Transferia: solving local pain or bringing global gain?

ABSTRACT

The sustainability of container transferia, a specific type of intermodal terminals located in the vicinity of ports, is analysed in an external cost evaluation. This concept enables transporting large amounts of containers from a port to a transferium, outside the most congested area, by high-frequency barge or rail transport. From this point onwards, the transport is executed by truck or intermodal. The paper presents a case study of maritime-based container transport in Belgium. A geographic information systems-based model compares transport alternatives, regarding their societal impact. The findings suggest that when trucks perform the hinterland transport to transferia instead of direct truck transport to the port, the production of external costs decreases in the port area, but remains stable in the hinterland. However, when intermodal chains can replace these truck services to the transferia, external costs remain limited in the port area, but also decrease in the hinterland in most cases.     

The impact of interfirm relationships on investment: Evidence from the Polish dairy sector

Financial constraints and credit market imperfections are a major constraint on investment, growth and poverty reduction in transition and developing countries. This paper analyses the impact on investments of financial assistance programs as part of interfirm relationships. Our empirical evidence is based on a two-stage survey methodology. Qualitative evidence on dairy companies’ assistance programs was gathered in the first stage through in-depth interviews at the level of the dairy companies. Quantitative data on 290 milk producing rural households in Poland was collected through a random survey in the second stage. The empirical analysis shows that dairy companies have played an important role in financial assistance, in particular for dairy-specific investments. In addition, they had an important indirect impact on farm activities and investments through feed supply and loan guarantee programs.     

Alliance Concentration in Multinational Companies: Examining Alliance Portfolios,Firm Structure,and Firm Performance

Research summary: This article explores the distribution of alliances across firms' internal structure. Focusing on multinational companies, we examine the impact of alliance portfolio concentration—i.e., the extent to which alliances are concentrated within a limited number of geographic units—on focal firms' performance. Relying on Knowledge‐Based View (KBV) insights, we hypothesize that an increase in alliance portfolio concentration positively influences firm performance and that alliance portfolio size negatively moderates this relationship. Our empirical results enrich the emerging capability perspective on alliance portfolios, point to the relevance of conceptualizing focal firms in alliance portfolio research as polylithic entities instead of monolithic ones, and provide new insights into how firms create value by potentially recombining externally accessed knowledge. Managerial summary: In the setting of multinational companies, we examine whether alliance activities are concentrated in a limited number of subsidiaries or are highly dispersed across multiple subsidiaries. We find that, over time, firms exhibit different patterns in terms of alliance portfolio concentration. In addition, the results show that, for MNCs with a relatively small alliance portfolio, an increase in alliance portfolio concentration is positively related to their financial performance. However, when MNCs' alliance portfolios are relatively large, the relationship between alliance portfolio concentration and firm performance becomes negative. Jointly, these findings suggest that the distribution of alliances across firms' internal structure is an important factor in shaping potential knowledge recombination benefits from alliance portfolios. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Non-cooperative solutions for estate division problems

In an estate division problem an estate has to be divided among several players whose total entitlement to the estate exceeds its size. This paper extends the non-cooperative approach through a claim game, as initiated by O?Neill (1982), by allowing players to put multiple claims on the same part of the estate, and by considering the case where individual entitlements may exceed the estate. A full characterization of the set of Nash equilibria of the claim game is obtained both for restricted estate division problems, where individual entitlements do not exceed the estate, and for the general case. Variations on the claim game are considered, which result in proportional division in equilibrium.     

Interorganizational Collaboration and Innovation: Toward a Portfolio Approach*

In the literature on innovation, interorganizational collaboration has been advanced as beneficial for the innovative performance of firms. At the same time, large‐scale empirical evidence for such a relationship is scarce. This article examines whether evidence can be found for the idea that interorganizational collaboration supports the effectiveness of innovation strategies. This article empirically addresses this research question by analyzing data on Belgian manufacturing firms (n=221) collected in the Community Innovation Survey, a biannual survey organized by Eurostat and the European Commission aimed at obtaining insights into the innovation practices and performance of companies within the various European Union (EU) member states. Tobit analyses reveal a positive relationship between interorganizational collaboration and innovative performance. At the same time, the impact on innovative performance differs depending on the nature of the partner(s) involved. These findings strongly suggest the relevance of adopting a portfolio approach to interorganizational collaboration within the context of innovation strategies.     

Convergence of Bayesian learning to general equilibrium in mis-specified models

A central unanswered question in economic theory is that of price formation in disequilibrium. This paper lays the groundwork for a model that has been suggested as an answer to this question in, particularly, Arrow [Toward a theory of price adjustment, in: M. Abramovitz, et al. (Ed.), The Allocation of Economic Resources, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1959], Fisher [Disequilibrium Foundations of Equilibrium Economics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983] and Hahn [Information dynamics and equilibrium, in: F. Hahn (Ed.), The Economics of Missing Markets, Information, and Games, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989]. We consider sellers that monopolistically compete in prices but have incomplete information about the structure of the market they face. They each entertain a simple demand conjecture in which sales are perceived to depend on the own price only, and set prices to maximize expected profits. Prior beliefs on the parameters of conjectured demand are updated into posterior beliefs upon each observation of sales at proposed prices, using Bayes’ rule. The rational learning process, thus, constructed drives the price dynamics of the model. Its properties are analysed. Moreover, a sufficient condition is provided, relating objectively possible events and subjective beliefs, under which the price process is globally stable on a conjectural equilibrium for almost all objectively possible developments of history.     

Self‐reported Resilience of European Farms With and Without the CAP

Firms are able to survive only if they adapt appropriately in response to disturbances. The ability of a farm to continue after a disturbance is defined as resilience. To analyse the resilience of EU farms we explore exit and the number of adaptation strategies that farmers follow under two scenarios. The current CAP will be continued in the base scenario, while it will be abolished in scenario 2. The outcomes show that under both scenarios large, more specialised farms with young farm heads are most resilient, and small more diversified farms headed by old farmers are least resilient.     

The Role of Business Ethics,Personality, Work Values and Gender in Vocational Interests from Adolescents

The present study investigates how business ethics are related to vocational interest. Special attention has been paid to the relationship between business ethics and the interest in ‘enterprising’ and ‘social’ oriented professions. The results show that business ethics is only significantly correlated in a negative way, to enterprising vocational preferences. Moreover, the negative contribution of business ethics to the preference for entrepreneurial and managerial professions remains after controlling for personality and work values. Some work values also predict the entrepreneurial interest: Earnings, Influence, Competition, Innovation and Creativity. The personality traits Extraversion (positive) and Agreeableness (negative) have predictive validity, but this effect disappears after controlling for work values. In the ‘Discussion’ section, we pay attention to possible consequences of the negative relationship between business ethics and Entrepreneurial interest for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). We argue that efforts concerning realistic job previews will only be meaningful if they are completed with efforts to make people more sensitive for ethics in two other domains, namely education and business.     

How to identify leadership potential: Development and testing of a consensus model

Building on two studies, the current article responds to urgent calls in the literature for more empirical research on how to identify leadership potential. Based on an extensive review of the 1986–2010 literature, and applying a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques, we developed a model of leadership potential consisting of four quadrants: Analytical skills (containing the factors Intellectual curiosity, Strategic insight, Decision making, and Problem solving); Learning agility (containing the factors Willingness to learn, Emotional intelligence, and Adaptability); Drive (containing the factors Results orientation, Perseverance, and Dedication); and Emergent leadership (containing the factors Motivation to lead, Self‐promotion, and Stakeholder sensitivity). Notably, the developed model steers clear from some of the typical issues that tend to hinder valid assessments of leadership potential (i.e., the confound between performance and potential, as well as that between leadership potential and successful, mature leadership). Furthermore, high consensus was found between top managers, line managers, and HR managers about the practical relevance of the proposed model. The article concludes with some specific future avenues for research and practice. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Influence of Trade Policies on Price Integration in the World Beef Market

The article develops three hypotheses about how policy interventions in major trading nations influence price integration in the world beef market. Simple correlation coefficients, tests for significant differences between coefficients, and Granger causality tests are used to test the hypotheses. First, segmentation between prices in Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD)-free and FMD-endemic countries is found, but it is much less than previously assumed. Second, European Community policies that closed the E.C. import market have isolated prices in the E.C. from other markets. These policies also led to greater integration among prices in FMD-free and FMD-endemic market segments by forcing exporters from both segments to compete directly in new import markets. Third, the U.S.A. is found to be the price leader in world beef markets, due not only to market size, but also to U.S. policies that allow transmission of price information from the U.S. market to the world market but not vice versa.