Plant scale in entry decisions: a comparison of start-ups and established firm entrants

This paper examines the competitive advantage enjoyed by established firms over start-up firms in their choice of plant scale when entering industries. We hypothesize that established firms will enter at smaller scale because they have the opportunity to substitute other resources and advantages for the cost disadvantages that result from small scale. We find that established firms enter with lower scale plants which suggests that they have access to resources that allow them to be competitive at lower scales. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of a decision aid on risk aversion in capital investment decisions

In this study we examine whether a decision aid is an effective means of reducing risk aversion within a capital investment decision context, and under what conditions. Participating in the experiment were 78 working adults (mid management) with a mean age 30 and enrolled in a leading U.S. MBA program. We predict and find that a decision aid will be most effective among individuals intolerance of ambiguity and exhibiting high negative affect.     

Empirical regularity in academic research productivity patterns in marketing

In any academic discipline, published articles in their respective journals represent “production units” of scientific knowledge, and bibliometric distributions reflect the patterns in this productivity across authors or “producers”. We use a comprehensive data set from 11 leading marketing journals to examine whether there is any empirical regularity in the patterns of research productivity in the marketing literature. Our results present strong evidence that there is indeed a distinct empirical regularity. It is the so-called generalized Lotka's Law of patterns in scientific productivity: the number of authors publishing n papers is approximately 1/n^c of those publishing one paper. We find the empirically estimated value of the exponent c to be 2.05 for the overall bibliometric data across the leading marketing journals. For individual journals, the estimated values of c range from 2.15 to 2.83, with lower values indicating higher authorship concentration levels. We also find that variations in authorship concentration levels across journals and over time are driven by a journal's maturity, its topical focus, its attractiveness as a publication outlet, the characteristics of its review process, and the extent of author collaboration present in the journal. We discuss the general implications of our findings.     

Comparing the top and the bottom income earners: Distribution of income and taxes in the United States

Tax reform is again at the center stage as Congress grapples with ideas to reduce the US budget deficit and the country readies itself for another election year. Given this unusually charged tax reform season, populist and party rhetoric appears to the general population to have largely replaced reasoned debate as politicians, economists and pundits “cherry pick” facts to justify their claims. Our contribution to the current debate on tax equity is that this is one of the very few studies that jointly consider the impact of payroll and income taxes. Most tax equity studies focus only on the federal income tax and as such issue misleading implications. It is important to jointly consider payroll and income taxes because (a) for taxpayers in lower income ranges, the payroll tax burden outweighs the income tax burden, while (b) for higher income taxpayers income from wages above $106,800 ($110,000 in 2012) are payroll-tax free, and (c) other sources of income, namely dividends and capital gains, are not subject to payroll taxes at all. Thus, we provide a more comprehensive picture of the overall progressivity (or lack thereof) exhibited by the current tax laws. In addition, we also consider how some often-raised tax proposals would prospectively affect income inequality and tax progressivity.