Research

Working Papers

"Performance Evaluation and Collaboration Matching between Industry and Academic"

Abstract: This paper theoretically studies innovative collaborations, where heterogeneous firms compete for heterogeneous academics. At an interim stage, there is an evaluation of the project, allowing firms to monitor academics and decide whether to abandon the project to avoid the loss from a future failure. This paper considers different evaluation structures and shows that in each case, the equilibrium matching is unique (either positive or negative assortative). Thus, the evaluation structure has important effects on equilibrium matching. Moreover, this paper analyzes the relationship between academic ability and incentives and discusses the robustness of the results.

Work in Progress

"From Rivals to Allies? CEO Connections in an Era of Common Ownership"  with Dennis Hutschenreiter

Abstract: We empirically study the effect of common ownership on firm behavior regarding CEO hiring: the appointment of CEOs who have social connections (employment, education, or club connections) to same-industry portfolio firms' CEOs. Connected CEOs' preferences may align better with common owners' objective of portfolio value maximization,  since these connections can help CEOs to communicate better, facilitating cooperative behavior or the transfer of valuable information among the firms. Our sample contains CEO hiring events of US public firms from 1992 to 2018. A one standard deviation increase in common ownership between a hiring firm and its industry rival leads to a 14.1% increase in the probability that a hiring firm appoints a CEO which is socially connected to the rival’s CEO. In addition, we explore the effect of hiring connected CEOs on same-industry peers’  performance in terms of return on assets, Tobin’s Q, and R&D intensity in a three-year window period both before and after the hiring events. We find evidence that gaining CEO connections with the hiring firms increases the peer firms’ return on assets and Tobin’s Q but decreases R&D. Our results tend to be stronger the narrower we define an industry. These results suggest an anticompetitive effect of connected CEOs.

"Working from Home and Worker's Performance during Covid-19"  with Laura Guillén and Florian Kunze

Abstract: We study the possible interaction effect of the autonomy of working from home and managerial responsibilities and the effect on workers' engagement, performance, exhaustion, and job satisfaction. We use the data as part of the Konstanz Home Office Study and find a negative impact of working from home on the manager's behaviors. It is important for the manager to stay in contact with his/her team members, but the pandemic made it hard to maintain the stability of this connection. Therefore, working from home may only increase the engagement, performance, and satisfaction of those workers without managerial responsibilities.

Publications

"Similar-to-me Effects in the Grant Application Process: Applicants, Panellists, and the Likelihood of Obtaining Funds" 

Abstract: We analyze if and how the characteristics of grant research panels affect the applicants’ likelihood of obtaining funding,  especially if particular types  of panels favour particular types  of applicants. We use the  UK’s  Engineering and  Physical  Sciences  Research  Council (EPSRC) award decisions to test the similar-to-me hypothesis for the first time in the grant context. Our main results indicate that panel members tend to favour more (or penalise less) applicants with similar characteristics to them, as the similar-to-me hypothesis suggests. We show, for instance, that the quality of the applicants is more critical for panels of high quality than for panels of relatively lower quality, that basic-oriented panels tend to penalise applied-oriented applicants,  and that discussions with fewer female members tend to penalise teams with more female applicants. As a whole, we show that similar-to-me effects are simultaneously at work for a  wide variety of functional,  job-related research characteristics as well as for more well-known demographic attributes.

"The Impact of Consumers’ Regret on Firms’ Decisions in a Durable Good Market," Journal of Economics, 139, 125–157, 2023

Abstract: This paper studies how the consumer's anticipated regret affects the firms' pricing decisions and profits in a duopoly market. I consider a two-period game with differentiated durable products, where an incumbent sells a basic version over two periods, and an entrant releases an improved version in period 2, of which the improved features are difficult to assess by the consumers. This ambiguity will lead to regret. This paper focuses on two types of regret: a consumer may regret purchasing in period 1 instead of purchasing in period 2 (action regret); a consumer who waited until period 2 might regret not buying in period 1 (inaction regret). The consumers can anticipate the possible regret, which will influence the consumer's decision-making. The results show that both types of anticipated regret may increase or decrease the incumbent’s profit. In contrast, action (inaction) regret always benefits (harms) the entrant. Besides, the analysis indicates that the improved version's quality may either strengthen or weaken the impact of regret. Moreover, this paper examines the robustness of the results under different setups.

"Education Choices and Job Market Characteristics" with Inés Macho-Stadler, Economics Letters, 223, 110985, 2023

Abstract:  We propose a simple three-stage model where heterogeneous schools compete via tuition fees, individuals with the ex-ante unknown ability make their education choices to (eventually) get a diploma and reveal their ability, and finally the job market determines the assignment of workers to firms and the equilibrium wages. In equilibrium, wages in the labor market and schools’ fees and individuals’ school choices are strongly related. We also analyze the effects of the existence of a public school or a subsidy on social welfare.