The Effect of Explicit Communication on pricing: Evidence from the Collapse of a Gasoline Cartel

We study the collapse of collusion in Québec's retail gasoline market following a Competition Bureau investigation, and show that it involved two empirical regularities: high margins, and asymmetric price adjustments. Using weekly, station‐level prices we test whether collusion was successful, and whether asymmetric adjustments were part of the cartel's strategy. We do so in the markets targeted by the investigation, and in markets throughout the province with similar pre‐collapse pricing (cyclical markets). Our results suggest that stations in both target and cyclical markets adjusted pricing following the announcement: margins fell (by 30%/15% in target/cyclical markets), and adjustments became more symmetric.     

Differentiating Major and Incremental New Product Development: The Effects of Functional and Numerical Workforce Flexibility*

This study seeks to explain the differential effects of workforce flexibility on incremental and major new product development (NPD). Drawing on the resource‐based theory of the firm, human resource management research, and innovation management literature, the authors distinguish two types of workforce flexibility, functional and numerical, and hypothesize differential effects on NPD outcomes. A large‐scale sample of 284 Dutch firms across various manufacturing goods and business services industries serves to test these hypotheses. The results suggest that functional flexibility positively influences incremental NPD only, internal numerical flexibility negatively influences incremental NPD only, and external numerical flexibility positively influences major NPD only. Thus, differences between major and incremental NPD are grounded in the human resource flexibility of the firm. This complements research that found that such differences lie in critical development activities, learning processes, and capabilities. It also complements product innovation research on flexibility in NPD processes and on flexibility in organizational structures and routines. It extends the resource‐based theory of the firm suggesting that human resource flexibility is part of the dynamic capabilities that allow firms to reconfigure existing competencies. The conclusions imply that managers of manufacturing and service firms may use training and education and create a functional flexible workforce that can progressively enhance incremental NPD outcomes. They may want to avoid paying overtime, because such internal numerical flexibility hampers incremental NPD, but use fixed‐term contracts to expand external numerical flexibility to enhance major NPD.     

Socially Useless Jobs

Recent research suggests that many workers in modern economies think that their job is socially useless, i.e., that it makes no or a negative contribution to society. However, the evidence so far is mainly anecdotal. We use a representative dataset comprising 100,000 workers from forty‐seven countries at four points in time. We find that approximately 8 percent of workers perceive their job as socially useless, while another 17 percent are doubtful about the usefulness of their job. There are sizeable differences among countries, sectors, occupations, and age groups, but no trend over time. A vast majority of workers cares about holding a socially useful job and we find that they suffer when they consider their job useless. We also explore possible causes of socially useless jobs, including bad management, strict job protection legislation, harmful economic activities, labor hoarding, and division of labor.     

There and Back Again: The De‐Licensing and Re‐Licensing of Barbers in Alabama

The economic effects of occupational licensing remain an understudied topic, but even less is known about the effects of the removal of licensing legislation. In this article, we take advantage of a natural experiment that occurred in the state of Alabama. Alabama was the last state to begin licensing barbers in 1973 and also the only state to de‐license barbers (in 1983). Relying on data from 1974 to 1994, we find evidence that barber de‐licensing reduced the average annual earnings of barbers as well as the number of cosmetologist employees per million residents in Alabama, although not all our results are statistically significant. We also find evidence that de‐licensing resulted in small increases in the number of barber shops and decreases in the number of cosmetology shops in Alabama. In recent decades, a number of attempts have been made to re‐license the occupation — most recently with a barber licensing bill that became law in September 2013. The result is that barbering in Alabama is once again a licensed occupation. Our limited evidence suggests that the re‐licensing of barbers in Alabama may already have had an effect on pay and on the number of barber shops.     

Using Virtual Reality to Enhance Food Technology Education

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - The use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology combined with 360-degree images and videos provide an opportunity for teachers to bring...     

Working Time Mismatch and Subjective Well-being

This study uses nationally representative panel survey data for Australia to identify the role played by mismatches between hours actually worked and working time preferences in contributing to reported levels of job and life satisfaction. Three main conclusions emerge. First, it is not the number of hours worked that matters for subjective well-being, but working time mismatch. Second, overemployment is a more serious problem than is underemployment. Third, while the magnitude of the impact of overemployment may seem small in absolute terms, relative to other variables, such as disability, the effect is quite large.     

Product‐market strategy and the marketing capabilities of the firm: impact on market effectiveness and cash flow performance

We report on two studies (a single and a multi‐industry) that empirically investigate a nomological network of relationships between strategic business unit product‐market strategy (differentiation, cost‐focus, and product‐market scope), marketing capabilities (architectural and specialized capabilities, as well as their integration), and business unit performance (market effectiveness and subsequent one‐year objective cash flow), along with a series of controls. Addressing important lacunae in the resource‐based view our main research objective is to augment understanding of how critical firm‐level marketing capabilities enable the realization of strategy, thus, further advancing both the resource‐based view and more recent capabilities theorizing. Specifically, we test seven hypotheses and find strong evidence that both architectural and specialized marketing capabilities, and their integration, positively mediate the product‐market strategy and derived business unit performance relationship. In contrast to many extant studies, both survey and objectively measured data are combined, and because the secondary data collected contains both resource‐level (input) data and subsequent one‐year financial data, a higher level of confidence may be attributable to our findings. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Academic brands and their impact on scientific endeavour: The case of business market research and researchers

This paper examines the significance of the rapid development of so-called “academic brands” in Marketing for the process of academic research and for the work and the careers of researchers: It focuses on the specific case of business market research and researchers. The paper starts by exploring the ideas behind the development of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) and its impact on the academic community: CCT appears as an emblematic case of branding of an academic community. The paper then discusses the rapid emergence of the Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) as a case of branding which has a direct impact on business market research. The paper then relates the emergence of these two “brands” to developments in business market research and more specifically to the development of IMP as a brand. Finally, the paper draws some conclusions about the role of academic branding and its impact on scientific endeavour with emphasis on the future of business marketing research and researchers.     

Should inflation-targeting central banks respond to exchange rate movements?

This paper examines whether it is optimal for inflation-targeting central banks to respond to exchange-rate movements. The paper finds that exchange-rate movements can provide a signal on the developments in the economy that the central bank cannot perfectly observe. The results suggest that when the degrees of exchange-rate pass-through and international financial integration are high, it is optimal for the central bank to pay more attentions to exchange-rate movements. These results however depend on two conditions: 1) the ability of the central bank to observe the true exchange-rate process and 2) the number of real frictions in the model economy.     

Relation between time-series and cross-sectional effects of idiosyncratic variance on stock returns

Consistent with the post-1962 US evidence by Ang et al. [Ang, A., Hodrick, R., Xing Y., Zhang, X., 2006. The cross-section of volatility and expected returns. Journal of Finance 51, 259–299], we find that stocks with high idiosyncratic variance (IV) have low CAPM-adjusted expected returns in both pre-1962 US and modern G7 data. We also test in three ways the conjecture that IV is a proxy of systematic risk. First, the return difference between low and high IV stocks – that we dub as IVF – is a priced factor in the cross-section of stock returns. Second, loadings on lagged market variance and lagged average IV account for a significant portion of variation in average returns on portfolios sorted by IV. Third, the variance of IVF correlates closely with average IV, and the two variables have similar explanatory power for the time-series and cross-sectional stock returns.