Management (Economics)

In this paper, we empirically test for network effects and preannouncement effects in the DVD market. We do this by measuring the effect of potential (incompatible) competition on a network undergoing growth. We find that there are network effects. The data are generally consistent with the hypothesis that the preannouncement of DIVX temporarily slowed down the adoption of DVD technology.

A scries of two-plin/cr, sccoiui-pricc avunwu-valuc auctions tire reported. In symmctrk niictioiis, biiiticrs suffer from a wi}iiier's curse, hi nsi/uinietrie auctions in wliieh one bidder has a private value ai1vanta<;^i'. the effect on bids and prices is proportional rather than exp>losive (the prediction of Nash equilibrium biddiu^ theory). Although advantaged bidders are close to makin^^ best responses to disadvantnged bidders, the latter bid much more aggressiivly than in equilibrium, thereby earnin<^ negative average profits. Experienced bidders coiisistently bid closer to the Nash equilibrium than inexperienced bidders, although these adjustments towards equilibrium are small and at times uneven.

We study three corporate nonmarket strategies designed to influence the lobbying behavior of other special interest groups: (1) astroturf, in which the firm covertly subsidizes a group with similar views to lobby when it normally would not; (2) the bear hug, in which the firm overtly pays a group to alter its lobbying activities; and (3) self-regulation, in which the firm voluntarily limits the potential social harm from its activities. All three strategies reduce the informativeness of lobbying, and all reduce the payoff of the public decisionmaker. We show that the decision-maker would benefit by requiring the public disclosure of funds spent on astroturf lobbying but that the availability of alternative influence strategies limits the impact of such a policy.

We develop an economic model of "greenwash," in which a firm strategically discloses environmental information and a non-governmental organization (NGO) may audit and penalize the firm for failing to fully disclose its environmental impacts. We identify conditions under which NGO punishment of greenwash backfires, inducing the firm to become less rather than more forthcoming about its environmental performance. We show that complementarities with NGO auditing may justify public policies encouraging firms to adopt environmental management systems. Mandatory disclosure rules offer the potential for better performance than NGO auditing, but the necessary penalties may be so large as to be politically unpalatable. If so, a mix of mandatory disclosure rules, NGO auditing and environmental management systems may be needed to induce full environmental disclosure.

"This paper aims to verify if the intensiveness of prior customers’ experiences with the same services provider and other providers affects service quality. The empirical investigation was conducted in auto service sector. Empirical research concludes that customers’ experiences specified by lengths of relationships
with a service provider and frequency of service use do not influence whole aspects of service quality. But there are some aspects of service quality that are affected by customers longitudinal experiences, they are: expectations of service assurance, perceptions concerning reliability and responsiveness, and the quality gap concerning assurance. The results also have consequences for mangers responsible of service operations.
Keywords: service quality, quality gaps, customers’ experiences, SERVQUAL."

The paper reports on both methodological and substantive findings. It presents a method for generating simplified representations for regional urban populations, their geographical sub-populations and communities. the method generates greatly simplified high-resolution socio-economic profiles of populated geographical areas from complex large census data sets.

This paper reports on the perceptions of Thailand Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) entrepreneurs towards Halal Food Certification (hFC) on three dimensions; market share and market competitiveness, government support and monitoring and Halal hub information dissemination. based on responses from 98 respondents, the study found that it is important for Thailand SMEs to acquire hFC to promote customers' confidence, trust and satisfaction but respondents raised dissatisfaction on the poor dissemination of Halal hub information. hence, the agency involves in distributing information on Halal hub needs to improve its functional role of delivering information particularly on the quality of content, accessibility of media used and regularity of announcement. The study also indicates that respondents' gender and marital status have significant influence on the intention to apply for Halal Certificate and the desire to obtain Halal Certification for their food products.

Transport markets have confronted various changes during the previous decades. As branch positive issue is that volumes have increased steadily, but on the other hand, for society this has placed great pressure to reduce environmental emissions and other costs (like infrastructure and its maintenance). In the near future strict emission regulations will change nature of transport, and this will mostly influence sea and road transport. However, rail transport (along with inland water transport) has been highlighted as an option to facilitate the situation. Main objective of this research was to unfold Finnish and Estonian private sectors' viewpoints towards Rail Baltica transport corridor, which is planned to intersect the Eastern Baltic Sea Region. In order to understand the overall standpoints in Northern part of Rail Baltica, the development process of Russian railway market was briefly examined. Based on the results Rail Baltica transport corridor is seen as important and attractive transport corridor. Both Finnish and Estonian private actors stress that in order to assure the sufficient freight and passenger flows, the corridor should be connected to Russia.

The firm is often considered as a nexus of contracts linking the management and its different stakeholders: claimholders, workers, unions, customers, suppliers, and the state, among others. This paper surveys recent work in contract theory, the multiprincipal incentive theory, and the theory of side contracts, which provides some insights into the structure of those contracts and therefore into the structure of the firm. First, we discuss the incomplete contracting assumptions underlying these variations of the usual grand contract approach. Second, we explain how the theoretical lessons learned from this work-the distribution of contracting rights, the power of incentive schemes within organizations, and the design of communication channels-apply to the theory of the firm.

We develop an economic model of "greenwash," in which a firm strategically discloses environmental information and a non-governmental organization (NGO) may audit and penalize the firm for engaging in greenwash. We identify conditions under which NGO punishment of greenwash backfires, inducing the firm to become less rather than more forthcoming about its environmental performance. We show that complementarities with NGO auditing may justify public policies encouraging firms to adopt environmental management systems. Mandatory disclosure rules offer the potential for better performance than NGO auditing, but the necessary penalties may be so large as to be politically unpalatable. If so, a mix of mandatory disclosure rules, NGO auditing and environmental management systems may be needed.

The culture, supporting effectiveness of marketing activities, is most frequently designated by two basic terms in the literature: as the marketing culture or as the market culture. If the corporate culture shall be of marketing or market character, which in both cases means figuratively market-oriented, then the basic prerequisites shared by the members of the company should incorporate for instance

Tourism is a growing and an extremely competitive sector. To be competitive, tourism firms need do innovate, responding to the more and more demanding tourist. Nonetheless, research on this field is limited and insufficient. In Portugal, the tourism sector is a highly strategic sector for the Portuguese economy, but there is no evidence on how Portuguese tourism firms innovate. This paper presents a thesis proposal with the aim to provide empirical evidence of the innovative behaviour of Portuguese tourism firm. Trough a direct survey on all the Portuguese tourism firms we intent to investigate firms' innovativeness and their determinants and then compare the results with data from Danish and Spanish tourism firms. The literature on innovation in services and in tourism, in particular Sunbdo et al. (2007) taxonomy of tourism firms, provides us a guide to our investigation. It is also our aim to contribute with additional findings on the process of innovation in the tourism industry.

Using Japanese facility-level data, we estimate the effects of ISO 14001 certification on the promotion of more advanced practices, namely green supply chain management (GSCM). Our results show that ISO 14001 promotes GSCM practices, in that facilities with environmental managementsystems (EMS) certified to ISO 14001 are 40 percent more likely to assess their suppliers’ environmental performance and 50 percent more likely to require that their suppliers undertake specific environmental practices. Further, we find that government approaches that encourage voluntary EMS adoption indirectly promote GSCM practices, in that the probability of facilities’ assessing their suppliers’ environmental performance and requiring them to undertake specific environmental practices increases by 9 percent and10 percent, respectively, if a government assistance program exists. Combined, these findings suggest that there may be significant but previously unnoticed spillover effects of ISO 14001 and government promotion of voluntary action

The role of Educational Institutes is to provide for and development of manpower required for the social, economic and technological advancement of any nation cannot be over- emphasized. By their unique nature, Educational Institutes are expected to be an inventory of the most specialized and skilled intellectuals. They serve as storehouses of knowledge for nurturing the manpower needs of the nation and hence for satisfying the aspirations of the people for a good and humane society. Central to the realization of University goals and objective are the academic staff whose roles are crucial and their number, quality and their effectiveness make the difference in university education, production function and to the wider society. No academic institution can really ensure sustainability and quality in the long run without a well-qualified and committed academic staff. Higher education institutions are, therefore, very much dependent on the intellectual and creative abilities and commitment of the academic staff than most other
organisations. This, therefore, makes it critically important to retain this Intellectual staff.

Extant literature on FDI entry modes and corruption tend to convey the idea that corruption leads to the choice of low equity, i.e. joint-ventures with local partners, or non-equity modes, namely export and contracting, in order to avoid the contact with corrupt state officials. Recently, however, Demirbag et al. (2010) argument that, despite corruption, linguistic and historical ties between home

Using Japanese facility-level data, we estimate the effects of ISO 14001 certification on the promotion of more advanced practices, namely green supply chain management (GSCM). Our results show that ISO 14001 promotes GSCM practices. Facilities with environmental management systems (EMS) certified to ISO 14001 are 40% more likely to assess their suppliers' environmental performance and 50% more likely to require that their suppliers undertake specific environmental practices. Further, government programs that encourage voluntary EMS adoption indirectly promote GSCM practices. These programs increase the probabilities that facilities will assess their suppliers' environmental performance and require suppliers to undertake specific environmental practices by 7% and 8% respectively. Combined, these findings suggest that there may be significant but previously unnoticed spillover effects of ISO 14001 and government promotion of voluntary action. KEY WORDS: voluntary actions, positive spillover, environmental management systems, ISO 14001, green supply chain management, government assistance programs, environmental impacts, discrete choice model, endogeneity JEL CLASSIFICATION NUMBERS: [C35, Q53, Q58, M11, M14]

Tourism is a growing and an extremely competitive sector. To be competitive, tourism firms need do innovate, responding to the more and more demanding tourist. Nonetheless, research on this field is limited and insufficient. In Portugal, the tourism sector is a highly strategic sector for the Portuguese economy, but there is no evidence on how Portuguese tourism firms innovate. This paper presents a thesis proposal with the aim to provide empirical evidence of the innovative behaviour of Portuguese tourism firm. Trough a direct survey on all the Portuguese tourism firms we intent to investigate firms' innovativeness and their determinants and then compare the results with data from Danish and Spanish tourism firms. The literature on innovation in services and in tourism, in particular Sunbdo et al. (2007) taxonomy of tourism firms, provides us a guide to our investigation. It is also our aim to contribute with additional findings on the process of innovation in the tourism industry.

We present a new explanation and empirical evidence showing that rural subsidies to large farmers tend to be associated with low land productivity and excessive deforestation. We develop a lobbying model where wealthy farmers trade bribes or political contributions to government politicians in exchange for subsidies; farmers are able to tilt the terms of the bargaining game with policy makers in their favor by pre-committing to an inefficient choice of semi-fixed inputs. Government proneness to accept political contributions or bribes and its willingness to provide subsidies cause farmers to adopt inefficient modes of production as a mechanism to capture such subsidies. Our predictions are consistent with stylized facts on land use in Latin America, and suggest that subsidy schemes have been counterproductive-distorting and constraining development, and triggering excessive depletion of natural resources. We validate some of the predictions of the model through econometric analyses using a new data set for nine countries in Latin America. r

Studies about the influence and impact of knowledge-producing organisations' (e.g., universities or R&D institutions) have been addressed by means of strict economic analysis, stressing their economic impact in a local, regional or national extent. In the present study, an alternative methodology is put forward in order to evaluate the international scientific impact and influence of a knowledge-producing and -diffusing institution. Two main branches of the literature, dealing with the measurability of the economic impact of R&D organisations and their knowledge flows, are surveyed: standard economic studies, and scientometrics and bibliometrics analyses. With the aim of implementing an approach closer to the latter methods, we map the international scientific network of a knowledge-producing organisation using social network analysis statistical tools and thus assess the international impact and influence of such institution. Using INESC Porto -a Portuguese private non-profit organisation, recognised as being of public interest, due to its R&D activities -as our case study, we analyse the dynamics of its scientific production over the last two decades, attributing special attention to the international scientific co-authorships' evolution, outlining the architecture of the knowledge network and its changing pattern. Additionally, focusing on the most prolific scientific areas of INESC Porto, and resorting to published scientific work recorded in the Science Citation Index (SCI) of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), we trace citations and infer over INESC Porto's international scientific influence and impact.

Television networks spend about 16% of their revenues on tune-ins, which are previews or advertisements for their own shows. In this paper, we examine two questions. First, what is the informational content in advertising? Second, is this level of expenditures consistent with profit maximization? To answer these questions, we use a new and unique micro-level panel dataset on the television viewing decisions of a large sample of individuals, matched with data on show tune-in advertisements. The difference in ( effectiveness of advertisements between ''regular'' shows about which view-) ers are assumed to have substantial information a priori and ''specials'' ( ) about which they have very little reveals the value of information in advertisements and the different roles that information can play. The number of exposures for each individual is likely to be correlated with their preferences, since networks target their audiences. We address this endogeneity problem by controlling for observed, and integrating the unobserved, characteristics of individuals, and find that the estimated effects of tune-ins are still large. Finally, we find that actual expenditures on tune-ins closely match the predicted optimal levels of spending.

The impact of demand growth on the maximal degree of collusion (consistent with equilibrium) is investigated in a Cournot supergame where market growth may trigger future entry and a collusive agreement is enforced by the most profitable 'grim trigger strategies' available. It is shown that: (i) delaying entry beyond the first period at which the net present value of the entrant's expected profits is positive may be optimal; and (ii) the interplay between the intrinsic effect of demand growth and the impact of entry crucially determines the overall effect of demand growth on the maximal degree of sustainable pre-entry collusion.

The culture, supporting effectiveness of marketing activities, is most frequently designated by two basic terms in the literature: as the marketing culture or as the market culture. If the corporate culture shall be of marketing or market character, which in both cases means figuratively market-oriented, then the basic prerequisites shared by the members of the company should incorporate for instance that the company is affected by the environment in which it exists, that the company is able to establish and analyze impacts of the environment and react to them; that the company is able to satisfy needs of the key stakeholders (customers, suppliers, intermediaries, etc.). And the basic values accepted by the company and shared by the members of the company should accommodate such values like: team work, highly competitive and result orientation, high internal and external orientation, market aggressiveness, success, flexibility, interfunctional cooperation, etc.; norms of behavior in the company (continuous market success monitoring and measuring, market-related innovativeness and flexibility -non-bureaucratic solution of problems, openness and sincerity in market-related communication -interfunctional coordination, market-related quality orientation, marketrelated velocity, market-related staff appreciation, etc.) must conform to these values. The content corporate culture characteristics indicated above are of key character for the market-oriented company. The relevant method of thinking shall be shared in the whole company and reflected at all corporate levels. The market orientation should become the dominant culture pulling the company together. On the other hand, when the above noted basic values don't accepted by company and don't shared by members of company then corporate culture should be an important barrier of market orientation implementation.

This study reports on a contingent choice survey in which respondents expressed their preferences for packages of watershed rriariagerrierit outcomes, where these packages were assessed against alternative institutional characteristics of the funding mechanism. Specifically, this study addresses the issue of respondents' faith in the payment mechanism as an efficient and guaranteed funding source. Analyses of marginal willingness to pay for single variable changes, marginal rates of substitution among variable pairs, arid willingness to pay for watershed management packages indicate the potential for significant impacts of payment mechanism attributes. Implications address ranking of policy packages arid validity in estimating money-scaled welfare impacts. o

Capital budgeting as a decision process is among the most important of all management decisions. The importance (consequents) of the subsequent outcome may bring a level of uncertainty to the judgement-making process by the decision maker(s) in the form of doubt, hesitancy, and procrastination. This study considers one such problem, namely the selection of the type of fleet car to be adopted by a small car rental company, a selection that accounts for a large proportion of the company¡¦s working capital. With a number of criteria to consider, a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) analysis is undertaken to accommodate the inherent uncertainty. Developments are made to the FAHP method utilised to consider the preference results with differing levels of precision in the pairwise judgements made.

We analyze bilateral merchandise trade flows between Ghana and the other 14 members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The analysis involves the use of the modified gravity model based on most recent data from 1995 to 2006. We establish that per capita gross domestic product of ECOWAS countries and the population of these countries drive trade levels between Ghana and these countries in a positive manner as expected from the theoretical gravity model. The physical distance between Ghana and ECOWAS member countries has the expected negative impact on trade flows with longer distances reducing trade flows. Political instability in ECOWAS countries hinders bilateral trade between Ghana and these countries. We also establish that Ghana trades more intensively with French-speaking countries than other countries in the ECOWAS region. This result is partly due to Ghana sharing its border with three French-speaking countries. However the trade volumes between Ghana and other French-speaking countries in the Region with which it does not share borders are also significant. The widespread teaching and learning of the French language in Ghana is one of the recommendations of the study.

The paper focuses on the mediating effect of organizational trust and its cognitive and affective components on the impact of leadership relationship on different forms of organizational innovativeness such as product, market, behaviour, process and strategy. The empirical data was collected in a public organization (n=757) in Lithuania in 2013. A series of regression analysis suggest that organizational trust has partially mediating effect on the studied relationship. Leadership relationship and organizational trust have the strongest explanative power for behaviour innovativeness. In particular, the affective component of organizational trust influences the effect of leadership relationship on this form of innovativeness. Besides, affective trust plays a more significant role than cognitive trust in increasing processes innovativeness. However, cognitive trust is more powerful in accounting for development of product innovativeness. The authors discuss managerial implications to the studied sector organizations and suggest some directions for further research.

We examine bargaining in a dynamic context where exchange between two parties affects the potential surplus from future trade. In this setting traders negotiate current contracts anticipating the impact of their agreement on future exchanges. We show that in growing environments these dynamic considerations will often ameliorate bargaining inefficiencies associated with private information and facilitate exchange as both parties cooperate to nurture the relationship. In contrast, we find that in declining environments dynamic considerations will often exacerbate bargaining inefficiencies and hinder trade, as both parties are hesitant to let the relationship mature. These findings have implications for preferences to form long-lived relationships. , three reviewers, and Dan Spulber, as well as seminar participants at Chicago, Harvard, Indiana, Michigan, MIT, and Northwestern, for helpful comments and suggestions. All errors remain our own.

We develop a stylized model of horizontal and vertical competition in tournaments with two competing firms. The sponsor cares not only about the quality of the design but also about the design location. A priori not even the sponsor knows his preferred design location, which is only discovered once he has seen the actual proposals. We show that the more efficient firm is more likely to be conservative when choosing the design location. Also, to get some differentiation in design locations, the cost difference between contestants can be neither too small nor too big. Therefore, if the sponsor mainly cares about the design location, participation in the tournaments by the two lowest-cost contestants cannot be optimal for the sponsor.

We set-up a two-sided market framework to model competition between a Prefered Provider Organization (PPO) and a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO). Both health plans compete to attract policyholders on one side and providers on the other side. The PPO, which is characterized by a higher diversity of providers, attracts riskier policyholders. Our two-sided framework allows to examine the consequences of this risk segmentation on the providers' side, especially in terms of remuneration. The outcome of competition mainly depends on two effects: a demand effect, influenced by the value put by policyholders on providers access and an adverse selection effect, captured by the characteristics of the health risk distribution. If the adverse selection effect is too strong, the HMO gets a higher profit in equilibrium. On the contrary, if the demand effect dominates, the PPO profit is higher in spite of the unfavorable risk segmentation. We believe that our model, by highlighting the two-sided market structure of the health plans' competition, provides new insights to understand the increase in the PPOs' market share observed during the last decade in the US.

This paper contributes empirically to the long-debated issue of the legitimacy of the European Central Bank (ECB) with regard to European polities. Using microlevel data from the Eurobarometer survey, we shed light on the socio-demographic determinants of public-opinion support for the ECB. We find that people with higher level of education and income and centre to right-wing political orientation tend to support the ECB, as well as people with optimistic expectations on the economic situation. By contrast, the unemployed tend to distrust the ECB. The policy relevance of such results is important for ECB's communication strategy with the general public.

Environmental activists are increasingly resorting to private strategies such as boycotts and protests focused on changing individual firms' behavior. In this paper, we examine activists' use of such "private politics" to engender firm compliance with activist objectives. We begin by developing a simple theoretical model of an activist campaign then we develop a series of propositions in response to these questions. We then derive from these propositions a set of empirical hypotheses based on a set of observable features of firms. Finally, we test our hypotheses using a unique dataset of environmental activist campaigns against firms in the United States from 1988-2003. This paper fills an important need in the literature as one of the first empirical attempts to examine the private political strategies of activists and has important implications for the burgeoning literatures on industry self-regulation and the non-market strategies of firms.

Economic transition in Eastern Europe should generate market growth. In addition, current discussions on economic integration and the development of a free-trade area in Eastern Europe will improve market accessibility. These two forces will significantly affect the strategies by which external firms will choose to supply markets zn Eastern Europe. This paper examines the ways in which supply strategy is likely to change. We show that both market growth and improved market accessibility will lead the external firms to swifch from exporting to foreign direct investment. However, market growth is likely to lead to dispersed investment in the growing economies, whereas increased market accessibility, by establishing an integrated regional bloc in Eastern Europe, is more likely to lead to concentrated investment plus infra-regional exports to the remainder of the regional bloc. The switch from exporting to local production through foreign direct investment will favor consumers through lowered prices but will harm national producers by depressing profit margins.

The main objective of this research paper is to present how the public sector may contribute to the development of social innovations and to what extent this process may be supported by the European Social Fund's (ESF) resources. The research method comprises critical analysis of the ESF reports.

We present a discussion of the concept of information in Economics. We begin by presenting the prevalent model, closely associated with the Maximization of Expected Utility hypothesis. While it has proved to be useful in many ways, it also exhibits many shortcomings, which we illustrate with some examples. On the other hand the evidence accumulated by Experimental Economics shows that the actual behavior of economic agents does not necessarily respond to the traditional characterization that stems from von Neumann and work.