The generalized Stackelberg equilibrium of the all-pay auction with complete information

We characterize the equilibrium of the all-pay auction with general convex cost of effort and sequential effort choices. We consider a set of n players who are arbitrarily partitioned into a group of players who choose their efforts ‘early’ and a group of players who choose ‘late’. Only the player with the lowest cost of effort has a positive payoff in any equilibrium. This payoff depends on his own timing vis-a-vis the timing of others. We also show that the choice of timing can be endogenized, in which case the strongest player typically chooses ‘late’, whereas all other players are indifferent with respect to their choice of timing. In the most prominent equilibrium the player with the lowest cost of effort wins the auction at zero aggregate cost. We thank Dan Kovenock and Luis C. Corchón for discussion and helpful comments. The usual caveat applies. Wolfgang Leininger likes to express his gratitude to Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB) for its generous hospitality and financial support.     

Laying the foundations of international careers research

As an editorial to the special issue “new avenues in international careers research” this article discusses the roots of the international careers research stream, which sits at the intersection between career studies, HRM and international management. In order to support future studies in this emerging area of enquiry, we attempt to lay down the foundations of a research agenda based around what we see as the three core areas of interest: contextualised careers research, comparative careers research and careers research in internationally operating organisations. After providing some suggestions for the kinds of theoretical and methodological tools that will be required to build on these foundations, we introduce the five empirical papers that comprise this special issue.     

TRADE INTEGRATION,OUTSOURCING AND EMPLOYMENT IN AUSTRIA: A DECOMPOSITION APPROACH

Outsourcing and trade integration of advanced countries is debated with respect to employment effects, in particular for low educated workers – at least in relative terms. We study the employment effects – differentiated by educational attainment levels – of changes in the patterns of trade integration and outsourcing in the Austrian economy over the periods 1995–2000 and 2000–2005 using hierarchical decomposition analysis based on deflated input–output tables. Outsourcing is modeled as changes in the shares of domestically produced intermediates in total intermediates. A similar decomposition of the final demand vector allows us to draw conclusions on the overall employment effects of trade integration. The results suggest that the expected negative employment effects of outsourcing and rising import penetration have been overcompensated by increasing exports. Thus, the overall employment effects of Austrian trade integration have been positive for all educational attainment groups. However, whereas the total effects have been strongest for medium and high educated workers over the period 1995–2000, employment of low educated workers have been strongest and positively affected over the period 2000–2005. This pattern can be explained by a more sluggish export performance together with stronger negative effects of outsourcing and import penetration in medium and high-skill intensive products.     

Do Overconfident Workers Cooperate Less? The Relationship Between Overconfidence and Cooperation in Team Production

The tendency to underestimate others' relative performance compared with one's own is widespread among individuals in all work environments. We examine the relationship between, and the driving forces behind, individual overconfidence and voluntary cooperation in team production. Our experimental data suggest an indirect and gender‐specific link: overconfident men hold more optimistic beliefs about coworkers' cooperativeness than men who lack confidence and are accordingly significantly more cooperative, whereas overconfidence, beliefs, and cooperativeness are not correlated in women. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Experimental evidence of limited attention at the gym

Experimental Economics - In a randomized field experiment, we show that a low-cost intervention, weekly email reminders, increases the weekly exercising frequency of gym members by 13%, with the...     

An outlier test for linear processes — II. Large contamination

In Flak/Schmid (1993) an outlier test for linear processes was introduced. The test statistic bases on a comparison of each observation with a one-step predictor. It was assumed that an upper bound for the total number of outlierss _n is known, wheren denotes the sample size. The asymptotic distribution of the test statistic was derived under the assumption thats _n/n → 0 ands _n → ∞ asn → ∞. This note deals with the asymptotic behaviour of this quantity, ifs _n/n →p ₀ ∈ (0, 1).     

Asymptotic behavior of the estimated weights and of the estimated performance measures of the minimum VaR and the minimum CVaR optimal portfolios for dependent data

In this paper we derive the asymptotic distributions of the estimated weights and of estimated performance measures of the minimum value-at-risk portfolio and of the minimum conditional value-at-risk portfolio assuming that the asset returns follow a strictly stationary process. It is proved that the estimated weights as well as the estimated performance measures are asymptotically multivariate normally distributed. We also present an asymptotic test for the weights and a joint test for the characteristics of both portfolios. Moreover, the asymptotic densities of the estimated performance measures are compared with the corresponding exact densities. It is shown that the asymptotic approximation performs well even for the moderate sample size.