The paper provides a niche model for the lack and emergence of ethnic party fragmentation under different demographic conditions. The predictions are tested against the findings of Stroschein (2011) on Hungarian ethnic party success at municipal elections in three Romanian counties.

In populations of human organizations (e.g. firms) that operate in cultural niches (markets), size differences are usually large. As large organizations can in principle out-compete small ones, the actual presence of many small organizations asks for an explanation. In ours, we focus on the...

Imitation of first-mover firms in opting for a merger or acquisition (M&A) facilitates merger-wave formation. Empirical evidence suggests that, under uncertainty of outcomes, firms regret more not following their rivals’ strategy than possibly failing jointly by copying it. We explore the...

Chinese employers practice extensive personal screening of job applicants. This study identifies four manifestations of this practice by motive – statistical, customer taste-based, employer taste-based, and regulatory – and evaluates their prevalence, economic determinants and implications...

Real-life utility networks such as smart grids, pipelines and water networks can be exposed to safety and security related risk. Preventative measures can be applied to mitigate such risks that may result in service interruptions for the users of these networks. An index of (dis)connectivity,...

In this paper, the multiple travelling salesperson problem with hotel selection (m-TSPHS) is presented. This combinatorial optimisation problem is a generalisation of both the travelling salesperson problem with hotel selection (TSPHS) and the multiple travelling salesperson problem (m-TSP). As...

In this paper we present a heuristic framework that is based on mathematical programming to solve network design problems. Our techniques combine local branching with locally exact refinements. In an iterative strategy an existing solution is refined by solving restricted mixed integer programs...

Stated choice experiments are conducted to identify the attributes that drive people's preferences when choosing between competing options of products or services. They are widely used in transportation in order to support the decision making of companies and governmental authorities. A large...

Intermittent power sources enable firms to reduce costs by horizontally subcontracting generation. Dispatchable units serve as a strategic device, even when never used, since their availability credibly limits the price paid for subcontracting. Security of supply measures motivated by too low...

We present an effective scheduling heuristic for realistic production planning in a petrochemical blending plant? The considered model takes into account orders spanning a multi-product portfolio with multiple bills of materials per product, that need to be scheduled on shared production...