research development and firm growth empirical evidence from european top r d spending firms abstract following recent literature we present a model of endogenous firm growth with r d investment as one of the main mechanisms of growth our study evidences a positive effect of r d intensity on the sales growth by using ols quantile regressions and gmm system estimators for a sample of 754 european firms for the 2003 2007 period we also find this association is more intense in high growth firms and is especially significant when referring to high technology sectors this paper gives empirical support to those recommendations from policy makers and business leaders for maintaining the r d expenditures especially in high technology sectors even when facing a recession

firm growth size age and behavior in japanese manufacturing this paper investigates the relationship between firm growth and firm size firm age and firm behavior such as r d activity and subcontracting based on the data of nearly 14 000 japanese manufacturing firms the stylized facts that firm size and age have a negative effect on firm growth are confirmed in the case of japanese manufacturing firms also a firm s survivability rises with its size and age r d expenditure per employee has a significant positive effect on firm growth which justifies the argument made by hall 1987 although subcontracting to only one company has no significant effect on firm growth it has a significant positive effect on a firm s survivability in addition subcon tracting firms depending on only one company as a customer are subject to no significant age effects this possibly suggests that the age effect itself has some relation to the extent of the trade network

organizational identities and the hazard of change industrial and corporate change volume 15 number 5 pp 755 784 doi 10 1093 icc dtl020 advance access published august 8 2006 organizational identities and the hazard of change michael t hannan james n baron greta hsu and ozgecan kocak we examine how the life chances and financial performance of nascent high technology firms were affected by two kinds of organizational changes altering founders blueprints for the employment relation and replacing a founder chief executive officer ceo by an outsider we argue that both events destabilize organizations but that changes in employment blueprints are tied more tightly to the organization s identity and thus are more destabilizing we analyze three dimensions of organizational performance among a sample of young high technology companies in california s silicon valley survival versus failure launching an initial public offering ipo and changes in financial valuations among organi zations that underwent an ipo as predicted changing the employment blueprint increased the hazard of failure and diminished growth in market value appoint ing an outsider as ceo did not affect the hazard of failure appreciably but did depress the rate of growth in market capitalization the implications of these results for ecological and institutional perspectives on organizations are discussed 1 imprinting identity and disruptive change the proposition advanced by hannan and freeman 1984 that altering an organiza tion s core features is hazardous has been the focus of much theorizing and empirical research barnett and carroll 1995 carroll and hannan 2000 this research has generally emphasized one side of the inertia story the disruption entailed in reorgan izing routines and architectures the other side of the story that changes in core fea tures might be viewed as violations of deep seated taken for granted expectations by key organizational constituents has received less attention this article attempts to redress the balance by developing an identity based notion of an organization s core and testing the proposition that changing such core features is especially destabilizing notions of identity played an important part in shaping the original inertia argu ment for instance hannan and freeman 1984 155 156 motivated their argument with the example of the university although some features such as textbooks con stantly change in an adaptive way changing a curriculum from liberal arts to voca tional training would be extraordinarily difficult the curriculum is difficult to the author 2006 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved

growth of firms in developing countries evidence from cote d ivoire the paper presents evidence in support of a particular growth process of firms that is consistent with a missing middle in the size distribution of manufacturing firms in african countries firm growth is explained by size and age effects as a result of efficiency exploiting through scale enlargements and learning but is strongly moderated by reputation effects and formal legitimation which facilitate access to output markets and resources complementing the model with data on growth obstacles as perceived by the owners of firms medium sized firms are found to be strongly hurt by insufficient access to infrastructure and financial services

entrepreneurship selection and performance a meta analysis of the impact of education in developing economies this meta analytical review of empirical studies of the impact of schooling on entrepreneurship in selection and performance in developing economies looks at variations impact across specific characteristics of the studies a marginal year of schooling in developing economies raises enterprise income by an average of 5 5 percent which is close to the average return in industrial countries the return varies however by gender rural or urban residence and the share of agriculture in the economy furthermore more educated workers typically end up in wage employment and prefer nonfarm entrepreneurship to farming the education effect that separates workers into self employment and wage employment is stronger for women possibly stronger in urban areas and also stronger in the least developed economies where agriculture is more dominant and literacy rates are lower

intraindustry structure and the ease of strategic change there has been considerable recent work in industrial organization emphasizing the importance of group stratification within industries the thrust of this literature is that in empirical work and in particular in investigating public policy problems differences across firms within an industry may be crucial this paper is intended as a contribution to the empirical literature of group structures in this paper i examine patterns of strategic group membership in a number of industries and analyze changes in the strategies used by firms in particular i provide a series of rather simple exploratory tests of the importance of intraindustry strategic differences in a number of industries

the role of corporate social responsibility in consumer evaluation of nutrition information disclosure by retail restaurants research examining consumer responses to the provision of nutritional information as part of restaurant menus has produced mixed results in light of pending legislation requiring the provision of nutritional information the authors examine the how corporate social responsibility csr impacts consumer service evaluation of restaurants findings from three studies demonstrate that the relationship between consumer attitudes toward the disclosure of nutrition information and their subsequent evaluation of the food provider is impacted by csr related initiatives studies one and two find that consumer evaluations are enhanced when the firm has an existing reputation for csr and when the firm includes healthy product options as part of the introduction of the nutritional information study 3 finds these effects are particularly strong with fast food restaurants overall the findings suggest that for some firms the introduction of the legislation provides an opportunity to strengthen relationships with customers and gain advantage over some competitors

technological capabilities and industrialization abstract this paper reviews the implications for industrial strategy of recent research on technological capabilities at the firm and national levels after exploring the nature and determinants of microlevel technological development a simple framework for explaining the growth of national capabilities is set out based on the interplay of incentives capabilities and institutions each may suffer market failure and so require corrective intervention the experience of some industrializing countries is described to assess the validity of this framework it is concluded that interventions carefully and selectively applied are necessary for industrial success

strategy research governance and competence perspectives business strategy is a complex subject and is usefully examined from several perspectives this paper applies the lenses of governance and competence to the study of strategy both the governance and the competence perspectives have had the benefit of distinguished antecedents they have also had to deal with tautological reputations i begin with the governance perspective with emphasis on the six key moves through which it has been operationalized i then examine the competence perspective in these same six respects governance challenges the competence perspective to apply itself more assiduously to operationalization including the need to choose and give definition to one or more units of analysis of which the routine is a promising candidate the research challenges posed by competence to which governance can and should respond include dynamic transaction costs learning and the need to push beyond generic governance to address strategy issues faced by particular firms with their distinctive strengths and disabilities a lively research future for these two perspectives individually and in combination is projected copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd business strategy is an expansive enterprise not only do all of the functional areas in the business school relate but strategy is by nature interdisciplinary all of the social sciences especially economics and organization theory plus contract law are implicated indeed in the high technology arena where some of the most difficult strategy issues reside engineering and the law on intellectual property rights also have a bearing of the various approaches to the study of strategy this paper focuses on the governance and competence perspectives both perspectives combine economic reasoning with organization theory as between these two the governance

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

testing gibrat s law for small young and innovating firms this article analyses whether small young and innovating firms have experienced a greater employment growth than other spanish firms over the period 1990 2000 the study draws upon a sample of 1272 manufacturing firms in which only 967 of the firms survived for the entire ten year period the analyses test gibrat s law both by least squares and by utilizing the procedure proposed by heckman in which a probit survival equation is first estimated to correct for sample selection bias two estimators correcting for selection bias are utilized one that incorporates the inverse mill s ratio and the other that employs maximum likelihood methods all the results reject gibrat s law and support the proposition that small firms have grown larger additionally the results show that old firms grow less than young ones and innovating activity both process and product is a strong positive factor in the firm s survival and its employment growth

capital accumulation and deposit pricing in mutual financial institutions this paper presents a multiperiod model of a deposit type mutual financial institution and analyzes the manager s capital accumulation and deposit pricing decisions under uncertainty the model is meant to describe a mutual savings and loan assoeiation sla or a credit union in which there are no stockholders

governance form and organizational adaptation lessons from the savings and loan industry in the 1980s this paper explores how governance form affects the organizational capacity for adaptation we make a general case about the importance of governance in adaptation and we identify three mechanisms through which governance form may affect organizations ability to manage the competency and failure traps that often frustrate the process we look for evidence of these mechanisms through a study of the u s savings and loan s l industry in the 1980s this is an apt context because s ls were confronted by severe environmental changes that suggested a need for change of a relatively radical sort during this decade and because the industry contains a mix of governance forms stock form firms and mutual associations we examine whether mutuals and stocks differed in their propensity to move away from their traditional business and mission of residential mortgage lending in response to the challenges of the 1980s we also consider whether stocks and mutuals differed in their performance outcomes during this decade results indicate that mutuals were slightly less prone toward change but were in no sense inertial they also show that mutuals performed better overall and appeared to change more successfully than did stock firms the overall pattern of results suggests that mutual governance was a resource that allowed s ls to better balance exploration and exploitation in the face of a changing and ambiguous environment we consider the broader implications of these findings for research on organizational adaptation governance form and governance more generally

introduction to the special issue on the econometrics of auctions 2004 jean jacques la ont s contributions are important in many elds in economics yet he still managed to spare some of his time to help to trigger the scienti c quality uplift inthe empirical analysis of auctions papers in this special issue continue this project and usejean jacques papers in the various dimensions of his work in theory econometric identi cation estimation and empirical results of auctions this is why we wish to dedicate this special issueto the memory of jean jacques la ont and to his so formidable capacity of doing and inspiringexcellent research in applied and theoretical economics in estimating risk aversion from ascending and sealed bid auctions jingfeng lu andisabelle perrigne rely on multiple source of data t o identify the risk aversion of bidders previousresearch using experimental or eld data had proven the importance of risk aversion albeit ina parametric way risk aversion is di cult to identify non parametrically in the private valueparadigm if information consists only in observed bids athey and haile 2007 in particular the in uence of risk aversion on observed bids of di erent organizational forms for the auction is

identity and the economics of organizations on plebes first day at west point called r day they strip down to their underwear their hair is cut off they are put in uniform they then must address an older cadet with the proper salute and with the statement sir new cadet doe reports to the cadet in the red sash for the first time as ordered plebes must stand and salute and repeat and stand and salute and repeat until they get it exactly right all the while being reprimanded for every tiny mistake in the summary of david lipsky 2003 pp 145 154 who spent four years tracking a company of cadets at west point on r day you surrender your old self in stages but r day is just the beginning of the training and personal re engineering that is to come so that west point graduates emerge four years later as loyal officers in the u s army lipsky shows that despite some failure this tough program is remarkably successful in creating officers with the will to lead in battle economists current picture of organizations and work incentives has no place for the west point program and the motivations it seeks to inculcate in recruits in a standard economic model an individual s preferences are fixed and utility depends only on pecuniary variables the army s aim at west point is to change cadets preferences they wish to inculcate non economic motives in the cadets so that they have the same goals as the u s army alternatively stated the goal of west point is to change the identity of the cadets so they will think of themselves above all else as officers in the u s army they will feel bad about themselves they will lose utility if they fall short of the ideals of such an officer this change in identity

the small the young and the productive determinants of manufacturing firm growth in ethiopia abstract this study examines the relationships between firm growth and firm size age and labor productivity using annual census based panel data on ethiopian manufacturing firms the study explicitly addresses the ongoing statistical concerns in firm growth models such as sample censoring regression to the mean and unobserved heterogeneity our empirical results indicate that firm growth decreases with size smaller firms have faster rates of growth than larger firms even after compensating for their higher attrition rates the negative relation between age and growth predicted by the learning model is found to apply only to younger firms labor productivity affects firm growth positively which indicates that there is a market selection process at work during the period of economic reforms in ethiopia

expense preference behavior in the savings and loan industry neoclassical microeconomic theory traditionally has assumed that the decision process in the firm is guided by the objective of profit maximization a number of economists have suggested however that managers may pursue goals which maximize personal utility rather than firm profitability 1 10 11 23 24 conditions under which managerial discretion may be substituted for profit maximization include weak competition in the product or service market a high degree of regulation and the separation of ownership and control under these conditions managers have greater opportunity to indulge in discretionary expenditures and the pursuit of managerial emoluments that is managers may seek to achieve a higher level of personal utility via higher salaries additional staff and other perquisites for which they have positive preferences in general this results in an expansion of expenditures beyond the profit maximizing level and a suboptimal x inefficient use of resources within the firm the expense preference theory of the firm recently received considerable support by the work of edwards 3 in which he developed a test to distinguish between expense preference and profit maximizing behavior upon application of this test to the banking industry edwards found that the number of employees and bank expenditures on wages and salaries are higher in noncompetitive banking markets

modeling the dynamics of strategic fit a normative approach to strategic change this study develops and tests a dynamic perspective on strategic fit drawing from contingency and resource based arguments in the strategy and organizational theory literatures we propose a distinctive analytical approach to identify environmental and organizational contingencies that should predict changes in a firm s strategy and the performance implications of such changes we test our model using extensive longitudinal data from over 4000 u s savings and loan institutions during a period when many s ls considered changing strategic direction the findings support our model of dynamic strategic fit specifically we find that 1 the timing direction and magnitude of strategic changes can be logically predicted based on differences in specific environmental forces and organizational resources and 2 organizations that deviated from our model s prediction of dynamic strategic fit i e changed more or changed less than our model prescribed experienced negative performance consequences we conclude by discussing the implications of our approach and findings for future research on strategic fit and strategic change copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

the relationship between firm growth size and age estimates for 100 manufacturing industries this study uses a sample of all firms operating in 100 manufacturing industries to examine some aspects of firm dynamics it finds that firm growth the variability of firm growth and the probability that a firm will fail decrease with firm age it also finds that firm growth decreases at a diminishing rate with firm size even after controlling for the exit of slow growing firms from the sample gibrat s law therefore fails although the severity of the failure decreases with firm size copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

age size growth and survival uk companies in the 1980s this paper examines growth and survival amongst quoted and unquoted u k companies in the period 1975 85 and compares the results with earlier u k and u s studies an examination of death rates shows that smaller companies had higher death rates but the largest and smallest companies were least vulnerable to takeover careful attention is therefore paid to problems of sample selection bias it is shown that smaller companies grew faster than larger companies that gibrat s law does not hold amongst smaller firms that age is negatively related to growth and that these results are not an artifact of sample selection bias copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

organizational inertia and momentum a dynamic model of strategic change this study provides an empirical test of hannan and freeman s theory of structural inertia we examined the changes organizations undertook in response to a major environmental change in addition

the s l debacle public policy lessons for bank and thrift regulation this book describes the period of failures of savings and loan associations and sets out a program of policies to prevent future debacles it explains the regulatory actions and inactions that created the incentives for large numbers of thrifts to make excessively risky and ill conceived and in some cases fraudulent and criminal investments it describes the failure of the accounting system to provide adequate information to regulators and in many cases even to the managers of the thrifts themselves concerning the health and riskiness of individual thrifts it also discusses how the regulatory system that had been conceived in an earlier and highly regulated era was overwhelmed in the deregulated environment of the early 1980s it shows how the reforms that were made in response to the growing crisis were too little and too late and finally it offers a set of policy reforms that could prevent future crises in the savings and loan industry this work should be of interest to political and financial economists

firm capabilities technological dynamism and the internationalisation of innovation a behavioural approach we develop a behavioural framework of bounded rational decision making under uncertainty to analyse the role of technological dynamism in the firm s environment for its decision to internationalise innovation applying prospect theory we argue that technological uncertainty in the firm s environment affects its risk preferences differently depending on its technological capabilities a key prediction is that firms with low capabilities will internationalise innovation when faced by technological uncertainty while firms with high capabilities will concentrate their innovation at the home base we also argue that our behavioural approach based on prospect theory is not a stand alone programme but benefits from the integration with traditional concepts in ib in particular we make a case that organisational measures fostering absorptive capacity such as intensive personnel exchange between headquarters and subsidiaries can help to attenuate the high capability firms tendency to concentrate innovation at the home base when faced by high uncertainty we corroborate the predictions of our framework based on data from the german part of the community innovation survey

the medium term effect of r d on firm growth this study analyses the effect of r d expenditure on firm employment growth in the medium term using six cross sectional waves of an innovation survey conducted in the netherlands in all sectors the analysis is focused on firms having positive r d expenditure and investigates whether higher investments in r d in proportion to firm turnover translate into higher medium term growth rates comparisons with growth on a shorter term are conducted by following the firm size evolution since the r d investment for five consecutive years and allowing for firm exit at all time terms quantile regression techniques indicate that a higher r d has a positive effect on high growers and allows a higher number of firms to be high growers still once a firm invests in r d even if a higher investment makes the firm more likely to have a very good performance it does not make it less likely to have a bad one

do small innovating firms outperform non innovators the paper considers the relative performance along a number of parameters of a sample of 228 small manufacturing firms categorised by level of innovation whilst innovators appear no more likely to have experienced some form of sales or employment growth they are significantly more likely to have grown more in other words the innovators growth rate distributions are highly negatively skewed with regards to export intensities profitability and productivity levels the findings are less clear on the whole the results reported here are similar to those of other small firm studies yet vary markedly from large firm equivalents suggesting that the nature of the returns to innovation may be contingent at least in part upon firm size moreover the high levels of variation in firm performance should caution us against proffering innovative imperatives if we are to counsel firms to innovate at all costs we must be clear about and clearly demonstrate the nature of the returns they may reasonably expect and the processes through which these may be optimised

entrepreneurial orientation and small business performance a configurational approach the strategy and entrepreneurship literatures suggest that an entrepreneurial orientation eo improves firm performance but the empirical results are mixed in this article we investigate the eo of small businesses and find that a main effects only analysis provides an incomplete picture of performance access to capital and the dynamism of the environment are important to small businesses and we find that when combined with eo a three way interaction model the configurational approach explains variance in performance over and above a contingency model two way interactions and a main effects only model

pro market institutions and global strategy the pendulum of pro market reforms and reversals we review the literature analyzing the impact of pro market institutions on firms global strategy we propose that the ideological tension between whether the government or the market should drive economic development results in a pendulum of pro market reforms and reversals that drive changes in firm strategy and performance much progress has been made in the analyses of pro market reforms and their impact on firms international strategies and performance however there is a need to further learn about four areas 1 the concept of pro market institutions in particular the variety of institutional dimensions the measures and the influence of informal institutions on firm strategies 2 the drivers of changes in pro market institutions especially firms influences and the co evolution of firm strategies and institutional changes 3 the implications of changes in pro market reforms for the interactions among integration diversification and internationalization strategies the causality chains connecting institutions and strategies and the reconfiguration of activities globally and 4 the non traditional moderators that alter the impact of pro market institutional dynamics on firms strategies such as country level political systems industry level competitor reactions and individual level managerial capabilities and perceptions

quantile estimates of the impact of r d intensity on firm performance this paper investigates the relationship between initial research and development r d intensity and firm growth using a unique data set for firms with r d activities in austria during the period 1995 2006 results based on the least absolute deviation lad estimator show that initial r d intensity has a positive and significant impact on both employment and sales growth in the subsequent 2 years quantile regressions for each cross section reveal that the impact of r d intensity is significant from 0 3 to the highest quantile of the conditional distribution of employment growth furthermore the elasticity of employment growth with respect to r d intensity is highest for firms at or slightly below the median of the distribution of firm growth finally we find that the impact of r d decreases significantly over time

high growth entrepreneurial firms in africa a quantile regression approach this article analyses the growth performance of a large set of entrepreneurial firms in ten manufacturing sectors of 11 sub saharan african countries the focus of the article is on identifying those entrepreneurs attributes and firm characteristics that tend to generate a significant number of high growth firms in these countries to this end we use a quantile regression which provides a more complete estimation of the growth distribution of firms conditional on different attributes the results indicate that firms that engage in product innovation have their own transport means and are connected to the internet through their own website are especially characterized by higher growth rates and also display a distribution of growth rates skewed to the right hosting a higher number of high growth firms the effect of the last two variables which relate to distance bridging modes of infrastructure points to the self reinforcing growth effects they generate in creating wider input and output markets education raises growth opportunities by affecting the lower quantiles but it does not appear to influence the upper quantiles the estimated conditional growth distributions for the technology intensive machinery and electronics sectors show more extreme tails and a lower mean in comparison to the traditional industries indicating the more risky nature of doing business in these industries

innovation and firm growth does firm age play a role this paper explores the relationship between innovation and firm growth for firms of different ages we hypothesize that young firms undertake riskier innovation activities which may have greater performance benefits if successful or greater losses if unsuccessful using an extensive spanish community innovation survey sample for the period 2004 2012 we apply panel quantile regressions to study the effect of r d activities on firm growth i e sales growth productivity growth and employment growth our results show that young firms face larger performance benefits from r d at the upper quantiles of the growth rate distribution but face larger decline at the lower quantiles r d investment by young firms therefore appears to significantly riskier than r d investment by more mature firms which suggests some policy implications

econometrics of first price auctions in this paper we propose an estimation method for the empirical study of theoretical auction models we focus on first price sealed bid and descending auctions and we adopt the private value paradigm where each bidder is assumed to have a different private value only known to him for the object that is auctioned following mcfadden 1989 and pakes and pollard 1989 our proposed method is based on simulations specifically the method relies on a simulated nonlinear least squares objective function appropriately adjusted so as to obtain consistent estimates of the parameters of interest we illustrate the proposed method by studying a market of agricultural products where descending auctions are used our analysis takes into account heterogeneity of the auctioned objects and the fact that only the winning bid is observed we estimate the parameters that characterize the distribution of the unobserved private values for each auctioned object

structuring a theory of moral sentiments institutional and organizational coevolution in the early thrift industry the authors investigate the coevolution of organizations and institu tions they study how institutional definitions rules and expectations unfold in tandem with the organizational structures and processes that embody those institutions the research site is the early thrift industry changes in thrifts technical environment the rise of a transient and heterogeneous population and institutional environment the rise of progressivism propelled this coevolutionary process the coevolution of thrift organizations and institutions proceeded primarily through selection adaptation was constrained by both institutional factors it was difficult to adopt a novel institutional logic and technical factors early thrifts were generally small so entry and exit were easy

growth acquisition activity and firm size evidence from the united kingdom this paper provides new empirical evidence on the relationship between size growth and acquisition activity of quoted companies in the united kingdom the evidence is based on some two thousand companies and covers the period i960 76 there has been no detailed systematic study for this period the results suggest some revisions to generally accepted views in the area and they have certain implications for industrial and competition policy pursued in the u k and the factors affecting aggregate concentration the paper is arranged as follows section i considers the broader economic context for the study whilst section ii notes some a priori expectations regarding the relationship between size and growth and size and acquisition activity sections iii v present empirical evidence and the last section provides a summary and policy implications of the results

the dynamics of micro and small enterprises in developing countries abstract the number of people engaged in micro and small enterprises increases as a result of new enterprises being started and through an expansion of existing activities as a partial offset to these increases employment declines when existing businesses cease operations this article draws on recent survey work to examine the magnitude and determinants of enterprise births closures and expansions it explores the ways in which these different sources of change are influenced by the state of the macroeconomy and examines policy and project implications

savings and loan ownership structure and expense preference abstract this paper studies the influence of ownership structure on managerial expense preference behavior the hypothesis is that the greater the diffusion of ownership the weaker is the monitoring by owners and the greater is the degree of expense preference behavior whereas expense preference behavior affects inputs particularly on the job consumption of managers well functioning managerial labor markets should resolve the problem by equating the total compensation of managers across firms of different ownership structures a more serious problem however is the potential impact of expense preference behavior on output evidence from the savings and loan industry is adduced indicating that the more diffuse ownership structures associated with mutuality exhibit greater agency costs through the expansion of inputs and outputs beyond profit maximizing levels

adaptation as information restriction the hot stove effect individuals and social systems are often portrayed as risk averse and resistant to change such propensities are characteristically attributed to individual organizational and cultural traits such as risk aversion uncertainty avoidance discounting and an unwillingness to change this paper explores an alternative interpretation of such phenomena we show how the reproduction of successful actions inherent in adaptive processes such as learning and competitive selection and reproduction results in a bias against alternatives that initially may appear to be worse than they actually are in particular learning and selection are biased against both risky and novel alternatives because the biases are products of the tendency to reproduce success that is inherent in the sequential sampling of adaptation they are reduced whenever the reproduction of success is attenuated in particular when adaptation is slowed made imprecise or recalled less reliably the propensity to engage in risky and new activities is increased these protections against the error of rejecting potentially good alternatives on inadequate experiential evidence are costly however they increase the likelihood of persisting with alternatives that are poor in the long run as well as in the short run

african smes networks and manufacturing performance abstract this paper examines the role of private support institutions in determining small and medium enterprise smes growth and performance in sub saharan africa ssa it finds that smes in ssa get around market failures and lack of formal institutions by creating private governance systems in the form of long term business relationships and tight ethnically based business networks there are important links between these informal governance institutions and sme performance networks raise the performance of insiders and in the sparse business environments of the ssa region have attendant negative consequences for market participation of outsiders such as indigenous african smes this is indicated through the determinants of access to supplier credit policy interventions will be needed to improve the platform for relation based governance mechanisms and to address the exclusionary effects of tight networks

technical efficiency market share and profitability of manufacturing firms in cote d ivoire the technology trap this paper investigates the sources of inefficiency of firms in cote d ivoire and exam ines to what extent these effects translate into poor performance a large majority of firms is technically inefficient producing far below the maximum attainable output level major cost savings can also be realised through enlarging the scale of activities of firms efficiency gains and scale advantages translate into a better competitive position and via their impact on market share into higher profitability however severe growth barriers and imperfect markets keep firms from realising these gains and prevent firms from catching up in technology with respect to their larger older and often foreign owned competitors

allocation of human capital and innovation at the frontier firm level evidence on germany and the netherlands this paper examines how productivity eects of human capital and innovation vary at dierent points of the conditional productivity distribution our analysis draws upon two large unbalanced panels of 6 634 enterprises in germany and 14 586 enterprises in the netherlands over the period 2000 2008 considering 5 manufacturing and services industries that dier in the level of technological intensity industries in the netherlands are characterized by a larger average proportion of high skilled employees and indus tries in germany by a more unequal distribution of human capital intensity except for low technology manufacturing average innovation performance is higher in all industries in germany and the innova tion performance distributions are more dispersed in the netherlands in both countries we observe non linearities in the productivity eects of investing in product innovation in the majority of indus tries frontier rms enjoy the highest returns to product innovation whereas the most negative returns to process innovation are observed in the best performing enterprises of most industries in both countries we nd that the returns to human capital increase with proximity to the technological frontier in industries with a low level of technological intensity strikingly a negative complementarity eect between human capital and proximity to the technological frontier is observed in knowledge intensive services which is most pronounced for the netherlands suggestive evidence for the latter points to a winner takes all interpretation of this nding

the impact of international standards certification on the performance of firms in less developed countries this paper examines the effects of international standards certification isc on both productivity and sales performance for firms from a wide set of countries exhibiting different degrees of institutional development against a large dataset of manufacturing firms operating in 59 countries we find that isc raises productivity and sales performance of firms through efficiency gains and quality signaling with the effects being larger in countries where market supporting institutions are weak the largest gain in performance comes from direct productivity improvements helping firms to climb the technological ladder and closing the productivity gap with firms based in developed countries

auctioning and bargaining an econometric study of timber auctions with secret reservation prices this article considers a first price sealed bid auction at which the seller s reservation price is not announced in advance we allow for a second round of bargaining and consider the nash bargaining outcome when the object is unsold after the auctioning round we characterize the bidders and seller s bayesian nash equilibrium strategies the distributions of the buyers and seller s private values are estimated by nonlinear least squares from auction data on standing timber while solving numerically the differential equations characterizing the seller s and buyers equilibrium strategies the performance of the estimated model is then compared to a model in which the players behave myopically

ceo duality and firm performance what s the fuss rising shareholder activism following poor corporate performance and a subsequent drop in shareholder value at many major u s corporations had rekindled interest in duality and corporate governance despite limited empirical evidence duality chairman of the board and ceo are the same individual has been blamed in many cases for the poor performance and failure of firms to adapt to a changing environment in examining the relationship between duality and firm performance this study considers the announcement effects of changes in duality status accounting measures of operating performance for firms that have changed their duality structure and long term measures of performance for firms that have had a consistent history of a duality structure our results suggest that 1 the market is indifferent to changes in a firm s duality status 2 there is little evidence of operating performance changes around changes in duality status and 3 there is only weak evidence that duality status affects long term performance after controlling for other factors that might impact that performance

multi round procurement auctions with secret reserve prices theory and evidence when a secret reserve price is used in an auction the auctioneer cannot guarantee that the good can be sold out at the auction and can reauction the unsold objects in the next round motivated by this interesting feature observed in the procurement auctions organized by the indiana department of transportation we construct a dynamic bidding model in multi round procurement auctions with secret reserve prices and evaluate how the release of the auctioneer s reserve price affects bidders bidding behavior and the auctioneer s expected payment our theoretical model predicts that the equilibrium bids uniformly decline over stages and the numerical analysis of our model indicates that hiding the reserve price may be better than announcing it for the auctioneer under some specifications of underlying distributions we develop an empirical model with bidders discount factor equal to zero to recover the unknown structural parameters and to conduct counterfactual analyses copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

the causes and costs of depository institution failures contributing authors 1 introduction a f cottrell et al 2 s l closures and survivors are there systematic differences in behavior j r barth et al 3 deregulation gone awry moral hazard in the savings and loan industry r a cole et al 4 underlying determinants of closed bank resolution costs w p osterberg j b thomson 5 federal reserve lending to banks that failed implications for the bank insurance fund r a gilbert 6 the savings and loan debacle moral hazard or market disaster g a lilly 7 what are the connections between deposit insurance and bank failures a f cottrell et al 8 bank failures as poisson variates a reappraisal n davutyan 9 a triggering mechanism of economywide bank runs sangkyun park 10 herd behavior or animal spirits a possible explanation of credit crunches and bubbles t s mondschean r a pecchenino index

how organizational resources affect strategic change and performance in turbulent environments theory and evidence this study examines how historical resource endowments and competencies affect strategic change and its outcomes amid environmental turbulence drawing from both behavioral and economics based literatures we develop four distinct perspectives regarding the likely effect of resources on strategic change these four perspectives offer alternative predictions about how and why resource endowments should affect the likelihood or magnitude of strategic change and how and why they should moderate the relation between strategic change and performance we examine the predictive power of these four alternative arguments using extensive longitudinal data from a single industry context characterized both by substantial resource heterogeneity and environmental turbulence results indicate that organizations possessing greater stocks of historically valuable resources were much less likely to engage in adaptive strategic change but also that this resource driven disinclination towards change tended to have a benign or even beneficial effect on performance we discuss the implications of our theory and findings for the strategic change literature and also for the literature on the resource based view of the firm

does mobile money use increase firms investment evidence from enterprise surveys in kenya uganda and tanzania private investment can be an important engine of economic growth in east african countries which despite recent growth rates are still plagued with adverse economic conditions against this backdrop there has been substantial penetration of mobile money moving beyond simple person to person exchanges toward adoption by private firms this study explores whether there is a relationship between firm adoption of mobile money and firm investment using firm level data that are nationally representative of the private sector in three east african countries kenya tanzania and uganda a positive relationship is found between mobile money use and the probability of a firm s purchase of fixed assets this relationship is attributed to reduced transaction costs increased liquidity and increased credit worthiness associated with the use of mobile phone financial services

a note on savings and loan ownership structure and expense preference a re examination this study extends the work of akella and greenbaum journal of banking finance 12 1988 419 through the use of a much larger nationwide sample of us saving and loan associations and supports their original finding of significant expense preference behavior in mutual savings and loans during their original study period 1979 80 this study also provides evidence that over the time period of substantial deregulation and changes in the competitive environment in the us financial services industry expense preference behavior for savings and loans decreased the results are consistent with the idea that the removal of barriers that restrict competition should improve managerial efficiency in firms that survive 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

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

the role of alliances in the early development of high growth firms rapid growth is sought after but may overstretch a firm s resources can alliances supply compensating support for rapidly growing firms longitudinal data on firms in a technology cluster are used to investigate rapid growth in relation to alliances and other factors known to be associated with firm growth rapid firm growth appears beneficial in terms of higher survival rates and earlier attainment of mid size but is rarely sustained alliances are predictors of rapid growth as are international operations venture capital is not directly associated with firm growth in the findings but there is a high incidence of alliances among venture capital backed firms copyright 2014 the author 2013 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

securities analysts and incumbent response to radical technological change evidence from digital photography and internet telephony a large body of research has explored the factors that impede established firms responses to radical technological changes while it is widely acknowledged that managers face pressures from financial markets to choose strategies that maximize shareholder value little work in the technological change literature has considered the possible influences of public equity markets and the securities analysts who mediate them on incumbent firms challenged with technological change in this paper i begin to address the topic by empirically exploring how securities analysts react to the different strategies undertaken by incumbent firms faced with radical technological change i study the question in two settings the shift to digital technology in photography and the advent of voice over internet protocol voip technology in wireline telecommunications i find evidence that analysts are more attentive and positive toward incumbents strategies that extend and preserve the existing technology than toward strategies that respond directly to the new technology in these settings analysts largely ignore incumbents strategies that directly incorporate the new technology for several years following the discontinuity this study provides insights into the nature and direction of analysts reactions to firms strategies in the context of technological change and is a first step toward better understanding of the potential role of analysts and financial markets in incumbent adaptation

entrepreneurial networking a blessing or a curse differential effects for low medium and high performing franchisees recent studies have called for a better understanding of the link between networking and entrepreneurial performance we provide such understanding in three ways by focusing on a specific entrepreneurial context franchise systems by developing a multi faceted theoretical framework and by highlighting a contingency that may affect the networking performance link we combine knowledge and learning perspectives with a networking perspective to develop and test a multi faceted framework on the effects of franchisee networking with peers within a franchise system peer networking on franchisee unit performance in particular we argue that the performance benefits that franchisees draw from networking with their peers vary between low medium and high performing franchisees we use ordinary least squares ols and quantile regression analyses to test our hypotheses with empirical data from a dutch franchise system our results confirm that structural resource and relational facets of franchisee peer networking affect unit performance and that they benefit and harm low medium and high performing franchisees differently

energy poverty in ghana any progress so far abstract this paper investigates the dynamics of energy poverty in ghana using two nationwide cross sectional datasets ghana living standards surveys round 5 and round 6 employing the multidimensional energy poverty index mepi as a measure of energy poverty this paper estimates that the share of energy poor people decreased from 88 4 in 2005 2006 to 82 5 in 2012 2013 the results indicate that although there has been a significant decline in the overall energy poverty in ghana during the study periods the incidence of energy poverty remains high moreover the study findings show a large gap between urban and rural energy poverty over the two periods rural people are almost twice as energy poor as urban people these findings suggest the need for the incorporation of energy poverty reduction strategies into income poverty reduction strategies to help improve not only access to modern energy but also in terms of affordability