Toeholds,rejected offers,and bidder gains: Do rebuffed bidders put targets in play to profit from their toeholds?

Previous research shows that on average acquirers who buy shares in the pre-bid market gain because the average price of the acquisition is reduced. This study addresses a different question, one that relies on the withdrawal of the bidder rather than the successful completion of the acquisition. Do some firms with toeholds bid for the target to entice other bidders into the contest for the gain that they make when they sell their shares in the target to another bidder? This paper argues that holding a toehold makes hostile bidders more likely to withdraw from the contest if another bidder enters. The evidence is consistent with our hypothesis: hostile bidders that have a toehold, on average, earn significant abnormal returns of 4.98%, with a mean toehold of 13.81%. Those without a toehold, on average, earn a significantly lower 0.06% return.     

Technological and Design Innovation Effects in Regional New Product Rollouts: A European Illustration

Firms are increasingly recognizing the importance of understanding regional dynamics and their effects on competitiveness. One such area that is gaining increased importance due to intra‐regional trade is the factors contributing to the successful rollouts of new products within a region. New product rollouts are complicated by nature but are further compounded by intricacies in the type of innovation (i.e., technological or design) being introduced into a region. Unfortunately, limited research has investigated this area. This study works to address this limitation by examining the per country performance effects of regional new product rollouts of technological and design innovations. The study examines the introduction of 14 technological innovations and 12 design innovations across 17 unique firms operating in eight European countries from 2000 to 2007. Specifically, this study attempts to show (1) an important role of the type of innovation on a firm's regional new product rollout strategy; (2) a relationship between national culture and the effectiveness of regional rollout strategies; and (3) an influence of economic openness on the type of innovation for regional new product rollout strategies. The results indicate that a longer regional new product rollout strategy is a more effective strategy for technological innovations, while a shorter regional new product rollout strategy is a more effective strategy for design innovations. The study also presents significant interaction effects in relation to the cultural dimensions of uncertainty avoidance and power distance as well as a significant effect of economic openness. Implications for practitioners and academics are presented.     

Profiling exporting and nonexporting service firms: Critical differences to decision-makers

The internationalization of services has become a critical element in the global marketplace. While the internationalization of services has increased in importance, the lack of empirically based research has been a shortcoming. This article empirically examines key characteristics (i.e., total sales, number of employees, age of firm, management's desire to export, perceived profit potential from internationalization, top management's foreign language skills, and international work experience) separating exporting from nonexporting domestic-based service firms. It provides a profile for the exporting service firm that is distinctly different than that of the nonexporting service provider. These differences suggest important policy considerations for federal and state export promotion agencies and strategy considerations for service firm owners and management. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Release the constraints: Solving the problems of export financing in troublesome times

Export growth is seen by governments as being a key to economic recovery. In the United States, the Obama Administration pledged to double exports by the year 2015. To gain greater insights into exporting as an engine for growth, we look to export lenders to understand the contextual changes in export lending, as well as priorities in evaluating exporters. Findings from a study of export lenders on the lender referral list of the Export-Import Bank of the United States suggest that changes in the financial industry's structure over the last two decades, coupled with the economic recession, have motivated policy—at both the lending firm and governmental level—that hampers the ability of exporting to contribute to economic recovery. Further, the findings suggest that current lender policy encourages a focus on short-term returns rather than an exporter's long-term strategic position in the market. Lender preferences, in addition to governmental policies increasing regulation of the financial sector, place significant constraints on economic recovery. Thus, we call for key lender and governmental policy changes that could release industry constraints and unleash the export engine for economic recovery.     

One little Lebanese cucumber is not going to break the bank: Price in the choice of fresh fruits and vegetables

This paper reports on empirical research into individual consumer behaviour in the context of fresh fruit and vegetable purchases. The discussion draws on research results from two studies conducted around the actual shopping process. The findings suggest that consumers' price response behaviour may not be consistent with that predicted by economic theory and that this could be significant at the aggregate level. The existence of 'acceptable price ranges' points to the presence of price thresholds within which consumers are relatively insensitive to price movements. Also of relevance is that the primary influence of the budget constraint may be at a broader level rather than at the level of choosing particular products.     

R&D and Absorptive Capacity: Theory and Empirical Evidence*

This paper presents a single unified framework that integrates the theoretical literature on Schumpeterian endogenous growth and major strands of the empirical literature on R&D, productivity growth and productivity convergence. Starting from a structural model of endogenous growth following Aghion and Howitt (1992, 1998) , we provide microeconomic foundations for the reduced‐form equations for total factor productivity (TFP) growth frequently estimated empirically using industry‐level data. R&D affects both innovation and the assimilation of others’ discoveries (“absorptive capacity”). Long‐run cross‐country differences in productivity emerge endogenously, and the analysis implies that many existing studies underestimate R&D's social rate of return by neglecting absorptive capacity.     

LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION POLICIES AND MEAT PROCESSING MARGINS: THE CASE OF NEW ZEALAND, 1967-1988*

The New Zealand export meat industry has been through a considerable number of changes in the 1980s. The deregulation of export slaughter facilities, Supplementary Minimum Prices, Producer Board intervention, declining livestock numbers and domestic cost pressures have all affected the performance of the domestically based processing sector. Major changes in market access and demand have influenced off-shore marketing operations, particularly for sheepmeats. Additionally, there has been a change in the type of meat exported with a greater proportion of further processed product shipped in recent years. As an example of the impact of these developments on livestock producers, the producer share of the United Kingdom wholesale market return for a representative prime lamb carcase has fallen from 40 per cent in 1978 to 25 per cent in 1988. In this article the pattern of intervention in the New Zealand pastoral meat industries from the mid-1960s is detailed, emphasising the different environments of the beef and sheepmeat enterprises. Then the principal factors influencing domestic processing margins for these products are empirically examined. Alternative model specifications and alternative estimation techniques are compared and contrasted. The results of these analyses are discussed in terms of the historical patterns of assistance and structural change, and in terms of current rationalisation pressures on the meat processing sector.     

Defining hospital clusters and associated service communities in metropolitan areas.

According to traditional concepts of hospital governance, each institution is considered responsible for the care of a defined community. Evaluation of hospital performance and effective service planning both require that hospitals' service communities be identified. However, in metropolitan regions it is difficult to associate a geographic population with any one hospital because of the wide choice of facilities available to area residents. The service community concept becomes more meaningful in these regions if several hospitals with overlapping geographic communities are defined as a cluster.This paper describes a two-step method for identifying hospital clusters and their associated service communities. The first step involves analysis of patient origin data to identify logical clusters of hospitals. Three algorithms for performing this analysis are presented. In the second step, analytical findings are reviewed by a panel of area planners and hospital experts who, considering additional qualitative factors, determine how the hospitals may be most appropriately grouped. Experience in using this method for hospitals in the seven-county region around Detroit, Michigan suggests that reasonable clusters can be identified, although clusters of central city hospitals are less well-defined than those in the suburban areas.