Starting and Subsequent Earnings of Young Workers in Different Sized Firms

Based upon the highly innovative Project TALENT Longitudinal Database, this study tracks the starting earnings and subsequent early earnings growth of young males who began their work careers at either a smaller (<100 employees) or larger private firm more than a generation ago. Prior evidence based upon less rich databases found that earnings were systematically higher in larger firms but did not have access to many other variables that could affect projected earnings which are available in the TALENT database. Earnings regressions are estimated here including not only usual explanatory variables of years of schooling and labor market experience, but also adding other variables pertaining to prior job experience, military service, IQ, socioeconomic background and some other factors. The findings indicate that while starting earnings of those in this database were indeed higher in larger firms, the gap evaporated fairly quickly with projected earnings of those in smaller firms featuring a small earnings premium. The results here suggest guidance based upon the body of prior evidence may have been less reliable than thought, and that evidence itself may not provide as useful a baseline as desired for subsequent research addressing whether this pattern continues for recent cohorts.

Market legitimation in countercultural market change

Drawing on concepts of institutional work, legitimacy, and institutional logics, we investigate why countercultural markets experience institutional change and the actions institutional work market actors perform to inform institutional logics and ensure the legitimacy of countercultural markets. Although previous research suggests market changes and disruption, little attention has been paid to markets that originate from different institutional backgrounds, changes in the market experience in relation to its legitimization, and institutional work to attain legitimacy. The case of indie music in South Korea illustrates the evolution of a cultural market from the introduction of its ethos, the crisis caused by legitimacy pressures, and the transformation of the market. Using data gathered through in-depth interviews with indie labels and music consumers in South Korea, and archival sources, our research illuminates the source of market struggle and theorizes approaches that market actors perform to overcome the struggle.

INFLUENCE OF DIFFERENTIATION STRATEGY ON PERFORMANCE OF THE INSURANCE COMPANIES IN KENYA

Purpose: Consistent high performance being their main objective, insurance companies are currently concentrating on development of strategies for ensuring enhanced sustainability and success. Differentiation strategy has recently received unprecedented attention as it enhances the capability of firms to expand, exploit emerging opportunities, manage threats and ultimately gain sustainable competitive advantage in today’s highly dynamic market. In Kenya, the present operational set up of the insurance industry is a dynamic one characterized with intense competition due to the presence of numerous insurance organizations selling diverse products and services. Major challenges include similarities in insurance products, differences in product valuations, increased brokerage, poor products’ perception and low quality of services provided by insurance firms. This study sought to establish the influence of differentiation strategy on performance of the insurance companies in Kenya. Specifically, the study aimed at determining the influence of strategy scope, products perception, value based services and market experience on insurance companies’ performance, with the ultimate goal of providing tangible solutions to exiting differentiation challenges in the industry and beyond. Methodology: Using semi-structured questionnaires, primary data was collected from 55 registered insurance companies in Kenya. Descriptive analysis was done using SPSS software, and inferential statistics including regression, correlation and ANOVA analysis were applied to establish the association between the dependent and the independent variables. Findings: The study found out that over 85% of the insurance companies had adopted the differentiation strategy at different magnitudes, which enabled development of products and services offering more value and great market experience, and were since enjoying enhanced competitive advantage. Unique Contributions to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study recommends that the insurance companies should scale up their differentiation by applying strong research and development skills, strong services and products engineering skills, strong creativity skills, good cooperation with distribution channels and strong marketing skills for remarkable performance.

The Relative Effects of Institutions on Ownership in Acquisitions

<p>Purpose - Globalization has increased competition to an international level. However, limited market experience causes uncertainty, affecting how firms strategize their entry. Institutional distance can be a dominant cause of such environmental uncertainty. The institutional environment incorporates three institutional pillars; the regulatory pillar, the normative pillar and the cognitive pillar. Institutions are shaped by culture and desires to protect domestic business, meaning institutions differ between countries. This is known as institutional distance. There is, however, a research gap concerning the relative influence of institutional pillars on cross-border acquisition ownership, when institutional distance is present. This thesis seeks to research the influential effect of all three institutional pillars on acquisition ownership, when firms are faced with institutional distance. Theory - Institutional theory was the fundamental theory used in this research, applying the sociology perspective of Scott (1995). Firstly, investigations were conducted on individual pillars to see how each pillar influenced acquisition ownership. Secondly, individual pillar findings were then combined and compared, to illustrate their relative influence on acquisition ownership. Such simultaneous acknowledgement of all three institutional pillars, provided new insight on the relative effects of institutions on acquisition ownership. Methodology - This study implemented a single method approach, using quantitative analysis. Archival data was gathered focusing on firms from three industries in eleven selected countries who conduct cross-border acquisitions (CBAs). CBAs were chosen due to their popular use as a research construct in imitation research. Cognitive distance, normative distance and regulatory distance were then used to measure institutional distance. Cognitive distance effects were measured using frequency based imitation. Normative distance was measured using two of Hofstede’s (1980) cultural value dimensions: uncertainty avoidance and collectivism. Regulatory distance was measured using World Bank Governance Indicators. Thus, it was important to strategically choose home countries to ensure a variety of dimension and indicator values with which to conduct a reliable study. Logistic regression, conducted with STATA, was then used to analyze relationships between institutions and acquisition ownership. Key Findings – The findings illustrate that all three institutional pillars have an influential effect on acquisition ownership decisions. This reinforces the emerging belief, that studies must include all three institutional pillars in research. This finding adds to this scant research. Analyzing the comprehensive institutional environment produces more reliable results. The findings suggest that institutional pillars form an institutional hierarchy when institutional distance exists between the home and host countries. Regulatory distance have the strongest influence on acquisition ownership. Severe regulatory sanctions threaten illegitimate behaviours, forcing foreign entrants to prioritize compliance to regulatory institutions. Normative distance has the second strongest impact on acquisition ownership. Its tacit nature camouflages dysfunctional cultural complexities that disrupt strategy implementation, which can cause a firm to relocate. Lastly, cognitive distance has the third strongest influence on acquisition ownership. Its lack of severe repercussions facilitates the prioritization of the previous two pillars. However, cognitive distance acknowledgement is important as it illustrates how host participants interpret stimuli from their environment, which informs foreign entrants of appropriate cross-national responsive behaviour. Contributions - This study contributes to international business research by illustrating the hierarchical formation of the influence of institutional pillars on cross-border acquisition ownership, where institutional distance is present. This contribution has managerial implications. Managers are strongly encouraged to consider all of regulatory pillar, normative pillar and cognitive pillar when venturing abroad. Further, managers must acknowledge the institutional pillar hierarchy and prioritize responses accordingly, to avoid crippling outcomes that could lead to poor acquisition outcomes. Lastly, this thesis contributes to literature by highlighting the need to include collectivism as a research construct in ownership studies. Prior studies have narrowly focused on uncertainty avoidance and power distance. However, collectivism has been observed to influence ownership, likely due to the recent rise of Asia in international business.</p>

The Relative Effects of Institutions on Ownership in Acquisitions

<p>Purpose - Globalization has increased competition to an international level. However, limited market experience causes uncertainty, affecting how firms strategize their entry. Institutional distance can be a dominant cause of such environmental uncertainty. The institutional environment incorporates three institutional pillars; the regulatory pillar, the normative pillar and the cognitive pillar. Institutions are shaped by culture and desires to protect domestic business, meaning institutions differ between countries. This is known as institutional distance. There is, however, a research gap concerning the relative influence of institutional pillars on cross-border acquisition ownership, when institutional distance is present. This thesis seeks to research the influential effect of all three institutional pillars on acquisition ownership, when firms are faced with institutional distance. Theory - Institutional theory was the fundamental theory used in this research, applying the sociology perspective of Scott (1995). Firstly, investigations were conducted on individual pillars to see how each pillar influenced acquisition ownership. Secondly, individual pillar findings were then combined and compared, to illustrate their relative influence on acquisition ownership. Such simultaneous acknowledgement of all three institutional pillars, provided new insight on the relative effects of institutions on acquisition ownership. Methodology - This study implemented a single method approach, using quantitative analysis. Archival data was gathered focusing on firms from three industries in eleven selected countries who conduct cross-border acquisitions (CBAs). CBAs were chosen due to their popular use as a research construct in imitation research. Cognitive distance, normative distance and regulatory distance were then used to measure institutional distance. Cognitive distance effects were measured using frequency based imitation. Normative distance was measured using two of Hofstede’s (1980) cultural value dimensions: uncertainty avoidance and collectivism. Regulatory distance was measured using World Bank Governance Indicators. Thus, it was important to strategically choose home countries to ensure a variety of dimension and indicator values with which to conduct a reliable study. Logistic regression, conducted with STATA, was then used to analyze relationships between institutions and acquisition ownership. Key Findings – The findings illustrate that all three institutional pillars have an influential effect on acquisition ownership decisions. This reinforces the emerging belief, that studies must include all three institutional pillars in research. This finding adds to this scant research. Analyzing the comprehensive institutional environment produces more reliable results. The findings suggest that institutional pillars form an institutional hierarchy when institutional distance exists between the home and host countries. Regulatory distance have the strongest influence on acquisition ownership. Severe regulatory sanctions threaten illegitimate behaviours, forcing foreign entrants to prioritize compliance to regulatory institutions. Normative distance has the second strongest impact on acquisition ownership. Its tacit nature camouflages dysfunctional cultural complexities that disrupt strategy implementation, which can cause a firm to relocate. Lastly, cognitive distance has the third strongest influence on acquisition ownership. Its lack of severe repercussions facilitates the prioritization of the previous two pillars. However, cognitive distance acknowledgement is important as it illustrates how host participants interpret stimuli from their environment, which informs foreign entrants of appropriate cross-national responsive behaviour. Contributions - This study contributes to international business research by illustrating the hierarchical formation of the influence of institutional pillars on cross-border acquisition ownership, where institutional distance is present. This contribution has managerial implications. Managers are strongly encouraged to consider all of regulatory pillar, normative pillar and cognitive pillar when venturing abroad. Further, managers must acknowledge the institutional pillar hierarchy and prioritize responses accordingly, to avoid crippling outcomes that could lead to poor acquisition outcomes. Lastly, this thesis contributes to literature by highlighting the need to include collectivism as a research construct in ownership studies. Prior studies have narrowly focused on uncertainty avoidance and power distance. However, collectivism has been observed to influence ownership, likely due to the recent rise of Asia in international business.</p>

Cognitive Biases on the Iran Stock Exchange: Unsupervised Learning Approach to Examining Feature Bundles in Investors’ Portfolios

This paper innovatively analyses the joint occurrence of cognitive biases in groups of stock exchange investors. It considers jointly a number of common fallacies: confirmation bias, loss aversion, gambler’s fallacy, availability cascade, hot-hand fallacy, bandwagon effect, and Dunning–Kruger effect, which have hitherto been studied separately. The paper aims to highlight the diverse range of investor’s profiles which are characterised by such fallacies, and the considerable differences observed based on their age, stock market experience and perception of market trends. The analysis is based on k-means and hierarchical clustering, feature importance and Principal Component Analysis, which were applied to data from the Tehran Stock Exchange. There are a few essential findings which contribute to the existing literature. Firstly, the results show that gender does not have a role to play in diversifying the investors’ profiles. Secondly, cognitive biases are bundled, and we distinguish four investors’ profiles; thus, they should be analysed jointly, not separately. Thirdly, the exposure to cognitive biases differs significantly due to the individual features of investors. The group most vulnerable to almost all analysed biases are inexperienced investors, who are pessimistic about market developments and have invested a large amount. Fourthly, the ages of investors are essential only in connection with other factors such as experience, market perception and investment exposure. Young (20–40 years), experienced investors with huge investments (+1000 mln rials/+24,000 USD) are mostly less exposed to all biases and much less risk-averse. Additionally, older (50+) and experienced investors (5–10 years) who are more optimistic about trends (hot hand bias) were affected much less by cognitive biases, only showing vulnerability to the Dunning–Kruger effect. Fifthly, more than 40% of investors apply consultation and technical analysis approaches to succeed in trading. Finally, from a methodological perspective, this study shows that unsupervised learning methods are effective in profiling investors and bundling similar behaviours.

Abstract 1122‐000244: The Pennsylvania Post‐Market Multicenter Experience with Flow Re‐Direction Endoluminal Device (FRED)

Introduction : The Flow Re‐direction Endoluminal Device (FRED) is a novel self‐expanding double‐layer nitinol braided flow diverter that recently received FDA approval. Early post‐market studies from the US literature are currently lacking and we here report our short‐term multicenter experience results. Methods : Series of consecutive patients undergoing FRED treatment for intracranial aneurysms were queried from prospectively maintained registries in 4 North‐American Centers in the State of Pennsylvania from February 2020 to June 2021. The pertinent baseline demographics, aneurysmal characteristics, and procedural outcomes were collected and analyzed, with primary outcome of aneurysmal occlusion, and secondary outcome of safety and complications. Results : Sixty‐one patients (median age 58, 82% females) underwent 65 FRED treatment procedures for harbored 72 aneurysms. The majority (86.1%) of aneurysms were unruptured; 80.5% were saccular in morphology and 87.5% were located in the internal carotid artery, with a median size of 7.2 mm (IQR 5.2 ‐11.9mm). Radiographic follow‐up was available in 80.5% of the aneurysms, showing complete occlusion in 79.3%, and near‐complete occlusion in 6.9% of the cases (median follow‐up of 6 months), with a retreatment rate of 2.8%. Permanent ischemic complications were encountered in 2.8% of the cases, with no procedural mortality, and a modified Rankin Scale of 0–2 documented in 98.1% of the patients at the last clinical follow‐up. Conclusions : The results of the early post‐market experience with the FRED device show reasonable safety and adequate aneurysmal occlusion rates comparable to other flow diverters. Larger multicenter studies with longer follow up data are needed to assess the long‐term safety and durability of the device.

Wages of Skilled Migrant and Native Employees in Germany: New Light on an Old Issue

The German Council of Economic Experts (GCEE) argues for a labor market-driven immigration of skilled migrants into Germany to overcome a decline in workforce due to demographic ageing. We pick up this current debate on skilled immigration by analyzing the migrant-native wage differential for skilled workers in Germany and consider various information on firms. Our results indicate that the wage gap is mainly explained by observable characteristics, especially labor market experience and firm characteristics. However, we find lower rewards for migrants’ labor market experience than for natives (flatter experience curves). Our results show that these differences in experience curves become negligible in the long run. Moreover, we reveal firms’ wage-setting policies: Firms evaluate a worker's education independent of migration backgrounds, as migrants possess the same productivity levels as their German counterparts in the same occupations and task levels. Due to Germany's heterogeneous immigration structure, we are able to compare the results for different migrant subgroups and, thus, derive valuable insights into the migrant-native wage structure with a wide reach beyond Germany. This article adds to current debates in various industrialized countries with demographic ageing patterns, as it focuses on an important group for domestic labor markets: skilled immigrants.

Can Regional Gender Ideologies Account for Variation of Gender Pay Gaps? The Case of Germany

While research often invokes gender disparities in wage-determining characteristics to explain gender pay gaps, why these gender disparities and gender pay gaps vary across contexts has received less attention. Therefore, I analyze how subnational gender ideologies predict gender pay gaps in two ways: as directly affecting gender pay gaps and as indirectly predicting gender pay gaps through intermediate gender disparities in determinants of wage. The analyses are based on German survey data (SOEP 2014–2018) supplemented with regional-level statistics. First, I leverage regional differences in predictors of gender ideologies to estimate region-specific gender ideologies. Mapping these gender ideologies across Germany reveals substantial regional variation. Second, multi-level models provide region-specific gender disparities in wage determinants and gender pay gaps. Results reveal that traditional gender ideologies are associated with women gaining less labor market experience and working less often in full-time jobs or supervising positions. In addition to this indirect association, gender ideologies directly predict the extent of adjusted gender pay gaps. These associations contribute novel evidence on regional variation of gender ideologies and how they can underlie explanations often invoked for gender pay gaps.

Commercialization of Teff production in West North Ethiopia

Background: Teff is only cereal crop Ethiopia’s in terms of production, acreage, and the number of farm holdings. It is one of the staples crops produced in the study area. However, the farm productivity, commercialization and level of intensity per hectare is low compared to the other cereals , Despite, smallholder farmers are not enough to participate in the teff market so the commercialization level is very low due to different factors. so, the study aimed to analyze determinants of smallholder farmer’s teff commercialization in west north, Ethiopia.Methods; A three-stage sampling procedure was used to take the sample respondents, 190 smallholder teff producers were selected to collect primary data through semi-structures questionnaires. Combinations of data analysis methods such as descriptive statistics and econometrics model (double hurdle) were used.Results: The average level of teff commercialization index of sampled Teff producers in the study area was 11.97%. The model result showed that the variables like age, gender, education, land size, variety, Teff market experience, distance to the nearest market, off-farm income, and credit were significantly affecting the market orientation of Teff production. Therefore, improving households’ market access, extension service, market orientation, education, and productivity of land (best agronomic practices) would enhance the commercialization level of smallholder Teff producers.