Does Distance Hinder Coordination? Identifying and Bridging Boundaries of Offshored Work

We submit that offshoring research focused mostly about an empirical phenomenon and extending our understanding about it, rather than expanding our understanding of the underlying theory as illuminated by empirical evidence. To theoretically frame the implications of offshoring strategy and practice for organizational design, this paper centers on the interplay between coordination and geographical distance. Distance strains the traditional approaches to coordination – i.e. decomposability and communication – as it impacts on knowledge boundaries created by the decomposition scheme. This increases the inherent complexity of the international division and coordination of innovative labor and knowledge and calls for new organizational practices.     

Use of propensity score matching to evaluate a national smoking cessation media campaign

Sustained mass media campaigns have been recommended to stem the tobacco epidemic in the United States. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to estimate the effect of awareness of a national smoking cessation media campaign (EX) on quit attempts and cessation-related cognition. Participants were 4,067 smokers and recent quitters aged 18-49 in targeted U.S. media markets. Controlling for potential confounders through PSM and regression analysis, confirmed awareness of EX was not significantly associated with either outcome at 6-month follow-up. Matched analyses excluding 217 quitters resulted in a significant effect of EX on both outcomes.     

Time and Postmodernism

In this essay we discuss changes in the cultural meaning and significance of time in postmodernism. We begin by examining the experience of time and space in the Middle Ages and its radical alteration following the Renaissance. After a relatively brief period of optimism during the Enlightenment regarding the scientific control over time and space, a new crisis beginning in the mid‐nineteenth century emphasized the increasing disjuncture between external, objective notions of time and the way time was experienced subjectively. We argue that the current literature on time and post‐modernity is best understood in this context, where earlier disequilibriating effects brought about by modern technologies are exacerbated by new developments in transportation and communications technology. Here we discuss the particular effects on topics of interest to social scientists such as changes in notions of personal identity and the effacement of historical time. We conclude with a call for more empirically grounded work on questions concerning time in postmodernism. We lament the paucity of concrete data as well as the excess of useless polemics and recommend several researchers already conducting work in this field.     

Exploring the antecedents of potential absorptive capacity and its impact on innovation performance

This paper builds upon the theoretical framework developed by Zahra and George [Absorptive capacity: a review, reconceptualization, and extension. Academy of Management Review 2002;27:185–203] to empirically explore the antecedents of potential absorptive capacity (PAC), i.e. the ability to identify and assimilate external knowledge flows. Based on a sample of 2464 innovative Spanish firms, we find evidence that R&D cooperation, external knowledge acquisition and experience with knowledge search are key antecedents of a firm's PAC. Also, during periods of important internal reshaping, when there are significant changes in strategy, design of the organization and marketing, firms exert more effort to accumulate PAC. Finally, we find that PAC is a source of competitive advantage in innovation, especially in the presence of efficient internal knowledge flows that help reduce the distance between potential and realized capacity.     

Property Loss Estimation for Wind and Earthquake Perils

This article describes the development of a generic loss assessment methodology, which is applicable to earthquake and windstorm perils worldwide. The latest information regarding hazard estimation is first integrated with the parameters that best describe the intensity of the action of both windstorms and earthquakes on building structures, for events with defined average return periods or recurrence intervals. The subsequent evaluation of building vulnerability (damageability) under the action of both earthquake and windstorm loadings utilizes information on damage and loss from past events, along with an assessment of the key building properties (including age and quality of design and construction), to assess information about the ability of buildings to withstand such loadings and hence to assign a building type to the particular risk or portfolio of risks. This predicted damage information is then translated into risk-specific mathematical vulnerability functions, which enable numerical evaluation of the probability of building damage arising at various defined levels. By assigning cost factors to the defined damage levels, the associated computation of total loss at a given level of hazard may be achieved. This developed methodology is universal in the sense that it may be applied successfully to buildings situated in a variety of earthquake and windstorm environments, ranging from very low to extreme levels of hazard. As a loss prediction tool, it enables accurate estimation of losses from potential scenario events linked to defined return periods and, hence, can greatly assist risk assessment and planning.     

Risk Analysis for U.S. Offshore Wind Farms: The Need for an Integrated Approach

Wind power is becoming an increasingly important part of the global energy portfolio, and there is growing interest in developing offshore wind farms in the United States to better utilize this resource. Wind farms have certain environmental benefits, notably near‐zero emissions of greenhouse gases, particulates, and other contaminants of concern. However, there are significant challenges ahead in achieving large‐scale integration of wind power in the United States, particularly offshore wind. Environmental impacts from wind farms are a concern, and these are subject to a number of on‐going studies focused on risks to the environment. However, once a wind farm is built, the farm itself will face a number of risks from a variety of hazards, and managing these risks is critical to the ultimate achievement of long‐term reductions in pollutant emissions from clean energy sources such as wind. No integrated framework currently exists for assessing risks to offshore wind farms in the United States, which poses a challenge for wind farm risk management. In this “Perspective”, we provide an overview of the risks faced by an offshore wind farm, argue that an integrated framework is needed, and give a preliminary starting point for such a framework to illustrate what it might look like. This is not a final framework; substantial work remains. Our intention here is to highlight the research need in this area in the hope of spurring additional research about the risks to wind farms to complement the substantial amount of on‐going research on the risks from wind farms.     

THE INEFFICIENCY OF WORKER TIME USE

Much work is carried out in short, interrupted segments. This phenomenon, which we label task juggling, has been overlooked by economists. We study the work schedules of some judges in Italy documenting that they do juggle tasks and that juggling causally lowers their productivity substantially. To measure the size of this effect, we show that although all these judges receive the same workload, those who juggle more trials at once instead of working sequentially on few of them at each unit of time, take longer to complete their portfolios of cases. Task juggling seems to have no adverse effect on the quality of the judges' decisions, as measured by the percent of decisions appealed. To identify these causal effects we estimate models with judge fixed effects and we exploit the lottery assigning cases to judges. We discuss whether task juggling can be viewed as inefficient, and provide a back‐of‐the‐envelope calculation of the social cost of longer trials due to task juggling.     

Inference on Causal Effects in a Generalized Regression Kink Design

We consider nonparametric identification and estimation in a nonseparable model where a continuous regressor of interest is a known, deterministic, but kinked function of an observed assignment variable. We characterize a broad class of models in which a sharp “Regression Kink Design” (RKD or RK Design) identifies a readily interpretable treatment‐on‐the‐treated parameter (Florens, Heckman, Meghir, and Vytlacil (2008)). We also introduce a “fuzzy regression kink design” generalization that allows for omitted variables in the assignment rule, noncompliance, and certain types of measurement errors in the observed values of the assignment variable and the policy variable. Our identifying assumptions give rise to testable restrictions on the distributions of the assignment variable and predetermined covariates around the kink point, similar to the restrictions delivered by Lee (2008) for the regression discontinuity design. Using a kink in the unemployment benefit formula, we apply a fuzzy RKD to empirically estimate the effect of benefit rates on unemployment durations in Austria.     

Entry and Exit in OTC Derivatives Markets

We develop a parsimonious model to study the equilibrium and socially optimal decisions of banks to enter, trade in, and possibly exit, an OTC market. Although we endow all banks with the same trading technology, banks' optimal entry and trading decisions endogenously lead to a realistic market structure composed of dealers and customers with distinct trading patterns. We decompose banks' entry incentives into incentives to hedge risk and incentives to make intermediation profits. We show that dealer banks enter more than is socially optimal. In the face of large negative shocks, they may also exit more than is socially optimal when markets are not perfectly resilient.