Footloose Monopolies: Regulating a "National Champion"

We analyze the design of optimal regulation of a domestic monopolist that also competes in an unregulated foreign market. We show how foreign activities affect regulation, consumers' surplus, national welfare, and firm's profits. Although expansion in unregulated foreign markets amplifies the distortions that are caused by the regulator's limited information, we also show that allowing the firm to compete abroad does not necessarily harm domestic consumers. We analyze if and when the firm's decision to expand abroad coincides with national interests.     

Lost and Found in Translation: How Firms Use Anisomorphism to Manage the Institutional Complexity of CSR

Prior research on the internationalization of firms from emerging countries has fruitfully invoked institutional theory to emphasize the legitimacy benefits that firms that obtain from showing isomorphism with international norms such as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Without denying the intuitive appeal for these firms to communicate acceptance of CSR, we suggest that firms face a legitimacy trade-off, where the hoped-for legitimacy benefits of isomorphism must be weighed against other home-country institutional considerations. We advance and test this notion that firms will navigate this institutional complexity by engaging in anisomorphism, i.e., espousing general acceptance with international values but with selective ‘translation’ based on home country differences. We test our predictions by analysing firms' communication of CSR, using a unique dataset comprised of 245 firms observed over the period from 2000 to 2018. Consistent with our predictions, we find that firms from countries more reliant on natural resource extraction (e.g., mining and fossil fuel industries) de-emphasize the environmental component of CSR, and firms from more autocratic countries de-emphasize the human rights component of CSR. Additionally, and consistent with our presumption of firms' weighing the international versus home-country legitimacy trade-off, we find that these main effects are sensitive to changes in firms' levels of internationalization.     

Profit sharing and investment by regulated utilities: A welfare analysis

We analyse the effects of different regulatory schemes (price cap and profit sharing) on the endogenous size of a firm's investment. Using a real option approach in continuous time, we show that profit sharing does not delay a firm's start-up investment compared to a pure price-cap scheme. Profit sharing does not necessarily affect total investment either, if the threshold for profit sharing is high enough. Only a profit sharing intervening for low profit levels could delay further investments. We also evaluate the effects of profit sharing on social welfare, determining profit level that should optimally trigger tighter regulation: profit sharing should be less stringent in sectors where there is more opportunity for larger investment.     

Algorithms and their Affordances: How Crowdworkers Manage Algorithmic Scores in Online Labour Markets

On online labour platforms, algorithmic scores are used as indicators of freelancers' work quality and future performance. Recent studies underscore that, to achieve good scores and secure their presence on platforms, freelancers respond to algorithmic control in different ways. However, we argue, to fully understand how freelancers deal with algorithmic scores, we first need to investigate how they interpret scores and, more specifically, what scores can do for them, i.e., perceived algorithmic affordances and constraints. Our interviews and other qualitative data collected with knowledge intensive gig workers on a major platform allow us to explain how the perceived affordances of algorithms (i.e., barrier, individual visibility, self-extension, rule of the game) act as mechanisms that explain different behavioural and emotional responses over time. Our work contributes to the current debate on the positive and negative consequences of algorithmic work by portraying the fundamental role paid by the individual interpretation of algorithmic scores and by integrating the affordance perspective into our understanding of algorithmic work.     

Where do firms' recombinant capabilities come from? Intraorganizational networks,knowledge, and firms' ability to innovate through technological recombination

A firm's innovativeness is driven by its ability to recombine existing technologies. Elaborating on this argument, we contend that there exist two distinct types of recombinant capabilities. First, firms may innovate through recombinant creation, i.e., by creating technological combinations new to the firm. Second, they may innovate through recombinant reuse; i.e., by reconfiguring combinations already known to the firm. We study what drives each type of capability by examining two factors: the degree of integration of a firm's intraorganizational network and the diversity of its knowledge base. We test our theoretical predictions using data on 126 semiconductor firms between 1984 and 2003. Our analyses indicate that factors that favor recombinant creation generally hinder recombinant reuse and vice versa; however, combining an integrated collaboration network and a diverse knowledge base may concurrently enhance both recombinant capabilities. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Patent‐backed securities in pharmaceuticals: what determines success or failure?

Recently, there has been growing interest in new financial tools that leverage on intellectual property assets, such as patent‐backed securitizations (PBSs). In this paper we study the potential determinants leading to the success or failure of securitization deals having patents as underlying assets. We develop a conceptual framework that we test on two well‐known US patent securitization deals in the pharmaceutical industry, by using a fuzzy set approach. Results highlight that factors related to the market size, level of competition and expected market life of the assets underlying a PBS can reasonably increase the probability that a deal will succeed. Moreover, a higher quality of the underlying invention and longer patent residual life are likely to reduce the risk of technical obsolescence and sales losses. Finally, the strength of the credit enhancement mechanisms, the flexibility of the deal architecture and the adoption of a diversification strategy are other key factors determining the success of the securitization.     

Latent class count models of total visitation demand: <Emphasis Type="Italic">days out hiking in the eastern Alps</Emphasis>

We report preliminary results on the investigation of the hypothesis of the existence of latent classes in the total demand for days out in a vast section of the Italian Eastern Alps. Finite mixing is informed by socioeconomic variables and it is limited to the demand portion of a hurdle model of visitation. Gradually more flexible count models are estimated moving from the Poisson to the Negative Binomial -1 and -2, to the generalized negative binomial. The implications for expected consumers surplus, predicted visitation and choke prices are discussed for a plausible 2 class model where years of experience play an important role in class membership.      

Factors Affecting Lodging Career Success: An Analysis of Management Philosophies

This research investigates the impact of lodging professionals' management philosophy practices on career success. The study assesses the practice of management philosophies and examines if these practices differ among respondent groups, as well as explores the influence of practiced philosophies on career success. Findings indicate that differences exist among respondents based on age, property affiliations, and position. Moreover, executives who instill in employees customer-centeredness and engage in open sharing of information with employees experience relatively high monetary success. However, results suggest that lodging professionals' practices of these management philosophies are not rewarded until reaching senior status.     

Sparkling wine choice from supermarket shelves: the impact of certification of origin and production practices

We report the results of a study based on revealed and stated preference data on choice of Prosecco wines in retail stores close to the origin of production in Northern Italy. Emphasis is placed on ability to reconcile the utility structure of stated preference data with that underlying revealed preference data. We extend the analysis to cover nonattendance of key attributes, such as price and certification of origin, while controlling for the large range of brand effects.