Innovation speed under uncertainty and competition

Innovation speed is widely considered to be a key factor for a firm's ability to maintain competitive advantage. Primarily, empirical evidence has found contradictory interdependencies regarding the role of innovation speed. The prevailing proposition of “the faster the better” has been challenged by results of empirical studies heavily depending on the methodological setup used. In contrast, we propose a model of the complete innovation process to study innovation speed under uncertainty and competition. We find that higher market uncertainty speeds up innovation and encourages firms to innovate incrementally. Strong competition tends to reduce innovation speed and encourages rather radical innovation.     

Peking raises the statistical veil

The veil which hid the statistical records of the People’s Republic of China for two decades was raised at the second session of the Vth National People’s Congress. In the following article Prof. Kraus presents the most important official data on the country’s economic development and considers them in context with hitherto available western estimates.     

The effects of corporate reputation perceptions of the general public on shareholder value

Superior corporate reputations can have strategic value for firms. Of the “multiple reputations” associated with each firm, we focus on the perceptions of the general public. The public represents the most widely defined stakeholder group but has attracted the least amount of research interest to date. Drawing on data for German firms, this study demonstrates that superior reputation perceptions issued by the general public increase shareholder value, as measured by future stock returns. This study provides a more nuanced understanding for this novel finding. Applying a conceptualization of reputation that balances both its affective and cognitive components, we find that reputation perceptions that are driven by nonfinancial aspects are more value relevant in the future than reputation perceptions that are driven by previous financial performance. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Can outstanding dividend payments be estimated by American options?

Based on historical market data for American options on a stock and no-arbitrage bounds on future dividends they can!      

Monitoring or payroll maximization? What happens when workers enter the boardroom?

Review of Accounting Studies - We examine whether worker representation on corporate boards results in improved monitoring or payroll maximization. Several economic theories predict that worker...     

Luther and the Girls: Religious Denomination and the Female Education Gap in Nineteenth‐century Prussia*

Martin Luther urged each town to have a girls' school so that girls would learn to read the Gospel, thereby evoking a surge of building girls' schools in Protestant areas. Using county‐ and town‐level data from the first Prussian census of 1816, we show that a larger share of Protestants decreased the gender gap in basic education. This result holds when using only the exogenous variation in Protestantism due to a county's or town's distance to Wittenberg, the birthplace of the Reformation. Similar results are found for the gender gap in literacy among the adult population in 1871.     

A cross-national comparison and taxonomy of DEA-based hospital efficiency studies

This paper provides the first taxonomy of hospital efficiency studies that uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) and related techniques. We provide a systematic review of 79 such studies published from 1984–2004 that represent 12 countries. Only studies written in English are considered. A cross-national comparison reveals significant differences with respect to important study characteristics such as type of DEA model selected and choice of input and output categories. Compared with US studies, European efforts are more likely to measure allocative rather than technical efficiency, use longitudinal data, and use fewer observations. We take a longitudinal perspective that illustrates the life cycle of this research, as well as its diffusion across disciplines. Our taxonomy can be used by policy makers and researchers to review past, and assemble new, DEA models.     

Portrayals of Minorities and Women in Super Bowl Advertising

Portrayals of women and minorities advertising have long been of interest to advertising scholars. While research has found that the overall representation of these groups has increased, some stereotypes persist, and so do questions about the quality and prominence of portrayals. This study examines portrayals of minorities and women in Super Bowl advertising, the main “pop culture” showcase for US advertising. A content analysis of 10 years of Super Bowl ads is conducted and a multinomial logit regression model is employed to delve deeper into the content analysis results. Findings show that while the overall representation of women and various minority groups is strong, a deeper analysis shows that these groups are seldom depicted as primary characters by themselves and that some subtle stereotypes persist. We also find that ads featuring female principal characters are more likely to feature home settings, sexual appeals, emotional messages, and music as a major element and that it is less likely for female (vs. male) celebrities to be used. Minority principal characters are more likely to be celebrities and be included in ads with music or for technical products but are less likely to be included in ads featuring corporate social responsibility messages.