The authors study the takeoff of 16 new products across 31 countries (430 categories). They test the effect of 12 hypothesized drivers of takeoff using a parametric hazard model. The average time-to-takeoff varies substantially across nations, cultural clusters, product class, and calendar time. On this metric of time-to-takeoff, Japan, is the most innovative country, followed by the Nordic countries and Anglo American countries. Newly developed countries of E. Asia (e.g., South Korea) are more innovative than established economies of Western Europe (e.g., Italy). The authors find that takeoff is driven by culture and wealth plus product class, product vintage and prior takeoffs. Most importantly, time-to-takeoff is shortening over time and converging across countries. The authors discuss the implications of these findings.

Although the relationship between religion and economic development on the macro-level has been investigated, it is less clear how religious background influences economic attitudes and financial decision-making on the level of the individual or household, the micro-level. We use panel data from the extensive DNB Household Survey, covering the period from 1995 to 2008, to investigate whether – and through which channel – religious denomination affects household finance in the Netherlands. We find evidence that, in general, religious households care more about saving, are more risk-averse, consider themselves more trusting, have a more external locus of control, and have a stronger bequest motive. Furthermore, Catholics and Protestants have longer planning horizons, and Protestants and Evangelicals seem to have a greater sense of individual financial responsibility. Most of these factors matter for household financial decision-making, albeit to differing degrees. Using our religion variables as instruments for economic attitudes (and controlling for demographic and background risk characteristics), we demonstrate that the above-mentioned differences in economic beliefs and preferences explain the higher propensity to save by religious households in general and the lower investments in risky assets by Catholic households.

and International Merger and Acquisition Activity This study examines the role that CEO overconfidence plays in an explanation of international mergers and acquisitions during the period 2000-2006. Using a sample of CEOs of Fortune Global 500 firms over our sample period, we document a number of demographic and national patterns in the global distribution of overconfident CEOs. We find that the Hofstede measures of national culture partially explain these geographical patterns in the dispersion of overconfident CEOs. We conclude that CEO overconfidence is an international phenomenon, although it is most extensively observed in younger individuals heading firms headquartered in Christian countries that encourage individualism while deemphasizing a long-term orientation in their national cultures. We also find that overconfidence is related to a number of aspects of merger activity. CEO overconfidence helps to explain the number of offers made by a CEO, the