An institutional perspective of public policy and network effects in the renewable energy industry: enablers or disablers of entrepreneurial behaviour and innovation?

This study extends theory on the effects of public policies stimulating technology demand and of industry network ties on firm-level entrepreneurial behaviour. We take an institutional perspective to develop a theoretical model examining the mechanisms through which public policies, regulatory uncertainty, and industry network ties affect firm-level entrepreneurial decision-making processes and the ability to introduce highly innovative products and to sustain superior performance. We focus on firm-level effects, which enables the study of the tension between institutional pressures of homogeneity and competitive pressures of heterogeneity for entrepreneurial decision-making processes in environments characterized by policy-induced market demands. To test our hypotheses, we draw on data from a large-scale survey among German renewable energy firms. Our results show that public policies can constrain firm innovativeness and risk-taking behaviour because they steer firms towards a more conservative attitude and discourage the pursuit of high-risk innovation projects. However, firms can counteract these influences and enhance their innovativeness by maintaining close network ties with research associations as we find that innovativeness and a highly innovative product portfolio are key success factors. In summary, these findings provide important implications for the study of public policy effects, industry network ties and entrepreneurial behaviour.     

Technology adoption in markets with network effects: Theory and experimental evidence

We examine a technology-adoption game with network effects in which coordination on either technology A or technology B constitutes a Nash equilibrium. Coordination on technology B is assumed to be payoff dominant. We define a technology’s critical mass as the minimal share of users, which is necessary to make the choice of this technology the best response for any remaining user. We show that the technology with the lower critical mass implies risk dominance and selection by the maximin criterion. We present experimental evidence that both payoff dominance and risk dominance explain participants’ choices in the technology-adoption game. The relative riskiness of a technology can be proxied using either technologies’ critical masses or stand-alone values absent any network effects.     

Stuck at a workplace: What’s work control,demands and learning got to do with it? A longitudinal multilevel study on Swedish permanent employees in situations of ‘workplace locked-in’

Abstract

Whilst health consequences of being locked-in at the workplace have been documented in several research studies, it is largely unknown how work characteristics and their changes over time relate to risks for becoming locked-in at a certain workplace. Accordingly, this paper studied how perceived control, learning opportunities and quantitative demands at work associate with workplace-locked-in (WPLI). The study included permanent employees who participated in the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH) study in wave 3 through 5 (n = 2918 individuals; n = 7460 observations). Results from multi-level analysis show that there was significant individual variation in WPLI changes over time, even though on average, WPLI decreased slightly. Differences in work characteristics between individuals (L2) and across time (L1) associated significantly with WPLI: higher levels of job control and learning opportunities related to lower odds ratios for WPLI, whereas higher quantitative job demands associated with higher odds ratios of WPLI. Moreover, differences in quantitative job demands, number of job changes and educational achievements explained the individual variations of WPLI developments over time. The result shows that WPLI can – to some extent – be prevented or reduced through good work design, and implications for HR managers and organizations are discussed.     

Business Cycle Volatility in Germany

Abstract. Stylized facts suggest that output volatility in OECD countries has declined in recent years. The causes and the nature of this decline have so far been analyzed mainly for the United States. In this paper, we analyze whether structural changes in output volatility in Germany can be detected. We report evidence that output volatility has declined in Germany. It is difficult to answer the question whether this decline in output volatility reflects good economic and monetary policy or merely ‘good luck’.     

Voluntary contributions to a public good when partial contribution is a dominant strategy

We present an experiment on voluntary contributions to a public good. The game has a dominant strategy solution in the interior of the strategy space. We observe significant over-contribution. Our result is similar to those of typical corner-solution experiments.     

Games of Climate Change with International Trade

We analyse games of greenhouse gas emission reduction in which the emissions and the emission reduction costs of one country depend on other countries' emission abatement. In an analytically tractable model, we show that international trade effects on costs and emissions can either increase or decrease incentives to reduce emissions and to cooperate on emission abatement; in some specifications, optimal emission reduction is unaffected by trade. We therefore specify the model further, calibrating it to larger models that estimate the costs of emission reduction, trade effects, and impacts of climate change. If trade effects are driven by total emission reduction costs of other countries cooperation is slightly more difficult than in the case without trade effects. If trade effects are determined by relative emission reduction efforts in other countries, cooperation becomes easier. Carbon leakage does not affect our qualitative insights, although it does change the numbers.