Applications of Business Theatre in New Service Development

Applying business theatre can not only make a contribution in the context of change management, learning and development processes in companies, but also in the new service development (NSD) process. The authors show how business theatre can be applied in each step of NSD and present insights that they gained from a students’ and a research project. As service theatre addresses the “emotional side”, it is an ideal complement to a systematic NSD approach that addresses the “rational side” of a service.     

The Galileo Project put to the test of European competition and public procurement law

The following article throws some light on the (fragile) legal foundations of the Galileo Project, the European Satellite Navigation System, and gives an interpretation of the normative procurement rules of the EU. Additionally it tries to reveal the practical problems of upholding the principle of free competition and an open market in as much as the procurement of high technology concerns a highly olipolistic market.     

Schumpeter 1911: Farsighted Visions on Economic Development

This paper presents to the English-speaking reader a sample of material contained only in Schumpeter's first German edition (1911) of Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung , material subsequently omitted from later German editions and from the English translation. The newly-translated material, presented here for the first time in English, comprises a substantial part of the second chapter, only available in a completely rewritten version, and fully half of the famous seventh chapter, which has not been previously available at all in English. This material merits attention today because it contains remarkable and farsighted visions on economic theory that may inspire current efforts to devise models of economic and social evolution. In order to better appreciate the original text, we briefly introduce the "background" to Theorie and its revisions, briefly describing the social and intellectual environment of the time. We then discuss how the entrepreneur evolved over the three editions of Theorie (from 1911 to 1934) in view of the shift in Schumpeter's personal and intellectual life and outline the most important implications raised by the first German edition of 1911. Finally, we use Schumpeter's own statements to settle the obstinate confusion on the publication year of Theorie in favour of the year 1911.     

A design-led conceptual framework for developing school integrated STEM programs: the Australian context

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education is recognised as the latest development stage on the pathway...     

Do VCs matter? the importance of owners on performance variance in start‐up firms

Adding to the corporate effect literature, we study the effect of owners on firm performance in a new context, that of venture capital firms (VCs) and the start‐up firms in which they invest. After discussing the effect that VC ownership can have on start‐ups, we estimate that start‐up‐specific, owner (VC), and year effects account for significant variance in performance (26.3 percent, 11.2 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively). The effects of industry and investment stage are not statistically different from zero. We also provide an analysis that separates the owner effect into two components: a selection component—which impacts investment—and a management component—which explains significant variance in performance. By examining the owner effect in a different institutionalized form of governance—that of the start‐up and its relationship to VC owners—our study also contributes to an understanding of the ‘ownership’ effect in the strategy literature more generally. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Yield curve responses to market sentiments and monetary policy

Central banks recently started to target longer term interest rates. The empirical failure of the rational expectations theory of the yield curve, however, limits its applicability to monetary policy analysis. The success of agent-based behavioral asset pricing models and behavioral macroeconomic models in replicating statistical regularities of empirical data series motivates to apply them to yield curve modeling. This paper analyses how the interaction of monetary policy and market sentiments shape the yield curve in a behavioral model with heterogeneous and bounded-rational agents. One result is that the behavioral model replicates empirical facts of term structure data. Moreover, it overcomes one major deficiency of rational expectations models of the yield curve in explaining the empirically observed uncertain responses of longer term yields to changes in the central bank rate. These are explained by the behavioral model’s ability to generate different responses of market sentiments to shocks at different times which lead to a variety of interest rate responses. Further results of this paper can be used as policy advice on how central banks can target the level, slope and curvature of the yield curve by targeting market sentiments about inflation and the business cycle.     

Changing investment styles: style creep and style gaming in the hedge fund industry

Notwithstanding their common features, hedge funds remain an extremely diverse asset class. Information on fund styles is important for numerous purposes, such as portfolio construction, performance attribution and risk management. With fund self‐declaration being prone to (strategic) misclassification, return‐based taxonomies grouping funds along similarities in realized returns provide a useful alternative. We provide a consistent classification system of homogeneous groups of hedge funds based on self‐organizing maps. Whereas some fund categories such as managed futures are largely consistent in their self‐declared strategies, others, especially so‐called ‘equity hedge’ funds, display no or very limited return similarities. Furthermore, we also find evidence of fund managers performing undisclosed changes of their trading style over time. Those funds that misclassified themselves once are particularly likely to change their trading style again. Although style self‐declaration can, therefore, be quite misleading, our results indicate that hedge funds do not misdeclare their style strategically to improve their relative performance. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Natural resource dependence, non-tradables, and economic growth

I argue that the commonly used nominal measure of natural resource dependence – the share of exports of primary products in GNP – understates in growth regressions the negative link between natural resource dependence and per capita GDP growth. I show that using a purchasing power parity adjusted measure yields an economically much larger negative relationship between per capita GDP growth and natural resource dependence than what has been suggested by the nominal measure. Consistent with the rent-seeking literature, I show that the resource curse is a symptom of societies characterized by high levels of corruption and sluggish checks and balances on political decision-making.     

REFERENCE NORMS,STAGGERED WAGES,AND WAGE LEADERSHIP: THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE*

This article presents an extension of the Taylor model with staggered wages in which wage setting is also influenced by reference norms. We show that reference norms can considerably increase the persistence of inflation but that the size of this effect depends on the exact definition (e.g., external vs. internal, symmetric vs. asymmetric norms). Using data on collectively bargained wages in Austria from 1980 to 2006 we show that wage setting is strongly influenced by reference norms, that external norms seem to matter more than internal norms, and that there is a clear indication for the existence of wage leadership (asymmetric norms).