The Biotechnology industry in Germany and Japan

Biotechnology is considered as one of the key high-technology sectors in the future. It has been increasingly accepted that small, innovative businesses were the major stimulus for the development of this emerging industry. Many studies on new entrepreneurial entrants in biotechnology are mainly addressed to the situation in the United States and neglected developments in other countries. Therefore, the present paper concentrates on two latecomers into the industry of biotechnology, namely Japan and Germany, and addresses the question how different institutional frameworks may have an impact on its emergence. More specifically, we investigate the role of venture capital, governmental initiatives, large companies, and entrepreneurship on the development and current situation of the biotechnology industry. The comparison of the biotechnology industry between two countries against the background of their different institutional settings provides some important insights for management scholars as well as policy makers. --Biotechnologische Industrie,Japan,Deutschland

Don't Fall for Tuning Parameters: Tuning-Free Variable Selection in High Dimensions With the TREX

Lasso is a seminal contribution to high-dimensional statistics, but it hinges on a tuning parameter that is difficult to calibrate in practice. A partial remedy for this problem is Square-Root Lasso, because it inherently calibrates to the noise variance. However, Square-Root Lasso still requires the calibration of a tuning parameter to all other aspects of the model. In this study, we introduce TREX, an alternative to Lasso with an inherent calibration to all aspects of the model. This adaptation to the entire model renders TREX an estimator that does not require any calibration of tuning parameters. We show that TREX can outperform cross-validated Lasso in terms of variable selection and computational efficiency. We also introduce a bootstrapped version of TREX that can further improve variable selection. We illustrate the promising performance of TREX both on synthetic data and on a recent high-dimensional biological data set that considers riboflavin production in B. subtilis

Forecast Errors in Undisclosed Management Sales Forecasts: The Disappearance of the Overoptimism Bias

Previous empirical evidence which evaluated the accuracy of management earnings or sales forecasts consistently revealed these forecasts to be on average signi cantly overoptimistic. However, all studies analyzed forecasts from public disclosures, which are an important signal to investors and analysts and thus possibly biased by strategic considerations. To disentagle whether and to which extent strategic deception or cognitive biases are resposible for this overoptimism, the present study analyzes the accuracy of 6,234 undisclosed, company-internal sales forecasts, which German firms provided anonymously to the IAB Establishment Panel. Quite surprisingly, the study reveals the average forecast to be signi cantly overpessimistic. I propose that the non-existence of a general bias towards overoptimism is due to the lack of incentives to consciously overgloss future prospects in undisclosed forecasts and that overpessimism may be a consequence of loss aversion. --Management forecasts,Overoptimism,Overpessimism,Germany

Periodicity of free subgroup numbers modulo prime powers

We completely characterise when the sequence of free subgroup numbers of a finitely generated virtually free group is ultimately periodic modulo a given prime power.Comment: AmS-LaTeX; 18 page