rival unionism and membership growth in the united states 1900 to 2005 a special case of inter organizational competition this article uses time series data from 1900 to 2005 to explore the effects of rivalry between labor unions as a special case of inter organizational competition holding constant economic and political factors that typically account for changes in union density we investigate how competition from rival labor federations and from independent unions affect both union density and a measure for the density of the dominant federation afl afl cio adjusted for membership changes from mergers and splits we measure competition by the number of unions and the size of rivals while much existing literature measures state regulation with categorical coding for specific periods we measure the effect of state enforcement directly with counts of pro labor and pro management unfair labor practice cases adjudicated by the national labor relations board we assess the effect of left wing political culture using the popular vote for socialist and communist candidates in presidential elections both the number of memb

constrainedly fair job assignments under minimum wages a number of jobs are to be assigned to a greater number of workers while having to abide by the law of minimum wages firms must determine who should be assigned which job and at what salary in such situations fair envy free allocations usually fail to exist to cope with this situation this paper proposes a new concept of fairness called constrained fairness among the set of constrainedly fair allocations the so called constrainedly fair and minimal allocations are of particular interest the reason for this is that the salaries are not only compatible with the minimum wages they are also optimal from the standpoint of cost minimizing firms and the assignment of jobs is efficient from the viewpoint of workers a convergent dynamic procedure that identifies constrainedly fair and minimal allocations is proposed furthermore strategic properties of the mechanism are derived and two notions of efficiency are evaluated

learning and time varying macroeconomic volatility abstract this paper presents a dsge model in which agents learning about the economy can endogenously generate time varying macroeconomic volatility economic agents use simple models to form expectations and need to learn the relevant parameters their gain coefficient is endogenous and is adjusted according to past forecast errors the model is estimated using likelihood based bayesian methods the endogenous gain is jointly estimated with the structural parameters of the system the estimation results show that private agents appear to have often switched to constant gain learning with a high constant gain during most of the 1970s and until the early 1980s while reverting to a decreasing gain later on as a result the model can generate a pattern of volatility which is increasing in the 1970s and falling in the second half of the sample with a decline that can roughly match the magnitude of the so called great moderation in the 1984 2007 period the paper also documents how a failure to incorporate learning into the estimation may lead econometricians to spuriously find time varying volatility in the exogenous shocks even when these have constant variance by construction

assessing organizational fitness on a dynamic landscape an empirical test of the relative inertia thesis this paper proposes an empirical framework for evaluating the relative structural inertia hypothesis a central assumption of organizational ecology theories in stark contrast to the tenets of strategic management the relative inertia thesis claims that organizations are typically unable to match structural changes to their competitive environments in a timely fashion the hypothesis is tested for the hospital industry in california during the 1980 90 time frame strategic movements in a competition landscape are tracked using a variant of the jaccard similarity coefficient which has been applied in numerous studies of biological competition findings indicate that few hospitals are able to overcome inertial forces in adapting their service portfolios furthermore the ability of hospitals to strategically reposition themselves decreases markedly with provider density analyses also investigate the relation between organizational attributes e g age size mission and portfolio scope and adaptability implications for both ecological and strategic theory are pursued 1997 john wiley sons ltd

the spread of the multidivisional form among large firms 1919 1979 the multidivisional form is the favored form of organization for the large firms that dominate the american economy this study takes up the causes of the dissemination of that form among large firms from 1919 to 1979 five theories are initially proposed as possible explanations for the changes observed and these theories are operationalized and tested the model that seems most consistent with the data emphasizes the ability of key actors to alter structure under three circumstances when the firm has a product related or unrelated strategy which is consistent with chandler s 1962 theorizing when the corporate presidents have a background in sales or finance and when other firms in the industry alter their structures the implications of these results for theories of organizational change are discussed with special reference to the importance of conceiving how actors operate with varying rationalities in this process

the non optimality of proposed monetary policy rules under timeless perspective commitment abstract in a near canonical forward looking model the timeless perspective form of commitment typically provides outcomes that are on average superior to those resulting from discretion the specific condition that appears in the literature is however not optimal from the relevant perspective

housing markets with indivisibilities abstract a model of a rental housing market in which houses are treated as indivisible commodities is presented a recursive equation that determines a competitive equilibrium is provided and it is argued that this competitive equilibrium is representative of the set of all competitive equilibria using this representative equilibrium several propositions on comparative statics are considered that have to do with how the competitive rents change when certain parameters of the model change

price quantity strategic market games this paper is yet another in a rapidly growing series e g 2 11 on strategic approaches to economic equilibrium our aim here is to make precise the remark implicitly due to bertrand 1 or 10 ch 4 5 that if the agents in an economy use price setting strategies then the strategic nash equilibria will in fact be walrasian and this without any assumption of a large number of small agents however in our models not only prices but also quantities are set by the agents thus it might actually be more appropriate to call them bertrand cournot types of models we begin with a standard walras exchange economy with a finite number of traders and commodities this is recast as a game in strategic form in essentially two different ways there is a trading post for each commodity to which traders send contingent statements about how much they wish to buy and sell and at what prices in model 1 the trading point is determined by the intersection of the aggregate supply and demand curves in model 2 trade takes place so as to meet as many contingent statements as possible each buyer whose orders are filled pays the price he quoted using a fiat money which can be borrowed costlessly and limitlessly but after trade is over there is a settlement of accounts and a penalty is levied on those who are bankrupt no attempt is made to model the penalty in any detail it is simply described in the form of a disutility but this in turn may be imagined to stem from confiscation of assets see remark 5 or the necessity of procuring highly priced loans etc call a noncooperative equilibrium active if it turns out that no trader is isolated i e trapped as the sole buyer or seller at some trading post then our results may be described as follows in model 1 the active2 n e of the game coincide with the c e of the market furthermore there is a subset of tight active n e which also coincide with the c e and each n e in this subset is strong

a critical exploration of sponsorship infrastructure and new organizations this research focuses on the effects of public sponsorship and regional infrastructure on the emergence and survival of new organizations propositions are tested regarding the joint effects of sponsorship and infrastructure on industrial development in a randomly selected sample of fourteen regions the data include six measures of infrastructure sponsorship as measured by the total dollars spent for economic development and their individual and joint effects on the number of firms and employees in high technology industries for the years 1965 1970 1975 1980 and 1984 this preliminary analysis suggests that variation in the infrastructure and level of sponsorship within a region is related to the birth and survival of new organizations

the ecology of organizational mortality american labor unions 1836 1985 this research analyzes the disbanding rates of the full population of american national labor unions for the period 1836 1985 it tests the hypothesis drawn from population ecology theory that di

large indivisibles an analysis with respect to price equilibrium and fairness an exchange economy is considered in which there are a finite number of individuals the same number of indivisibles and a fixed amount of a divisible good each individual consumes exactly one of the indivisibles and a certain quantity of the divisible good the existence of prices corresponding to pareto efficient allocations is proved it is also shown that this economy possesses fair allocations income fair allocations coalition fair allocations and pareto efficient egalitarian equivalent allocations in this study the effect of including large indivisibles in an exchange economy will be analyzed the analysis will be carried out with respect to the existence of price equilibrium and with respect to the existence of different forms of fairness the economy consists of a finite number of individuals the same number of indivisibles and a fixed amount of a divisible good it is assumed that each individual consumes exactly one of the indivisibles and some quantity of the divisible good we may interpret the indivisibles as being professions or houses the relationship between price equilibrium and a pareto efficient allocation is well known and proved in a number of cases under different assumptions about preferences and commodities for a standard economy see e g debreu 5 in case of nonconvexities which may also describe a certain type of indivisibility we may have an exact relationship in economies with a continuum of individuals see e g hildenbrand 11 but otherwise an approximate relationship obtains the degree of approximation depends on the degree of nonconvexities in preferences and not on the number of individuals see e g arrow and hahn 1 we will prove the existence of prices characterizing a pareto efficient allocation in a case where the indivisibles play an essential role and where approximate results would be too approximate the indivisibles may be considered large for the individual compared to his total consumption the theory of fairness has developed considerably during the seventies different kinds of concepts of fairness have been introduced and analyzed see daniel 41 foley 81 pazner and schmeidler 121 and schmeidler and vind 141 among others normally these authors have considered models with divisible goods or an infinite number of individuals for exchange economies the existence of fair allocations an envy free and pareto efficient allocation has been proved in

effects of ancestral populations on entrepreneurial founding and failure private liquor stores in alberta 1994 2003 until 1993 all liquor stores in the canadian province of alberta were government owned and run in the fall of 1993 the provincial government exited liquor retailing all government stores were shut down and entrepreneurs were allowed to open private liquor stores in this article we take advantage of this abrupt regulatory change in the alberta liquor retailing industry to address two related issues that have received little empirical attention first we investigate how an ancestral population affects processes of legitimation and competition while density dependence theory predicts that legitimation effects outweigh competitive effects at low levels of density will this be the case when a new population replaces a similar ancestral one second beyond density dependence we investigate how ancestral populations affect the locations of new entrepreneurial ventures will entrepreneurs follow ancestral location patterns and will these ancestral locations confer survival advantages to answer these questions we map all private liquor stores on the street map of calgary alberta s largest city from 1994 to 2003 and analyze store founding and failure we use our results to draw implications for theories of density dependence entrepreneurial behavior and industry spatial structure copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

the conditioning effect of time on firm survival an industry life cycle approach in an effort to reconcile theoretical blind spots we integrated research in technology management organizational ecology and evolutionary economics the central premise underlying the resultan

the value of interest rate stabilization policies when agents are learning we examine the expectational stability e stability of rational expectations equilibrium under optimal interest rate rules in the context of the standard new keynesian model of the monetary transmission mechanism we focus on the case where the monetary authority adds interest rate stabilization to its other objectives of inflation and output stabilization we consider both the case where the monetary authority lacks a commitment technology and as well as the case of full commitment we show that for both cases optimal interest rate rules yield rational expectations equilibria that are e stable for a wide range of empirically plausible parameter values this finding stands in contrast to the findings of evans and honkapohja 2002 2003ab for optimal monetary policy rules in environments where interest rate stabilization is not part of the central bank s objective function

in search of excellence fads success stories and adaptive emulation1 the faddishness of the business community is often noted and lamented but not well understood by standard models of innovation and diffusion we combine arguments about organizational cognition and institutional mimicry to develop a model of adaptive emulation where firms respond to perceived failure by imitating their most successful peers computational experiments show that this process generates empirically plausible cascades of adoption even if innovations are entirely worthless faddish cycles are most robust across alternative treatments of managerial decision making where innovations have modest positive effects on outcomes these results have broad implications for the faddishness of a business community increasingly marked by media driven accounts of success and for the properties of organizational practices that are hot one day and cold the next

learning about monetary policy rules abstract we study macroeconomic systems with forward looking private sector agents and a monetary authority that is trying to control the economy through the use of a linear policy feedback rule we use stability under recursive learning a la evans and honkapohja learning and expectations in macroeconomics princeton university press princeton new jersey 2001 as a criterion for evaluating monetary policy rules in this context we find that considering learning can alter the evaluation of alternative policy rules

escaping nash inflation an ordinary differential equation ode gives the mean dynamics that govern the convergence to self confirming equilibria of self referential systems under discounted least squares learning another ode governs escape dynamics that recurrently propel away from a self confirming equilibrium in a model with a unique self confirming equilibrium the escape dynamics make the government discover too strong a version of the natural rate hypothesis the escape route dynamics cause recurrent outcomes close to the ramsey commitment inflation rate in a model with an adaptive government

density dependence in the evolution of populations of newspaper organizations a model of density dependence is proposed to explain regularities in the growth and decline of organizational populations density the number of organizations is assumed to be a function of the social processes of legitimation and competition at low density the model predicts that the legitimation process will dominate and will lead to high organizational founding rates and low organizational mortality rates at high levels of density competition will dominate and consequently founding rates will decline and mortality rates will rise the model is tested with hazard function models using data from nine newspaper populations spanning the 19th and 20th centuries and covering over 5200 newspapers analysis offounding rates provides strong empirical support for the model analysis of mortality rates reveals that the model holds for large populations

robust stability of monetary policy rules under adaptive learning recent research has explored how minor changes in expectation formation can change the stability properties of a model duffy and xiao 2007 evans and honkapohja 2009 this article builds on this research by examining an economy subject to a variety of monetary policy rules under an endogenous learning algorithm proposed by marcet and nicolini 2003 the results indicate that operational versions of optimal discretionary rules are not robustly stable as in evans and honkapohja 2009 in addition commitment rules are not robust to minor changes in expectational structure and parameter values

uncovering the influence of social venture creation on commercial venture creation a population ecology perspective abstract this study takes a population ecology perspective to uncover the influence that social venture creation exerts on commercial venture creation data from 88 ohio counties during 2003 2007 uncovered a negative relationship suggesting that social ventures compete for resources with commercial ventures at the time of founding additionally we found that income levels in the county affected the inter population dynamics between social and commercial ventures specifically lower income levels exacerbated the competitive relationship between social and commercial ventures low levels of government spending on welfare were found to suppress commercial start up rates

the dynamics of rapid industrial growth evidence from sweden s information technology industry 1990 2004 sweden s information technology it industry expanded through an inflow of new entrants during the 1990s its evolution was analyzed using ecological models of organizational founding and disbanding controlling for the effects of economic conditions this study analyzed the effects of density dependence age imprinting rate dependence and the origin of new entrants on the industry the results indicate that the inflow was comprised of start ups that proved to be relatively short lived in contrast new entrants that originated as part of incumbent firms that were diversifying in it stabilized the industry by depressing its disbanding rate and facilitating the entry of new firms in explaining the dynamics of the industry the analysis supports the established models of density dependence age dependence imprinting and organizational origin copyright 2009 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

interest rate control and nonconvergence to rational expectations this paper investigates the feasibility of a monetary policy aimed at pegging the nominal rate of interest it shows that under general conditions such a policy would produce the well known cumulative process despite the fact that there exists a well behaved rational expectations equilibrium with no tendency for inflation to accelerate or decelerate the cumulative process shows up as the failure of learning to converge to rational expectations specifically the paper shows first in a conventional is lm model with an expectations augmented phillips curve and then in a micro based finance constraint model that if people follow any learning rule based on experience that satisfies a weak condition then the sequence of temporary equilibria under a policy of interest pegging cannot converge the nonconvergent path that will be observed accords with the familiar cumulative process in that inflation accelerates if the market rate of interest has been pegged below the natural rate

the existence and computation of competitive equilibria in markets with an indivisible commodity abstract this paper considers an exchange economy called a generalized assignment market in which sellers and buyers trade one indivisible commodity possibly with product differentiation for a perfectly divisible commodity the existence of a competitive equilibrium in this economy is proved using kakutani s fixed point theorem this existence theorem is applied to a production economy in which sellers are formulated as producers with convex cost functions two examples of housing markets are provided and their competitive equilibria are numerically calculated

the order and size of entry into international markets abstract when entering markets managers must decide when to enter as well as how many resources to commit to the entry the study finds that larger initial resource commitments do not result in higher market share and market survival in international markets instead to improve performance in international markets managers should strive to be first entrants further first entrants typically commit fewer resources suggesting that this strategy can be pursued by firms with limited resources

recurrent hyperinflations and learning we use a model of boundedly rational learning to account for the observations of recurrent hyperinflations in the 1980 s in a standard monetary model we replace the assumption of full rational expectations by a formal definition of quasi rational learning the model under learning matches some crucial stylized facts observed during the recurrent hyperinflations experienced by several countries in the 1980 s remarkably well we argue that despite being a small departure from rational expectations quasi rational learning does not preclude falsifiability of the model it does not violate reasonable rationality requirements and it can be used for policy evaluation

a simple recursive forecasting model abstract we compare the performance of alternative recursive forecasting models a simple constant gain algorithm used widely in the learning literature both forecasts well out of sample and also provides the best fit to the survey of professional forecasters

the strategy structure of two sided matching markets we study two sided markets in which agents are buyers and sellers or firms and workers or men and women the agents are to form partnerships which provide them with satisfaction and at the same time make monetary transfers e g salaries or dowries the core of this market game is shown to have a particularly nice structure so that precise answers can be given to questions concerning comparative statics and manipulability the idea of using walrasian equilibrium as a mechanism for making allocations with desirable properties of fairness and efficiency has been studied extensively the scheme involves having agents specify their supply and demand functions the competitive equilibria are then calculated and allocations are made accordingly in general this procedure may run into two difficulties first nonuniqueness if there are several equilibria there may be no fair way to decide which one should be implemented and second manipulability if there is only one equilibrium an informed agent may be able to influence it by suitably falsifying his demand data however as we will show here using the walrasian mechanism does work remarkably well for a certain class of important markets these are the matching markets of our title and they include markets for single items like houses where it is assumed that traders do not wish to acquire more than one item they also include labor markets in which it is desired to match workers with jobs at suitable salaries academic markets in which students are to be assigned to educational institutions marriage markets where men and women are matched through negotiating of dowries it turns out that in these markets both the problems of nonuniqueness and manipulability can be resolved in a

analyzing unexpected density dependence effects on organizational births in new york s life insurance industry 1842 1904 organizational ecologists argue that numbers of firms density dependence significantly affect industrial development rising numbers of firms are thought to legitimize a young industry leading persons to launch new firms in the industry but in a more crowded older industry increasing numbers of companies are expected to intensify competition producing a decline in organizational births since this argument dominates ecological theory results that challenge it must be explained i identify six reasons for such results only a few of these explanations have been evaluated empirically and the ideas rarely have been assessed with respect to organizational births therefore i address these explanations in order to resolve unexpected density dependence effects on foundings in new york s life insurance industry from 1842 to 1904 measuring numbers of life insurance operators at both the state new york and national u s levels of analysis resolves the unexpected density dynamics in this study and produces a coherent pattern of density findings further numbers of mutual savings banks and numbers of small life insurers in new york created competitive pressures in the life insurance business leading persons to abandon carrier entrepreneurship entrepreneurship also suffered when the life insurance industry was dominated by a few large sellers more generally the evidence shows that new york was divided into two insurance submarkets and that carrier organizers reacted to legitimation and competition trends in the submarket occupied by domestic insurers i conclude that once we consider the reasons for unexpected density dynamics the core model of density dependence offers a cogent explanation for industrial evolution

after minimalism transformations of state bar associations from market dependence to state reliance 1918 to 1950 compared to conventional approaches we conceptualize transformations in populations of organizations in terms of shifts in their relative embeddedness in markets and states as organizations expand beyond minimalist conditions of existence states and markets offer alternative solutions to the core problems of persistence obtaining resources managing competition and constructing legitimacy by analyzing the movers and stayers in a population of state bar associations that split into two co existing forms of organization one primarily reliant on the market and the other primarily dependent on the state we demonstrate that a two stage transition to a new form can be explained by the complementary interplay of resource dependency and neo institutional theories organizations are more likely to move from reliance on the market to reliance on the state if 1 their market performance has been unsuccessful 2 states are willing and able to solve organizational problems 3 organizations are younger and less established and 4 compelling alternative models have been propagated by moral entrepreneurs and adopted by influential states

employing identities in organizational ecology this paper argues for greater attention to employment based organizational identities in ecological theory and research i define and explore three dimensions of particular relevance to labor market identities sharpness resonance focus and authenticity the paper offers some speculations regarding i when labor market identities are most decisive for organizations ii how product market and labor market identities interact iii how employment based organizational identities might be operationalized and iv how greater attention to such identities would illuminate key issues in organizational ecology copyright 2004 oxford university press

industry competition and firm human capital this paper argues that objective and subjective human capital may have substantial impact upon organizational performance in a competitive context objective human capital pertains to such features as education and experience whereas subjective human capital relates to personality characteristics the argument is illustrated by presenting the results of two empirical studies 1 a cross section 1990 1991 analysis of about 50 incumbents in the flemish furniture industry concentrating on the impact of subjective human capital particularly the chief executive officer s ceo s locus of control personality on financial performance and 2 a longitudinal 1970 1992 analysis of a cohort of 100 entrants into the dutch audit industry focusing on the influence of objective human capital particularly education and experience on exit by merger and acquisition m a or diaspora both studies support the claim that objective and subjective human capital matters for example flemish furniture firms headed by a ceo with an internal locus of control trait reach higher levels of financial performance and dutch audit firms with a high proportion of personnel with business experience are more likely to exit the industry over the years as a result of diaspora finally the data of the flemish furniture and dutch audit industries are re analyzed so as to compare the impact of human capital variables on small firm performance in both industries this re analysis reveals that in both industries the impact of human capital variables is more pronounced in large firms compared to small businesses

new size measurements in population ecology in organizational ecology the analysis of the impact of competition between populations on vital ratios is relatively underdeveloped this paper addresses this issue by developing new competition measurements that focus on the importance of organizational size the application of these measurements in the case of competition between organizational subforms in a population and their impact on mortality rates demonstrate their usefulness for modelling competition specifically the results show how levels of competition between firms in a population can be more clearly analysed when the rival population mass or concentration indices are used

incentive compatibility in a market with indivisible goods abstract in a market in which each trader s initial endowment is one unit of an indivisible good there exists an incentive compatible procedure for reaching a competitive allocation this contrasts with some recent results for similar problems

monetary policy expectations and commitment commitment in monetary policy leads to equilibria that are superior to those from optimal discretionary policies a number of interest rate reaction functions and instrument rules have been proposed to implement or approximate commitment policy we assess these rules in terms of whether they lead to a rational expectations equilibrium that is both locally determinate and stable under adaptive learning by private agents a reaction function that appropriately depends explicitly on private sector expectations performs particularly well on both counts