Contextual Influences on Executive Selection: Firm Characteristics and CEO Experience

This study examines the relationship between antecedent organizational characteristics and the pre-succession experience of individuals chosen as chief executive officer (CEO) – relationships that have received limited attention in past research. A sample of 214 CEO selection decisions was used to test hypothesized relationships between the firm characteristics of size, performance, growth, advertising intensity, risk and individual attributes pertaining to the experience of selected CEOs. Results indicate the following relationships: pre-succession profitability, size and advertising intensity are associated with the chosen executives' organizational tenure levels; pre-succession firm size and risk are associated with the age of selected CEOs; and, pre-succession profitability and advertising intensity are associated with type of functional background experience. Findings provide new insights into the relative importance of pre-succession experience associated with different organizational contexts in CEO selection decisions.     

Indian export incentives

This paper analyses Indian export incentives within the framework of piecemeal ‘second-best’ welfare economics, taking the extant import control system as a binding constraint. It provides a condensed account of recent Indian export incentives together with some quantitative estimates (based on firm level data for some engineering good exporters) of their likely effects on feasible second-best welfare levels.     

India's trade with the socialist countries

India's trade with the socialist countries increased most rapidly after 1960. This rapid growth occured in a framework of bilateral trade agreements, the distinct feature of which was that payments for all transactions were made in rupees. The USSR was by far the most important trading partner. Bilateral rupee trade provided India with imports that were essential for its development programme and was also responsible for a little more than 40 per cent of the growth in India's total exports between 1960/1 and 1972/3. In view of the fact that a large proportion of it constituted a net increase in exports and was probably at better terms of trade, there is no doubt that India derived substantial benefits from its trade with the socialist countries.     

A dimensionally consistent aggregation framework for biophysical metrics

We develop a formal representation of the economy-ecosystem interaction problem by distinguishing between stock-flow, and fund-flux spaces (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971). We then define dimensionless quantities in both the cardinal stock-flow space and the ordinal fund-flux space. This leads to analytic definitions of natural capital and natural income in the fund-flux space. We show that a stock-fund representation of the economy-ecosystem interaction problem helps investigate aggregation properties of biophysical metrics. In particular, we show how a metric that is dimensionally consistent in the stock-flow space can have dimensional problems in the fund-flux space. Ecological footprint is used as an illustrative example. Finally, we argue that dimensionally consistent metrics are keys to further the development of biophysical assessments as a tool for practical environmental policy.     

A new multivariate count data model to study multi-category physician prescription behavior

Multivariate count models represent a natural way of accommodating data from multiple product categories when the dependent variable in each category is represented by a positive integer. In this paper, we propose a new simultaneous equation multi-category count data model–the Poisson-lognormal simultaneous equation model–that allows for the Poisson parameter in one equation to be a function of the Poisson parameters in other equations. While generally applicable to any situation where simultaneity is an issue and the dependent variables are measured as counts, such a specification is particularly useful for our empirical application where physicians prescribe drugs in multiple categories. Accounting for the endogeneity of detailing in such situations requires us to explicitly allow for pharmaceutical firms’ detailing activities in one category to be influenced by their activities in other categories. Estimation of such a system of equations using traditional maximum likelihood method is cumbersome, so we propose a simple solution based on using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. Our simulation study demonstrates the validity of the solution algorithm and the biases that would result if such simultaneity is ignored in the estimation process.     

The GDPs of seven major regions, 1950–1990

Using international comparison data for 1950–1990, we describe the GDPs of seven major regions of the non-Communist world: the North, the South (“down under”), Tropical Africa, Tropical America, and South-West, South-Central and South-East Asia. The inequality among these regions accounts for almost 90 percent of the inequality among the 113 individual countries.     

Exploring the factors of cluster linkages that influence innovation performance of firms in a cluster

Clusters being considered as the proponents of innovation, there is a reasonable consensus among researchers and policy-makers that they are the sources of innovation. Therefore, of late, both researchers and policy-makers have increasingly focused on demystifying the factors driving innovation among the firms in a cluster, especially in a high-tech cluster. At the surface level, researchers have identified that the dynamism through interactions of a firm with other firms and associated institutions is one of the key drivers of innovation in a firm residing in a cluster. However, the factors that constitute degree of cluster interactions of firms that determine their innovation levels have not been explored adequately. Bengaluru being one of the highly ranked global hubs of technological innovation in Asia, houses densely interconnected network of high-tech manufacturing firms. It is in the context of Bengaluru cluster that this paper discerned the factors constituting degree of cluster linkages of firms that differentiated the innovation performance among the firms in a cluster. It was found that the ability of a firm to integrate global value chain both vertically and horizontally through extra-cluster linkages determines the innovation performance of a firm in a cluster.     

An empirical analysis of individual level casino gambling behavior

Gambling and gaming is a very large industry in the United States with about one-third of all adults participating in it on a regular basis. Using novel and unique behavioral data from a panel of casino gamblers, this paper investigates three aspects of consumer behavior in this domain. The first is that consumers are addicted to gambling, the second that they act on “irrational” beliefs, and the third that they are influenced by marketing activity that attempts to influence their gambling behavior. We use the interrelated consumer decisions to play (gamble) and the amount bet in a casino setting to focus on addiction using the standard economic definition of addiction. We test for two irrational behaviors, the “gambler’s fallacy” and the “hot hand myth”—our research represents the first test for these behaviors using disaggregate data in a real (as opposed to a laboratory) setting. Finally, we look at the effect of marketing instruments on the both the decision to play and the amount bet. Using hierarchical Bayesian methods to pin down individual-level parameters, we find that about 8% of the consumers in our sample can be classified as addicted. We find support in our data for the gambler’s fallacy, but not for the hot hand myth. We find that marketing instruments positively affect gambling behavior, and that consumers who are more addicted are also affected by marketing to a greater extent. Specifically, the long-run marketing response is about twice as high for the more addicted consumers.