Firm growth,adaptive capability,and entrepreneurial orientation

Research summary: This paper posits adaptive capability as a mechanism through which a firm's prior growth influences the exhibition of future entrepreneurial action. Defined as the firm's proficiency in altering its understanding of market expectations, increased adaptive capability is a consequence of the new resource combinations that result from expanding organizational boundaries. Increased adaptive capability in turn corresponds to expansion of entrepreneurial activity, as firms increase their entrepreneurial orientation as the strategic mechanism to capitalize on their improved understanding of market conditions. We find support for our research model in a two‐study series conducted in South Korea and the United Kingdom. Managerial summary: Most would agree that entrepreneurially oriented firms—being innovative, entering new markets, and taking risk—grow faster. But how a firm becomes entrepreneurial is a complicated question. In this study, we flipped the growth relationship around and found support for growth contributing to a firm's entrepreneurial orientation. But between growth and being more entrepreneurial is the firm's ability to recognize changes in market expectations. We argue that as a firm grows, it acquires new resources and new knowledge of how to use those resources. These new resource combinations increase its ability to recognize changes in market expectations—its adaptive capability. This capability uncovers new entrepreneurial opportunities for value creation. To capture this potential value, firms expand their entrepreneurial orientation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Agricultural development in industrialising Japan, 1880–1940

This study reviews research examining agricultural development in industrialising Japan. We focus on the (dys)functioning of markets for land, finance, labour and agricultural commodities. We cover topics including land (mis)allocation, size-productivity relationships, tenancy contract choice and Marshallian inefficiency, property rights, microfinance, shock-coping strategies, rural–urban migration and agricultural market integration. The literature reveals that market failures often observed in developing economies were not prominent, except for possibly labour markets. The literature also highlights the roles and administrative capacities of central and local governments. Tight local communities served to reduce transaction costs.     

Investor Familiarity and Home Bias: Japanese Evidence

We examine how foreign and domestic portfolio investors, both classified into money managers, invest in Japanese firms over the sample period of 1985–1998. We propose the agency-familiarity hypothesis to explain investment behavior of these institutional investors focusing on the two firm-level variables: market capitalization and export ratios. Both types of institutional investors over-invest in familiar firms measured in firm size while each shows opposite preference patterns with respect to the export ratios. The foreign investors become more export-firm oriented in the second-half sample and the domestic orientation of the domestic institutional investors becomes statistically significant during the same second-half. Because of the location difference of their client investors, the compositions of familiar firms are different between these two types with respect to the firm’s export activities. Home bias at the firm level in terms of the sensitivity to the export ratio is evident for both types of investors, especially, in more recent years, although equity home bias at the country level has been gradually mitigated. Based on these macro- and micro-level results, we conclude that the investment behavior of money managers is more consistent with the agency-familiarity explanation than the information-based explanation regardless of their nationalities.     

Informational linkages among the major currencies in the EBS market: Evidence from the spot rates of the Euro,Yen and Swiss franc

Using high-frequency data on the Euro, Yen and Swiss franc, this paper examines whether the permanent (informational) component of one currency's variance explains the variances of the other currencies as well. Previous studies have not considered this interdependency among currencies. A variance decomposition shows that trade-correlated news on the Euro effectively contributes to the variance of the Swiss franc. In addition, for these two currencies, non-trade-correlated news on one currency reciprocally affects the other. The findings suggest that prior studies may have overestimated the impact of trade-correlated news about a currency on its own permanent variance.     

The Impact of Order Flow on the Foreign Exchange Market: A Copula Approach

Using the copula function, I propose a new econometric method to measure the state-dependent impact of order flows on returns in foreign exchange markets and examine whether this impact is affected by the number of informed traders. My results indicate that the impact of the order flow decreases as trading becomes more informed. This finding suggests an especially important theoretical implication: that the effect of competition among informed traders tends to dominate that of the adverse selection problem faced by uninformed traders in the euro/dollar and yen/dollar markets.     

The influence of firm age and intangible resources on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm growth among Japanese SMEs

With the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance having broad scholarly acceptance, researchers are now delving with increased focus into the contextual factors that change the nature of the relationship between EO and various manifestations of organizational performance. In this vein, this study adopts the resource based view and investigates the moderating influence of firm age and intangible resources on the EO-firm growth relationship among small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Japan. Further, we propose a three-way interactive model between EO, firm age, and intangible resources to better identify entrepreneurial configurations that promote superior SME growth.     

Privatization, productive efficiency and social welfare with a foreign competitor

We investigate how decision-making upon cost-reducing R&D investment by a domestic public firm is affected by privatization and entry of a foreign firm. It is shown that entry of a foreign firm lowers productive efficiency of the domestic public firm but improves the domestic social welfare. It is also shown that privatization of the public firm lowers productive efficiency and deteriorates domestic social welfare.     

Are American homeowners more satisfied with their lives than renters?

Researchers often find that homeownership is not associated with life satisfaction in the United States. Using the 2009–2010 Behavioural Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey, this study examines whether homeowners are more satisfied with their lives than renters in the following eight states: Alabama, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and Wisconsin. A positive relationship between homeownership and life satisfaction (approximately 0.06 points on a 4‐point scale; p < .01) is found, even when whether respondents are worried about having enough money to pay their rent or mortgage is controlled for. However, the positive effect of homeownership declines as the local house prices increase, indicating that homeowners in expensive areas tend to be less satisfied with their lives than homeowners in more affordable areas.     

Bounds on average causal effects in studies with a latent response variable

Consider a case where cause-effect relationships between variables can be described as a directed acylic graph and the corresponding recursive factorization of a joint distribution. In order to provide the bounds on average causal effects in studies with a latent response variable, this paper proposes a graphical criterion for selecting covariates and variables caused by the response variable. The result enables us not only to judge from the graph structure whether the bounds on an average causal effect can be expressed through the observed quantities, but also to provide their closed-form expressions in case where its answer is affirmative. The graphical criterion of this paper is helpful to evaluate the bounds on average causal effects when it is difficult to observe a response variable.     

The current account and stock returns

In this paper, I use stock return data to test an intertemporal model of the current account. I find that the model performs well in three countries: the U.K., Canada, and Japan. Hall [Hall, R.E., 1978. Stochastic implication of the life cycle-permanent income hypothesis: theory and evidence. J. Polit. Econ. 86 (6), 971–987] points out that because stock price predicts the future state of the economy, it predicts consumption. Assuming that consumption depends on permanent income, my empirical finding indicates that a representative agent smoothes consumption based on stock market information. In other words, stock market returns yield information about permanent income.