On the user cost and homeownership

This paper studies the differences in the cost of housing services for renters and homeowners and calculates the bias that results when we value owner-occupied housing services using a rental equivalence approach. Our framework is a life-cycle model with endogenous tenure choice with households facing idiosyncratic uninsurable earnings risk and housing price risk. We model houses as illiquid assets that provide collateral for loans. To analyze the impact of preferential housing taxation on the tenure choice and the bias, we consider a tax system that mimics that of the US economy. Namely, owner-occupied housing services are not taxed and mortgage interest payments are deductible. Through simulations, we show that a rental equivalence approach (relative to a user cost approach) overestimates the cost of housing services. The magnitude of the bias is very sensitive to both the income tax rate and the size of adjustment costs in the housing market.     

The contingent effects of top management teams on venture performance: Aligning founding team composition with innovation strategy and commercialization environment

How does the relationship between founding team composition and venture performance depend on the venture's strategy and business environment? Using data from a novel survey of 2,067 firms, we show that while diverse founding teams tend to exhibit higher performance, this is not universally true. We find that founding teams that are diverse are likely to achieve high performance in a competitive commercialization environment. On the other hand, technically focused founding teams are aligned with a cooperative commercialization environment and when the enterprise pursues an innovation strategy. These results are robust to corrections for endogenous team formation concerns. The findings suggest that ventures cannot ignore founding team composition and expect to later professionalize their top management teams to align with their strategy and environment. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is Your Banker Leaking Your Personal Information? The Roles of Ethics and Individual-Level Cultural Characteristics in Predicting Organizational Computer Abuse

Computer abuse (CA) by employees is a critical concern for managers. Misuse of an organization’s information assets leads to costly damage to an organization’s reputation, decreases in sales, and impositions of fines. We use this opportunity to introduce and expand the theoretic framework proffered by Thong and Yap (1998) to better understand the factors that lead individuals to commit CA in organizations. The study uses a survey of 449 respondents from the banking, financial, and insurance industries. Our results indicate that individuals who adhere to a formalist ethical perspective are significantly less likely to engage in CA activities than those following a utilitarian ethical framework. In addition, the results provide evidence that employees with individualistic natures are linked to increased CA incidents, whereas collectivist tendencies are associated with decreases in CA behaviors. Our results also show that collectivism acts as a strong moderator that further decreases the relationships between formalism and CA, and utilitarianism and CA. Finally, we offer detailed suggestions on how organizations and researchers can leverage our findings to decrease CA occurrences.     

Competition and Regulation of Mobile Money Platforms in Africa: A Comparative Analysis of Kenya and Uganda

Review of Industrial Organization - We analyze the competition issues in mobile money in Kenya–where Safaricom is the market leader–and in Uganda: where the market is duopolistic. We...     

Skilled maintenance trades under lean manufacturing: Evidence from the car industry

This article explores how skilled maintenance trades have fared under lean automotive manufacturing, a cohort of workers relatively neglected in the literature. Historically, such trades possessed a distinct ‘craft consciousness’ derived from apprenticed-acquired skill, autonomy in job execution, strict job boundaries and relative occupational status and prestige. The article assesses how lean has impacted this craft tradition over time, drawing on a case study of one UK car plant to assess its trajectory across three decades. Four different skilled cohorts—electrical, mechanical, control engineers and die maintenance fitters—are examined to gauge respective trends in skill, autonomy, demarcation and status. While the study finds variation in experiences across different trades, the general trend points to a deterioration in work conditions on all four benchmarks of assessment. The article concludes by inferring implications for the future trajectory of skilled trades considering recent accounts provided in Industry 4.0 narratives.