Technology development mode: a transaction cost conceptualization

Technology alliances have emerged in the past decade as a significant mode for the development of innovation. The present research assesses the factors explaining whether firms will engage in such technology alliances or utilize the more traditional mode of internal R&D. The hypotheses stem from a transaction cost conceptualization. Results suggest that firms which pursue technology alliances are likely to have less commitment to product category-specific assets, to face higher technological uncertainty, to be more capable at measuring innovation performance, to have more successful technology alliance experiences, and to compete in lower growth product categories. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Potential Conflict and Inefficiencies Arising in Agri‐environmental Management

We characterise the welfare implications of uncoordinated policy decisions in the presence of multiple externalities, illustrated with an aquifer. We concentrate on the problem of coordination that can occur when distinct agricultural and water authorities implement their respective policies (to optimise food production and groundwater use) with environmental concerns in mind. We represent this problem as an open‐loop Nash game, which compares the game‐theoretical solution to a centrally planned solution. We show that the inefficiencies arise from differences in the account taken of relevant costs by different authorities. We demonstrate that the magnitude of the inefficiency generated by the absence of coordination of our authorities varies depending on the weights put on environmental benefits by each authority, and discuss the implications of analysis for future research and policy.     

Identifying and analysing the drivers of heterogeneity among ecosystem builder accelerators

In response to convergent and dynamic market developments, established firms use corporate accelerators to open their innovation processes to start‐ups. Among different accelerator themes, the ecosystem builder theme introduced by recent research plays a crucial role in furthering our understanding of the heterogeneity of accelerators due to its broad objectives. By interviewing 20 leading experts from 16 German corporate accelerators, we first identify heterogeneity among different ecosystem builder accelerators based on the differences in the process of selection, business support, and graduation. Second, we further structure the observed heterogeneity by depicting five different ecosystem builder accelerator types instead of a single ecosystem builder theme. These ecosystem builder accelerator types show important differences and similarities in terms of strategies, design elements, and processes within each of the process steps. Our findings hold meaningful research and managerial implications by providing (1) a consistent and systematic conceptual understanding about ecosystem builder accelerators, their strategies, design elements, and processes and (2) guidance to design and position ecosystem builder accelerators with regard to a long‐term corporate strategy.     

A bootstrap-based comparison of portfolio insurance strategies

This study presents a systematic comparison of portfolio insurance strategies. We implement a bootstrap-based hypothesis test to assess statistical significance of the differences in a variety of downside-oriented risk and performance measures for pairs of portfolio insurance strategies. Our comparison of different strategies considers the following distinguishing characteristics: static versus dynamic protection; initial wealth versus cumulated wealth protection; model-based versus model-free protection; and strong floor compliance versus probabilistic floor compliance. Our results indicate that the classical portfolio insurance strategies synthetic put and constant proportion portfolio insurance (CPPI) provide superior downside protection compared to a simple stop-loss trading rule and also exhibit a higher risk-adjusted performance in many cases (dependent on the applied performance measure). Analyzing recently developed strategies, neither the TIPP strategy (as an ‘improved’ CPPI strategy) nor the dynamic VaR-strategy provides significant improvements over the more traditional portfolio insurance strategies.     

ÉTUDE COMPARATIVE DES PERFORMANCES DES INSTITUTIONS DE MICROFINANCE D’AFRIQUE SUB‐SAHARIENNE SELON LEUR STATUT LÉGAL

RESUME 1 : Cet article vérifie l’existence d’une différence de performance selon le statut juridique des institutions de microfinance d’Afrique Sub‐saharienne. Une analyse multi‐variée de la variance (MANOVA) permet d’étudier un échantillon de 94 IMF entre 2001 et 2005. Les résultats suggèrent que les coopératives sont plus efficientes et financièrement plus efficaces que les Organisations Non Gouvernementales (ONG) et les sociétés privées. Aucune différence significative de qualité de portefeuille selon le statut juridique n’est trouvée. Par ailleurs, nous ne trouvons pas de différence significative de rentabilité et de viabilité entre les sociétés privées et les ONG. Cependant, alors que les transactions effectuées sont plus intenses dans les coopératives, la portée (nombre d’emprunteurs actifs) semble plus importante dans les sociétés privées.     

Predictability of Financial Crises: Lessons from Sweden for Other Countries

The predictability of financial crises is widely regarded as low. However, skills linked to market psychology (behavioral finance) and the understanding of history and macrofinancial aggregates have been insufficiently integrated in the forecasting and risk management of financial institutions. Traditional financial modeling can no longer be applied as nicely as in the past. In Sweden, the financial crises of the early 1990s and in the latter part of the past decade were caused by overconfidence, control illusion, and herd mentality—but also by shortcomings in management and corporate governance. There is no evidence that these two serious Swedish banking crises were not foreseeable. The general question is when and under which circumstances financial decision-makers and authorities should listen to the usual minority of warning voices. One conclusion is that economists should be more “in house-oriented,” and top managers should heed their professional opinions. Conclusions from this paper can also be drawn for China, India, and other emerging markets both when it comes to financial deregulation policy and government debt risks in deregulated financial markets.     

Testing Mundell's Intuition of Endogenous OCA Theory*

This paper presents an empirical assessment of the endogenous optimum currency area theory. Frankel and Rose (1998 ) study the endogeneity of a currency union through the lens of international trade flows. Our study extends Frankel and Rose's model by using FDI flows to test the original theory developed by Mundell in 1973. A gravity model is used to empirically assess the effectiveness of the convergence criteria by examining location‐specific advantages that guide multinational investment within the European Union. A fixed effects model based on a panel data of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows within the EU‐15 shows that horizontal investment promotes the diffusion of the production process across the national border. Specifically, our results suggest that economic convergence ensured by belonging to the common currency area helps double FDI flows.     

On the Continuity Correction

A simple, and fairly general, analytical derivation of the "one-half" continuity correction is presented.     

Technological change and worker participation in Europe

This article analyses the extent, evaluation and strategies for the future of employees, representatives and management regarding participation in technological change. The results from interviews in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Denmark show a low level of involvement, particularly in strategic decision making, a positive evaluation of participation by practitioners and the intention to increase levels of involvement on both sides of industry.     

The Land Development Corporation: A System for Selling Rural Real Estate

This research illustrates ways in which rural real estate is converted into potential vacation home sites by large land development corporations. The individual and previously disorganized approach to selling property is replaced by an organized framework that is designed to create a demand for rural real estate.
Unfortunately, development is progressing without serious or adequate consideration being given to a number of specific problems. Developers and local governmental officials often fail to consider the environmental impact of these developments, the adequacy of service facilities being provided or the direct and indirect public costs associated with this type of developmental activity. Because of these shortcomings and others, serious questions arise concerning the desirability of this kind of developmental activity for rural areas.