A DESIGNER'S CHOICE BETWEEN SINGLE‐PRIZE AND PARALLEL TOURNAMENTS

In this article, I theoretically and experimentally compare a designer's profits from two tournament designs. The first design is a standard winner‐take‐all tournament with a single prize. The second design features two winner‐take‐all (parallel) tournaments with different prizes where individuals choose which tournament to enter before competing. I develop a simple model that illustrates how the relative performances of these designs change as contestants' abilities differ. The theoretical model shows that the designer's profit is higher (lower) in the parallel tournament when contestants' abilities differ greatly (are similar). I complement these findings with experimental evidence. The experiments show that the parallel tournament is more profitable under high heterogeneity, whereas under low heterogeneity, the designer is better off with the single‐prize tournament. Furthermore, high‐ability agents under‐participate and low‐ability agents over‐participate in the high‐prize tournament relative to the theoretical prediction. (JEL C72, D82, J33, M51, M52)     

A success index to evaluate e-Marketplaces

The internet offers companies many opportunities to implement new business models, in short called e-Business, and to reinforce their competitiveness in the market. Despite the great interest and demand shown towards e-Business, the number of successful applications is quite few. This study suggests a framework to monitor and appraise the success of a particular e-Business operation, e-Marketplaces. To achieve this, we propose a measure, namely the e-Marketplace success index (e-MSI) to quantify the performance of e-Marketplaces. e-MSI can be effectively employed for benchmarking among digital marketplaces whether they are competing or not. More importantly, the factors shaping e-MSI are also educative – the weaknesses and strengths of e-Marketplaces with respect to key success dimensions come right to the fore. We believe that e-Marketplaces can take advantage of this information to improve their effectiveness and, at the same time, actual and/or potential companies may benefit from a uniform, objective and robust assessment of e-Marketplaces.     

Does the sectoral composition of growth affect child stunting reductions?

This article uses a natural experiment based on random and exogenous variations in temperature to examine whether the sectoral composition of growth has an effect on child stunting reductions. Agricultural growth is central to food security strategies in developing countries, as it is often considered the most effective way to fight (child) undernutrition. The evidence base to support the putative superior role of agricultural growth is, however, relatively weak, possibly because studies have ignored growth faltering. Accounting for the latter, we find that while both agricultural and non‐agricultural growth decrease stunting, agricultural growth is significantly superior to non‐agricultural growth in this regard. The estimated impacts are large, in that a 10% increase in agricultural GDP per capita reduces child stunting by 9.6% (as opposed to 8.4% for non‐agricultural).     

Do norms matter for firm boundaries?

Even though norms have been integrated in the formal theory of the firm, we have not seen a clear-cut relationship between norms and firm boundaries. In a simple game of relationship specific investments, I show that the parties’ reputation for being trustworthy may be decisive for optimal asset ownership.     

论国家创新系统及其政策工具的选择

要使我国的经济实现三步走的战略目标 ,必须从国家创新系统的角度提出并规划我国的经济科技体制改革和发展战略。为此 ,对国家创新系统的基本概念、特点、构成、起源进行了论述 ,并对国家创新系统中政策工具的选择进行了分析     

Challenges in Development and Implementation of Health‐Risk‐Based Soil Quality Guidelines: Turkey's Experience

Management of contaminated sites is a critical environmental issue around the world due to the human health risk involved for many sites and scarcity of funding. Moreover, clean‐up costs of all contaminated sites to their background levels with existing engineering technologies may be financially infeasible and demand extended periods of operation time. Given these constraints, to achieve optimal utilization of available funds and prioritization of contaminated sites that need immediate attention, health‐risk‐based soil quality guidelines should be preferred over the traditional soil quality standards. For these reasons, traditional soil quality standards are being replaced by health‐risk‐based ones in many countries and in Turkey as well. The need for health‐risk‐based guidelines is clear, but developing these guidelines and implementation of them in contaminated site management is not a straightforward process. The goal of this study is to highlight the problems that are encountered at various stages of the development process of risk‐based soil quality guidelines for Turkey and how they are dealt with. Utilization of different definitions and methodologies at different countries, existence of inconsistent risk assessment tools, difficulties in accessing relevant documents and reports, and lack of specific data required for Turkey are among these problems. We believe that Turkey's experience may help other countries that are planning to develop health‐risk‐based guidelines achieve their goals in a more efficient manner.     

The Importance of Social Embeddedness: Churn Models at Mobile Providers

This article argues the importance of social embeddedness at mobile providers by examining the effects of customers’ network topological properties on churn probability—the probability of a customer switching from one telecommunication provider to another. This article uses data from regional snowball sampling—the only practically feasible network sampling method—to identify groups with significantly different churn ratios for customers with different network topological properties. Clear evidence indicates that individual network characteristics (node‐level metrics) have considerable impact on churn probabilities. The inclusion of network‐related measures in the churn model allows a longer‐term projection of churners and improves the predictive power of the model. With no possibility to carry out repeated sampling, sample stability was checked through simulation results. On the one hand, this article highlights the importance and effectiveness of the provider's tailored marketing campaigns by showing that customers targeted by direct marketing campaigns are less threatened by churn than nontargeted customers. On the other, this article shows that social embeddedness blocks the impact of the very same marketing efforts. This article forwards the idea that social embeddedness, also prevalent in vendor switching, can be extended to understanding the development of professional societies threatened by membership churn.     

A zero-augmented gamma mixed model for longitudinal data with many zeros

In many occupational safety interventions, the objective is to reduce the injury incidence as well as the mean claims cost once injury has occurred. The claims cost data within a period typically contain a large proportion of zero observations (no claim). The distribution thus comprises a point mass at 0 mixed with a non-degenerate parametric component. Essentially, the likelihood function can be factorized into two orthogonal components. These two components relate respectively to the effect of covariates on the incidence of claims and the magnitude of claims, given that claims are made. Furthermore, the longitudinal nature of the intervention inherently imposes some correlation among the observations. This paper introduces a zero-augmented gamma random effects model for analysing longitudinal data with many zeros. Adopting the generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) approach reduces the original problem to the fitting of two independent GLMMs. The method is applied to evaluate the effectiveness of a workplace risk assessment teams program, trialled within the cleaning services of a Western Australian public hospital.     

Recurrence,eruptions, and a transnational turn: Three decades of strained relations between migrants to Norway and the Child Welfare Services

The relations between the Norwegian Child Welfare Services (CWS) and various migrant groups are notably strained. Numerous media accounts and a growing body of research reveal that many migrants to Norway fear the CWS. By combining quantitative and qualitative analyses of media accounts, this paper addresses the historical evolvement of such strained relations in Norway. Previous research has neglected this aspect. Findings show that migration issues related to the CWS have been topics of public debate in Norway for three decades, with foster care being a particularly intractable concern. With the onset of the decade beginning in 2010, however, matters have intensified and taken on transnational dimensions. In the discussion of our findings, we emphasize in particular how digital and social media have contributed to the recent changes.