Publication database

We build a framework where firm size is a source of market power in a frictional labor market. The key mechanism is that a granular employer can eliminate its own vacancies from a worker’s outside option in the wage bargain. Hence, a granular employer does not compete with itself for workers. We derive a structural mapping from a microfounded concentration index to average wages. Using the framework in Austrian micro-data, we find that granular market power depresses wages by 9-13 percent and can explain 40 percent of the observed decline in the labor share from 1997 to 2015. Merging the two largest firms in every labor market depresses market-wide wages by six percent.

This working paper was also published in the IZA Institute of Labour Economics discussion paper series: https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/12574

Prior research has argued that family firms are reluctant to consider external equity as a source of financing because they fear a loss of control, which would limit their socioemotional wealth. However, prior empirical research has neglected potential contingencies that determine whether family firms’ need for control affects their equity financing decisions. The purpose of this paper is to provide first insight into this research void.

The paper builds on rational choice theory and a logit regression using secondary data.

The study shows that the effect of family firm owners’ need for control on their consideration of external equity depends on the extent to which owners expect investors to interfere with management and the extent to which decision making is affected by emotions. Hereby, the present study provides evidence that family firm owners’ decisions to use external equity are more complex than previously presumed.

This study has several limitations that provide fruitful avenues for further research. Overall, the authors list and detail seven different limitations in the paper, e.g. the narrow focus on equity financing, the use of a partial model, the fact that the authors did not conceptualize differences between different types of investors (such as high net worth individuals, private equity firms and venture capital firms) in the model and further more.

The study shows that investors need to understand the complex interplay among family firms’ need for control, expected investor interference and emotional decision making, to correctly assess their chances of success when approaching family firms for equity.

Prior empirical research has neglected potential contingencies that determine whether family firms’ need for control affects their equity financing decisions. The present paper provides first insight into this research void.

With permission of Emerald

This chapter first shows that the phenomenon of luxury is also subject to a life cycle. In advanced economies, luxury has reached the seniority phase, where less is more often and in time, space, and leisure, as well as the ability to experience, decode, and enjoy the essential. This chapter also includes a detailed description of the size and functioning of different luxury markets. Tourism and the cars/yachts segment are by far the largest luxury market segments, with sales of around €400 billion each. In the future, however, the weights will shift towards tourism. Travel dominates the wish list of luxury.

The term "luxury" must increasingly be grasped intellectually. The chapter stresses the outstanding importance of status in society, which goes hand in hand with the consumption and possession of luxury. In addition it highlights the personal and cultural dimension of the phenomenon and shows ways how luxury might evolve further.

Hannes Gurzki and David Woisetschläger speak in their contribution of luxury as the extraordinary—as opposed to the ordinary—and investigate the question of the motives and modes of conduct of human beings, from aesthetics to self-realization. In a further article, they explain the motives and factors that trigger a consumer choice for luxury goods. This involves the creation of a need for the unattainable, the way to fulfilling it and the further development of the need for ever new experiences.

We study the transmission channels from central banks’ quantitative easing programs via the banking sector when central banks start purchasing corporate bonds. We find evidence consistent with a “capital structure channel” of monetary policy. The announcement of central bank purchases reduces the bond yields of firms whose bonds are eligible for central bank purchases. These firms substitute bank term loans with bond debt, thereby relaxing banks’ lending constraints: banks with low Tier-1 ratios and high non-performing loans increase lending to private (and profitable) firms, which experience a growth in capital expenditures and sales. The credit reallocation increases banks’ risk-taking in corporate credit.

With permission of Elsevier

Herbert Simon predicted in 1958 that the revolution in computers will force humans to consider our role in a world in which our intellectual power and speed are outstripped by the intelligence of machines. The purpose of this panel symposium is to invite thought leaders in the field of management to share how they consider the role of organizations in a world in which the predictions Simon made are about to be fully realized. In particular, we will focus on how organizations and their members adapt to artificial intelligence (AI) and how organizations learn from machines that are also learning from the (potentially biased) data the organizations generate.

With permission of the Academy of Management

Recent research suggests that the management of organizational errors is increasingly a responsibility for top executives. The rise of democratizing technologies, such as peer-to-peer social media, appears to intensify the speed and consequences of these errors by challenging organizations’ relationships with key stakeholders. Engaging in the active management of unfolding organizational errors before they evolve into crises becomes a strategic concern in itself that challenges classic approaches. However, this new role for CEOs, board chairs and directors has received relatively limited attention in academic research: most recent literature focuses on learning after errors and failure not managing errors that is, engaging in actions to minimize negative and maximize positive outcomes of the errors as they occur. The limited attention may be due to the fact that research is done by different scholarly communities, from strategy to organizational behavior and specific streams that exchange too little between them. It is the purpose of this panel to explore the preferred research avenues going forward, all the while capitalizing on what we already know and what we need to know (and how) (i) with regard to organizational errors or errors in organizations (ii) in particular how errors are and can be managed from the top of the organization i.e. at the executive level and (iii) as distinct from error prevention (risk management, compliance, etc.), damage control (crisis management) and learning from errors (and failures). Key questions should revolve around: What is the role of senior executives in detecting and managing errors, so as to avoid them actually turning into disasters or failure? What is required from top executives for effectively doing so – for example what forms of leadership make executive error management more effective? What is the impact of executive error management on strategy – for example how does it affect the dynamic capabilities of the organization, or even bring about a new understanding of strategy as learning? We are gathering a panel of highly experienced scholars representing several of the major research streams with the aim of fostering a rich trans-disciplinary discussion. We plan to reserve ample room for dialogue with the audience, of which practitioners and consultants should form a significant part.

With permission of the Academy of Management

Organizations learn from direct experience and the experience of others, and code these experiences as successes or failures by comparing against certain reference point. Although the growing literature on learning from success and failure has made meaningful headway in exploring these differences, our understanding of the processes through which learning through experience with failure and success is still quite limited. This symposium brings together a series of papers dealing with cutting-edge issues related to organizational learning from success and failure. Individually as well as collectively, these papers address fundamental, central, and unresolved questions regarding how organizations learn through successes and failures, why differences arise across these forms of learning, and what outcomes can be expected from related learning processes.

With permission of the Academy of Management

An increasing number of research projects successfully involve the general public (the crowd) in tasks such as collecting observational data or classifying images to answer scientists’ research questions. Although such crowd science projects have generated great hopes among scientists and policy makers, it is not clear whether the crowd can also meaningfully contribute to other stages of the research process, in particular the identification of research questions that should be studied. We first develop a conceptual framework that ties different aspects of “good” research questions to different types of knowledge. We then discuss potential strengths and weaknesses of the crowd compared to professional scientists in developing research questions, while also considering important heterogeneity among crowd members. Data from a series of online and field experiments has been gathered and is currently analyzed to test individual- and crowd-level hypotheses focusing on the underlying mechanisms that influence a crowd’s performance in generating research questions. Our results aim for advancing the literatures on crowd and citizen science as well as the broader literature on crowdsourcing and the organization of open and distributed knowledge production. Our findings have important implications for scientists and policy makers.

With permission of the Academy of Management