Evolutionary stability of bargaining and price posting: implications for formal and informal activities

In this paper we study the co-existence of two well known trading protocols, bargaining and price-posting. To do so we consider a frictional environment where buyers and sellers play price-posting and bargaining games infinitely many times. Sellers switch from one market to the other at a rate that is proportional to their payoff differentials. Given the different informational requirements associated with these two trading mechanisms, we examine their possible co-existence in the context of informal and formal markets. Other than having different trading protocols, we also consider other distinguishing features. We find a unique stable equilibrium where price-posting (formal markets) and bargaining (informal markets) co-exist. In a richer environment where both sellers and buyers can move across markets, we show that there exists a unique stable dynamic equilibrium where formal and informal activities also co-exist whenever sellers’ and buyers’ net costs of trading in the formal market have opposite signs.     

REIT Characteristics and the Sensitivity of REIT Returns

Previous research on the returns to real estate investment trusts (REITs) has considered whether REITs are systematically exposed to general stock-market risk and interest-rate risk. This study examines how the sensitivity of REIT returns to these factors may be influenced by various REIT characteristics. Using a sample of publicly traded REITs, we estimate the sensitivity of REIT returns to stock market and interest-rate changes. We then propose and implement a model for testing whether differences in asset structure, financial leverage, management strategy, and degree of specialization in the REIT portfolios are related to their sensitivity to interest rate and market risk. Our results permit us to offer some inferences about how REITs can alter their risk exposure by managing these characteristics.     

Stress scenario generation for solvency and risk management

We derive worst-case scenarios in a life insurance model in the case where the interest rate and the various transition intensities are mutually dependent. Examples of this dependence are that (a) surrender intensities and interest rates are high at the same time, (b) mortality intensities of a policyholder as active and disabled, respectively, are low at the same time, and (c) mortality intensities of the policyholders in a portfolio are low at the same time. The set from which the worst-case scenario is taken reflects the dependence structure and allows us to relate the worst-case scenario-based reserve, qualitatively, to a Value-at-Risk-based calculation of solvency capital requirements. This brings out perspectives for our results in relation to qualifying the standard formula of Solvency II or using a scenario-based approach in internal models. Our results are powerful for various applications and the techniques are non-standard in control theory, exactly because our worst-case scenario is deterministic and not adapted to the stochastic development of the portfolio. The formalistic results are exemplified in a series of numerical studies.     

Retail shopping lists: Reassessment and new insights

The paper addresses consumers' shopping lists. The current study is based on a survey of 871 lists collected at retail grocery stores. Most items on shopping lists appear on the product category level rather than the brand level. The importance of the brand level varies considerably across product categories. An association between the frequency of a brand's appearance on lists and the amount of money spent on advertising the brand could not be found. A strong link between brands, prices and store names is revealed. Price in the majority of cases refers to brands rather than to product categories. The paper ends with a discussion and with suggestions for future research.     

Steering customers to the online channel: The influence of personal relationships,learning investments,and attitude toward the firm

Understanding the consequences of customer steering is a key challenge of multichannel customer management. Although many firms are faced with the question whether customers should be steered to the online channel to realize the potential benefits of this channel, little is known about the circumstances under which customers will be unreceptive to the online channel and displeased if they are steered. This research addresses this critical gap and examines the impact of customer steering with assortment modifications on customers' online migration decisions and overall satisfaction in three experimental studies. The results highlight the importance of three contingency factors: personal relationships in the current channel, learning investments into the online channel and attitude toward the steering firm.     

Conceptualizing leadership across cultures

In this article, we summarize research on how the meaning of leadership varies systematically across cultures, and describe the conflict in the literature between the quest for universals and the identification of cultural contingencies in leadership theory. We review the literature on the relationships between cultural dimensions and leadership, and discuss implications of this range of research for management practice.     

Grit and self-employment: a multi-country study

Blending the literatures on grit and self-employment, we propose the role of grit in separating the self-employed from the employed. Based on a sample of 13,210 respondents from nine countries, our results indicate that not only is grit related to self-employment, but also grit is more strongly related to self-employment for risk-takers, females, and younger individuals. The findings are robust, controlling for several individual characteristics and alternate specifications, and have implications for the broader literature on self-employment.     

What Ethical Leadership Means to Me: Asian,American, and European Perspectives

Despite the increasingly multinational nature of the workplace, there have been few studies of the convergence and divergence in beliefs about ethics-based leadership across cultures. This study examines the meaning of ethical and unethical leadership held by managers in six societies with the goal of identifying areas of convergence and divergence across cultures. More specifically, qualitative research methods were used to identify the attributes and behaviors that managers from the People’s Republic of China (the PRC), Hong Kong, the Republic of China (Taiwan), the United States (the U.S.), Ireland, and Germany attribute to ethical and unethical leaders. Across societies, six ethical leadership themes and six unethical leadership themes emerged from a thematic analysis of the open-ended responses. Dominant themes for ethical and unethical leadership for each society are identified and examined within the context of the core cultural values and practices of that society. Implications for theory, research, and management practice are discussed.     

Linking net entry to regional economic growth

Regional growth differentials could be explained by how intensively and dynamically new firms of a particular region enter expanding industries. Although the direct contribution of new firms to value creation and growth may be regarded as tautological, the aggregate impacts are largely empirically unobserved. After a brief motivation, we use an expression of firm net entry as an indicator of the distinctive capacity of regional entrepreneurial resources to enter new industries and create value. Using data for Belgian districts, we test the net entry effects on subsequent economic growth in the manufacturing and services industries. Our analysis helps emphasize the different dynamics at work within the manufacturing and services industries and, although requiring cautious interpretation, provides evidence for some positive impact of net entry on regional economic growth in the services industry.     

The reciprocal and non‐linear relationship of sustainability and financial performance

The goal of this paper is to describe the link between financial performance and the level of sustainability. In a novel approach, the paper classifies firms based on past financial success to address a potentially reciprocal relationship. For the groups of better and worse performing firms and for the entire sample, the above link is then tested, also accounting for non‐linearity in the relationship. We show that environmental management system (EMS) implementation as a proxy for a firm's sustainability level is only positively associated with the financial performance of financially well‐performing firms. Conversely, it has a negative association with the performance of less good firms. We show that this implies that firms cannot change from good to bad performance, and vice versa, solely through the implementation of an EMS, and also that the result remains when introducing non‐linearity in the link. Based on this result, we discuss implications for the direction of causality.