It Won't Fit! For Innovative Products,Sometimes That's for the Best

The degree of overlap (i.e., fit) between product development organizations' resources and the product development projects pursued has powerful performance implications. Drawing on organizational learning theory and the resource‐based view, this research conceptualizes and empirically tests the interrelationships between the levels of fit, innovativeness, speed to market, and financial new product performance. After reviewing the research literature relevant to resource fit and new product performance, the level of innovativeness is posited to be an important moderating and mediating factor, which is validated by analysis of data gathered from 279 product developing firms. Technological fit has a negative direct effect on both technological and market innovativeness, while the use of existing marketing resources (i.e., a high degree of marketing fit) positively impacts technological innovativeness. This suggests, consistent with findings from market orientation research, that a deep, long‐held customer understanding can promote technological innovativeness. The moderating hypotheses proposed are also well supported: First, a high degree of marketing fit has a more positive impact on performance for market innovative products (e.g., products which address a new target market or use a nontraditional channel for the firm). Drawing on a deep customer understanding is more critical to performance for market innovative products. Conversely, the benefits of marketing fit are limited where market innovativeness is lacking. Interestingly, the counterpart moderating role of technological innovativeness on technological fit's performance effect is not significant; the level of technological innovativeness does not significantly impact the performance impact of technological fit. There are also significant moderating effects across dimensions. Our results show that the financial benefit of using existing marketing resources is lessened for technologically innovative products. Technological innovations necessitate drastic adaptation of marketing resources (i.e., channel and brand); firms drawing only on existing marketing resources for a technologically innovative new product will incur reduced profit. Similarly, the positive implications of using existing technological resources are limited for products which are highly market innovative. Generally, resource fit is seen to have an (oft‐overlooked) dark side in product development, though several of our findings suggest that marketing resources are more flexible than are technological resources.     

How Should the Graduate Economics Core be Changed?

The authors present suggestions by graduate students from a range of economics departments for improving the first-year core sequence in economics. The students identified a number of elements that should be added to the core: more training in building microeconomic models, a discussion of the methodological foundations of model-building, more emphasis on institutions to motivate and contextualize macroeconomic models, and greater focus on econometric practice rather than theory. The authors hope that these suggestions will encourage departments to take a fresh look at the content of the first-year core.     

Is there a minimum wage biting in Puerto Rico? Updating the debate

This research evaluates the repercussions on employment in Puerto Rico of the latest increases in the minimum wage (made between 2007 and 2009). We find that the increases in the minimum wage to $7.25 had a negative impact on employment in a few small sectors only, and that employment was significantly more affected by output.     

Self-interest, self-restraint and corporate responsibility for nanotechnologies: Emerging dilemmas for modern managers

The recent developments in nanotechnology have simultaneously conjured up visions of utopia and dismal images of technological and biological catastrophes. Interestingly, the world of nanoscales has given rise to larger than life ethical dilemmas, challenging the basic assumptions that we hold about ethics, man-machine interface, adoption of new technologies and, fundamentally, the directions of human development. Given the divergence and uncertainties in the assessment of risks and benefits associated with nanotechnology, regulatory oversight in the future is likely to be partial and fragmented. Even where interests converge, the large time-frame needed for standardization of regulation coupled with the varying propensities of countries of the world to understand, assimilate and respond to risk issues increase the difficulties associated with creating appropriate regulatory regimes. In the absence of such controls, it may be necessary to rely on corporations behaving in a socially responsible manner by self-regulating when dealing with the conceptualization, development, use and disposal of nanoparticles. Caught between the reality and rhetoric, corporate managers need to manage trade-offs between corporate advantage and social responsibility in ways that may have a significant bearing on the survival of their firms and the future development of nanotechnology itself. This paper examines the tensions between the self-interest of corporations in exploiting the technology to bring innovative products to the market and self-restraint in exercising ethical choices to secure wider safety and salubrity in the face of scientific uncertainty and public insecurity     

Theory and Empirics of Democracy and Crime Revisited: How Much Further Can We Go with Existing Data and Methodologies?

The vast empirical work on the criminogenic nature of democracies has produced strong—albeit suspiciously wide‐ranging—claims. This article reviews existing evidence and methodologies that link crime and democracies. It asks three questions: Do theories generate separable and exclusionary predictions enabling their identification and testing? Could results be more conclusive given existing data limitations and the current methodological state of the art? How far are we from obtaining such results? We conclude that there are far too many arguments with blurry lines predicting just about any result. Data are more likely to constitute the binding constraint rather than methodology issues, despite the fact that the estimation of causality between democracy and crime can still be improved. Finally, the priority should be the harmonization of existing information sources, which will require overcoming externalities associated with the public good nature of global information generation.     

Is it punishment? Sovereign defaults and the decline in trade

Sovereign defaults are associated with declines in defaulting countries trade. Are these declines the result of trade sanctions as the trade sanctions argument of sovereign borrowing would suggest? We devise an empirical strategy to evaluate this issue based on the idea that if trade sanctions are causing the declines, bilateral trade with creditor countries should fall more than trade with other countries. We find that this is not the case. The analysis does not yield much evidence of broader punishment strategies including a league of major creditors either. These results contradict the predictions of the trade sanctions theory of sovereign borrowing.     

Productivity and efficiency with discrete variables and quadratic cost function

We propose an index of productivity based on a quadratic cost function and developed for discrete data including technical and allocative inefficiency, jointly with technical change and returns to scale, as determinants of Total Factor Productivity. This new index is applied to Spanish stevedoring industry so as to identify the sources of change in the productivity of a multiproductive activity, where some companies do not produce some of the outputs. In this context, the functional quadratic form and the productivity index proposed prove particularly useful.     

The welfare cost of means‐testing: pensioner participation in income support

We estimate parametric and semi‐parametric binary choice models of benefit take‐up by British pensioners and use a revealed preference argument to infer the cash‐equivalent value of disutility arising from stigma or complexity of the claims process. These implicit costs turn out to be relatively small, averaging about £3–4 per week across Income Support recipients. Using the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke measure of poverty among pensioners, we find that allowing for implicit claim costs incurred by benefit recipients raises the measured degree of poverty by not more than 13%. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interregional Trade Linkages and the Commercial Role: The Spanish Case

The development of a national or regional economy depends on its own actions as much as on those of its commercial partners. Trade transmits economic events from one economy to another. The type and the degree of interdependence between territories—regions or countries—determines the consequences of external actions in a region. Multipliers translate the effects of a change in one variable on the others. Using an input–output scheme to express interregional commercial flows, some coefficients are developed to classify and identify the role that each region plays in interregional trade. An empirical application of the methodology on Spanish Comunidades Autonomas is presented. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Fifty-Eight International Atlantic Economic Conference, Chicago, October 7–10, 2004. The authors greatly appreciate the comments and suggestions from the participants at the meeting. The authors also wish to thank an anonymous referee and editor for their constructive suggestions and comments. This research was partially supported by the DGI project SEJ2004-07924/ECON.     

Corporate identity management and employees’ responses

Main goals in this study are to analyse the effects of corporate identity management (CIM) on the employees’ responses, and the moderating effects of two employee personality traits: proactive personality and resistance to change. Two hundred and ninety-three branch managers in the banking sector in Spain participated in the study, and their responses were analysed through structural equation modelling. Results show that organizational identification is a key variable to explain the CIM effects on employees’ responses. Moreover, employees’ proactive personality and resistance to change exert a moderating influence on the way identification leads to extra-role behaviours. Human resource practices should take into account that proactive employees are more prone to externalize their identification by spreading positive WOM. Besides, identification with the organization will lead to loyalty, especially in employees with low resistance to change.