DYNAMICS BETWEEN NORTH AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN AGRICULTURAL FUTURES PRICES DURING TURMOIL AND FINANCIALIZATION

North American and European agricultural futures markets faced significant changes in recent years, i.e., the financialization which originated in the USA, the increase of futures trading in Europe and the recent price turmoils in international commodity markets. We analyse the long‐ and short‐run dynamics between North American and European agricultural futures prices during these institutional changes. The empirical results show that the US markets lead in terms of price transmissions and volatility spillovers. US markets, however, predominantly react to deviations from the long‐run equilibrium which indicates a rising impact of European agricultural markets on a global scale.     

Fairness, errors and the power of competition

In this paper, we investigate the effects of competition on bargained outcomes. We show that the neglect of either fairness concerns or decision errors will prevent a satisfactory understanding of how competition affects bargaining. We conducted experiments which demonstrate that introducing a small amount of competition to a bilateral ultimatum game – by adding just one competitor – induces large behavioral changes among responders and proposers, causing large changes in accepted offers. Models that assume that all people are self-interested and fully rational do not adequately explain these changes. We show that a model which combines heterogeneous fairness concerns with decision errors correctly predicts the comparative static effects of changes in competition. Moreover, the combined model is remarkably good at predicting the entire distribution of offers in many different competitive situations.     

Self-reinforcing market dominance

Are initial competitive advantages self-reinforcing, so that markets exhibit an endogenous tendency to be dominated by only a few firms? Although this question is of great economic importance, no systematic empirical study has yet addressed it. Therefore, we examine experimentally whether firms with an initial cost advantage are more likely to invest in marginal cost reductions than firms with higher initial costs. We find that the initial competitive advantages are indeed self-reinforcing, but subjects in the role of firms overinvest relative to the Nash equilibrium. However, the pattern of overinvestment even strengthens the tendency towards self-reinforcing cost advantages relative to the theoretical prediction. Further, as predicted by the Nash equilibrium, mean-preserving spreads of the initial cost distribution have no effects on aggregate investments. Finally, investment spillovers reduce investment, and investment is higher than the joint-profit maximizing benchmark for the case without spillovers and lower for the case with spillovers.     

Insider trading legislation and corporate governance

This paper analyzes the impact of insider trading legislation on corporate governance. In a context where large, dominant shareholders can monitor underperforming companies, managers have an incentive to give early warnings about adverse developments to dominant shareholders. This information is effectively a bribe to induce dominant shareholders to sell their stock and refrain from intervention. If insider trading is unregulated, dominant shareholders collude with management at the expense of small shareholders. The optimal regime forces the company to disclose all material information to the market. Private contracting between companies and shareholders leads to optimal insider trading regulation only if initial shareholders can enter a binding commitment, otherwise large shareholders and managers recontract at the expense of small shareholders. Enforcement also matters. European Union legislation requires inside information to be precise. Such a narrow definition creates a grey zone, where information is private but cannot be classified as inside information. As a result the effectiveness of corporate governance and firm value are reduced. Regulation in the US that treats shareholders with a stake exceeding 10% as insiders is potentially harmful.     

Drivers of sales performance: a contemporary meta-analysis. Have salespeople become knowledge brokers?

It has been 25 years since the publication of a comprehensive review of the full spectrum of sales-performance drivers. This study takes stock of the contemporary field and synthesizes empirical evidence from the period 1982–2008. The authors revise the classification scheme for sales performance determinants devised by Walker et al. (1977) and estimate both the predictive validity of its sub-categories and the impact of a range of moderators on determinant-sales performance relationships. Based on multivariate causal model analysis, the results make two major observations: (1) Five sub-categories demonstrate significant relationships with sales performance: selling-related knowledge (β = .28), degree of adaptiveness (β = .27), role ambiguity (β = −.25), cognitive aptitude (β = .23) and work engagement (β = .23). (2) These sub-categories are moderated by measurement method, research context, and sales-type variables. The authors identify managerial implications of the results and offer suggestions for further research, including the conjecture that as the world is moving toward a knowledge-intensive economy, salespeople could be functioning as knowledge-brokers. The results seem to back this supposition and indicate how it might inspire future research in the field of personal selling.     

Comparing evolutionary dynamics across different national settings: the case of the synthetic dye industry, 1857–1914

Current models of industry evolution suggest that development patterns should be the same across different levels of analysis. In comparing the evolution of the synthetic dye industry at the global level and in the five major producer countries before World War I (Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland and the United States), it is shown that patterns of industry evolution differed significantly across national contexts. Based on a quantitative and qualitative database of all firms and plants in the industry, the paper analyzes how German firms came to dominate the industry and identifies factors such as availabilities of crucial skills, economies of scale and scope, and positive feedback mechanisms between firms and national institutions that likely produced these national differences. The empirical analysis calls for formal models of evolution that incorporate differences in institutional environments.     

Deregulation, Mergers, and Cost Savingsin Class I U.S. Railroads, 1974-1986

In this paper we attempt to disentangle the effects of deregulation on rail costs from those directly attributable to mergers. We estimate that cost reductions obtained from mergers ranged from a high of 33% for the Burlington Northern to a low of a 3% cost increase for the CSX. However, firms not engaged in significant merger activities experienced similar cost differentials indicating that consolidation was not a prerequisite for cost savings. We conclude that although mergers did confer some benefits on the participating firms, they were not a prerequisite for railroads being able to achieve substantial cost savings.     

Human Resources Management Innovation

Guided by a general manager's perspective of human resources management (HRM), this paper identifies key factor affecting the introduction of HRM innovations in organizations. Because the essence of market and technological leadership is the development of the organizational capacity to carry out inventive ideas, it is critical to understand the main forces influencing HRM innovation. Following a definition of HRM innovation, six propositions are discussed using current and historical examples. Since HRM innovation also involves change in the social system of the organization, the adoption and diffusion of these innovations can be attributed not only to external environmental forces but also to social processes.     

Explicit solution of a general consumption/portfolio problem with subsistence consumption and bankruptcy

This paper solves a general continuous-time single-agent consumption and portfolio decision problem with subsistence consumption in closed form. The analysis allows for general continuously differentiable concave utility functions. The model takes into consideration that consumption must be no smaller than a given subsistence rate and that bankruptcy can occur. Thus the paper generalizes the results of Karatzas, Lehoczky, Sethi, and Shreve (1986).