The role of institutions as determinants of rent seeking success is well established. In this paper, we focus on institutions that have received little attention in the literature, namely electoral institutions. We examine three measures of electoral institutional structure that are hypothesized...

This paper explores the integration of emerging countries into the global system of innovation, as a channel for their technological catch-up. Using data on the innovative activity in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry, we analyze the geographic dispersion of inventor networks linked to China,...

Societe Suisse de Microelectronique et d'Horlogerie (SMH) was formed in 1983 by merging the two leading Swiss watch groups, SSIH and ASUAG. SMH and its main brand, Swatch, was the outcome of crisis for the Swiss watch industry. In a few short decades, foreign competitors with superior technology...

The actions that individuals take to minimize the impact of risk generally involve cost. Thus, the actions that provide insurance often provide signals with regard to the individuals' underlying quality characteristics. Since the same action affects risk exposure and signals quality, individual...

Scientific research is a crucial success factor for knowledge intensive firms and is often a joint effort of scientists and managers. However, scientists and managers belong to different “professional guilds,” subscribing to different belief systems and valuing different types of incentives....

In this article, we make two important contributions to the literature on clusters. First, we provide a broader theory of cluster connectivity that has hitherto focused on organization-based pipelines and MNE subsidiaries, by including linkages in the form of personal relationships. Second, we...

We argue that the creation of new knowledge is both difficult and rare. More specifically, we posit that the creation of new knowledge is dominated by a few key insights that challenge the way people think about an idea; generating high interest and use. We label this the homerun hypothesis. Using...