The Value Relevance of Forced Top Management Departures

This paper studies the value relevance of management turnover based on a sample of Dutch events. Consistent with previous studies we find weak or insignificant aggregate announcement effects on stock prices. The evidence is in conflict with effective internal monitoring from which positive abnormal returns would result. The hypothesis is that two opposing forces underlie the inconclusive result: (1) A positive real effect of the unanticipated forced resignation of a poor performing manager and (2) A negative information effect if the change signals worse management performance than anticipated. To test the hypothesis, announcement effects on trading volumes are analyzed too. Our conclusion supports the hypothesis: forced management departures are value relevant.top management turnover/resignations/changes; corporate governance; internal monitoring; value relevance; event study.

Ability Dispersion and Team Performance: a field experiment

This paper studies the impact of diversity in cognitive ability among members of a team on their performance. We conduct a large field experiment in which teams start up and manage real companies under identical circumstances. Exogenous variation in - otherwise random - team composition is imposed by assigning individuals to teams based on their measured cognitive abilities. The setting is one of business management practices in the longer run where tasks are diverse and involve complex decision-making. We propose a model in which greater ability dispersion generates greater knowledge for a team, but also increases the costs of monitoring necessitated by moral hazard. Consistent with the predictions of our model, we find that team performance as measured in terms of sales, profits and profits per share first increases, and then decreases, with ability dispersion. Teams with a moderate degree of ability dispersion also experience fewer dismissals due to fewer shirking members in those teams

Risk, Balanced Skills and Entrepreneurship

This paper proposes that risk aversion encourages individuals to invest in balanced skill profiles, making them more likely to become entrepreneurs. By not having taken this possible linkage into account, previous research has underestimated the impacts both of risk aversion and balanced skills on the likelihood individuals choose entrepreneurship. Data on Dutch university graduates provides evidence which supports this contention. It thereby raises the possibility that even risk-averse people might be suited to entrepreneurship; and it may also help explain why prior research has generated mixed evidence about the effects of risk aversion on selection into entrepreneurship.entrepreneurship, jack-of-all-trades, risk, human capital, occupational choice

Ability Dispersion and Team Performance

What is the effect of dispersed levels of cognitive ability of members of a (business) team on their team's performance? This paper reports the results of a field experiment in which 573 students in 49 teams start up and manage real companies under identical circumstances. We ensured exogenous variation in - otherwise random - team composition by assigning students to teams based on their measured cognitive abilities (Raven test). Each team performs a variety of tasks, often involving complex decision making. The key result of the experiment is that the performance of business teams first increases and then decreases with ability dispersion. We seek to understand this finding by developing a model in which team members of different ability levels form sub-teams with other team members with similar ability levels to specialize in different productive tasks. Diversity spreads production over different tasks in order to escape diminishing marginal returns under specialization. The model comes with a boundary condition: our experimental finding is most likely to emerge in settings where different tasks exhibit moderate differences in their productive contributions to total output

Evidence from Sibling Correlations

We assess the broad importance of family and community background for entrepreneurship outcomes. We go beyond traditional, intergenerational associations by estimating sibling correlations in unincorporated and incorporated entrepreneurship using register data from Sweden. Sibling correlations range from 20% to 50%. They are consistently higher for more committed and incorporated entrepreneurship than for less committed or unincorporated entrepreneurship; they are also higher for brothers than sisters. We then assess what factors drive these correlations: parental entrepreneurship, neighborhoods, shared genes and financial resources help explain these high correlations, whereas immigration status, family structure and sibling peer effects have a limited contribution. The higher correlation for incorporated versus unincorporated entrepreneurship is explained mainly by the type of parental entrepreneurial engagement and financial resources, while the gap between brother and sister correlations in unincorporated entrepreneurship is largely driven by the geographic concentration of male dominated industries

Waarde van wetenschap:Observeren, weten en meten

Het is belangrijk en urgent dat de planbureaus de effecten van investeringen in wetenschap systematisch gaan evalueren met een ander instrumentarium. De huidige modelmatige aanpak is daarvoor ongeschikt. De waarde van investeringen in wetenschap wordt daardoor nu niet systematisch meegenomen bij beleidsevaluaties of het evalueren van partijprogramma’s. Hierdoor wordt investeren in wetenschap onterecht als een kostenpost gezien

Risk, balanced skills and entrepreneurship

This paper proposes that risk aversion encourages individuals to invest in balanced skill profiles, making them more likely to become entrepreneurs. By not taking this possible linkage into account, previous research has underestimated the impacts of both risk aversion and balanced skills on the likelihood individuals choose entrepreneurship. Data on Dutch university graduates provide an illustration supporting our contention. We raise the possibility that even risk-averse people might be suited to entrepreneurship; and it may also help explain why prior research has generated somewhat mixed evidence about the effects of risk aversion on selection into entrepreneurship