exposed venture capital competitor ties and entrepreneurial innovation this study investigates the impact of early relationships on innovation at entrepreneurial firms prior research has largely focused on the benefits of network ties documenting the many advantages that accrue to firms embedded in a rich network of interorganizational relationships in contrast we build on research emphasizing potential drawbacks to examine how competitive exposure enabled by powerful intermediaries can inhibit innovation we develop the concept of competitive information leakage which occurs when firms are indirectly tied to their competitors via shared intermediary organizations to test our theory we examine every relationship between entrepreneurial firms and their venture capital investors in the minimally invasive surgical device segment of the medical device industry over a 22 year period we find that indirect ties to competitors impede innovation and that this effect is moderated by several factors related to the intermediary s opportunities and motivation to leak important information

how firms respond to financial restatement ceo successors and external reactions although past studies have paid considerable attention to firms reputations few have investigated the actions that firms take following a reputation damaging event we identify firms involved in financial earnings restatements and examine whether naming a successor ceo with specific qualities serves to signal the seriousness of a firm s efforts to restore its reputation using theories of market signaling we argue that attributes of successor ceos significantly influence the reactions of key external constituencies in particular firms with more severe restatement tend to name successors who have prior ceo or turnaround experience and a more elite education the naming of such successors results in more positive reactions from the stock market financial analysts and mass media we argue that these attributes send messages to stakeholders and the broader public about the ceo s credibility and the firm s efforts

a status based model of market competition this article explores the significance of status processes for generating and reproducing hierarchy among producers in a market it develops a conception of a market as a status order in which each

the selection principle and market failure in systems competition abstract if governments stepped in where markets failed reintroducing markets through the backdoor of systems competition will again result in market failure three models are presented which illustrate this wisdom the first is concerned with congestion prone public goods and shows that fiscal competition may be ruinous for the governments the second considers the insurance function of redistributive taxation and shows that systems competition may suffer from adverse selection the third studies the role of quality regulation and shows that systems competition may be a competition of laxity resulting in inefficiently low quality standards

the economics of movement success business responses to civil rights mobilization1 this article explores why movements are successful in obtaining concessions from economic actors while social movement theorists have suggested that economic actors weigh the costliness of protests the author considers the vulnerability of movement targets to both the cost of disruptions in routine transactions and the cost of conceding to movement demands by addressing the magnitude of these costs and their interaction the author derives an economic opportunity structure to predict the receptivity of economic actors to movement demands and the likely struggles among them over the decision to yield also this cost assessment approach reveals patterns of vulnerability across economic sectors to the costs of disruptive mobilization the author tests this analysis based on case studies of the responses of economic actors to civil rights mobilization in the 1960s in five southern localities these cases depict how the character of protest and variation in the configuration of business communities defined

diplomatic and corporate networks bridges to foreign locations firms and governments operate in broad networks in which the home government and its diplomatic service are a critical node or a referral point between firms and potential partners in foreign locations thus diplomatic relations between countries matter for the choice of foreign investment location using a network perspective we argue that the extent to which good diplomatic relations induce firms to invest in friendly host countries depends on their political connections to home governments those with stronger ties to home governments can better access and leverage intergovernmental diplomatic connections thus benefiting potentially from enhanced access to information reduced political risks and increased legitimacy such ability of politically connected firms is more useful where weak institutional impartiality in the host country inhibits neutral treatment of foreign investors empirically using overseas investment location decisions by chinese firms we find that the types of home government ties i e whether they are organizational or personal and whether those relationships are with central or local goverments and the impartiality of host institutions are both important contingencies affecting firms utilization of diplomatic relations we discuss the implications of our study to research on network theory political ties and internationalization of emerging market firms

charting the territory recombination as a source of uncertainty for potential entrants in this paper we conceptualize categories as regions of a cognitive map that structure the market and guide the investment decisions of potential entrants i e of new and established organizations we advance that as a category appears altered via incumbents acts of recombination potential entrants face market specific uncertainty and are discouraged to invest in that category these negative effects of recombination on market entries are however mitigated at increasing values of category status we test our arguments in the market for electronic music the analyses of product and organizational entries in music styles between 1978 and 2011 lend support to our arguments

the dynamics of organizational status this paper examines the growth and decline of organizational status it is argued that an organization s status is determined by two factors past performance outcomes and the status of the organization s affiliates the better the past performance outcomes and the higher the status of the affiliates the greater the organization s growth in status this basic proposition is tested in an examination of status changes among investment banks in the non investment grade market between 1981 and 1987 implications and extensions are discussed in the conclusion copyright 1996 by oxford university press

magnification and correction of the acolyte effect initial benefits and ex post settling up in nfl coaching careers what are the long term consequences of initially beneficial high reputation workplace ties under uncertainty acolytes i e subordinates with work connections to high reputation industry leaders

decision making approaches and the propensity to default evidence and implications abstract this paper examines heterogeneity in the responsiveness to default options in a large state retirement plan focusing on individuals decision making approaches as well as their economic and demographic characteristics analyses of a survey of plan participants show that procrastination and the need for cognitive closure are important determinants of the likelihood of default this paper also explores an important implication of defaulting individuals who default are significantly more likely to subsequently express a desire to enroll in a different plan the desire to change plans is also correlated with numerous economic and decision making characteristics including procrastination

the credibility of social climbing when does inter firm mobility not influence organizational status this paper examines when inter firm mobility influences organizational status whereas a low status firm can accumulate prestigious affiliations by hiring from a high status firm the status distance between these firms may influence whether the mobility event is perceived as credible if the mobility event lacks credibility meaning that market participants believe that the employee moved for a reason other than the new employer s quality then the hiring firm is less likely to improve its status position we also explore this effect s symmetry and find that a high status firm is less likely to experience status decline when the mobility event lacks credibility we assess these hypotheses in the context of the inter firm mobility of partners of the subsidiary offices of international law firms in hong kong from 1998 to 2008

network composition collaborative ties and upgrading in emerging market firms lessons from the argentine autoparts sector what types of relational and institutional mechanisms shape knowledge flows and the upgrading capabilities of emerging market firms in the face of economic liberalization we analyze the argentine autoparts sector to distinguish the relative impact of different types of network relationships on a firm s process and product upgrading a few social ties to international assemblers appear to be most beneficial for local suppliers although they may be insufficient to compensate fully for the negative effect of being located in a lower tier supplier customer relationships that are part of regular disciplined discussions for product and process improvements appear to be especially beneficial for upgrading

the decline of social entrenchment social network cohesion and board responsiveness to shareholder activism shareholder activism through corporate governance proposals is a prominent avenue for investors to voice their concerns in corporate governance matters however shareholder proposals have an uneven effect on corporate governance this paper contributes to research on shareholder activism by joining social movement approaches to activism with network theoretic approaches to corporate governance the paper examines how firms position within cohesive sections of the board interlock network termed social entrenchment predicts 1 the likelihood of being targeted by activist investors and 2 firms responsiveness to proposal demands first a firm s position in the board network serves as a salient network prism attracting activists attention this is especially true for activist investors who lack other backchannel avenues for engagement or seek to use public reputational penalties as part of their activism strategy second the board network traditionally served as an important collective infrastruc

r d subsidies external collaborative breadth differential gains and the role of collaboration experience abstract external collaboration breadth is important for firms to acquire the knowledge needed to innovate in this paper we combine cross sectional and longitudinal data from the spanish panel of technological innovation survey pitec to examine the indirect impact of r d subsidies on firm external collaboration breadth we contribute to understanding of the indirect impacts of r d subsidies by first providing strong evidence of an economically significant average positive impact of r d subsidies on firm external collaboration breadth second our results advance understanding of the differential impacts of r d subsidies by revealing the vast heterogeneity of the impact at the firm level where approximately only half of treated firms experience a positive collaboration impact from r d subsidies while the remainder experience no impact or a negative effect finally we advance understanding of the characteristics explaining the differential impact of r d subsidies on external collaboration breadth by utilising the organisational learning literature to demonstrate the important role of firm collaboration experience

partners forever an empirical study of relational ties in two small firm clusters many researchers take as axiomatic the proposition that economic action in clusters is embedded in dense durable and trust based social networks it is suggested here that the bias towards high trust enduring relations obscures the competitive dynamics of networks even where co operation can be identified drawing attention to the competitive motives underlying the construction of social networks an investigation is made into the duration and brokering of dyadic relations in business owners advice networks the analysis of 668 dyadic ties in a population of 113 small business owners in two textile and clothing clusters in germany reveals considerable variation in the duration of social relations and the likelihood that they were formed through third party brokers many of whom were direct competitors creating more ephemeral links the findings suggest that marketless conceptions of social networks in clusters need to be balanced with a stronger concern for the role of competition in the social embe

how do social defenses work a resource dependence lens on technology ventures venture capital investors and corporate relationships interorganizational relationships offer many potential benefits but they also expose firms to dangers such as misappropriation which pull partners apart this tension between collaboration and competition is central to tie formation especially for young technology firms that have both a high need for resources and high appropriability of their own resources prior work has examined legal and timing defenses that enable interorganizational ties by such low power firms we focus here on social defenses in a longitudinal study of equity tie formation between young firms and established corporate sharks spanning five technology based industries and 25 years we unpack the effects of social defenses and find intriguingly that centrally positioned third parties are a particularly powerful social defense and that third party social defenses are especially significant when more traditional defenses are unavailable we thus offer the insight that third party chaperones central venture capital investors play a key role in helping young firms to mitigate and navigate vulnerabilities while mobilizing resources

networks as the pipes and prisms of the market1 this article draws an analytical distinction between two types of market uncertainty egocentric which refers to a focal actor s uncertainty regarding the best way to convert a set of inputs to an output desired by a potential exchange partner and altercentric which denotes the uncertainty confronted by a focal actor s exchange partners regarding the quality of the output that the focal actor brings to the market given this distinction the article considers how the value of structural holes and market status vary with these two types of uncertainty the article proposes that the value of structural holes increases with egocentric uncertainty but not with altercentric uncertainty in contrast the value of status increases with altercentric uncertainty but declines with egocentric uncertainty thus actors with networks rich in structural holes should sort into markets or market segments that are high in egocentric uncertainty high status actors should sort into markets that are low in egocentric

isolating the symbolic implications of employee mobility price increases after hiring winemakers from prominent wineries when a firm hires a skilled employee from a prominent competitor an indirect affiliation between the two firms is created recent orga nizational research indicates that such affilia tions may influence the hiring firm s prices both substantively and symbolically e g joel m podolny 2001substantively product quality may be enhanced by the human capital the new employee transfers from their prior employer if so then the hiring firm s prices should increase symbolically because the prior employer was a prominent competitor the move signals to con sumers that the hiring firm s quality may be bet ter than previously believed accordingly prices should increase these substantive and symbolic effects are dif ficult to disentangle empirically consequently their independent effects are more theoretically advanced than empirically supported we leverage an idiosyncratic feature of wine markets to isolate the substance from symbol in the hiring of skilled winemakers because wines are aged before they are released evaluated and priced new winemakers start work as wines made by their predecessors enter the market assuming that winemakers exert little influence on the quality of wines that are already in the cellar an assumption we validate empirically then post hire pricing effects are primarily if not purely symbolic as such once we control for the propensity of wineries to hire new winemak ers we isolate signaling i e symbolic from human capital effects on wine prices following hiring events

strategic alliances venture capital and exit decisions in early stage high tech firms abstract we study the trade offs that biotech start ups face in the private equity market when they choose between raising firm level capital from venture capitalists or project level capital from strategic alliance partners increased alliance activity makes future alliances more likely but future vc activity less likely in contrast venture capital vc activity makes both future alliance and future vc activity more likely both types of private capital raise the hazard of going public acquisition as an alternative to initial public offering is made more likely by increased vc activity but the link between acquisition probabilities and alliance activity is less clear cut these results highlight both the importance of alliance partners in resolving asymmetric information problems in the capital acquisition process and the potential conflict of interest between different sources of private equity

limitation of liability and the ownership structure of the firm this paper models the optimal choice of shareholder liability if investors want managers to be monitored the monitors should be residual claimants shareholders and monitoring and firm value will increase as shareholders commit more of their wealth to the firm when liquidating wealth is costly contingent liability dominates direct investment as a wealth commitment device however if wealth is unobservable under this regime only relatively poor investors will hold shares in equilibrium this may be prevented at a cost by verifying shareholder wealth and restricting stock transfers comparative statics on various liability regimes are used to motivate actual contractual arrangements

interim news and the role of proxy voting advice this paper examines the information content and consequences of third party voting advice that arrives as news at an interim stage in corporate proxy contests we first document significant stock returns around announcements of proxy vote recommendations we then develop a multiequation empirical procedure for disentangling the price impact of prediction effects changes in contest outcome probabilities from the price impact of certification effects changes in outcome contingent valuations both effects are present in the data voting advice is both predictive about contest outcomes and informative about the ability of dissidents to add value consequently proxy advice plays a dual informational role

home country networks and foreign expansion evidence from the venture capital industry we propose that home country network advantages shape firms foreign expansion we argue that a social status advantage is transferable from one market to another as a signal of quality but that a

the conditional nature of embeddedness a study of borrowing by large u s firms 1973 1994 economic and organizational sociologists have increasingly demonstrated that the actions of individuals and firms are affected by the social networks within which they are embedded in recent years scholars have begun to recognize that the effects of these social networks may vary across populations or types of relations this article examines the extent to which the effects of interfirm networks on the behavior of firms are historically contingent focusing on the level of debt financing among approximately 140 large u s corporations over a 22 year period the authors show that the extent to which the firms use of debt was influenced by those with which they were tied through director interlocks declined over time the authors argue that this decline in the network effect reflected a shift in the institutional environment within which the firms operated and that it was driven by three processes the professionalization of the finance function within the firm the internalization of financial decision

shrewd crude or simply deluded comovement and the internet stock phenomenon we show that i return comovement among internet stocks during the late 1990s and early 2000 was not exceedingly high ii there was substantial consistency in the manner by which investors distinguished among internet stocks and iii high comovement is most common during periods of price erosion these results cast doubt on the view that the extraordinary appreciation of internet stocks was due to the crude classification of all such stocks as members of a hot category

how much prestige is enough assessing the value of multiple types of high status affiliates for young firms abstract young unproven firms can signal their worthiness or potential through affiliations with various types of prestigious parties drawing from signaling theory we present a formal consideration of the implications of multiple numbers and types of prestigious affiliates for ipo valuations we argue that different types of prestigious affiliates prestigious executives directors venture capital firms and underwriters convey different signals of ipo worth depending on the extent to which they provide certification or substantive benefits based on a sample of 257 software ipos we find considerable support for our expectations the benefits of prestigious executives and directors accumulate in a linear more is better fashion in contrast the payoffs from vc and underwriter prestige accumulate in a curvilinear fashion we discuss the theoretical implications of these findings and propose an agenda for future research

the effect of a large shareholder on corporate value this article analyzes the value of a corporation as a function of its ownership structure shareholders can acquire costly information about the manager s effort to produce output concentrating share ownership leads the largest shareholder to i acquire more precise signals of effort and ii modify the compensation contract better monitoring increases output and hence firm value however the risk averse large shareholder bears more idiosyncratic firm risk as his stake in the firm increases these forces equilibrate at a unique welfare maximizing ownership structure under a strong condition on the purchase or sale of shares by large stockholders investors have incentives to trade toward the ownership structure that maximizes the social surplus when all investors are price takers only a diffuse ownership structure can arise in a competitive equilibrium

domestic alliance network to attract foreign partners evidence from international joint ventures in china partner selection is a critical issue in building international joint ventures ijvs we argue that foreign firms are more likely to select local firms with unique network structural advantages within a local alliance network we frame structural advantages as two network position traits centrality and brokerage specifically network centrality acts as a stronger network trait than brokerage in attracting foreign ijv partners however such a relationship may be moderated by foreign firms local experience and perceived capabilities we contend that when foreign firms have a high level of local market experience and perceived capabilities they may prefer a local broker over a centrally located local firm data on the domestic alliance network in china s electronics and information technology it industries largely support our hypotheses we conclude that as foreign investors become strategic insiders they may not only seek a local partner s capability attributes but also more critically pay attention to a local partner s domestic network

labor market advantages of organizational status a study of lateral partner hiring by large u s law firms prior research demonstrates product market advantages of organizational status but largely neglects factor market advantages we propose that status is advantageous in labor markets because individuals generally consider employer status a nonpecuniary employment benefit dyadic analyses of lateral partner hiring by large u s law firms demonstrate two status based advantages in employee hiring and retention first high status firms are more likely than low status ones to hire an employee from a more profitable competitor second high status firms are most likely to lose an employee to a lower status competitor when the competitor is atypically more profitable we discuss implications of these findings for individual and organizational status attainment and for the stability of industry status hierarchies

unbundling the structure of inertia resource versus routine rigidity i work to unbundle the structure of inertia into two distinct categories resource rigidity failure to change resource investment patterns and routine rigidity failure to change organizational p

ties that bind how business connections affect mutual fund activism we investigate whether business ties with portfolio firms influence mutual funds proxy voting using a comprehensive data set spanning 2003 to 2011 in contrast to prior literature we find that business ties significantly influence promanagement voting at the level of individual pairs of fund families and firms after controlling for institutional shareholder services iss recommendations and holdings the association is significant only for shareholder sponsored proposals and stronger for those that pass or fail by relatively narrow margins our findings are consistent with a demand driven model of biased voting in which company managers use existing business ties with funds to influence how they vote abstract from author

how environmentalists greened trade policy strategic action and the architecture of field overlap this article examines why and how environmental activists despite considerable political weakness and disproportionally few resources won substantive negotiating concessions that far outstripped labor achievements during nafta s negotiation despite a trade policy arena hostile to their demands environmentalists gained official recognition for the legitimacy of their claims obtained a seat at the negotiating table turned a previously technocratic concern into a highly visible populist issue and won an environmental side agreement stronger than its labor counterpart we argue that this unexpected outcome is best explained by environmentalists strategic use of mechanisms available at the intersection of multiple fields while field theory mainly focuses on interactions within a particular field we suggest that the structure of overlap between fields the architecture of field overlap creates unique points of leverage that render particular targets more vulnerable and certain strategies more effective

behind the scenes the corporate governance preferences of institutional investors we survey institutional investors to better understand their role in the corporate governance of firms consistent with a number of theories we document widespread behind the scenes intervention as well as governance motivated exit these governance mechanisms are viewed as complementary devices with intervention typically occurring prior to a potential exit we further find that long term investors and investors that are less concerned about stock liquidity intervene more intensively finally we find that most investors use proxy advisors and believe that the information provided by such advisors improves their own voting decisions

blocks liquidity and corporate control the paper develops a simple model of corporate ownership structure in which costs and benefits of ownership concentration are analyzed the model cornpares the liquidity benefits obtained through dispersed corporate ownership with the benefits from efficient management control achieved by some degree of ownership concentration the paper reexamines the free rider problem in corporate control in the presence of liquidity trading derives predictions for the trade and pricing of blocks and provides criteria for the optimal choice of ownership structure the recent incomplete contracting approach in corporate finance has considerably improved our understanding of how small firms determine their capital structure the basic setting considered in this line of research is one where a founder manager seeks funding from one or several financiers the main premise is that the founder manager in her dealings with the financiers is primarily concerned with maintaining her private benefits of control for small firms these are often quite large relative to the financial returns thus for a small firm the problem of determining the financial structure often reduces to the problem of how to obtain fundingr while giving away as little control as possible to the financiers of course most financiers insist on some form of protection so that the final compromise reached in most financial contracts for small firms is one resembling a debt contract or a venture capital contract which protects the founder manager s control as long as the firm is performing adequately this perspective for small firms does not extend naturally to large firms because the private benefits of control of the managers for large firms are likely to be small relative to the firm s monetary returns so that protection of these benefits is not an overriding consideration moreover large firms

the sociological approach to financial markets as a part of the renaissance and growth of economic sociology during the past two decades and in response to processes such as economic globalization financial markets have been increasingly scrutinized by sociologists their investigation is seen as relevant with respect to understanding the structure and dynamics of advanced societies the dynamics of social development as well as fundamental aspects of human behaviour this paper charts recent developments in the sociology of financial markets its starting point is the treatment of the concept of information within three sociological orientations the social structural approach sociological neo institutionalism and the newer social studies of finance by highlighting their different assumptions about information and market behaviour i discuss how these approaches conceptualize financial markets the methodological implications and the ways in which they contribute to the study of financial exchanges

technical note why does the nbd model work robustness in representing product purchases brand purchases and imperfectly recorded purchases one of the most managerially useful constructs that emerge from the stochastic modelling of brand choice is that of conditional expectations in this paper the conditional expectations are derived for a generalization of the nbd model called the beta binomial negative binomial distribution bb nbd model first described by jeuland bass and wright the model developed to jointly represent the product class purchase and brand selection processes is also particularly appropriate for analyzing panel data when not every purchase occasion is recorded the conditional expectations for the nbd model increase linearly with the number of previous purchases made by an individual therefore the degree of nonlinearity of the conditional expectations in our more complicated model allows us to assess the robustness of nbd results when in fact the basic assumptions are not true this paper gives the simple conditions when the nbd will exactly or approximately represent the bb nbd and describes the qualitative deviations between these two models when they are not identical

local economic policies as determinants of the local business climate empirical results from a cross section analysis among east german municipalities blume l 2006 local economic policies as determinants of the local business climate empirical results from a cross section analysis among east german municipalities regional studies 40 321 333 for the period after 1995 there is empirical evidence that differences in east german local economic policies explain a significant part of the variation in the local business climate a cross section analysis among 92 municipalities shows that successful economic policies consisted of a balanced mix of traditional instruments consulting real estate management investment in infrastructure and modern competition oriented activities city marketing new public management regional cooperation and public private partnerships at the current level of intergovernmental competition among east german municipalities there are no signs of a ruinous race in subsidies discriminating subsidies even have a negative effect on the business climate in cities that have implemented these blume l 2006 les politiques

law finance and the international mobility of corporate governance we introduce the topic of this special issue on the role of financial and legal institutions in international governance with a particular emphasis on a notion of international mobility of corporate governance our discussion places the special issue at the intersection of law finance and international business with a focus on the contexts of foreign investors and directors country level legal and regulatory institutions facilitate foreign ownership foreign directors raising external financial capital and international m a activity the interplay between the impact of foreign ownership and foreign directors on firm governance and performance depends on international differences in formal regulatory institutions in addition to legal conditions informal institutions such as political connections also shape the economic value of foreign ownership and foreign directors we highlight key papers in the literature provide an overview of the new papers in this special issue and offer suggestions for future research

to steal or not to steal firm attributes legal environment and valuation data on corporate governance and disclosure practices reveal wide within country variation that decreases with the strength of investors legal protection a simple model identifies three firm attributes related to that variation investment opportunities external financing and ownership structure using firm level governance and transparency data from 27 countries we find that all three firm attributes are related to the quality of governance and disclosure practices and firms with higher governance and transparency rankings are valued higher in stock markets all relations are stronger in less investor friendly countries demonstrating that firms adapt to poor legal environments to establish efficient governance practices

who appropriates centrality rents the role of institutions in regulating social networks in the global islamic finance industry this study explains and tests the effects of country level institutions on the distribution of centrality rents between two sets of actors in an interorganizational network building on the literature on corporate elites we propose that a cohesive elite following organizational logics other than profit maximization diverts centrality rents and induces costs on firms and that macro institutions act as external governance mechanisms to shape this relationship we develop our theory in the emerging islamic finance industry where shariah scholars connect firms and constitute a religious corporate elite while central scholars in this network create legitimacy for firms they also shirk and cause information leakage suggesting a negative centrality performance relationship for the firms country level institutions such as government regulation and democracy we argue ameliorate these effects by influencing this religious elite s institutional logic and restraining their actions while institutions developed from within the industry strengthen the power of the elite testing our theory in a network of 367 scholars and 396 institutions over 31 countries using multi level methods we indeed find a negative centrality performance relationship that is ameliorated by stronger government regulation but exacerbated by better developed industry specific institutions as well as a negative relationship between democratic and regulatory institutions and centrality

the effect of large investors on asset quality evidence from subprime mortgage securities abstract fannie mae and freddie mac the gses the dominant investors in subprime mortgage backed securities before the 2008 crisis substantively affected collateral composition in this market mortgages included in securities designed for the gses performed better than those backing other securities in the same deals holding observable risk constant consistent with the transmission of private information these effects are concentrated in low documentation loans and for issuers that were highly dependent on the gses and were corporate affiliates of the mortgage originators additional analysis of yield spreads shows that these performance differences were not reflected in prices

when being in the minority pays off relationships among sellers and price setting in the champagne industry economic sociologists have studied how social relationships shape market prices by focusing mostly on vertical interactions between buyers and sellers in this article we examine instead the price consequences of horizontal relationships that arise from intergroup processes among sellers our setting is the market for champagne grapes using proprietary transaction level data we find that female grape growers a minority in the growers community charge systematically higher prices than do male grape growers we argue that the underlying mechanism for this unexpected pattern of results involves the relationships developed and maintained by minority members specifically in depth fieldwork reveals that female growers get together to compensate for their isolation from the majority this behavior enables them to overcome local constraints on the availability of price relevant information constraints that stem from prevailing norms of market behavior individualism and secrecy we discuss the implications

estimating the benefits of job creation from local investment subsidies this paper reviews the application of project appraisal techniques to analysing the cost effectiveness of local investment subsidies advance factory building cost per job measures are shown to be dependent upon the method of assessing the number of jobs created and the assumptions used in evaluating exchequer as well as social costs and benefits if realistic probabilities are adopted about the likelihood of previously unemployed persons obtaining a job other than in the advance factories then such local investment subsidies are not economically viable in exchequer terms local investment subsidies may be justified on cost benefit grounds but even by this criterion the number of subsidy created relative to subsidy diverted jobs is crucial to the decision

the costs of shareholder activism evidence from a sequential decision model abstract this paper provides benchmarks for monitoring costs and evaluates the net returns to shareholder activism i model activism as a sequential decision process consisting of demand negotiations board representation and proxy contest and estimate the costs of each activism stage a campaign ending in a proxy fight has average costs of 10 71 million i find that the estimated monitoring costs reduce activist returns by more than two thirds the mean net activist return is close to zero but the top quartile of activists earns higher returns on their activist holdings than on their non activist investments the large sample evidence presented in this paper aids in understanding the nature and evolution of activist engagements

preentry contacts and the generation of nascent networks in organizations this paper investigates the impact of individuals social ties at organizational entry on the formation of intraorganizational networks when individuals enter organizations with one or more preentry relationships in place i argue they form more extensive networks post entry than their untied counterparts however it is also suggested that under some conditions i e when quality is more certain the relationship between pre and postentry social structure is contingent on individuals quality attributes i test and find support for these hypotheses in a study of new business and law professionals the results indicate that individuals with an initial advantage in social ties form more extensive networks post entry than those without such an advantage and that when certainty about quality is high this effect depends on the quality attributes of the new entrants implications of this study for research on social networks resource accumulation and inequality are discussed

an investigation into the order of the brand choice process this paper investigates the order of the brand choice process at the individual family level using a variety of tests t likelihood ratio binomial runs and multinomial runs tests the test of stationarity developed permits separate analyses for stationary and nonstationary purchase sequences our analyses indicate that the purchase sequences of a majority of stationary consumers are consistent with the zero order assumption this result is observed for all the nine frequently bought packaged goods studied with the use of panel data and for a product category soft drinks using experimental data

global connectedness and local innovation in industrial clusters in today s knowledge economy clusters are a key driver of a country s competitiveness yet a cluster s technological base is now more than ever influenced by constituent firms actions to tap into distant knowledge sources drawing on a social network perspective and distinguishing between horizontal versus vertical organization based linkages we explore the effects of a cluster s connectedness to foreign locations on its innovation performance we show that improvements in horizontal and vertical connectedness both stimulate a cluster s innovation performance but that their relative effects vary across cluster types innovation in knowledge intensive clusters disproportionately benefits from enhancements in their constituent firms horizontal connectedness to foreign knowledge hotspots innovation in labor intensive clusters mostly gains from stronger vertical connections by their firms to central value chain players abroad we discuss the implications of our findings for research on global knowledge sourcing and cluster upgrading

who pays the price of brokerage transferring constraint through price setting in the staffing sector this article analyzes how a broker s ability to affect prices and extract superior value from its position has economic consequences for the actors tied to it i argue that intermediaries may exercise partial control in price setting by transferring the price constraints imposed on them by the actors on one side of the market to those on the other side in so doing they generate unequal returns for the brokered parties who then receive different prices due to the nature of the tie between the broker and its other exchange partners i investigate this argument using a novel mix of quantitative and qualitative data gathered from an intermediary in the staffing sector the results show that the broker is able to transfer discounts offered to valued buyers clients on to the sellers workers matched with them instead of reducing its own margins as a result actors with the same resource endowments receive different prices depending on the relationships among other exchange partners in a given triadic ne

syndication institutionalization and lottery play1 why do people play the lottery since lottery tickets are assets with negative expected return lottery play challenges the basic assumptions of economic theory this article approaches lottery play from a networks perspective and focuses on syndicate play a comparison of the development of lottery markets in germany austria spain and portugal from the 17th century onward shows that lottery play declined with rising incomes except in countries in which syndicate play diffused widely namely spain and to a lesser extent portugal although syndicating originated among the relatively poor as a response to an increase in lottery prices it persisted even when individual play became affordable this article contends that syndicating endured because of an institutionalization process by which lottery tickets have transformed from purely economic assets into symbolic carriers of interpersonal ties that convey membership and status position in relevant social networks

the rise and fall of small worlds exploring the dynamics of social structure this paper explores the interplay between social structure and economic action by examining some of the evolutionary dynamics of an emergent network that coalesces into a small world system the study highlights the small world system s evolutionary dynamics at both the macro level of the network and the micro level of an individual actor this dual analytical lens helps establish that in competitive and information intensive settings a small world system could be a highly dynamic structure that follows an inverted u shaped evolutionary pattern wherein an increase in the small worldliness of the system is followed by its later decline as a result of three factors 1 the recursive relationship between the evolving social structure and individual actors formation of bridging ties which eventually homogenizes the information space and decreases actors propensity to form bridging ties creating a globally separated network 2 self containment of the small world network or increasing homogenization of the social system which makes the small world less accepting of and less attractive to new actors thereby limiting formation of bridging ties to outside clusters and 3 fragmentation of the small world network or the small world system s inability to retain current clusters the study uses data on interorganizational tie formation in the global computer industry in the period from 1996 to 2005 to test the hypothesized relationships

institutional ownership and governance this paper describes different forms of ownership across countries and how these forms influence the way companies are governed in most stock markets in the world listed companies frequently have a controlling shareholder usually a family however japan the uk and to a lesser extent the us are exceptions in these three countries ownership is frequently highly fragmented where share stakes are held by different institutional owners including asset managers both active and passive and by shareholder activists the paper focuses in particular on the governance structure of different institutional shareholders how they engage with target firms and their effectiveness the paper concludes with recommendations for regulators to enhance different forms of ownership

editor s choice active ownership we analyze an extensive proprietary database of corporate social responsibility engagements with u s public companies from 1999 2009 engagements address environmental social and governance concerns successful unsuccessful engagements are followed by positive zero abnormal returns companies with inferior governance and socially conscious institutional investors are more likely to be engaged success in engagements is more probable if the engaged firm has reputational concerns and higher capacity to implement changes collaboration among activists is instrumental in increasing the success rate of environmental social engagements after successful engagements particularly on environmental social issues companies experience improved accounting performance and governance and increased institutional ownership

network prominence bargaining power and the allocation of value capturing rights in high tech alliance contracts we suggest and provide empirical evidence that the bargaining power of alliance partners stemming from their prominence in alliance networks influences the ex ante allocation of value capturing rights in high tech alliance contracts network prominence can enhance the availability of alternative partners for a firm and thereby elevates the firm s bargaining power and enables the firm to receive i more value capturing rights vis a vis its partner i e more net value capturing rights and ii more rights to the unexpected outcomes vis a vis its partner we empirically investigate the content of research and development r d collaboration contracts between biotech and pharmaceutical firms and show that as the prominence of the client i e pharmaceutical firm increases it is able to attain i more net value capturing rights to outcomes within the area of collaboration and ii more rights to unexpected outcomes by contrast increased prominence of the r d firm i e biotech firm decreases both t

understanding global flows of venture capital human networks as the carrier wave of globalization industry participants and observers view venture capital as fundamentally a local business however recent data show an increasing share of us venture capital investments flowing overseas we suggest that cross border venture capital flows are associated with the formation of transnational technical communities ttcs groups of immigrants active in both home and host country technical networks our results highlight the role of human networks as a mechanism of industry globalization and support the view that ttcs are emerging economic actors in their own right

shaming the corporation the social production of targets and the anti sweatshop movement as social movements co evolve with changes in states and markets it is crucial to examine how they make particular kinds of actors into focal points for the expression of grievances and the demand for rights but researchers often bracket the question of why some kinds of organizations are more likely than others to become targets of social movement pressure we theorize the social production of targets by social movements rejecting a simple reflection model to focus on configurations of power and vulnerability that shape repertoires of contention empirically we extend structural accounts of global commodity chains and cultural accounts of markets to analyze the production of targets in the case of the anti sweatshop movement of the 1990s using a longitudinal firm level dataset and unique data on anti sweatshop activism we identify factors that attracted social movement pressure to particular companies firms power and positions strongly shaped their likelihood of becoming targets of anti swea

making sense of the competitiveness debate the debate over national competitiveness is marked by some basic misperceptions with few exceptions those who use the term have a crude essentially mercantilist view of world trade in which competition among nations is just like competition between corporations not only do the authors and readers of reports on national competitiveness usually not understand comparative advantage they are unaware of the most basic adding up constraints economists however find it hard to believe that seemingly well informed people can really be this naive and assume that there must be more sophisticated ideas lying behind what they say the rationales offered by economists in turn offer false comfort to the would be sophisticates who like the term competitiveness they believe that they have transcended conventional economic theory when the fact is that they have failed to comprehend it in short the actual level of discussion is lower than any of the participants imagines copyright 1996 by oxford university press

getting off to a good start the effects of upper echelon affiliations on underwriter prestige the initial public offering ipo is one of the most critical events in the lifetime of a young firm prior research has shown that firms tend to have successful ipos if they go public with the endorsement of a prestigious lead underwriter this paper examines the antecedents to receiving endorsement by a prestigious underwriter and links this to the experience base of a firm s upper echelon we theorize that the amount and type of upper echelon experience serve as important symbols of a young firm s legitimacy to critical outsiders we introduce a typology of upper echelon experience that distinguishes between upper echelon upstream horizontal and downstream employment based affiliations and suggest that these different types of upper echelon affiliations allay different types of endorser concerns regarding firm legitimacy affecting the endorsement process further we theorize that the relationships between upper echelon experience and investment bank prestige will be moderated by technological uncertainty we test our assertions on a comprehensive sample of public and private biotechnology firms that were founded between 1961 and 1994 and that went public between 1979 and 1996 analyses of the five year career histories of the over 3 200 executives and directors that make up the upper echelons of these firms show that firms with upper echelons with affiliations with prominent downstream organizations i e pharmaceutical and or healthcare companies and with prominent horizontal organizations i e biotechnology companies are more likely to attract the endorsement of a prestigious investment bank we also find that the greater the range of upper echelon affiliations across the categories of upstream horizontal and downstream affiliations the more prestigious the firm s lead underwriter we also find that these latter results are moderated by technological uncertainty the present research has implications for the study of organizational legitimacy interorganizational endorsements and entrepreneurship

when ownership structure matters a review of the effects of investor horizon on corporate policies this paper surveys the literature on the impact of investor horizon on corporate policies while the desire to encourage long term investor ownership is shared among managers boards and policy makers how greater long term investor ownership benefits corporate decisions and ultimately firm performance is still under academic investigation the contribution of this paper is twofold the paper s first contribution is providing an up to date review of theoretical and empirical findings this paper introduces the groups of long term and short term investors and the related classification methodologies and investor horizon proxies used to form them it further reviews the determinants of an investor s horizon then this paper organizes the literature on the impact of investor horizon on corporate policies around three main channels the short term pressure hypothesis the monitoring hypothesis and the catering hypothesis the paper s second contribution is identifying six major challenges ahead that need to be addressed to improve the understanding of the impact of long term short term investor ownership on corporates policies these challenges represent opportunities for further research

after the break up the relational and reputational consequences of withdrawals from venture capital syndicates organizational theorists are increasingly interested in the antecedents of terminating interorganizational relationships but have paid little attention to the disruptive consequences of such termi

ownership structure speculation and shareholder intervention an institution holding shares in a firm can use information about the firm both for trading speculation and for deciding whether to intervene to improve firm performance intervention increases the value of the institution s existing shareholdings but intervention only increases the institution s trading profits if it enhances the precision of the institution s information relative to that of uninformed traders thus the ability to speculate can increase or decrease institutional intervention we examine key factors that affect the intervention decision the usefulness of short swing provisions and restricted shares in encouraging institutional intervention and implications for ownership structure across different firms institutional investors hold an ever greater fraction of corporate america s equity traditionally these institutions were stock pickers who tried to beat the market through trading if a firm whose stock they held seemed headed for trouble these investors headed for the door the wall street rule more recently some of these institutions have been using the ownership rights attached to their shares to pressure firms to act in the shareholders interest some have even argued that there is a synergy between gathering information for use in trading shares speculation and intelligently pressuring firms to improve performance intervention we argue that these motives can also conflict analyzing these motives allows us to predict which firms are most likely to attract institutional intervention which in turn has crosssectional implications for firm ownership structure recent examples suggest that institutional investors with large stakes sometimes intervene and sometimes follow the wall street rule so that there is indeed a choice to be studied in the early 1990s there was a wave of activism by a variety of large institutional investors among them calpers the california public employees pension fund putnam management a mutual fund manager and j p morgan a bank holding company these institu

choice map inferring a product market map from panel data this paper describes choice map a model that infers a product market map from panel data choice map is a stochastic brand choice model a random utility quantal choice model and a multidimensional scaling procedure choice map combines the parsimony of stochastic choice models the rationale of random utility models and the ability of multidimensional scaling procedures to simultaneously infer both brand positions and consumer preferences from preference choice data choice map assumes that consumers have stationary purchase probabilities for the observational period which makes the model best suited to frequently bought mature product categories neither experimental nor survey data are required traditional mapping methods that scale such data may not yield the same structure for low involvement products as will a procedure like choice map that scales behavioral data choice map s descriptive and predictive validity exceeds that of an alternative stochastic brand choice model the dirichlet multinomial for a test data set

hard and soft networks for urban competitiveness the concept of competitiveness has grown significantly and it is now common for cities regions and nations to assess improve and publicise their competitive standing vis a vis other places yet it remains rather unclear just what competitiveness is when applied to places which have objectives distinct from those of private sector organisations for whom share price and profitability serve as common metrics the blurring of the responsibilities of the public and private sectors also complicates matters with the former making increasing use of the terminology and priorities of business this paper takes the view that both public and private sectors and their interactions are sustained by networks to be effective these networks must operate at the global national regional and local scales gathering knowledge via social interaction that is through soft networks to a growing degree competitive networking also demands technological capability whether in high tech sectors smokestack industries

dynamic inducements in r d investment market signals and network locations this research shows that alliance networks shape how firms respond to uncertainty reducing information generated outside a network product awards signal the potential commercial success of the awa

business ties and proxy voting by mutual funds abstract the magnitude of mutual funds business ties with their portfolio firms is documented and is linked to funds proxy votes at specific firms and to overall voting practices aggregate votes at the fund family level indicate a positive relation between business ties and the propensity to vote with management votes at specific firms however reveal that funds are no more likely to vote with management of client firms than of non clients because the votes took place when funds knew their votes would be publicly scrutinized fund families with a larger client base may have adopted voting policies that led to less frequent opposition to management at all firms

niching versus change of pace brands using purchase frequencies and penetration rates to infer brand positionings the authors examine deviations from ehrenberg s wi 1 bi equal to a constant law to infer the positioning of low share brands as niche versus change of pace brands results from empirical anal

top management s attention to discontinuous technological change corporate venture capital as an alert mechanism technological discontinuities pose serious challenges to top managers attention these discontinuities which often occur at the fringes of an industry are usually driven by innovative and often venture capital backed start ups creating new products and transforming existing industries in ways that are difficult for incumbent managers to understand against the backdrop of their existing cognitive schemata however failing to appreciate and embrace successful technological discontinuities might endanger incumbents very existence extending the attention based view we explore whether and how interorganizational relationships guide top managers attention either to or away from technological discontinuities we propose that homophilous relationships e g alliances with industry peers should exhibit a negative relationship with incumbents timely attention to technological discontinuities whereas heterophilous relationships e g with venture capitalists as a result of coinvestments should exhibit a positive relationship furthermore we hypothesize that the status of the partners strengthens the effect of homophilous and heterophilous relationships with the timely attention of top managers to technological discontinuities based on a longitudinal study of the incumbents in four information and communications technology industry sectors we find that heterophilous ties through corporate venture capital cvc coinvesting with high status venture capital firms exhibit a strong positive relationship with timely attention cvc when it connects senior management to high status venture capitalists through coinvestments has a special role in directing top managers attention to technological discontinuities and ensuing business opportunities implications for the understanding of the role of interorganizational ties as structural determinants of top managers attention are discussed

taking a view corporate speculation governance and compensation using responses to a well known confidential survey we study corporations use of derivatives to take a view on interest rate and currency movements characteristics of speculators suggest that perceived information and cost advantages lead them to take positions actively that is they do not speculate to increase risk by betting the ranch speculating firms encourage managers to speculate through incentive aligning compensation arrangements and bonding contracts and they use derivatives specific internal controls to manage potential abuse finally we examine whether investors reading public corporate disclosures are able to identify firms that indicate speculating in the confidential survey they are not derivative instruments can be used to hedge market risk exposures or to spec ulate on movements in the value of the underlying asset to hedge generally implies that the derivative position is taken with the intention of reducing risk to speculate generally implies that the derivative position is undertaken with the primary intention of making a profit or increasing risk speculation has a pejorative connotation in the financial press yet it is not clear that this repu tation is deserved in this paper we explore whether speculation is an activity that is optimal ex ante but for which we should expect to observe some large negative outcomes ex post or whether it is an activity that will decrease ex pected shareholder value to the benefit of agents of the firm that is whether it is evidence of an agency problem and governance failure the extant theoretical and empirical literature presents an abundance of ev idence about why firms should and do use derivatives to hedge 1 we know

getting known by the company you keep publicizing the qualifications and former associations of skilled employees when product quality cannot be ascertained in advance of purchase producers must convince relevant audiences that they are worthy of consideration as quality players we propose that quality oriented producers will selectively publicize information about their skilled employees in anticipation of signaling benefits which include the accrual of visibility and the projection of quality based identities we validate our perspective on publicizing affiliation information by analyzing how a sample of australian wine producers publicized specific career information about their skilled employees i e their winemakers including the names of certain former employers of these individuals copyright 2009 oxford university press

earnings quality evidence from the field abstract we provide insights into earnings quality from a survey of 169 cfos of public companies and in depth interviews of 12 cfos and two standard setters cfos believe that i above all high quality earnings are sustainable and repeatable specific characteristics include consistent reporting choices backing by actual cash flows and absence of one time items and long term estimates ii about 50 of earnings quality is driven by non discretionary factors such as industry and macro economic conditions iii in any given period about 20 of firms manage earnings to misrepresent economic performance and for such firms 10 of eps is typically managed iv earnings manipulation is hard to unravel from the outside but peer comparisons and lack of correspondence between earnings and cash flows provide helpful red flags in addition cfos disagree with current standard setting on a number of issues including the sheer number of promulgated rules the top down approach to rule making the neglect of the matching principle and the emphasis on fair value accounting they indicate that a rules based culture makes the audit function centralized and mechanical and hinders the development of audit professionals a summary impression from our work is that cfos view earnings quality as more of a single and unconditional characteristic in contrast to current research where measures of earnings quality are strongly conditional on the decision setting this cfo view is related to their idea of one number a single earnings metric that shapes both their interactions with external stakeholders and internal decision making

toward an aspiration level theory of open innovation although open innovation has become increasingly established in the management literature comprehensive theoretical explanations of what drives firms to be open are sparse taking the perspective of the behavioral theory of the firm we conceive of open innovation as a form of nonlocal search arguing that firms will turn to open innovation when substantially under or over performing relative to their aspirations we further enquire how this relationship is moderated by firm specific innovation related resources human capital research and development investment and patents employing a representative survey of uk firms we find some evidence of moderation allowing us to present explanations of search through open innovation and contribute to the behavioral theory of the firm itself

endogenously chosen boards of directors and their monitoring of the ceo author s hermalin benjamin e abstract this paper develops a model in which the effectiveness of a board s monitoring of the ceo depends on the board s independence the independence of new directors is determined through negotiations implicit or explicit between the existing directors and the ceo the ceo s bargaining position and thus influence over the board selection process depends on an updated estimate of the ceo s ability based on prior performance many empirical findings about board structure and performance arise as equilibrium phenomena in this model we also explore the implications of this model for proposed regulations of corporate governance structures please contact the program in law and economics at boalt hall school of law uc berkeley berkeley ca 94720 for a copy of this paper

organizing contests for status the matthew effect vs the mark effect what is the best way to design tournaments for status in which individuals labor primarily for the esteem of their peers what process in other words should organizers of status based contests impose upon those who covet peer recognition we propose a formal model of status based competition that contrasts two competing alternatives the first following merton is the matthew effect according to which a tournament s architect directs slack resources to elite actors and thus widens the distribution of rewards by favoring cumulative advantage the second is the mark effect under which a tournament s designer instead pushes slack resources to marginal actors and thus tightens the distribution of rewards our results suggest that although the mark effect is better for the social welfare of most tournaments the matthew effect is preferable in two distinct contexts in small tournaments where variation in underlying ability translates into acute advantages for the most capable contestants and in large tournaments whose contestants face constant rather than rising marginal costs a condition we relate to contestants perception of their work as intrinsically valuable our contributions are twofold we find counter to the thrust of merton s work that cumulative advantage is not invariably optimal for the functioning of status contests and we identify circumstances in which the production of superstars is likely to make contests for status better off in aggregate implications for future research on status and management are discussed this paper was accepted by olav sorenson organizations and social networks

the curvilinear relationships between structural embeddedness and productive efficiency an exploratory study abstract existing network studies pay much attention to the benefits of structural embeddedness however uzzi 1996 points out the marginal benefits of structural embeddedness may follow a pattern of diminishing returns using major customer disclosure data from compustat this study investigates the curvilinear relationships between multiple aspects of structural embeddedness and productive efficiency applying both wang and ho 2010 and chen and lin 2009 stochastic frontier models we confirm the diminishing returns of eigenvector and betweenness centralities with a partial support for interconnectedness implications from our findings can help decision makers better understand the effects of structural embeddedness and help devise network structural change strategies for productive efficiency

the economic effects of state and local business incentives dies they have proliferated to the point that a 652 page overview of and state by state guide to business incentives was recently published national association of state development agencies et al 1983 a major area of this controversy concerns the effects of local subsidies on local and national economic welfare 2 moes 1961 1962a and 1962b buchanan and moes 1960 laird and rinehart 1967 and 1972 and gray 1964 argued that situations exist where local subsidies can increase both local and national economic welfare but goffman 1962 and thompson 1962 argued that local subsidies are unlikely to increase local economic welfare and are likely to decrease national economic welfare to address this issue a series

public trading and private incentives this article studies the link between public trading and the activity of a firm s large shareholder who can affect firm value public trading results in the formation of a stock price that is informative about the large shareholder s activity this increases the latter s incentives to engage in value increasing activities indeed if he has to liquidate part of his stake before the effect of his activity is publicly observed a more informative price rewards him for his activity implications are derived for the decision to go public capital structure and security design we consider a firm with a large shareholder and otherwise dispersed shares which are publicly traded the block holder is an insider in the sense that he can undertake actions that directly affect the firm s value moreover the insider might not take all value increasing actions as at least some of them involve a private cost for him in other words there is an incentive problem the article s main premise is that public trading as part of the price formation process generates information not only about exogenous factors affecting firm value but also about the insider s activity for instance as a result of public trading a firm s stock price will incorporate the market s evaluation of how a controlling shareholder allocates corporate resources we identify two sources of incentives for the insider to engage in activities that will increase firm value the first one is his stake in the firm since the insider participates in a value increase in proportion to his equity stake a larger stake increases the benefit to him from the firm value being high the view that large shareholders affect firm value is indeed widespread shleifer and vishny 1997 they alleviate the free rider problem pervasive in firms with passive dispersed investors unable or unwilling to affect the firm s operations that is outsiders

venture capitalists and cooperative start up commercialization strategy this paper examines the possible impact of venture capital vc backing on the commercialization direction of technology based start ups by asking to what extent if at all do vc funded start ups engage in cooperative commercialization strategies strategic alliances or technology licensing or both relative to a comparable set of start ups and with what consequences to address these questions i assemble a novel data set that matches firms receiving a federal research and development subsidy through the u s small business innovative research program to vc funded firms by observable characteristics in five technology intensive industries these data allow decoupling of cooperative activity resulting from start up development via the passage of calendar time from that due to association with vcs an analysis of the 696 start ups in the sample split by an external funding source suggests substantial boosts in both cooperative activity associated with vc backed firms and in the likelihood of an initial public offering

the impact of social structure on economic outcomes s ocial structure especially in the form of social networks affects economic outcomes for three main reasons first social networks affect the flow and the quality of information much information is subtle nuanced and difficult to verify so actors do not believe impersonal sources and instead rely on people they know second social networks are an important source of reward and punishment since these are often magnified in their impact when coming from others personally known third trust by which i mean the confidence that others will do the right thing despite a clear balance of incentives to the contrary emerges if it does in the context of a social network economists have recently devoted considerable attention to the impact of social structure and networks on the economy for example see the economists chapters in rauch and casella 2001 and the illuminating review essay of this volume by zuckerman 2003 as well as dutta and jackson 2003 and calvoarmengol 2004 however i focus here on sociologists contributions sociologists have developed core principles about the interactions of social structure information ability to punish or reward and trust that frequently recur in their analyses of political economic and other institutions i begin by reviewing some of these principles building on these i then discuss how social structures and social networks can affect economic outcomes like hiring price productivity and innovation

the long run effect of economic development policy on resident welfare in a perfectly competitive urban economy abstract this paper argues that evaluations of economic development policy must consider the long run effect on resident welfare the paper uses comparative static analysis of a closed urban economy with an explicit labor market to investigate the effect of policies that stimulate economic activity the paper finds that such policies do not necessarily raise resident welfare because of the competition for land between firms and households on the other hand the paper does find that income transfers increase resident welfare this model assumes however that the land capital and labor markets are perfectly competitive therefore these results are based on the assumption that an urban economy is efficient