collective bargaining in the public sector the effect of legal structure on dispute costs and wages this paper examines the impact of collective bargaining legislation on dispute costs and wages using a panel of canadian public sector contracts the authors results suggest that policymakers designing collective bargaining legislation face a trade off between reducing dispute costs and increasing wages dispute costs are lower under compulsory arbitration than under the right to strike or when no collective bargaining legislation exists hence a switch to compulsory arbitration could potentially make both the union and the employer better off by reducing dispute costs however the authors find that wages are higher under compulsory arbitration than under other legal structures copyright 1991 by american economic association

rational inattentiveness in a forecasting experiment while standard theory assumes rational optimizing agents under full information the latter is rarely found in reality information has to be acquired and processed both involving costs in rational inattentiveness models agents update their information set only when the benefit outweighs the information cost we test the rational inattentiveness model in a controlled laboratory environment our design is a forecasting task with costly information and a clear cost benefit structure while we find numerous deviations from the model predictions on the individual level the aggregate results are consistent with rational inattentiveness and sticky information models rejecting simpler behavioral heuristics

individual risk attitudes measurement determinants and behavioral consequences this paper studies risk attitudes using a large representative survey and a complementary experiment conducted with a representative subject pool in subjects homes using a question asking people about their willingness to take risks in general we find that gender age height and parental background have an economically significant impact on willingness to take risks the experiment confirms the behavioral validity of this measure using paid lottery choices turning to other questions about risk attitudes in specific contexts we find similar results on the determinants of risk attitudes and also shed light on the deeper question of stability of risk attitudes across contexts we conduct a horse race of the ability of different measures to explain risky behaviors such as holdings stocks occupational choice and smoking the question about risk taking in general generates the best all round predictor of risky behavior

strikes arbitration and teacher salaries a behavioral analysis this study uses bacharach and lawler s behavioral theory of bargaining to derive hypotheses about the impact of strikes and compulsory interest arbitration on teacher salaries those hypotheses are tested with data sets on illinois and iowa school districts and on a national sample of teachers drawn from the current population survey the results suggest that strike use affects teacher salaries but that arbitration use does not additional tests indicate that the availability of both arbitration and of the legal or de facto right to strike has similar effects on salary levels increasing salaries by about 10 percent the findings also suggest that arbitration and the strike are used as defensive rather than offensive strategies

internationalisation conceptualising an entrepreneurial process of behaviour in time this paper presents a three stage process of conceptual development in response to the call for a unifying direction for research in the emergent field of international entrepreneurship drawing on classic approaches to internationalisation and importing insight from entrepreneurship as a separate and distinct field of study the paper develops three potential models of internationalisation as a time based process of entrepreneurial behaviour the models evolve from the simple through general to precise levels of conceptualisation research implications are discussed

sticky information in general equilibrium this paper develops and analyzes a general equilibrium model with sticky information the only rigidity in goods labor and financial markets is that agents are inattentive sporadically updating their information sets when setting prices wages and consumption after presenting the ingredients of such a model the paper develops an algorithm to solve this class of models and uses it to study the model s dynamic properties it then estimates the parameters of the model using u s data on five key macroeconomic time series it finds that information stickiness is present in all markets and is especially pronounced for consumers and workers variance decompositions show that monetary policy and aggregate demand shocks account for most of the variance of inflation output and hours jel e30 e10

international evidence on the efficacy of new keynesian models of inflation persistence in this paper we take an agnostic view of the phillips curve debate and carry out an empirical investigation of the relative and absolute efficacy of calvo sticky price sp sticky information si and sticky price with indexation models spi with emphasis on their ability to mimic inflationary dynamics in particular we look at evidence for a group of 13 oecd countries and we consider three alternative measures of inflationary pressure including the output gap labor share and unemployment we find that the calvo sp and the si models essentially perform no better than a strawman constant inflation model when used to explain inflation persistence indeed virtually all inflationary dynamics end up being captured by the residuals of the estimated versions of these models we find that spi model is preferable because it captures the type of strong inflationary persistence that has in the past characterized the economies of the countries in our sample however two caveats to this conclusion are that improvement in performance is driven mostly by the time series part of the model i e lagged inflation and that the spi model overemphasizes inflationary persistence thus there appears to be room for improvement via either modified versions of the above models or via development of new models that better track inflation persistence

collective bargaining interest arbitration and police salaries previous research and conventional wisdom suggest that the practice of collective bargaining the availability of interest arbitration and the use of arbitration when available all have a positive

social capital structural holes and the formation of an industry network the formation of a network is determined by the opposition of two forces the first is the reproduction of network structure as a general social resource for network members the second is the alteration of network structure by entrepreneurs for their own benefit the idea of reproduction is a conventional one in organizational sociology but has taken on increased importance due to the work of bourdieu and coleman in contrast burt stresses the entrepreneurship of individual agents in exploiting structural holes that lie between constrained positions though complementary the theories of social capital and structural holes have fundamentally different implications for network formation this paper investigates these theories by examining empirically the formation of the interorganizational network among biotechnology firms we propose that network structure determines the frequency with which a new biotechnology firm or startup establishes new relationships network structure indicates both where soci

costly information acquisition experimental analysis of a boundedly rational model the directed cognition model assumes that agents use partially myopic option value calculations to select their next cognitive operation the current paper tests this model by studying information acquisition in two experiments in the first experiment information acquisition has an explicit financial cost in the second experiment information acquisition is costly because time is scarce the directed cognition model successfully predicts aggregate information acquisition patterns in these experiments when the directed cognition model and the fully rational model make demonstrably different predictions the directed cognition model better matches the laboratory evidence jel d83

costly optimization an experiment abstract an experimental technique is developed and used to examine how human subjects make choices when optimization is costly the total cost of making a choice is defined to include two parts 1 the direct cost of making the decision and 2 the indirect cost of making a choice that is not best among the available alternatives the total cost of choice for subjects in the experimental economy ranged from 15 to 42 percent of the economy s resources the hypothesis that agents are rational on average was strongly rejected while the hypothesis that agents are rational in the long run fared better

uncertain search a model of search among technologies of uncertain values in the standard search problem there is an infinite pool of items whose distribution of values is known a decision maker draws an item from the pool observes its value and decides whether to keep it or to draw another item he can keep only one item and he seeks the item with the largest value in the standard uncertainty resolution problem there is only one item and the value of that item remains uncertain even after it is drawn the decision maker sequentially collects observations on the value of the item and decides whether to keep the item discard the item or take another observation uncertain search marries the sequential drawing from a pool of items from the search literature with the unknown value of a drawn item from the uncertainty resolution literature presented in the context of technology adoption it considers drawing from a pool of new technologies whose values remain unknown even after being drawn the decision maker sequentially purchases information in order to bayesianly update

testing the sticky information phillips curve abstract i consider the empirical evidence for the sticky information model relative to the basic sticky price model conditional on historical measures of inflation forecasts the estimated structural parameters are inconsistent with an underlying sticky information model and the sticky information phillips curve is statistically dominated by the new keynesian phillips curve i find that the poor performance of the sticky information approach is driven by two key elements first the sticky information model underestimates inflation in the 1970s and overestimates inflation since the 1980s second predicted inflation from the sticky information model is excessively smooth

addressing participant inattention in federal programs a field experiment with the conservation reserve program voluntary land conservation programs depend upon the willingness of land owners to participate since participation requires commitment to long term contracts most studies on participation focus on changes to the pecuniary incentives facing land owners this study presents a large scale field experiment within the usda s conservation reserve program crp that examines whether informational outreach including behavioral nudges could improve land owners willingness to participate the experiment evaluates the impact of three types of reminder letters on the rate at which land is offered into the crp we find that for the most well informed group farms with expiring crp contracts the reminder letters did improve participation we interpret this result as evidence of inattentive behavior we do not detect any differences in the estimated treatment effects among the basic reminder letter and the letters augmented with peer comparisons and social norm messaging nor do we detect any treatment effect among currently unenrolled farms from a policy perspective these results imply that the usda can generate additional crp offers among farms with expiring contracts at an average cost of 39 per additional offer assuming a twenty five million acre program reminder letters sent during every sign up period would result in re enrollment offers from an additional 420 000 acres using simulations based on offers from prior crp sign ups we estimate that these additional offers in the crp auction would reduce program costs depending on the year of simulation the outreach effort achieves a benefit cost ratio of between 20 1 and 90 1

speed of the internationalization process the role of diversity and depth in experiential learning by analyzing internationalization as a dynamic process we attempt to explain the speed of international operations in terms of learning acquired in the course of past international activities we consider that the speed of the internationalization process depends on the type of experiential learning that results from decisions implicit in the internationalization process choice of location and modes of operation firms develop two types of learning activities with respect to the selection of foreign markets and modes of operation diversity and depth of accumulated international activities we propose that depth of international activities has an inverted u shaped impact on the speed of the internationalization process while diversity of international activities has a u shaped influence on the speed of internationalization process the results of our longitudinal study of 889 firms over 23 years 1986 2008 suggest that diversity of international activities promotes long term learning by exposing the firm to richer experiences although such learning only takes place over time depth of international activities may accelerate the internationalization process in the short term but it eventually restrains its potential for development in the long term our research highlights the short term vs long term consequences of different types of decisions related to the internationalization process

learning from interest arbitration the next round in final offer arbitration the decision of the arbitrator provides the parties with information about the preferences of the arbitrator that is not available prior to the award using data from wisconsin teacher negotiations from 1977 to 1986 the authors find that the information contained in an award altered the parties expectations about the arbitrator s preferences and influenced the subsequent negotiated settlement the negotiated settlement following an award was higher when the union s final offer was selected than when the employer s offer was selected in the round following an award the variance in negotiated settlements declined and the wage structure toward which the settlements converged was one that conformed with the arbitrator s views of fairness

sme internationalization modes in the german biotechnology industry the influence of imitation network position and international experience in this article we reveal how network enabled imitation processes impact young small and medium sized enterprises smes internationalization and how a firm s network position as well as its experiential knowledge moderate imitative behavior in internationalization modes building on institutional network and organizational learning theory we suggest that firms imitate the internationalization modes of their peers in their network moreover we argue that a firm s imitation propensity depends on two important boundary conditions network position and past experience applying a longitudinal event history analysis to analyze the complete population of 977 german biotechnology firms between 1996 and 2012 largely supports our hypotheses our findings reveal that firms imitate the internationalization modes of their peers in a precise manner this implies that the imitation of others can initially serve as a presumably convenient low risk shortcut to a planned or experience driven internationalization process furthermore our results confirm that this imitation process is channeled through formal network relations and that central network positions that are associated with superior information access enhanced legitimacy and status may promote deviating behavior acknowledging the interplay of different learning sources our findings additionally show that initial internationalization mode choices of smes can have a lasting effect on subsequent internationalization behavior overall our study contributes to a more nuanced view of imitative behavior of internationalizing smes and its boundary conditions and highlights future research opportunities that exist for considering imitation and its implications in international business research

extending the internationalization process model increases and decreases of mne commitment in emerging economies the internationalization process model suggests that firms internationalize by building positions in foreign markets and networks following iterative cycles of learning and changes in commitment however as subsidiaries evolve commitments may be decreased as well as increased a phenomenon that has rarely been studied moreover it remains an open question why strategic intentions at the outset of an investment project differ from the actual operations established we address these questions by extending the model and combining it with mintzberg and waters framework of strategy formation specifically we suggest that commitment decisions correspond to statements of intended strategy while network positions correspond to realized strategies the processes of learning opportunity creation and trust building triggered by commitment decisions are however moderated by institutional influences that lead to divergences between realized and intended strategies we test propositions derived from this framework on a survey data set of subsidiaries of multinational enterprises in hungary lithuania and poland and find that institutional voids and institutional uncertainty affect subsidiary strategy implementation but in opposing directions under high institutional uncertainty investors prefer low commitment but flexible modes that enable later commitment increases whereas institutional voids increase up front information search and adaptation costs that reduce the likelihood of early post entry adjustments our analysis reinforces the need for more differentiated theoretical analyses of how institutions affect business strategies over time

on the internationalization process of firms a critical analysis even though international marketing has been challenged because of theoretical and methodological shortcomings very few researchers have actually attempted to analyze the weaknesses based on principles of theory evaluation in this article the author examines two types of models addressing the individual firm s internationalization process a theory evaluation is performed based on the explanation and the falsification criteria in order to improve the internationalization models some measures are proposed

a note on the revisited uppsala internationalization process model the implications of business networks and entrepreneurship in their article from 2009 johanson and vahlne suggest a reformulation of the uppsala internationalization process model by incorporating business network theory and entrepreneurship theory into the model the present paper makes a critical examination of this reformulation the overall conclusion is that several issues have to be addressed regarding the relationship between business networks and firms internationalization the meaning of entrepreneurship as well as the possibility to combine business network theory and entrepreneurship theory in the uppsala model before the full potential of such an incorporation can be realized

integrating sticky prices and sticky information abstract understanding the relationship between nominal and real variables most notably inflation and cyclical output is one of the fundamental questions of economics toward this understanding we develop a model that integrates sticky prices and sticky information a dual stickiness model we find that both rigidities are present in u s data we also show that the dual stickiness model s closest competitor is the hybrid new keynesian model for both models current inflation depends in part on last period s inflation the former model achieves this dependence endogenously through the interaction of the two rigidities rather than through backward looking behavior u s data support the dual stickiness model over the hybrid model because lagged expectations terms appear in the former s inflation euler equation finally we show that it is quantitatively important to distinguish between the two by simulating a dynamic equilibrium model under each of the two inflation equations

the network dynamics of international new ventures this study uses multi site case research to advance a set of propositions regarding the network dynamics of early stage international new ventures the investigative approach builds on arguments that network theory and analysis are fundamental to international entrepreneurship in the spirit of cross disciplinary research perspectives from the entrepreneurship literature are embraced to help inform our understanding of international new venture networks

implications of rational inattention abstract a constraint that actions can depend on observations only through a communication channel with finite shannon capacity is shown to be able to play a role very similar to that of a signal extraction problem or an adjustment cost in standard control problems the resulting theory looks enough like familiar dynamic rational expectations theories to suggest that it might be useful and practical while the implications for policy are different enough to be interesting

the uppsala internationalization process model revisited from liability of foreignness to liability of outsidership the uppsala internationalization process model is revisited in the light of changes in business practices and theoretical advances that have been made since 1977 now the business environment is viewed as a web of relationships a network rather than as a neoclassical market with many independent suppliers and customers outsidership in relation to the relevant network more than psychic distance is the root of uncertainty the change mechanisms in the revised model are essentially the same as those in the original version although we add trust building and knowledge creation the latter to recognize the fact that new knowledge is developed in relationships