Contributions published at Department of Business Administration (Egon Franck)

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The role structure of a top management team (TMT)—the roles of TMT members and the relationships among those roles—has important implications for how TMT members work together as a group in directing an organization and shaping its strategy. Although the importance of TMT role structure has long been noted, it has received scant attention until recently when upper-echelons scholars started examining its formation and influence. To stimulate a concerted effort in studying TMT role structure, we develop a framework elaborating its main themes, draw out key contributions from extant research (see the SMS Collection), and outline promising future directions. In particular, we highlight important dynamics of how formal and informal structures complement or compete with each other in the strategic leadership of an organization.

This article describes the content published in the Journal of Sports Economics (JSE) for its 20th anniversary. The analysis focuses on the most relevant topics and captures the characteristics of authors, institutions, and types of collaborations over a 20-year period. In total, the sample includes 663 research articles (published from February 2000 to December 2019) and 856 authors from 490 institutions. The 20-year period offers an insightful picture of sports economics research. The article discusses additional features and trends and reflects on expected directions for future research in the journal.

In this paper, we use the methods of networks science to analyse the transaction networks of tokens running on the Ethereum blockchain. We start with a deep dive on four of them: Ampleforth (AMP), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Dai (DAI) and Uniswap (UNI). We study two types of blockchain addresses, smart contracts (SC), which run code, and externally owned accounts (EOA), run by human users, or off-chain code, with the corresponding private keys. We use preferential attachment and network dismantling strategies to evaluate their importance for the network structure. Subsequently, we expand our view to all ERC-20 tokens issued on the Ethereum network. We first study multilayered networks composed of Ether (ETH) and individual tokens using a dismantling approach to assess how the deconstruction starting from one network affects the other. Finally, we analyse the Ether network and Ethereum-based token networks to find similarities between sets of high-degree nodes. For this purpose, we use both the traditional Jaccard Index and a new metric that we introduce, the Ordered Jaccard Index (OJI), which considers the order of the elements in the two sets that are compared. Our findings suggest that smart contracts and exchange-related addresses play a structural role in transaction networks both in DeFi and Ethereum. The presence in the network of nodes associated to addresses of smart contracts and exchanges is positively correlated with the success of the token network measured in terms of network size and market capitalisation. These nodes play a fundamental role in the centralisation of the supposedly decentralised finance (DeFi) ecosystem: without them, their networks would quickly collapse.

During the recent pandemic, fear of COVID-19 has been widespread and is considered to deteriorate mental health. We assessed whether vaccination can effectively reduce the fear of COVID-19 and, thus, contribute to improving people's mental health status. We used two-wave panel data from a German online study collected in April 2021 (t1) and August/September 2021 (t2) and estimated differences-in-differences to determine whether those who were vaccinated against COVID-19 experienced a reduction of fear of COVID-19, and whether the reduction was more evident as compared to people who were not vaccinated for various reasons. Fear of COVID-19 generally decreased between t1 and t2 for all respondents. Moreover, reduction of fear for people who were unvaccinated at t1 but received the vaccine between t1 and t2 was strongest as compared to people who did not get vaccinated during that period, even after we controlled for factors associated with fear (e.g., age, gender). Vaccination reduced fear of COVID-19 beyond some seasonal fluctuation and, therefore, we argue that vaccination partially reduces the psychological distress caused by the pandemic. We recommend that scientists, practitioners, and politicians highlight this additional positive effect of vaccination in health communication.

During the recent pandemic, fear of COVID-19 has been widespread and is considered to deteriorate mental health. We assessed whether vaccination can effectively reduce the fear of COVID-19 and, thus, contribute to improving people's mental health status. We used two-wave panel data from a German online study collected in April 2021 (t1) and August/September 2021 (t2) and estimated differences-in-differences to determine whether those who were vaccinated against COVID-19 experienced a reduction of fear of COVID-19, and whether the reduction was more evident as compared to people who were not vaccinated for various reasons. Fear of COVID-19 generally decreased between t1 and t2 for all respondents. Moreover, reduction of fear for people who were unvaccinated at t1 but received the vaccine between t1 and t2 was strongest as compared to people who did not get vaccinated during that period, even after we controlled for factors associated with fear (e.g., age, gender). Vaccination reduced fear of COVID-19 beyond some seasonal fluctuation and, therefore, we argue that vaccination partially reduces the psychological distress caused by the pandemic. We recommend that scientists, practitioners, and politicians highlight this additional positive effect of vaccination in health communication.

Meta-search platforms, which enable consumers to compare product prices between different sales channels, are sometimes integrated with certain channels. A case in point is the online hotel booking industry where the major online travel agencies are integrated with meta-search platforms. Studying web-scraped data from the meta-search platform Kayak, we find indications that, for a given hotel, the offers of affiliated online travel agents (like Booking.com) are more visible than those of other online travel agents with the same price. Moreover, hotels appear to be less prominent in Kayak’s search results when the rival online travel agent Expedia has the lowest price.

While the birthday effect has been widely studied in the economics and sport literature, this study introduces the concept of the ‘real’ birthday effect. It holds that birthday celebrations yield fatigue, which negatively affect running performance. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of players’ birthdays on post-birthday running performance using data from the German Football Bundesliga (2011–2018). The dataset includes 1,040 different field players who played in 2,142 matches (n= 49,233). Running performance was measured by the total distance covered during the game (in m per minute) and the number of intensive runs (>20 and <24 km/h; per minute). On average, players ran 123.68 m and performed 0.70 intensive runs per minute, which are equivalent to 11.1 km and 63 intensive runs during a 90-minute match. The results of fixed effects panel regression analyses, which also control for various player, game, and team characteristics, show that players perform significantly fewer intensive runs on the day following their birthday. This finding supports the concept of the ‘real’ birthday effect. Football coaches should reconsider fielding players on match days succeeding their birthday as these players perform significantly fewer intensive runs.

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We examine the evolution of accounting regulation by linking disclosure policies and investments in a dynamic voting model, where the disclosure requirement is the outcome of voting. Firms’ preferences over disclosure policies are determined by their investments, which are in turn decided by current and future disclosure policies. Absent external influences, accounting regimes are stable. A disclosure regime of high (low) quality and a strong (weak) economy coexist and reinforce each other. However, regulatory interventions can result in regime changes by changing the entrepreneurs’ expectations, even without direct enforcement. Unexpected shocks could also result in regime changes by impacting economic conditions and hence voter composition. Our analysis provides a framework to study the interaction between accounting regulation and firms’ economic decisions.

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