Contributions in Merlin

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When not every facet of a transaction can be contracted upon and transacting parties' payoffs are asymmetric, low-powered incentives for those facets of the transaction that can be contracted upon may be necessary to avoid too large a distortion in those facets that cannot be contracted upon (Barzel, 1982, 1997; Hansmann, 1996; Holmstrom and Milgrom, 1991). Distinguishing between different types of capital (financial, physical, intangible), different forms of incentives (performance pay, organizational form, ownership), and different transacting pairs (manager/shareholder, supplier/buyer, customer/firm), and using a model of investment developed by Falkinger (2014), we extend the preceding insight to explain partnerships, mutuals, cooperatives, government ownership, and vertical integration. Distinguishing between resource allocation and resource creation, we show that resource creation calls for higher powered incentives than does resource allocation. Allowing for diversification-induced economies of scale in the use of capital, we establish the result that larger, more diversified firms offer higher-powered incentives. Finally, allowing for the partial contractibility of investment and the use of capital, we show that the former decreases the power of incentives whereas the latter increases that power, thereby providing a combined explanation for the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century rise of large military and civilian bureaucracies and the more recent outsourcing of products and services previously sourced internally. Our results suggest that the recognition of the multiple facets of most transactions can help explain numerous institutional arrangements, as well as the apparent lack of disadvantage of low-powered-incentives organizations competing with their high-powered-incentives counterparts (Bohren and Josefsen, 2013; Hansmann and Thomsen, 2012).

This paper empirically examines how suspense and surprise explain demand for entertainment. We use the Wimbledon Championships tennis tournament as a natural laboratory. This setting allows us to both operationalize suspense and surprise using the audience's belief about the final outcome of the match and observe of the demand for live entertainment using TV audience figures. Using 8,563 minute-by-minute observations from 80 matches between 2009 and 2014, our fixed-effects estimates show that both suspense and surprise are driving forces behind media entertainment demand. Our results have important implications for the design of entertainment content to maximize entertainment demand.

Previous organizational research on decoupling in the context of socio-environmental governance has suggested a trade-off between compliance and goal achievement, meaning that remedying the decoupling of policies and practices tends to jeopardize efforts to remedy the decoupling of means and ends. We expand on previous research on the trade-off between compliance and goal achievement by examining the spatiotemporal processes of sensemaking by which the meaning of compliance and achievement is negotiated among multiple actors. Taking a qualitative analytical approach we examine the evolution of anti-corruption policies at Siemens and affiliated actors, and describe how different anti-corruption narratives have developed over time at different locations and how they have been linked to each other. We explain that through narration actors develop a shared understanding of what it means to be compliant and successful and elaborate how the apparent tension between compliance and goal achievement is dissolved through story-telling. Our study contributes to decoupling re-search by examining the ideational-communicative dynamics underlying the social deconstruction of the compliance-achievement gap.

Sustainable investing (SI) has lately been viewed as a mainstream investment style. However, this notion can be questioned since private investors appear substantially underrepresented in SI compared to institutional investors. In this study, we empirically explore SI-barriers for private investors. We provide insights from interviews with High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs), an economically highly significant yet secretive and thus little researched segment of private investors. Our results indicate substantial interest in SI amongst HNWIs, while the perception of what SI entails varied across individuals. From our analysis, we propose three specific SI-barriers. The first is an SI-information asymmetry based on investment advisors’ perception that appears to misinterpret clients’ interest in SI. The second relates to HNWIs’ perception of SI to be more volatile then average investments. This perception limits the engagement in SI in situations where the investor has a short-term investment horizon. The third barrier highlights the role of recent financial losses. In situations where the investor experienced such losses, the perception of SI as being more volatile than average investments results in less SI engagement. We reflect on these empirical results by drawing on insights from Prospect Theory and propose avenues for future research. In sum, this paper shows that investors’ cognition of SI appears to be an important engagement reason that goes beyond the usual business-case-arguments.

In this paper we develop a one-factor non-affine stochastic volatility option pricing model where the dynamics of the underlying is endogenously determined from micro-foundations. The interaction and herding of the agents trading the underlying asset induce an amplification of the volatility of the asset over the volatility of the fundamentals. Although the model is non-affine, a closed form option pricing formula can still be derived by using a Gauss-Hermite series expansion methodology. The model is calibrated using S&P 500 index options for the period 1996-2013. When its results are compared to some benchmark models we find that the new non-affine one-factor model outperforms the affine one-factor Heston model and it is competitive, especially out-of-sample, with the affine two-factor double Heston model.

This paper proposes a new measurement for the specificity of occupations based on a content analysis of training curricula that we link to labor market demands. We apply Lazear’s (2009) skill weights approach and test predictions on labor market outcomes derived from his theory. We find clear evidence of a trade-off between earning higher returns with more specific training and higher occupational mobility with less specific training. Our measure improves the micro-foundation of human capital specificity and provides an evidence-based approach to evaluate the specificity of training curricula.