DO MANAGERS MATTER: EVIDENCE FROM E‐SPORTS

Growing importance of human resources places the role of managers at the core of company efficiency. However, there are studies that demonstrate the efficiency of teams without a manager, so‐called self‐managed teams, is higher comparing with managed teams. Thus, despite the focus on managerial efficiency in the economic literature, the issue of whether a team needs a manager is far from settled. In this paper, we use a quasi‐experimental setting from e‐Sports (competitive video gaming) to understand whether the hiring a manager is of benefit to team performance. The empirical part of the study is based on endogenous switching regression model. This method allows investigating what performance of self‐managed team would be if it will have a manager and vice versa. The dataset includes the information of prize money and features of top e‐Sports teams in Counter‐Strike: Global Offensive (e‐Sports discipline) from 2013 to 2017. The main finding of this study is that managed teams perform better than self‐managed ones but this is not due to the manager. (JEL Z2, M54, L25)     

Comparing supply‐side specifications in models of global agriculture and the food system

This article compares the theoretical and functional specification of production in partial equilibrium (PE) and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models of the global agricultural and food system included in the AgMIP model comparison study. The two model families differ in their scope—partial versus economy‐wide—and in how they represent technology and the behavior of supply and demand in markets. The CGE models are “deep” structural models in that they explicitly solve the maximization problem of consumers and producers, assuming utility maximization and profit maximization with production/cost functions that include all factor inputs. The PE models divide into two groups on the supply side: (1) “shallow” structural models, which essentially specify area/yield supply functions with no explicit maximization behavior, and (2) “deep” structural models that provide a detailed activity‐analysis specification of technology and explicit optimizing behavior by producers. While the models vary in their specifications of technology, both within and between the PE and CGE families, we consider two stylized theoretical models to compare the behavior of crop yields and supply functions in CGE models with their behavior in shallow structural PE models. We find that the theoretical responsiveness of supply to changes in prices can be similar, depending on parameter choices that define the behavior of implicit supply functions over the domain of applicability defined by the common scenarios used in the AgMIP comparisons. In practice, however, the applied models are more complex and differ in their empirical sensitivity to variations in specification—comparability of results given parameter choices is an empirical question. To illustrate the issues, sensitivity analysis is done with one global CGE model, MAGNET, to indicate how the results vary with different specification of technical change, and how they compare with the results from PE models.     

Did rent deregulation alter tenure choice decisions in the Czech Republic?

Our study is the first that explicitly links rent deregulation and the choice between owning and renting (the tenure choice) using household decisions over a 1‐year period. The rent deregulation process in the Czech Republic started in 2006, two years after joining the European Union. By design, the maximum regulated rent appreciation depended explicitly on real estate prices, which accelerated the pace of deregulation due to rapidly rising prices at the time. A unique dataset enables us to track the tenure choice of households from consumption surveys for subsequent years. The proportion of households that switched from renting to owning sharply increased among renters of regulated apartments. We show that this change was caused by the deregulation process. In contrast, rent deregulation makes owners and renters paying market rent less likely to change ownership status.     

中国与捷克的贸易联系:部门分析

捷克与中国的贸易存在巨额的赤字。撇开捷克贸易赤字的出口一方,我们来看一下进口。捷克是中国对欧盟进口的门户吗?中国的进口是否被用到了进一步加工领域?文章分析了影响贸易赤字的各个因素,比较了捷克与欧盟15国及波兰、匈牙利和斯洛伐克从中国的进口情况。分析表明,捷克从中国的进口表现出与其他国家非常不同的发展趋势,不仅进口量巨大(占GDP的比重),而且在投资品和进一步加工产品方面有快速的发展。对格鲁伯—劳埃德产业内贸易指数的计算表明,在所有测算国家中中捷贸易的数值最低。该研究验证了一个假设:捷克是中国进入和拓展欧盟市场的一个立足点。     

Creationism versus Evolutionism in Economics: Societal Consequences of Economic Doctrine

In the 1940s and 1950s, institutionalist economists rapidly lost their influence over American economics. In parallel, a new mainstream emerged, and the institutionalists were extremely dissatisfied with the path taken by the economic science. We analyze the opinions and feelings about this context to shed light on the institutionalists’ understanding of the new mainstream economics. We construct a historical account of the institutionalists’ dissatisfaction with post-war economics based on archival material from the personal papers of Allan Gruchy, John Gambs, John Blair, and Clarence Ayres. In the period analyzed, the economists, who would later found the Association for Evolutionary Economics, acted as dissenters rather than institutionalists. In part, this explains the pluralistic path that the association has followed ever since its foundation.     

THE USE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND INNOVATION BY MANUFACTURING FIRMS IN CANADA

The objective of the paper is to determine how the utilisation of intellectual property rights (IPRs) by Canadian manufacturing firms is related to their characteristics, activities, competitive strategies and industry sector in which they operate. The principal source of information used in this endeavour is the Statistics Canada Survey of Innovation 1999.

The paper starts with an overview of other studies that looked at the use of intellectual property rights in Canada. Follows a conceptual framework presenting variables likely to explain the use specific IPRs by Canadian manufacturing firms.

The use of IPRs is to a great extent correlated with basic economic characteristics of firms, their activities and industry environment. A series of estimated logit regressions predict the probability that a firm will use a specific IPR instrument. Also estimated is the contribution of the use of IPRs to the probability that a firm innovates.

The decision of a firm to use IPRs is often not independent of the decision to innovate. To eliminate the potential endogeneity bias I estimate a two-stage logit model. A comparison of the single- and two-stage logit models shows that the nexus from the protection of intellectual property (patents) to innovation may be weaker than indicated by the single equation model.     

Land‐use change trajectories up to 2050: insights from a global agro‐economic model comparison

Changes in agricultural land use have important implications for environmental services. Previous studies of agricultural land‐use futures have been published indicating large uncertainty due to different model assumptions and methodologies. In this article we present a first comprehensive comparison of global agro‐economic models that have harmonized drivers of population, GDP, and biophysical yields. The comparison allows us to ask two research questions: (1) How much cropland will be used under different socioeconomic and climate change scenarios? (2) How can differences in model results be explained? The comparison includes four partial and six general equilibrium models that differ in how they model land supply and amount of potentially available land. We analyze results of two different socioeconomic scenarios and three climate scenarios (one with constant climate). Most models (7 out of 10) project an increase of cropland of 10–25% by 2050 compared to 2005 (under constant climate), but one model projects a decrease. Pasture land expands in some models, which increase the treat on natural vegetation further. Across all models most of the cropland expansion takes place in South America and sub‐Saharan Africa. In general, the strongest differences in model results are related to differences in the costs of land expansion, the endogenous productivity responses, and the assumptions about potential cropland.