Policies for a complex product system

This paper examines how government policy has influenced the pattern of innovation and industrial leadership in the cellular mobile communication systems. It focuses on the US government's role in promoting the early development of the cellular concept in the 1970s, Europe's attempt to take the lead with the promotion of the GSM standard in the late 1980s, and the rise of two rival world-wide standards in the 1990s (Europe's GSM versus America's CDMA systems). The cellular mobile communications system is treated as an example of a complex product system (CoPS). CoPS are large-scale, engineering intensive products that are supplied in unit or batch production and tailored to meet the requirements of particular large users. The purpose of this paper is to show by a single case study how patterns of technological innovation in CoPS may be influenced by policies of direct and indirect government control to promote industrial leadership.     

Planning executive succession: The effect of recruitment source and organizational problems on anticipated tenure

This study examines the anticipated tenure of the chief executive officer (CEO) from the incumbent's point of view. An analysis of approximately 1500 questionnaires returned by corporate presidents reveals that anticipated tenure is generally little affected by whether the CEO is recruited from within or from outside the organization. However, under conditions of formalized succession planning and when confronted with specific problems, such as modernizing operations, mandates to increase sales and merger operations, there exist differences in anticipated tenure between inside and outside recruited CEOs. These differences are discussed in terms of their implications to corporate level succession planning.     

Price‐Match Announcements in a Consumer Search Duopoly

Using a model of sequential search, we show that announcements to price‐match raise prices by altering consumer search behavior. First, price‐matching diminishes firms’ incentives to lower prices to attract consumers who have no search costs. Second, for consumers with positive search costs, price‐matching lowers the marginal benefit of search, inducing them to accept higher prices. Finally, price‐matching can lead to asymmetric equilibria where one firm runs fewer sales and both firms tend to offer smaller discounts than in a symmetric equilibrium. Price increases grow in the proportion of consumers who invoke price‐matching guarantees and in the level of equilibrium asymmetry.     

The internet as an information intermediary

The internet is an enormous and growing source of information for investors about the opinions of others. Virtually any individual with internet access can express opinions about firms and editorialize about company news. However, to date we know very little about the impact these nontraditional internet intermediaries have on markets. We develop a framework wherein internet information intermediaries fall along a spectrum of professionalism and document a nuanced relationship between coverage by these intermediaries and capital market effects. Using a novel dataset that tracks coverage of companies by individuals posting on thousands of websites, we find that coverage by professional and semi-professional intermediaries is associated with positive capital market effects but coverage by nonprofessional internet intermediaries has the opposite effect—hindering price formation. The detrimental effects of nonprofessional coverage are observed most strongly when the intermediaries have larger audiences.     

Sustainability and comovement of government debt in EMU Countries: A panel data analysis

We investigate the sustainability of fiscal policy in a set of 19 European Monetary Union (EMU) countries over the period 1970–2016. Panel unit root tests in the presence of cross-section dependence show that the government debt series is stationary, indicating that the solvency condition would be satisfied for these countries. This confirms the effectiveness of the austerity measures implemented by these member states. Moreover, an unobserved common factor drives the comovement of government debt in the Eurozone.     

Strategies to offset performance failures: The role of brand equity

In this research, we examine the role of brand equity as a strategy to offset the negative effects of a performance failure. Two independent studies, spanning four industries and involving 669 respondents are employed to investigate this issue. Results suggest that high brand equity leads to more favorable satisfaction evaluations and behavioral intentions than low brand equity. The brand equity effect is identified as a prevailing advantage that spans the entire failure and recovery sequence. This is an important finding because it implies that the advantages of high brand equity theoretically can apply to all failures, not just those for which recovery is attempted. Further inspection, however, reveals that despite the prevailing advantage, high-equity brand failures lead to a more drastic decline in customer evaluations immediately after the failure episode. Managerial implications and future research are addressed.     

Is Passive Farming A Problem for Agriculture in the EU?

We address a new agricultural policy concern following the decoupling of CAP direct payments in 2005: passive farming, whereby landowners maintain their agricultural area to collect payments without producing commodities. It is claimed that passive farming is hindering agricultural development by ‘blocking’ access to farmland for expanding farmers. We evaluate the links between the EU's Single Payment Scheme (SPS), passive farming, land use and agricultural development. Following identification of the rational landowners’ optimal land‐use choice, we evaluate the effects of the SPS using a spatial, agent‐based model that simulates farmers’ competition for land in a case‐study region of Sweden. We show that passive farming does not constrain land from being used in production; on the contrary more land is used than would be the case without the SPS. We conclude that passive farming is not a problem for agriculture, but provides public goods that would otherwise be under provided: preservation of marginal farmland and future food security. However SPS payments on highly productive land inflate land values (capitalisation) and slow structural change, which hinder agricultural development. Consequently CAP goals could be better served by targeting payments on marginal land and phasing out payments to highly productive land.     

Strategic recommendations for new product adoption in the Chinese market

ABSTRACT

This study extended current understandings of the relationships among domain specific innovativeness (DSI), the desire for unique consumer products (DUCPs), perceived new product characteristics (PNPCs), and Chinese consumers’ new product adoption behavior. It also investigated the indirect effect of vicarious learning behavior on Chinese consumers’ acceptance of new products. Data was collected in Shanghai, China. The results demonstrated that DSI and PNPCs were the primary drivers of new product adoption. The study also showed that PNPCs played a mediating role in the relationship between vicarious learning and the adoption of new products by Chinese consumers. The results confirmed the predictive power of DSI and how PNPCs affect Chinese innovative buying behavior. The results also suggest that PNPCs facilitate Chinese consumers’ new product learning behavior.     

Productivity Measurement in Gambling: Plant‐level Evidence from the United Kingdom

Although gambling is one of the fastest‐growing service industries, there have been no studies of total factor productivity (TFP) in this sector. We attempt to fill this gap using establishment‐level data from the United Kingdom. We also discuss key measurement issues in calculating gambling productivity and estimate labor and TFP equations, based on a stochastic frontier production function framework, focusing in particular on the impact of information technology on productivity. Our preliminary results suggest that the production function models fit well, generating plausible elasticity estimates. We find consistent evidence that productivity increased following major reforms to gambling taxation in 2001. Our findings yield limited evidence of regional variations in efficiency. Another key preliminary result is that internet operations appear to be associated with higher relative efficiency.