The Impact of Compulsory Arbitration on Bargaining Behavior: An Experimental Study

A series of experiments compares bargaining behavior under three different settings: no arbitration, conventional and final offer arbitration. Under no arbitration disputes with zero payoffs were around 10%, while the pie was equally split in less than half of the cases. Under conventional arbitration - where the arbitrator is free in choosing his award - every third negotiation ended in dispute giving evidence for a modified chilling effect. Under final offer arbitration – where the arbitrator has to award to the bargainers either one of their final offers - there was only a small increase of disputes while equal splits have doubled to 80%. The experiment shows final offer arbitration, though having lower dispute rates, to interfer more with bargaining behavior than conventional arbitration where the bargaining behavior was similar to the no-arbitration treatment. Under final offer arbitration, negotiators adjust their bargaining strategy to the arbitrator´s expected award. --Bargaining,Arbitration,Experiments,Fair Awards

Mechanical Engineering: Medium-Sized Companies with Highest Savings Potential

The German mechanical engineering industry, dominated by medium-sized companies, is greatly successful - both on the domestic and on the international market. A first analysis conducted by DIW Berlin reveals that this success cannot be attributed to a better exploitation of potential efficiencies - mechanical engineering is about as efficient as other key sectors (for instance the chemical industry). In fact, despite their obvious success medium-sized mechanical engineering businesses have larger savings potential than bigger companies and even than smaller enterprises in this industry.Data envelopment analysis, German engineering firms, Efficiency, Firm size

"I Want to, But I Also Need to": Start-Ups Resulting from Opportunity and Necessity

When unemployed persons go into business, they often are characterized as necessity entrepreneurs, because push factors, namely their unemployment, likely prompted their decision. In contrast to this, business founders who have been previously employed represent opportunity entrepreneurs because pull factors provide the rationale for their decision. However, a data set of nearly 1,900 business start-ups by unemployed persons reveals that both kind of motivation can be observed among these start-ups. Moreover, a new type of entrepreneur emerges, motivated by both push and pull variables simultaneously. An analysis of the development of the businesses reflecting three different motivational types indicates a strong relationship between motives, survival rates and entrepreneurial development. We find in particular that start-ups out of opportunity and necessity have higher survival rates than do start-ups out of necessity, even if both types face the same duration of previous unemployment.entrepreneurship, push and pull motives, survival and failure, job creation

Is Entrepreneurial Success Predictable?: An Ex-ante Analysis of the Character-Based Approach

This paper empirically analyzes whether the character-based approach, which is based on the personality structure and the human capital of business founders, allows prediction of entrepreneurial success. A unique data set is used consisting of 414 previously unemployed persons whose personal characteristics were screened by different methods, namely a one-day assessment center (AC) and a standardized questionnaire, before they launched their business. Results are partly unexpected: first, there is almost no correlation between the AC data and the questionnaire. Second, the predictive power of the AC data is slightly better than that of the questionnaire, but lower than expected in theory. Interestingly, for those subgroups where the AC data have low predictive power, the questionnaire does better. Third, when success is measured in terms of employees hired, the character-based approach is a poor predictor.Entrepreneurship, psychological assessment, character-based approach, success prediction

Microlending: Is There Demand for Such Loans in Germany?

A lack of financial means is viewed as a key reason why small businesses fail. Therefore, also in Germany several institutions tried to establish microloans as a financing tool. A first empirical study, building a benchmark for similar studies in Western Europe, shows that about 15 percent of all self-employed individuals would be interested in getting access to microloans. The study also demonstrates that these financial needs exist in target groups different from what was previously expected at least in Germany. Rather than offering microloans to business founders, they should be offered to existing small business owners in specific sectors. In addition, in order to be accepted by entrepreneurs, access to microloans must be available rapidly, with short repayment periods.Entrepreneurship, Microlending, Market research

Is entrepreneurial success predictable? An ex-ante analysis of the character-based approach

This paper empirically analyzes whether the character-based approach, which is based on the personality structure and the human capital of business founders, allows prediction of entrepreneurial success. A unique data set is used consisting of 414 previously unemployed persons whose personal characteristics were screened by different methods, namely a one-day assessment center (AC) and a standardized questionnaire, before they launched their business. Results are partly unexpected: first, there is almost no correlation detween the AC data and the questionnaire. Second, the predictive power of the AC data is slightly better than that of the questionnaire, but lower than expected in theory. Interestingly, for those subgrounds where the AC data have low predictive power, the questionnaire does better. Third, when success is measured in terms of employees hired, the character-based approach is a poor predictor. --Entrepreneurship,Psychological Assessment,Character Based Approach,Success Prediction

Utility-Based Altruism: Evidence in Favour Gary Becker

In Dictator Game experiments where the information status of the recipient varies we find that a certain type of donator tends to reduce his offer when the recipient has incomplete information about the pie size. This result provides new evidence on those approaches on altruism, which assume that the donator takes care for the recipient's utility when making his altruistic choice. --

Utility versus Income-Based Altruism

In Dictator Game experiments where the information status of the participants varies we find that a certain type of proposer tends to reduce his offers when the recipient has incomplete information about the pie size. We also find that a certain type of recipient tends to reject too small offers in the Impunity Game when the proposer has incomplete information about the recipient type. To explain these puzzling results we reconsider Becker's [1974] theory of altruism, which assumes that externalities are caused by other people's utility. When incomplete information about the other person is introduced, it turns out that his approach predicts – in contrast to other theories of altruism - that some altruistic persons will change their behavior as observed in our experiments. Thus, a kind of utility based altruism (and spite as its opposite form) can be assumed as the main principle governing behavior in this class of games. --