quick job entry or long term human capital development the dynamic effects of alternative training schemes this study evaluates and compares the eectiveness of two alternative training schemes for the unemployed short job search oriented training and long human capital oriented training we investigate the impact dynamics of these pro grams considering both unemployment and employment duration our analysis uses a rich administrative longitudinal data set for germany where both programs were implemented at the same time our estimation strategy flexibly accounts for dy namic selection on observables and unobservables as well as heterogeneous treatment eects the results indicate that short term training schemes can be an eective tool to reduce unemployment in the long run in particular if participation occurs early during unemployment long term training schemes increase the average du ration of employment spells more strongly than short term training however they increase the expected unemployment duration if they are started early during un employment this negative short run impact of long term training is an important driver of its overall eectiveness

new technology adoption in us telecommunications the role of competitive pressures and firm level inducements in this study we examine the reasons for the differential adoption levels of a new technology that of electronic switching across firms in the us telecommunications industry using theoretical postulates from the market structure inducements approach to firm behavior and the behavioral theory of the firm we propose that the incentives to adopt a new technology are positively related to the competitive pressures faced by a firm in its micro market negatively related to past levels of performance and positively related to slack availability our sample consists of 40 of the largest firms in the industry we use firm level data collected for the years 1973 1978 1981 1984 and 1987 and the results indicate strong support for our proposition our findings show that in general market effects via the mechanism of competitive pressures generated are strong in explaining inter firm variations in levels of technology adoption in the period since moves to deregulate the industry began however the firm level effects are equally strong if not stronger in explaining such variations both in the period leading up to the commencement of deregulatory moves and also immediately thereafter

section 337 and the protection of intellectual property in the united states the complainants and the impact under section 337 of the tariff act of 1930 a firm can challenge imports that infringe its u s intellectual property rights such as patents copyrights and trademarks based on publicly available information this paper examines the characteristics of firms that file complaints under section 337 and also evaluates how firms are affected by the outcomes we find a complaining firm compared with peer firms in the same industry is typically larger produces a more diverse range of products has invested more in intangibles and is no less profitable a finding of no violation significantly depresses the filing firm s profits compared to peers section 337 appears to protect innovators but its effectiveness in promoting more innovation cannot be demonstrated so clearly copyright 1996 by mit press

semi autonomous planning using linear programming in the chilean general treasury abstract the chilean general treasury is the governmental institution that among other functions is in charge of collecting debts from taxes credits and fees until now the central office in santiago has performed the planning which has caused inefficiencies due to the lack of knowledge of the local realities of 35 offices across the country in order to allow for more independence and yet not lose control we develop a system in a spreadsheet that allows each office to perform its own planning the system consists of a multi period linear program that considers a combination of parameters that depend on each region the primal optimal variables provide the production goals for each period that allow an objective performance appraisal while the dual variables allow comparing the marginal benefit of allocating additional resources to the different offices

racing to the bottom and racing to the top the crucial role of firm characteristics in foreign direct investment choices this study builds on the pollution haven and induced innovation arguments as explanations for firm behavior with regard to international environmental management and argues both need to be integrated this implies that foreign direct investment is capable of facilitating a race to the bottom and a race to the top simultaneously using novel and detailed data we test whether environmental capabilities and weaknesses and other characteristics affect us firms foreign direct investment choices in chinese provinces with more or less stringent environmental regulation this enables a more detailed analysis by allowing country regulation to vary spatially and over time our study finds that heterogeneity in capabilities and firm size jointly determine foreign direct investment and in doing so shows the simultaneity of a race to the bottom and to the top specifically firms with environmental capabilities invest in more stringently regulated regions and firms with weaknesses are less likely to target such regions these diverging effects are both moderated by firm size which further amplifies each of them our findings underscore the need to integrate pollution haven and induced innovation arguments in a joint analysis they furthermore show the relevance of methodological choices when testing hypotheses integrating the above arguments empirically

punitive sanctions and the transition rate from welfare to work in the netherlands the average exit rate out of welfare is dramatically low most welfare recipients have to comply with guidelines on job search effort that are imposed by the welfare agency if they do not then a sanction in the form of a temporary benefit reduction can be imposed this article investigates the effect of such sanctions on the transition rate from welfare to work using a unique set of rich register data on welfare recipients we find that the imposition of sanctions substantially increases the individual transition rate from welfare to work

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

a theory of international new ventures a decade of research oviatt and mcdougall s jibs article identified and defined international new ventures invs and their prominent role in the global marketplace the article spurred worldwide interest in invs by raising questions about the validity and efficacy of existing theory especially about the uppsala process model of internationalization the article also laid an important theoretical foundation for research into international entrepreneurship ie where younger and wellestablished companies use their entrepreneurial activities to create value as they internationalize their operations this paper reviews oviatt and mcdougall s original propositions highlighting their important contributions to the field the paper also highlights the progress made in research using oviatt and mcdougall s framework the major debates that persist about the nature and role of invs the source of their competitive advantages and the key issues to be explored in future research

different shades of green global oil and gas companies and renewable energy abstract the long term energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy raises critical questions about the future of oil and gas firms this study asks why some oil and gas firms are committed to renewable energy while others continue to maintain a distinct fossil fuels focus with little or no investment in renewable energy the analysis reveals that there is a wide range in the degree to which oil and gas firms have invested in renewable energy some firms have no investments and others have investments in multiple renewable energy technologies across many countries we examine a combination of country based institutional factors and firm based knowledge and experience factors that could impact oil and gas firms decisions to invest in renewable energy activity regulative and normative pressures impacted renewable energy investments as did environmental citizenship and the degree of internationalization the study s integration of country level factors with firm level experiences provides insights into how firms are dealing with the energy transition by examining areas such as sustainability and regulatory policy the paper sheds light on the ways in which scholars can tap into measures and methods that can extend traditional ib research

impact of ownership on the international involvement of smes this paper analyses the relationship between the internationalisation strategies of smes and types of ownership different types of ownership affect firms and this in turn will influence the internationalisation strategy adopted using a sample of spanish smes our results show that internationalisation is negatively related to family ownership and positively related to corporate ownership we have also observed that the presence of a corporate blockholder in family firms encourages internationalisation these results support the idea that ownership type influences the decision to internationalise

an empirical examination of institutional investor preferences for corporate social performance this study investigates the pattern of institutional shareholding in the u k and its relationship with socially responsible behavior by companies within a sample of over 500 uk companies we estimate a set of ownership models that distinguish between long and short term investors and their largest components and which incorporate both aggregated and disaggregated measures of corporate social performance csp the results suggest that long term institutional investment is positively related to csp providing further support for earlier studies by johnson and greening 1999 academy of management journal 42 564 576 and graves and waddock 1994 academy of management journal 37 1034 1046 disaggregation of csp into its constituent components suggests that the pattern of institutional investment is also related to the form which csp takes investigation of the impact of investment screens on the selection of stocks suggests that long term institutional investors select primarily through exclusion rejecting those firms which have the worst csp

the effect of unemployment insurance sanctions on the transition rate from unemployment to employment sanctions or punitive benefits reductions are increasingly used as a tool to enforce compliance of unemployment insurance claimants with search requirements this article analyses sanctions using a unique administrative data set of individuals who started collecting unemployment insurance in the netherlands in 1992 after correction for selectivity in the imposition of sanctions we find that sanctions substantially raise individual re employment rates

being good while being bad social responsibility and the international diversification of us firms this paper contributes to the discussion on international diversification and corporate social responsibility csr by suggesting that firms can be simultaneously socially responsible and socially irresponsible to test our assertions we analyze data from 222 publicly traded us firms from 1993 to 2003 the findings support our hypotheses and have significant implications for the way in which we conceptualize csr

job displacement and the transitions to re employment and early retirement for non employed older workers abstract despite the relatively higher frequency of job displacement among older workers in europe little is known about its effect on the work retirement decision employing individual data from the european community household panel for a number of countries with differences in their institutional environments the effect of job displacement for non employed workers is identified separately for the transitions into re employment and retirement the findings suggest that in countries with relatively more generous unemployment insurance provisions for the older unemployed which offer a pathway to early retirement older displaced workers exhibit lower re employment and higher retirement rates compared to the non displaced these results are robust to dynamic selection due to unobserved heterogeneity and to the endogeneity of displacement

resource and market based determinants of performance in the u s banking industry this paper explores the implications of studying industry competitive patterns at the level of resource accumulation and the relationship between resource endowments and firm performance outcomes in the u s banking industry it uses the strategic group framework to evaluate two models of rivalry and performance and concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for competitive analysis strategic group theory and the banking industry

discretionary policy and multiple equilibria in lq re models we study discretionary equilibria in dynamic linear quadratic rational expectations models in contrast to the assumptions that pervade this literature we show that these models do have multiple equilibria in some situations we demonstrate the existence of multiple discretionary equilibria by example we investigate general properties of discretionary equilibria and discuss implications for numerical algorithms

shareholder value stakeholder management and social issues what s the bottom line we test the relationship between shareholder value stakeholder management and social issue participation building better relations with primary stakeholders like employees customers suppliers and communities could lead to increased shareholder wealth by helping firms develop intangible valuable assets which can be sources of competitive advantage on the other hand using corporate resources for social issues not related to primary stakeholders may not create value for shareholders we test these propositions with data from s p 500 firms and find evidence that stakeholder management leads to improved shareholder value while social issue participation is negatively associated with shareholder value copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

measuring globalization of industries using a national industry approach empirical evidence across five countries and over time this paper presents an objective measurement of industry globalization although crucial in understanding firm strategies industry globalization has been largely subjectively measured consisting of mostly case studies this research develops a two pronged measure of industry globalization based on a the extent of an industry s international linkages lit and b the integration of value added activities within the industry iit in addition of providing a quantitative equivalent to porter 1986 and bartlett and ghoshal s 1989 conceptual industry categorizations this measure permits the examination of important but previously untested notions regarding globalization using data for chemical and manufacturing industries for five major trading nations we find that 1 chemical industries are less global than manufacturing industries despite high levels of fdi found in chemical industries 2 u s globalization frequently assumed to be representative of worldwide globalization of industries is less than that of other major industrial countries and 3 industries in both sectors are globalizing over time consistent with the literature

incentive regulation and productive efficiency in the u s telecommunications industry this study evaluates the effect of incentive regulation on the productivity of u s local exchange carriers between 1988 and 1993 introducing pure price cap schemes has a strong and positive but lagged effect on technical efficiency where price cap schemes operate in conjunction with an earnings sharing scheme there is immediate effect on technical efficiency but the impact is less strong than the effect of a pure price caps scheme where only an earnings sharing scheme operates its effect is detrimental to technical efficiency weaker though broadly positive results are obtained as to the effect of incentive regulation on scale efficiency copyright 1997 by university of chicago press

cronyism a cross cultural analysis the devastating economic effects of the asian financial crisis and us corporate scandals have underscored the need to strengthen corporate governance provisions although cronyism has been suggested as a leading cause of the two crises it has received little attention from scholars in this paper we analyze the concept of cronyism and argue that it comes in various guises arising from different motivational bases and power dependence relations we distinguish cronyism from related constructs and posit that it is a form of corruption with different dynamics from other forms we advance propositions on its likelihood of occurrence across cultures and develop a typology of cronyist exchanges

flexibility and the theory of the firm abstract the object of this paper is 1 to bring together and integrate the various concepts of flexibility found in the economic literature 2 to flesh out the meaning of various aspects of flexibility and their implications thereby bridging the gap between the existing highly abstract theories and the empirical facts and 3 in the process to give a rich and comprehensive enough description of an industry to stimulate further theoretical as well as empirical work the study tries to combine inductive and deductive reasoning using empirical observations based on indepth interviews with manufacturers in the metalworking industry in the united states and sweden

economic freedom democracy and the quality of life summary many empirical studies indicate that economic freedom in society is positively correlated with prosperity and growth while democracy exhibits mixed correlations however these studies do not control for the possible interaction of these two types of freedoms or their respective influences on social welfare this empirical analysis examines the interaction of economic freedom and democracy on measures of health education and disease prevention in society the results imply that greater economic freedom consistently enhances these welfare measures even among more democratic countries democracy has a smaller positive influence that disappears for many welfare measures in countries with more economic freedoms

foreign patent rights and high tech exports evidence from taiwan this paper conducts a consecutive pooled data analysis from 1989 to 2000 to investigate the relationship between foreign patent rights fprs and the exports of three high tech industries in taiwan the semiconductor the information and the communication equipment industries following smith s model setup empirical results indicate that both market expansion and market power effects do exist in taiwan s case in addition this paper proposes a new hypothesis in which the importing country may exhibit a stronger r d ability than the exporting country a case that has not been considered in earlier empirical work finally a test is made to determine if a trips trade related intellectual property rights agreement has any impact on the fprs exports relationship and no evidence is found of a structural change after the implementation of trips

a resource based perspective on corporate environmental performance and profitability drawing on the resource based view of the firm we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship with the returns to environmental performance higher in high growth industries we tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 finns over two years using independently developed environmental ratings results indicate that it pays to be green and that this relationship strengthens with industry growth we conclude by highlighting the study s academic and managerial implications making special reference to the social issues in management literature

intellectual property rights and foreign direct investment abstract this paper develops a product cycle model with endogenous innovation imitation and foreign direct investment fdi we use this model to determine how stronger intellectual property rights ipr protection in the south affects innovation imitation and fdi we find that stronger ipr protection keeps multinationals safer from imitation but no more so than northern firms instead the increased difficulty of imitation generates resource wasting and imitation disincentive effects that reduce both fdi and innovation the greater resources absorbed in imitation crowd out fdi reduced fdi then transmits resource scarcity in the south back to the north and consequently contracts innovation

electoral cycles in active labor market policies we examine how electoral motives influence active labor market policies that promote short term job creation such policies reduce measures of unemployment using german state data for the period 1985 to 2004 we show that election motivated politicians pushed job promotion schemes before elections

patent rights and trade analysis of biological products medicinals and botanicals and pharmaceuticals this article analyzes the effects of foreign patent rights on u s bilateral exports the empirical analysis covers three highly disaggregated drug industries over three decades we estimate bilateral trade equations for each industry using cross country data on the strength of national patent rights the findings show that strong foreign patent rights enhance the market power of u s drug exporters across countries with weak imitative abilities alternatively strong foreign patent rights stimulate the market expansion of u s drug exports across countries with strong imitative abilities these effects are larger in magnitude during the 1980 90s relative to the 1970s copyright 2002 oxford university press

the effect of benefit sanctions on the duration of unemployment this paper investigates the effectiveness of unemployment benefit sanctions in reducing unemployment duration swiss data on benefit sanctions allow us to separate the effect of a warning that a person is not complying with eligibility requirements from the effect of the actual enforcement of a benefit sanction moreover public employment services are given substantial leeway in setting the monitoring intensity results indicate that both warning and enforcement have a positive effect on the exit rate out of unemployment and that increasing the monitoring intensity reduces the duration of unemployment of the nonsanctioned jel j64 j65 j68

the threat effect of active labor market programs a systematic review this paper is a systematic review of the threat effect of active labor market programs for unemployed individuals the threat effect is the induced change in the hazard rate of leaving unemployment prior to program participation studies included in the review all estimated a threat effect with the participants in all cases being unemployed individuals in receipt of benefit of some kind during their tenure of unemployment eight of these studies have been included in a meta analysis the meta analysis which has been carried out using a random effects model to account for heterogeneity indicated a hazard ratio of 1 25 for the pooled estimate we conclude that active labor market programs constitute a statistically significant threat effect although it is modest

culture and institutions how economic freedom and long term orientation interactively influence corporate social responsibility studies of international differences in firm behavior tend to consider either institutional or cultural factors focusing on corporate social responsibility csr we conjecture that not only both institutions and culture need to be taken into account but also the interaction between these two sets of factors we theorize that the institutions associated with economic freedom in combination with the cultural trait long term orientation positively influences csr practices panel data of 5023 companies from 41 countries confirm this expectation this finding pertains both to long term orientation at the level of the society and at the level of the company our findings support calls for more attention to interactive effects of cultures and institutions

research on international business problems and prospects this paper reflects on the general problems and specific opportunities faced by contemporary research on multinational enterprise the general problems include controlling properly for the firm s opportunities when testing the effectiveness of its policy choices avoiding biases that result from studying surviving business units and ignoring those that disappeared and mobilizing longitudinal data and exploiting the many census based data sets now coming available

combining matching and nonparametric instrumental variable estimation theory and an application to the evaluation of active labour market policies summary we show how instrumental variable and matching estimators can be combined in order to identify a broader array of treatment effects instrumental variable iv estimators are known to estimate effects only for the compliers representing a subset of the entire population by combining iv with matching we can estimate the treatment effects for the always and never takers as well since in many cases these groups are the endogenous outcome of some assignment process such estimates also help in judging the implications of such a selection process in our application to the effects of participation in active labour market programmes in switzerland we find large and lasting positive employment effects for the compliers whereas the effects for the always and never participants are small in addition the compliers have worse employment outcomes without treatment than those who participate in the programme with or without the intervention under investigation this suggests that the earlier assignment policy of the caseworkers was inefficient in that the always participants were neither those unemployed who would experience the highest expected treatment effects nor those unemployed who had the largest need for assistance copyright 2014 john wiley sons ltd

corporate contributions altruistic or for profit existing literature has focused on three rationales for corporate philanthropy through the firm giving corporate statesmanship and profit motivated giving the profit motivation argument was exa

an evaluation of the swedish system of active labour market programmes in the 1990s we investigate the presence of short and long term effects from joining a swedish labor market program vis a vis more intense job search in open unemployment overall the impact of the program system is found to have been mixed joining a program has increased employment rates among participants a result robust to a misclassification problem in the data on the other hand it has also allowed participants to remain significantly longer on unemployment benefits and more generally in the unemployment system this being particularly the case for those entitled individuals entering a program around the time of their unemployment benefits exhaustion

staying ahead and getting even risk attitudes of experienced poker players abstract frequent online poker players with extensive experience calculating probabilities and expected values might be expected to behave as expected utility maximizers in that small shocks to their wealth would not affect risk preferences rabin 2000 by contrast reference dependent loss aversion as in prospect theory koszegi and rabin 2006 kahneman and tversky 1979 predicts that risk aversion decreases as wealth moves away from the reference point in either direction in terms of continuing to play as well as a more aggressive playing style we find strong evidence for the break even effect the increased pursuit of risk as a player is losing within a session players behavior also appears consistent with existing evidence on reference dependent labor supply in their tendency to reduce effort and risk taking in response to being ahead our findings provide evidence for reference dependent behavior in a flexible high skilled setting under conditions of well understood monetary risk

optimal trade and technology policies dynamic linkages this paper examines the dynamic linkages between technology policy on the one hand and tra de and industrial policies on the other when any of the latter polic ies affects the incentives of firms to innovate there is an independ ent argument for or against such a policy in addition to those obtain ed from the usual analysis of international oligopoly the adoption o f an r d policy involves a dynamic tradeoff in welfare the pattern o f which depends on whether an r d subsidy or tax is optimal noncoope rative r d subsidies may lead to pareto superior outcomes in the pres ence of international technological diffusion copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

market liberalization and firm performance during china s economic transition this paper examines the impact of market liberalization on firm performance through institutional changes during the economic reform in china the conceptualization focuses on the decentralization of control ownership restructuring and industrial policy as the primary institutional changes to implement market liberalization in china these institutional changes affect firm performance by shaping managerial incentives affecting transaction and agency costs and making selective resource allocations across and within industries using a large scale data set including 23 577 firms between 1992 and 1996 the study examines how market liberalization affects the profitability and productivity of chinese firms and the relationship between ownership change and the performance of state owned enterprises

the interactions of organizational and competitive influences on strategy and performance despite much debate in the strategy literatures there is little consensus as to whether organizational capabilities or market competition are more important in shaping firms actions and performance we suspect that simply comparing firm level and industry level influences will continue to prove fruitless for two reasons in the first place both organization and competition are clearly important in shaping strategy and performance in the second place we suspect that the inconclusive nature of much of the existing research reflects the fact that organizational capabilities competition strategy and performance are fundamentally endogenous that is reciprocal interactions at multiple levels of analysis between the environment and the firm shape business strategy and performance while interactions between strategy and performance in turn shape both organizational capabilities and competitive environments this special issue of the strategic management journal includes papers that focus attention on several dimensions of these interactions a common theme emerges from the work concerning the sequential nature of the interrelationships the papers suggest that firms develop organizational capabilities as they act in competitive institutional and cognitive environments where capabilities arise both by design and as the unexpected by products of firm actions the capabilities managers understanding of the capabilities and the historical context that surrounds them then condition firms reactions to changes in their environment the reactions and firm performance in turn affect the structure of the industry and all these changes generate new information which in turn creates new learning opportunities thus the papers view strategy and performance as an ongoing sequence of capabilities conditioned adaptations by firms which in turn become exogenous events in the environments of the managers of other firms for strategy researchers the important question is not that of which disciplinary perspective or mode of explanation is a more appropriate one but rather that of the conditions under which a given mode of explanation is most appropriate 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

country level institutions firm value and the role of corporate social responsibility initiatives drawing on transaction cost theories and the resource based view of a firm we posit that the value of corporate social responsibility csr initiatives is greater in countries where an absence of market supporting institutions increases transaction costs and limits access to resources using a large sample of 11 672 firm year observations representing 2445 unique firms from 53 countries during 2003 2010 and controlling for firm level unobservable heterogeneity we find supportive evidence that csr is more positively related to firm value in countries with weaker market institutions we also provide evidence on the channels through which csr initiatives reduce transaction costs we find that csr is associated with improved access to financing in countries with weaker equity and credit markets greater investment and lower default risk in countries with more limited business freedom and longer trade credit period and higher future sales growth in countries with weaker legal institutions our findings provide new insights on non market mechanisms such as csr through which firms can compensate for institutional voids

is the international business research agenda running out of steam this research note challenges international business researchers to think of their future work in terms of the past achievements of their discipline it identifies three key research areas corresponding to attempts to tackle crucial empirical questions the explanation of foreign direct investment the multinational firm and the globalization of business it ends by considering the future research agenda

the effect of national context on perceptions of risk a comparison of planned versus free market managers a model is developed to explain the effect of national context on risk related decisions an essential feature of risk related decisions is substantial uncertainty or inadequate information as well as significant consequences regarding future outcomes we argue that differences in information flows and consequences across national institutional environments affect the perceived uncertainty of decision situations for this reason the institutional environment in which managers reside should play a fundamental and systematic role in influencing their perceptions of risk we test our model on managers from two environments that contrast in terms of information and consequences related to risk a free market economy the u s and a centrally planned economy the czech republic in 1992 our results indicate that the institutional environment does indeed play a strong and systematic role in explaining managers risk related decisions thus national environment appears to be an important contextual condition to which the propensity to take risks is sensitive

productivity change and its determinants among leading mobile operators in europe the european mobile telecommunications industry has seen increased competition and market saturation in recent years so improving productivity will become crucially important for mobile operators in the near future this study adopts a bootstrap malmquist index approach to estimate productivity change among a sample of 23 of europe s leading mobile operators over the 2008 to 2009 period using a second stage regression this article also analyses the determinants of productivity changes in terms of regulation competition and ownership structure the results show that mobile companies operating in countries that have recently joined the eu have a positive association with productivity change in contrast to their counterparts in south east europe concerning market competition the leading mobile operators that experience higher productivity changes operate in more concentrated markets the results also indicate that international mobile operators perform better in terms of productivity change than their

government intervention in the venezuelan petroleum industry an empirical investigation of political risk two important aspects of political risk analysis that have not received much attention in the literature are a the reasons why multinational firms experience different types of intervention and b the timing of intervention in order to address these issues this research develops a conceptual model of political risk based on the premise that host government intervention is related to specific objectives of the government vis a vis multinational firms information reflecting the attainment of objectives motivates the government to intervene in a given manner the application of this model to the case of the venezuelan petroleum industry from years 1947 to 1976 provides some support for this model and gives insight into the timing of specific types of intervention

stability vs flexibility the effect of regulatory institutions on opportunity type how entrepreneurial opportunities are formed and exploited depends upon the institutional environment in which they are embedded the varying amounts of risk and uncertainty across and within heterogeneous institutional environments have important implications for the types of opportunity developed while the international business and entrepreneurship literatures consider the effect of environmental risk and uncertainty on firms risk and uncertainty are often treated as interchangeable or synonymous and rarely are both considered to be present together to address this we develop a new theoretical model based on institutional economics describing how institutional arrangements promoting stability thus supporting an entrepreneur s ability to assess risk will lead to more imitative opportunities while institutions promoting flexibility thus supporting an entrepreneur s ability to respond to uncertainty by iterating will foster more innovative opportunities we test this framework using cross national data across 40 countries from the gem survey finding that institutional arrangements that promote stability do lead to more imitation while institutions that promote flexibility foster more innovation by treating risk and uncertainty as distinct constructs our study makes theoretical contributions to research on institutional environments and opportunity types with implications for future research on subsidiary initiatives the evolution of mnes and born global firms

evaluating the impact of french employment policies on individual labour market histories this paper deals with the evaluation of some public employment policies set up in france during the 1980 s to improve the labour market prospects of unskilled young workers the evaluation implemented in this paper is restricted to the impact of such public measures on durations and outcomes of subsequent spells of unemployment and employment the econometric study is conducted with non experimental longitudinal microdata recording individual labour nlarket histories a particular attention is paid to the differential effects of various types of measures according to the educational level of recipients programmes involving a higher level of on thejob training such as alternating work training programmes in private firms are principally beneficial to the less educated young workers in contrast for more educated young workers work fare programmes in the public sector decrease the intensity of transition from the subsequent unemployment spell to regular jobs for that subgroup work fare programmes may act as a signal of low employment performance

strategies of legitimation mnes and the adoption of csr in response to host country institutions drawing on institutional theory this study examines the question of how host country institutions affect corporate social responsibility csr adoption by multinational enterprises mnes i propose that csr encompasses a set of practices that mnes draw on to signal legitimacy in different kinds of institutional contexts contexts that vary in how they shape issue salience and stakeholder power in a given issue field building on ideas related to field opacity and the managerial implications of csr i study why mnes adopt two distinct types of csr policies standards based csr in response to contexts marked by issue salience and rights based csr in response to contexts marked by stakeholder power to test these hypotheses i use subsidiary and firm level data from a sample of 540 western european mnes in the issue field of labor rights results show that mnes strategically adopt these csr policies related to their presence in distinct institutional contexts the study offers implications for how mnes manage the legitimacy of their global operations and how csr as a form of private governance can emerge as both a substitute and complement to regulatory institutions

are weak patent rights a barrier to u s exports abstract this paper assesses whether how and to what extent u s exports are sensitive to national differences in patent rights i estimate bilateral trade equations that account for trade distortions related to patent rights using data on state to country manufacturing exports in 1992 i find that weak patent rights are a barrier to u s exports but only to countries that pose a strong threat of imitation e g china the stronger patent rights required under the wto agreement increase u s exports to these high threat markets alternatively strengthening patent rights in countries that pose a weak threat of imitation reinforces monopoly power and reduces u s exports to these markets

exchange hazards relational reliability and contracts in china the contingent role of legal enforceability building on institutional and transaction cost economics this article proposes that legal enforceability increases the use of contract over relational reliability e g beliefs that the other party acts in a non opportunistic manner to safeguard market exchanges characterized by non trivial hazards the results of 399 buyer supplier exchanges in china show that 1 when managers perceive that the legal system can protect their firm s interests they tend to use explicit contracts rather than relational reliability to safeguard transactions involving risks i e asset specificity environmental uncertainty and behavioral uncertainty and 2 when managers do not perceive the legal system as credible they are less likely to use contracts and instead rely on relational reliability to safeguard transactions associated with specialized assets and environmental uncertainty but not those involving behavioral uncertainty we further find that legal enforceability does not moderate the effect of relational reliability on contracts but does weaken the effect of contracts on relational reliability these results endorse the importance of prior experience e g relational reliability in supporting the use of explicit contracts and alternatively suggest that under conditions of greater legal enforceability the contract signals less regarding one s intention to be trustworthy but more about the efficacy of sanctions

on the utilization of resources perspectives from the u s telecommunications industry the issue of resource utilization is important in the resource based stream of work since the ability of firms to utilize resources is a key indicator of their competitive abilities this paper specifies why some firms might be better at utilizing resources than others thereafter it demonstrates how to empirically ascertain differences in resource utilization patterns between firms using the u s telecommunications industry as a context the data envelopment analysis procedure dea which is a firm level resource utilization measure is used this procedure can be useful for the resource based approach research agenda since performance is measured in resource terms dea is applied to measure variations in different dimensions of resource utilization for the firms making up the local operating sector of the telecommunications industry the use of dea to guide empirical research and address theoretical issues within the resource based paradigm is illustrated using the resource utilization index for the telecommunications firms as the measure of strategic performance 1998 john wiley sons ltd

policies and impact an analysis of village level microfinance institutions this paper uses variation in policies and institutional characteristics to evaluate the impacts of village level microfinance institutions in rural thailand to identify impacts we use policies related to the successful unsuccessful provision of services as exogenous variation in effective financial intermediation we find that institutions particularly those with good policies can promote asset growth consumption smoothing and occupational mobility and can decrease moneylender reliance specifically cash lending institutions production credit groups and especially women s groups are successful in providing intermediation and its benefits to members while buffalo banks and rice banks are not the policies identified as important to intermediation and benefits the provision of savings services especially pledged savings accounts emergency services and training and advice surprisingly much publicized policies such as joint liability default consequences or repayment frequency had no measured impacts jel 012 016

preemptive patenting and the persistence of monopoly this article takes a different tack and inquires whether institutions such as the patent system create opportunities for firms with monopoly power to maintain their monopoly power the results apply to other situations such as brand identification spatial location and capacity expansion which share the characteristic that early or preemptive actions may lower the returns to potential competitors

are firms with foreign ceos better citizens a study of the impact of ceo foreignness on corporate social performance this study examines whether firms corporate social performance csp varies when local firms have foreign ceos building on the social identity perspective we argue that because foreign ceos are perceived as outgroup or nonprototypical leaders by the local firms stakeholders local firms with foreign ceos need to achieve a higher level of csp than do local firms with local ceos to enhance their legitimacy and trustworthiness furthermore we propose that the predicted difference in csp between foreign and local ceo led firms will be larger a for more authentic and thus trust enhancing csr activities and b in those socio economic environments where the salience of ceo foreignness and thus the need to build trustworthiness with locals is more pronounced in a sample of 1001 local firms across 18 developed countries during the period between 2003 and 2015 our empirical results support most of our predictions

the institutional environment for infrastructure investment the empirical evidence that links political institutions to economic outcomes has grown dramatically in recent years however virtually all of this analysis is undertaken using data from the past three decades this paper extends this empirical framework by performing a two century long historical analysis of the determinants of infrastructure investment in a panel of over 100 countries the results demonstrate that political environments that limit the feasibility of policy change are an important determinant of investment in infrastructure copyright 2002 oxford university press

a microeconometric evaluation of the active labour market policy in switzerland in the second part of the 1990 s switzerland conducted an ambitious active labour market policy almp encompassing a wide variety of programmes we evaluate the effects of these programmes on the individual employment probability of potential participants our econometric analysis uses unusually informative data origi nating from administrative unemployment and social security records we apply a matching es timator adapted for the case of multiple programmes we find substantial positive effects for one particular programme that is a unique feature of the swiss almp it consists of a wage subsidy for temporary jobs in the regular labour market that would otherwise not be taken up by the unemployed we also find large negative effects for traditional employment programmes oper ated in sheltered labour markets for training courses the results are mixed doi 10 1111 1468 0297 00072 download internet appendix pdf 2 590 kb

how broad should the scope of patent protection be i explore the trade off between a patent s length that is its lifetime and its width that is its scope of coverage a wider patent generally reduces the distortion of consumers choices between the patented brand of the product and unpatented lower priced varieties sold by competitors but also permits higher prices which increase relative to profits the deadweight losses from consumers switching consumption out of the product class i show under what conditions infinitely lived but very narrowly focused patents are the socially efficient way to reward innovation and under what conditions very short lived but very broad patents are optimal

firms corporate social responsibility behavior an integration of institutional and profit maximization approaches understanding firms behavior across countries a key concern in the international business literature requires the joint consideration of both institutional influences and firms profit maximization goals in the corporate social responsibility csr area however researchers have utilized theories that take into account only one or the other institutional theory which explains csr as legitimacy seeking activities in line with national level institutions or economic based approaches that consider csr effects only in terms of firm profitability while an institutional argument implies convergence in csr behavior among firms in similar institutional contexts profit maximization logic treats csr as a firm specific behavior we integrate these perspectives by demonstrating the moderating effects of firms economic motivations for seeking legitimacy on the relationship between institutional environment and csr responsiveness we argue that variations in firms economic visibility and economic vulnerability can bring about differences in their need for societal goodwill and in turn their legitimacy seeking findings on a database of apparel firms employee related csr across 23 countries support this overall argument the integration of such fundamentally different theoretical perspectives allows us to contribute new theoretical insights to international business on the influence of national institutions on firms behavior

cultural and leadership predictors of corporate social responsibility values of top management a globe study of 15 countries this paper examines cultural and leadership variables associated with corporate social responsibility values that managers apply to their decision making in this longitudinal study we analyze data from 561 firms located in 15 countries on five continents to illustrate how the cultural dimensions of institutional collectivism and power distance predict social responsibility values on the part of top management team members ceo visionary leadership and integrity were also uniquely predictive of such values

sluggish giants sticky cultures and dynamic capability transformation abstract using a theoretical framework derived from contemporary literature this paper investigates whether large and culturally dominant firms can transform their capabilities over time strategic capabilities as articulated in theory include resource accumulation and resource configuration to these is added the capability of resource utilization which comes about because of tacit and inimitable intra firm coordination skills and is a key performance measurement metric this article evaluates whether large firms in the u s telecommunications industry have been able to effect a transformation in their strategic performance over a 16 year period of time 1975 to 1990 since the late 1960s and early 1970s many measures have been undertaken to restructure the industry environment and these culminated in the 1984 divestiture by at t of this 22 bell operating companies bocs to seven regional holding companies rhcs simultaneously a series of steps opened competition in many markets for not only the rhcs but for the other local operating companies of which there are approximately 25 large ones which in many cases are bigger than some of the companies belonging to the rhc fold the local operating companies have faced a major transformation in their environment in the last 10 years once protected monopolies they now face increasing competition in many market segments which were once their profit sanctuaries enabling them to cross subsidize many unprofitable operations for the larger operating companies once owned by at t there was the shock of divestiture and re birth providing them an opportunity to engage in entrepreneurially oriented behavior thus the u s telecommunications industry provides a useful laboratory within which to analyze performance and capability transformation additionally one of the key issues that the literature is concerned with is the transformation in the performance of existing organizations this article provides evidence on the key issue of corporate performance transformation for the principal firms that comprise one of the most important industries of contemporary times it is a transformation that continues at an even faster pace today the results show that in a dynamic setting size no longer materially influences negative performance inertia arguments about the ability of large firms to effect change are not validated in the context of a dynamic u s telecommunications industry with a larger variety and pool of resources available larger firms can undergo transformation through a process of dynamic learning as effectively as smaller firms the relative transformation of the erstwhile bell operating companies is a testimony to this assertion the results have some implications for downsizing received wisdom means that less is better and smaller is swifter downsizing means dispersal of assets and resources particularly human resources which embody firm specific skills and knowledge which types of resources are lost in this process is critical to the eventual success of such endeavors with downsizing the ability of large firms to transform themselves via internal learning may be lost dynamic learning implies information scale economy exploitation and to the extent that critical mass is reduced through downsizing there is lesser diffusion of information and knowledge as a qualitatively important part of this human capital mass is reduced there is less impact of future learning as firm specific knowledge which could be combined with emergent information to create new capabilities disappears in such circumstances whether large firms can transform themselves successfully is a salient issue that ought to be further evaluated

preference falsification policy continuity and collective conservatism through a model that distinguishes between privately held and publicly declared preferences and between private and public beliefs this paper explains why a society might c ling to its past choices all four variables are endogenous to the mo del following the introduction of a measure of collective conservati sm the paper turns to the determinants and consequences of feedback from society s choices to its members private beliefs and preference s the theory is applied to the persistence of india s caste system t o explain why the lowest castes have been among the system s most com mitted supporters copyright 1987 by royal economic society

how effective are unemployment benefit sanctions looking beyond unemployment exit this paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of benefit sanctions i e temporary reductions in unemployment benefits as punishment for noncompliance with eligibility requirements in addition to the effects on unemployment durations we evaluate the effects on post unemployment employment stability on exits from the labor market and on earnings in our analysis we use a rich set of swiss register data which allow us to distinguish between ex ante effects the effects of warnings and the effects of enforcement of benefit sanctions adopting a multivariate mixed proportional hazard approach to address selectivity we find that both warnings and enforcement increase the job finding rate and the exit rate out of the labor force warnings do not affect subsequent employment stability but do reduce post unemployment earnings actual benefit reductions lower the quality of post unemployment jobs both in terms of job duration as well as in terms of earnings the net effect of a benefit sanction on post unemployment income is negative over a period of two years after leaving unemployment workers who got a benefit sanction imposed face a net income loss equivalent to 30 days of full pay due to the ex post effect in addition to that stricter monitoring may reduce net earnings by up to 4 days of pay for every unemployed worker due to the ex ante effect

transaction cost economics in real time this paper attempts to place the theq of the boundaries of thejirm within the context of the passage of time more precisely it resurrects and places in a modem frame some of the insights of the chsical and marshallian theories of organization the modem reinterpretation of those theories centers around the capabilities view of the jirm taken together with governance costs the capabilities ofjirm and market determine the boundaries of the jirm in the short run ovw time capabilities change as firms and markets learn which implies a kind of information or knowledge cost the cost of trandewing the firm s capability to the market w vice versa these dynamic governance costs are the costs of persuading negotiating and coordinating with and teaching others they arise in the face of change notably txchnological and organizational innovation in fit they are the costs of not having the capabilities you need when you need them dynamic transaction costs provide an explanation for vertical integration that is arguably more general than those dominant in the literature in the face of uncertainty and divwgent views ofthe future common ownership of multiple stages of production is a supwior institutional arrangement for coordinating systemic change asset specrfity is neither necessary nor suffient for this to be true dynamic governance costs may also affit internal organization it may sometimes be costly in 3 terms of persuasion negotiation and teaching to create within the firm capabilities readily available on the market indeed in cases in which systemic coordination is not 4 the issue the market may turn out to be the superior institution of coordination in e 2 genwal the capabilities view of the jirm suggests that we look atfim2 and market as alternative and sometimes overlapping institutions of learning 1 transaction costs in the long rzln and the short 9 x classical and neoclassical perspectives

novelty and disclosure in patent law the stringency of the novelty requirement in patent law affects the pace of innovation because it affects the amount of technical information that is disclosed among firms it also affects ex ante profitability of research we compare weak and strong novelty requirements from the standpoint of social efficiency we ask how our answer depends on the rule that determines which firm gets a patent when two firms have patents pending on the same technology the possible rules are first to invent which applies in the u s and first to file which applies everywhere else

ownership organization and private firms efficient use of resources the principal agent theory asserts that public firms performance is driven by efficient capital and labor markets but is silent about non listed private companies which are less permeable to market forces both capital and labor than are public companies we propose and test a 2 x 2 framework distinguishing owner controlled vs agent led firms from firms with a flat vs multilayer organization our findings provide highly contrasted results and raise important issues for further study of private firms

the impact of active labour market programmes on the duration of unemployment in switzerland this article evaluates the effects of swiss active labour market programmes on the job chances of unemployed workers the main innovation is a comparison of two important dynamic evaluation estimators the matching estimator and the timing of events estimator we find that both estimators generate different treatment effects according to the matching estimator temporary subsidised jobs shorten unemployment duration whereas training programmes and employment programmes do not in contrast the timing of events estimator suggests that none of the swiss active labour market programmes shortens unemployment duration the aim of the present article is to study the impact of active labour market policies almps on the duration of unemployment in switzerland the new swiss almps reflect the increasing consensus among policy makers that actively assisting the unemployed in job search is preferable to simply providing them with passive income support the danger is so the argument goes that reliance on passive income support may reduce work incentives and job search activities and therefore increase the risk of long term unemployment almps are seen by many as the key to minimise these risks the question how participation in almp measures affects labour market histories of individuals has been the subject of substantial debate the main problem is that labour market outcomes for participants may be systematically different from non participants

international standards for intellectual property protection and r d incentives abstract we examine the effect of alternative standards for intellectual property protection uniform protection based on the gatt principle of non discrimination provides domestic and foreign firms with the same level of protection discriminatory protection based on section 337 of the u s trade laws provides different levels of protection depending upon where the firm is located we show that discriminatory protection may not increase and may decrease domestic r d the effect of asymmetric patent protection depends on whether the rivals have pre existing products on the costs of r d and on the value of the potential innovation

labour market effects of retraining for the unemployed the role of occupations abstractwe analyse the impact of retraining for unemployed low skilled job seekers in germany this extensive training programme leads to a formal vocational degree which is often required to access certain professions applying statistical matching methods we find that on average after a period with large lock in effects retraining strongly increases the employment probability of participants especially women we add to the literature by estimating the employment effects for different occupations for which participants are trained our results show that there are substantial differences depending on the occupation as the composition of trained occupations differs for men and women segregation could be a driver of higher employment effects for women however comparisons of men and women trained for the same occupations reveal that even after controlling for segregation women profit more from retraining while caseworkers are instructed to choose professions with high labour demand other aspects

competition in the united states long distance telecommunications industry langdale j 1983 competition in the united states long distance telecommunications industry reg studies 17 393 409 entry of competition in the united states long distance telecommunications industry is examined in the context of changes in the economic technological and regulatory environment growth of large multi plant firms has led to a rapid growth of demand on intermetropolitan routes technological change and deregulation of the industry have lowered the barriers to entry in the long distance field geographical expansion of competitive services is discussed in relation to the structure of the urban hierarchy services are initially introduced in major metropolitan areas and then spread down the hierarchy in addition the spread of american telephone and telegraph s specialized business communications service dataphone digital service is examined

corporate social responsibility in europe and the u s insights from businesses self presentations the paper compares the extent and content of businesses communications about corporate social responsibility csr in france the netherlands the u k and the u s in particular the study investigates the nature of csr principles processes and stakeholder issues discussed in web pages the results show that businesses in the four countries do not display the same eagerness to appear as socially responsible and employ diverse means to convey social responsibility images

international r d rivalry and industrial strategy this paper presents a theory of government intervention which provides an explanation for industrial strategy policies such as r d or export subsidies in imperfectly competitive international markets domestic net welfare is improved by the capture of a greater share of the output of rent earning industries although the subsidy ridden noncooperative international equilibrium is jointly suboptimal behaviour of governments and firms is modelled as a three stage subgame perfect nash equilibrium the assumption that the government is the first player in this game allows it to influence equilibrium outcomes by altering the set of credible actions open to firms

international business responses to institutional voids for nearly two decades scholars in international business and management have explored the implications of institutional voids for firm strategy and structure although institutional voids offer both opportunities and challenges they have largely been associated with firms efforts to avoid or mitigate institutional deficiencies and reduce the transaction costs associated with operating in settings subject to those institutional shortcomings the goal of this special issue is to advance scholarship on this topic by a exploring institutional voids that are new to the literature b providing a deeper assessment of the different ways in which firms respond to these voids and c utilizing diverse disciplines and theoretical approaches to do so in this introduction we first review and synthesize extant research on institutional voids tracking the evolution of institutional void scholarship since the inception of the concept khanna palepu journal of economic literature 45 2 331 372 1997 and providing our perspective on its contributions and limitations we then summarize the contributions of the articles included in this special issue in addition to identifying an array of institutional voids economic and social the articles highlight four different strategies for responding to them internalization substitution borrowing and signaling drawing on these we develop new insights on the implications of institutional voids for firm behavior we conclude with suggestions for future research

how valuable are the patents behind section 337 cases a us patent protects the owner of the intellectual property from imitators producing in the us and foreign imitators selling in the us market there are two venues for filing infringement cases against international infringement of us patents with the international trade commission itc using section 337 of the tariff act of 1930 or with federal district courts three indicators of patent value suggest that patents litigated under section 337 are on average more valuable however their values tend to be more variable the latter suggests that some firms may be using section 337 not for protection against international infringement of us patents but for protection against imports

partial unemployment insurance benefits and the transition rate to regular work abstract in finland unemployed workers who are looking for a full time job but take up a part time or very short full time job may qualify for partial unemployment benefits in exchange for partial benefits these applicants must continue their search of regular full time work this study analyzes the implications of working on partial benefits for subsequent transitions to regular employment the timing of events approach is applied to distinguish between causal and selectivity effects associated with the receipt of partial benefits the results suggest that partial unemployment associated with short full time jobs facilitates transitions to regular employment also part time working on partial benefits may help men but not women in finding a regular job afterwards

the corporate social performance financial performance link strategic managers are consistently faced with the decision of how to allocate scarce corporate resources in an environment that is placing more and more pressures on them recent scholarship in strategic management suggests that many of these pressures come directly from sources associated with social issues in management rather than traditional arenas of strategic management using a greatly improved source of data on corporate social performance this paper reports the results of a rigorous study of the empirical linkages between financial and social performance corporate social performance csp is found to be positively associated with prior financial performance supporting the theory that slack resource availability and csp are positively related csp is also found to be positively associated with future financial performance supporting the theory that good management and csp are positively related 1997 by john wiley sons ltd