The structure and infrastructure of Finnish research literature

The structure and infrastructure of the Finnish research literature is determined. A representative database of technical articles was extracted from the Science Citation Index for the years 2003-2004, with each article containing at least one author with a Finnish address. Document clustering was used to identify the main technical themes (core competencies) of Finnish research. Four of the pervasive technical topics identified from the clustering (Wireless Networks and Mobile Communication, Signal Processing, Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry) were analyzed further using bibliometrics, in order to identify the infrastructure of these research areas. Finally, the citation performance of Finnish research in the four pervasive technical topics above, and in other technical topics obtained by analysis of Abstract phrases, was compared to that of two Scandanavian countries with similar population and GDP, Norway and Denmark.     

Ethical correlates of role conflict and ambiguity in marketing: The mediating role of cognitive moral development

Researchers in marketing ethics have identified the importance of cognitive moral development (CMD) in marketing ethics models. This study looks at selected correlates of role conflict and role ambiguity in marketing, especially the mediating role of CMD. Of the correlates examined, the results seem to support the existence of statistically significant relationships between CMD and role conflict and ambiguity. Implications for practitioners are provided. For example, the study could have direct implications for management personnel who have the responsibility of hiring ethical people and helping them address any role conflict or ambiguity that may arise from their job. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Mississippi. His work has previously appeared in theJournal of Business Ethics, theJournal of Pharmaceutical Marketing and Management, theJournal of Marketing Theory and Practice, theJournal of Promotion Management, Health Marketing Quarterly, and various national proceedings. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from Texas Tech University. His work has previously appeared in theJournal of Business Research, theJournal of Macromarketing, theJournal of Business Ethics, International Marketing Review, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and various other journals and proceedings. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. His research has previously appeared in theJournal of Marketing Research and numerous other journals and proceedings. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from Florida State University. His research has been published in theJournal of Business Research, theJournal of Marketing Management, and in various proceedings.     

Managing for Speed To Avoid Product Obsolescence: A Survey of Techniques

Competition among product manufacturers is intensifying in many industries. The nature of this competition forces firms to manage the product supply process for speed to avoid product obsolescence and decreased competitiveness. Rene Cordero describes a number of time-saving techniques and develops a framework for managing the product supply process for speed: making speed a central objective of the firm, selecting faster product strategies, managing for the speedy implementation of these product strategies, and managing human resources for speed. Although speeding the product supply process requires significant changes in the traditional management of product development, managing for speed can bring benefits such as faster response to market needs, reduced product cost, and increased product quality.     

Operational model for planning the harvest and distribution of perishable agricultural products

This paper presents an operational model that generates short term planning decisions for the fresh produce industry. In particular, the application developed helps the grower to maximize his revenues by making production and distribution decisions during the harvest season. The main motivation for this model comes from the fact that the profitability of producers is highly dependent on the handling of short term planning in the harvest season. Some of the factors affecting profitability include the management of labor costs, the preservation of the value of perishable crops, and the use transportation modes that provide the best trade-off between time (quality of products) and cost. These issues are interrelated, and their judicious management is fundamental for attaining good financial results. The results of the proposed planning model indicate that significant savings can be obtained by managing the trade-off of the freshness at the delivery of the product with the added labor and transportation cost at the grower's side. Moreover the results also show that dynamic, information based, management practices might be preferred over traditional practices based in fixed labor allocation and distribution practices.     

The Impact of Economic Shocks in the Rest of the World on South Africa: Evidence from a Global VAR

The substantial change in South Africa’s trade patterns over the past two decades has affected the impact of economic shocks in major world economies on South Africa. To investigate the effect, we use a global vector autoregression (GVAR) model with time-varying trade weights to account for changing international trade linkages. We show that the long-term impact of a shock to Chinese GDP on South African GDP is much stronger in 2009 than in 1995, due to the substantial increase in South Africa’s trade with China since the mid-1990s. At the same time, the importance of the U.S. economy to South Africa diminished considerably. The results indicate one of the possible reasons why the recent global crisis did not affect South Africa as much as it affected developed economies. It also stresses the increased risk, to the South African and other economies, should China experience slower GDP growth.     

State Dependence Can Explain the Risk Aversion Puzzle

Risk aversion functions extracted from observed stock and optionprices can be negative, as shown by Aït-Sahalia and Lo(2000), Journal of Econometrics 94: 9–51; and Jackwerth(2000), The Review of Financial Studies 13(2), 433–51.We rationalize this puzzle by a lack of conditioning on latentstate variables. Once properly conditioned, risk aversion functionsand pricing kernels are consistent with economic theory. Todifferentiate between the various theoretical explanations interms of heterogeneity of beliefs or preferences, market sentiment,state-dependent utility, or regimes in fundamentals, we calibrateseveral consumption-based asset pricing models to match theempirical pricing kernel and risk aversion functions at differentdates and over several years.     

Fraternal twins—Should investors be careful?*

After analyzing portfolio differences between separate account-mutual fund twins, we find that dissimilar “fraternal twins” show significantly lower joint performance than “identical twins.” This finding is consistent with fraternal twins competing for the limited attention of a manager while identical twins mutually profit. Furthermore, the effect is stronger for separate accounts, which is probably due to investors having the opportunity to influence managers’ investment decisions according to their preferences. These results are independent of differences in known investment constraints. However, the findings may be driven by separate account investors’ preferences for higher liquidity and lower idiosyncratic risk.     

Climate risks and U.S. stock-market tail risks: A forecasting experiment using over a century of data

We examine the predictive value of the uncertainty associated with growth in temperature for stock-market tail risk in the United States using monthly data that cover the sample period from 1895:02 to 2021:08. To this end, we measure stock-market tail risk by means of the popular Conditional Autoregressive Value at Risk (CAViaR) model. Our results show that accounting for the predictive value of the uncertainty associated with growth in temperature, as measured either by means of standard generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models or a stochastic-volatility (SV) model, mainly is beneficial for a forecaster who suffers a sufficiently higher loss from an underestimation of tail risk than from a comparable overestimation.     

The guppy and the whale: Relational pluralism and start-ups' expropriation dilemma in partnership formation

Start-ups have a high need for resources yet face significant risks when forming partnerships with incumbents to access those resources. We propose that a partnership strategy based on relational pluralism, forming multiplex and multifaceted ties with partners, can mitigate these risks. Such ties offer the start-up increased legitimacy and a relational safeguard against resource misappropriation by more powerful partners. However, we propose that there is a limit to the effectiveness of relational pluralism. Its effect is weakened when the start-up becomes entirely dependent on a small set of partners, or when an additional tie yields resources that are redundant. We argue that the start-up only benefits when the gains from relational safeguarding and legitimacy outweigh the costs of dependence and redundancy. We empirically observe the co-evolution of start-ups’ interlocking directorate and strategic alliance networks in the Australian mining industry over a 10-year period. Our results show that start-ups that engage in relational pluralism perform better than both start-ups that form no alliances and start-ups that form stand-alone alliances. Having a very small portfolio of partners or one that skews heavily toward local partners, however, indeed limits the effectiveness of relational pluralism. Intriguingly, we also find that the temporal sequencing of relational pluralism matters. One of our central findings is that the best performing start-ups first form board interlocks with promising partners and add a strategic alliance later. This offers a rare glance at the temporal sequencing in which peripheral start-ups can gain exceptional performance through partnership formation.