Publications

Crowd-sourcing of information has become popular in the years since James Surowiecki published The Wisdom of Crowds: why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies, and nations. In sports, crowd-sourced estimates of players’ values and abilities are common, particularly in football where salary information is generally unavailable. The analysis here first considers the characteristics of a good crowd-sourced value then turns to an empirical analysis which applies those characteristics and their implications to assess the quality of the commonly used crowd-sourced values from Transfermarkt. Our empirical results show systematic influences from some obvious factors indicating that the crowd-sourced transfer fees are biased as predictors of the true market determined fees. The findings are useful because they address the question of whether these values can reasonably be used as proxies for unknown salary in academic research. Additionally, because Transfermarkt values are often used in negotiations between clubs and players, it is useful to both parties to know the accuracy and the bias of the crowd-sourced values.

The paper is aimed to analyse the most recent and relevant research on boards of directors in BRIC. Existent reviews on the board of directors do not focus on BRIC and do not consider the specifics of their corporate governance model. Therefore, the current review fills this gap by analysing 111 research papers from Scopus/Web of Science published between 2015 and 2020. Firstly, we provide a content analysis of abstracts to find the most frequent research topics and compare them to the developed countries’ studies. Secondly, based on the content analysis findings, we provide a qualitative analysis of three research directions: board composition, social capital, and board functioning, divided further into ten smaller research topics. Thirdly, we compare the research output with the developed countries’ studies and the statistics provided by the Spencer Stuart Board Indexes to analyse whether they are coherent. The results confirm the topicality of board research in BRIC and overlapping topics between the BRIC and the more developed countries. As a result, we formulate a research agenda for further studies on boards in BRIC.

In this paper, we study choice under uncertainty with belief functions. Belief functions can capture par- tial information by describing what is objectively known about the probabilities of events. State-contingent acts together with a belief function over states induce belief functions over outcomes. We assume that de- cision makers have preferences over belief functions that reflect both their valuation of outcomes and the information available about the likelihood of outcomes. We provide axioms characterizing a preference rep- resentation for belief functions that captures what is (objectively) known about the likelihood of outcomes and combines it with subjective beliefs according to the “principle of insufficient reason” whenever the likelihood of events is unknown. This treatment of partial information yields a natural distinction between ambiguity and ambiguity attitudes. The approach is novel in its treatment of partial information and in its axiomatization of the uniform distribution in case of ignorance. © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Purpose – Video games are considered as a leisure activity that makes being unemployed more attractive than before. In this study, the authors use eSports prizes as a proxy for the popularity of video games to analyze its influence on total and youth unemployment. Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop a theoretical model and empirically test it using the total prize money won by representatives of a country in a given season in eSports tournaments, via a panel regression model with the country-year as a unit of observation. The data set includes information about 191 countries between 2000 and 2015. Findings – The authors’ results of regression analysis show a positive influence of the popularity of video games on the unemployment rate. In addition, the authors analyze this effect for countries with different levels of income and labor productivity. The authors found a significant inverse relationship between income level and the effect of the popularity of video games on total and youth unemployment. Originality/value – While previous studies rely mostly on self-reported data, the authors suggest a new approach to measure video game popularity. This paper contributes to existing knowledge with empirical evidence on how leisure activities affect unemployment at the country level.  

Purpose: The research aims to examine the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on a company's behaviour concerning its human capital. Additionally, the difference in effect for companies with specific human capital is analysed.

Design/methodology/approach: The hypotheses are tested on a multi-industry sample of large public companies from five European countries, using panel data modelling. The index of Baker et al. (2016) is used to measure EPU.

Findings: In the case of increasing EPU on one standard deviation, companies tend to reduce their human capital by approximately 1.7%. Moreover, despite theoretical assumptions, the effect on companies with more specific human capital is twice stronger. The heterogeneity of effect across countries and industries is also present.

Practical implications: Regulators and governments should consciously introduce changes in relation to regulations and decrease the uncertainty of economic policy to stimulate corporate investments in human capital.

Originality/value: This is the first study that considers the mechanism of EPU and its influence on corporate human capital. The results suggest that concerns regarding economic policy cause companies to reduce human capital.

We propose a new solution concept, called Context-Dependent Equilibrium Under Ambi- guity (CD-EUA), for strategic games where players’ beliefs may be influenced by exogenous context-related information. Players’ beliefs about the strategic behavior of their opponents are represented by belief functions. The notion of belief functions allows us to combine ex- ogenous context information in the spirit of Schelling (1960) with endogenous equilibrium beliefs about the opponents’ behavior in analogy to the standard Nash equilibrium. For any finite strategic game, we prove existence of a CD-EUA for any context information and any degree of confidence in it. Moreover, we show continuity of the equilibrium corre- spondence. Finally, we illustrate how CD-EUA can be applied to different types of context information in games by explaining some stylized facts from experimental research on co- ordination.

Business‐like approaches are applied more and more widely in nonprofit organization contexts, and theaters are no exception. Revenue generation, customer segmentation, and personalized marketing are becoming the key managerial concerns. Our study focuses on two relevant aspects of theater attendees' behavior. We examine visitors' willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) for theater seats (to derive revenue drivers), and its difference between two segments – single and couple visitors (to uncover the social motivation effect). These aspects taken together have never been previously studied in the nonprofit marketing context. We model WTP using the actual purchase data from Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre in Russia. Unlike most marketing studies which use stated preference for WTP evaluation, we employ the revealed preference approach. The results verify that single and couple visitors may be treated as separate segments, allowing for personalized promotion and other marketing decisions.

We experimentally compare two natural mechanisms for the collective choice of an allocation of a fixed budget to a number of divisible public projects: the mean rule that implements the average of all individual pro- posals, and a suitably normalized median rule. Theoretical results predict extreme voting behavior in equilibrium under the mean rule and frequently sincere voting under the normalized median rule. Our findings confirm equi- librium behavior under the mean rule in situations in which the equilibrium strategies are easily identifiable. The empirical results for the normalized median rule are multifaceted. While we also find that many individuals play best responses, remarkably these are rarely sincere. Nevertheless, we find that the normalized median rule enjoys significantly better welfare proper- ties than the mean rule.

This research was aimed at analyzing the moderating role of region on the impact of internal and external sources of knowledge on product innovation from a multilevel perspective. This study has made a contribution to the knowledge and innovation management field for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), by analyzing the utilization of internal and external sources of knowledge in rapidly changing environments, such as the Russian business context, with consideration given to regional disparity. Empirical estimations are carried out on the basis of more than 700 Russian manufacturing SMEs, observed in 2018 within the framework of the project, “Factors of Competitiveness and Growth of Russian Manufacturing Enterprises”. Internal and external sources of knowledge were identified through latent variables and a method of hierarchical linear modeling was applied, considering firm-level data nested within different regions. The results obtained, show that in Russian SMEs, when considering the moderation role of the region, internal and external knowledge have a positive impact on product innovation. Moreover, external knowledge contributes more by comparison to internal knowledge. Meanwhile, the region context conditions the strength of the innovation effect for both knowledge sources. The significance of regional conditions in transforming internal and external sources of knowledge into product innovation, requires specific policy elaboration at regional level. Moreover, the dominating role of external knowledge sources for product innovation in SMEs, proves the necessity of specific policy elaboration with regard to the knowledge-sharing infrastructure connecting different business units.

Background and Purpose Despite the continuing efforts in multimodal assessment of the motor system after stroke, conclusive findings on the complementarity of functional and structural metrics of the corticospinal tract (CST) integrity and the role of the contralesional hemisphere are still missing. The aim of this work was to find the best combination of the motor system parameters, allowing classification of patients into three predefined groups of upper limb motor recovery.

Methods 35 chronic ischemic stroke patients (47 [26–66] y.o., 29 [6–58] months post-stroke) with only supratentorial lesion and unilateral upper extremity weakness were enrolled. Patients were divided into three groups depending on the upper limb motor recovery. Non-parametric statistical tests and regression analysis were used to investigate the relationships among structural and functional motor system parameters, probed by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). In addition, stratification rules were tested, using a decision tree classifier to identify parameters explaining motor recovery.

Results Fractional anisotropy (FA) ratio in the internal capsule (IC) and absence/presence of motor evoked potentials (MEPs), were equally discriminative of the worst motor outcome group (96% accuracy). MEP presence diverged for two investigated hand muscles. Concurrently, for the three recovery groups’ classification, the best parameter combination was: IC FA ratio and Fréchet distance between the contralesional and ipsilesional CST FA profiles (91% accuracy). No other metrics had any additional value for patients’ classification.

Conclusions This study demonstrates that IC FA ratio and MEPs absence are equally important markers for poor recovery. Importantly, we found that MEPs should be controlled in more than one hand muscle. Finally, we show that better separation between different motor recovery groups may be achieved when considering the whole CST FA profile.

Abstract. We provide novel simple representations of strategy-proof voting rules when voters have uni-dimensional single-peaked preferences (as well as multi-dimensional separable preferences). The analysis recov- ers, links and unifies existing results in the literature such as Moulin’s classic characterization in terms of phantom voters and Barber`a, Gul and Stacchetti’s in terms of winning coalitions (“generalized median voter schemes”). First, we compare the computational properties of the var- ious representations and show that the grading curve representation is superior in terms of computational complexity. Moreover, the new ap- proach allows us to obtain new characterizations when strategy-proofness is combined with other desirable properties such as anonymity, respon- siveness, ordinality, participation, consistency, or proportionality. In the anonymous case, two methods are single out: the –well know– ordinal median and the –most recent– linear median.

The paper investigates the variety of peer effects on individual performance in a team sport. The individual performance of more than 5,000 soccer players, from 234 teams, between 2010 and 2015, is measured with the help of the FIFA video game simulator developed by EA Sports. The study reveals positive peer effects on individual performance although the marginal benefit decreases. Additionally, team cohesion contributes to an improvement of players’ ranking.

This paper examines people's willingness to separate collection of plastic waste. The study is based on a questionnaire survey of Perm residents and visitors, the data were analyzed using econometric methods. We identified key factors that determine the ecological behavior of people - the importance for a person of the benefits that he carries for the environment, the willingness to devote personal time to measures to protect it and awareness of the environmental harm of plastic waste. On average, all things being equal, an individual's awareness of the environmental hazards of plastic leads to increase the probability of his participation in the separate collection of plastic by 11.78%. On average, all things being equal, the proximity of containers for separate collection of plastic waste increases the probability that a person will participate in the separate collection of plastic by 45.57%. It should be noted that the probability of participation in a separate collection is lower for men than for women, all things being equal. Also, all things being equal, the probability of participation in the separate collection of plastic increases with age by 0.3%. 

In this paper, we rethink the corporate digital divide, a phenomenon not studied in detail in prior research. Motivated by innovation-diffusion, competence-based and skill-biased technical change theories, we hypothesize that all digital technologies’ innovations must be supported by demand for related skills and should be integrated into an innovation cycle. This research is conducted using a vast dataset of 1000 large Russian firms observed over ten years, with information collected from open internet-based sources and processed through content analysis. Among the key findings, the digital-innovation cycle has been explored and visualized, by identifying the most probable period of these innovations and their further diffusion. The digital-divide concept has been explicated by examining data on the relative dynamics of digital skills demanded by the same companies during the period of investigation. The empirical results deliver an interesting insight and encourage us to rethink the corporate digital divide through causality between competency accumulation and digital technological shifts. That, in turn, identifies the conditions necessary for the prediction of demand shocks in relation to digital competencies in labor markets.

Purpose

Focusing on managerial problems related to the measurement of intangibles, this paper develops and validates a hedonic-pricing methodology for the evaluation of the intangible resources of companies obtaining their shadow prices.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper adapts a hedonic-pricing methodology developed primarily for markets in real estate and secondhand cars to define how much intangibles may contribute to companies' market value. A certain calibration of the original tool has been developed to make this methodology appropriate for interpretation and practical use. The main advantage of this approach is that it allows for an evaluation of the shadow prices of intangible resources. These prices can be interpreted as the market value of the intangible resources which are not reflected on the balance sheet.

Findings

The results of this study demonstrate that hedonic pricing with a self-selection correction generates robust estimates. As one can see, the positive contribution of a high endowment of intangibles for all shadow prices is confirmed through estimations using two different techniques. Meanwhile, the negative effect of a low endowment is even more evident for the baseline model. This model shows consistent negative shadow prices for the majority of underinvested intangibles. Brands have the highest shadow prices in the introduced models; human capital, as measured by the qualification of top management and investments in employees, has likewise demonstrated high prices. However, most structural resources seem to be not reflected to a large degree in companies' market value.

Practical implications

This paper brings new opportunities to obtain the monetary value of intangible resources based on estimated market prices of a corporation's resource portfolio. These prices may be used for several purposes – for example, benchmarking for performance management, capital budgeting or knowledge-management practices. Moreover, by having methodological value, this study opens ways to evaluate any other intangibles which are not explicitly discussed in the empirical test of this particular study.

Originality/value

This study primarily contributes to the methodological advancement of evaluation of corporate intangible resources. It departs from the conventional hedonic-pricing mechanism to identify cogent estimates to intangibles in monetary terms. Importantly, this mechanism implies individual shadow prices for specific intangible resources which makes the contribution of this study unique for the existing literature, both within resource-based and value-based views.

Success on many tasks depends on a trade-off between speed and accuracy. In a novel variant, a speed-accuracy trade-off with sample-based decisions in which both speed and accuracy jointly depend on (self-truncated) sample size, we found strong accuracy biases. On every trial of a sequential investment game, participants chose between 2 investment funds based on binary samples of the funds' past outcomes. Participants could stop sampling and decide whenever they felt sufficiently informed. Total payoff was the product of choice accuracy and number of choices completed within the available time (speed). Participants' failure to understand the dominance of speed over accuracy-that speed decreases more than accuracy improves with increasing sample size-led to dramatic oversampling. Our research aimed to examine to what extent metacognitive functions of monitoring and control could correct for the accuracy bias. Experiments 1a through 1c demonstrated similarly strong accuracy biases and payoff losses in psychology and economics students, depressed, and control patients. In Experiments 2 through 4, the accuracy bias persisted despite several manipulations (feedback, sample limit, choice difficulty, payoff, sampling truncation as default) that underlined the speed advantage, reflecting a conspicuous metacognitive deficit. Even when participants faced no risk of losing on incorrect trials but could still win on correct trials (Experiment 3) and when sampling was contingent on the active solicitation of every new element (Experiment 4), participants continued to sample too much and failed to overcome the accuracy bias. The final discussion focuses on psychological reasons and possible remedies for the metacognitive deficit in trade-off regulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Accounting for ambiguity aversion in dynamic decisions generally implies that either dy- namic consistency or consequentialism must be given up. To gain insight into which of these principles better describes people’s preferences, we tested them using a variation of Ellsberg’s three-color urn experiment. Subjects were asked to make a choice both before and after they received a signal. We found that most ambiguity neutral subjects satisfied both dynamic consistency and consequentialism and behaved consistent with subjective expected utility with Bayesian updating. The majority of ambiguity averse subjects satis- fied consequentialism, but violated dynamic consistency.

This article contributes to the development of contestable market theory by investigating how competitiveness in the eSports industry influences the size of this industry, as measured by the volume of monetary prizes. We use data on each gamer's prize earnings for each tournament from 1999 to 2015 to estimate panel vector autoregression (V.A.R.) model with fixed effects. The main finding is that competition does not increase industry size. This result confirms the hypothesis from the contestable market theory that perfect competition does not always facilitate better development, especially in industries where natural barriers result in a small number of leading firms or teams.

Information about companies published in a news feed is invariably tinted by emotional tonality. As such, resulting perceptions may influence the opinion of market players, and consequently affect the dynamics of a company’s share price. This study aims to evaluate various hypotheses about the impact of the tone of news items regarding dividends, capital expenditures, and development on the stock prices of Russian companies. Information disclosure is extensively studied, and there have been limited studies on the effect of disclosures on Russian companies. However, until now, there have been no research studies which verify hypotheses on the influence of news sentiment on corporate share prices in the Russian market.

This analysis was conducted using data from 49 Russian public companies included in the Moscow exchange index over the period from the end of 2017 to the beginning of 2019. To account for the proximate impact of news items on consequential market phenomena, an event study methodology was applied in order to estimate and construct the models of dependency of cumulative abnormal return (CAR) on news tone level, and control for financial and nonfinancial factors.

Our results provide evidence for the positive impact of the tone of news texts on the share prices of Russian companies. The increase in news tone by one standard deviation leads to a cumulative abnormal stock return increase of 0.26 percentage points. This result is consistent with previous research conducted on data from developed stock markets. Moreover, the relationship between the tone or sentiment level of a news item and the stock price reaction is linear, without the diminishing marginal effect.

Our conclusions should prompt companies to invest effort in delivering information in a tonally positive way, highlighting the most positive news. Investors, in turn, should rationally approach the interpretation of published information.