Does corporate strategy matter?

A revisionist view that corporate strategy does not matter has gained considerable influence in recent years. This view largely stems from empirical results of early variance decomposition studies that found negligible corporate effects associated with profitability differences between businesses. Our analysis of the variance decomposition literature shows this view to be incorrect. Not only do the studies as a group show that factors at the corporate level of organizations contribute to profitability differences, but also evidence suggests that factors specifically associated with corporate strategy contribute to corporate effects. Corporate strategy in fact does matter. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Persistence of cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon: A spatial analysis of the rationale for beef production

Fed by demand for beef within Brazil and in global markets, the Brazilian herd grew from 147 million head of cattle in 1990 to ≈200 million in 2007. Eighty-three percent of this expansion occurred in the Amazon and this trend is expected to continue as the industry bounces back from a recent agricultural downturn. Intensification of the cattle industry has been suggested as one way to reduce pressure on forest margins and spare land for soybean or sugarcane production, and is the cornerstone of Brazil's plan for mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. To this end, federal credit programs and research and development activities in Brazil are aligning to support intensification goals, but there is no guarantee that this push for intensification will decrease the demand for land at the forest margin and as result curb CO₂ emissions from deforestation. In this paper we use a spatially explicit rent model which incorporates the local effects of biophysical characteristics, infrastructure, land prices, and distance to markets and slaughterhouses to calculate 30-year Net Present Values (NPVs) of extensive cattle ranching across the Brazilian Amazon. We use the model to ask where extensive ranching is profitable and how land acquisition affects profitability. We estimate that between 17% and 80% of land in the Amazon would have moderate to high NPVs when ranched extensively if it were settled, i.e. if the rancher does not buy the land but acquires it through land grabbing. In addition, we estimate that between 9% and 13% of land in the Amazon is vulnerable to speculation (i.e. areas with positive NPVs only if land is settled and not purchased), which suggests that land speculation is an important driver of extensive ranching profitability, and may continue to be in the future. These results suggest that pro-intensification policies such as credit provision for improved pasture management and investment in more intensive production systems must be accompanied by implementation and enforcement of policies that alter the incentives to clear forest for pasture, discourage land speculation, and increase accountability for land management practices if intensification of the cattle sector is to deter new deforestation and displace production from low-yield, extensive cattle production systems in frontier regions of the Brazilian Amazon.     

Buyer behavior in business-to-business services: The case of foreign exchange

Empirical regularities in buying behavior observed in mostly consumer markets have been linked into a comprehensive model, the Dirichlet. No attempt has yet been made to see if this model applies to services in general or to business-to-business services in particular. In this paper, we examine the purchasing behavior of large multinational corporations from four countries who purchase foreign exchange contracts from the major banks. We highlight similarities to the patterns of buying behavior observed in consumer markets. Implications for the management of business-to-business services firms are discussed.     

REGULATORY THREATS AND POLITICAL VULNERABILITY

During the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign and immediately after, the pharmaceutical industry was subjected to regulatory threats. It was charged with high drug costs, high advertising expense, and insufficient expenditure on research and development (R&D) to develop better drugs. We examine whether firms' measures of political vulnerability (higher advertising expense and lower R&D expenditure) influence the equity value effects of the regulatory threats. We find negative announcement effects around three regulatory threats. We then extend the analysis and find evidence consistent with our hypotheses that measures of political vulnerability are associated with more negative abnormal returns in response to the regulatory threats. JEL classification: G18, L50, L65.     

Parking Externalities in Commercial Real Estate

Local governments have employed a variety of strategies to reduce street congestion through an increase in parking supply. These policies have been criticized as an implicit subsidy that shifts costs from drivers to the public at large. Others have noted that parking lots and structures can lead to increased water and air pollution. However, there has not been an examination of whether parking, presumably by reducing congestion, generates external benefits. We measure whether nearby parking availability influences commercial property prices after controlling for property characteristics, including on‐site parking. We find that publicly accessible parking, such as commercial parking garages, generates significant aggregate externalities. We also find evidence of a significant complementary relationship between building and parking area in property values. This suggests that parking regulation could have a significant impact on property development through its effect on the value of the marginal square foot of building area.     

Concerns of the ceo

Interviews with 26 CEOs across a wide variety of industries reveals their concerns as well as agenda and behavior. The issues discussed have been placed against four intellectual frameworks to get a better picture of CEO concerns. These executives frequently ponder institutional and corporate strategy but very seldom business strategy and competitive markets. The plurality of the concerns deal with issues of management development and human resource management. Where the question is one of changing or redirecting the strategy of the firm, it is often put in the context of looking inside the firm at top managers and organization culture.     

A tale of two gravities*

The flows of traded goods across countries are known to follow a gravity pattern: Their volumes are greater between countries that are larger in size and closer to each other. We find a similar pattern in the flows of territories across countries between 1870 and 2008. During this period, countries experienced inflows and outflows of territories, mirroring the international flows of goods. We find three other pieces of critical evidence supporting that the two flows interact through similar economic motives. Our findings illustrate the usefulness of international trade models for understanding international politics.