renewable energy investment and job creation a cross sectoral assessment for the czech republic with reference to eu benchmarks the development of renewable energy sources has been primarily justified on the ground of environmental policies and energy security but new jobs opportunities and establishment of new economy sectors may be equally important co benefits from investments in this sector the main goal of this paper is to assess the employment benefits of investments in renewable energy in the czech republic we examine the level and rate of the development of the renewable energy sector in the czech republic in terms of green job creation for the period 2008 2013 in comparison to data from other eu countries including germany as a leading early investor in renewables whilst the deployment of renewable energy in the czech republic has succeeded to create a significant number of jobs more than 20 000 employees in 2010 our analysis illustrates a strong dependency of job creation on the continuation of financial incentives we also find that biomass and waste energy processing offer the highest employment per mwh which benefits employment in economically fragile rural areas we discuss the question of competitiveness of a country that was not amongst the early adopters of renewables arguing that the technical skills of the labour force in the czech republic provide a potential for more sustained investments in the sector

how firms respond to financial restatement ceo successors and external reactions although past studies have paid considerable attention to firms reputations few have investigated the actions that firms take following a reputation damaging event we identify firms involved in financial earnings restatements and examine whether naming a successor ceo with specific qualities serves to signal the seriousness of a firm s efforts to restore its reputation using theories of market signaling we argue that attributes of successor ceos significantly influence the reactions of key external constituencies in particular firms with more severe restatement tend to name successors who have prior ceo or turnaround experience and a more elite education the naming of such successors results in more positive reactions from the stock market financial analysts and mass media we argue that these attributes send messages to stakeholders and the broader public about the ceo s credibility and the firm s efforts

strategic alliances venture capital and exit decisions in early stage high tech firms abstract we study the trade offs that biotech start ups face in the private equity market when they choose between raising firm level capital from venture capitalists or project level capital from strategic alliance partners increased alliance activity makes future alliances more likely but future vc activity less likely in contrast venture capital vc activity makes both future alliance and future vc activity more likely both types of private capital raise the hazard of going public acquisition as an alternative to initial public offering is made more likely by increased vc activity but the link between acquisition probabilities and alliance activity is less clear cut these results highlight both the importance of alliance partners in resolving asymmetric information problems in the capital acquisition process and the potential conflict of interest between different sources of private equity

who appropriates centrality rents the role of institutions in regulating social networks in the global islamic finance industry this study explains and tests the effects of country level institutions on the distribution of centrality rents between two sets of actors in an interorganizational network building on the literature on corporate elites we propose that a cohesive elite following organizational logics other than profit maximization diverts centrality rents and induces costs on firms and that macro institutions act as external governance mechanisms to shape this relationship we develop our theory in the emerging islamic finance industry where shariah scholars connect firms and constitute a religious corporate elite while central scholars in this network create legitimacy for firms they also shirk and cause information leakage suggesting a negative centrality performance relationship for the firms country level institutions such as government regulation and democracy we argue ameliorate these effects by influencing this religious elite s institutional logic and restraining their actions while institutions developed from within the industry strengthen the power of the elite testing our theory in a network of 367 scholars and 396 institutions over 31 countries using multi level methods we indeed find a negative centrality performance relationship that is ameliorated by stronger government regulation but exacerbated by better developed industry specific institutions as well as a negative relationship between democratic and regulatory institutions and centrality

multi criteria revision of the hungarian renewable energy utilization action plan review of the aspect of economy abstract in 2012 the hungarian government has decided to revise the country s national renewable action plan mostly due to the experienced changes of the economic environment and the continuously decreasing cost of renewable energy technologies present paper introduces the methodology and the most important results of this revision process carried out by the centre for energy research of the hungarian academy of sciences first the results of hungarian initiatives aiming the increase of the share of renewable were examined then by analysis of technological and economic trends of recent years new scenarios were set to reach the targets set by adopting the 2009 28 ec directive 1 a multiple criteria decision analysis mcda of all potential renewable technologies and their respective fuels served as a basis for the most competitive scenarios the authors focused on five aspects economy environment climate job creation and innovation due to coverage constraints present paper dominantly focuses on the review of the economical aspect but in addition to those mentioned further aspects may also be considered in the optimisation process the results of the revision highlight that by 2020 hungary will still mostly be using bioenergy in its renewable portfolio which also allows the country to exploit its significant potential

a status based model of market competition this article explores the significance of status processes for generating and reproducing hierarchy among producers in a market it develops a conception of a market as a status order in which each

getting off to a good start the effects of upper echelon affiliations on underwriter prestige the initial public offering ipo is one of the most critical events in the lifetime of a young firm prior research has shown that firms tend to have successful ipos if they go public with the endorsement of a prestigious lead underwriter this paper examines the antecedents to receiving endorsement by a prestigious underwriter and links this to the experience base of a firm s upper echelon we theorize that the amount and type of upper echelon experience serve as important symbols of a young firm s legitimacy to critical outsiders we introduce a typology of upper echelon experience that distinguishes between upper echelon upstream horizontal and downstream employment based affiliations and suggest that these different types of upper echelon affiliations allay different types of endorser concerns regarding firm legitimacy affecting the endorsement process further we theorize that the relationships between upper echelon experience and investment bank prestige will be moderated by technological uncertainty we test our assertions on a comprehensive sample of public and private biotechnology firms that were founded between 1961 and 1994 and that went public between 1979 and 1996 analyses of the five year career histories of the over 3 200 executives and directors that make up the upper echelons of these firms show that firms with upper echelons with affiliations with prominent downstream organizations i e pharmaceutical and or healthcare companies and with prominent horizontal organizations i e biotechnology companies are more likely to attract the endorsement of a prestigious investment bank we also find that the greater the range of upper echelon affiliations across the categories of upstream horizontal and downstream affiliations the more prestigious the firm s lead underwriter we also find that these latter results are moderated by technological uncertainty the present research has implications for the study of organizational legitimacy interorganizational endorsements and entrepreneurship

home country networks and foreign expansion evidence from the venture capital industry we propose that home country network advantages shape firms foreign expansion we argue that a social status advantage is transferable from one market to another as a signal of quality but that a

the conditional nature of embeddedness a study of borrowing by large u s firms 1973 1994 economic and organizational sociologists have increasingly demonstrated that the actions of individuals and firms are affected by the social networks within which they are embedded in recent years scholars have begun to recognize that the effects of these social networks may vary across populations or types of relations this article examines the extent to which the effects of interfirm networks on the behavior of firms are historically contingent focusing on the level of debt financing among approximately 140 large u s corporations over a 22 year period the authors show that the extent to which the firms use of debt was influenced by those with which they were tied through director interlocks declined over time the authors argue that this decline in the network effect reflected a shift in the institutional environment within which the firms operated and that it was driven by three processes the professionalization of the finance function within the firm the internalization of financial decision

interorganizational alliances and the performance of firms a study of growth and innovation rates in a high technology industry this paper investigates the relationship between intercorporate technology alliances and firm performance it argues that alliances are access relationships and therefore that the advantages which a focal firm derives from a portfolio of strategic coalitions depend upon the resource profiles of its alliance partners in particular large firms and those that possess leading edge technological resources are posited to be the most valuable associates the paper also argues that alliances are both pathways for the exchange of resources and signals that convey social status and recognition particularly when one of the firms in an alliance is a young or small organization or more generally an organization of equivocal quality alliances can act as endorsements they build public confidence in the value of an organization s products and services and thereby facilitate the firm s efforts to attract customers and other corporate partners the findings from models of sales growth and innovation rates in a large sample of semiconductor producers confirm that organizations with large and innovative alliance partners perform better than otherwise comparable firms that lack such partners consistent with the status transfer arguments the findings also demonstrate that young and small firms benefit more from large and innovative strategic alliance partners than do old and large organizations copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

katrina s children evidence on the structure of peer effects from hurricane evacuees in 2005 hurricanes katrina and rita forced many children to relocate across the southeast while schools quickly enrolled evacuees receiving families worried about the impact of evacuees on non evacuee students data from houston and louisiana show that on average the influx of evacuees moderately reduced elementary math test scores in houston we reject linear in means models of peer effects and find evidence of a highly non linear but monotonic model student achievement improves with high ability and worsens with low ability peers moreover exposure to undisciplined evacuees increased native absenteeism and disciplinary problems supporting a bad apple model in behavior

renewable energy policy framework and bioenergy contribution in the european union an overview from national renewable energy action plans and progress reports abstract the use of renewable energy is projected to increase substantially in the european union to reach a share of 20 in final energy consumption and 10 renewable energy in transport by 2020 the renewable energy contribution is further expected to increase to 55 75 of gross final energy consumption in 2050 according to the latest reports the european union has made significant progress since 2005 and is on track to reach its 2020 renewable energy targets this paper provides a review of the policy framework for renewable energy in the european union and an analysis of the progress made by the use of renewable energy as well as the expected developments until 2020 and beyond it focusses on the contribution of bioenergy the major source among renewables in the european union as biomass availability is a critical issue for the bioenergy production this paper provides an analysis of the biomass demand for reaching the 2020 targets in relation with the expected domestic supply and biomass potential

school meal quality and academic performance abstract improving the nutritional content of public school meals is a topic of intense policy interest a main motivation is the health of school children and in particular the rising childhood obesity rate medical and nutrition literature has long argued that a healthy diet can have a second important impact improved cognitive function in this paper we test whether offering healthier meals affects student achievement as measured by test scores our sample includes all california ca public schools over a five year period we estimate difference in differences style regressions using variation that takes advantage of frequent meal vendor contract turnover students at schools that contract with a healthy school meal vendor score higher on ca state achievement tests we do not find any evidence that healthier school meals lead to a decrease in obesity rates the test score gains while modest in magnitude come at very low cost

shrewd crude or simply deluded comovement and the internet stock phenomenon we show that i return comovement among internet stocks during the late 1990s and early 2000 was not exceedingly high ii there was substantial consistency in the manner by which investors distinguished among internet stocks and iii high comovement is most common during periods of price erosion these results cast doubt on the view that the extraordinary appreciation of internet stocks was due to the crude classification of all such stocks as members of a hot category

childhood nutrition and labor market outcomes evidence from a school breakfast program abstract while a growing literature documents the short term effects of public programs providing children with nutritious food there is scarce evidence of the long term effects of such programs this paper studies the long term and intergenerational consequences of access to nutritious food using the rollout of a free school breakfast program in norwegian cities this program provided children with nutritious food and replaced a hot school meal at the end of the day with similar caloric value but less micronutrients our results indicate that access to a nutritious school breakfast increases education by 0 1 years and earnings by 2 3 in addition we present empirical evidence that early exposure is most beneficial that a longer treatment duration does not yield higher returns and that the positive effects on men s earnings are transmitted across generations our results are mostly robust to adding municipality specific time trends event study models support the validity of the research design and most estimated effects survive adjustment for multiple hypothesis testing

how much prestige is enough assessing the value of multiple types of high status affiliates for young firms abstract young unproven firms can signal their worthiness or potential through affiliations with various types of prestigious parties drawing from signaling theory we present a formal consideration of the implications of multiple numbers and types of prestigious affiliates for ipo valuations we argue that different types of prestigious affiliates prestigious executives directors venture capital firms and underwriters convey different signals of ipo worth depending on the extent to which they provide certification or substantive benefits based on a sample of 257 software ipos we find considerable support for our expectations the benefits of prestigious executives and directors accumulate in a linear more is better fashion in contrast the payoffs from vc and underwriter prestige accumulate in a curvilinear fashion we discuss the theoretical implications of these findings and propose an agenda for future research

preentry contacts and the generation of nascent networks in organizations this paper investigates the impact of individuals social ties at organizational entry on the formation of intraorganizational networks when individuals enter organizations with one or more preentry relationships in place i argue they form more extensive networks post entry than their untied counterparts however it is also suggested that under some conditions i e when quality is more certain the relationship between pre and postentry social structure is contingent on individuals quality attributes i test and find support for these hypotheses in a study of new business and law professionals the results indicate that individuals with an initial advantage in social ties form more extensive networks post entry than those without such an advantage and that when certainty about quality is high this effect depends on the quality attributes of the new entrants implications of this study for research on social networks resource accumulation and inequality are discussed

the challenges of determining the employment effects of renewable energy abstract the benefits of promoting renewable energy are regularly claimed to be energy security climate change mitigation and job creation while the first two benefits are generally accepted the impact of renewable energy on employment is still disputed this paper presents a discussion of the various factors that influence the analysis of renewable energy and its impact on employment the advantages and disadvantages of input output methods and analysis methods are discussed as well as the issues surrounding the measurement of job creation a critical evaluation of the literature reveals factors that should be considered when completing a study about renewable energy and employment labour intensity of renewables cost increases and availability of investments counting job losses job quality and skills model assumptions and sources of information analytical studies using extensive surveys were found to be more appropriate for regional studies while input output methods were better suited to national and international studies

domestic alliance network to attract foreign partners evidence from international joint ventures in china partner selection is a critical issue in building international joint ventures ijvs we argue that foreign firms are more likely to select local firms with unique network structural advantages within a local alliance network we frame structural advantages as two network position traits centrality and brokerage specifically network centrality acts as a stronger network trait than brokerage in attracting foreign ijv partners however such a relationship may be moderated by foreign firms local experience and perceived capabilities we contend that when foreign firms have a high level of local market experience and perceived capabilities they may prefer a local broker over a centrally located local firm data on the domestic alliance network in china s electronics and information technology it industries largely support our hypotheses we conclude that as foreign investors become strategic insiders they may not only seek a local partner s capability attributes but also more critically pay attention to a local partner s domestic network

labor market advantages of organizational status a study of lateral partner hiring by large u s law firms prior research demonstrates product market advantages of organizational status but largely neglects factor market advantages we propose that status is advantageous in labor markets because individuals generally consider employer status a nonpecuniary employment benefit dyadic analyses of lateral partner hiring by large u s law firms demonstrate two status based advantages in employee hiring and retention first high status firms are more likely than low status ones to hire an employee from a more profitable competitor second high status firms are most likely to lose an employee to a lower status competitor when the competitor is atypically more profitable we discuss implications of these findings for individual and organizational status attainment and for the stability of industry status hierarchies

unbundling the structure of inertia resource versus routine rigidity i work to unbundle the structure of inertia into two distinct categories resource rigidity failure to change resource investment patterns and routine rigidity failure to change organizational p

dynamic inducements in r d investment market signals and network locations this research shows that alliance networks shape how firms respond to uncertainty reducing information generated outside a network product awards signal the potential commercial success of the awa

food for thought the effects of school accountability plans on school nutrition abstract with the passage of the no child left behind act of 2001 school accountability is now federal law continuing the recent trend of states implementing significant accountability systems for schools this paper studies an unusual yet powerful school response to accountability systems using disaggregated school lunch menus from a random sample of school districts in virginia we find that schools threatened with accountability sanctions increase the caloric content of their lunches on testing days in an apparent attempt to boost short term student cognitive performance moreover we find that the schools that responded the most along these dimensions experienced the greatest improvements in standardized test scores

early childhood nutrition and academic achievement a longitudinal analysis abstract many policymakers propose early childhood nutrition programs as a way to increase students academic achievement this paper investigates the nutrition learning nexus using a unique longitudinal data set that follows a large sample of filipino children from birth until the end of their primary education we find that better nourished children perform significantly better in school partly because they enter school earlier and thus have more time to learn but mostly because of greater learning productivity per year of schooling our cost benefit analysis suggests that a dollar invested in an early childhood nutrition program in a developing country could potentially return at least three dollars worth of gains in academic achievement and perhaps much more

a review of multi criteria decision making mcdm towards sustainable renewable energy development abstract in the current era of sustainable development energy planning has become complex due to the involvement of multiple benchmarks like technical social economic and environmental this in turn puts major constraints for decision makers to optimize energy alternatives independently and discretely especially in case of rural communities in addition topographical limitations concerning renewable energy systems which are mostly distributed in nature the energy planning becomes more complicated in such cases decision analysis plays a vital role for designing such systems by considering various criteria and objectives even at disintegrated levels of electrification multiple criteria decision making mcdm is a branch of operational research dealing with finding optimal results in complex scenarios including various indicators conflicting objectives and criteria this tool is becoming popular in the field of energy planning due to the flexibility it provides to the decision makers to take decisions while considering all the criteria and objectives simultaneously this article develops an insight into various mcdm techniques progress made by considering renewable energy applications over mcdm methods and future prospects in this area an extensive review in the sphere of sustainable energy has been performed by utilizing mcdm technique

global connectedness and local innovation in industrial clusters in today s knowledge economy clusters are a key driver of a country s competitiveness yet a cluster s technological base is now more than ever influenced by constituent firms actions to tap into distant knowledge sources drawing on a social network perspective and distinguishing between horizontal versus vertical organization based linkages we explore the effects of a cluster s connectedness to foreign locations on its innovation performance we show that improvements in horizontal and vertical connectedness both stimulate a cluster s innovation performance but that their relative effects vary across cluster types innovation in knowledge intensive clusters disproportionately benefits from enhancements in their constituent firms horizontal connectedness to foreign knowledge hotspots innovation in labor intensive clusters mostly gains from stronger vertical connections by their firms to central value chain players abroad we discuss the implications of our findings for research on global knowledge sourcing and cluster upgrading

top management s attention to discontinuous technological change corporate venture capital as an alert mechanism technological discontinuities pose serious challenges to top managers attention these discontinuities which often occur at the fringes of an industry are usually driven by innovative and often venture capital backed start ups creating new products and transforming existing industries in ways that are difficult for incumbent managers to understand against the backdrop of their existing cognitive schemata however failing to appreciate and embrace successful technological discontinuities might endanger incumbents very existence extending the attention based view we explore whether and how interorganizational relationships guide top managers attention either to or away from technological discontinuities we propose that homophilous relationships e g alliances with industry peers should exhibit a negative relationship with incumbents timely attention to technological discontinuities whereas heterophilous relationships e g with venture capitalists as a result of coinvestments should exhibit a positive relationship furthermore we hypothesize that the status of the partners strengthens the effect of homophilous and heterophilous relationships with the timely attention of top managers to technological discontinuities based on a longitudinal study of the incumbents in four information and communications technology industry sectors we find that heterophilous ties through corporate venture capital cvc coinvesting with high status venture capital firms exhibit a strong positive relationship with timely attention cvc when it connects senior management to high status venture capitalists through coinvestments has a special role in directing top managers attention to technological discontinuities and ensuing business opportunities implications for the understanding of the role of interorganizational ties as structural determinants of top managers attention are discussed

who pays the price of brokerage transferring constraint through price setting in the staffing sector this article analyzes how a broker s ability to affect prices and extract superior value from its position has economic consequences for the actors tied to it i argue that intermediaries may exercise partial control in price setting by transferring the price constraints imposed on them by the actors on one side of the market to those on the other side in so doing they generate unequal returns for the brokered parties who then receive different prices due to the nature of the tie between the broker and its other exchange partners i investigate this argument using a novel mix of quantitative and qualitative data gathered from an intermediary in the staffing sector the results show that the broker is able to transfer discounts offered to valued buyers clients on to the sellers workers matched with them instead of reducing its own margins as a result actors with the same resource endowments receive different prices depending on the relationships among other exchange partners in a given triadic ne

syndication institutionalization and lottery play1 why do people play the lottery since lottery tickets are assets with negative expected return lottery play challenges the basic assumptions of economic theory this article approaches lottery play from a networks perspective and focuses on syndicate play a comparison of the development of lottery markets in germany austria spain and portugal from the 17th century onward shows that lottery play declined with rising incomes except in countries in which syndicate play diffused widely namely spain and to a lesser extent portugal although syndicating originated among the relatively poor as a response to an increase in lottery prices it persisted even when individual play became affordable this article contends that syndicating endured because of an institutionalization process by which lottery tickets have transformed from purely economic assets into symbolic carriers of interpersonal ties that convey membership and status position in relevant social networks

getting known by the company you keep publicizing the qualifications and former associations of skilled employees when product quality cannot be ascertained in advance of purchase producers must convince relevant audiences that they are worthy of consideration as quality players we propose that quality oriented producers will selectively publicize information about their skilled employees in anticipation of signaling benefits which include the accrual of visibility and the projection of quality based identities we validate our perspective on publicizing affiliation information by analyzing how a sample of australian wine producers publicized specific career information about their skilled employees i e their winemakers including the names of certain former employers of these individuals copyright 2009 oxford university press

the rise and fall of small worlds exploring the dynamics of social structure this paper explores the interplay between social structure and economic action by examining some of the evolutionary dynamics of an emergent network that coalesces into a small world system the study highlights the small world system s evolutionary dynamics at both the macro level of the network and the micro level of an individual actor this dual analytical lens helps establish that in competitive and information intensive settings a small world system could be a highly dynamic structure that follows an inverted u shaped evolutionary pattern wherein an increase in the small worldliness of the system is followed by its later decline as a result of three factors 1 the recursive relationship between the evolving social structure and individual actors formation of bridging ties which eventually homogenizes the information space and decreases actors propensity to form bridging ties creating a globally separated network 2 self containment of the small world network or increasing homogenization of the social system which makes the small world less accepting of and less attractive to new actors thereby limiting formation of bridging ties to outside clusters and 3 fragmentation of the small world network or the small world system s inability to retain current clusters the study uses data on interorganizational tie formation in the global computer industry in the period from 1996 to 2005 to test the hypothesized relationships

toward an aspiration level theory of open innovation although open innovation has become increasingly established in the management literature comprehensive theoretical explanations of what drives firms to be open are sparse taking the perspective of the behavioral theory of the firm we conceive of open innovation as a form of nonlocal search arguing that firms will turn to open innovation when substantially under or over performing relative to their aspirations we further enquire how this relationship is moderated by firm specific innovation related resources human capital research and development investment and patents employing a representative survey of uk firms we find some evidence of moderation allowing us to present explanations of search through open innovation and contribute to the behavioral theory of the firm itself

an economic evaluation of the moneyball hypothesis in his 2003 book moneyball financial reporter michael lewis made a striking claim the valuation of skills in the market for baseball players was grossly inefficient the discrepancy was so large that when the oakland athletics hired an unlikely management group consisting of billy beane a former player with mediocre talent and two quantitative analysts the team was able to exploit this inefficiency and outproduce most of the competition while operating on a shoestring budget the publication of moneyball triggered a firestorm of criticism from baseball insiders lewis 2004 and it raised the eyebrows of many economists as well basic price theory implies a tight correspondence between pay and productivity when markets are competitive and rich in information as would seem to be the case in baseball the market for baseball players receives daily attention from the print and broadcast media along with periodic in depth analysis from lifelong baseball experts and academic economists indeed a case can be made that more is known about pay and quantified performance in this market than in any other labor market in the american economy in this paper we test the central portion of lewis s 2003 argument with elementary econometric tools and confirm his claims in particular we find that hitters salaries during this period did not accurately reflect the contribution of various batting skills to winning games this inefficiency was sufficiently large that knowledge of its existence and the ability to exploit it enabled the oakland athletics to gain a substantial advantage over their competition further we find

charting the territory recombination as a source of uncertainty for potential entrants in this paper we conceptualize categories as regions of a cognitive map that structure the market and guide the investment decisions of potential entrants i e of new and established organizations we advance that as a category appears altered via incumbents acts of recombination potential entrants face market specific uncertainty and are discouraged to invest in that category these negative effects of recombination on market entries are however mitigated at increasing values of category status we test our arguments in the market for electronic music the analyses of product and organizational entries in music styles between 1978 and 2011 lend support to our arguments

the dynamics of organizational status this paper examines the growth and decline of organizational status it is argued that an organization s status is determined by two factors past performance outcomes and the status of the organization s affiliates the better the past performance outcomes and the higher the status of the affiliates the greater the organization s growth in status this basic proposition is tested in an examination of status changes among investment banks in the non investment grade market between 1981 and 1987 implications and extensions are discussed in the conclusion copyright 1996 by oxford university press

the sociological approach to financial markets as a part of the renaissance and growth of economic sociology during the past two decades and in response to processes such as economic globalization financial markets have been increasingly scrutinized by sociologists their investigation is seen as relevant with respect to understanding the structure and dynamics of advanced societies the dynamics of social development as well as fundamental aspects of human behaviour this paper charts recent developments in the sociology of financial markets its starting point is the treatment of the concept of information within three sociological orientations the social structural approach sociological neo institutionalism and the newer social studies of finance by highlighting their different assumptions about information and market behaviour i discuss how these approaches conceptualize financial markets the methodological implications and the ways in which they contribute to the study of financial exchanges

magnification and correction of the acolyte effect initial benefits and ex post settling up in nfl coaching careers what are the long term consequences of initially beneficial high reputation workplace ties under uncertainty acolytes i e subordinates with work connections to high reputation industry leaders

organizing contests for status the matthew effect vs the mark effect what is the best way to design tournaments for status in which individuals labor primarily for the esteem of their peers what process in other words should organizers of status based contests impose upon those who covet peer recognition we propose a formal model of status based competition that contrasts two competing alternatives the first following merton is the matthew effect according to which a tournament s architect directs slack resources to elite actors and thus widens the distribution of rewards by favoring cumulative advantage the second is the mark effect under which a tournament s designer instead pushes slack resources to marginal actors and thus tightens the distribution of rewards our results suggest that although the mark effect is better for the social welfare of most tournaments the matthew effect is preferable in two distinct contexts in small tournaments where variation in underlying ability translates into acute advantages for the most capable contestants and in large tournaments whose contestants face constant rather than rising marginal costs a condition we relate to contestants perception of their work as intrinsically valuable our contributions are twofold we find counter to the thrust of merton s work that cumulative advantage is not invariably optimal for the functioning of status contests and we identify circumstances in which the production of superstars is likely to make contests for status better off in aggregate implications for future research on status and management are discussed this paper was accepted by olav sorenson organizations and social networks

network composition collaborative ties and upgrading in emerging market firms lessons from the argentine autoparts sector what types of relational and institutional mechanisms shape knowledge flows and the upgrading capabilities of emerging market firms in the face of economic liberalization we analyze the argentine autoparts sector to distinguish the relative impact of different types of network relationships on a firm s process and product upgrading a few social ties to international assemblers appear to be most beneficial for local suppliers although they may be insufficient to compensate fully for the negative effect of being located in a lower tier supplier customer relationships that are part of regular disciplined discussions for product and process improvements appear to be especially beneficial for upgrading

the decline of social entrenchment social network cohesion and board responsiveness to shareholder activism shareholder activism through corporate governance proposals is a prominent avenue for investors to voice their concerns in corporate governance matters however shareholder proposals have an uneven effect on corporate governance this paper contributes to research on shareholder activism by joining social movement approaches to activism with network theoretic approaches to corporate governance the paper examines how firms position within cohesive sections of the board interlock network termed social entrenchment predicts 1 the likelihood of being targeted by activist investors and 2 firms responsiveness to proposal demands first a firm s position in the board network serves as a salient network prism attracting activists attention this is especially true for activist investors who lack other backchannel avenues for engagement or seek to use public reputational penalties as part of their activism strategy second the board network traditionally served as an important collective infrastruc

nutrition and cognitive achievement an evaluation of the school breakfast program this paper investigates the impact of the school breakfast program sbp on cognitive achievement the sbp is a federal entitlement program that offers breakfast to any student including free breakfast for any low income student who attends a school that participates in the program to increase the availability of the sbp many states mandate that schools participate in the program if the percent of free or reduced price eligible students in a school exceeds a specific threshold using the details of these mandates as a source of identifying variation i find that the availability of the program increases student achievement

network prominence bargaining power and the allocation of value capturing rights in high tech alliance contracts we suggest and provide empirical evidence that the bargaining power of alliance partners stemming from their prominence in alliance networks influences the ex ante allocation of value capturing rights in high tech alliance contracts network prominence can enhance the availability of alternative partners for a firm and thereby elevates the firm s bargaining power and enables the firm to receive i more value capturing rights vis a vis its partner i e more net value capturing rights and ii more rights to the unexpected outcomes vis a vis its partner we empirically investigate the content of research and development r d collaboration contracts between biotech and pharmaceutical firms and show that as the prominence of the client i e pharmaceutical firm increases it is able to attain i more net value capturing rights to outcomes within the area of collaboration and ii more rights to unexpected outcomes by contrast increased prominence of the r d firm i e biotech firm decreases both t

the curvilinear relationships between structural embeddedness and productive efficiency an exploratory study abstract existing network studies pay much attention to the benefits of structural embeddedness however uzzi 1996 points out the marginal benefits of structural embeddedness may follow a pattern of diminishing returns using major customer disclosure data from compustat this study investigates the curvilinear relationships between multiple aspects of structural embeddedness and productive efficiency applying both wang and ho 2010 and chen and lin 2009 stochastic frontier models we confirm the diminishing returns of eigenvector and betweenness centralities with a partial support for interconnectedness implications from our findings can help decision makers better understand the effects of structural embeddedness and help devise network structural change strategies for productive efficiency

performance promotion and the peter principle this paper considers why organizations use promotions rather than just monetary bonuses to motivate employees even though this may conflict with efficient assignment of employees to jobs when performance is unverifiable use of promotion reduces the incentive for managers to be affected by influence activities that would blunt the effectiveness of monetary bonuses when employees are risk neutral use of promotion for incentives need not distort assignments when they are risk averse it may sufficient conditions for this are given the distortion may be either to promote more employees than is efficient the peter principle effect or fewer

r d subsidies external collaborative breadth differential gains and the role of collaboration experience abstract external collaboration breadth is important for firms to acquire the knowledge needed to innovate in this paper we combine cross sectional and longitudinal data from the spanish panel of technological innovation survey pitec to examine the indirect impact of r d subsidies on firm external collaboration breadth we contribute to understanding of the indirect impacts of r d subsidies by first providing strong evidence of an economically significant average positive impact of r d subsidies on firm external collaboration breadth second our results advance understanding of the differential impacts of r d subsidies by revealing the vast heterogeneity of the impact at the firm level where approximately only half of treated firms experience a positive collaboration impact from r d subsidies while the remainder experience no impact or a negative effect finally we advance understanding of the characteristics explaining the differential impact of r d subsidies on external collaboration breadth by utilising the organisational learning literature to demonstrate the important role of firm collaboration experience

partners forever an empirical study of relational ties in two small firm clusters many researchers take as axiomatic the proposition that economic action in clusters is embedded in dense durable and trust based social networks it is suggested here that the bias towards high trust enduring relations obscures the competitive dynamics of networks even where co operation can be identified drawing attention to the competitive motives underlying the construction of social networks an investigation is made into the duration and brokering of dyadic relations in business owners advice networks the analysis of 668 dyadic ties in a population of 113 small business owners in two textile and clothing clusters in germany reveals considerable variation in the duration of social relations and the likelihood that they were formed through third party brokers many of whom were direct competitors creating more ephemeral links the findings suggest that marketless conceptions of social networks in clusters need to be balanced with a stronger concern for the role of competition in the social embe

venture capitalists and cooperative start up commercialization strategy this paper examines the possible impact of venture capital vc backing on the commercialization direction of technology based start ups by asking to what extent if at all do vc funded start ups engage in cooperative commercialization strategies strategic alliances or technology licensing or both relative to a comparable set of start ups and with what consequences to address these questions i assemble a novel data set that matches firms receiving a federal research and development subsidy through the u s small business innovative research program to vc funded firms by observable characteristics in five technology intensive industries these data allow decoupling of cooperative activity resulting from start up development via the passage of calendar time from that due to association with vcs an analysis of the 696 start ups in the sample split by an external funding source suggests substantial boosts in both cooperative activity associated with vc backed firms and in the likelihood of an initial public offering

understanding global flows of venture capital human networks as the carrier wave of globalization industry participants and observers view venture capital as fundamentally a local business however recent data show an increasing share of us venture capital investments flowing overseas we suggest that cross border venture capital flows are associated with the formation of transnational technical communities ttcs groups of immigrants active in both home and host country technical networks our results highlight the role of human networks as a mechanism of industry globalization and support the view that ttcs are emerging economic actors in their own right

networks as the pipes and prisms of the market1 this article draws an analytical distinction between two types of market uncertainty egocentric which refers to a focal actor s uncertainty regarding the best way to convert a set of inputs to an output desired by a potential exchange partner and altercentric which denotes the uncertainty confronted by a focal actor s exchange partners regarding the quality of the output that the focal actor brings to the market given this distinction the article considers how the value of structural holes and market status vary with these two types of uncertainty the article proposes that the value of structural holes increases with egocentric uncertainty but not with altercentric uncertainty in contrast the value of status increases with altercentric uncertainty but declines with egocentric uncertainty thus actors with networks rich in structural holes should sort into markets or market segments that are high in egocentric uncertainty high status actors should sort into markets that are low in egocentric

the impact of family income on child achievement evidence from the earned income tax credit using an instrumental variables strategy we estimate the causal effect of income on children s math and reading achievement our identification derives from the large nonlinear changes in the earned income tax credit the largest of these changes increased family income by as much as 20 percent or approximately 2 100 between 1993 and 1997 our baseline estimates imply that a 1 000 increase in income raises combined math and reading test scores by 6 percent of a standard deviation in the short run test gains are larger for children from disadvantaged families and robust to a variety of alternative specifications jel h24 h31 i21 i38 j13