Creating Cross Disciplinary Synergies

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Creating Cross Disciplinary Synergies by Bernard
Yeung Abraham Krasnoff Professor of Global
Business Professor of Economics and Professor of
Management NYU Stern School of Business
byeung_at_stern.nyu.edu
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What is International/Strategy research

• Applied social sciences
• No shortage of interesting topics
• Firm level questions that span across
• Multiple economic, social, political systems and
  institutional environment
• Multiple perspectives
• The heterogeneity leads to cross disciplinary
  synergies, particularly in strategy, financial
  economics, and new institutional economics
• Offer insights that enrich traditional fields
• Offer insights that enrich IS
• Yet, make sure that you stand on a solid piece of
  rock

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History

• Trained as an economist (Chicago), went to U of
  Alberta to teach IB
• What is IB?
• Very interesting business questions, discussed
  with very weak or no theories
• Alberta
• Countertrade applies agency theory, signaling,
  sub-game perfect contract theory
• Economic theories meet a phenomenon that begs
  for an explanation
• My first tenure IB and economics
• Michigan
• FDI theories multiple theories not properly
  tested
• Use q theory in financial economics to test an IO
  theory
• Trade theories with absolutely no firm level
  analyses
• Play up firm level analyses to reveal
  rent-seeking nature of trade protection
• My second tenure financial economics and IS

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Recent years

• Travel around the world
• Asian craziness
• Synchronized stock returns
• See what financial economists do not see!
• Too deep into stock prices reflect available
  information
• overlooked functional efficiency
• Does the market as a whole has information
• Does the market allocate resources efficiently
• Too deep into that market model explains stock
  return, but not into that residual in stock
  returns information arrival

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Recent years

• Travel around the world
• Asian craziness
• Dynastic management
• See what financial economists do not see!
• Deeply embedded in their concern on conflicts
  between diffused shareholders and manager
• Not seeing the conflicts between dominant
  insiders and the rest of the society

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New

• Combining uninformed stock prices and dynastic
  management
• Family dynasties destroy capital markets and
  institutions to protect their status quo
• Implications of non-functioning capital markets
  and dynastic management on strategy?
• Including the political free cashflow in China
  and her outward FDI?

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What have I learned?

• Outsider advantage
• Intellectual arbitrage
• Theories waiting for good applications
• Applications create theoretical deepening
• Location heterogeneity
• Solid foundation
• Use basic theories to absorb other disciplines
  theories e.g., repeated use of information
  economics, agency theory, game theory
• Use the basic theories to identify commonalities

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How to build a reputation?

• Curiosity, Read, Attend seminars and conferences
• Co-authors
• Gradual development into journal territories
• Present papers, offer to serve as discussants,
  present papers
• Maintain commonly high standards, do not race
  down to the bottom