David L. Baumer

Innovative web use to learn about consumer behavior and online privacy

Consumers are more protective of their personal data than most e-marketers probably ever expected. Indeed, any willingness by consumers to provide certain information online greatly depends on whos doing the asking.

The influence of flexibility in buyer–seller relationships on the productivity of knowledge

Abstract This study is the first empirical examination of the knowledge substitution and flexibility effects derived from the relational and resource-based views of the firm. In these perspectives, it is critically important for firms whose strategic value creation depends on innovation and knowledge to develop interfirm knowledge-sharing routines with their trading partners. These routines enable more productive knowledge resources to replace less productive stocks of knowledge, and the effectiveness of the substitution is influenced by the flexibility with which the supplier and buyer firms adapt to the change. Using a sample of entrepreneurial software firms, we find that their productivity increases as their relationships with trading partners become increasingly flexible. Thus, this paper offers evidence that in an innovative, knowledge-intensive industry context, flexibility in interorganizational relationships is an important interfirm resource.

Internet privacy law: a comparison between the United States and the European Union

The increasing use of personal information in Internet-based applications has created privacy concerns worldwide. This has led to awareness among policy makers in several countries of the desirability of harmonizing privacy laws. The greatest challenge to privacy legislation from an international perspective arises because, while the Internet is virtually borderless, legislative approaches differ from country to country. This paper presents a functional comparison between current privacy law in the European Union (EU) and in the United States (U.S.), as such laws relate to regulation of websites and online service providers. In addition, similarities and differences between the 2002 EU Directive 2002/58/EC, Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications, which has been adopted by the EU but not yet implemented, and the proposed U.S. Online Privacy Protection Act, are illuminated. Employing a qualitative approach, we use the Fair Information Practices to organize discussion of comparisons and contrasts between U.S. and EU privacy laws. Our investigation of this topic leads us to conclude that the right to privacy is more strictly protected in the EU than in the U.S. The Online Privacy Protection Act, recently introduced as a bill in Congress, has the potential to significantly affect commercial practices in the U.S. and move the U.S. towards current EU privacy protection laws. This analysis benefits managers as well as security professionals since the results can be used as guidelines in ensuring that an organizations website practices are consistent with requirements imposed by countries with which they exchange information. It also provides information that can guide organizations as they prepare for potential privacy legislation.

Understanding Retained Patronage Refunds in Agricultural Cooperatives

The share of patronage refunds retained by an agricultural cooperative is modeled as arising from the portfolio decision of its median member. The member is viewed as maximizing expected utility by allocating wealth between investments in farming assets and equity in the cooperative. Determinants of the share of patronage refunds retained are the expected rates of return on these two investments, their variances, their covariance, and the expected future share of patronage and its variance. Empirical examinations of aggregate cooperative data and cross-section analysis of seventeen regional supply cooperatives are found to be consistent with the model.

Big-time college sports: management and economic issues.

This article discusses management issues of “big time” intercollegiate athletic programs and examines the detailed athletics budgets of 35 large universities on the east coast. The programs are found to be increasingly commercialized and professionalized, largely a result of their mandate to be self-supporting and the influence of television. Pressures to win, exacerbated by the economic profitability of successful programs, and the relationships between profits, on the one hand, and variables such as graduation rates of athletes and NCAA violations, on the other hand, are explored.

An experimental economics approach toward quantifying online privacy choices

The importance of personal privacy to Internet users has been extensively researched using a variety of survey techniques. The limitations of survey research are well-known and exist in part because there are no positive or negative consequences to responses provided by survey participants. Such limitations are the motivation for this work. Experimental economics is widely accepted by economists and others as an investigative technique that can provide measures of economic choice-making that are substantially more accurate than those provided by surveys. This paper describes our efforts at applying the techniques of experimental economics to provide a foundation for (a) estimating the values that consumers place on privacy and various forms of security (encryption, HIPAA, etc.) and for (b) quantifying user responses to changes in the Internet environment. The contribution of this study is a better understanding of individual decision-making in the context of benefits and costs of making private information available to Internet sites. Preliminary results from a series of pilot studies are consistent with optimizing behaviors, indicating that continued application of experimental economics techniques in the quantification of Internet user actions in privacy/security space will be illuminating. Our results show that Internet users place great value on security measures, both regulatory and technical, that make identity theft much less likely. Our Web-based experiments indicate that privacy- and security- enhancing protections are likely to be subject to moral hazard responses, as participants in our online experiments became more aggressive in their Internet usage with greater protection in place.

Justice Sotomayor on the Supreme Court: A Boon for Business?

In this essay, five business law professors with specialties in five different doctrinal areas analyze Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s jurisprudence in those areas and consider the implications of her appointment to the Supreme Court. Each of the areas, intellectual property, antitrust, securities, ERISA, and employment law, involves an area of federal law of significant importance to businesses. Although employment law also is a matter of state law, this essay focuses on the federal employment law statutes. Based on our analysis, we believe that Justice Sotomayor will approach business cases from a neutral perspective. Overall, we find support for the generally accepted view that Justice Sotomayor hews closely to precedent and uses a careful, methodical approach to her legal decisions and case drafting. We also find support, though, in a number of the doctrinal areas that Justice Sotomayor brings a strong sense of fairness and demand for appropriate process. At the same time, there are indications across multiple areas that she is quite deferential to governmental actors, including agency expertise. Finally, her approach to damages also reflects her sense of fairness with examples indicating a tendency to limit damage awards to the amount of loss by plaintiffs.