The US Antitrust System and Recent Trends in Antitrust Enforcement

This paper provides a survey of recent research on the US antitrust system. First we provide an overview of the US antitrust system, describing the roles of the US Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and case law. Second, we provide a new econometric trend analysis on the enforcement of US antitrust law, showing that (1) enforcement demonstrates some trend behavior, as well as comovement with business cycles; (2) the time series of antitrust cases demonstrates two distinct episodes, which we characterize as 'pre-deregulation' and 'post-deregulation;' (3) the time series of government antitrust filings leads the time series of private antitrust filings. Finally, we describe recent economic research relevant to the area of antitrust and the impact of this research on US antitrust policy.     

Making the Most of Virtual Expertise in Telemedicine and Telehealth Environment

Virtual expertise is a critical component of telehealth projects and it needs to be effectively managed if telehealth is to deliver on its potential. There are many issues within telehealth that relate to the management of knowledge, and we identify and classify these using a range of papers on the topic. We introduce a virtual expertise platform that provides basic building blocks for effect-leveraging of expertise in this domain. The platform includes management directives and goals, a collaborative culture, an appropriate information and communication technology platform, a knowledge management layer, and a tools or application layer that interact to facilitate knowledge sharing, and ultimately improve patient care. We also emphasize how social media tools can be used as part of the tools layer to improve virtual knowledge sharing before and after telehealth events.     

How does your kindergarten classroom affect your earnings? Evidence from Project Star

In Project STAR, 11,571 students in Tennessee and their teachers were randomly assigned to classrooms within their schools from kindergarten to third grade. This article evaluates the long-term impacts of STAR by linking the experimental data to administrative records. We first demonstrate that kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings. We then document four sets of experimental impacts. First, students in small classes are significantly more likely to attend college and exhibit improvements on other outcomes. Class size does not have a significant effect on earnings at age 27, but this effect is imprecisely estimated. Second, students who had a more experienced teacher in kindergarten have higher earnings. Third, an analysis of variance reveals significant classroom effects on earnings. Students who were randomly assigned to higher quality classrooms in grades K–3—as measured by classmates' end-of-class test scores—have higher earnings, college attendance rates, and other outcomes. Finally, the effects of class quality fade out on test scores in later grades, but gains in noncognitive measures persist.     

International variations in expected equity premia: Role of financial architecture and governance

Estimates of ex-ante equity premia are important in planning investments in pension funds, life insurance pools, and for other long-term financial obligations or goals. However, while global cross-border investment positions and flows have been rising, there is little research on non-US ex-ante equity premia or on their determinants in a global setting. This paper uses data on a recent 8-year period from 33 countries and models simultaneously our estimate of the ex-ante equity premium as a dependent variable and our measure of financial architecture as an instrumental variable. We document that ex-ante equity premia are larger in countries that have a more bank-oriented financial architecture, are wealthier, and have better governance. These results are robust to alternative model specifications and estimation techniques. Given the importance of equity premia and financial architecture, these results should be of much interest to scholars, managers, regulators, and policy makers.     

Professional Occupations,Knowledge-Driven Firms,and Entrepreneurship: A National and Regional Analysis

The worldwide dominance of Western nations in commercial knowledge-intensive services has declined between 1995 and 2010, but the slippage in revenue was only from 88 to 79 percent. The European Union and North America remain the two largest regions in consumption and in exporting. Four professional service sectors—accounting, law, engineering, and management consultancy—have shown stability or even growth in the past decade. Entry and expansion requirements in these fields, at home and abroad, constitute barriers for both individual professionals and companies. Entrepreneurship is evident in these sectors, as small and medium size enterprises have maintained their viability against large firms. Only accountancy shows a high degree of concentration, but competition in this sector, too, is expected from the emerging economies, especially China. Professional service firms of the West have forged strong linkages with both domestic and foreign clients via relationship marketing. Technology is an important factor via automation. Although each of the four sectors is facing both external and internal challenges, they continue to grow and appear to be meeting the challenges in part by more innovation and transparency.     

Developing a Global Mindset: Integrating Demographics,Sustainability, Technology,and Globalization

Business schools face a number of challenges in responding to the business influences of demographics, sustainability, and technology—all three of which are also the fundamental driving forces for globalization. Demographic forces are creating global imbalances in worker populations and in government finances; the world economy faces sustainability and climate change challenges; technology is accelerating business change and changing the nature of work; and the global economy is being re-structured with the rise of major emerging economies such as Brazil, India, and China. Given an uncertain future, this essay examines the nature of these challenges and contends that while providing measurable knowledge of global business and specific job skills are important, business schools must focus on the attitudes, skills, and knowledge helpful for student career flexibility including leadership skills, a good work ethic, and abilities to continue learning.     

The effect of the innovative environment on exit of entrepreneurial firms

To foster ‘creative destruction,’ entrants must survive the turbulent conditions they face in their first crucial years in the industry. We investigate how the external knowledge milieu of an entrant, conceptualized as its innovative environment, causes systematic variation in survival patterns. We test our model from 3,431 firms in 33 industries over 80 years. We depict the innovative environment along two knowledge‐related dimensions, namely technology regime and technology intensity. While the aligned state of the innovative environment, where product innovation exists in tandem with abundant innovation opportunities, promotes entrant survival, we find that this beneficial effect is more pronounced for small entrants due to a possible mitigation of scale disadvantages. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Institutional Ownership and Distribution of Equity Returns

Although there is considerable evidence of the importance of skewness and kurtosis in equity returns, much less attention has been paid to their determinants. Recent theoretical and empirical advances in the literature suggest that the information structure and other market characteristics affect the nature of return distributions. One such characteristic is the degree of institutional ownership in the stock. This study hypothesizes and documents a significant inverse relationship between the degree of institutional ownership and the standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis of equity returns.     

Consumer involvement in retail store positioning

The concept of consumer involvement in products and issues and its theoretical importance in attitude change strategy have been discussed in the past. This paper reports empirical findings relating to retail store perceptions and preferences, using involvement as a moderator variable.