the credit crisis as a problem in the sociology of knowledge this article analyzes the role in the credit crisis of the processes by which market participants produce knowledge about financial instruments employing documentary sources and 87 predominantly oral history interviews the article presents a historical sociology of the clusters of evaluation practices surrounding abss asset backed securities most importantly mortgage backed securities and cdos collateralized debt obligations despite the close structural similarity between abss and cdos these practices came to differ substantially and became the province e g in the rating agencies of organizationally separate groups in consequence when abs cdos cdos in which the underlying assets are abss emerged they were evaluated in two separate stages this created a fatally attractive arbitrage opportunity large scale exploitation of which sidelined previously important gatekeepers risk sensitive investors in the lower tranches of mortgage backed securities and eventually magnified and concentrate

an analysis of the tradeoff between advertising and price discounting the authors examine an important influence on the price advertising tradeoff the ratio of price and advertising elasticities their theoretical analysis stresses the centrality of the elasticity r

labor market returns to two and four year college the paper examines labor market returns to a two and four year college education analysis of the 1972 national longitudinal survey of youth observation that the average person who attended a two year college earned about 10 percent more than those without any college education comparison with the wages of those who attended a four year college education

r d and technology policy in nics as learning processes abstract this paper presents a dynamic learning perspective to research and development activity and to policies promoting these activities and technological development more generally the basic idea is that successful penetration of research and development rd multidisciplinary learning both technoeconomic and managerial organizational and learning which is cumulative through time this is especially so at an early infant phase of diffusion of this process through the economy a dynamic view of externalities and market failures is presented one that provides the basis for a catalytic perspective of technological policy this perspective is based on the distinction between an infant and a mature phase of policy where massive flexible search oriented support in the early phase sets the base for endogenization routinization of r d in the economy and for the possibility of drastic reductions in government support for traditional forms of r d in the later phase

managing advertising and promotion for long run profitability in recent years manufacturers have become increasingly disposed toward the use of sales promotions often at the cost of advertising yet the long term implications of these changes for brand profitability remain unclear in this paper we seek to offer insights into this important issue we consider the questions of i whether it is more desirable to ad vertise or promote ii whether it is better to use frequent shallow promotions or infrequent deep promotions and iii how changes in regular prices affect sales relative to increases in price promotions additional insights regarding brand equity the relative magnitude of short and long term effects and the decomposition of advertising and promotion elasticities across choice and quantity decisions are obtained to address these points we develop a heteroscedastic varying parameter joint probit choice and regression quantity model our approach allows consumers responses to short term marketing activities to change in response to changes in marketing actions over the long term we also accommodate the possibility of competitive reactions to policy changes of a brand the model is estimated for a consumer packaged good category by using over eight years of panel data the resulting parameters enable us to assess the effects of changes in advertising and promotion policies on sales and profits our results show that in the long term advertising has a positive effect on brand equity while promotions have a negative effect furthermore we find price promotion elasticities to be larger than regular price elasticities in the short term but smaller than regular price elasticities when long term effects are considered consistent with previous research we also find that most of the effect of a price cut is manifested in consumers brand choice decisions in the short term but when long term effects are again considered this result no longer holds last we estimate that the long term effects of promotions on sales are negative overall and about two fifths the magnitude of the positive short term effects finally making reasonable cost and margin assumptions we conduct simulations to assess the relative profit impact of long term changes in pricing advertising or promotion policies our results show regular price decreases to have a generally negative effect on the long term profits of brands advertising to be profitable for two of the brands and increases in price promotions to be uniformly unprofitable

favorite son specialized child laborers and students in poor ldc households abstract though prior theoretical models of child labor nominally contain households with multiple children they treat all children as identical in their returns to labor market and education activities in actuality households with identical twins are the exception and inherent heterogeneity implies different returns for children we construct a theoretical model that allows child heterogeneity and bilateral altruism our model illuminates potential inefficiencies in the time allocation of children across labor market obligations and education opportunities in poor households when intra household talent differentials across children are great an inefficient reverse specialization may arise and partial bans on child labor will increase efficiency

entrepreneurship human capital and labor demand a story of signaling and matching in contrast to employee qualifications there is no clear evidence that entrepreneurs qualifications positively affect their income in this study we propose that entrepreneurs can benefit from using their qualification as a signal during the process of recruiting employees this is assumed to follow a process of matching equals among equals we confirm a matching of qualification levels for highly skilled employees in denmark and an indication of this in germany partial support for matching among medium skilled employees was only found in germany with no consistent evidence of matching for low skilled employees in neither country this suggests that as skill levels of employees decrease their probabilities of working for different founders converge founders qualifications are the most reliable predictor of recruitment choices over time our findings are robust to numerous control variables as well as across industries and firm age

evolutionary theorizing in economics modern economic analysis oriented toward understanding the workings of economies that make extensive use of markets came into existence with three guiding questions all central in adam smith s 1776 1937 the wealth of nations one question concerned order without any central authority guiding and commanding action how is economic activity coordinated the second question was the challenge of explaining the prevailing constellation of prices inputs and outputs what explains the price of labor and the rent of land the third question addressed the processes of economic progress or development smith and other early economists clearly were impressed by the inventiveness the energy and the growing productivity generated by the evolving market economy how to understand its dynamics the first two questions have defined continuing central concerns of the discipline of economics since they first were posed over two centuries ago when not posed in the context of an economy that is understood as in the process of developing they seem to pull the focus of theorizing toward equilibrium conditions the third question concerned with the processes driving economic progress pulls the theorizing toward an evolutionary orientation the question of economic development has waxed and waned in centrality to the discipline as has the importance of evolutionary theorizing during the first several decades of the twentieth century evolutionary thinking and language was widespread in economics but as one contrasts the economic

history friendly models of industry evolution the computer industry the model presented in this paper is the first of a new generation of evolutionary economic models history friendly models history friendly models are formal models that aim to capture in stylized form qualitative and appreciative theories about the mechanisms and factors affecting industry evolution technological advance and institutional change put forth by empirical scholars of industrial economics technological change business organization and strategy and other social scientists in this paper we have analyzed the long term evolution of the computer industry in particular we have examined the emergence of a dominant firm in mainframes the introduction of a major innovation microprocessor the opening up of a new market segment personal computers ad the competition there between newcomers and diversified old established firms we have taken a body of verbal appreciative theorizing developed a formal representation of that theory and found that the formal version of that theory is consistent and capable of generating the stylized facts the appreciative theory purports to explain going through this analytic exercise has significantly sharpened our theoretical understanding of the key factors behind salient aspects of the evolution of the computer industry copyright 1999 by oxford university press

modeling the co evolution of national industries and institutions important contributions within the realms of industrial dynamics and evolutionary economic theory have shown the need to explore the sources of industrial leadership in high tech industries several of these studies suggest that the co evolution between national industries and certain supporting institutions could play a fundamental role as a source of competitive advantage although an analysis of these processes still poses significant formal and theoretical challenges in this article we draw on previous contributions to formal evolutionary theorizing in order to build up a co evolution model suitable for the dynamic analysis of industrial leadership this model involves national firms competing on a worldwide level in a science based industry and co evolving with their respective national university systems certain national firms may influence university funding by institutional shaping while national university systems crucially affect the competitive advantage of said firms in the global market the model highlights important mechanisms through which institutional technological and market interrelated factors determine the dynamics of industrial leadership and eventually the emergence of industrial leadership shifts some of the implications regarding policy and future research on economic development follow

the impact of licenses on a late starter ldc chile in the 1990s the acquisition of technology through licenses is a potentially important means of accelerating productivity growth especially in late starter developing countries in the throes of catch up yet the literature has tended to focus on the potential benefits to the seller overlooking those to the purchaser our own concern we find that expenditures on licensing showed exceptionally high rates on return on the order of twice those for investment in physical capital this investment significantly improved firms performance and productivity in chilean industry during the 1990s we conclude that licensing can be an important instrument for speeding catch up in less developed countries

early marketing matters a time varying parameter approach to persistence modeling are persistent marketing effects most likely to appear right after the introduction of a product the authors give an affirmative answer to this question by developing a model that explicitly reports how persistent and transient marketing effects evolve over time the proposed model provides managers with a valuable tool to evaluate their allocation of marketing expenditures over time an application of the model to many pharmaceutical products estimated through exact initial kalman filtering indicates that both persistent and transient effects occur predominantly immediately after a brand s introduction subsequently the size of the effects declines the authors theoretically and empirically compare their methodology with methodology based on unit root testing and demonstrate that the need for unit root tests creates difficulties in applying conventional persistence modeling the authors recommend that marketing models should either accommodate persistent effects that change over time or be applied to mature brands or limited time windows only

modularity in technology and organization this paper is an attempt to raid both the literature on modular design and the literature on property rights to create the outlines of a modularity theory of the firm such a theory will look at firms and other organizations in terms of the partitioning of rights understood as protected spheres of authority among cooperating parties and it will assert that organizations reflect nonmodular structures that is structures in which decision rights rights of alienation and residual claims to income do not all reside in the same hands 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

patient or physician oriented marketing what drives primary demand for prescription drugs abstract the authors analyze primary demand effects of marketing efforts directed at the physician detailing and professional journal advertising versus marketing efforts directed at the patient direct to consumer advertising the analysis covers 86 categories or approximately 85 of the u s pharmaceutical market during the 2001 2005 period primary demand effects are rather small in contrast with the estimated sales effects for individual brands by using a new brand level method to estimate primary demand effects with aggregate data the authors show that the small effects are due to intense competitive interactions during the observation period but not necessarily to low primary demand responsiveness in contrast with previous studies the authors also find that detailing is more effective in driving primary demand than direct to consumer advertising a category sales model cannot provide such insights in addition a category sales model likely produces biased predictions about period by perio

attraction versus linear and multiplicative market share models an empirical evaluation linear and multiplicative market share models are compared with the attraction specification on the basis of both predictive and descriptive measures the data used represent 15 brands in three dif

wages and labor management in african manufacturing using matched employer employee data on 10 african countries this paper examines the relationship beween wages worker supervision and labor productivity in manufacturing wages increase with rm size for both production workers and supervisors we develop a two tier model of supervision that can account for this stylized fact and we t the structural model to the data employee data is used to derive a rm speci c wage premium that is purged of the effect of worker observables we nd as trong effect of both supervision and wages on effort and hence on labor productivity labor management in sub saharan africa appears problematic with much higher supervisor to worker ratios than in morocco and a higher elasticity of effort with respect to supervision

the agenda for growth theory a different point of view it is argued here that the basic assumptions of neoclassical growth theory inherently limit the ability of models within that theory to cast light on economic growth as we have experienced it this holds for the new growth theory as well as the older growth theory of the 1950s and 190js it is proposed that to make real headway with understanding economic growth a growth theory needs the following elements 1 the ability to treat technological advance as an essentially disequilibrium process 2 to incorporate a theory of the firm in which firm capabilities and differences across firms are central elements and 3 to incorporate into the theory a richer body of institutions than currently are treated in standard growth theory including at the least universities copyright 1998 by oxford university press

human capital versus sorting the effects of compulsory attendance laws under the educational sorting hypothesis a state compulsory school attendance law will increase the educational attainment of high ability workers who are not directly affected hy the law under the human capital hypothesis such laws affect only those individuals whose hehavior is directly constrained we find that compulsory attendance laws do increase enrollment rates in age groups they do not affect directly thus our results contradict the human capital hypothesis and are consistent with the sorting hypothesis i introduction the last decade has seen considerable debate between supporters of the human capital and sorting models of education the former assert that the effect of education on wages reflects increased productivity the latter maintain that it reflects at least in part correlation between education and unobserved ability workers use education to signal their ability while employers use education to screen workers despite the importance of the debate no fully convincing tests of the hypotheses have been developed in fact many members of the profession maintain at least privately that these hypotheses cannot be tested against each other and that the debate must therefore be relegated to the realm of ideology in this paper we show that the models can be tested against each other by examining the effects of state compulsory school attendance laws we show that under the human capital hypotheis such laws will affect the educational attainment only of those who in the absence of the law would have left school prior to the minimum school leaving age on the other hand under the sorting hypothesis the effects of the law will percolate through the system increasing educational attainment even among workers not directly constrained by the law our results are consistent with the predictions of the sorting model

the central role of noise in evaluating interventions that use test scores to rank schools many programs reward or penalize schools based on students average performance mean reversion is a potentially serious hindrance to the evaluation of such interventions chile s 900 schools program p 900 allocated resources based on cutoffs in schools mean test scores this paper shows that transitory noise in average scores and mean reversion lead conventional estimation approaches to overstate the impacts of such programs it further shows how a regressiondiscontinuity design can be used to control for reversion biases it concludes that p 900 had significant effects on test score gains albeit much smaller than is widely believed

public service innovation and multiple institutional logics the case of hybrid social enterprise providers of health and wellbeing public sector organisations are confronted with growing health and social care needs in combination with severe resource constraints prompting interest in innovative responses to such challenges public service innovation is poorly understood particularly where innovators must navigate between the norms practices and logics of public private and civil society sectors we contribute to the understanding of how innovating hybrid organisations are able to creatively combine co existing logics case study evidence from newly established social enterprise providers of health and wellbeing services in england is utilised to examine how innovations are shaped by i an incumbent state or public sector logic and two challenger logics relating to ii the market and increasing competition and iii civil society emphasising social value and democratic engagement with employees and service users the analysis shows how a more fluid and creative interplay of logics can be observed in relation to specific strategies and practices within organisations these strategies relate to the empowerment of staff to be creative financial management and knowledge sharing and protection the interplay of logics shaping social innovation is also found in relationships with key stakeholders notably public sector funders service users and service delivery partners implications are drawn for innovation in public services and hybrid organisations more broadly

asymmetric and neighborhood cross price effects some empirical generalizations this paper provides some empirical generalizations regarding how the relative prices of competing brands affect the cross price effects among them particular focus is on the asymmetric price effect and the neighborhood price effect the asymmetric price effect states that a price promotion by a higher priced brand affects the market share of a lower priced brand more so than the reverse the neighborhood price effect states that brands that are closer to each other in price have larger cross price effects than brands that are priced farther apart the main objective of this paper is to test if these two effects are generalizable across product categories and to assess which of these two effects is stronger while the neighborhood price effect has not been rigorously tested in past research the asymmetric price effect has been validated by several researchers however these tests of asymmetric price effect have predominantly used elasticity as the measure of cross price effect the cross price elasticity measures the percentage change in market share or sales of a brand for 1 change in price of a competing brand we show that asymmetries in cross price elasticities tend to favor the higher priced brand simply because of scaling effects due to considering percentage changes furthermore several researchers have used logit models to infer asymmetric patterns we also show that inferring asymmetries from conventional logit models is incorrect to account for potential scaling effects we consider the absolute cross price effect defined as the change in market share percentage points of a target brand when a competing brand s price changes by one percent of the product category price the advantage of this measure is that it is dimensionless hence comparable across categories and it avoids scaling effects we show that in the logit model with arbitrary heterogeneity in brand preferences and price sensitivities the absolute cross price effect is symmetric we develop an econometric model for simultaneously estimating the asymmetric and neighborhood price effects and assess their relative strengths we also estimate two alternate models that address the following questions i if i were managing the ith highest priced brand which brand do i impact the most by discounting and which brand hurts me the most through price discounts ii who hurts whom in national brand vs store brand competition based on a meta analysis of 1 060 cross price effects on 280 brands from 19 different grocery product categories we provide the following empirical generalizations 1 the asymmetric price effect holds with cross price elasticities but tends to disappear with absolute cross price effects 2 the neighborhood price effect holds with both cross price elasticities and absolute cross price effects and is significantly stronger than the asymmetric price effect on both measures of cross price effects 3 a brand is affected the most by discounts of its immediately higher priced brand followed closely by discounts of its immediately lower priced brand 4 national brands impact store brands more so than the reverse when the cross effect is measured in elasticities but the asymmetric effect does not hold with absolute effects store brands hurt and are in turn hurt the most by the lower priced national brands that are adjacent in price to the store brands 5 cross price effects are greater when there are fewer competing brands in the product category and among brands in nonfood household products than among brands in food products the implications of these findings are discussed

emergent innovation systems and the delivery of clinical services the case of intra ocular lenses abstract this paper is an exploration of the dynamics of technical change in medicine we argue that innovation in medicine is a process that is distributed across time space and epistemic and institutional domains that it entails the entrepreneurial effort of creative individuals as well as the emergence of correlated understanding among heterogeneous agents whose rules of interaction are contingently instituted in socio economic systems along unfolding scientific and technological trajectories we illustrate our arguments through an in depth analysis of a major ophthalmologic innovation the intra ocular lens that has literally transformed the treatment of cataract in the developed world and has the potential to do so in many developing countries we investigate the advancement of clinical knowledge about the disease the development of effective technological capabilities and the co evolution of the supply capacity and demand of a micro innovation system emerged along a specific sequence of interrelated problems and associated solutions which engaged scientists technicians practitioners regulators and patients alike over a period of around three decades

the determinants of technology adoption the case of the banking firm using data on the adoption of automatic teller machines by firms in the banking industry this study examines the relationship between the decision to adopt new technology and its determinants since banking firms differ considerably in terms of the competitive environments in which they operate focusing on this one innovation in this industry allows a stronger test of the relationship between market structure and the adoption of new technology than has been previously conducted using a failure time estimation procedure we find that larger banks and banks operating in more concentrated local banking markets register a higher conditional probability of adopting this new technology all else equal we also find that other results are consistent with the underlying model and that the bank s regulatory environment shapes its adoption decision in plausible ways

modeling asymmetric competition the effects of the marketing actions of one brand can be distributed among its competitors market shares in a complex manner this paper presents and illustrates methods for modeling brand competition and brand strategies in markets where competitive effects can be differentially and asymmetrically distributed we discuss the empirical specification parameter estimation and competitive strategy implications of the models proposed price and advertising competition among eleven brands of an australian household product is used to illustrate the application of these procedures

the category demand effects of price promotions although price promotions have increased in both commercial use and quantity of academic research over the last decade most of the attention has been focused on their effects on brand choice and brand sales by contrast little is known about the conditions under which price promotions expand short run and long run category demand even though the benefits of category expansion can be substantial to manufacturers and retailers alike this paper studies the category demand effects of consumer price promotions across 560 consumer product categories over a 4 year period the data describe national sales in dutch supermarkets and cover virtually the entire marketing mix i e prices promotions advertising distribution and new product activity we focus on the estimation of main effects i e the dynamic category expansive impact of price promotions as well as the moderating effects of marketing intensity and competition both conduct and structure on short and long run promotional effectiveness the research design uses modern multivariate time series analysis to disentangle short run and long run effects first we conduct a series of unit root tests to determine whether or not category demand is stationary or evolving over time the results are incorporated in the specification of vector autoregressive models with exogenous variables varx models the impulse response functions derived from these varx models provide estimates of the short and long term effects of price promotions on category demand these estimates in turn are used as dependent variables in a series of second stage regressions that assess the explanatory power of marketing intensity and competition several model validation tests support the robustness of the empirical findings we present our results in the form of empirical generalizations on the main effects of price promotions on category demand in the short and the long run and through statistical tests on how these effects change with marketing intensity and competition the findings generate an overall picture of the power and limitations of consumer price promotions in expanding category demand as follows category demand is found to be predominantly stationary either around a fixed mean or a deterministic trend although the total net short term effects of price promotions are generally strong with an average elasticity of 2 21 and a more conservative median elasticity of 1 75 they rarely exhibit persistent effects instead the effects dissipate over a time period lasting approximately 10 weeks on average and their long term impact is essentially zero by contrast the successful introduction of new products into a category is more frequently associated with a permanent category demand increase several moderating effects on price promotion effectiveness exist more frequent promotions increase their effectiveness but only in the short run the use of nonprice advertising reduces the category demand effects of price promotions both in the short run and in the long run competitive structure matters as well the less oligopolistic the category the smaller the short run effectiveness of price promotions at the same time we find that the dominant form of competitive reaction either in price promotion or in advertising is no reaction short run category demand effectiveness of price promotions is lower in categories experiencing major new product introductions finally both the short and long run price promotion effectiveness is higher in perishable product categories the paper discusses several managerial implications of these empirical findings and suggests various avenues for future research overall we conclude that the power of price promotions lies primarily in the preservation of the status quo in the category

the emergence of technology systems knowledge production and distribution in the case of the emilian plastics district the emergence of technology systems is the result of interdependen t dynamics of generation and diffusion of complementary bits of localised technological knowledge technological communication is the crucial element assessing the collective conditions under which technological knowledge is accumulated and diffused the case study of the emerging emilian technological system in the plastics sector shows that the synchronic and diachronic localised interactions among industrial dynamics institutional r d efforts and technological interrelatedness are the determinants of the systematic production accumulation and distribution of localised technological knowledge in turn explaining the origin and development of the technology system itself

toward a reconciliation of market power and information theories of advertising effects on price elasticity prior work on the economic effects of advertising has presented conflicting views some authors have suggested that advertising creates market power by artificially differentiating brands and thereby lowering price elasticity others have viewed advertising as an efficient source of information about the existence of substitutes arguing that advertising increases price elasticity the present research proposes a unifying theoretical model in which advertising affects price elasticity through its influence on two mediating constructs the size of the consideration set and the relative strength of preference pretests 1 and 2 examine the effects of advertising on these two constructs results from the main experiment show that in accordance with the theoretical framework the same advertisements that increased price elasticity in some decision environments decreased it in others

what enables rapid economic progress what are the needed institutions abstract in recent years institutions have again become a central focus of economists and other scholars studying the processes of economic growth and the reasons why nations have differed so greatly in their achievements on this front however with few exceptions the exploration of the role of institutions has not been connected with a coherent analysis of the relationships between institutions and institutional change and technological advance this paper proposes a way of analyzing these relationships the concept of social technologies which support physical technologies plays a key role in the analysis

how well does advertising work generalizations from meta analysis of brand advertising elasticities abstract the authors conduct a meta analysis of 751 short term and 402 long term direct to consumer brand advertising elasticities estimated in 56 studies published between 1960 and 2008 the study finds several new empirical generalizations about advertising elasticity the most important are as follows the average short term advertising elasticity is 12 which is substantially lower than the prior meta analytic mean of 22 there has been a decline in the advertising elasticity over time and advertising elasticity is higher 1 for durable goods than nondurable goods 2 in the early stage than the mature stage of the life cycle 3 for yearly data than quarterly data and 4 when advertising is measured in gross rating points than monetary terms the mean long term advertising elasticity is 24 which is much lower than the implied mean in the prior meta analysis 41 many of the results for short term elasticity hold for long term elasticity with some notable exceptions the authors discuss t

the effect of human capital on earnings evidence from a reform at colombia s top university abstract in this paper i test whether the return to college education is the result of human capital accumulation or instead reflects the fact that attending college signals higher ability to employers i exploit a reform at universidad de los andes which in 2006 reduced the amount of coursework required to earn degrees in economics and business by 20 and 14 respectively but did not change the quality of incoming or graduating students the size of the entering class their average high school exit exam scores and graduation rates were not affected by the reform indicating that selection of students into the degrees remained the same using administrative data on wages and college attendance i estimate that wages fell by approximately 16 in economics and 13 in business these results suggest that human capital plays an important role in the determination of wages and reject a pure signaling model surveying employers i find that the reduction in wages may have resulted from a decline in performance during the recruitment process which led students to be placed in lower quality firms using data from the recruitment process for economists at the central bank of colombia i find that the reform reduced the probability of los andes graduates being hired by 17 percentage points

rural electricity access in south asia is grid extension the remedy a critical review abstract despite the historical priority to grid based electrification in south asia two out of every five people in the region still live without access to electricity due to various limitations of conventional grid based rural electrification as brought out by a number of studies and reports demand for alternative models such as renewable energy based off grid and distributed generation solutions are gaining increasing attention globally however due to the absence of any study that could juxtapose these two modes in terms of their merits and demerits it is difficult to infer on their relative superiority or inferiority in view of that this paper makes an attempt to connect the dots by carrying out an extensive review of the literature to analyse the role of grid and off grid options in facilitating rural electrification and come out with a comparative assessment of their costs and impacts on the south asian countries the paper infers that instead of considering each of the modes of electrification in a standalone manner and perceiving them as mutually exclusive or competing with one another as usually perceived in the policy sphere off grid electrification can actually be considered as a complementary mode and should ideally be integrated with grid expansion to serve the bigger cause of ensuring universal and sustainable rural electrification in south asia

labor market returns to the ged using regression discontinuity analysis we evaluate returns to general educational development ged certification for high school dropouts using state administrative data we apply a fuzzy regression discontinuity method to account for test takers retaking the test for women we find that ged certification has no statistically significant effect on either employment or earnings for men we find a significant increase in earnings in the second year after taking the test but no impact in subsequent years ged certification increases postsecondary school enrollment by 4 8 percentage points our results differ from regression discontinuity approaches that fail to account for test retaking

position effects in search advertising and their moderators a regression discontinuity approach we investigate the causal effect of position in search engine advertising listings on outcomes such as click through rates and sales orders because positions are determined through an auction there are significant selection issues in measuring position effects a simple mean comparison of outcomes at two positions is likely to be biased due to these selection issues additionally experimentation is rendered difficult in this situation by competitors bidding behavior which induces selection biases that cannot be eliminated by randomizing the bids for the focal advertiser econometric approaches to address the selection are rendered infeasible due to the difficulty of finding suitable instruments in this context we show that a regression discontinuity rd approach is feasible to measure causal effects in this important context we apply the approach to a large and unique data set of daily observations containing information on a focal advertiser as well as its major competitors our rd estimates demonstrate that there are significant selection biases in the more naive estimates while a mean comparison of outcomes across positions would indicate very large position effects we find that our rd estimates of these effects are much smaller and exist only in some of the positions we further investigate moderators of these effects position effects are stronger when the advertiser is smaller and when the consumer has low prior experience with the keyword for the advertiser they are weaker when the keyword phrase has specific brand or product information when the ad copy is more specific as in exact matching options and on weekends compared to weekdays

estimating the labor market signaling value of the ged this paper tests the labor market signaling hypothesis for the general educational development ged equivalency credential using a unique data set containing ged test scores and social security administration ssa earnings data we exploit variation in ged status generated by differential state ged passing standards to identify the signaling value of the ged net of human capital effects our results indicate that the ged signal increases the earnings of young white dropouts by 10 to 19 percent we find no statistically significant effects for minority dropouts

profiting from business model innovation evidence from pay as you drive auto insurance the emergent business model literature revolving mainly around the mechanisms through which new business models create and deliver value has left the value capture challenge under explored this paper examines how an incumbent firm profits from business model innovation through the study of pay as you drive auto insurance although business models do not warrant formal intellectual property ip protection their constituent components e g business methods and brands often do drawing on the profiting from innovation framework we find that formal and strategic ip protection methods play complementary roles initially formal ip rights are used primarily as a defensive strategy as vehicles for packaging and trading know how and most importantly as a means of buying time to build specialised complementary assets long term competitiveness however depends on whether the innovator builds a strong position in specialised complementary assets and is capable of reconfiguring them over time in line with changes in the market environment thus we explicate the complex mechanism and dynamic capability for capturing value from business model innovation

the price elasticity of selective demand a meta analysis of econometric models of sales the author describes a meta analysis of econometric studies that estimated the elasticity of selective sales or market share to price the literature review yielded 367 suitable price elasticities

signaling in higher education the effect of access to elite colleges on choice of major i introduction it is a well established fact that more educated individuals earn higher wages there are two primary theories for the source of this education wage premium the first is the human capital accumulation or full information model in which education directly enhances productivity and thereby increases an individual s wages the second is the signaling model of the labor market first proposed by spence 1973 wherein the monetary returns to schooling are partially explained by information asymmetries between individuals and employers these two models lead to strikingly similar labor market predictions which has made testing between them difficult i provide a new test of the signaling model against the full information model using individuals choices of college major this test is novel in that it focuses on the quality of an individual s education as a potential signal rather than the quantity of education furthermore while other tests have focused on high school students or other specific groups e g general education diploma takers in tyler et al 2000 and mba students in hussey 2012 this test sheds light onto the decision making process of college going students in a full information model productivity is costlessly observed by both the individual and the employer each individual chooses her optimal level of education to improve productivity and wages given her ability and the marginal cost of schooling in the signaling framework information is asymmetric such that employers cannot perfectly observe individual ability or true productivity employers use education levels to infer expected productivity while each individual chooses her level of schooling to signal a higher innate ability and potential productivity to employers the equilibrium result in both models is that higher ability individuals obtain more education and accordingly earn higher wages while the equilibria in both models appear similar the extent to which individuals sort on ability depends on the amount of information asymmetry in the labor market under the signaling model the individual s social and private returns to education do not necessarily coincide the private return is a combined effect of the social return from increased productivity and the signaling effect of being identified perhaps falsely as a high ability individual this disparity between private and social returns could lead to an inefficient allocation of schooling in the competitive labor market the implication that investment in schooling might lead to a deadweight loss for society has prompted many attempts to distinguish between these two theories bedard 2001 hussey 2012 lang and kropp 1986 riley 1979 wolpin 1977 and to measure what portion of the returns to schooling is attributable to signaling effects altonji and pierret 1997 2001 clark and martorell 2014 fang 2006 tyler et al 2000 however the empirical evidence differentiating the two models has been fairly limited and testing between the full information and signaling models of education has proven difficult i propose a new model applying the signaling framework of spence 1973 to the postsecondary environment in this model major field of study can be used by individuals to signal unobserved ability and productivity to employers i show that this leads to a prediction that geographic areas with high access to elite colleges result in fewer science technology engineering and mathematics stem majors among lower ability students at nonelite colleges this is distinct from the prediction of a full information model where the level of access to elite schools should only affect those high ability individuals who are eligible to attend an elite school using data from the national center for education statistics baccalaureate beyond survey and the geographic variation in access to elite schools across the united states i find evidence that is consistent with the signaling model prediction

a dynamic analysis of educational attainment occupational choices and job search this article examines career choices using a dynamic structural model that nests a job search model within a human capital model of occupational and educational choices wage growth occurs in the model because workers move between firms and occupations as they search for suitable job matches and because workers endogenously accumulate firm and occupation specific human capital simulations performed using the estimated model reveal that both self selection in occupational choices and mobility between firms account for a much larger share of total earnings and utility than the combined effects of firm and occupation specific human capital

the dynamics of technological change in uk retail banking services an evolutionary perspective abstract the purpose of this paper is to elaborate an evolutionary perspective on the process of structural change that has characterized the banking industry in the united kingdom uk for this purpose the evolution of retail financial services is contrasted against the backdrop of the implementation and development of information and communication technologies icts the paper delves into the sources and the effects of technological change in banking over a long term perspective 1840s 1990s to point out the significance of the opportunities and the constraints that have shaped the growth and development of this industry this is interpreted as a three stage evolutionary process driven by intertemporal coordination across several complementary domains including activities of production business organization consumption and the underlying regulatory setting it is concluded that the evolution of uk retail banking displays the characteristics of a distributed process of innovation in which developers of technologies service suppliers and customers contribute to the process of structural change of the industry

technological transformations in history how the computer regime grew out of existing computing regimes abstract in the article we describe how the digital computer regime grew out of existing computing regimes through a process of transformation this transformation is conceptualised as a regime shift a change in the rule set that underpins technical change guiding innovative activity and output into particular directions examples of such rules are technical standards product standards user requirements design rules and organisational rules of how to produce what to produce the paper describes how the new digital computer regime had to start from structures of the old regimes and only later on developed its own distinctive elements it describes how specific changes in the existing computing regimes particularly the increasing division of labour the growing schematisation of computing activities and the development of more sophisticated punch card machinery contributed to the design and programming methods of the digital computer how the old programming methods constrained the development of the new regime is also discussed the article does not go into the actual processes of diffusion of digital computers into specific domains it does however discuss the role of market demand dynamics for the evolution of digital technology which too often is portrayed as a technology science push phenomenon

inadequacy of technology and innovation systems at the periphery inadequacy of technology is a child of structuralism the concept of a national system of innovation nsi is a child of evolutionary theory a dialogue between these concepts can enrich our understanding of the problems involved in building nsis at the periphery celso furtado explains the structural roots of modernisation marginalisation polarisation and how the orientation of technology of underdeveloped countries is embedded in income concentration the formation of welfare states at the periphery provides nsis with a new focusing device helping to break the marginalisation side of the process the combined formation of nsis and welfare systems is an institutional response to modernisation marginalisation polarisation

a spillover based theory of credentialism i propose a model in which credentials such as diplomas are instrumentally valuable to workers the model avoids an important criticism of standard job market signalling models by tying a worker s wage to their output a worker s productivity is influenced by the skills of their co workers where such skills arise from an ability augmenting investment that is made prior to matching with co workers credentials allow workers to demonstrate their investment to the labour market thereby allowing them to match with high skill co workers in equilibrium despite the positive externality associated with a worker s investment i show how overinvestment is pervasive in equilibrium

practice prize reports the practice prize reports consist of one article with two parts as follows sinha ashish j jeffrey inman yantao wang joonwook park attribute drivers a factor analytic choice map approach for understanding choices among skus and tellis gerard j rajesh k chandy deborah macinnis pattana thaivanich modeling the microeffects of television advertising which ad works when where for how long and why

innovation in investment banking the dynamics of control systems within the chandlerian firm this paper extends the technological aspects of chandler s scale and scope framework from 19th century manufacturing firms that processed physical materials to a modern service firm that processes information the intangible nature of information intensive service provision means that scale and scope economies in investment banking are constrained more by regulations on risk exposure than developments in production technologies profitability and corporate dynamics are therefore dependent on innovation in risk control systems drawing on a case study the paper shows that risk control systems undergo qualitative changes as they increase in size and complexity

the relationship between market characteristics and promotional price elasticities many empirical studies in marketing and economics have estimated brand price elasticities for specific products in markets their results indicate that price elasticities seem to differ across brands product categories retail outlets and regions however there has been very little research which examines the factors associated with these observed differences this paper focuses on the promotional price elasticities of established major brands in stable categories it identifies some characteristics of markets which may be associated with differences in price elasticities for frequently purchased nondurables a cross sectional model of the effect of these market characteristics on price elasticities is developed and estimated utilizing own price elasticity estimates for brands at twelve stores the results indicate market characteristics such as brand market share couponing activity display activity and feature activity explain a substantial amount of the variation in promotional price elasticities

scope and patterns of innovation cooperation in spanish service enterprises abstract examining 2148 innovating service firms from the spanish technological innovation panel 2004 this paper utilizes latent class analysis to appraise the scope of innovation cooperation in services in the spanish economy in accordance with the growing weight of external information flows throughout innovation processes the empirical evidence indicates that the nature of the service activity affects both the partner chosen and the cooperation intensity the results lead to the creation of a typology of cooperation composed of three broad profiles service firms intensive in techno scientific cooperation intensive in interactions with clients and a profile with low intensity in cooperation called lonely innovators the probability that a firm belongs to the latter profile is 59 which makes it reasonable to affirm that innovation cooperation is not a common practice in spanish innovating service enterprises innovation output variables have been included in order to examine the relationship between patterns of cooperation and innovation performance the findings also underline the co existence of different cooperation patterns within the same industry

does advertising serve as a signal evidence from a field experiment in mobile search we develop a field experiment that assesses whether advertising can serve as a signal that enhances consumers evaluations of advertised goods we implement the experiment on a mobile search platform that provides listings and reviews for an archetypal experience good restaurants in collaboration with the platform we randomize about 200 000 users in 13 asian cities into exposure of ads for about 600 local restaurants within the exposure group we randomly vary the disclosure to the consumer of whether a restaurant s listing is a paid ad this enables isolating the effect on outcomes of a user knowing that a listing is sponsored a pure signalling effect we find that this disclosure increases calls to the restaurant by 77 holding fixed all other attributes of the ad the disclosure effect is higher when the consumer uses the platform away from his typical city of search when the uncertainty about restaurant quality is larger and for restaurants that have received fewer ratings in the past on the supply side newer higher rated and more popular restaurants are found to advertise more on the platform and ratings of those that advertised during the experiment are found to be higher two years later taken together we interpret these results as consistent with a signalling equilibrium in which ads serve as implicit signals that enhance the appeal of the advertised restaurants to consumers both consumers and advertisers seem to benefit from the signalling consumers shift choices towards restaurants that are better rated at baseline in the disclosure group compared to the no disclosure group and advertisers gain from the improved outcomes induced by disclosure

revisiting international business theory a capabilities based theory of the mne an introduction to this issue of the journal of international business studies in which the author discusses a capabilities based theory of multinational enterprises mne is presented

interdependences in the intrafirm diffusion of technological innovations confronting the rational and social accounts of diffusion this article investigates the intrafirm diffusion of technological innovations and the interdependences that exist among rival firms in this process previous research has offered two potential explanations for these interdependences social accounts in which they result from institutional pressures and rational accounts in which firms are interdependent as a result of how adoption by rivals affects expectations about the profitability of the technology the article offers two contributions first we propose a competitive interaction mechanism that is consistent with the fundamentals of rational accounts of diffusion second the empirical analysis shows the dominance of the proposed rational mechanism over social accounts of innovation diffusion in the generation of interdependences in the process of intrafirm diffusion

reorganising global value chains and building innovation capabilities in brazil and india abstract this paper is concerned with global shifts in innovation power it shows that brazil and india are accumulating significant innovation capabilities most explanations concentrate on factors within these rising powers this paper concentrates on explanatory factors which have their origin in the old powers europe and usa in order to understand the build up of innovation capabilities in brazil and india it examines their linkages with firms in europe and usa concentrating on the value chains which connect them it shows how the organisational decomposition of the innovation process emanating from the old powers contributes directly and indirectly to the build up of innovation capabilities in the new powers the empirical evidence comes from the brazilian auto and the indian software industry and the value chains which link them to the united states and germany two very different industries show a core of common findings on processes which contribute to building advanced innovation capabilities in india and brazil

does the g e d improve earnings estimates from a sample of both successful and unsuccessful g e d candidates the author uses a unique data set constructed from florida general education development certificate ged and unemployment insurance ui administrative records to estimate the relative earnings of two groups of male high school dropouts who took the ged exams in 1995 those who passed the exams obtaining the credential and those who failed the exams estimates from several different specifications all show greater mean quarterly earnings growth among those who obtained a ged than among unsuccessful candidates the advantage was small in dollar terms only about 1 400 annually six years after the exams but given the very low initial earnings of these school dropouts it was large in relative terms growing from zero immediately after the 1995 exams to 13 20 six years later most of these gains appear to reflect not differential wage growth between the two groups but a differential rate of movement from non employment to employment

technology adoption in the presence of network externalities we analyze technology adoption in industries where network externalities are significant the pattern of adoption depends on whether technologies are sponsored a sponsor is an entity that has property rights to the technology and hence is willing to make investments to promote it key findings include the following 1 compatibility tends to be undersupplied by the market but excessive standardization can occur 2 in the absence of sponsors the technology superior today has a strategic advantage and is likely to dominate the market 3 when one of two rival technologies is sponsored that technology has a strategic advantage and may be adopted even if it is inferior 4 when two competing technologies both are sponsored the technology that will be superior tomorrow has a strategic advantage

a rose by any other name are family firms named after their founding families rewarded more for their new product introductions the authors explore the relation between the way different family firms are named and the shareholder value impact of these firms new product introductions using an event study of 1 294 product introduction announcements of 107 publicly listed u s family firms the authors find that the presence of the founding family s name as part of a family firm s name acts as a valuable firm resource increasing the abnormal stock returns surrounding the firm s new product introductions superior returns to family named firms new product introductions are partially mediated by these firms history of ethical product related behavior family named firms particularly those with corporate branding and those wherein a founding family member holds the ceo or chairman position are more likely to exhibit a history of avoiding such product related controversies as product safety issues and deceptive advertising the authors highlight the managerial and theoretical contributions of this research

technical change organizational form and the structure of bank production of those technological characteristics related to the nature of competition among firms in an industry or market scale economies and technical change are especially important economies of scale are said to exist when an equiproportional increase in all inputs results in a greater than proportional increase in output or equivalently when an increase in output at constant input prices leads to a less than proportional increase in total costs thus average costs decline as output expands depending upon the extent to which costs decline as output increases regulation of the firms in the industry may be necessary l the literature analyzing scale economies in commercial banking is voluminous the early studies on scale economies in banking include those by benston 1965 1972 greenbaum 1967 murphy 1972 and bell and murphy 1968 more recent studies include those by benston hanweck and humphrey 1982 and clark 1984 2 this literature has established that mild scale economies exist in bank

technological regimes and innovation in services the case of the italian banking industry abstract in this paper we propose a conceptual model to analyse innovations originating from the diffusion of information technologies in the banking sector we argue that technical change in this industry exhibits a revolutionary character a distinction is made between the mass automation regime focusing mainly on the mechanization of back office procedures in the 1960s and 1970s and the smart automation regime originating from the introduction of distributed data processing and network technologies and centered around the supply of electronic banking services a theoretical model is developed which emphasizes the crucial role played by demand pull variables in stimulating innovative behaviour under the smart automation regime in contrast limited importance is attributed to cumulative and learning by doing effects relating to back office automation at least for banks endowed with sufficient absorptive capacity the theoretical hypotheses are tested through an econometric analysis of the determinants of the innovative behaviour in electronic payment systems of a sample of italian commercial banks

technological convergence and scope of organizational innovation abstract many industries are faced with increasingly merging and overlapping technologies with multiple technological strands converging it is incumbent upon firms to stay on the top of these developments a firm will succeed to the extent that it can cover a wider range of innovative activities whether alone or in partnership with other firms this paper examines a firm s innovation in information technology such innovations vary widely in their scope with some involving a very limited range of skills rendering them more incremental given a firm s inclination toward specialization the adoption of broad innovations is more feasible if it has developed interfirm arrangements which provide access to distant technology in a study of commercial banks it was found that the scope of new information technologies is contingent upon a firm having developed linkages particularly with firms whose industries provide complementary knowledge

a critical realist interpretation of evolutionary growth theorising the article discusses a critical realist interpretation of evolutionary growth theorising by focusing on some of its basic characteristics the evolutionary ontology is complex differentiated structured systemic open ever changing and radically uncertain its methodology tends to be increasingly based on appreciative theorising retroductive explanations and interdisciplinary analysis after discussing these features the article suggests that critical realism may indeed constitute an important philosophical and methodological foundation for the future development of evolutionary theories of economic growth

sectoral regularities of productivity growth in developing countries a kaldorian interpretation this paper provides a kaldorian interpretation for empirical regularities of product ivity growth at the sectoral level of the economy the statistical evidence is based on a dataset drawn from internationally compatible time series for employment and value added in 30 developing countries based on novel non linear statistical techniques the findings show i a regular pattern of positive sectoral employment elasticities with respect to output growth ii robust differences across sectors in the magnitude of the employment elasticities and iii employment elasticities for all sectors that are signifi cantly less than unity suggesting strong evidence for increasing returns at the sector level of the economy

making sense of institutions as a factor shaping economic performance abstract there has recently been a resurgence of interest in how institutions affect economic performance a review of this literature reveals that the concept of an institution means different things to different scholars both within economics and across the social sciences we discuss what factors unify the different definitions of institutions and develop a concept of institutions useful for the analysis of economic performance and economic growth in particular specifically we develop the notion of institutions as standard social technologies economic growth results from the co evolution of physical and social technologies

choice set heterogeneity and the role of advertising an analysis with micro and macro data abstract the authors show how to use microlevel survey data from a tracking study on brand awareness in conjunction with data on sales and advertising expenditures to improve the specification estimation and interpretation of aggregate discrete choice models of demand in a departure from the commonly made full information assumption they incorporate limited information in the form of choice sets to reflect that consumers may not be aware of all available brands at purchase time they find that both the estimated brand constants and the price coefficient are biased downward when consumer heterogeneity in choice sets is ignored these biased estimates can lead firms to make costly price setting mistakes in addition the tracking data enable the authors to identify separately two processes by which advertising influences market shares they find that advertising has a direct effect on brand awareness inclusion in choice set in addition to its effect on consumer preferences increase in utility this

on limiting or encouraging rivalry in technical progress the effect of patent scope decisions abstract this essay is on the effects of the scope of a patent e g how broad its allowed claims on subsequent inventing in a field it is argued that this depends on the topography of technical advance in a field in particular on how inventions are linked to each other and in the extent to which rapid technical advance requires a diversity of actors and minds as contrasted with being facilitated by express coordination of inventive activity technical advance is examined in several different fields with a focus on how patents influenced the pace and quality of development the authors conclude that allowing and enforcing broad patent claims tends to hinder technical progress

a robust r d project portfolio optimization model for pharmaceutical contract research organizations pharmaceutical drug research and development r d outsourcing to contract research organizations cros has experienced a significant growth in recent decades and the trend is expected to continue a key question for cros and firms in similar environments is which projects should be included in the firm s portfolio of projects as a distinctive contribution to the literature this paper develops and evaluates a business support tool to help a cro decide on clinical r d project opportunities and revise its portfolio of r d projects given the existing constraints and financial and resource capabilities a new mathematical programming model in the form of a capital budgeting problem is developed to help revising and rescheduling of the project portfolio the uncertainty of pharmaceutical r d cost estimates in drug development stages is captured to mimic a more realistic representation of pharmaceutical r d projects and a robust optimization approach is used to tackle the uncertain formulation an illustrative example is presented to demonstrate the proposed approach

personal selling elasticities a meta analysis abstract this article presents a meta analysis of prior econometric estimates of personal selling elasticity that is the ratio of the percentage change in an objective ratio scaled measure of sales output e g dollar or unit purchases to the corresponding percentage change in an objective ratio scaled measure of personal selling input e g dollar expenditures the authors conduct a meta analysis of 506 personal selling elasticity estimates drawn from analyses of 88 empirical data sets across 75 previous articles they find a mean estimate of current period personal selling elasticity of 34 they also find that elasticity estimates are higher for early life cycle stage offerings higher from studies set in europe than from those set in the united states and smaller in more recent years in addition elasticity estimates are affected significantly by analysts use of relative rather than absolute sales output measures by cross sectional rather than panel data by omission of promotions by lagge

sources of imitation improving bank process capabilities abstract this paper argues that imitators are more likely than innovators to use a wider variety of channels for improving their process capabilities and that the sources of imitation are more informal or non market mediated than formal yet the search for know how is a variegated process even within the same industry these variations stem from factors other than industry specific technical requirements regulatory intervention has important implications for firm history skill bases size and competitive focus taken together these background elements guide firms from the same industry towards somewhat different sources of know how the case under study is banking a service industry rarely considered in the literature on technical change

work education mismatch an endogenous theory of professionalization we model the education workforce pipeline and offer an endogenous theory of professionalization and ever higher degree attainment we introduce two mechanisms that act on the education enterprise causing the number of educated people to increase dramatically with relatively short term changes in the job market using our illustrative dynamic model we argue that the system is susceptible to small changes and the introduced self driving growth engines are adequate to over incentivize degree attainment we also show that the mechanisms magnify effects of short term recessions or technological changes and create long term waves of mismatch between workforce and jobs the implication of the theory is degree inflation magnified pressures on those with lower degrees underemployment and job market mismatch and inefficiency

competing technologies and market dominance standard battles in the local area networking industry the rise of fast ethernet as the dominant standard for high speed connection in the local area networking industry is chosen to study the interaction between increasing returns to adoption and technical change in innovation diffusion contrary to most of the empirical papers on diffusion with increasing returns which study competition between an entrenched technology and a new competitor the focus is on the case in which several and different versions of a new technology are competing at the same time for market dominance within this context this article studies under which conditions an early technology may fail to capitalise on its initial time advantage and a new version without a clear early lead may become dominant in particular we will consider a case in which the initial time advantage is made ineffective by consistently adverse technological expectations then we analyse how the arrival on the market of different categories of buyers sensitive to specific applications further contribute to weaken the early leader and strengthen a competing version this is more likely to occur when buyers are highly familiar with the characteristics of that specific version copyright 2008 oxford university press

analysing distributed processes of provision and innovation the vast majority of products i e goods and services are provided to the consumer through several co ordinated and contributing agents acting together this paper is concerned with improving our understanding of processes of provision and innovation that involve several contributing and co ordinated agents firms or organizations the distributedness of provision and innovation varies in scale and takes a variety of dynamic forms or modes and their analysis brings to the fore the significance of dependency and asymmetric power relations between classes of economic agent the approach thereby opens up considerations on distributed innovation beyond those addressed by the systems of innovation perspectives

chapter 9 econometric and time series market response models publisher summary marketing has seen a rapid expansion in the widespread use of quantitative methods correlation and regression analysis were among the first techniques used as marketing research emerged as a discipline after world war ii in the early 1970s regression analysis became econometrics simultaneous equation systems could be estimated almost as easily as single regression equations while econometrics as a whole continues to flourish as new and more sophisticated estimation techniques and associated computer software have become available simultaneous equation systems have not become widely prevalent the dynamic structure of marketing variables themselves is addressed in the chapter followed by discussions of leads and lags among marketing variables and the assessment of the direction of causality dynamic properties of sales response functions have been discussed in more detail marketing generalizations that have been uncovered as well as empirical evidence on the shape of the sales response function is reported

intrafirm diffusion of new technologies an empirical application research on the diffusion of new technologies has centred on the study of the interfirm rate of diffusion paying much less attention to intrafirm aspects this paper attempts to overcome this gap in the literature by analysing the factors that influence the speed with which a new technology the atm is fully adopted the data over which the hypotheses are tested belongs to the spanish savings banks market the results show that the rate of intrafirm diffusion is explained by innovation firm and market characteristics in testing our hypotheses we make use of both traditional methods and survival analysis techniques

inter capital relations and the network organisation redefining the work and employment nexus the blurring of organisational boundaries associated with networks of organisations suggests the need to reconsider how work and employment are shaped by shifting inter capital relations traditional theories of the internalised employment relationship understate its inter relationship with both the form of inter capitalist competition and the type of inter capitalist production relations also existing theories of inter organisational contracting do not adequately address how these are shaped by employment relations both within and between organisations an alternative approach provides a new perspective for considering forms of countervailing power to protect workers interests in a capitalist system continuously shifting from integrated to non integrated forms copyright 2005 oxford university press

testing alternative econometric models on the existence of advertising threshold effect threshold effect of advertising has received wide attention in the marketing literature but little formal representation of this phenomenon has been developed on the basis of monthly time series

theoretical models of sales promotions contributions limitations and a future research agenda our objective in this paper is to review theoretical models of sales promotions we highlight the key contributions of these models discuss their limitations and outline an agenda for future research managerial questions examined in these models include some very fundamental issues such as why firms resort to the use of sales promotions in mature markets and why the use of sales promotions has increased dramatically during the last two decades also included in this review are models that address firm level strategic issues such as the allocation of dollars between advertising and sales promotions and the relative emphasis on trade promotions vis a vis consumer promotions we also review theoretical models that explain how consumers respond to price promotions and what type of sales promotion tools may be superior to others in a particular market the review concludes with a possible agenda for future research

path dependence and the korean keyboard abstract this paper recounts the evolution of the korean keyboard as a case in which the disadvantages of the inherited standard turn into a nonissue with the advancement of auxiliary technologies the persistence of an inherited standard when a superior alternative is available is usually regarded as market failure however if the transition costs to the new standard are such that the net gains from the transition are insufficient the situation is unfortunate but not market failure the situation may change over time if the net gain from the alternative standard increases or transition costs to new alternative decrease or both the situation turns into one in which entrepreneurs can profit by making the transition where appropriate an institutional reform may lower transition costs substantially this paper suggests an additional possibility of technological changes that make the transition unnecessary in the case of the korean keyboard changes in auxiliary technologies have rendered the disadvantages of the inherited standard innocuous the case provides a cautionary tale against the temptation to drastically alter a seemingly hopelessly inferior inherited standard the lesson of the korean keyboard applies to japanese and chinese keyboards with even greater force

steady change the 200 largest us manufacturing firms throughout the 20th century this paper discusses the existence of structural change in business activity and technological competence among the 200 largest us manufacturing companies throughout the 20th century the data were taken from chandler scale and scope 1990 and fortune magazine the analysis of corporate evolution in used to assess continuity versus turbulence of business organizations in the context of the neo schumpeterian long wave hypothesis the empirical results show that the giants of the late 20th century are not the same as those at the beginning of that period persistence in the sample is very limited moreover turbulence is not smooth but rather occurs by impulses that affect specific industries and it has increased over time overall the pattern of corporate entry and industry development is very indicative of the new opportunities emerging with information and communication technologies this process of open ended continuous transformation supports the case for putting change at the centre of economic analysis

labor market signaling and self confidence wage compression and the gender pay gap i extend spence s signaling model by assuming that some workers are overconfident they underestimate their marginal cost of acquiring education and some are underconfident firms cannot observe workers productive abilities and beliefs but know the fractions of high ability overconfident and underconfident workers i find that biased beliefs lower the wage spread and compress the wages of unbiased workers i show that gender differences in self confidence can contribute to the gender pay gap if education raises productivity men are overconfident and women underconfident then women will on average earn less than men finally i show that biased beliefs can improve welfare