Who will lead and who will follow: Identifying Influential Users in Online Social Networks

Along with the explosive growth of the phenomenon Online Social Networks (OSN), identifying influential users in OSN has received a great deal of attention in recent years. However, the development of practical approaches for identifying them is still in its infancy. By means of a structured literature review, the authors analyze and synthesize the publications particularly from two perspectives. From a research perspective, they find that existing approaches mostly build on users’ connectivity and activity but hardly consider further characteristics of influential users. Moreover, they outline two major research streams. It becomes apparent that most marketing-oriented articles draw on real-world data of OSN, while more technology-oriented papers rather have a theoretical approach and mostly evaluate their artifacts by means of formal proofs. The authors find that a stronger collaboration between the scientific Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) and Marketing communities could be mutually beneficial. With respect to a practitioner’s perspective, they compile advice on the practical application of approaches for the identification of influential users. It is hoped that the results can stimulate and guide future research.     

Herding in the strategic allocations of Spanish pension plan managers

This paper empirically examines herding behavior in the strategic style allocations of Spanish pension plan managers. The study uses both the standard metric used in financial literature to capture institutional herding and a new approach to address some shortcomings of this traditional measure. Concretely, some authors have highlighted that the traditional measure does not take into account that the probability that a manager buys rather than sells a certain stock depends on both the initial holding in the stock and the asset flows. As a consequence, this study proposes a new approach, which can be applied to other financial markets and provides more accurate values of the probability to increase (or decrease) the style exposures bearing in mind the previous exposure of each portfolio. The study confirms the existence of herding behavior by using both methods. Although the strength of this behavior decreases using the new approach, the herding levels detected in this study of style herding of Spanish pension plans are higher than those of previous research analyzing portfolio holdings in other countries. Additionally, herding levels are higher in periods of low volatility while market returns does not seem to influence herding levels.     

Globalisation and technological convergence in the EU

We employ a two-step approach in investigating the dynamic transmission channels under which globalization factors foster technical efficiency by combining a dynamic efficiency analysis in the stochastic frontier framework, and a time series approach based on VAR and spectral analysis. Using the dataset of the 18 EU countries over 1970–2004, we find that both import and FDI are significant factors in spreading efficiency externalities and thus accelerating technology catch-up in the EU. In particular, the impacts of the import are more prominent in the short-run while those of FDI play a more important role over the longer-run. Furthermore, the impacts of the import are pro-cyclical only in the short-run whereas those of FDI are pro-cyclical mostly over the medium- to the long-run. This evidence is broadly consistent with the sample observation that the recent slowdown of the EU productivity has been closely related to the corresponding FDI decline especially after 2000. Hence, any protection-oriented policy will be likely to be more detrimental for the EU.     

Explaining the Reactions of Swiss Municipalities to The ‘Amalgamation Wave’: At the crossroad of institutional,economic and political pressures

Abstract

Public sector organizations are simultaneously subject to three types of environmental pressure: institutional, economic and political. How do these pressures influence the strategic behaviour of public organizations when confronted with efficiency-oriented reforms? We focus on the strategic behaviour of Swiss municipalities facing the amalgamation wave: a reform characterized by a strong economic rationale. Results confirm that the success of reforms depends not only on its matching with economic underpinnings. It is also necessary to take the political leadership and the responsibility of reform implementation.     

Quantitative narrative analysis software options compared: PC-ACE and CAQDAS (ATLAS.ti, MAXqda, and NVivo)

This paper shows how to carry out quantitative narrative analysis (QNA) with different text analysis software (PC-ACE, Program for Computer-Assisted Coding of Events, and various CAQDAS programs, Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software: ATLAS.ti, MAXQDA, and NVivo). QNA is a methodological approach to narrative texts that exploits invariant properties of narrative (namely, a “story grammar”, based on actors, actions, and their attributes) to make a statistical analysis of words possible. In comparing PC-ACE and CAQDAS, the paper leads the reader through the steps involved in setting up a grammar, in data entry, and in data query. A careful comparison of limits and possibilities of the two types of software will allow the reader interested in QNA to make an informed choice between a full implementation of QNA in a specialized but unknown software (PC-ACE) and a limited implementation in any of the widely used and popular CAQDAS programs.     

Career success for international professional women in the land of the equal? Evidence from Norway

This study investigates the career success of international expatriate women in Norway. Norwegian and international women were compared on both objective and subjective career success. Participants were 125 Norwegian women and 168 international expatriate women who answered a 58 item questionnaire. Although Norwegian women achieved higher career success than the expatriate group, these effects disappeared for objective career success when expatriate women had a high level of education, high English language competency and motivation. Motivation, self focused conflict resolution and language competency were positively associated with subjective career success. Results suggest that although being foreign can be a disadvantage in Norway, expatriate women can overcome this liability through investment in education, language and motivation. Implications for international expatriate women are discussed.     

Earnings Non‐Synchronicity and Voluntary Disclosure

Earnings non‐synchronicity reflects the extent to which firm‐specific factors determine a firm's earnings. Prior research suggests that high earnings non‐synchronicity impedes corporate outsiders' ability to process information. This study examines the impact of earnings non‐synchronicity on managers' decisions to provide earnings forecasts. We propose that high earnings non‐synchronicity motivates managers to issue earnings forecasts to reduce information asymmetry between managers and investors and to preempt costly information acquisition by outsiders. Consistently, we find a positive relation between earnings non‐synchronicity and managers' propensity to issue earnings forecasts, particularly long‐horizon forecasts. This positive relation is weaker when earnings are easier to predict based on the firm's earnings history and is stronger when the firm has higher institutional ownership and greater analyst following. We also find that the market's reaction to management forecasts increases with earnings non‐synchronicity. Overall, the evidence suggests that managers voluntarily provide earnings forecasts to alleviate the adverse consequences of earnings non‐synchronicity. These findings provide a more complete picture about the impact of earnings non‐synchronicity on a firm's information environment, and highlight the effect of the nature of information asymmetry on voluntary disclosures.     

Driving forces of chemical risks for the European biodiversity

In the framework of the EU-funded research project ALARM (Assessing LArge-scale environmental Risks with tested Methods), an original method combining the DPSIR (driving forces–pressures–state–impacts–responses) framework and an analysis based on the distinction between the four spheres of sustainability (environmental, economic, social and political) has been developed. This paper presents the application of this method, called “the tetrahedral DPSIR” for the identification and analysis of driving forces of environmental chemicals risks for biodiversity, in Europe. The purpose of this methodology is to help reduce the pressures on biodiversity through modifying the driving forces behind them by offering scientific advice to policy makers. We frame our analysis in the context of the current policy, namely the implementation of REACH (Regulation on the Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of CHemicals).     

The deregulation of international trucking in the European Union: form and effect

We describe the regulatory regime under which international trucking operated in Western Europe until the mid-1980s, the deregulatory process that followed, and the effect of this deregulation. We find that deregulation had a large positive effect on the growth of international trucking. We also find that shippers shifted toward more outsourcing of their trucking needs, but this occurred to an even greater extent in local and national road transport. We conclude that other factors beside the deregulation of international trucking affected the organization of the industry at the time. Finally, despite concerns voiced by member countries, we find no evidence that deregulation disproportionately favored carriers of countries that were initially more (or less) involved in international trucking, nor that it has favored low-wage countries.      

The structure of bias in peer voting systems: lessons from the Eurovision Song Contest

This paper assesses whether and how common characteristics of jury members or peer voters affect the outcomes of voting systems. In particular, we analyze to what extent these common features result in voting bias. We take as a case study the Eurovision Song Contest for which an extensive amount of historical data is available. In contrast to earlier studies we analyze the impact of common factors on the bias individually for each country, which is necessary to substantiate the publicly debated accusations of regional block voting by certain groups of countries. We establish strong evidence for voting bias in the song contest on the basis of geography, even after correction for culture, language, religion and ethnicity. However, these effects do generally not correspond to the usual accusations. We believe that our findings extend to all instances where groups of jury members or peer voters share certain common factors, which may cause voting bias. It is important to identify such structures explicitly, as it can help avoiding bias in the first place. The authors are grateful to Marieke van Dijk for excellent research assistance and to Laurens Swinkels, Ieva Pudane, Gijsbert van Lomwel, Jelena Stefanovic, and Bas van den Heuvel for useful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.