the commons as a natural barrier to entry why there are so few fish farms a competitive industry which overuses a common access resource may create a barrier to entry similar to spence s example of a cartel that uses excess capacity to prevent entry in most industries when a new firm enters existing firms find that their demand curves have fallen so they reduce their output to accommodate the new entrant in spence s model the cartel disintegrates upon entry so that the output of existing firms increases which may make entry unprofitable in an open access fishery the supply curve bends backward thus a fall in price created by the entry of a fish farm increases rather than decreases supply in the backwardbending portion of the supply curve an important implication of this theory is that fish farms are more likely to be unprofitable the more heavily overharvested is a species in a common property competitive market this natural barrier to entry may explain why true mariculture is barely in its infancy bardach ryther and mclarney

attitudes toward risk and the risk return paradox prospect theory explanations this study attempted to explain bowman s risk return paradox in terms of recent research in behavioral decision theory and prospect theory the research emphasized the role of reference or target

the wage effects of high performance work organization in manufacturing an unresolved question about now widespread innovative work systems such as teams and quality programs is whether they influence wage determination this study examines that possible association in manufacturing the author uses data from the 1997 national establishment survey that allow examination of how new work systems affected not only employees who were directly involved in them but other workers as well the key finding is that for core blue collar manufacturing employees higher wages were associated with high performance work organization hpwo systems while higher skill levels and computer based technologies were associated with higher wages the key mechanism appears to have been productivity gains independent of skill and technology that were shared via various across the board wage payment systems hpwo systems appear to have increased managers wages as well although through different channels the author finds no evidence that hpwo related wage gains led to greater wage inequality amon

management ownership and market valuation an empirical analysis we investigate the relationship between management ownership and market valuation of the firm as measured by tobin s q in a 1980 cross section of 371 fortune 500 firms we find evidence of a significant nonmonotonic relationship tobin s q first increases then declines and finally rises slightly as ownership by the board of directors rises for older firms there is evidence that q is lower when the firm is run by a member of the founding family than when it is run by an officer unrelated to the founder

the economics of wildlife farming and endangered species conservation abstract there is growing concern that the traditional protectionist approach to conservation is expensive and insufficient to deliver the desired environmental outcomes supply side policies to conserve endangered species have drawn support by generating supplies from captive bred animals wildlife commodity prices are expected to fall thereby lowering the incentive to poach species in the wild supply side policies however often neglect the institutional framework within which the wildlife trade takes place and ignore the potential strategic responses of economic agents adopting a model that captures imperfect competition between traders and farmers we analyze the effect of supply side policies and conclude that under some circumstances these policies may contribute to further devastation of wild stocks we derive conditions under which captive breeding contributes to conservation and discuss implications for policy makers

agency relationships in family firms theory and evidence does owner management necessarily eliminate the agency costs of ownership drawing on agency literature and on the economic theory of the household we argue that private ownership and owner management expose privately held owner managed firms to agency threats ignored by jensen s and meckling s 1976 agency model private ownership and owner management not only reduce the effectiveness of external control mechanisms they also expose firms to a self control problem created by incentives that cause owners to take actions which harm themselves as well as those around them jensen 1994 p 43 thus shareholders have incentive to invest resources in curbing both managerialand owner opportunism we extend this thesis to the domain of the family firm after developing hypotheses which describe how family dynamics and specifically altruism exacerbate agency problems experienced by these privately held owner managed firms we use data obtained from a large scale survey of family businesses to field test our hypotheses and find evidence which suggests support for our proposed theory finally we discuss the implications of our theory for research on family and other types of privately held owner managed firms

variations in r d investments of family and nonfamily firms behavioral agency and myopic loss aversion perspectives the behavioral agency model suggests that to preserve socioemotional wealth loss averse family firms usually invest less in r d than nonfamily firms however behavioral agency model predictions a

cooperation productivity and profit sharing firm specific assets generate an ex post bargaining problem over surplus division and rational workers may collude to obtain a surplus share in nonpecuniary form through restriction of effort conversely profit sharing should motivate cooperation to increase productivity when work organization facilitates interaction and horizontal monitoring since productive effort yields positive externalities to workers under contractual surplus sharing in simultaneous tobit estimates we find a strong influence of profit sharing on factor productivity in a sample of medium sized metalworking capitalist firms in west germany proxies for human capital and organizational factors were included

the fit between ceo compensation design and firm risk we examined the effects of unsystematic and systematic firm risk on ceo compensation risk bearing and total pay both the proportion of variable pay in ceo pay packages and their magnitude are curvilinearly related to unsystematic firm risk that is they are highest under conditions of moderate firm specific risk our results are consistent with agency theory predictions that both performance contingent pay and the greater earnings potential associated with that form of pay are highest when an agent has greater control over performance outcomes

competition and cooperation in corporate governance the effects of labor institutions on blockholder effectiveness in 23 european countries we provide an analysis of the costs and benefits of blockholding in europe where it is a dominant but certainly not universal corporate governance strategy for shareholders of publicly listed firms we find that the effectiveness of blockholding is conditioned by the specific labor institutions that distinguish european countries from the rest of the world and that these institutional effects involve both competition and cooperation between blockholders and collective labor interests we also find that relational blockholders are better able to cope with or benefit from these institutional effects than arm s length blockholders empirically we use advanced meta analytic methods on a total sample of 748 569 firm year observations derived from 162 studies covering 23 european countries

labor market mobility and cash compensation the moderating effects of race and gender building upon the gender based study conducted by brett and stroh 1997 we examined the moderating effects of gender and race on the relationship between changing employers and compensation attai

impact of cultured shrimp industry on wild shrimp fisheries analysis of price determination mechanisms and market dynamics cultured shrimp production has been growing dramatically on the world market over the last 15 years and some of the farm raised species are now considered as price indicators on the main market places one may therefore expect the price of theses cultured shrimp to have an impact on the price formation of other species and especially on wild shrimp with which they compete in this paper the authors address this question in the case of the wild shrimp penaeus subtilis exploited by the french guyana fishery south america and competing on the french market with the cultured thai shrimp back tiger a series of econometric tests issued from the co integration theory is performed between the price series of the two products these tests indicate that the two series are co integrated and that the black tiger market acts as a market leader for the french guyana shrimp product the authors then discuss the reasons of the current predominance of farm raised shrimp on wild caught product and in particular the french guyana shrimp and identify the constraints that the french market demand induces on both producers and importers in the light of this analysis a commercial strategy that would mitigate the impact of the thai shrimp on the french guyana product is suggested

when competitive advantage doesn t lead to performance the resource based view and stakeholder bargaining power what if rent from a competitive advantage is appropriated so it cannot be observed in performance measures the resourcebased view was not formulated to examine who will get the rent yet this essay argues that the factors leading to a resource based advantage also predict who will appropriate rent knowledge based assets are promising because firm specificity social complexity and causal ambiguity make them hard to imit ate however the roles of internal stakeholders may grant them a great deal of bargaining power especially relative to investors this essay integrates the resource based view with the bargaining power literature by defining the firm as a nexus of contracts this new lens can help to explain when rent will be generated and simultaneously who will appropriate it in doing so it provides a more robust theory of firm performance than the resource based view alone it is also suggested that this lens might be useful for examining other theories of firm performance

doing more with less innovation input and output in family firms family firms are often portrayed as an important yet conservative form of organization that is reluctant to invest in innovation however simultaneously evidence has shown that family firms are flourishing and in fact constitute many of the world s most innovative firms our study contributes to disentangling this puzzling effect we argue that family firms owing to the family s high level of control over the firm wealth concentration and importance of nonfinancial goals invest less in innovation but have an increased conversion rate of innovation input into output and ultimately a higher innovation output than nonfamily firms empirical evidence from a meta analysis based on 108 primary studies from 42 countries supports our hypotheses we further argue and empirically show that the observed effects are even stronger when the ceo of the family firm is a later generation family member however when the ceo of the family firm is the firm s founder innovation input is higher and contrary to our initial expectations innovation output is lower than that in other firms we further show that the family firm innovation input output relationships depend on country level factors namely the level of minority shareholder protection and the education level of the workforce in the country

technology and the future bioeconomy new discoveries in life sciences and the challenge of climate change are leading to the emergence of the bioeconomy where basic methods of advanced biology are applied to produce a wide array of products while also improving environmental quality the emergence of the bioeconomy is a continuing evolutionary process of transition from systems of mining nonrenewable resources to farming renewable ones this transition benefits from the modern tools of molecular biology that have expanded the human capacity to breed new organisms and utilize them to increase productivity in agriculture and fisheries as well as produce a wide array of products that were extracted in the past this transition is leading to the integration of the agricultural sector with the energy and mineral sectors the introduction of biotechnology has already improved the productivity of medicine as well as agriculture but in the case of agriculture has encountered resistance and regulatory constraints the evolution of the bioeconomy requires continuous public investment in research and innovation as well as the establishment of a regulatory framework and financial incentives and institutions that would lead to continuous private sector investment in the development and commercialization of new products one of the biggest challenges is the development of a regulatory framework that would control possible human and environmental externalities from new biotechnology products and at the same time not stifle innovation jel classifications q1 q2 q3 q4 q5

firm size and job quality a survey of the evidence from germany small firms provide and create a large proportion of jobs in germany are these jobs worse than jobs in larger firms the mosaic picture that emerges from a review of several recent empirical studies using german individual or firm level micro data shows that all in all wages are lower non wage incomes fringes are lower job security is lower work organisation is less rigid institutionalized possibilities for workers participation in decision making are weaker and opportunities for skill enhancement are worse in small firms compared to large firms the weight of evidence therefore indicates that on average small firms offer worse jobs than large firms it is argued that there is no need for policy measures targeted to improve job quality in small firms because higher incomes in large firms can in part be seen as compensating differentials for more rigid work organisation and can follow from wage policies to reduce shirking and turnover that is more costly in large than in small firms furthermore a lower level of remuneration less protection against dismissals a lower level of workers participation and less opportunities for further training all contribute to lower costs in small firms that might be needed to compensate for size related cost disadvantages compared to large firms economic policy should concentrate on keeping barriers to entrepreneurs entry to markets low to foster new firm formation and creative destruction

are family firms good employers family firms employ about 60 percent of the global workforce while it is widely assumed that they are good employers data about their conduct is mixed in this study we extend stewardship and agency theories to test competing propositions about the impact of family on employment practices using data from 14 961 private belgian firms over a 19 year period higher investments lower dividend payout and higher risk tolerance indicate that family firms are better financial stewards of their companies than nonfamily firms however family firms are worse organizational stewards than nonfamily firms they offer lower compensation invest less in employee training and exhibit higher voluntary turnover and lower labor productivity further and contrary to earlier research we find that financial practices in private family firms do not change over time and that the deleterious influence of family on employment practices rises with both firm age and with heightened family involvement together our findings suggest that a more nuanced understanding of stewardship and agency theory is needed to understand the impact of family on the governance of private firms

working in family firms paid less but more secure evidence from french matched employer employee data the authors study compensation packages in family owned and nonfamily owned firms using french matched employer employee data they first show that family firms pay on average lower wages part of this wage gap is attributable to low wage workers sorting into family firms and high wage workers sorting into nonfamily firms however they also find evidence that company wage policies differ according to ownership status so that the same worker is paid differently under family and nonfamily firm ownership in addition family firms are characterized by lower job insecurity as measured by lower dismissal rates family firms also appear to rely less on dismissals and more on hiring reductions than do nonfamily firms when they downsize the authors show that compensating wage differentials account for a substantial part of the inverse relationship between the family nonfamily gaps in wages and job security

come aboard exploring the effects of directorships in the executive labor market in this study we examine the following question what do executives gain from serving on boards we propose that board service benefits non ceo level executives in the executive labor market by acting as a certification mechanism and by providing access to unique knowledge skills and connections we argue that non ceo executives who gain directorships will be more likely to be promoted to ceo both inside and outside their home firm will be more likely to be promoted internally and will receive higher pay from their home firms to test our ideas we employ propensity score matching to construct a longitudinal sample of 2 104 top executives of large publicly traded companies in the united states over the period 1996 to 2012 the results provide consistent support for our theory

privatization possible lessons from the hungarian case abstract hungary was the first eastern european country to tackle the problem of economic reform initially in piecemeal fashion then by introducing broad sets of measures aimed at establishing a market based economic system this paper reviews the hungarian experience with privatization policies and presents some general conclusions regarding the design of successful privatization schemes that might serve as rough guidelines for other countries trying to reduce a vastly overextended public sector

reform in eastern europe how can the new governments of eastern europe succeed in moving from centrally planned to freemarket economies this incisive report identifies and describes the major policy choices to be made and discusses what will work and what will not reform in eastern europe provides a comprehensive easily read statement of reform policy that stands in the mainstream of modern western economics based on their experience with stabilization policies in other countries the authors show how eastern europe can reduce unemployment during the painful adjustment process create effective and socially acceptable mechanisms to subject enterprises to market discipline and replace barter trade under cmea with market based international trade

the ownership structure contingency in the sequential international entry mode decision process family owners and institutional investors in family dominant versus family influenced firms extending our understanding of family firms and international business research with respect to entry mode decisions this study explains how entry mode choice is the product of a sequential decision making process with an important ownership structure contingency we propose that firms with a dominant family owner family dominant firms prefer low equity ownership as their entry mode for the purpose of preserving their socioemotional wealth their preference is persistent even when the institutional investors are the dominant shareholders in the firm family influenced firms this nuanced examination of the role family values play in the entry mode decision extends our understanding of how family firms enter international markets

an open access fishery with rational expectations explain the evolution of the fish stock and the boat fleet as well as determine their equilibrium levels 2 while the changes in the fish stock are described by a biological rule entry and exit from the fishing industry are determined by how expectations are formed we examine a general model in which entry and exit are proportional to the present value of expected profits and compare two special cases of adaptive myopic expectations and rational expectations although both expectations mechanisms lead to the same equilibrium values they lead to different adjustment paths where expectations solely depend on current values myopic expectations it is well known that boats enter the fishery only when the fish stock is greater than its steady state stock 3 with rational expectations however boats may enter when the fish stock is much lower than its steady state value provided the boat fleet is sufficiently small this difference in adjustment is observable and in principle leads to an obvious test on how agents form expectations section 2 develops a general dynamic model for studying fisheries in section 3 we show that the model standardly used in the literature is equivalent to a myopic adaptive expectations model a rational expectations model is analyzed in section 4 the standard and rational expectations models are compared in section 5 section 6 illustrates this comparison using a simulation based on a schaefer model of the pacific halibut fishery section 7 presents the conclusions

stewardship or agency a social embeddedness reconciliation of conduct and performance in public family businesses two contradictory perspectives of family business conduct and performance are prominent in the literature the stewardship perspective argues that family business owners and managers will act as farsighted stewards of their companies investing generously in the business to enhance value for all stakeholders by contrast the agency and behavioral agency perspectives maintain that major family owners in catering to family self interest will underinvest in the firm avoid risk and extract resources this paper argues that both these views have application but under different circumstances determined in part by the degree to which the firm and its executive actors are embedded within the family and thus identify with its interests stewardship behavior will be less common and agency behavior will be more common the greater the number of family directors officers generations and votes and the more executives are susceptible to family influence these findings are supported among fortune 1000 firms as well as among the subsample of those firms that are family businesses

testing a causal model of corporate risk taking and performance the determinants of organizational risk taking and its impact on economic performance are critical issues in strategic management using a model that included risk performance performance expecta