Business Ties and Information Advantage: Evidence from Mutual Fund Trading

This article examines whether ties to portfolio firms’ management via pension business relationships provide mutual funds with an informational advantage. Funds become related to portfolio companies when fund families serve as trustees for firms’ employee pension plans. Selling by related funds is more likely to be motivated by an information advantage than their buying, because the latter is heavily influenced by the desire to secure pension inflows. We find that stocks with larger net sales by related funds experience lower future returns. Information appears related to firm fundamentals, as the return predictability of related funds’ selling concentrates in stocks with negative future earnings surprises. Consistent with an information‐based explanation, the predictive power of related funds’ selling for future returns is more pronounced when information uncertainty about the stock is higher. Our results contribute to a growing literature that shows the sources of informed trading by institutions.     

Processes in collaborative entrepreneurship: a longitudinal case study of how multiple actors exploit a radically new opportunity

In this longitudinal case study, the authors integrate the theory on social movement with the entrepreneurship literature on opportunity discovery, evaluation, and exploitation. They construct a model on collaborative entrepreneurial processes in which multiple partners are involved in identifying, forming, and exploiting an opportunity. Three interdependent subprocesses are identified: (1) the opportunity conceptualization dialogue, (2) resource mobilization and, (3) legitimacy building, which significantly contribute to our understanding of how individuals across different organizations become engaged in collaborative entrepreneurial processes. The model of collaborative entrepreneurial processes complements traditional models of the entrepreneurial process, which place the individual entrepreneur at the center of the process and does not consider group mobilization processes in which the actors aim to be creative and innovative in collaborating with actors from other organizations or firms.     

Interpartner legitimacy in regional strategic networks

Our aim is to add to the knowledge on a network level, focusing on if, and how, interpartner legitimacy affects the success or failure of network formation and development processes. Existing network theories and research tend to focus on resource exchange rather than on how actors perceive each other in terms of being legitimate or not. The purpose of the article is to analyze the interpartner legitimacy's influence on the formation and development processes of regional strategic networks (RSNs) from a network level. Two Swedish cases are discussed in terms of pragmatic, moral and cognitive interpartner legitimacy. The cases and the following discussion illuminate that interpartner legitimacy is important to incorporate into the analytical model if we wish to understand the processes of negotiations on the rules and norms which set the possibilities for survival of multi-actor interactions.     

Understanding Society: health,biomarker and genetic data

Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study includes a wide range of health measures, and in particular biomarker and genetic data. This makes it a unique resource for research on the economics of health. We review the main features of the biomarker data, how they are collected, and evidence on data quality. We also discuss examples of how these data have been used in economic research to date.     

A taxonomy of small- and medium-sized international family firms

This study develops a taxonomy of small- and medium-sized family firms that internationalise and discusses the different configurations of these firms based on firm culture (in terms of organisational orientations), firm strategy (in terms of differentiation, cost leadership and marketing standardisation) and firm structure (in terms of integration, centralisation and specialisation). Although the literature on international family firms has highlighted the significant role of organisational culture in firm internationalisation, the strategies and structures of international family firms and their consequences for performance have been disregarded. To examine the interplay of international family firm culture, strategy and structure, we employ a quantitative taxonomic approach that is rooted in configurational theory, analysing 504 Germany-based small- and medium-sized family firms. Different combinations of strategy, structure and culture result in different configurations of family firms and different levels of non-domestic performance. In considering these configurations, we aim to determine which combinations of strategies, structures and firm orientations are primarily applied by international family firms and whether these organisational configurations are successful. Our empirical findings suggest that there are four groups of firms: Domestic-Focussed Traditionalists, Global Standardisers, Multinational Adapters and Transnational Entrepreneurs. These configurations are clearly distinctive in terms of their structure, orientations and performance but differ less in terms of their strategies. Superior international (i.e. non-domestic) performance tends to be driven by a decentralised entrepreneurial approach.     

REPRODUCTION AND TEMPORARY DISEQUILIBRIUM: A CLASSICAL APPROACH

We build a bisector reproduction model with Classical features in which the capitalists aim at maximizing accumulation. At variance with gravitation models, it is assumed that they invest their profits in their own industry. Their plans are based on actual productions and expected prices. Effective prices and effective allocations of resources are determined by a market‐clearing mechanism. A law on the formation of expectations allows us to define the dynamics of disequilibria, which let appear endogenous self‐sustained fluctuations around a long‐run path. The long‐run rate of growth and the amplitude of the fluctuations depend on the initial conditions.     

Disequilibrium,Reproduction and Money: a Classical Approach

We consider a bisector reproduction model in which money is introduced as a pure means of exchange issued by a bank at the producers' requests. Each capitalist aims at maximizing accumulation in his own sector. Their plans are based on available quantities and expected prices. Effective prices are determined by a market mechanism. Temporary disequilibria occur in both physical and monetary terms. The settlement of the monetary balances is operated by means of a transfer of capital goods. Final allocations and effective productions are thus determined. The dynamics of the economy are those of a sequence of temporary disequilibria and let appear several possibilities (local or global stability, cycles) depending on the values of the parameters.     

The potential of participatory hybrid breeding

This article explores the potential of involving smallholder farmers in hybrid development for their low-external input farming systems. We have developed a conceptual model of the procedures, based on five assumptions: (a) the hybrids are bred for adaptation to local needs and preferences; (b) the dependence on and need for genetic diversity is taken into account; (c) breeders collaborate closely with farmers also in the initial stages of the breeding programme, that is, in establishing the breeding goals by identifying the desired traits and preferred local populations as (one of the) crossing parents; (d) hybrid seed production can be integrated into the farmers’ local seed system; and (e) farmers and breeders can agree on intellectual property rights, access and benefit sharing in a fair and transparent way. We illustrate the procedural consequences of these assumptions with reference to the case of a participatory maize breeding programme in southwest China, from 2000 to 2012, that included both open-pollinated and hybrid maize improvement. We show how farmers’ early involvement in hybrid development during the pre-breeding stage, including broadening the base populations with farmer-maintained local landraces, can support co-evolution of the genetic resources in farmers’ fields.     

Energy and CO2 emission relationships in the NAFTA trading bloc: a multi-regional multi-factor energy input–output approach

The North-America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has brought together the economies of Canada, Mexico, and the US into forming one of the largest trading blocs worldwide (within the top CO₂ emitters). However, the current global protectionist discourse threatens the agreement. This paper analyzes the energy and energy-related CO₂ emission relationships between NAFTA countries in 2014 to gain insights into the climate change implications of current integration and the possible cancelation of the agreement. The analysis is performed with a multi-regional version of the multi-factor energy input–output model. The results show that NAFTA has not built a single integrated energy system, though it has helped reduce energy-related CO₂ emissions. Moreover, if NAFTA is not revoked, further integration would depend on the capacity of the Mexican energy sector to converge to the performance of its trade partners’ energy sectors. Conversely, a broken deal would induce negative environmental externalities.