does culture affect behavior and performance of firms the case of joint ventures in china this study applies a resource based view of the firm to analyze data from a sample of 898 joint venture firms in china including both joint ventures established by overseas chinese and by firms from western cultures it is hypothesized that culture could influence the timing of entry of joint ventures their investment preferences and performance anovas and regressions were conducted and the results suggest the impact of cultural as well as technological resources this paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of the findings

corporate environmental responsiveness in india lessons from a developing country abstract we examine corporate environmental responsiveness in business organizations in india based on theoretically informed case analysis we operationalize corporate environmental responsiveness as a two order construct we find that level one the lower level responsiveness is driven by pressures arising out of powerful supply chain customers and institutional pressures resulting from internationalization the drivers for organizations at level two the higher level responsiveness are associated with organizational identities and cultures rooted in a long history of social responsiveness

market entry strategy under firm heterogeneity and asymmetric payoffs how should a firm decide whether or not to enter an untested market when a competing firm is vying for the same market should a firm always speed to the market in an effort to capitalize on pioneering advantages we address those questions by developing a simple game theoretical model that captures the most essential factors in a firm s market entry decision such as market uncertainty firm heterogeneity competition cannibalization and order of entry effects our analysis shows that in a competitive context both pioneering advantages and laggard s disadvantages can motivate a firm to speed to an untested market therefore pioneering advantages alone are not an adequate guide for a firm to formulate its market entry strategy the optimal decision may call for a firm to be a prudent laggard when pioneering advantages to the firm are substantial or to become a market pioneer when facing pioneering disadvantages we characterize different patterns of market entry as equilibrium outcomes for different configurations of the market reward structure and offer a conceptual framework for formulating market entry strategies that go beyond the conventional dichotomy speed or wait we show that the paradoxical phenomenon of disadvantaged pioneers can arise in a competitive context as the outcome of rational firms making rational choices to show that pioneering advantages alone are not the right litmus test for market entry decisions we apply our general framework to a concrete case where consumer preference or the premium that consumers are willing to pay for the pioneering brand gives rise to pioneering advantages and laggard s disadvantages we conclude that the firm with a larger pioneering premium may choose to wait while a firm with a smaller pioneering premium speeds to the market our analysis also sheds light on empirical research on pioneering advantages because firms may race into a market solely to avoid laggard s disadvantages rather than to capture pioneering advantages pioneers are not necessarily the firms best positioned to establish exploit and maintain pioneering advantages therefore it is not surprising that a significant percentage of pioneers fail as documented by recent empirical research our normative investigation further suggests that this predicament in empirical research will not disappear even if we have complete data use the right measurements and employ perfect statistical techniques therefore it is perhaps more fruitful to redirect our research effort in the search for pioneering advantages finally we extend our analysis to incorporate the effect of cannibalization on an incumbent firm s market entry strategy we conclude that cannibalization can motivate an incumbent firm to wait as the conventional wisdom suggests but it can also be an impetus for a firm to become a market pioneer we offer supporting evidence for our analysis and discuss managerial implications of our conclusions

an institution based view of international business strategy a focus on emerging economies leveraging the recent research interest in emerging economies this perspective paper argues that an institution based view of international business ib strategy has emerged it is positioned as one leg that helps sustain the strategy tripod the other two legs consisting of the industry and resource based views we then review four diverse areas of substantive research 1 antidumping as entry barriers 2 competing in and out of india 3 growing the firm in china and 4 governing the corporation in emerging economies overall we argue that an institution based view of ib strategy in combination with industry and resource based views will not only help sustain a strategy tripod but also shed significant light on the most fundamental questions confronting ib such as what drives firm strategy and performance in ib

a process model of capability development lessons from the electronic commerce strategy at bolsa de valores de guayaquil past literature using the resource based view of the firm has concentrated on attributes of firms capabilities and on strategies for exploiting existing firm specific assets comparatively little research has been conducted on how a firm develops manages and deploys capabilities to support its business strategy this study seeks to understand the process of capability development and to establish a model that has both theoretical and practical significance a longitudinal case study of the electronic commerce strategy formation and implementation at bolsa de valores de guayaquil an ecuadorian stock exchange yielded qualitative data that allowed inductive modeling of the capability development process the model reveals that capability development in support of a new strategy is a gradual process that is cumulative expansive and very dependent on the way that difficult to imitate resources and actions are combined at bolsa de valores de guayaquil actions that supported the development of the firm s capability to strategize seem to have contributed the most in the initial phase of the strategy formation and implementation actions that helped the development of the firm s capability to be flexible appear to have contributed the most during the middle phase and actions that supported the development of the firm s capabilities to integrate and engender trust seem to have contributed the most in the final phase in addition the key resources that supported the overall capabilities development process included leadership organizational culture information technology long term view and social networks implications of this model for both research and practice are discussed

r d marketing and the success of next generation products this paper studies dynamic competition in markets characterized by the introduction of technologically advanced next generation products firms invest in new product effort in an attempt to attain industry leadership thus securing high profits and benefiting from advantages relevant for the success of future product generations the analysis reveals that when the current leader possesses higher research and development r d competence it tends to investmore in r d than rivals and to retain its lead position the leader s investment exhibits an inverse u pattern as this advantage increases in contrast when the leader enjoys an advantage that originates from the persistence of reputation it investsless than its followers now followers investment exhibits an inverse u pattern as reputation advantage increases depending on the extent of leader reputation industry structure can either exhibit frequent leadership shifts or prolonged incumbent dominance the basic framework is extended to allow investments in additional marketing variables e g advertising interestingly the leader takes advantage of strong demand for its current product by focusing more on advertising whereas the follower expends more on r d by shedding light on the implications of industry position for investment incentives and market evolution the analysis provides valuable insights for formulating marketing strategy in fast paced high tech business environments

strategic responses to resource management pressures in agriculture institutional gender and location effects sustainable management of natural resources by farmers is under increasing public scrutiny in australia the case of water unsustainably used and stored by agricultural businesses has gained attention with communities in catchments potentially deprived of water and placed at downstream risk yet sustainable water management institutional policy mechanisms remain disjointed around the country the study reported here applies a strategic response typology to a survey of 404 farmers in four different institutional environments in australia to explore their responses to institutional pressures findings demonstrate a convergence in typologies that relate to farmers organising each other and communities influencing and networking for the benefit of agricultural resource management thereby questioning the traditional continuum of resistance furthermore the mid range typology avoidance emerges as a highly problematic typology for sustainable water management policymakers especially those in weaker institutional environments where there is a need to develop policy instruments that retain farmer water management decision making power and encourage networks the paper also extends the strategic response typology to enable understanding of how gender and location affect strategic responses to institutional pressures findings provide insight for policy design in times of increasing catastrophic flood and drought conditions exacerbated by poor water management practice

exchange rate volatility and intervention implications of the theory of optimum currency areas we show that variables pointed to by the theory of optimum currency areas ocas help to explain patterns of exchange rate variability and intervention across countries but oca considerations affect exchange market pressures and intervention in different ways exchange market pressures mainly reflect asymmetric shocks while intervention largely reflects the variables that oca theory suggests cause countries to value stable exchange rates small size and the extent of trade links intervention and exchange market pressure also vary with the structure of the international monetary system

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

mne institutional advantage how subunits shape transpose and evade host country institutions scholars increasingly emphasize the impact of institutions on multinational enterprises mnes but the opposite relationship has attracted less research that is mne agency in relation to institutions based on a comparative case study of six mnes from the united states and sweden this paper remedies this it explores and explicates mne subunits strategic responses to host country institutional constraints and opportunities in five different regions a new institutional approach is adopted which allows for an investigation of mne subunit agency in relation to normative and cognitive institutions as well as regulative ones this fine grained analysis reveals not only what kinds of responses mne subunits invoke but why and how they are able to respond we identify four strategic responses by which subunits shape transpose and evade institutions in the pursuit of competitive advantage innovation arbitrage circumvention and adaptation these responses are driven by three key enablers multinationality foreignness and institutional ambiguity that serve to enhance and heighten three mechanisms reflexivity role expectations and resources by linking the enablers and the mechanisms to specific types of strategic responses in a framework and typology the paper not only contributes to emerging research on the interplay between mnes institutions and strategy but to strategy practice

fear of floating and the external effects of currency unions the introduction of the euro has considerably affected the de facto monetary policy autonomy defined as independence from monetary policy in the key currency areas in countries outside the european currency union ecu using a standard open economy framework we argue that de facto monetary policy autonomy has significantly declined for countries that dominantly trade with the ecu and slightly increased for countries that dominantly trade with the dollar zone the predictions of our model find support in the data we estimate the influence of the bundesbank s ecb s and the fed s monetary policies on various country groups the de facto monetary policy autonomy of both non euro eu members and efta countries declined with the introduction of the euro this effect was slightly stronger for the eu member countries than for efta countries as our theory predicts at the same time the de facto monetary policy autonomy of australia and new zealand vis a vis the us dollar has moderately increased

learning and forecasts about option returns through the volatility risk premium we use learning in an equilibrium model to explain the puzzling predictive power of the volatility risk premium vrp for option returns in the model a representative agent follows a rational bayesian learning process in an economy under incomplete information with the objective of pricing options we show that learning induces dynamic differences between probability measuresp and q which produces predictability patterns from the vrp for option returns the forecasting features of the vrp for option returns obtained through our model exhibit the same behaviour as those observed in an empirical analysis with s p 500 index options

central bank transparency and the volatility of exchange rates abstract we analyze the effect of monetary policy transparency on bilateral exchange rate volatility we test the theoretical predictions of a stylized model using panel data for 62 currencies from 1998 to 2010 we find strong evidence that an increase in the availability of information about monetary policy objectives decreases exchange rate volatility using interaction models we find that this effect is more pronounced for countries with a lower flexibility of goods prices a lower level of central bank conservatism and a higher interest rate sensitivity of money demand

defensive marketing strategies this paper analyzes how a firm should adjust its marketing expenditures and its price to defend its position in an existing market from attack by a competitive new product our focus is to provide usable managerial recommendations on the strategy of response in particular we show that if products can be represented by their position in a multiattribute space consumers are heterogeneous and maximize utility and awareness advertising and distribution can be summarized by response functions then for the profit maximizing firm it is optimal to decrease awareness advertising it is optimal to decrease the distribution budget unless the new product can be kept out of the market a price increase may be optimal and even under the optimal strategy profits decrease as a result of the competitive new product furthermore if the consumer tastes are uniformly distributed across the spectrum a price decrease increases defensive profits it is optimal at the margin to improve product quality in the direction of the defending product s strength and it is optimal at the margin to reposition by advertising in the same direction in addition we provide practical procedures to estimate 1 the distribution of consumer tastes and 2 the position of the new product in perceptual space from sales data and knowledge of the percent of consumers who are aware of the new product and find it available competitive diagnostics such as the angle of attack are introduced to help the defending manager this article was originally published in marketing science volume 2 issue 4 pages 319 360 in 1983

the category demand effects of price promotions although price promotions have increased in both commercial use and quantity of academic research over the last decade most of the attention has been focused on their effects on brand choice and brand sales by contrast little is known about the conditions under which price promotions expand short run and long run category demand even though the benefits of category expansion can be substantial to manufacturers and retailers alike this paper studies the category demand effects of consumer price promotions across 560 consumer product categories over a 4 year period the data describe national sales in dutch supermarkets and cover virtually the entire marketing mix i e prices promotions advertising distribution and new product activity we focus on the estimation of main effects i e the dynamic category expansive impact of price promotions as well as the moderating effects of marketing intensity and competition both conduct and structure on short and long run promotional effectiveness the research design uses modern multivariate time series analysis to disentangle short run and long run effects first we conduct a series of unit root tests to determine whether or not category demand is stationary or evolving over time the results are incorporated in the specification of vector autoregressive models with exogenous variables varx models the impulse response functions derived from these varx models provide estimates of the short and long term effects of price promotions on category demand these estimates in turn are used as dependent variables in a series of second stage regressions that assess the explanatory power of marketing intensity and competition several model validation tests support the robustness of the empirical findings we present our results in the form of empirical generalizations on the main effects of price promotions on category demand in the short and the long run and through statistical tests on how these effects change with marketing intensity and competition the findings generate an overall picture of the power and limitations of consumer price promotions in expanding category demand as follows category demand is found to be predominantly stationary either around a fixed mean or a deterministic trend although the total net short term effects of price promotions are generally strong with an average elasticity of 2 21 and a more conservative median elasticity of 1 75 they rarely exhibit persistent effects instead the effects dissipate over a time period lasting approximately 10 weeks on average and their long term impact is essentially zero by contrast the successful introduction of new products into a category is more frequently associated with a permanent category demand increase several moderating effects on price promotion effectiveness exist more frequent promotions increase their effectiveness but only in the short run the use of nonprice advertising reduces the category demand effects of price promotions both in the short run and in the long run competitive structure matters as well the less oligopolistic the category the smaller the short run effectiveness of price promotions at the same time we find that the dominant form of competitive reaction either in price promotion or in advertising is no reaction short run category demand effectiveness of price promotions is lower in categories experiencing major new product introductions finally both the short and long run price promotion effectiveness is higher in perishable product categories the paper discusses several managerial implications of these empirical findings and suggests various avenues for future research overall we conclude that the power of price promotions lies primarily in the preservation of the status quo in the category

spanish regions and the macroeconomic benefits of the european monetary union c osta i f ont j and t remosa i b alcells r 2003 spanish regions and the macroeconomic benefits of the european monetary union reg studies 37 217 226 this paper empirically examines the extent to which regions within the same country differ in their exposure to a common currency we estimate an optimum currency areas oca index based on the main theoretical macroeconomic determinants we use data from the spanish regions for the period 1992 98 and germany is taken as a numeraire results allow us to forecast whether sharing the same currency is equally suitable for regions differing in the relevant oca determinants despite being equally exposed to national specific shocks the results suggest three main findings first relatively large more diversified and open regions are best prepared to share the same currency second real exchange rate differs significantly between spanish regions although these differences remain smaller than those between countries third whereas at the regional le

who can adjust to the euro this study estimates potential exchange rate variation among 26 european countries during 1992 1998 as a proxy for the potential magnitude of adjustment they face to euro block membership using the instrumental variable iv method applying least squares cross section regression analysis based on optimal currency area theory a currency union among belgium denmark france germany ireland malta the netherlands and slovenia is found to entail a relatively light burden of adjustment for its members the current membership of other countries in the euro block is potentially very demanding on their societies in the long term this study also compares currency boards and independent central banks as alternative monetary frameworks for disinflation policies based on a pooled time series cross section dataset of the same countries and years currency boards are found to be more effective in reducing inflation in all countries except belgium balancing emu s credibility gains against its adjustment costs finland greece italy portugal and spain seem like unstable members of the euro block for all new eu member states except the czech republic malta slovenia and slovakia the advice is to stay out of the euro block until their economies are liberalised and flexible enough to withstand major adjustments and their societal interest groups supportive enough of these adjustments

once bitten not necessarily shy determinants of foreign market re entry commitment strategies we investigate foreign market re entry commitment strategies namely the changes in the modes of operation commitment undertaken by multinational enterprises mnes as they return to foreign markets from which they had previously exited we combine organisational learning theory with the institutional change literature to examine the antecedents of re entry commitment strategies from an analysis of 1020 re entry events between 1980 and 2016 we find that operation mode prior to exit is a strong predictor of subsequent re entry mode contrary to the predictions of learning theory we did not find support for the effect of experience accumulated during the initial market endeavour on the re entry commitment strategies of mnes in turn exit motives significantly impact on the re entrants decision to re enter via a different mode of operation by either increasing or decreasing their commitment to the market we show that re entrants do not replicate unsuccessful operation mode strategies if they had previously underperformed in the market when favourable host institutional changes occur during the time out period re entrants tend to increase commitment in the host market irrespective of the degree of prior experience accumulated in the market

the choice of an exchange rate system and macroeconomic stability the recent theoretical literature regarding the choice of an exchange rate system has focused on how the choice of an exchange rate regime will affect the stability of the economy while the methodology and emphasis of the various theoretical arguments differ the common thread that runs through all is the notion that the appropriate exchange rate system will differ with the nature of the disturbance to the economy the substantive differences existing among the various studies are to a certain extent due to different criteria used for exchange system choice it is not surprising that one s beliefs with regard to the effect of exogenous shocks on exchange system choice will be sensitive to the objective function used for instance fischer 1977 and frenkel and aizenman 1982 focus on the minimization of real consumption shocks and derive the result that the greater the domestic money shocks the more likely is a float alternatively flood 1979 and aizenman 1983 with an objective of minimizing domestic price shocks conclude that the greater the domestic money shocks the more preferred is a fixed exchange rate while the evidence presented below will indicate which approach is more consistent with actual country practice we should first consider the rationale behind the criteria considered fischer appeals to basic micro theory when he says that concavity of utility functions expressed as a function of consumption justifies concern with the stability of consumption but it is not obvious that price stability is of itself undesirable

estimating policy invariant deep parameters in the financial sector when risk and growth matter this paper provides and illustrates an approach to the estimation of technology parameters in the financial sector the relevant technologies are those of the financial intermediaries that produce inside money as output services and the nonfinancial firms that demand financial services as inputs to production technology we also display analogous results for consumer demand but without the modeling and econometric details which are available elsewhere the problems that we seek to solve through our approach to modeling and euler equation estimation are the lucas critique and what chrystal and macdonald 1994 p 76 recently have called the barnett critique we also explore the tracking ability of the divisia monetary aggregate and simple sum monetary aggregate relative ta the gmm estimated exact rational expectations monetary aggregate for each type of economic agent in this paper we produce and estimate euler equations for firms that demand or supply financial services as an illustration of the available approach first advocated forcefully and convincingly for the financial sector by poterba and rotemberg 1987 with respect to consumer demand for financial services we do not seek to integrate the three sectors into a complete economy in which aggregation blockings would have to conform across sectors in addition we do not explore in detail the

sustainable competitive advantage combining institutional and resource based views this article suggests that the context and process of resource selection have an important influence on firm heterogeneity and sustainable competitive advantage it is argued that a firm s sustainable advantage depends on its ability to manage the institutional context of its resource decisions a firm s institutional context includes its internal culture as well as broader influences from the state society and interfirm relations that define socially acceptable economic behavior a process model of firm heterogeneity is proposed that combines the insights of a resource based view with the institutional perspective from organization theory normative rationality institutional isolating mechanisms and institutional sources of firm homogeneity are proposed as determinants of rent potential that complement and extend resource based explanations of firm variation and sustainable competitive advantage the article suggests that both resource capital and institutional capital are indispensable to sustainable competitive advantage 1997 john wiley sons ltd

let me talk to my manager haggling in a competitive environment although negotiating over prices with sellers is common in many markets such as automobiles furniture services consumer electronics etc it is not clear how a haggling price policy can help a firm gain a strategic advantage or whether it is even sustainable in a competitive market in this paper we explore the implications of haggling and fixed prices as pricing policies in a competitive market we develop a model in which two competing retailers choose between offering either a fixed price or haggling over prices with customers there are two consumer segments in our analysis one segment thehagglers has a lower opportunity cost of time and a lower haggling cost than the other segment thenonhagglers when both retailers follow the same pricing policy then a haggling policy is more profitable than a fixed price policy only when the proportion of nonhagglers is sufficiently high we find two kinds of prisoners dilemma under some conditions a more profitable haggling policy can be broken by a fixed price policy and under other conditions a fixed price policy can be broken by a haggling policy surprisingly we show that under some conditions an asymmetric outcome with one retailer haggling and the other offering a fixed price is also an equilibrium

sustainable entrepreneurship is entrepreneurial will enough a north south comparison based on an analysis of 44 cases in canada tunisia and cameroon this research attempts to determine the fundaments of sustainable entrepreneurship se in an international perspective and to shed the light on the potential impact of economic institutional and cultural dimensions upon diverse levels of sustainability in small and medium size firms smes neo institutional and entrepreneurship theories were combined in an integrative conceptual model to fully embrace the meanings and practices of se and to question the culture free argument of some prescriptions as well as some international programs the analysis of the rationale behind entrepreneurs committed to sustainability in the three countries compared to less engaged firms shows that entrepreneurs individual values are crucial in all cases socio cultural specificities and institutional realities can however be more or less inductive to the adoption of sustainable practices in smes this study also demonstrates that external stimuli are needed in tunisia and cameroon to reach the same environmental involvement as found in canada moreover support programs to assist smes with the adoption of sustainable practices and communication about the issue have to be tailored to the entrepreneur s motives the firms levels of openness to sustainability the socio cultural practices already embedded and the countries priorities implications for policy management and research are also discussed

no news is bad news sensegiving activities media attention and venture capital funding of new technology organizations a significant body of research has examined how new organizations gain legitimacy and how gaining it affects their subsequent access to resources less attention has been given to the problem of how new organizations attract collective attention although related to legitimation the problem of attracting attention is distinct as attention and evaluation are distinct cognitive processes in this study we examine the allocation of collective attention to new organizations in a system of relationships within which new organizations seek to attract attention through their sensegiving activities the information properties of their sensegiving activities affect the level of attention they receive from different types of media and media attention in turn increases their perceived value potential in the eyes of venture capital investors vcs we examine these relationships in a sample of 398 information technology start ups that have obtained different levels of venture capital funding our results show that new organizations that engage in more intense and diverse sensegiving activities attract higher levels of industry media attention and that these effects are enhanced by the human capital of their founders and leaders diverse sensegiving activities are also associated with higher levels of attention from the general media but only the attention of specialized industry media is positively associated with the level of vc funding obtained these findings extend current research on information intermediation and institutional legitimation by demonstrating that media attention early in the life of new organizations affects how they are valued by a well informed expert audience such as vcs they also contribute to entrepreneurship research on the effects of new organizations strategies on their ability to secure resources and to research on vc funding decisions

mapping the institutional capital of high tech firms a fuzzy set analysis of capitalist variety and export performance we examine how institutional configurations not single institutions provide companies with institutional capital building on the varieties of capitalism approach it is argued that competitive advantage in high tech industries with radical innovation may be supported by combinations of certain institutional conditions lax employment protection weak collective bargaining coverage extensive university training little occupational training and a large stock market furthermore multinational enterprises engage in institutional arbitrage they allocate their activities so as to benefit from available institutional capital these hypotheses are tested on country level data for 19 oecd economies in the period 1990 to 2003 a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis yields several interesting findings a high share of university graduates and a large stock market are complementary institutions leading to strong export performance in high tech employment protection is neither conducive nor harmful to export performance in high tech a high volume of cross border mergers and acquisitions as a form of institutional arbitrage leading to knowledge flows acts as a functional equivalent to institutions that support knowledge production in the home economy implications of these findings for theory policy and the analysis of firm level behavior are developed

understanding bilateral exchange rate volatility abstract this paper develops an empirical model of bilateral exchange rate volatility we conjecture that for developing economies external financial liabilities have an important effect on desired bilateral exchange rate volatility above and beyond the standard optimal currency area oca factors by contrast industrial countries do not face the same set of constraints in international financial markets in our theoretical model external debt tightens financial constraints and reduces the efficiency of the exchange rate in responding to external shocks we go on to explore the determinants of bilateral exchange rate volatility in a broad cross section of countries for developing economies bilateral exchange rate volatility relative to creditor countries is strongly negatively affected by the stock of external debt for industrial countries however oca variables appear more important and external debt is generally not significant in explaining bilateral exchange rate volatility

capabilities as a mediator linking resources and the international performance of entrepreneurial firms in an emerging economy this study investigates an under researched topic the relationships between capabilities resources and international performance among entrepreneurial firms in an emerging economy we combine the resource based view of the firm and the capability building perspective of rent creation to shed light on the crucial role of firm specific capabilities that transform key resources into performance outcomes employing a large sample of chinese entrepreneurial firms our investigation demonstrates that while the resources of institutional capital and managerial ties are important in the internationalization effort their effects on international performance are channeled through each firm s adaptive capability this adaptive capability is the firm s ability to coordinate recombine and allocate resources to meet the different requirements of foreign markets specifically our research is able to demonstrate support for the mediating role of capabilities in the relationship between resources and international performance the implications of these findings for theoretical development and future research are discussed

comments on competitive responsiveness marketing science features many and diverse articles that analyze competitive responsiveness although recent marketing science editorials e g shugan 2002 suggest that competitive responsiveness is only a part of a comprehensive competitive marketing strategy it remains a vital part for that reason and many others marketing science is particularly proud of this special issue edited by david j reibstein and dick r wittink before introducing and vigorously applauding both the editors and authors of this excellent special issue we emphasize that competitive responsiveness raises numerous issues including whether one can forecast outcomes of new policies based on past observations made under old policies i e the lucas critique and decisions regarding which variables should be considered endogenous shugan 2004 i e determined within the model perhaps normative models are inherently perishable evolution in market structure requires modifications over time also although complete consistency within the world of the model is aesthetically pleasing imposing industry specific exogenous constraints that might appear unrelated to the modeling assumptions is sometimes necessary

understanding bilateral exchange rate risks abstract we apply the autoregressive conditional jump intensity arji model to weekly bilateral exchange rate returns of 31 countries and examine the determinants of bilateral exchange rate risks over the period 2001 2013 consistent with the balance sheet effects in the open economy literature we find that bilateral exchange rate risks are significantly reduced by external financial liabilities above and beyond the standard optimal currency area oca factors and the development of domestic financial sectors will attenuate this effect subsample analysis reveals that developed countries also face credit constraints in the global capital market and the negative effects of external liabilities on bilateral exchange rate risks are increasingly pronounced in countries facing more credit constraints

market roll out and retailer adoption for new brands this paper proposes a descriptive model of the spatial and temporal evolution of retail distribution for new packaged goods the distribution model postulates separate processes for local market entry by manufacturers and adoption by retailers given entry of special interest is whether retail adoption occurs along a competitive network with retailers as nodes and overlapping trade areas of these retailers as links the model is calibrated on data covering the introduction of two very successful new brands in the frozen pizza category for these brands manufacturers sequentially enter markets based on spatial proximity to markets already entered spatial evolution and on whether chains in these markets adopted previously elsewhere market selection a retail chain adopts new brands based on the adoption timing of competing chains within its trade territory competitive contagion and on the fraction of its trade area in which the new brand is available trade area coverage the effects of market selection and of trade area coverage create dependencies between market entry and retail adoption because of these dependencies the attraction of a particular market as a lead market depends on its location in the geographic structure of the u s retail trade

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

an evolutionary approach to understanding international business activity the co evolution of mnes and the institutional environment this paper examines the co evolution of mne activities and institutions external and internal to the firm we develop a theoretical framework for this analysis that draws on the more recent writings of douglass north on institutions as a response to complex forms of uncertainty associated with the rise in global economic interconnectedness and of richard nelson on the co evolution of technology and institutions we link historical changes in the character of mne activities to changes in the institutional environment and highlight the scope for firm level creativity and institutional entrepreneurship that may lead to co evolution with the environment we argue that the main drivers for institutional entrepreneurship are now found in the increasing autonomy of mne subsidiaries thus mne agency derives from more decentralized forms of experimentation in international corporate networks which competence creating nodes of new initiatives can co evolve with local institutions unlike most other streams of related literature our approach connects patterns of institutional change in wider business systems with more micro processes of variety generation and experimentation within and across individual firms this form of co evolutionary analysis is increasingly important to understanding the interrelationships between mne activities and public policy

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

testing for the lucas critique a quantitative investigation this thesis contains four essays which studies the macroeconomic effects of fiscal and monetary policy quantitatively the first essay investigates whether swedish postwar business cycles have been generated by domestic or foreign shocks and finds that they are about equally important in the second essay the effects of government budget deficits on interest rates in sweden are studied in a small open economy framework the empirical results which have high power due to very large swings in deficits and interest rates provide support that larger deficits produce higher interest rates and thus give support against the ricardian view the third essay seeks to identify optimal social insurance and redistribution levels in sweden and the u s with respect to temporary and permanent idiosyncratic productivity risks the results indicate that sweden should reduce the social security level while the u s should approximately maintain the current level in the last essay the small sample properties of a well known statistical test for the lucas critique the super exogeneity test is studied in a general equilibrium environment the results indicate that the super exogeneity test do not have sufficient power in small samples

who invests in renewable electricity production empirical evidence and suggestions for further research transforming energy systems to fulfill the needs of a low carbon economy requires large investments in renewable electricity production res e recent literature underlines the need to take a closer look at the composition of the res e investor group in order to understand the motives and investment processes of different types of investors however existing energy policies generally consider res e investments made on a regional or national level and target investors who evaluate their res e investments according to least cost high profit criteria we present empirical evidence to show that res e investments are made by a heterogeneous group of investors that a variety of investors exist and that their formation varies among the different types of renewable sources this has direct implications for our understanding of the investment process in res e and for the study of motives and driving forces of res e investors we introduce a multi dimensional framework for analyzing differences between categories of investors which not only considers to the standard economic dimension which is predominant in the contemporary energy literature but also considers the entrepreneurship innovation adoption and institutional dimensions the framework emphasizes the influence of four main investor related factors on the investment process which should be studied in future research motives background resources and personal characteristics

understanding index option returns this paper studies the returns from investing in index options previous research documents significant average option returns large capm alphas and high sharpe ratios and concludes that put options are mispriced we propose an alternative approach to evaluate the significance of option returns and obtain different conclusions instead of using these statistical metrics we compare historical option returns to those generated by commonly used option pricing models we find that the most puzzling finding in the existing literature the large returns to writing out of themoney puts is not even inconsistent with the black scholes model moreover simple stochastic volatility models with no risk premia generate put returns across all strikes that are not inconsistent with the observed data at the money straddle returns are more challenging to understand and we find that these returns are not inconsistent with explanations such as jump risk premia peso problems and estimation risk

the future of stakeholder management theory a temporal perspective we propose adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory and assess the implications thereof for firm level competitive advantage we argue that a firm s competitive advantage fundamentally depends on its capacity for stakeholder management related transformational adaptation over time our new temporal stakeholder management approach builds upon insights from both the resource based view rbv in strategic management and institutional theory stakeholder agendas and their relative salience to the firm evolve over time a phenomenon well understood in the literature and requiring what we call level 1 adaptation however the dominant direction of stakeholder pressures can also change namely from supporting resource heterogeneity at the firm level to fostering industry homogeneity and vice versa when dominant stakeholder pressures shift from supporting heterogeneity towards stimulating homogeneity in industry the firm must engage in level 2 or transformational adaptation stakeholders typically provide valuable resources to the firm in an early stage without these resources which foster heterogeneity in line with rbv thinking the firm would not exist at a later stage stakeholders also contribute to inter firm homogeneity via isomorphism pressures in line with institutional theory thinking adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory has far reaching implications for this theory s practical relevance to senior level management in business

why is it so difficult to find an effect of exchange rate risk on trade abstract it is commonly argued that exchange rate risk hampers international trade however the large literature on this subject has not yet provided conclusive evidence this paper analyzes why it is so difficult to obtain a clear answer from time series analyses we use data on bilateral aggregate u s exports to the other g7 countries the results show that as far as the exchange rate is concerned export decisions are mostly affected by the probability distribution of the about one year ahead rate the riskiness of the exchange rate at such a long horizon appears fairly constant over time with only short term fluctuations this makes it difficult to discover the true effect of exchange rate risk on trade from the time series data that are typically available

structural analysis of manufacturer pricing in the presence of a strategic retailer consumer goods manufacturers usually sell their brands to consumers through common independent retailers theoretical research on such channel structures has analyzed the optimal behavior of channel members under alternative assumptions of manufacturer retailer interaction vertical strategic interaction research in empirical industrial organization has focused on analyzing the competitive interactions between manufacturers horizontal strategic interaction decision support systems have made various assumptions about retailer pricing rules e g constant markup category profit maximization the appropriateness of such assumptions about strategic behavior for any specific market however is an empirical question this paper therefore empirically infers 1 the vertical strategic interaction vsi between manufacturers and retailer 2 the horizontal strategic interaction hsi between manufacturers simultaneously with the vsi and 3 the pricing rule used by a retailer the approach is particularly appealing because it can be used with widely available scanner data where there is no information on wholesale prices researchers usually have no access to wholesale prices even manufacturers who have access to their own wholesale prices usually have limited information on competitors wholesale prices in the absence of wholesale prices we derive formulae for wholesale prices using game theoretic solution techniques under the specific assumptions of vertical and horizontal strategic interaction and retailer pricing rules we then embed the formulae for wholesale prices into the estimation equations while our empirical illustration is using scanner data without wholesale prices the model itself can be applied when wholesale prices are available early research on the inference of hsi among manufacturers in setting wholesale prices using scanner data e g kadiyali et al 1996 1999 made the simplifying assumption that retailers charge a constant margin this assumption enabled them to infer wholesale prices and analyze competitive interactions between manufacturers in this paper we show that this model is econometrically identical to a model that measures retail price coordination across brands hence the inferred cooperation among manufacturers could be exaggerated by the coordinated pricing category management done by the retailer we find empirical support for this argument this highlights the need to properly model and infer vsi simultaneously to accurately estimate the hsi when using data at the retail level functional forms of demand have been evaluated in terms of the fit of the model to sales data but recent theoretical research on channels lee and staelin 1997 tyagi 1999 has shown that the functional form has serious implications for strategic behavior such as retail passthrough while the logit and linear model implies equilibrium passthrough of less than 100 lee and staelin call this vertical strategic substitute vss the multiplicative model implies optimal passthrough of greater than 100 vertical strategic complement vsc because passthrough rates on promotions have been found to be below or above 100 chevalier and curhan 1976 armstrong 1991 we empirically test the appropriateness of the logit vss and the multiplicative vsc functional form for the data we perform our analysis in the yogurt and peanut butter categories for the two biggest stores in a local market we found that the vss implications of the logit fit the data better than the multiplicative model we also find that for both categories the best fitting model is one in which 1 the retailer maximizes category profits 2 the vsi is manufacturer stackelberg and 3 manufacturer pricing hsi is tacitly collusive the fact that the retailer maximizes category profits is consistent with theoretical expectations the inference that the vsi is manufacturer stackelberg reflects the institutional reality of the timing of the game retailers set their retail prices after manufacturers set their wholesale prices note that in the stores and product categories that we analyze the two manufacturers own the dominant brands with combined market shares of about 82 in the yogurt market and 65 in the peanut butter market the result is also consistent with a balance of power argument in the literature the finding that manufacturer pricing is tacitly collusive is consistent with the argument that firms involved in long term competition in concentrated markets can achieve tacit collusion managers use decision support systems for promotion planning that routinely make assumptions about vsi hsi and the functional form the results from our analysis are of substantive import in judging the appropriateness of assumptions made in such decision support systems

interest rate linkages within the european monetary system new evidence incorporating long run trends abstract this paper shows that the rejection of the existence of bivariate long run relationships between the interest rates within the european monetary system ems by previous studies may stem from the under specification of deterministic variables in the models and failure to capture the changes in the trend behavior of the data the present study applies the johansen cointegration tests in models with alternative trend specifications to four german other ems interest rate pairs for 1979 1998 with three sub sample periods corresponding to different degrees of ems monetary integration in contrast to the findings of past studies the results of this study lend support to the hypothesis that the interest rates of ems countries move together more closely over time converging from a wide dispersion toward the central level

network location and learning the influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation this paper presents a dynamic firm level study of the role of network resources in determining alliance formation such resources inhere not so much within the firm but reside in the interfirm networks in which firms are placed data from extensive fieldwork show that by influencing the extent to which firms have access to information about potential partners such resources are an important catalyst for new alliances especially because alliances entail considerable hazards this study also assesses the importance of firms capabilities with alliance formation and material resources as determinants of their alliance decisions i test this dynamic framework and its hypotheses about the role of time varying network resources and firm capabilities with comprehensive longitudinal multi industry data on the formation of strategic alliances by a panel of firms between 1970 and 1989 the results confirm field observations that accumulated network resources arising from firm participation in the network of accumulated prior alliances are influential in firms decisions to enter into new alliances this study highlights the importance of network resources that firms derive from their embeddedness in networks for explaining their strategic behavior copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

real exchange rate variability and the choice of exchange rate regime by developing countries abstract this paper draws together two distinct strands of the exchange rate literature it proposes that real exchange rate variability and the choice of exchange rate regime are jointly determined i test this claim by estimating a simultaneous limited dependent variable model with data from a cross section of developing countries during the recent floating period drawing on the relevant exchange rate literature the paper examines a number of exogenous determinants of exchange rate variability and the choice of exchange rate regime

extending environmental management beyond the firm boundaries an empirical study of dutch food and beverage firms consumer demand for environmental sustainability and for affordable prices calls for cooperation and information exchange in food chains to reduce joint environmental impact known as externally oriented environmental management e em e em is increasingly regarded as a management tool to simultaneously improve environmental operational and business performance understanding the factors that influence managers to develop e em helps to design environmentally and economically sustainable food chains the prior research regarding these factors is not exhaustive and demanded a multi period approach this study expands the understanding of the factors that influence managers to develop e em with a multi period empirical research we address the effects of external institutional pressures regulative normative and culturally cognitive and the level of in company environmental management i em on e em which involves information exchange in the chain cooperation with suppliers and customers the analysis relies on survey data of 255 and 96 dutch food and beverage f b processors from 2002 and 2010 respectively the findings indicate that respondents have considerably improved i em over time i em requires in company pzrocedures ranging from environmental strategy formulation to the managerial review of achieved results to assure continuous improvement of environmental performance f b processors that had already achieved a high level of i em are more likely to develop e em also growing normative and culturally cognitive pressures from supply chain partners and increasingly from long term public private environmental covenants significantly influenced e em implementation however regulative pressure from public authorities had no impact it appeared that e em is influenced mostly by institutional pressures when the firms are less experienced with i em

causes of the difficulties in internationalization we study the causes of the difficulties faced by firms when they internationalize in search of new markets we build on the resource based theory to argue that the difficulties in internationalization can be separated into three main sets based on their relationship to advantage loss of advantage provided by resources transferred abroad creation of a disadvantage by resources transferred abroad and lack of complementary resources required to operate abroad in each set we further distinguish difficulties that are specific to a firm from those that are common to a set of firms we argue that only a few of the resulting types of difficulties of internationalization are exclusive to the cross border expansion and propose solutions that address the root cause of each type

real exchange rate effects of monetary disturbances under different degrees of exchange rate flexibility an empirical analysis abstract we examine the effects of monetary policy on the real exchange rate in a cross country analysis we find that the variability of money shocks and the degree of informativeness of the exchange rate are important determinants of the magnitude of the real exchange rate effects of domestic money shocks our results are consistent with previous cross country evidence on the output effects of money shocks but also highlight the role of the exchange rate regime

how dynamic consumer response competitor response company support and company inertia shape long term marketing effectiveness long term marketing effectiveness is a high priority research topic for managers and emerges from the complex interplay among dynamic reactions of several market players this paper introduces restricted policy simulations to distinguish four dynamic forces consumer response competitor response company inertia and company support a rich marketing dataset allows the analysis of price display feature advertising and product line extensions the first finding is that consumer response differs significantly from the net effectiveness of product line extensions price feature and advertising in particular net sales effects are up to five times stronger and longer lasting than consumer response second this difference is not due to competitor response but to company action for tactical actions price and feature it takes the form of inertia as promotions last for several weeks for strategic actions advertising and product line extensions support by other marketing instruments greatly enhances dynamic consumer response this company action negates the postpromotion dip in consumer response and enhances the long term sales benefits of product line extensions feature and advertising therefore managers are urged to evaluate company decision rules for inertia and support when assessing long term marketing effectiveness

the inaugural isms practice prize competition isms practice prize competition chairman gary l lilien special section introduction by the isms practice prize competition chairman finalists joseph a foster peter n golder gerard j tellis predicting sales takeoff for whirlpool s new personal valet john h roberts pamela d morrison charles j nelson implementing a prelaunch diffusion model measurement and management challenges of the telstra switching study

commentary defensive marketing strategies for every new product and service entrant there are usually many incumbents who must defend their positions in the market hence defensive strategy is as least as critical as new product strategy our 1983 article argued that defensive strategy critically depends on the distribution of buyer preferences and the position of the new entrant relative to the position of the incumbent in a multidimensional attribute space since the appearance of our 1983 article in marketing science research in defensive strategy has progressed in both prescriptive and descriptive directions subsequent research on defensive strategy has also addressed empirical methodological theoretical and substantive issues today defensive strategy is more important than ever with shorter new product life cycles persistent service innovation remarkable technological change global competition and the invention of new channels of distributions

endogeneity in marketing decision models there are many critical concerns including the accounting for endogeneity when one is properly estimating response functions however it is sometimes certainly not always better to leave some variables exogenous when building mathematical models intended to help decision makers the exogenous variables allow the decision maker to better adapt the mathematical model to different situations and to incorporate myriad variables and constraints outside of the model

is having more channels really better a model of competition among commercial television broadcasters competitive behavior in commercial television broadcasting is modeled to examine program choice and the effects of more channels being available on firm strategy specifically broadcasters compete by selecting both the type and quality level of a program to offer but do not compete on price we obtain five major results first a comparison of monopoly and duopoly markets indicates that broadcasters in an industry with a larger number of competitors may provide programs of lower quality compared to broadcasters in an industry with a smaller number second in terms of viewer welfare having more channels available is not necessarily better third broadcasters tend to choose an intermediate level of differentiation in terms of the types of programs they provide resulting in a counterprogramming strategy in other words avoidance of price competition is not required for competitors to differentiate themselves from each other fourth if one broadcaster starts the evening with a higher quality higher rated program than its competitor its second program should also be of higher quality finally a broadcaster s first program should be of equal or higher quality than its second program put another way it always behooves a broadcaster to lead with its best

response to competitive entry a rationale for delayed defensive reaction empirical studies examining responses to new product entries come to the puzzling conclusion that in general an incumbent reacts to a new entrant after a significant delay even easy to implement price cuts are observed after significant lag following entry these findings seem to contradict the existing literature that either implicitly assumes or strongly advocates immediate defensive responses to limit competitive encroachment when a competing firm enters the market consumers may be uncertain about the entering firm s product quality the incumbent firm through rigorous tests may fully know the entrant s quality suppose the incumbent aggressively lowers price this may cause the consumers to wonder if indeed the entrant s quality is high in other words an incumbent s reaction may cause the consumers to make inferences about the entrant s quality such strategic implications of the incumbent s reactions have to be carefully analyzed before determining the optimal response by the incumbent in this paper we propose a conceptual framework for understanding differences in the magnitude and timing of incumbents responses to competitive entries we consider a model in which a monopolist incumbent firm faces competitive entry the incumbent firm knows the true quality of the entrant with certainty although consumers are aware of the incumbent s product quality through their prior experience they are initially uncertain of the entrant s product quality in such a situation a high quality entrant has the incentive to signal her true quality through her strategic price choice however the uncertainty about the entrant s quality is favorable to the incumbent in the sense that consumers believe with a high probability that the entrant s quality is low as a result the strategic incentives facing the incumbent and the entrant oppose each other while the entrant wants to signal her high quality the incumbent wants to prevent her from doing so we demonstrate that one way the incumbent can prevent the quality signaling is to select a higher than his optimal competitive duopoly price in other words the incumbent can prevent or jam the entrant s quality signaling by choosing a price higher than his optimal competitive price when consumers are fully informed about the entrant s true quality though the signal jamming price is lower than the monopoly price the price is substantially higher than the competitive price this marginal reduction in the incumbent s price from the pre entry monopolistic price represents a muted or lack of response by the incumbent to the competitive entry however once the entrant s quality gets revealed in subsequent periods through consumer usage and word of mouth the entrant has no incentive to engage in quality signaling and the incumbent has no incentive to jam it therefore the market reverts to the complete information competitive prices and the incumbent lowers his price considerably this temporal pattern of muted price reduction in the first period followed by a sharp price reduction in the second period corresponds to a delayed defensive reaction in our model although the empirical studies suggest that the delayed reaction may arise due to factors such as managerial inertia or indecision we demonstrate that such a behavior is indeed an optimal strategy for a profit maximizing firm thus our model reconciles empirical results with the equilibrium outcome of a strategic analytical framework furthermore in an experimental setting we test the predictive power of our framework and establish that consumers indeed form conjectures about the entrant s quality based on the incumbent s reactions in the first experimental study we find strong support for the notion that the incumbent s price reaction may indicate entrant s quality in a follow up study we observe that whenever the incumbent lowers prices respondents judge the quality of the entrant to be higher as compared to the case when prices are the same or increased the managerial implication of this paper is that well established incumbent firms should be cautious in the implementation of their defensive responses to product introductions of uncertain quality by competitors of particular concern are situations where the reactions are easily observable by consumers a strong reaction may suggest that the incumbent takes the competitive threat seriously leading consumers to believe in the quality of the competitor s product

international joint venture partner selection the role of the host country legal environment this study attempts to enhance our understanding of how a host country s legal environment influences international joint venture ijv partner selection criteria empirical results based on survey data collected on 169 ijvs revealed that host country rule of law perceptions negatively influence appropriation and coordination cost concerns which positively influence partner related criteria furthermore these concerns mediate the relationship between perceptions of host country rule of law and partner related criteria

human resource management in us subsidiaries in europe and australia centralisation or autonomy we explore determinants of subsidiary autonomy in setting human resource management hrm practices within us parented multinational enterprises mnes in europe and australia we examine both the effect of strategic context and the effect of the institutional location of the subsidiary we find that us mnes show greater centralisation of control over hrm where the subsidiary faces global markets in coordinated market economies vs liberal market economies and where union density is low

coming forward the effects of social and regulatory forces on the voluntary restatement of earnings subsequent to wrongdoing we investigate the effects of social and regulatory forces on a firm s decision to disclose past wrongdoing by voluntarily restating its earnings with an eight year sample of more than 2 500 public firms including 170 voluntary restaters we find that firms are more likely to voluntarily restate their earnings in response to informal social pressures from other firms in their industry and less likely to do so in response to formal regulatory sanctions we also show that the impact of these forces varies with firm status we contribute to corporate governance and public policy research that examines the effectiveness of hard versus soft deterrence measures on firm compliance

reply to do returns policies intensify retail competition returns policies are common in many sectors of retail distribution padmanabhan and png 1997 showed that with demand uncertainty a returns policy could improve manufacturer profitability under certain conditions wang 2004 showed that returns policies do not change manufacturer profitability when demand is certain and retailing is competitive we show that returns policies do increase manufacturer profitability by attenuating retailer price competition when demand is low and intensifying competition when demand is high importantly this effect holds only in the presence of demand uncertainty further the conditions under which a returns policy raises the manufacturer s profit are weaker when retailing is a duopoly than when retailing is a monopoly this suggests that returns policies serve both to manage competition and mitigate demand uncertainty

dynamics of international integration of government securities markets abstract this paper investigates the dynamics of international government bond market integration in six of the g7 economies over two decades leading up to the global crisis it examines whether such integration had been significant the extent to which integration at the short and long end of the yield curve differed the nature of such integration and the extent of the decoupling of the long rates from short rates these issues are investigated using the rigorous smooth transition copula garch model framework the results show that integration at the long end of the yield curve had been increasing had become pronounced and was significantly greater than at the short end decoupling between the short and long end of the yield curve was notable with important implications for the efficacy of monetary policy in the period before the crisis

why firms engage in corruption a top management perspective this study builds upon the top management literature to predict and test antecedents to firms engagement in corruption building on a survey of 341 executives in india we find that if executives have social ties with government officials their firms are more likely to engage in corruption further these executives are likely to rationalize engaging in corruption as a necessity for being competitive the results collectively illustrate the role that executives social ties and perceptions have in shaping illegal actions of their respective firms

partial repeat bidding in the name your own price channel this paper presents an initial examination of an emerging business model the name your own price nyop channel as popularized by priceline com focusing on how to optimally structure such market interactions i ask whether it is more profitable to restrict individuals to a single bid as is currently done by priceline or conversely to allow consumers to continue bidding if the previous offer was rejected i find that both market structures yield the same expected profit in practice a single bid policy may not be perfectly enforceable especially in the internet environment because a sophisticated user can circumvent such a policy by camouflaging one s identity or otherwise manipulating the bidding procedure thus priceline s single bid restriction is likely to result in partial repeat bidding the case in which some consumers are limited to a single bid while other sophisticated users may rebid i ask whether such surreptitious bidding is detrimental to the nyop firm and find that profits are lower than if such opportunistic behavior were absent surprisingly i find that the impact of the number of repeat bidders on profits is not monotonic thus if it is prohibitively costly or logistically infeasible for the nyop firm to eliminate surreptitious rebidding behavior the firm may in fact benefit from encouraging rather than discouraging users to rebid the direction that increases profits depends on the percentage of sophisticated bidders

state governance and technological innovation in emerging economies state owned enterprise restructuration and institutional logic dissonance in china s high speed train sector can state governance spur firm innovation in an emerging economy and transform state owned enterprises soes from dying dinosaurs to dynamic dynamos we seek an answer to this question by investigating the innovative performance of restructured soes in china s high speed train sector we expect that soe restructuration will improve firm innovation but that the degree of improvement will depend on how the state conducts firm governance building on institutional theory we distinguish state governance via equity ownership and administrative affiliation in an emerging economy with market hierarchy institutional conflicts under such conflicts restructured soes experience institutional logic dissonance which hinders organizational change for technological innovation we hypothesize that state ownership exacerbates institutional logic dissonance at a restructured soe thus limiting innovation improvement from restructuration in contrast state affiliation mitigates firm dissonance and hence augments such improvement we find empirical evidence for these hypotheses in a comprehensive panel of high speed train manufacturers in china between 1989 and 2015 this study contributes to the institution based theory of technological innovation in emerging economies on the practical front our findings suggest that emerging states may adopt arms length governance to spur soe innovation and unleash these dynamic dynamos to fuel sustainable economic growth

does exchange rate risk affect exports asymmetrically asian evidence abstract this paper tests the hypothesis of asymmetric effects of exchange rate risk with a dynamic conditional correlation bivariate garch 1 1 m model the asymmetry means that exchange rate risk volatility affects exports differently during appreciations and depreciations which may reflect exporter s asymmetric risk perception and hedging behavior using bilateral exports from eight asian countries to the us the real exchange rate risk significantly affects exports for all countries negative or positive in periods of depreciation or appreciation thus policy makers can consider the stability of the exchange rate in addition to its depreciation as a method of controlling export growth

the impact of a product harm crisis on marketing effectiveness product harm crises are among a firm s worst nightmares a firm may experience i a loss in baseline sales ii a reduced own effectiveness for its marketing instruments iii an increased cross sensitivity to rival firms marketing mix activities and iv a decreased cross impact of its marketing mix instruments on the sales of competing unaffected brands we find that this quadruple jeopardy materialized in a case study of an australian product harm crisis faced by kraft peanut butter we arrive at this conclusion by using a time varying error correction model that quantifies the consequences of this crisis on base sales and on own and cross brand short and long term effectiveness the proposed modeling approach allows managers to make more informed decisions on how to regain the brands pre crisis performance levels

navigating identity duality in multinational subsidiaries a paradox lens on identity claims at hindustan unilever 1959 2015 multinational subsidiaries do not merely seek legitimacy within their dual institutional contexts they also strive to articulate an organizational identity by drawing on institutional resources embedded in these dual contexts we draw attention to the subsidiary s identity duality and conceptualize it as a paradox i e as the juxtaposition of the contradictory interdependent and persistent characteristics of the global and the local in the subsidiary s identity using 57 years of archival data from hindustan unilever the indian subsidiary of anglo dutch multinational unilever we observe changing patterns in the articulation of identity claims by subsidiary leaders and develop a process model of how subsidiaries navigate identity duality over time we find that subsidiary leaders may use two modes of organizational identity work for this purpose logic ordering the articulation of identity claims that respond to contradictory institutional demands by privileging one and subordinating the other and logic bridging the articulation of identity claims that respond to contradictory institutional demands by effecting a janusian integration of the said demands over time and employing these modes of identity work leaders at hindustan unilever sustained a dynamic balance between the dual cores of the subsidiary s espoused identity

consumer learning brand loyalty and competition in several markets consumers can gain further information regarding how well a product fits their preferences only by experiencing it after purchase this could then generate loyalty for the products tried first this paper considers a model in which consumers learn in the first period about the product they buy and then make choices in the second period about the competing products given what they learned in the first period the paper finds that if the distribution of valuations for each product is negatively positively skewed a firm benefits is hurt in the future from having a greater market share today the brand loyalty characteristic with negative skewness two effects are identified on one hand marginal forward looking consumers are less price sensitive than myopic consumers and this is a force toward higher prices on the other hand forward looking firms realize that they gain in the future from having a higher market share in the current period and compete more aggressively in prices for similar discount factors for consumers and firms the latter effect dominates the paper also characterizes the importance of consumer learning effects on the market outcome

sustained competitive advantage temporal dynamics and the incidence and persistence of superior economic performance competitive advantage is a key concept in strategic management research for a number of reasons not the least of which is that an avowed consequence of its attainment is held to be superior economic performance however few prior empirical studies have directly and systematically documented the incidence or prevalence of persistent superior economic performance the research reported here is based on empirical studies of a large number of industry samples for which longitudinal data were stratified by levels of performance using a new methodology and then analyzed in terms of their dynamics this new stratification technique was used in lieu of autoregressive methods employed in prior studies of performance persistence to allow for a true outlier analysis because persistent superior economic performance both has been argued theoretically and found empirically to be rare detailed results from a sample of 6 772 firms in 40 industries over 25 years are presented to illustrate the findings that 1 while some firms do exhibit superior economic performance 2 only a very small minority do so and 3 the phenomenon very rarely persists for long time frames these results while not providing direct support for a particular extant strategic management or economic theory concerning firm performance are most consonant with the resource based view of the firm and have implications for significant aspects of other received strategic management and economic theories

implications of reduced search cost and free riding in e commerce this paper examines a market where the provision of information service is costly but information service has the characteristics of a public good consumers on the other hand can use the information service to make an informed purchase decision and derive higher utility from consuming their ideal product however after receiving the information service from an information service provider consumers can easily free ride by purchasing at low price sellers who do not provide any information service the paper examines the competition where sellers compete by providing information service for horizontally differentiated products and where technology reduces consumers search cost it is found that in this market a seller needs to establish itself as an information service provider in order to make positive profits even when there is free riding a seller however cannot make positive profits by free riding all the time also with an increase in competition in the information service market sellers have reduced incentives to provide information service it is also found that in this market a decrease in search cost may increase or decrease social welfare

are individuals bayesian decision makers there has been increasing interest in whether normative models of individual choice under uncertainty accord with actual behavior these concerns have been much greater than in other economic contexts because of the particularly severe demands such decisions place on the rationality of the decision maker the limitations of these decisions have widespread consequences as they provide the rationale for many governmental efforts to regulate the risks people face here i explore the issues raised by a bayesian decision framework focusing particularly on my analyses of worker and consumer behavior

option prices under bayesian learning implied volatility dynamics and predictive densities abstract this paper shows that many of the empirical biases of the black and scholes option pricing model can be explained by bayesian learning effects in the context of an equilibrium model where dividend news evolve on a binomial lattice with unknown but recursively updated probabilities we derive closed form pricing formulas for european options learning is found to generate asymmetric skews in the implied volatility surface and systematic patterns in the term structure of option prices data on s p 500 index option prices is used to back out the parameters of the underlying learning process and to predict the evolution in the cross section of option prices the proposed model leads to lower out of sample forecast errors and smaller hedging errors than a variety of alternative option pricing models including black scholes and a garch model

do returns policies intensify retail competition the paper manufacturer s returns policies and retail competition by padmanabhan and png 1997 argues that returns policies intensify retail competition and therefore raise the manufacturer s profits they reach that result through a problematic method to solve the game particularly in the game where the manufacturer accepts returns they unreasonably assume the retailers would never face stock constraints thus changing the retail competition from a cournot like competition to a bertrand one actually in a game where retailers first order stocks and then compete by choosing prices even if a manufacturer offers full return policies the retailers can still use insufficient stocks as quantities precommitment in order to uphold retail prices hence the retailers still face stock constraints at the final stage of the game the nature of the game is essentially unaffected by returns policies when demand is certain this note shows that returns policies do not intensify retail competition in the model proposed by padmanabhan and png 1997

endogeneity and heterogeneity in a probit demand model estimation using aggregate data two issues that have become increasingly important while estimating the parameters of aggregate demand functions to study firm behavior are theendogeneity of marketing activities typically price andheterogeneity across consumers in the market under consideration ignoring these issues in the estimation of the demand function parameters can lead to biased and inconsistent estimates for the effects of marketing activities endogeneity and heterogeneity have achieved prominence in large measure because of the increasing popularity of logit models to characterize demand functions usingaggregate data the logit model accounts for purchase incidence and brand choice by including a no purchase alternative in the consumer s choice set this allows for category sales to change as a function of the marketing activities of brands in the category there are three issues with using the logit model with the no purchase option to characterize demand when studying competitive interactions among firms 1 the marketing literature dealing with brand choice behavior at the consumer level has found that the iia restriction is not appropriate as each brand in the choice set is more similar to some brands than it is to others 2 studies have found that the purchase incidence decision is distinct from the brand choice decision hence it may not be appropriate to model the no purchase decision as just another alternative in the choice set with the iia restriction holding across all brands and the no purchase option 3 even if the distinction between the purchase incidence and brand choice decisions is accounted for via for example a nested logit specification accounting for the purchase incidence decision with aggregate data requires assumptions for computing the share of the no purchase alternative which is otherwise unobserved in this paper we propose a probit model as an alternative to the logit model to specify the aggregate demand functions of firms competing in oligopoly markets the probit model avoids the iia property that affects the logit model at the individual consumer level furthermore the probit model can naturally account for the distinction between the purchase incidence and brand choice decisions due to the general covariance structure assumed for the utilities of the alternatives we demonstrate how the parameters of the proposed model can be estimated using aggregate time series data from a product market in the estimation we account for the endogeneity of marketing variables as well as for heterogeneity across consumers our results indicate that both endogeneity as well as heterogeneity need to be accounted for even after allowing for a non iia specification at the individual consumer level specific to our data we also find that ignoring endogeneity has a bigger impact on the estimated price elasticities than ignoring the effects of heterogeneity a comparison of the elasticities obtained from the probit model with those from the corresponding logit specification indicates that therange of elasticities obtained from the probit model across brands is larger than that obtained from the logit the results have implications for issues such as firm level pricing in addition to specifying a probit model and providing comparisons with the logit model the paper also addresses the third issue raised above we propose a simple alternative to the purchase incidence brand choice specification by decomposing the demand for a brand into a category demand equation and a conditional brand choice share equation we provide a comparison of results from this specification to those from the specification that includes the no purchase alternative and find that estimated elasticities are sensitive to the specification used we also estimate the demand function parameters using a traditional specification such as the double logarithmic model here we find that the estimated elasticities could be signed in such a manner as to be not useful for firm level pricing decisions one of the key limitations of the proposed model is that while it accounts for the purchase incidence and brand choice decisions of households it does not account for differences across consumers in their purchase quantities the model and analysis are best suited for product categories in which consumers typically make single unit purchases another limitation is more practical in nature while recent advances have been made in computing probit probabilities it could nevertheless be a challenge to do so when the number of alternatives is large

faith and fair trade the moderating role of contextual religious salience normative and historical arguments support the idea that religion potentially shapes decisions to support fair trade products that said the question of how religion influences organizational decision makers to purchase fair trade products in a business to business context has remained largely unaddressed this research examines the interactive effect of individual religious commitment and contextual religious salience on an individual s willingness to pay a price premium for a fair trade product when buying on behalf of an organization findings from two experimental studies involving 75 and 87 working individuals respectively reveal that the effect of a decision maker s religious commitment on his or her willingness to pay a price premium for the purchase of a fair trade product on behalf of an organization is moderated by the contextual salience of religion specifically when religion is highly salient in the organizational context religious commitment is positively related to the decision maker s willingness to pay a premium for the fair trade product when contextual religious salience is low religious commitment and willingness to pay a premium are unrelated implications for theory and practice are presented