| 51. |
- Eriksson, Kimmo, 1967-, et al.
(författare)
-
The devil is in the details : Incorrect intuitions in optimal search
- 2010
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Ingår i: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-2681 .- 1879-1751. ; 75:2, s. 338-347
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the classic Secretary Problem it has been established that people tend to search somewhat less than is optimal, and a number of explanations have been suggested. Here we propose a new explanation, the Similar-But-Incorrect Intuitions Hypothesis, which says that suboptimal search behavior is to be expected because optimal strategies vary disproportionately with subtle details of the search problem setup, whereas people seem to entertain general intuitions about optimal search. We find support for this hypothesis in experiments on a new search problem, the Explore-and-Collect Problem, where the player collects utility from an option every time it is tried and options can be recalled. Although the optimal search effort in this problem is much smaller than for the Secretary Problem, people tend to search only marginally less. This is not predicted by previous explanations for suboptimal search.
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| 52. |
- Ferguson, Shon, 1979-
(författare)
-
Essays on Trade, Technology and the Organization of Firms
- 2010
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- "Endogenous Sunk Costs, Exporting and Heterogeneous Firms" Empirical evidence shows that R&D spending is highly correlated with firm productivity and highly concentrated among large firms. This paper develops a model of quality competition with heterogeneous firms that can explain these patterns. The model makes two new predictions. The first prediction is that exporters upgrade while domestic firms downgrade when trade liberalizes. The second prediction is that quality competition reduces the effect of trade liberalization along the extensive margin. "Endogenous Product Differentiation, Market Size and Trade" Recent empirical evidence suggests that average export prices are higher when firms sell in large markets. This paper offers a theoretical explanation for why we do not always see pro-competitive market size effects in the trade data for differentiated goods. The model here proposes that export prices can in fact be higher in larger countries because firms have greater incentive to differentiate their products, which increases price-cost markups. In the two-country case the model predicts that larger countries sell manufacturing goods at higher price-cost markups than smaller countries. "Institution-Driven Comparative Advantage, Complex Goods and Organizational Choice" The theory of the firm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms' integration opportunities affect the way institutions determine international trade patterns. We find that vertical integration lessens the impact of a country's ability to enforce contracts on the comparative advantage of complex goods. We also find that countries with good financial institutions export disproportionately more in sectors that produce complex goods and that have a high propensity for vertical integration.
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| 53. |
- Hellgren, Bo, 1951-, et al.
(författare)
-
The Reproduction of Efficiecy Theory : The Construction of the AstraZeneca Merger in the Public Discourse
- 2011
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Ingår i: International Journal of Business and Management. - : Canadian Center of Science and Education. - 1833-3850 .- 1833-8119. ; 6:5, s. 16-27
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Mergers have become a generally accepted solution to a broad set of managerial problems in practice. However, research on mergers and acquisitions provides a rather sceptical view as to the success of mergers in solving business problems. The current paper aims at investigating the public discourse on mergers and acquisitions and its relation to the scientific discourse. The public discourse is studied by an analysis of Swedish media reports on the Astra Zeneca merger. More specifically we study the actors given voice in the discourse, the temporal evolution of the discourse and the arguments voiced. We conclude that the discourse is dominated by journalists, managers and financial analysts who all generate arguments based on a rather narrow “efficiency theoretical” basis. This is in conflict with current insights in research on mergers and acquisitions that has proposed more valid and complex models for understanding mergers. The reasons and consequences of this discrepancy between the public and the scientific discourses are discussed.
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| 54. |
- Nilsson, Andreas, 1977, et al.
(författare)
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Exploring public IT procurement : Switching Costs in the wake of a turn-to-services
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of 8th Scandinavian Workshop on E-government.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Technological and business-model related developments have continued to push the view that services and not software packages are the upcoming commodities within IT. This can be seen in the wide-spread adoption of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as the de-facto standard for new systems, and the radical increase in Software as a Service and other Cloud Computing based technologies as the business-models of choice for IT procurement. This” turn-to-services” brings with it promises of a better fit between IT supply and the changing demands of customers, and an increased competition between interoperable services in the market. Public Sector IT Procurement (PSITP) has yet to see mainstream adoption of these new business-models, yet the promises of reduced price and increased fit are still there. This paper builds on the assumptions that high switching cost is a factor that reduces the competition on the market for PSITP (Porter, 1980; Frendell, 1995). The paper presents a design science (Peffers et al, 2007) approach towards studying PSITP switching costs. A model for estimating switching cost is developed and a roadmap for demonstrating and evaluating the model is presented.
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| 55. |
- Nilsson, Andreas, 1977, et al.
(författare)
-
Studying the Implications of Cloud-based delivery models on public IT procurement: A switching cost perspective
- 2011
-
Ingår i: eChallenges e2011, Florence, Italy. - 9781905824274
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Public sector IT procurement has received limited interest from the research community, despite the vastness and importance of the phenomena. Following contemporary developments in a “turn-to-services”, with more and more of the total IT environment being supplied through cloud-based delivery models, this paper explores the potential in using switching costs as an approach for studying public sector IT procurement. Through presenting and contrasting two theoretical models for switching cost estimation, this paper discusses the use of switching costs as a perspective in the study of public sector IT procurement of cloud-based services. As the results show, switching costs is a valuable way ahead, and the paper lists some design implications for research into the field.
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| 56. |
- Myrdal, Janken, et al.
(författare)
-
Scandinavia
- 2011. - 1
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Ingår i: Agrarian change and crisis in Europe, 1200-1500. - London : Routledge. - 9780415895781 ; , s. 204-249
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)
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| 57. |
- Ellingsen, Tore, et al.
(författare)
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When Does Communication Improve Coordination?
- 2010
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Ingår i: The American Economic Review. - : American Economic Association. - 0002-8282 .- 1944-7981. ; 100:4, s. 1695-1724
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We study costless pre-play communication of intentions among inexperienced players. Using the level-k model of strategic thinking to describe players' beliefs, we fully characterize the effects of preplay communication in symmetric 2 x 2 games. One-way communication weakly increases coordination on Nash equilibrium outcomes, although average payoffs sometimes decrease. Two-way communication further improves payoffs in some games but is detrimental in others. Moving beyond the class of symmetric 2 x 2 games, we find that communication facilitates coordination in common interest games with positive spillovers and strategic complementarities, but there are also games in which any type of communication hampers coordination.
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| 58. |
- Hirvonen, Lalaina, 1974-
(författare)
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Essays in Empirical Labour Economics : Family Background, Gender and Earnings
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- All three essays in this thesis are concerned with the interrelation of family, gender and labour market outcomes. The first paper investigates family earnings mobility between parents and sons, and parents and daughters, highlighting the role of assortative mating. The results suggest that daughters are more mobile than sons. I also find that Sweden has a higher degree of mobility compared to the U.S., and that assortative mating is an important underlying channel for earnings transmission. The difference in mobility between the two countries does not inherently depend on factors affecting the marriage match. Moreover, adult economic outcomes are more dependent on family background for those at the lower end of the earnings distribution. The second study analyses the long-run effects of an increase in family size on the 1980-2005 labour market outcomes of Swedish men and women. The decision to have (more) children is dependent on current and future labour market prospects. I use the exogenous variations in the sex composition of the first two children to overcome this endogeneity problem. My findings suggest that having an additional child has a stronger negative impact on earnings than on participation. However, mothers experience a substantial but not complete long-term recovery in earnings. The third paper illustrates the difficulty in disentangling the underlying channels of intergenerational earnings persistence using a path analysis model. On closer examination, such a model has a potential shortcoming since the covariates are correlated to other unobserved factors. The results suggest that education is the most influential mechanism in the earnings transmission process, while IQ, mental ability and BMI are of secondary importance. However, education is sensitive to the inclusion of other covariates and the order in which these are entered into the equation.
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| 59. |
- Holmlund, Helena, 1976-, et al.
(författare)
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The Causal Effect of Parents' Schooling on Children's Schooling : A Comparison of Estimation Methods
- 2011
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Ingår i: Journal of Economic Literature. - : American Economic Association. - 0022-0515 .- 0364-281X. ; 49:3, s. 615-651
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We review the empirical literature that estimates the causal effect of parent’s schooling on child’s schooling, and conclude that estimates differ across studies. We then consider three explanations for why this is: (a) idiosyncratic differences in data sets, (b) differences in remaining biases between different identification strategies, and (c) differences across identification strategies in their ability to make out-of-sample predictions. We conclude that discrepancies in past studies can be explained by violations of identifying assumptions. Our reading of past evidence, together with an application to Swedish register data, suggests that intergenerational schooling associations are largely driven by selection. Parental schooling constitutes a large part of the parental nurture effect, but as a whole does not play a large role.
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| 60. |
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