Contributions in Merlin

Are initial competitive advantages self-reinforcing, so that markets exhibit an endogenous tendency to be dominated by only a few firms? Although this question is of great economic importance, no systematic empirical study has yet addressed it. Therefore, we examine experimentally whether firms with an initial cost advantage are more likely to invest in marginal cost reductions than firms with higher initial costs. We find that the initial competitive advantages are indeed self-reinforcing, but subjects in the role of firms overinvest relative to the Nash equilibrium. However, the pattern of overinvestment even strengthens the tendency towards self-reinforcing cost advantages relative to the theoretical prediction. Further, as predicted by the Nash equilibrium, mean-preserving spreads of the initial cost distribution have no effects on aggregate investments. Finally, investment spillovers reduce investment, and investment is higher than the joint-profit maximizing benchmark for the case without spillovers and lower for the case with spillovers.

null

null

null

null

null

null

null

This paper assesses some of the implications of globalization for the scholarly debate on business ethics, CSR and related concepts. The argument is based, among other things, on the declining capacity of nation state institutions to regulate socially desirable corporate behavior as well as the growing corporate exposure to heterogeneous social, cultural and political values in societies globally. It is argued that these changes are shifting the corporate role towards a sphere of societal governance hitherto dominated by traditional political actors. This leads to a discussion of the ambivalent results of such a process for a responsible corporate role in a globalized world. While assessing the current reception these changes have received in the management literature, the contribution of the four papers of this Special Issues are framed and evaluated. The argument closes by highlighting avenues of future research on this new challenge.

Neuroimaging can address activity across the entire brain in relation to cognition, but is typically correlative rather than causal. Brain stimulation can target a local brain area causally, but without revealing the entire network affected. Combining brain stimulation with concurrent neuroimaging allows a new causal approach to how interplay between extended networks of brain regions can support cognition. Brain stimulation does not affect only the targeted local region but also activity in remote interconnected regions. These remote effects depend on cognitive factors (e.g. task-condition), revealing dynamic changes in interplay between brain areas. We illustrate this with examples from top-down modulation of visual cortex, response-competition, inter-hemispheric rivalry and motor tasks; but the new approach should be applicable to many domains of cognition.