Purpose: The study aims to investigate the effect of cultural alignment and value congruency between children and founder on intergenerational succession and on the observation of family optimal outcomes.Design/methodology/approach: A game-theoretical approach is used to develop a sequential game modeling the strategic interactions behind successor selection. The authors test its main predictions by conducting an experiment with 75 subjects.Findings: A theoretical prediction that misalignment between children and founder leads to outcomes without intergenerational succession, or to outcomes with intergenerational succession that are not family optimal. These predictions are buttressed by our experiment, which also found evidence that the family optimal outcome is focal when there are multiple equilibria.Research limitations/implications: No light is thrown on the sources of cultural (mis)alignment, but only on some of its consequences. Further studies of a different nature are needed to better understand the former.Practical implications: Cultural diffusion and value congruency within the family should be timely fostered to promote harmony during the succession process and raise the chances of successful succession.Originality/value: The cultural alignment and value congruency between incumbent and successors is treated as shaping the incentives that both types of agents face in the successor-selection process. Further, experimental techniques have not been used to test the results obtained in games exploring issues in family firm succession. This paper aims to begin filling this gap.

This paper aims to analyze the impact of corruption on firm innovation in Portugal, using data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys on 1062 firms for 2019. We employ regression analysis and instrumental variables techniques to account for endogeneity in the corruption variable. Our results show that corruption fosters innovation in Portugal, regardless of the dependent variable we use to measure innovation. We have also analyzed the effect of corruption on innovation in foreign and domestic firms. While corruption boosts innovation for domestic firms, we found that the effect is not statistically significant for foreign firms. Our conclusions are of interest to policymakers, as any measure intended to fight corruption should consider its impact on firm performance. As this article shows, such an impact need not be negative. Nevertheless, if mitigating the impact of corruption is still intended, our results indicate that measures promoting foreign direct investment could help achieve this.

In this article, we study the enrollment decision of candidates to Portuguese public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). We classify candidates according to their revealed preference for regional mobility and measure the impact of their mobility status on the likelihood of enrollment. For instance, candidates succeeding to be placed in their home district are about fourteen percentage points more likely to enroll than those pushed away. We also show that distance deters enrollments, even for candidates that reveal a preference for migrating. Finally, we measure the impact of the availability of private sector alternatives in the home district on the likelihood of enrollment and show that their existence reduces the likelihood of enrollment by up to nine percentage points.

Implicitly, the Socialist Calculation Debate is about the connection between neoclassical theory and reality. It involves several ontological presuppositions, with wide-ranging implications. Our purpose is to discuss one of these presuppositions. We want to scrutinise the conception, implicit in the ‘market socialist’ arguments, that things have economic roles or functions independently of the social environment in which they exist. Primary factors and techniques of production are taken to exist independently of social arrangements; jointly with consumer preferences, they are supposed to define the economic problem of a community. In criticising this conception, we borrow from F. A. Hayek, complementing his reflections with those of Donald Davidson, Tony Lawson and others. We also discuss a second problem, which follows directly from the first: if, in contrast with the market socialists’ conception, the economic roles of things depend holistically on complex social processes, how can we compare alternative forms of economic organisation?

The rise of cryptocurrencies over the past decade has promised to challenge the dominance of fiat money systems and reshape monetary policy. However, recent developments, including market volatility and the collapse of key exchanges like FTX, have eroded public trust, raising skepticism of a feasible transition to a crypto-based monetary system. This paper explores why cryptocurrencies have not met the expectations of their proponents, particularly those who saw them as a step towards Friedrich Hayek’s vision for competitive currency issuance. While cryptocurrencies reflect some aspects of Hayek’s model, their instability—especially in Bitcoin-like assets—undermines their role as a reliable alternative to fiat money. The paper also considers how central bank independence and regulatory gaps further hinder the development of a robust cryptocurrency framework. Despite the continued relevance of Hayek’s ideas in today’s monetary landscape, the entrenched structures of modern central banks and the rise of Central Bank Digital Currencies suggest that a decentralised currency order remains unlikely in the near future.