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on Business Economics |
| By: | d'Agostino, Giorgio; Raitano, Michele; Scarlato, Margherita |
| Abstract: | Apprenticeship may provide an important opportunity to improve human capital and future earnings of young people, especially those with low levels of education. Based on new administrative data, we provide the first empirical evidence of the effect on wages and employability of the mobility across firms and economic sectors of apprentices after graduation in Italy. We use an instrumental variable approach to account for endogenous selection that is based on observed and unobserved characteristics when estimating the causal effects of mobility. Our main finding is that job switchers outside the economic sector of the training firm faced a considerable gap in wages and weeks worked in comparison to stayers in the training firm, indicating a loss of firm-specific human capital. In addition, the new apprenticeship introduced by the Biagi reform, which lessened the stringency of the norms on the training content delivered by firms, resulted in further reductions of the transferability of skills for trainees relative to the previous regime. Overall, the apprenticeship contract in Italy generated earning gaps according to the workers’ mobility after graduation, thus increasing inequality among similar employees. |
| Keywords: | Apprenticeship training, Job mobility, Wages. |
| JEL: | J24 J31 J38 J62 |
| Date: | 2019–02–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:92261&r=all |
| By: | Buccella, Domenico; Fanti, Luciano |
| Abstract: | In a vertically related duopoly with input price bargaining, this paper re-examines the downstream firms’ profitability under different market competition degrees. Downstream firms earn highest profits with semi-collusion whose level depends on product differentiation and relative parties’ bargaining power. Holding fixed the upstream suppliers’ bargaining power, the more the products are differentiated, the higher the downstream firms’ collusive level that maximize profits, regardless of the negotiations’ structure. On the other hand, holding fixed the product differentiation degree: 1) with uncoordinated bargaining, the higher the upstream suppliers’ bargaining power is, the lower the downstream firms’ collusive level is; 2) with upstream firms’ bargaining coordination, a U-shaped relation exists between the upstream firms’ power and the downstream firms’ collusive level that maximizes their profits. |
| Keywords: | Decentralized/semi-coordinated bargaining; Right-to-Manage; Conjectural Variation model |
| JEL: | D43 J51 L13 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:92266&r=all |
| By: | Jacques Bughin; Tobias Kretschmer; Nicolas van Zeebroeck |
| Abstract: | With the increasing availability of digital technologies, many firms are planning to develop digitally-enabled business models. Digital technologies can give an impulse to realign strategies through two channels: Initial use of digital technologies may help firms spot their potential and encourage firms to develop digitally-supported business models, or emerging digital technologies may present a threat to firms, who then initiate a process of strategic renewal to relieve the pressure. We study how the adoption of new digital technologies is associated with changes to the strategy of the firm, and how both are shaped by a firm’s perception of the competitive stress created by new technological developments. Using two detailed survey-based datasets on firms’ expectations, adoption and strategy renewal for a wide range of AI and digital technologies, we find a strong positive association between the degree of strategy change and the adoption of advanced digital technologies. This relationship does not seem mediated by the level of competitive stress from digital technology, which is itself strongly associated with strategy change. Our results suggest a tight coupling between (technological) structure and strategy. |
| Keywords: | Digital transformation, Strategic Organization Design, Technology adoption, Strategic renewal, Digital strategy, Big data, Artificial Intelligence |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ict:wpaper:2013/284015&r=all |
| By: | Farboodi, Maryam; Mihet, Roxana; Philippon, Thomas; Veldkamp, Laura |
| Abstract: | We study a model where firms accumulate data as a valuable intangible asset. Data accumulation affects firms' dynamics. It increases the skewness of the firm size distribution as large firms generate more data and invest more in active experimentation. On the other hand, small data-savvy firms can overtake more traditional incumbents, provided they can finance their initial money-losing growth. Our model can be used to estimate the market and social value of data. |
| Keywords: | Big Data; firm size |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13489&r=all |
| By: | Gupta, Bishnupriya (University of Warwick); Mookherjee, Dilip (Boston University); Munshi, Kaivan (University of Cambridge); Sanclemente, Mario (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | We argue that community networks played an important role in the emergence of Indian entrepreneurship in the early stages of the cotton textile and jute textile industries in the late 19th and early 20th century respectively, overcoming the lack of market institutions and government support. From business registers, we construct a yearly panel dataset of entrepreneurs in these two industries. We find no evidence that entry is affected by prior trading experience or price shocks in the corresponding upstream sector. Firm directors exhibited a high degree of clustering of entrepreneurs by community. The dynamics of entry is consistent with a model of network-based dynamics |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1189&r=all |
| By: | Hickfang, Michael; Holder, Ulrike |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether and how founder-CEOs' risk incentives (VEGA) are related to firm innovation. We exploit a change in the accounting treatment of stock-based compensation under FAS 123R in 2005 to show a relationship between founders' risk-taking incentive and innovation. Using a sample of 226 firm-year observations between 2002 and 2008, we first show that stock options are incentives that encourage founder-CEOs to engage in risk-taking behaviour and that these were significantly reduced as a result of FAS 123R. Secondly, we find that innovation activities of the observed firms are significantly declining due to the reduction of the option compensation and the associated reduction in VEGA of founder-CEOs. Finally, our difference-in-differences approach provides strong evidence that there is a relationship between CEOs risk-taking and innovation output. Our results imply that even in founder-led firms it is important to incentivise founders' risk-taking behaviour in order that firms continue to innovate and remain competitive. |
| JEL: | G30 G32 G38 D80 O31 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:umiodp:122018&r=all |
| By: | Yanagisako, Sylvia |
| Abstract: | Evidence from around the globe shows that family firms are enduring, resilient forms of profit-seeking and not an archaic, transient form that will inevitably disappear. Social science research has tended to characterize the family values of these firms as producing "efficiency distortions" that adversely affect their financial performance. The author suggests an alternative heuristic approach of treating family firms as kinship enterprises that endure beyond the life of the firm. This approach enables us to understand how the timing of decisions about capital accumulation, expansion and diversification, as well as managerial organization, are shaped by kinship sentiments and intergenerational commitments without setting up an opposition between economic and kinship goals. |
| Keywords: | family firms,kinship,Italian firms,Italian-Chinese joint enterprises |
| JEL: | A13 D22 D91 L21 Z13 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201912&r=all |
| By: | Mertens, Matthias |
| Abstract: | This article investigates how changing production processes and increasing market power at the firm level relate to a fall in Germany's manufacturing sector labour share. Coinciding with the fall of the labour share, I document a rise in firms' product and labour market power. Notably, labour market power is a more relevant source of firms' market power than product market power. Increasing product and labour market power, however, only account for 30% of the fall in the labour share. The remaining 70% are explained by a transition of firms towards less labour-intensive production activities. I study the role of final product trade in causing those secular movements. I find that rising foreign export demand contributes to a decline in the labour share by increasing labour market power within firms and by inducing a reallocation of economic activity from nonexporting-high-labour-share to exporting-low-labour-share firms. |
| Keywords: | labour share,market power,labour market distortions,international trade,factor substitution |
| JEL: | D24 E25 F16 J50 L10 L60 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iwhcom:32019&r=all |
| By: | In Hwan Jo (National University of Singapore); Tatsuro Senga (Queen Mary) |
| Abstract: | Online appendix for the Review of Economic Dynamics article |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:append:17-402&r=all |
| By: | Böheim, René (University of Linz); Freudenthaler, Christoph (University of Linz); Lackner, Mario (University of Linz) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the effect of the coach's gender on risk-taking in women sports teams using data taken from National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball games. We find that the coach's gender has a sizable and significant effect on risk-taking, a finding that is robust to several empirical strategies, including an instrumental variable approach. In particular, we find that risk-taking among teams with a male head coach is 5 percentage points greater than that in teams with a female head coach. This gap is persistent over time and across intermediate game standings. The fact that risk-taking has a significantly positive effect on game success suggests that female coaches should be more risk-taking. |
| Keywords: | corporate risk-taking, gender difference, success |
| JEL: | J16 J44 |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12144&r=all |
| By: | Toshihiro Okubo (Faculty of Economics, Keio University); Eiichi Tomiura (Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University) |
| Abstract: | The international trade literature confirms that the average productivity of exporters is higher than that of non-exporters, while economic geography studies establish that urban firms tend to be more productive than rural ones. By introducing region-specific transportation costs in a Melitz-type heterogeneous firm trade model, the theory predicts that the minimum threshold productivity level for export is higher but that for survival by serving the local market is lower in the periphery region than in the core. Using Japanese plant-level panel data, we find evidence supporting the theoretical prediction that exporters in the peripheral regions, especially those distant from the core, have large productivity premiums. |
| Keywords: | Productivity, transportation costs |
| JEL: | F1 R12 L25 |
| Date: | 2019–01–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:keo:dpaper:2019-002&r=all |
| By: | Auerbach, Paul (Kingston University London) |
| Abstract: | Widespread uneasiness has emerged concerning a perceived slowdown in productivity growth. The question posed here is whether our destiny is indeed tied to inexorable movements in productivity and innovation, whatever these things may be, or can we build a future contingent upon collective choices and guided by human needs and desires? |
| Keywords: | Artificial Intelligence; innovation; productivity; Schumpeter; technological change; total factor productivity. |
| JEL: | O10 O30 O33 O40 O47 |
| Date: | 2019–02–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:kngedp:2019_003&r=all |