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Video games are considered as a leisure activity that makes being unemployed more attractive than before. In this study, the authors use eSports prizes as a proxy for the popularity of video games to analyze its influence on total and youth unemployment.

The authors develop a theoretical model and empirically test it using the total prize money won by representatives of a country in a given season in eSports tournaments, via a panel regression model with the country-year as a unit of observation. The data set includes information about 191 countries between 2000 and 2015.

The authors’ results of regression analysis show a positive influence of the popularity of video games on the unemployment rate. In addition, the authors analyze this effect for countries with different levels of income and labor productivity. The authors found a significant inverse relationship between income level and the effect of the popularity of video games on total and youth unemployment.

While previous studies rely mostly on self-reported data, the authors suggest a new approach to measure video game popularity. This paper contributes to existing knowledge with empirical evidence on how leisure activities affect unemployment at the country level.

This study explores company strategies for intangibles. The authors investigate whether it is reasonable for companies to intensify intangibles when the current strategy is not intangible-intensive. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate a theoretical model to describe the strategic decision making in companies.

The authors use the Bellman-equation framework to find the conditions under which a change in strategy for intangibles is reasonable.

The results determine the parameters of returns on intangibles in different strategies, the optimal intangible stock and the influence of external economic shocks. The findings of the study demonstrate that many requirements have to be met to make intangible-intensive strategy beneficial for a company. Moreover negative shocks of crises force a company to postpone a new strategy on intangibles.

This research provides an insight into strategic behavior of companies under uncertainty. The theoretical findings demonstrate under which conditions companies should decide to switch to a strategy more intangible-intensive. This model can be used to empirically test parameters of different investment strategies of companies using structural estimation techniques.

This work contributes to the theory of managerial economics giving closed form solutions for the dynamic optimization of company behavior. The findings also show how this behavior might change when economic crises are faced or expected.