Financial competence,overconfidence, and trusting investments: Results from an experiment

Financial transactions sometimes occur in an environment where third-party enforcement is lacking. Behavioral explanations typically allude to the social preferences, where an individual’s utility is directly affected by another’s outcome, as the driver of the trusting investments and reciprocal returns. We hypothesize that, in part, these decisions are determined by an individual’s financial literacy and overconfidence in one’s knowledge. Experimental evidence is coupled with an innovative financial literacy assessment, which measures general competence, numeracy skills, and overconfidence in one’s knowledge. Results indicate that overconfidence is a significant determinant of behavior. Specifically, overconfident individuals make larger contributions in the investment game. We also document that there is an escalated effect in overconfident individuals who are also exhibit risk loving preferences.     

Location determinants of high-growth firms

County-level location patterns of INC5000 companies provide one map of American entrepreneurship and innovativeness, and understanding the local factors associated with these firms’ emergence is important for stimulating regional economic growth and innovation. We draw on the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship to motivate our regression model, and augment this theory with additional regional features that have been found to be important in the firm location literature. Zero-inflated negative binomial regressions indicate that these firms exist in counties with larger average establishment size, higher educational attainment and more natural amenities. Income growth, a mix of higher paying industries, and more banks per capita are associated with a smaller presence of these types of firms, all else equal. We conclude that the local conditions favouring high-growth firms are likely to be different from those favouring new firms in general, and that these conditions differ significantly in urban and rural areas and by industrial sectors.     

HR and analytics: why HR is set to fail the big data challenge

The HR world is abuzz with talk of big data and the transformative potential of HR analytics. This article takes issue with optimistic accounts, which hail HR analytics as a ‘must have’ capability that will ensure HR's future as a strategic management function while transforming organisational performance for the better. It argues that unless the HR profession wises up to both the potential and drawbacks of this emerging field and engages operationally and strategically to develop better methods and approaches, it is unlikely that existing practices of HR analytics will deliver transformational change. Indeed, it is possible that current trends will seal the exclusion of HR from strategic, board‐level influence while doing little to benefit organisations and actively damaging the interests of employees.     

Trading-up on unmet expectations? Evaluating consumers’ expectations in online premium grocery shopping logistics

Geography and retail store locations are inherently bound together; this study links food retail changes to systemic logistics changes in an emerging market. The later include raising income and education, access to a wide range of technologies, traffic and transport difficulties, lagging retail provision, changing family structure and roles, as well as changing food culture and taste. The study incorporates demand for premium products defined by Kapferer and Bastien [2009b. The Luxury Strategy. London: Kogan Page] as comprising a broad variety of higher quality and unique or distinctive products and brands including in grocery organic ranges, healthy options, allergy free selections, and international and gourmet/specialty products through an online grocery model (n?=?356) that integrates a novel view of home delivery in Istanbul. More importantly from a logistic perspective our model incorporates any products from any online vendors broadening the range beyond listed items found in any traditional online supermarkets. Data collected via phone survey and analysed via structural equation modelling suggest that the offer of online premium products significantly affects consumers’ delivery logistics expectations. We discuss logistics operations and business management implications, identifying the emerging geography of logistic models which respond to consumers’ unmet expectations using multiple sourcing and consolidation points.     

Innovation and productivity: insights from Malaysia's logistics industry

Efficient logistics is critical to a country's trade competitiveness. This paper uses the Data Envelopment Analysis Malmquist Index that includes an innovation component comprising three dimensions (input, process, and output), to assess the impact of innovation by third-party logistics (3PL). We treat the panel data of asset-based 3PL in Malaysia from 2007 to 2012. Three findings hold. First, innovation is not always accompanied by productivity gains. Second, innovation is still lacking in the logistics industry in Malaysia. Third, 3PL need to invest more in technology and stay financially healthy to accelerate the diffusion of innovation under a more competitive cost structure. This paper has two contributions. First, we offer an enhanced methodology for total factor productivity by including an innovation component and apply it for the first time to the logistics industry. Second, we augment the performance measurement literature specific to the logistics industry and our research suggests that the antecedents of productivity in logistics companies are investment and financial strength. These productivity–innovation findings provide insights into Malaysia's logistics industry and may be helpful for economies similar to Malaysia.     

INTENSITY OF COMPETITION, ENTRY AND ENTRY DETERRENCE IN RENT SEEKING CONTESTS

In rent seeking contests agents compete over a given amount of resource a prize. To increase the likelihood of winning the prize, the agents expend efforts. This paper addresses the issue of entry to and entry deterrence from rent seeking contest. The main purpose of the analysis is to provide an explanation for the empirical fact that the number of participants in contests is usually small. I also obtain results on the relationship between the intensity of competition in a contest and the amount of the contenders'expenditures.     

Real Business Cycle Models: An Introduction

In this article we present a simple real business cycle (RBC) model, in order to show that these models capture many of the features of business cycles in the real economy. While these models are very abstract, we argue that they are a useful way of thinking about the macro-economy. RBC models have also been influential in refocusing attention on supply issues in macroeconomics, after a long postwar focus on aggregate demand management in Australia and most other western economies. Policies such as structural reform and labour market reform are clearly aimed at influencing the supply side of the economy and productivity, and can be understood within the framework of RBC theory. RBC models have developed rapidly recently, yet there remains a good deal of misunderstanding about the methods and aims of these models. In this article we present a review of the literature and examine a simple model, using graphical techniques, to clarify some issues. We also argue that these models, while having limitations, have caused a fruitful re-examination of supply issues in economics, after the almost exclusive focus on aggregate demand in macroeconomics until the late 1970s.     

Price Competition and Advertising Signals: Signaling by Competing Senders

Can price and advertising be used by vertically differentiated duopolists to signal qualities to consumers? We show that pure price separation is impossible if the vertical differentiation is small, while adding dissipative advertising ensures the existence of separating equilibria. Two simple, but nonstandard, equilibrium refinements are introduced to deal with the multisender nature of the game, and they are shown to produce a unique separating and a unique pooling profile. Pooling results in a zero‐profit Bertrand outcome. Separation gives strictly positive duopoly profits, and dissipative advertising is used by the high‐quality firm when products are sufficiently close substitutes. Finally, compared to the complete‐information benchmark, the separating prices of both firms are distorted upwards when the degree of vertical differentiation is large, and downwards when it is small.     

Benchmark priors for Bayesian model averaging

In contrast to a posterior analysis given a particular sampling model, posterior model probabilities in the context of model uncertainty are typically rather sensitive to the specification of the prior. In particular, ‘diffuse’ priors on model-specific parameters can lead to quite unexpected consequences. Here we focus on the practically relevant situation where we need to entertain a (large) number of sampling models and we have (or wish to use) little or no subjective prior information. We aim at providing an ‘automatic’ or ‘benchmark’ prior structure that can be used in such cases. We focus on the normal linear regression model with uncertainty in the choice of regressors. We propose a partly non-informative prior structure related to a natural conjugate g-prior specification, where the amount of subjective information requested from the user is limited to the choice of a single scalar hyperparameter g_0j. The consequences of different choices for g_0j are examined. We investigate theoretical properties, such as consistency of the implied Bayesian procedure. Links with classical information criteria are provided. More importantly, we examine the finite sample implications of several choices of g_0j in a simulation study. The use of the MC³ algorithm of Madigan and York (Int. Stat. Rev. 63 (1995) 215), combined with efficient coding in Fortran, makes it feasible to conduct large simulations. In addition to posterior criteria, we shall also compare the predictive performance of different priors. A classic example concerning the economics of crime will also be provided and contrasted with results in the literature. The main findings of the paper will lead us to propose a ‘benchmark’ prior specification in a linear regression context with model uncertainty.