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This research uses discrete choice-based conjoint analysis that elicits the preference structure of German citizens when it comes to their timely intention to vaccinate. The focus is on the trade-offs between pharmaceuticals (vaccine) and "non-pharmaceutical interventions" (NPIs) such as lock-downs and social distancing measures, as well as the value of voluntary versus mandatory compliance to the citizens. Our results highlight three critical insights: (a) value of waiting: at 70% effective vaccine, 1/3 of citizens still would prefer to be vaccinated in the next 6 months rather than immediately; (b) costs of NPI constraints: an effective vaccine may come as a solution to compensate for the costs induced by invasive NPI imposed for an extended period; (c) freedom of choice: voluntary compliance is preferred by citizens over imposed measures whether it relates to vaccination choice, lock-down measures, or work location choice during the pandemic. Backing up those findings in monetary value, a quick shot of a 100% effective vaccination is estimated to be worth in the range of 11,400€. Still, the value of the shot quickly falls to no value when effectiveness drops below 50. At the same time, the cost of imposing protective rules lies in the range of 1500-2500€, depending on the rule analyzed. In comparison, the burden of extra complete lock-down and social distancing is about 775€ per citizen per month. As most current vaccines are being proven to have high efficacy, a strategy that selects the most effective vaccine candidates while emphasizing how the vaccine may stop the pain of lasting lock-downs will be appropriate to nudge the population towards vaccination. Control measures that are too restrictive may be welfare-deteriorating, but enough NPI measures must be recommended as long as vaccination adoption is not sufficiently large.

L'intelligence artificielle générative est en train d'envahir les bureaux et les salles de réunion des entreprises, ce qui soulève des questions sur les avantages et les inconvénients de son utilisation dans l'entreprise. La première question fondamentale est de savoir si l'IA générative change vraiment la donne, et est source d’avantage. Nous regardons donc des indicateurs d’intérêt et notamment les gains de productivité associés à trois pratiques susceptibles d’etre affectée par l’IA générative, dont l’écriture de logiciel, la formation de contenu et l’interaction clients. Nous constatons qu’il y a des avantages matériels, ce nouveau moment de l'IA peut sembler un peu chaotique, mais il est certainement en train de trouver des gisements de productivité que le monde de l’entreprise ne peut ignorer. Il n’empêche que ceux-ci varient toutefois considérablement d'un cas à l'autre augurant d’un risque d’une nouvelle fracture numérique (« digital divide »).

Malgré les promesses, le "paradoxe de la productivité de l'IA" est apparu, selon lequel l'adoption de l'IA ne conduit pas nécessairement à des gains de performance importants dans les entreprises. Se focalisant sur un échantillon d’entreprises multinationales qui ont investi dans l’IA, nous montrons que les frictions liées à la qualité et aux compléments de l'IA, peuvent en effet rapidement limiter l'avantage concurrentiel de l’IA. Mais l’inverse est aussi vrai, avec une portion d’entreprises traditionnelles, dans tous les secteurs, qui sont déjà capables de limiter les goulots d'étranglement organisationnels, et exploiter l’IA de manière innovatrice et concurrentielle, menant à des gains matériels de productivité, de l’ordre de 10% par an.

A large focus of digital transformation has been on embedding digitization across organizational functions, but the most successful transformations are often coupled with strategic renewal. A deeper look at successful digital transformations shows that strategic renewal is facilitated by pervasive digital technology adoption, as those technologies are disruptive in nature and help shift the corporate mindset towards a less defensive posture. We derive and discuss the implications of this result for managers and organizations., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Data science has been proven to be an important asset to support better decision making in a variety of settings, whether it is for a scientist to better predict climate change for a company to better predict sales or for a government to anticipate voting preferences. In this research, the authors leverage random forest (RF) as one of the most effective machine learning techniques using big data to predict vaccine intent in five European countries. The findings support the idea that outside of vaccine features, building adequate perception of the risk of contamination, and securing institutional and peer trust are key nudges to convert skeptics to get vaccinated against COVID-19. What machine learning techniques further add beyond traditional regression techniques is some extra granularity in factors affecting vaccine preferences (twice more factors than logistic regression). Other factors that emerge as predictors of vaccine intent are compliance appetite with non-pharmaceutical protective measures as well as perception of the crisis duration.

More than one year after the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared, the profit performance among large companies worldwide has been bifurcating between 1/3 of companies bouncing forward with higher profit trajectory as per before the crisis while the other firms are continuing to suffer a profit shortfall. Such asymmetry in performance in part reflects the large economic shock of the pandemic that takes time to be absorbed, but the probable main cause, we find in this research, is that large companies have been operating at significant gaps to the resilience frontier. The most important dynamic capabilities to support corporate resilience include higher agility, exercise of disruptive innovations, investment in sustainability practices, as well as active play in business ecosystems

This paper analyses the widespread difference in Covid-19 vaccination and Non-Pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) acceptance by the European population and finds that this difference can be clustered in nine archetype clusters. Calibrating a SIR model with control acceptance on Covid-19 pandemics, it is also estimated that three anti-control segments (standing in aggregate for 15% of the population) may be contributing to the entire bulk of the endemism of the Covid-19. While poorly compliant segments have lower risk perception than others, tend to be younger, and less educated, or are more self-centric, trust with respect to media, governmental, and healthcare institutions are significantly shaping control acceptance by the population. In particular, the way to overturn a large set of vaccination “hesitant” (20% of the population), must pass by rebuilding much higher trust in how the current crisis is managed by the government and healthcare system

FOG (« fear of going back to work ») is a new acronym reflecting workers stress to become contamined by COVID-19. In response, firms have been offering protections, extending teleworking as a way to continue to work during the pandemics. Leveraging a classical epidemiologic SIR model, we study how pandemics such as COVID-19 affect labor market, when the labor productivity is tied to the value of interactions, and under wage negotiations. Despite relatively schematic, our modelling highlights that workers participation during pandemics is dependent on reservation wages, and that the final dynamics are also critically dependent on a mix of health and wealth factors such as age, work interactions, workers power, and productivity of interactions. In general, teleworking may be a way to restore work participation, even if teleworking may be less productive, to the extent that the productivity gap can be compensated by a much higher protection of workers.

Despite promising announcements on an effective vaccine, the control of the COVID-19 pandemic is critically dependent on the maximal compliance of citizens to a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI for short). We use statistical clustering to partition European citizens with regards to their perceptive risks and social attitudes during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and find ten segments to predict, both the extent and mix of protective behaviors adopted. Those segments demonstrate a clear divide in the population, with on one extreme, a segment (standing for 8% of the population) that is self-centered and exhibits low self-risk perception as well as low NPI compliance. The other extreme is composed of a segment (11% of the population) that is more socially oriented, and quite responsive to all protective measures. As data are survey-based, we adjust responses based on information gap (by reaction time, RT, measurement) of both worry expression and NPI compliance, to confirm the robustness of our results. Further, we extend the notion of worries to be not only health-related but to include financial risk (like losing a job) as well as psychological worries (e.g., feeling alone, or being unable to meet with family and friends), as they prove to drive different NPI behaviors among the population.

This research updates early studies on the intention to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus among a representative sample of adults in 6 European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the UK) and differentiated by groups of “acceptors”, “refusers”, and “ hesitants”. The research relies on a set of traditional logistic and more complex Random Forest classification techniques to determine common predictors of vaccination preferences. The findings highlight that socio-demographics are not a reliable measure of vaccination propensity, after one controls for different risk perceptions, and illustrates the key role of institutional and peer trust for vaccination success. Policymakers must build vaccine promotion techniques differentiated according to “acceptors”, “refusers”, and “ hesitants”, while restoring much larger trust in their actions upfront since the pandemics, if one wishes the vaccination coverage to close part of the gap to the level of herd immunity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented levels of disruption and stress for workers. Still, little is relatively known about the state of mind of the workforce, even if its well-being is increasingly recognized as a material driver of productivity. This paper encompasses multiple forms of stress - health, economic, social, and psychological - and demonstrates that the workforce has been facing large but differentiated levels and a mix of stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results imply that if human resources practices want to be more effective, they must be more segmented, and enlarged in scope to find an answer to all forms of stress, and not only about health issues. But institutions also matter. In particular, more stressed workers are still hesitant to trust the healthcare system's ability to cure them in case of severe cases of the virus infection, and the segment more at risk perception of job losses, is the least trusting the government actions to handle the COVID-19 crisis.

In the current debate over the Future of Work, there is little discussion about how firms anticipate the evolution of their demand for labor and the related mix of skills as they adopt Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. This article contributes to this debate by leveraging a global survey of 3000 firms in 10 countries, covering the main sectors of the economy. Descriptive statistics from the survey are complemented by econometric analyses of corporate labor demand decisions. The findings are four-fold. First, those are still early days in the absorption of AI technologies, with less than 10% of companies investing in a majority of AI technologies and for multiple purposes. Second, if an aggregate portion of firms anticipates reducing employment as a result of adopting AI technologies, as many other companies anticipate labor growth or reorganizing employment. Third, this reallocation picture holds true when we examine further demand by labor functions and skills, with talent shifting toward more analytic, creative, and interaction skills, and away from administrative and routine-based functions, in line with past trends of skill- and routine-biased technological change. Fourth, a novel to the literature on Future of Work, econometric results on employment change highlight that employment dynamics are driven by related spillover effects to product markets. Higher competition, larger expectations of market (share) deployment may counterbalance negative automation effect on employment dynamics.

With the increasing availability of digital technologies, many firms are planning to develop digitally-enabled business models. Digital technologies can give an impulse to realign strategies through two channels: Initial use of digital technologies may help firms spot their potential and encourage firms to develop digitally-supported business models, or emerging digital technologies may present a threat to firms, who then initiate a process of strategic renewal to relieve the pressure. We study how the adoption of new digital technologies is associated with changes to the strategy of the firm, and how both are shaped by a firm’s perception of the competitive stress created by new technological developments. Using two detailed survey-based datasets on firms’ expectations, adoption and strategy renewal for a wide range of AI and digital technologies, we find a strong positive association between the degree of strategy change and the adoption of advanced digital technologies. This relationship does not seem mediated by the level of competitive stress from digital technology, which is itself strongly associated with strategy change. Our results suggest a tight coupling between (technological) structure and strategy.

The web currently carries vast amounts of information as to what consumers search for, comment on, and purchase in the real economy. This paper leverages a mash-up of online Google search queries and of social media comments (from Twitter, Facebook and other blogs) to "nowcast" the product sales evolution of the major telecom companies in Belgium. A few findings stand out. With an Error Correction Mechanism (ECM) model of sales dynamics, a co-integration relationship prevails between social media valence (respectively, between search query) and telecom operators' sales for both internet and digital television access provision (respectively, for fixed telephony provision). Elasticity estimates on sales are relatively larger for valence than for search queries. The ECM model with nowcasting variables improves telecom sales forecasts by about 25 % versus a naive autoregressive sales model.

The Internet of Things (“IoT”), networks of connected machines and sensors with the ability to monitor and manage objects in the physical world electronically, has substantial economic potential. IoT technology has a wide range of applications, such as optimizing the performance of industrial operations and infrastructure systems; coordinating self-driving cars; managing the energy efficiency and security of homes and offices; and monitoring patients remotely. Drawing on a body of research by the McKinsey Global Institute (most notably, The Internet of Things: Mapping the value beyond the hype, June 2015), this chapter finds that the IoT could generate anywhere from $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion in annual economic impact by 2025. We arrive at these figures through a bottom-up quantification of economic surplus that examines multiple use cases clustered in nine types of settings where IoT technology has relevance. We also highlight some of the fundamental enablers that will be necessary for this value to be realized, including industrial adoption, interoperability standards, cybersecurity, and regulatory certainty regarding issues such as data sharing and liability. While these factors are not yet certain, we conclude that the current hype of IoT is somewhat justified. Indeed, if these issues are resolved quickly and fully, the eventual economic value may exceed current expectations.

Scholars have been investigating the quick emergence of digital platforms, essentially through the lens of digital native firms. If there is limited occurrence of platforms launched by incumbent firms such as Daimler (Car2Go, Moovel) or Johnson Controls (Panopix), the economics of their strategic responses through platforms by incumbents merit attention. This paper provides the first large-scale empirical evidence on the incidence, nature and profitability of incumbent platforms. Our contribution is threefold: (1) only 10 to 30% of incumbent firms have already engaged in some platform play, with substantial heterogeneity across industries, however; (2) incumbent firms engage in such strategies with a strong focus on their supply chain, suggesting that their platform initiatives are biased toward supply-side economies of scale, rather than demand-side; and (3) platform strategies contribute to revenue and/or profit growth only when they are combined with a priority attached to the demand-side of the business (i.e. customers, instead of the supply chain), typically through the unbundling or rebundling of products or services, and are part of an offensive digital strategy at scale. These results are robust to a Heckman-selection equation and a number of changes to the specification and key measures.

How valuable, and, at the same time, how respective of privacy is the web? This paper uses conjoint techniques to assess how online users make the trade-off between use of free online applications and the desire to protect their privacy. While a large number of web users are indeed greatly concerned by cyber-privacy issues, I find that the value users are willing to pay to ensure their privacy protection is only several euro per month — an order of magnitude below the value users extract from using currently mostly ad-based, free online applications such as Facebook and Google. I further show that value for privacy is not homogenous in the online user population. I identify seven segments with different trade-offs between the value of cyber-privacy protection and use of online applications.

This paper looks at how collaborative technologies are being adapted inside the enterprise, based on global field research involving more than 2,800 executives, and enriched by an online board discussion contrasting motivations of early versus late adopters of ‘enterprise 2.0’. It is observed that ‘enterprise 2.0’ diffusion is relatively rapid and that one key rationale of adoption is to leverage new dimensions of collaborations that can form the basis for a new source of competitive advantage. While there is evidence of large pay-offs from the use of ‘enterprise 2.0’, the key challenge lies not in the promise of the technology, but more into superb execution — the paper closes with a set of key themes for successful implementation.

Why are so many on-line banking ventures—start-ups and incumbents alike—foundering? An industry which can theoretically conduct such a high proportion of its transactions electronically would seem well suited to a rapid move on-line. Yet, the rate at which customers around the world are adopting Internet banking remains relatively low; and furthermore the capability to convert or acquire customers on-line varies enormously among banks. This paper attempts to analyze and compare possible drivers of customer acquisition and conversion for European on-line banking at the light of various theories of bank innovations. The econometric model is consistent with “pull” market features playing a significant role, but only for customer conversion . In contrast, bank-specific factors are largely the driver for on-line customer acquisition strategy, especially organizational link to on-line activities and bank size. All in all, this paper confirms that, consistent with the strategic management literature, an “attacker” versus “conversion” strategy obeys significantly different paths, but also that some banks are notably better in executing their strategy than others, on-line.

This paper extends the recent literature, e.g. Leahy and Montagna (Economic Journal 110: 80–92, 2000), in relation to the link between unionization, inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and country welfare in an oligopoly market structure. It is shown that the common results, that unions may reduce welfare under FDI while multinational enterprises (MNEs) will strictly trade off union wages at each location, are generally driven by the assumption relating to the scope of the bargaining with the union, namely the ‘right to manage’ (RTM). In particular, our extension to efficient bargaining (EB) demonstrates that union power may increase welfare in the presence of FDI, while the MNEs’ choice between FDI and exports will include profit-sharing arbitrage with unions, in addition to the usual wage comparison considerations.

Digitization is claimed to disrupt a growing number of industries, even if to date, limited empirical evidence is made available to assess the magnitude of this phenomenon and types and pay-offs of...

This paper analyses the decision by firms under Cournot oligopoly as to recognize unions in order to gain market power despite higher costs. Considering classical models of union–firm bargaining, namely right-to-manage (RTM) and efficient bargaining (EB), we show that, for a sufficiently low level of union power EB firms might adopt cost-raising strategies. This theoretical prediction is compatible with some empirical evidence in favour of EB, and adds to the theoretical finding that EB might dominate RTM under unionized Cournot–Nash oligopoly. It also suggests closer antitrust scrutiny as whether unions can provide cartel-like services to oligopoly firms, allowing them to distort product market competition at the expense of consumers.

Virtual communities are a prominent business model of the World Wide Web, as they can combine reach and selectivity based on user needs. Not only do virtual communities fill a strategic niche – they also tend to have a stronger operational performance than other B2C business models in their early stage of development, according to a confidential sample of Internet-based companies participating in the e-performance line of McKinsey & Company. In spite of these encouraging results, virtual communities must continue to increase their performance, in particular cost-effectiveness, steadily along their life cycle in order to ensure strong value creation for the long term.

This article analyzes the optimal choice of union–oligopoly bargaining agenda (i.e., Right-to-Manage versus Efficient Bargaining) under possible market entry. It is shown that agreement by both the union and the incumbent firm about Efficient Bargaining emerges as equilibrium in Nash strategies, even more so under non-blockaded entry for deterrence motives. This is consistent with the common empirical findings that unionized firms do not behave according to the prediction of the Right-to-Manage model that employment will be on the labor demand curve. The entry deterrence effect highlighted in this paper also suggests that labor market organization should not be overlooked as a component of the welfare analysis of product market competition.

This article examines the properties of wage and profit-sharing contracts in a model of oligopoly with capital market equilibrium. While profit-sharing contracts dominate market wage contracts, profit-sharing also reduces the firm's cost of equity capital under fairly broad conditions of oligopoly, by enforcing lower costs in exchange for a pre-determined share of cash-flows to workers. This form of operational leverage both reinforces the classical effect of market power on systematic risk and the impact of profit-sharing on the corporate finance of the firm, as previously suggested by Ichino (1994, European Economic Review 38, 1411–1422).

This paper reexamines the relationship between the Marshall-Lerner (M-L) condition and the effects of exchange-rate movements on the trade balance, by integrating the role of product-market structure and the related issue of strategic interaction on tradeables prices and international flows.

This article analyzes the consequence of introducing union-firm contractual agreements in the theory of the firm under uncertainty. Generalizing the works on the labor-managed firm, it is shown that the risk-averse firm produces more than the risk-neutral firm, or the firm operating under certainty as long as equilibrium employment is negatively related to union wages, that is, when union power over wages is higher than that over employment.

This paper develops a simple model as to why unionized Cournot firms acting non-cooperatively in the product market may find it optimal to commit to bargaining outcomes with their specific union, which are off the labor demand curve, hence restricting their behavior to non-profit maximizing practices in their product markets. The prediction that power over labor conceded strategically to the union by the firm is negatively linked to union wage power is not rejected on a panel of Belgian firms as well as the prediction that the union bargaining power can be affected by product market structure and other variables affecting union wages.

This paper shows how strategic managerial incentives weaken union power at Cournot-Nash duopoly equilibrium , although, because of a prisoner's dilemma, unions are not averse to those contracts. Thus, one should question whether oligopolists automatically maximize profits when bargaining with trade unions.

This chapter draws on findings from a unique global survey to analyze how Enterprise 2.0 has been adopted in developing economies and how much it contributes to individual company performance. Two results stand out. While the use of social technologies by companies is gaining momentum, adoption remains patchy and still lags in developed countries. Nevertheless, clear evidence exists that Enterprise 2.0 in developing countries, when used at scale, lifts company performance, especially when integrated into workflows and when companies redefine their processes and operating models through social technologies.

This research uses a unique survey on innovation conducted in Belgian high-tech industries to investigate (a) the effects of managerial efficiency on the firm's innovative activity; and (b) the effects of controlling explicitly for managerial efficiency on the Schumpeterian-like relationship that firm size and market concentration are both conducive to innovation. The key findings are: managerial efficiency is an important determinant of the firm's innovation performance; only when one controls for managerial variables considered as success factors for innovation, the Schumpeterian effect of the impact of the firm's market share emerges for a wide range of measures of performance, which confirms Rothwell's suggestion [18] that small firms have a advantage in the management of their innovation.

This paper leverages the interface Google Insights for Search to 'nowcast' Belgian macro-economic indicators such as retail consumer spending and unemployment. Using a general ECM framework, the analysis demonstrates that economic fluctuations correlate with Google search intensity. In particular, a 10 percent increase in the intensity of search tends to increase retail spending and unemployment claim fluctuations by about 0.5 and 0.4 percent (respectively) in the same month, for a total effect culminating after one quarter of about 2 and 1 percent, respectively. Disaggregating retail sales by sub-category, such as food or apparel sales, we found similar estimates of search elasticities to sales fluctuations. Additionally, we find that for food retailing, search queries also correlate with level, on top of fluctuations of sales. In general, search queries explain between 16 to 46 percent of the variance in fluctuations in retail sales and unemployment in Belgium for the period 2004 to 2011.