Managerial Overconfidence,Self-Attribution Bias,and Downwardly Sticky Investment: Evidence from Korea

The extant literature on behavioral corporate finance has explored the effects of overconfidence on investment–cash flow sensitivity (ICS) to explain overinvestment, yet it has overlooked the asymmetric behavior of investments in relation to changes in cash flow levels. This study examines whether investments behave asymmetrically responding to changes in cash flows and, if so, how managerial overconfidence affects asymmetric ICS. Using a sample of KOSPI and KOSDAQ firms in Korea, we find the incidence of downwardly sticky ICS in unconstrained firms. We then find that overconfident managers encourage ICS to be stickier than their rational peers do in unconstrained firms. Finally, we find that managerial overconfidence intensified by self-attribution bias induces ICS to get even stickier, suggesting more explicit evidence of corporate investment distortions. The results of alternative tests using the asymmetric models of Homburg and Nasev (2008) are qualitatively consistent with prior results. Overall, our findings imply a higher incidence of excessive investment commitments driven by overconfident managers.     

我国标准化与专利的关系:基于ICS分类的实证分析

专利与标准(化)在一国创新系统中发挥着越来越重要的作用。国内外现有研究标准(化)与专利之间相互关系的实证文献很少,基于我国的宏观经验数据来分析专利和标准(化)之间关系的实证研究,在变量设定以及数据收集方面存在较大的缺陷。首先在变量的设定方面纠正了现有研究的不足之处,其次严格按照布莱德的标准的国际分类(ICS)和国际专利分类(IPC)之间的对应关系收集数据,从而在变量的选择和收集以及样本量方面保证了数据分析结果的有效性。经过实证分析,研究结果表明:我国的专利申请与标准之间具有积极的相互影响的关系;同时,在不同的行业中,专利申请和标准之间的关系是不同的。     

Interoperability of interpersonal communications services – A consumer perspective

The European Electronic Communications Code (EECC) enables competent authorities to introduce interoperability obligations also for number-independent interpersonal communications services (NI-ICS) such as Facebook Messenger, LINE, Skype, WeChat and WhatsApp. Under such an obligation, consumers could interact not just with users of the NI-ICS where they have a user account themselves, but also with users of all then interoperable NI-ICS. While with traditional electronic communications services (ECS) economic theory and consumer interests align as regards interoperability since multi-homing across various operators is the exemption, it is not yet clear whether that is also true for NI-ICS for which multi-homing is the norm. Our paper draws on an online survey of n = 2044 consumers in Germany covering traditional ECS, email and 22 other NI-ICS to address this issue from a consumer point of view. We find that people proactively use the boundaries between communications services to compartmentalize their social contacts according to relationship closeness. Our finding echoes indications provided in a rich stream of computer-mediated communication (CMC) research and in particular psychological theories of relationship development. Specifically, people appear to follow a finely tuned cultural code implying a hierarchical order of communications services used depending on the closeness of the contacts. Consequently, our results provide a complementary explanation of how and why certain groups of social ties converge to a specific (set of) communications service(s) beyond network effects and shed a critical light on current policy debates around an interoperability obligation for interpersonal communications applications. They highlight that an interoperability obligation for NI-ICS would likely not be in line with consumer interests.