Is the Optimal Labor Income Tax Progressive in a Unionized Economy?*

This paper concerns optimal nonlinear labor income taxation in an economy with union wage setting and endogenous hours of work. The purpose is to study the determinants of tax progression. We show that the optimal degree of progression of the labor income tax depends on the extent to which the government can influence the wage rate via tax policy as well as on its ability to redistribute income across individuals. In addition, the argument for progressive labor income taxation depends on whether hours of work are chosen by the employed themselves or the union.     

Combining data and text mining techniques for analysing financial reports

There is a vast amount of financial information on companies' financial performance available to investors in electronic form today. While automatic analysis of financial figures is common, it has been difficult to extract meaning from the textual parts of financial reports automatically. The textual part of an annual report contains richer information than the financial ratios. In this paper, we combine data and text mining methods for analysing quantitative and qualitative data from financial reports, in order to see if the textual part of the report contains some indications about future financial performance. The quantitative analysis has been performed using self‐organizing maps, and the qualitative analysis using prototype‐matching text clustering. The analysis is performed on the quarterly reports of three leading companies in the telecommunications sector. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nothing is so good it can't be made better

The concept of continuous improvement can be viewed from the perspectives of the elimination of waste or the improvement of quality. The waste elimination approach attacks all forms of waste, whereas quality improvement uses the concept of total customer satisfaction. This article describes an eight-step model for continuous improvement that addresses waste elimination and customer satisfaction.     

Industrial Climate Neutrality in the EU: Outline of an Integrated Industrial Green Deal

Intereconomics - Industry, and in particular the energy-intensive extraction and production of basic materials such as chemicals, cement, steel, non-ferrous metals, ceramics, and so on, is...     

Market-focused sustainability: market orientation plus!

The concept of sustainability is increasingly being addressed theoretically by scholars and practically by managers and policymakers. With this growing focus on sustainability efforts, marketing is in a unique position to elevate its focus from managing relationships with customers to strategically managing a broader set of marketplace issues. Overall, an organization achieves market-based sustainability to the extent that it strategically aligns itself with the market-oriented product needs and wants of customers and the interests of multiple stakeholders concerned about social responsibility issues involving economic, environmental, and social dimensions. To set the stage for marketing’s inquiry into sustainability efforts, I briefly review the concept of sustainability, compare it with corporate social responsibility, bring in stakeholders, argue for the notion of “market orientation plus,” and consider the possibility that the notion of what sustainability encompasses is converging in the marketing literature.     

On the importance of matching strategic behavior and target market selection to business strategy in high-tech markets

Business strategy is fundamentally concerned with the actions required to create superior customer value in the firm’s target markets with the ultimate goal of achieving superior performance. Marketing theory suggests that two critical marketing activities required to achieve this end are: (1) the adoption of appropriate strategic behaviors (i.e., customer-oriented, competitor-oriented, technology-oriented) and (2) targeting of the appropriate market segments (i.e., innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards). This study builds on prior research which demonstrates that the strategic behavior—firm performance relationship is contingent on the firm’s strategy by examining this relationship in high tech markets and by considering the incremental contribution of appropriate target market selection. Responses from 160 senior marketing managers in high-tech firms reveal strong support for our framework. Thus, this study provides useful guidance to executives and managers in high-tech firms regarding the steps that they should take to increase their probability of success.

The greening of Swedish energy policy: A critique

This article discusses Swedish energy policy over the period 1973–1992 with a focus on its current energy objectives. Bans on energy sources are assessed as one of the challenges faced by Sweden in the 1990s. We raise questions about the future consequences of such draconian approaches to energy policy that inhibit societal learning. Bans on any fuel source only serve to handicap the economy and lead to a less flexible and more inefficient energy supply at a greater than necessary cost. With the Swedish economy on the verge of becoming more integrated with the rest of Europe, it is imperative to view its comparative advantage in electricity as the basis for its energy policy rather than the individual fuels that generate that electricity. Our goal has been to synthesize components among existing energy objectives to suggest logical implications for the future.     

Does market orientation matter?: a test of the relationship between positional advantage and performance

A recent series of articles in the Strategic Management Journal has discussed the potential value of an organization developing a market orientation in its quest to achieve success. We posit that market orientation can enhance success, but that its potential value should not be considered in isolation. Specifically, we draw on the resource‐based view of the firm to suggest that four capabilities—market orientation, entrepreneurship, innovativeness, and organizational learning—each contribute to the creation of positional advantages for some firms. The data used are drawn from 181 large multinational corporations (MNC). The results indicate that positional advantages arising from the confluence of market orientation, entrepreneurship, innovativeness, and organizational learning have a positive effect on MNC performance (five‐year average change in ROI, income, and stock price). Overall, the results support the contention that market orientation can enhance success, albeit within the context of other important phenomena. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.