Christoph Grimpe, Wolfgang Sofka, Ulrich Kaiser, Competing for digital human capital: The retention effect of digital expertise in MNC subsidiaries, Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 54 (4), 2023. (Journal Article)
Employees with relevant knowledge and skills for digitalization have become increasingly important for the competitiveness of MNCs. However, the shortage of such digital human capital in many host countries is putting pressure on MNC subsidiaries to prevent these employees from leaving. We theorize that the retention of digital human capital in MNC subsidiaries does not merely depend on salaries but crucially on the learning opportunities that subsidiaries offer. By integrating mechanisms from the literature on subsidiary-specific advantages into theoretical models explaining voluntary mobility constraints of employees, we reason that the opportunities for acquiring new skills in subsidiaries with advanced digital expertise will reduce the odds of losing these valuable employees. We test our theoretical predictions for 11,598 employees with digital human capital working for 866 foreign MNC subsidiaries in Denmark observed between 2002 and 2012. We find that digital expertise helps retaining digital human capital. The effect is stronger if subsidiaries have an internationally diverse workforce and when they possess patented technologies. Both factors provide distinct learning opportunities from digital expertise. The effect is weaker if the subsidiary is located in regional clusters of digital expertise since alternative employers may offer similar learning opportunities. |
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Stefan Wittwer, When can digital platforms be classified as gatekeepers: An application of the European Digital Markets Act to Apple's App Store, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2022. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Morgane Cure, Matthias Hunold, Reinhold Kesler, Ulrich Laitenberger, Thomas Larrieu, Vertical integration of platforms and product prominence, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Vol. 20 (4), 2022. (Journal Article)
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. |
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Elena Busarac, The Role of funding for Innovation in Europe: How do natioal and pan-European Funds influence innovation performance in startup ecosystems?, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2022. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Damla Karapinar, Platform Entry into the Wearables Market: Evidence from Google’s Fitbit Acquisition, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2022. (Master's Thesis)
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Irene Bertschek, Reinhold Kesler, Let the user speak: Is feedback on Facebook a source of firms’ innovation?, Information Economics and Policy, Vol. 60, 2022. (Journal Article)
Social media open up new possibilities for firms to exploit information from various external sources. Does this information help firms to become more innovative? Combining firm-level survey data with information from firms’ Facebook pages, we study the role that firms’ and users’ activities on Facebook play in the innovation process. We find that firms’ adoption of a Facebook page as well as feedback from users are positively and significantly related to product innovations. Our results withstand a large set of robustness checks, including estimations that take potential endogeneity of firms’ Facebook use as well as unobserved heterogeneity into account. Analyzing the content of firm posts and user comments reveals that Facebook adoption is only correlated with product innovations if firms and users actively participate in a discussion, especially when engagement is above-average and comes from both sides. |
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Alex Coad, Ulrich Kaiser, Johan Kuhn, Spin doctors vs the spawn of capitalism: Who founds university and corporate startups?, Research Policy, Vol. 50 (10), 2021. (Journal Article)
We compare individuals presently employed either at a university, or at a firm from an R&D-intensive sector, and analyze which of their personal-specific and employer-specific characteristics are related to their choice to leave their present employer for an own startup. Our data set combines the population of Danish employees with their present employers. We focus on persons who at least hold a Bachelor's degree in engineering, sciences and health and track them over 2001-2012. We show that (i) there are overall few differences between the characteristics of university and corporate startup entrepreneurs, (ii) common factors associated with startup activity of both university and corporate employees are education, top management team membership, previous job mobility and being male, (iii) it is primarily human capital-related characteristics that are related to startup choice of university employees while (iv) the characteristics of the present workplace are the foremost factors of entrepreneurial activity by corporate employees. |
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Luzian Lechner, When to cash in on users: Evidence from mobile apps, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2021. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Simone Brentini, Mental health, financial pressure and entrepreneurship, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2021. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Dennis Glaeser, HRM Practices, Employee Turnover, and Startup Performance, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2021. (Master's Thesis)
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Pauline Affeldt, Reinhold Kesler, Big Tech Acquisitions: Towards Empirical Evidence, Journal of European Competition Law and Practice, Vol. 12 (6), 2021. (Journal Article)
The current policy discussion over Big Tech Acquisitions debates whether merger control needs to be updated to account for the particular features of digital industries. Empirical evidence on the competitive effects of big tech acquisitions is still scarce. Based on product-level data from the Google Play Store, we find that half of the acquired apps are discontinued, whereas continued apps become free of charge but request more privacy-sensitive permissions post-acquisition. To fully evaluate the competitive effects of Big Tech Acquisitions, it is necessary to study the impact on competing apps as well as potential spillovers to competing developers’ other apps. |
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Wolfgang Sofka, Christoph Grimpe, Ulrich Kaiser, Understanding the unwritten rules of the game: Government work experience and salary premiums in foreign MNC subsidiaries, Journal of International Business Studies, 2021. (Journal Article)
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Ulrich Kaiser, Johan M Kuhn, The value of publicly available, textual and non-textual information for startup performance prediction, Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Vol. 14, 2020. (Journal Article)
We use administrative textual and non-textual data retrieved from publicly available archives to predict the performance of Danish startups at the time of foundation. The performance outcomes we consider are survival, high employment growth, a return on assets of above 20 percent, new patent applications and participation in an innovation subsidy program. We consider a base specification that includes variables for legal form, region, ownership and industry in all specifications and add variable sets representing firm names, business purpose statements (BPSs) as well as founder and startup characteristics. To forecast the two innovation-related performance outcomes well, we only need to include a set of variables derived from the BPS texts on top of the base variables while an accurate prediction of startup survival requires the combination of the firm names and the BPS variables along with founder characteristics. An accurate forecast of high employment growth needs the combination of the BPS variables and the founder characteristics. All information our forecasts require is likely to be easily obtainable since the underlying information is mandatory to report upon business registration in many countries. The substantial accuracy of our predictions for survival, employment growth, new patents and participation in innovation subsidy programs indicates ample scope for algorithmic scoring models as an additional pillar of funding and innovation support decisions. |
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Nora Randegger, «The performance of socially vs. commercially motivated entrepreneurs» , University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2020. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Saverio Mauro Olivito, Saverio Mauro Olivito, Hybrid entrepreneurship as a real options process, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2020. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Joel Häseli, How Streaming Shapes Successful Songs: Evidence from Spotify, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2020. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Luka Vucicevic, Luka Vucicevic, Power of Digital Platforms: Streaming and the Evolution of Music, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2020. (Master's Thesis)
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Paolo Neri, Paolo Neri, An analysis of the competitive landscape of European VC funds, with a particular focus on funds that specialize on academic startups, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2020. (Bachelor's Thesis)
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Merkli Marylin, Merkli Marylin, Managing Labor Turnover in Startups, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2020. (Master's Thesis)
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Fabienne Brand, Founder Age and the Social Desirability of Startup Outcomes, University of Zurich, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics, 2020. (Master's Thesis)
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