cultural conflict and merger failure an experimental approach we use laboratory experiments to explore merger failure due to conflicting organizational cultures we introduce a laboratory paradigm for studying organizational culture that captures several key elements of the phenomenon in our experiments we allow subjects in firms to develop a culture and then merge two firms as expected performance decreases following the merging of two laboratory firms in addition subjects overestimate the performance of the merged firm and attribute the decrease in performance to members of the other firm rather than to situational difficulties created by conflicting culture

formulating research policy on expert advice abstract national research assessments represent the principal policy used by countries with public university systems to improve the quality of their universities research they typically employ expert panels of local academics to assess journal quality and use such assessments to reward publications we propose a model of how experts assess quality and test this model using data from the recent australian assessment controlling for objective quality we show that experts cognitive biases dominate their assessments consequently such assessments exaggerate the quality of the experts research and understate that of their colleagues our model can explain 95 of the variation in assessments

delays and equilibria with large and small information in social learning abstract the general model of social learning with irreversible investment and endogenous timing is analyzed for any distribution of private informations strategic complementarities and multiple equilibria appear which are generated solely by information externalities different equilibria generate strikingly different amounts of information the impacts of various assumptions bounded beliefs large number of agents discrete time and short periods are examined carefully the properties are robust to the introduction of observation noise with a continuum of agents

patterns of research productivity in the business ethics literature insights from analyses of bibliometric distributions in any academic discipline published articles in respective journals represent production units of scientific knowledge and bibliometric distributions reflect the patterns in such outputs across authors or producers closely following the analysis approach used for similar studies in the economics and finance literature we present the first study to examine whether there exists an empirical regularity in the bibliometric patterns of research productivity in the business ethics literature our results present strong evidence that there indeed exists a distinct empirical regularity it is the so called generalized lotka s law of scientific productivity pattern the number of authors publishing n papers is about 1 n c of those publishing one paper we discuss the likely processes that underlie the productivity pattern postulated by the generalized lotka s law we find that the value of the exponent c is equal to about 2 6 for the comprehensive bibliometric data across the two leading business ethics journals the observed research productivity pattern in the business ethics area a relatively young discipline is interestingly very consistent with those found in much older related business disciplines like economics accounting and finance we discuss the general implications of our findings

energy consumption and co2 emissions convergence in european union member countries a tonneau des danaides abstract as the consumption of energy is responsible for approximately 80 of ghg in eu iea 2008 the impact of energy activity on the environment has received increasing attention over the last decades from scholars researchers politicians and society as a whole within eu member countries it is commonly accepted that the design of energy and mitigation policies either at national or at european level require a detailed and integrated investigation of convergence divergence pattern among the participating countries in this paper we examine the distribution dynamics of energy consumption and co2 emissions their intensities as well as the carbonization index in 23 european countries over a forty one year period in particular from 1970 to 2010 for this purpose we used quah s methodology which is based on the dynamics of cross section distributions the main conclusion is that for all the examined variables the hypothesis of convergence patterns for the eu sample is not valid moreover regarding each examined variable different groups of polarization established important differences occur across eu countries according to the climate type with respect to the examined variables our analysis provides strong evidence supporting the fact that national and european energy and mitigation policies should be implemented according to the non convergence paradigm the body of evidence provided by our analysis is of great importance to energy policy makers and for issues related to climate change

investment dynamics with common and private values abstract we study a dynamic investment game with two dimensional signals where each firm observes its continuously distributed idiosyncratic cost of investment and a discrete signal correlated with common investment returns we demonstrate that the one step property holds and provide an equilibrium existence characterization result reversals are possible where a large number of firms investing in a given round becomes bad news about investment returns welfare is compared to static and rigid timing benchmarks and computed for large economies

zero as a special price the true value of free products when faced with a choice of selecting one of several available products or possibly buying nothing according to standard theoretical perspectives people will choose the option with the highest cost benefit difference however we propose that decisions about free zero price products differ in that people do not simply subtract costs from benefits but instead they perceive the benefits associated with free products as higher we test this proposal by contrasting demand for two products across conditions that maintain the price difference between the goods but vary the prices such that the cheaper good in the set is priced at either a low positive or zero price in contrast with a standard cost benefit perspective in the zero price condition dramatically more participants choose the cheaper option whereas dramatically fewer participants choose the more expensive option thus people appear to act as if zero pricing of a good not only decreases its cost but also adds to its benefits after documenting this basic effect we propose and test several psychological antecedents of the effect including social norms mapping difficulty and affect affect emerges as the most likely account for the effect

trends in the publication of empirical economics this paper documents recent trends in the publication of empirical articles in general interest economics journals three measures of journal quality are estimated the author finds substantial differences in publication rates of empirical articles among top tier and second tier journals and shows that the empirical percentages among general interest journals has been converging of late he offers potential explanations for the negative relationship between measured journal quality and empirical publication rates as well as the recent convergence

alternative measures of output in global economic environmental models purchasing power parity or market exchange rates the study examines the question of the use of purchasing power parity versus market exchange rates in constructing global economic models it compares three approaches mer accounts world price ppp accounts and superlative ppp accounts it concludes that the best approach is to use superlative ppp accounts this approach uses cross sectional ppp measures for relative incomes and outputs and relies on national accounts price and quantity indexes for time series extrapolations under ideal circumstances this approach will provide accurate and consistent cross sections and time series this approach will require relatively little change in model structure from ones using mer accounts the main concern would be to ensure that behavioral and reduced form relationships in the models have been correctly estimated

european economics an analysis based on publications in the core journals abstract in this paper we provide a ranking of european economics institutions and countries based on publications in a core set of 10 economic journals from 1991 to 1996 we find that the three leading universities in europe are the london school of economics tel aviv university and oxford university while the three top ranked countries are the u k france and israel

why are services cheaper in the poor countries in their important work on international comparisons of national incomes and of comparative price structure kravis heston and summers i982 p 8 have noted that services are much cheaper in the relative price structure of a typical poor country than in that of a rich country this phenonomen has been documented now fairly systematically by the data gathered under their guiding hand of the united nations international comparison icp which covers 34 countries table i reproduced from their work i982 and fig i based on rows 3 and ii 13 indeed show this tendencyfor the relationship between relative service prices and real per capita gdp in this kravis heston summers 34 country 6 group sample the tendency is strongly evident except for the intermediate groups iii and iv

modeling energy and development an evaluation of models and concepts most global energy models are developed by institutes from developed countries focusing primarily on issues that are important in industrialized countries evaluation of the results for asia of the ipcc sres models shows that broad concepts of energy and development the energy ladder and the environmental kuznets curve can be observed in the results of the models however improvements can be made in modeling the issues that underlie these concepts like traditional fuels electrification economic structural change income distribution and informal economies given the rapidly growing importance of energy trajectories of developing countries for global sustainability the challenge for the future is to develop energy models that include all these aspects of energy and development

will history repeat itself economic convergence and convergence in energy use patterns in this paper a difference in differences estimator on panel data for 30 developing and 21 industrialized countries is employed over the period 1971 2005 to examine how patterns of energy use characterized by the consumption of primary energy carriers sectoral energy use and carbon emissions are changing in the process of economic development for the average developing country in our sample the results indicate that economic catch up has been accompanied by above average growth of the use of most primary energy carriers the consumption of final energy in most sectors and total co2 emissions for industrialized countries we find that economic growth is partially decoupled from energy consumption and that above average rates of economic growth were accompanied by larger improvements in energy efficiency these results emphasize the need to identify the relevant engines of economic growth their implications for energy use and possibilities to achieve low carbon growth centered on productivity and efficiency improvements rather than on capital accumulation

social learning and peer effects in consumption evidence from movie sales using box office data for all movies released between 1982 and 2000 i quantify how much the consumption decisions of individuals depend on information they receive from their peers when quality is ex ante uncertain in the presence of social learning we should see different box office sales dynamics depending on whether opening weekend demand is higher or lower than expected i use a unique feature of the movie industry to identify ex ante demand expectations the number of screens dedicated to a movie in its opening weekend reflects the sales expectations held by profit maximizing theatre owners several pieces of evidence are consistent with social learning first sales of movies with positive surprise and negative surprise in opening weekend demand diverge over time if a movie has better than expected appeal and therefore experiences larger than expected sales in week 1 consumers in week 2 update upward their expectations of quality further increasing week 2 sales second this divergence is small for movies for which consumers have strong priors and large for movies for which consumers have weak priors third the effect of a surprise is stronger for audiences with large social networks finally consumers do not respond to surprises in first week sales that are orthogonal to movie quality like weather shocks overall social learning appears to be an important determinant of sales in the movie industry accounting for 32 of sales for the typical movie with positive surprise this implies the existence of a large social multiplier such that the elasticity of aggregate demand to movie quality is larger than the elasticity of individual demand

first author conditions this paper provides a theoretical explanation for the persistent use of alphabetical name ordering on academic papers in economics in a context in which market participants are interested in evaluating the relative individual contribution of authors it is an equilibrium for papers to use alphabetical ordering moreover it is never an equilibrium for authors always to be listed in order of relative contribution in fact we show via an example that the alphabetical name ordering norm may be the unique equilibrium althoug multiple equilibria are also possible finally we charaterize the welfare properties of the noncooperative equilibrium and show it to produce research of lower quality than is optimal and than would be achieved if coauthors were forced to use name ordering to signal relative contribution

just another niche in the wall how specialization is changing the face of mainstream economics there is considerable discussion on so called mainstream pluralism that is on the co presence of a variety of research programmes in today s mainstream economics that 1 significantly deviate from the neoclassical core 2 are pursued by different often separate communities of researchers and 3 have their origins outside economics the literature tends to regard mainstream pluralism as a transitory state towards a new post neoclassical mainstream this paper advances a new interpretation it suggests that the changing and fragmented state of mainstream economics is likely to persist over time under the impact of specialization as a self reinforcing mechanism and the creation of new specialties and approaches also through collaboration with researchers from other disciplines

taking the road less traveled by does conversation eradicate pernicious cascades abstract we offer a model in which sequences of individuals often converge upon poor decisions and are prone to fads despite communication of the payoff outcomes from past choices this reflects both direct and indirect action based information externalities in contrast with previous cascades literature cascades here are spontaneously dislodged and in general have a probability less than one of lasting forever furthermore the ability of individuals to communicate can reduce average decision accuracy and welfare

alternative measures of output in global economic environmental models purchasing power parity or market exchange rates comment abstract nordhaus nordhaus w 2006 alternative measures of output in global economic environmental models purchasing power parity or market exchange rates energy economics doi 10 1016 j eneco 2006 02 003 examines the question of the use of purchasing power parity versus market exchange rates in constructing global economic models he concludes that the best approach is to use ppp measures for relative incomes and outputs and national accounts prices and quantity indexes for time series extrapolations in this comment we argue and show that international real income comparisons based on ppp measures overstate the real incomes of poorer countries and underestimate the real incomes of richer regions this is the case because the ppp approach fails to account for the differences in various non traded attributes such as availability of public goods and the location attached to the final sale of the goods being compared additionally using a teleporting consumer model we show that the use of real exchange rates to convert real quantities and the use of market exchange rates to convert nominal incomes preserve real income rankings across nations and this approach is consistent with standard economic theory

information revelation through bunching abstract in this paper we analyze a dynamic game of pure information externality each player receives a private signal and chooses whether and when to invest bunching occurs when a subgroup of the players make decisions contingent on their signals while the rest of the players wait regardless of their signals we focus on asymmetric pure strategy equilibria where players private information is revealed gradually through bunching when players become patient enough the most efficient equilibrium contains no herding of investing while the least efficient equilibrium resembles the outcomes in an exogenous timing model when players discount factors differ less patient players will bunch earlier than more patient players

research note the researcher as a consumer of scientific publications how do name ordering conventions affect inferences about contribution credits when researchers from different fields with different norms collaborate the question arises of how name ordering conventions are chosen and how they affect contribution credits in this paper we answer these questions by studying two disciplines that exemplify the two cornerstones of name ordering conventions lexicographical ordering i e alphabetical ordering endorsed in economics and nonlexicographical ordering i e ordering according to individual contributions endorsed in psychology inferences about credits are unambiguous in the latter arrangement but imperfect in the former because alphabetical listing can reflect ordering according to individual contributions by chance we contrast the fields of economics and psychology with marketing a discipline heavily influenced by both based on archival data consisting of more than 38 000 journal articles we show that the three fields have different ordering practices in two empirical studies with 351 faculty and graduate student participants from all three disciplines as well as in a computer simulation we show that ordering practices systematically affect and shape the allocation of perceived contributions and credit whereas strong disciplinary norms in economics and psychology govern the allocation of contribution credits a more heterogeneous picture emerges for marketing this lack of strong norms has detrimental effects in terms of assigned contribution credits

strategic delay and the onset of investment cascades i study the phenomenon of herd behavior in a framework where agents can endogenously choose both the actions and the timing of their actions i assume that agents may have privately known quality and content of information a unique symmetric equilibrium in pure strategies is proved to exist and characterized in its closed form an investment cascade always occurs in the equilibrium and a strategic delay is shown to exist before the sudden onset of the investment cascade i also examine the loss of welfare from delay and information cascade

information revelation and strategic delay in a model of investment we model investment as an n player game with a pure informational externality each player s payoff depends only on his own action and the state of nature however because a player s action reveals his private information players wait to see what other players will do equilibrium is inefficient because delay is costly and information is imperfectly revealed we characterize the unique symmetric perfect bayesian equilibrium and study the robustness of delay which turns out to be sensitive to the reaction speed and the number of players we establish the following results i when the period length is very short the game ends very quickly and there is a form of herding or informational cascade which results in a collapse of investment ii as the period length increases the possibility of herding disappears iii as the number of players increases the rate of investment and the information flow are eventually independent of the number of players adding more players simply increases the number who delay iv in the limit the time profile of investment is extreme a period of low investment followed either by an investment surge or a collapse

global inequities and emissions in western european textiles and clothing consumption abstract rising demand for cheaper textiles and clothing in western europe is well documented as are changes in the textiles and clothing industry s globalised production structure we apply a sub systems global multi regional input output accounting framework to examine the sustainability implications of meeting western european demand for textiles and clothing goods between 1995 and 2009 our framework estimates environmental and socio economic impacts of consumption in a consistent manner and shows where these occur both geographically and in the value chain the results demonstrate that western european textiles and clothing consumption remains dependent on low cost labour from brazil russia india and china bric principally in the textiles and clothing and agricultural sectors conversely we show that the wage rate for bric workers in the global value chains serving western european textiles and clothing consumption has risen over time but remains low relative to the wage rate paid to western european workers likewise we find that profits are increasingly generated within bric and that they are now at comparable levels to those generated in western europe we find a slight overall decrease in the amount of carbon emitted in the production of textiles and clothing goods for western europe between 1995 and 2009 however the trend is not linear and the importance of different underlying drivers varies over the timeseries we conclude by discussing the implications of these results for a more sustainable future for western european textiles and clothing consumption

the journals of economics we examine the principal journals of economics with particular attention to the communication between journals as reflected by the network of interjournal citations during 1987 90 and the changes over the past century in the characteristics of the authors and the techniques they have used the numerical results and those of the statistical modeling of these results reinforce the importance of economic theory as an exporter of intellectual influence to applied economics the study includes an examination of the degree of specialization among different subfields of economics a statistical model is presented for measuring the flow of intellectual influence as measured by citations in terms of simple univariate scores

the unexpected challenges of using energy intensity as a policy objective examining the debate over the apec energy intensity goal aims energy intensity energy demand per unit of economic output is one of the most widely used indicators of energy efficiency in energy policy discussions yet its application in real world policymaking can be surprisingly problematical this paper aims to provide guidance to governments and organizations considering using energy intensity as a policy objective scope in 2007 the apec community adopted then in 2011 revised an apec region wide energy intensity improvement goal this paper presents a case study of that experience focusing on three key lessons learned these lessons are not original findings however none of them have received the recognition they deserve and consequently they came as a surprise to many of those involved in apec s policy discussions conclusions the three lessons are as follows 1 energy intensity improvement is happening surprisingly quickly but not quickly enough to meet the world s energy challenges 2 it is difficult to find a definition of energy intensity that can make it suitable for use as an indicator of regional energy efficiency 3 whether the gdp s of individual economies are converted to common currency using market exchange rates or purchasing power parity ppp can dramatically change regional energy intensity improvement calculations

international comparisons of gdp when it comes to making international comparisons of real gdp different views conventions and practices are still in evidence the authors set out the case for using purchasing power parity ppp converters for this purpose rather than conversions based on exchange rates and give reasons for rejecting various arguments that are still widely made to the contrary in doing so they provide instances of the differing current practices of international agencies and argue the case for greater uniformity and consistency on their part they make a number of suggestions general and specific for improving the quality and presentation of cross country comparative data