for selecting efficient conjoint choice designs when the interest is in quantifying willingness to pay (WTP). The new criterion, which we call the WTP-optimality criterion, is based on the c-optimality criterion which is often used in the optimal experimental design literature. We use a simulation study to evaluate the designs generated using the WTP-optimality criterion and discuss the design of a real-life conjoint experiment from the literature. The results show that the new criterion leads to designs that yield more precise estimates of the WTP than Bayesian D-optimal conjoint choice designs, which are increasingly being seen as the state-of-the-art designs for conjoint choice studies, and to a substantial reduction in the occurrence of unrealistically high WTP estimates.     

A conceptual framework for developing the curriculum and delivery of technology education in early childhood

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the analysis of the Early Childhood Education (ECE) curriculum in six countries involved in the UPDATE-project, and on that basis, propose a conceptual foundation for technology education in ECE that aims to enhance gender sensitive technology education in the continuum from early years to adulthood. The existing ECE curricula in the participating countries were analysed according to the general pedagogical approach as well as the contents specific to technology education. In many cases technology education was presented generally or implicitly, embedded in various curriculum content areas, and the existing curricula did not offer much support for teachers to figure out the nature, aims and pedagogical means of early childhood technology education. The comparison of the curricula raised some common key-issues which are important to construe more theoretically. In consequence, the article also focuses on the contemporary view of child-centred pedagogy and the conceptualisation of technology education fitting into the scope of ECE. Play is highlighted as a fundamental way of learning seldom studied in the context of technology education. In addition, a gender perspective on technology education deals with equal possibilities of both sexes to acquire knowledge, abilities and attitudes needed in technological agency.     

A Primer on Global Environmental Change

This paper sets out the science behind global environmental change, defined by the US Global Change Research Act as ‘changes in the global environment (including alterations in climate, land productivity, oceans or other water resources, atmospheric chemistry, and ecological systems) that may alter the capacity of the Earth to sustain life’. We explain why there is still scepticism about the science in the business world and introduce eight gestalt shifts that are likely to change how executives think about environmental change and the threats and opportunities such changes present. The paper concludes with future research directions on business and global environmental change and outlines how the business case for investment in clean technology means that the transition to clean tech is inevitable.     

The new EU countries and euro adoption

In the new member states of the EU which have not yet adopted the euro, previous adoption strategies have come under scrutiny. The spillovers and contagion from the global financial crisis revealed a new threat to the countries’ real convergence goal, namely considerable vulnerability to the transmission of financial instability to the real economy. This paper demonstrates the existence of extreme risks for real convergence and argues in favour of a new adoption strategy which does not announce a target date for the currency changeover and which allows for more flexible and countercyclical monetary, fiscal and wage policies.