Dividend policy,signaling, and discounts on closed-end funds

We test the predictions of dividend signaling models using closed-end equity funds that adopt explicit policies committing them to pay minimum dividend yields. These policies represent deliberate attempts to reduce share price undervaluation relative to NAV. Funds that adopt minimum dividend policies experience reductions in their share price discounts, trade at smaller discounts than other funds, earn greater excess returns following policy adoption, and their managers survive longer than other managers do. The results are broadly consistent with the predictions of dividend signaling models, and suggest that high quality closed-end funds can reduce undervaluation via dividend policy.     

New product development process and time-to-market in the generic pharmaceutical industry

Generic pharmaceutical companies tend to improve their market position by being first in the market when a patent on an original product elapses. The time-to-market of new products is an important source of their comparative advantages. In our study we investigate the organizational and managerial factors lying behind time-to-market in four generic pharmaceutical companies in Central and Eastern Europe. Our research also supports some results found in other studies on the lead-time of new product development. However, we find some factors specific to generic pharmaceutical companies. Our findings are incorporated into a diagnostic model of new product development in generic pharmaceutical companies, which is an important practical result of our research.     

Urban guerrilla activities in Greece

Logistic fits are made to the populations of attacks by urban guerrilla groups in Greece under the assumption that these organizations grow like species. The analysis is mainly based on data that cover the attacks of the two major urban guerrilla groups, Revolutionary Organization November 17 (17N) and Revolutionary Popular Struggle (ELA). We conclude that urban guerrilla activities in Greece may have been triggered into existence by the military junta but probably had their roots deeper into the earlier political system in Greece that repressed leftist movements. Our analysis shows that the life cycle of political violence in Greece had already been completed when the police finally began cracking down on the 17N, which takes away same of the shine from the police's achievement.     

A systematic approach for identifying technology opportunities: Keyword-based morphology analysis

Morphology analysis (MA), a representative qualitative technique in technology forecasting (TF), has been utilized to identify technology opportunities. However, conventional MA is subject to limitations in that there is no scientific or systematic way in establishing the morphology of technology, and it is difficult to prioritize the alternatives. As a remedy, we propose a keyword-based MA that is supported by a systematic procedure and quantitative data for concluding the morphology of technology. To this end, a technology dictionary is developed by factor analysis for keywords that are extracted from patent documents through text mining. Then, the morphology of patents is identified based on the technology dictionary. By listing the occupied configurations of collected patents, the unoccupied territory of configurations are suggested as technology opportunities. Moreover, the priority of alternatives is concluded, and similar and substitutive technologies can be analyzed for the purpose of extending morphology structure. Technical and managerial strategy for in-house R&D or cross-licensing can also be supported by examining the morphology portfolio of technologies. A thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) case is exemplified to illustrate the detailed procedure of this brand-new MA.     

Networks of predictions

Certain predictions stand out from others, irrespective of their accuracy, because they integrate many other predictions into a rich web of expectation. They can be identified by constructing, for any given issue, a network that maps the causal or contingent relationships that are often explicitly posited within a list of topically related predictions. The network has a distinctive structure. Many nodes (representing predictions) have a few links (indicating causal influence) but a few nodes have many. This distributional bias is a defining characteristic of non-random, scale free networks and influences the pattern of growth. New predictions tend to link with the already well connected, producing networks that are organized around a few, centrally located nodes. These identify the predictions perceived, within a community of informed opinion, to be the most “causally active”. A network is a cognitive map that aggregates our current understanding of an issue, reconfigures to incorporate new information as an issue evolves over time, and offers a metric for weighing the relative contribution of any one prediction in structuring our collective thinking about the future. Illustrative material is drawn from a relational database of some 350 predictions about global water scarcity.     

The Impact of Mandatory Votes on the Canada-U.S. Union Density Gap: A Note

This article provides empirical evidence concerning the impact of mandatory votes on the Canada-U.S. density gap. Simulation analysis reveals (1) that the increasing use of mandatory votes in Canada has narrowed the gap by about 1 percentage point and (2) that differences in recognition procedures between Canada and the United States accounted for at least 3 to 5 percentage points of the gap in 1998.     

Congestion, ownership, region of operation, and scale: Their impact on bus operator performance in Norway

The goal of this paper is to determine the impact that inputs such as fuel consumption and total number of workers employed have on operators’ efficiency in the Norwegian bus industry. Further, we investigate operations characteristics that are associated with the inefficient use of inputs in bus operations. This information is highly relevant for the subsidizers (decision-makers) since resource inefficiency leads to greater costs (ceteris paribus). We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to explore these issues. The results suggest that there is, in general, a potential for input saving in the sector of about 21%. No significant differences were found between urban and bus rural operators with respect to efficiency scores; neither were there any performance differences with respect to ownership. This latter result deviates from previous international studies, and can likely be explained by the lack of competition in the Norwegian bus industry. A particularly interesting result suggests a formidable degree of input congestion in the Norwegian bus industry, which is in contrast to previous international studies on such congestion.