Flexible Labor and Innovation Performance: Evidence from Longitudinal Firm-Level Data

Firms with high shares of workers on fixed-term contracts have significantly higher sales of imitative new products but perform significantly worse on sales of inno¬va¬tive new products (“first on the marketâ€). High functional flexibility in “insider-outsider†la¬bor markets enhances a firm’s new product sales, as do training efforts and highly edu¬ca¬¬ted personnel. We find weak evidence that larger and older firms have higher new pro¬duct sales than do younger and smaller firms. Our findings should be food for thought to eco-nomists making unqualified pleas for the deregulation of labor markets.J5;M5;O15;O31;OSA longitudinal dataset;SMEs;innovation performance;new product sales;numerical flexibility

Flexible labor and innovation performance: Evidence from longitudinal firm-level data

Firms with high shares of workers on fixed-term contracts have significantly higher sales of imitative new products but perform significantly worse on sales of innovative new products (“first on the market”). High functional flexibility in “insider-outsider” labor markets enhances a firm’s new product sales, as do training efforts and highly educated personnel. We find weak evidence that larger and older firms have higher new product sales than do younger and smaller firms. Our findings should be food for thought to economists making unqualified pleas for the deregulation of labor markets.Innovation performance; new product sales; numerical flexibility; functional flexibility; SMEs; OSA longitudinal data

CP Violation and Arrows of Time Evolution of a Neutral KK or BB Meson from an Incoherent to a Coherent State

We study the evolution of a neutral $K$ meson prepared as an incoherent equal mixture of $K^0$ and $\bar{K^0}$. Denoting the density matrix by \rho(t) = {1/2} N(t) [\1 + \vec{\zeta}(t) \cdot \vec{\sigma} ] , the norm of the state $N(t)$ is found to decrease monotonically from one to zero, while the magnitude of the Stokes vector $|\vec{\zeta}(t)|$ increases monotonically from zero to one. This property qualifies these observables as arrows of time. Requiring monotonic behaviour of $N(t)$ for arbitrary values of $\gamma_L, \gamma_S$ and $\Delta m$ yields a bound on the CP-violating overlap $\delta = \braket{K_L}{K_S}$, which is similar to, but weaker than, the known unitarity bound. A similar requirement on $|\vec{\zeta}(t)|$ yields a new bound, $\delta^2 < {1/2} (\frac{\Delta \gamma}{\Delta m}) \sinh (\frac{3\pi}{4} \frac{\Delta \gamma}{\Delta m})$ which is particularly effective in limiting the CP-violating overlap in the $B^0$-$\bar{B^0}$ system. We obtain the Stokes parameter $\zeta_3(t)$ which shows how the average strangeness of the beam evolves from zero to $\delta$. The evolution of the Stokes vector from $|\vec{\zeta}| = 0$ to $|\vec{\zeta}| = 1$ has a resemblance to an order parameter of a system undergoing spontaneous symmetry breaking.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. Inserted conon "." in title; minor change in text. To appear in Physical review

An Experimental Scanning Capacitance Microscope

A fine needle stylus mounted to a three-dimensional piezo system is scanned across the sample in x-and y-direction, while a constant spacing between tip and sample, i.e., constant tip-to-sample capacitance, is maintained in z-direction. This is accomplished by vibrating the tip in z-direction at 1 kHz by typically 0.1 microns and by detecting the capacitance modulation from the shifting of the resonance of a tuned 1 GHz line. The horizontal resolution achieved so far is limited by the tip radius at about 200 nm and the vertical resolution is about 5 nm. The theoretical limits for finer tips are 7 nm and 1 nm for horizontal and vertical resolution, respectively

The impact of Labour Relations on Innovative Output: An Exploration of Firm-level Data in the Netherlands

A growing literature on determinants of innovative per- formance focuses on factors such as market structure, firm size, (regional and international) knowledge spill- overs, R&D collaboration, conditions for appropriation of innovation benefits, and others. This paper contrib- utes to an aspect that is still sparsely explored: The im- pact of labour relations and Human Resource Manage- ment (HRM) practices on a firm’s innovative behaviour. Our empirical findings identify that active HRM policies, including job rotation, performance pay, and high qualification levels of personnel contribute positively to innovative performance

An attention-based view of short-termism:The effects of organizational structure

Debates about short-termism in business tend to center around the role of shareholder pressures and managers’ incentives, while the role of organizational structure remains understudied. In our paper, we adopt an attention-based lens to elucidate the role of organizational structure in directing the attention of management towards pressures for short-term results at the expense of the long term. Specifically, we argue that greater scale of operations, hierarchy, bureaucracy, and workforce flexibility reduce slack resources available to senior managers and increase the complexity of information presented to them in different ways. As a result, the senior managers shift their attention to short-term pressures, which are more easily understood, at the expense of attention for long-term considerations. Analysis based on a survey of senior managers in 3221 private firms in the Netherlands provides support for our arguments

Unstable particles as open quantum systems

We present the probability preserving description of the decaying particle within the framework of quantum mechanics of open systems taking into account the superselection rule prohibiting the superposition of the particle and vacuum. In our approach the evolution of the system is given by a family of completely positive trace preserving maps forming one-parameter dynamical semigroup. We give the Kraus representation for the general evolution of such systems which allows one to write the evolution for systems with two or more particles. Moreover, we show that the decay of the particle can be regarded as a Markov process by finding explicitly the master equation in the Lindblad form. We also show that there are remarkable restrictions on the possible strength of decoherence.Comment: 11 pp, 2 figs (published version

Paramaterizations of inclusive cross sections for pion production in proton-proton collisions. II. Comparison to new data

A set of new, precise data have recently been made available by the NA49 collaboration for charged pion production in proton-proton and proton-Carbon reactions at 158 GeV. The current paper compares this new data to five currently available arithmetic parameterizations. Although a precise fit is not expected, two of the parameterizations do not work very well but the other three are able to provide a moderately good, but not precise fit to the proton-proton data. The best two of these three parameterizations are scaled to the proton-Carbon data and again provide a moderately good, but not precise fit.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures, Accepted for publication in Physical Review