Sex and environmental policy in the U.S. House of Representatives

Using LCV score data, we find that female legislators favor stricter environmental policies than do their male counterparts. Moreover, gender-corrected estimates suggest that voters do not push environmental policy towards the middle, but rather select the ideologically closest candidate.     

Can sickness absence be affected by information meetings? Evidence from a social experiment

During the last decade several empirical studies have stressed the importance of norms and social interactions for explaining sickness-absence behavior. In this context, public discussions about the intentions of the insurance, and of the rights and duties of the receivers, may be important for reducing the sickness absence. In this article, we study whether information meetings about the Swedish sickness insurance affect the length of sickness-absence spells. The study is based on experimental data on individuals with weak labor market attachments. The displacement of when the call to the meeting was sent out was randomized. Comparing the survival functions of those called immediately with those whose calls were delayed (by about 30 days) makes it possible to study whether the length of sickness absence is affected by receiving the call earlier. The result suggests that the length is reduced by, on average, 20%. In the long term (12 months later), there is no effect of the information meeting. This suggests that attendance to the information meeting does not change individuals’ long-term behavior.     

Entrepreneurial response to interstate regulatory competition: evidence from a behavioral discrete choice experiment

Journal of Regulatory Economics - Despite a developing literature exploring the relationship between regulation, taxation and business startups, few studies have utilized artefactual experimental...     

Internet service provision and content services: paid peering and competition between internet providers

We consider the relationship of Internet service providers (ISP) and content service providers (CP) in the Internet ecosystem. Currently, the position of ISPs is challenged by the emergence of powerful content service providers, especially with the spreading of bandwidth-demanding video services. The further investment in the network capacity may be hindered by prevailing business models that largely exclude the ISPs from sharing in the major cash flows resulting from content provision. We develop modeling tools for evaluation of business models of ISPs and present results of an analysis of two models with the potential for the generation of additional cash flows for ISP: paid content peering and service differentiation. Firstly, we show that under certain conditions on the cost structure and the level of demand elasticity and uncertainty, it can be profitable for a powerful content provider to resort to paid content peering, thus transferring to the ISP a part of his content provision revenue. The resulting business model may provide substantial benefits to all major participants in this ecosystem: network providers, content and service providers and end users. After this we consider competition in the Internet provision sector and show that - also in this case - the paid content peering can help ISPs to expand the network capacity and at the same time increase profits of content providers. The end users benefit from the lower prices for content services. Finally, we consider the situation when an ISP differentiates the service offer by engaging in content provision, thus entering in direct competition with content providers.     

Organizational Culture and Organizational Change: The Transformation of Savings Banks in Denmark, 1965-1990

In this article, I argue that organizations' historical narrativesare a basic and important component of their culture and identity,and that these narratives can be resources as well as constraints.I combine a narrative approach with Joanne Martin's three perspectivetheory of organizational culture, and using the transformationof Danish savings banks as a case, I demonstrate how a narrativeapproach can provide a new and better understanding of organizationalbehaviour and change than mainstream economics and the abundantfunctionalist organizational culture literature. I demonstratehow, when change was called for by external pressures, the savingsbanks choice set was constrained by a shared narrative abouttheir historical origins. This narrative, in turn, constitutedthe identity, image and organizational culture of savings banksand to a high degree restrained learning capabilities, createdorganizational inertia and delayed the adoption of a new strategy.     

International experience,growth aspirations,and the internationalisation of new ventures

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of the breadth and depth of international experience on subsequent new venture internationalisation and to what extent growth aspirations moderate these relationships. Drawing upon previous literature on international new ventures, human capital and growth aspirations, we tested our hypotheses using longitudinal data from the Comprehensive Australian Study of Entrepreneurial Emergence (CAUSEE). Our results support the hypothesis that breadth of international experience has a positive impact on internationalisation. Depth of international experience on its own does not predict subsequent internationalisation activities. However, results support our hypothesis that the interplay of a high growth aspiration and depth of international experience has a positive effect on internationalisation activities. Our study contributes to the research stream on new venture internationalisation by distinguishing between breadth and depth of international experience, suggesting that these dimensions are differentially linked to internationalisation. Further, we test for interaction effects between international experience and growth aspirations. We thereby add to the knowledge by illustrating that some types of human capital are only utilised when accompanied by growth aspirations.     

Using local injury surveillance for community-based injury prevention: an analysis of scandinavian WHO safe community and canadian safe community foundation programmes

Injury surveillance is widely recognized as a critical prerequisite for effective injury prevention, yet few studies have investigated its use by community-based injury prevention programmes. This study examined the extent to which local injury data were collected, documented, analysed, linked to injury prevention action and used for evaluation among WHO Safe Communities in Scandinavia (25 programmes) and the Canadian Safe Community Foundation (SCF) network (16 programmes). For each programme, a key informant with relevant local knowledge was selected to respond to an emailed questionnaire. The study demonstrates that community-based injury prevention programmes experience difficulties accessing and effectively utilizing local injury surveillance data. The findings suggest that the responding SCF programmes approach injury prevention more scientifically than the Scandinavian WHO-designated Safe Community programmes, by making greater use of injury surveillance for assessment, integration into prevention strategies and measures, and evaluation. Despite study limitations, such as the low response rate among Canadian programmes and a large number of non-responses to two questions, the results highlight the importance of, and need for, greater use of local injury surveillance.     

Entrepreneurial growth: The role of international knowledge acquisition as moderated by firm age

In line with repeated recent calls for research on specific forms of growth rather than on an undifferentiated notion of “total growth,” our study contributes to the understanding of entrepreneurial growth. By this we mean growth through expansion into new geographic markets and/or via the introduction of new products or services. Building on Penrose's theory of the growth of the firm and on the research streams she has in part inspired, we investigate the impact of knowledge acquisition from international markets on entrepreneurial growth both at home and abroad. We further suggest that the effects of international knowledge acquisition on entrepreneurial growth will vary with firm age. Utilizing longitudinal data on 138 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we find that the acquisition of knowledge from international markets fuels growth through market development, and that this effect is stronger for international expansion than domestic expansion. Our results also show that firm age negatively moderates the relationship between international knowledge acquisition and entrepreneurial growth via the introduction of new products or services. Specifically, international knowledge acquisition has a positive effect on growth via new products/services development in young firms, but a negative effect in mature firms. We assume this reflects changes over time in how international knowledge is managed.     

The relationship between domestic and outward foreign direct investment: The role of industry-specific effects

Previous research has been inconclusive as regards the effect of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic investments. In this article, we show that this inconclusiveness can be explained at a disaggregated level as a function of the way industries are organized. Based on a simple theoretical framework including monitoring and trade costs, we argue that a complementary relationship can be expected to prevail in vertically integrated industries, whereas a substitutionary relationship can be expected in horizontally organized production. The empirical analysis confirms a significant difference between the two categories of industry as regards the impact of outward FDI on domestic investment. The results may thus have profound policy implications. JEL no. F12, F21, F23, G34.