Contributions published at Strategic Management and Business Policy (Egon Franck)

There is a well-established body of literature on separately testing the prediction power of different betting market settings. This paper provides an inter-market comparison of the forecasting accuracy of bookmakers and a major betting exchange. Employing a dataset covering all football matches played in the major leagues of the “Big Five” (England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) during three seasons (5478 games in total), we find evidence that the betting exchange provides more accurate predictions of a given event than bookmakers. A simple betting strategy of selecting bets for which bookmakers offer lower probabilities (higher odds) than the betting exchange generates above average, and in some cases even positive returns.

Based on the analysis of the specific industry environment in which football clubs compete, this paper presents a comparative institutional analysis of three paradigmatic structures of football club governance: classical (privately owned) football firms, modern football corporations (stock corporations with dispersed ownership) and members’ associations with an own legal personality (Verein). The results of the analysis are applied to current developments in German and English football and to recent initiatives of the Football Governing Bodies.

Theory predicts that the interaction type within a team moderates the impact of talent disparity on team productivity. Using panel data from professional German soccer teams, we test talent composition effects at different team levels characterized by different interaction types. At the match level, complementarities are expected due to the continuous interaction of the fielded players. If the entire squad is analyzed at the seasonal level, substitutability emerges from the fact that only a (varying) selection of players can prove their talent in the competition games. Holding average ability and unobserved team heterogeneity constant, we find that the players selected to play on the competition team should be rather homogeneous regarding their talent. However, if we relate talent differences within the entire squad to the team’s league standing at the end of the season, talent disparity turns out to be beneficial.

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In October 2003, a new flight regime was introduced at Zurich airport that significantly changed the levels of noise pollution in surrounding communities. We investigate the impact of the new flight policy on apartment prices using a hedonic price model and a non-linear difference-in-differences identification strategy. Our results suggest that rental prices increased by about 3 to 8 percent less in regions affected by the policy change, controlling for several apartment and location characteristics. The noise discount is still significant, although smaller, even after the inclusion of object-speciffc fixed effects. However, we do not find evidence of price changes in the sales market.

We analyze the effect of national diversity on sports team performance. Due to language barriers, we expect the team’s productivity to decrease with the number of nationalities, but that the introduction of further nations and further aspects of different cultures might lead to additional skills within the team. We test our hypothesis on a seasonal individual team basis. We do not find that national diversity among team members significantly influences a team’s performance. However, we find that the influence of national diversity on team performance depends on the nature of the underlying task.

The purpose of this study is to analyze whether previous results describing the effect of uncertainty of outcome on match attendance in team sports have been driven by heterogeneity in fan demand. We apply censored quantile regression methods and place particular emphasis on the relationship between match uncertainty and attendance demand, as previous results are highly ambiguous. This is more surprising, as each season association and league officials continue to spend millions on enhancing this uncertainty. We also control for season ticket holders, who are unlikely to be influenced by match specificities. Based on data from German soccer, our results indicate that fan demand shows heterogeneity across quantiles and that increasing match uncertainty of outcome exclusively benefits teams who already face strong attendance demand.

The meaning of firm’s role as a societal institution has gained increasing relevance as a result of globalization. Corporations have begun to manage the globalization processes, while political systems are still primarily oriented towards the idea of the nation state. The main duty of the nation states is to regulate and coordinate social issues within the framework of national boundaries; as their sphere of influence is limited to national boundaries they only limitedly engage in developing and realizing solutions for global problems. This gap is filled at least partially on the one hand by NGOs and supranational institutions like the UN. On the other hand, also the globally active multinational corporations are being increasingly challenged in their societal function. In the same vein Stiglitz (2006) claims for a reorientation of firms’ role in society in his new book on globalization: “One step in the right direction (note of the author: to improve corporate governance) would be to have companies take into account all stakeholders – employees and the communities in which they operate, not just their shareholders.

Today, sustainable relations with a broad range of key stakeholders are not only important from a normative business ethics perspective, but also from an entrepreneurial viewpoint to allow and support the long-term survival of a firm. We will argue that the traditional conception of a firm’s corporate social responsibility does not reflect this view and that a comprehensive and dynamic conception of a firm’s responsibilities is necessary to map the reality of business practice and to manage the challenges implied by sustainability. We think that distributive justice, that is the way in which firms involve their stakeholders in their wealth creation and dissemination processes, provides a comprehensive understanding of corporate responsibilities. Concerning procedural justice, we will discuss how firms involve stakeholders in their strategic processes according to their contribution to wealth creation. In the course of the article, we will propose a framework along with three design principles that can be used for shaping dynamic and comprehensive corporate responsibilities, and which thereby allow a sustainable procedure for changing business and non-business environments.

Aus historischen Gründen sind Kantone Eigentümer von diversen Unternehmen wie Kantonalbanken oder Gebäudeversicherungen. In jüngster Zeit wurde die Leistungserbringung in Bereichen wie Energie, Gesundheit, Verkehr, Bildung oder Informatik zudem vermehrt in rechtlich eigenständige Gesellschaften ausgelagert. So entwickelt sich die kantonale Verwaltung zunehmend zu einer Art Konzern, der an privatwirtschaftlich orientierten Unternehmen beteiligt ist. Das zweite Kantonsmonitoring von Avenir Suisse liefert eine Übersicht über den Umfang und die Struktur sowie potenzielle Risiken dieser kantonalen Beteiligungsportfolios. Zudem wird das Beteiligungsmanagement der 26 Kantone analysiert und verglichen. Die Studie erfasst rund 1000 Unternehmensbeteiligungen, die mit einem Gesamtwert von 8.3 Mrd. CHF in den Büchern der Kantone stehen. Aufgrund der zurückhaltenden Buchhaltungspraxis ist die tatsächliche Bedeutung der Beteiligungsportfolios aber weit höher. Angesichts dieser beträchtlichen Vermögenswerte mangelt es in vielen Kantonen sowohl an Transparenz als auch an systematischem Management. Nur wenige Kantone verfügen bislang über fundierte Grundlagen für systematisches Beteiligungsmanagement.

Energie gilt als wichtige Grundlage für die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung und den Wohlstand und wird häufig als dritter Produktionsfaktor neben der menschlichen Arbeit und dem Kapital betrachtet. Energie stellt daher für jede Volkswirtschaft eine strategische Ressource dar. Deren Verfügbarkeit und Preis bestimmen die Leistungs- und Konkurrenzfähigkeit eines Landes im internationalen Standortwettbewerb. Die vorliegende Publikation zeigt Zusammenhänge auf und liefert interessante Daten. In einem ersten Teil werden Fragen in Bezug auf die Entwicklung des weltweiten Energieverbrauchs, der fossilen Reserven und der Energieeffizienz beantwortet. Im zweiten Teil wird der Fokus auf die Schweiz gelegt und deren Gesamtenergieverbrauch, ihre Energieimporte und die Wichtigkeit der Energie für die Wirtschaft analysiert. In einem dritten Teil wird die Stromwirtschaft der Schweiz betrachtet. Hier werden Themen wie Produktion, erneuerbare Energien, Geräteeffizienz, Strompreise und Stromhandel behandelt.

Mit der Verlegung des Glasfasernetzes bis in die Haushalte vollzieht die Schweiz einen bedeutenden Schritt beim Ausbau ihrer Telekom-Infrastruktur. Dabei stellen sich Fragen bezüglich des künftigen Wettbewerbs- bzw. Regulierungsregimes, zumal die geltende Gesetzgebung keinen regulierten Netzzugang bei Glasfaser vorsieht. Zwar planen neben Swisscom auch zahlreiche städtische Elektrizitätswerke Investitionen in Glasfasernetze, doch ist damit ein stabiler und effektiver Infrastrukturwettbewerb nicht mit Sicherheit gewährleistet. Die Studie von Avenir Suisse schlägt einen differenzierten Regulierungsansatz vor, welcher grundsätzlich von einem funktionierenden Infrastrukturwettbewerb ausgeht und von einem regulierten Netzzugang absieht. Werden jedoch die Voraussetzungen für effektiven Wettbewerb nicht oder nicht mehr erfüllt, erfolgt ein regulierter Netzzugang auf regionaler Ebene. Die Effektivität dieses Ansatzes wird entscheidend gestärkt, wenn der Regulator auf die Gestaltung der Investitionspartnerschaften zwischen Swisscom und den Elektrizitätswerken Einfluss nehmen kann. Ausserdem würde die Funktionsfähigkeit des Wettbewerbes nachhaltig verbessert, wenn die Elektrizitätswerke eine gemeinsame Netzgesellschaft bildeten.