Designing innovative tools for improving literacy on intellectual property among SMEs

Improving intellectual property (IP) literacy among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has lately been discussed as a means for improving IP culture within these companies. Diverse public and private actors have, therefore, developed some tools to improve IP awareness and literacy in small companies. We analysed existing tools, intending to create a better design of innovative and effective IP instruments. This study is considered an important step among the first phases of designing a new artefact. The analysis used criteria created with the support of the literature and features of the tools. We further present design recommendations for improving effectiveness of new platforms that would improve IP literacy. The final recommendations suggest that new tools should rely on customisation, interaction and reliability, and their development should be based on the criteria used in the analysis.     

Reappearing Dividends

During the last two decades of the 20th century, the propensity of U.S. companies to pay cash dividends declined significantly. The trend away from dividends accelerated during the late 1990s, leading some economists to conclude that dividend policy was shifting in a very fundamental way. But there was a sharp reversal in this trend starting in 2000.
This article investigates five possible explanations why dividends are reappearing. Given the explosion of new companies during the 1990s, the authors find that part of this rebound can be explained by the "maturity hypothesis"– by the need for such companies to pay out their excess "free cash fiow" to reassure investors that it will not be wasted on value-destroying investments. The authors also report evidence that some companies have chosen to use dividends in part to restore investor confidence about the "quality" of corporate earnings in the wake of concerns over corporate governance. Third, the authors' findings suggest that U.S. companies have responded to the recent dividend tax cut, as one might expect, although the rebound in dividends started well before tax reform became a widely discussed possibility. Finally, the study finds little support for behavioralist explanations in which managers "cater" to irrational investor preferences for dividends. Although the authors hesitate to read too much into the recent rebound, their evidence is consistent with the idea that corporate payout policy has shifted back in favor of conventional cash dividends.     

Öffentliche Güter mit Versicherungscharakter

Dikes as well as early warning systems against natural disasters are just two examples for pure public goods that serve as an insurance device. Dikes reduce the probability of a loss caused by flooding. Such public goods can be seen as public self-protection. By contrast, early warning systems do not reduce the probability of a loss, but the size of a loss. Hence, such public goods can be seen as public self-insurance. The present paper presents a model which takes these characteristics into account. Conditions for the efficient provision of such public goods are derived. Moreover, we analyze the consequences of a change in income and risk aversion towards the efficient provision level as well as the interaction with private market insurance.     

Self‐Insurance and Self‐Protection as Public Goods

Many public goods provide utility by insuring against hazardous events. Those public goods can have self‐insurance and self‐protection character. For both situations we analyze the efficient public provision level and the provision level resulting from Nash behavior in a private provision game. We consider the interaction of public goods as insurance devices with market insurance. The availability of market insurance reduces the provision level of the public good for both public and private provision, regardless of whether we consider self‐insurance or self‐protection. Moreover, we show that Nash behavior has always a larger impact than the availability of market insurance.     

Does family employment enhance MSEs performance?: Integrating socioemotional wealth and family embeddedness perspectives

This paper analyzes the effect of family employment on performance in micro and small enterprises (MSEs) by combining two research perspectives that, until now, have been conducted separately: the family embeddedness perspective of entrepreneurship (Aldrich and Cliff, 2003) and the socioemotional wealth (SEW) approach to family business (Gomez-Mejia et al 2007). Our integrated perspective allows us to highlight how the nature of the employment relationships in MSEs enhances the benefits derived from the socioemotional endowment associated with family labor, and reduces the opportunity costs of employing relatives. Moreover, we assert that this relationship is moderated by specific family characteristics that determine the firm's ability to preserve the SEW, while at the same time pursuing financial goals. Our results provide partial support to the enhancing role of family labour on MSEs performance: employing family members increases sales but decreases profitability as measured by ROA. This effect also results in improved performance for women-led firms and for firms that have received family funding, but impairs MSEs performance when the business is the main source of the owner´s household income.     

Populism and the return of the “Paranoid Style”: Some evidence and a simple model of demand for incompetence as insurance against elite betrayal

We present a simple model of populism as the rejection of “disloyal” leaders. We show that adding the assumption that people are worse off when they experience low income as a result of leader betrayal (than when it is the result of bad luck) to a simple voter choice model yields a preference for incompetent leaders even if all leaders have the same underlying probability of betrayal. These deliver worse material outcomes in general, but they reduce the feelings of betrayal during bad times. Some evidence consistent with our model is gathered from the Trump–Clinton 2016 election: on average, subjects primed with the importance of competence in policymaking decrease their support for Trump, the candidate who scores lower on competence in our survey (even amongst Trump supporters). But two groups respond to the treatment with a large (approximately 5 percentage points) increase in their support for Donald Trump: those living in rural areas and those that are low educated, white and living in urban and suburban areas.     

Identity and environmentalism: the influence of community characteristics

This paper examines the influence of community characteristics on self-proclaimed environmentalism. We find that the composition of a community affects the likelihood that a person claims to be a strong environmentalist even after controlling for individual political leaning, socio-economic characteristics, and pro-environment behaviors. Individuals are more likely to claim to be strong environmentalists if they live in areas where a larger share of the population has post-graduate degrees, if they live in heavily Democratic areas, or if they live in heavily Republican areas. These community effects occur only when individuals are predisposed to take on an environmental identity.     

Process- Versus Function-Based Hierarchies

I consider a firm's choice between having people who carry out complementary tasks report to the same manager and having them report to separate, function-based managers. Even supposing that the former enhances coordination, the latter may be preferred because it improves the firm's control over employees. I show that, because switching from a function-based hierarchy to a process-based hierarchy reduces the firm's direct control, it raises the attractiveness of making the employee pay more sensitive to performance. Also, this switch tends to raise the profitability of fostering altruism between employees. I extend the analysis so that it deals with the relative benefits of IT- and M-form organizations. I show that the M form becomes more profitable as the firm gets large.     

Quality-adjusted price indexes for portable computers

The aim of this article is to identify the variables affecting the decision to make contributions to personal pension plans and the amount of such contributions. For this purpose, we specify and estimate a Tobit model for a sample based on the 1995 Personal Income Taxpayers Panel prepared by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance) formed by 3041 taxpayers, of whom 358 made contributions to pension plans. Our results suggest that individuals decide to invest in pension plans on complex grounds combining the wish to benefit from tax savings and to ensure they will receive supplementary income upon retirement.