export market performance of oecd countries an empirical examination of the role of cost competitiveness we investigate the relationship between export market shares and relative unit labour costs using a long panel of 12 manufacturing industries across 14 oecd countries we ask how sensitive are export market shares to changes in relative costs and what determines this sensitivity both costs and embodied technology are important but neither can fully explain changing export positions we explore whether residual country specific trends might be linked to deep structural features of economies sensitivity to labour costs is lower in high tech industries and core erm countries industry elasticities have increased especially in industries subject to increasing product market competition

waste performance of nuts 2 regions in the eu a conditional directional distance benefit of the doubt model abstract this paper attempts to benchmark the municipal solid waste msw management performance of the nuts 2 regions in the eu by constructing a composite indicator in order to account for commensurability weighting and aggregation issues of the performance indicators in regional waste and materials management this paper advocates a conditional directional distance version of the benefit of the doubt weighting technique in addition the waste management hierarchy defined by the eu is strongly embedded in the construction of our composite indicator the results reveal considerable differences in the aggregate performance of the regions even within member states in general waste sectors of the nuts 2 regions in austria belgium and germany generally do well in terms of msw management our results also reveal that some differences in the operating environment of the regions such as the number of tourist overnight stays are related to the aggregate performance of the regions however the observation that other conditions are not significantly related to the performance on a regional level is interesting as many policy makers frequently argue that the level of performance in their regions cannot be compared to that in other regions precisely due to this difference in operating conditions

note and comment keynes plus effective demand and changes in firm level r d an empirical note analysing changes over time in firm level r and d efforts we find that demand growth in a firm s sector of principal activity has a positive influence on changes in a firm s r and d effort confirming schmookler s 1969 demand pull hypothesis this finding points to an aspect of effective demand which has never been directly noticed by keynes or the keynesians such findings are important because of evidence in the literature that a firm s innovation activities are positively related to employment growth export intensity and profits

labour market deregulation flexibility and innovation labour flexibility is often portrayed as important to competitive success using evidence from an original survey of uk firms this paper investigates the relationships between firms use of on the one hand various flexible work practices human resource management techniques and industrial relations systems and on the other hand the innovative activities of those firms our results suggest that the sort of low road labour flexibility practices encouraged by labour market deregulation short term and temporary contracts a lack of employer commitment to job security low levels of training and so on are negatively correlated with innovation

generation of household solid waste in oecd countries an empirical analysis using macroeconomic data while there are numerous studies that use household level and community level data to examine the determinants of household solid waste generation rates little empirical work has been previously undertaken using macroeconomic data using a cross sectional time series database of solid waste in countries that are part of the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd we provide evidence on the economic and demographic determinants of generation rates of household solid waste with respect to economic activity and population density the results are largely consistent with results found in previous studies however additional insights are gained on the effects of factors such as household size and composition as well as the degree of urbanization

a heterogeneous conditional logit model of choice aggregate forecasts using mcfadden s conditional logit model of discrete choice harbor the unrealistic implicit assumption of a random utility distribution that is homogeneous across both alternatives and individuals this article relaxes that assumption a choice model is developed that describes the random utility component as a probability mixture model some numerical results illustrate that the derived model is not constrained by the independence of irrelevant alternatives property an experimental test of visual perceptions demonstrates the potential superiority of the model

law finance and innovation the dark side of shareholder protection proponents of minority shareholder protection state that national legal institutions protecting small investors boost stock markets and in turn the long term performance of countries in this paper we empirically challenge this argument we perform three stage least squares estimation on a sample of 48 countries during 1993 2006 and find that countries with stronger shareholder protection tend to have larger market capitalisation but also lower innovative activity we cope with stock market endogeneity and industry heterogeneity and circumvent omitted variables bias so that this finding is unlikely to be driven by misspecification problems the estimation results are interpreted arguing that stronger shareholder protection may depress rather than encourage the most valuable corporate productions because it enables small and diversified shareholders to play opportunistic actions against undiversified stockholders after specific investments are undertaken by the company innovative activity largely based on specific investing is particularly exposed to this problem copyright oxford university press

modeling purchase timing and brand switching behavior incorporating explanatory variables and unobserved heterogeneity the authors use a continuous time semi markov approach to analyze in a single framework the purchase timing and brand switching decisions of households for a frequently purchased product the analysis provides more insights into the dynamics of household purchase behavior than could be obtained from conventional discrete choice models such as logit or probit the authors find that the probability distribution of interpurchase times is not the same for various switching between brands revealing extra information about the purchase timing decisions further they find that though the marketing mix and household demographic variables explain a large part of the variation in the brand switching rates they account for only a small part of the variation in the repeat purchase rates another finding from the analysis is that the rates of switching between brands due to promotional activities such as special displays and price reductions are in reverse order to the share of purchases of the various brands

incorporating demographic variables in brand choice models an indivisible alternatives framework incorporating demographic variables in brand choice models is conceptually appealing and has numerous managerial benefits retailers and brand managers can assess geodemographic variations in demand and marketing mix response in order to implement micromarketing strategies for example a retailer planning to locate a new outlet can get some sense of the differences in demand patterns and price and promotion sensitivities in the new trading area in order to make initial stocking inventory pricing and promotion decisions for existing outlets retailers can fine tune the assortment and merchandising activities in a category to match local market conditions similarly a packaged goods manufacturers would benefit from getting a sense of whether they should stress promotional activity for one part of a brand s product line in some retail trading areas and other parts of the brand s line in other retail trading areas unfortunately a general finding across existing studies is that the impact of demographic variables on brand choice is neither strong nor consistent these findings are puzzling given that one would expect certain demographic variables such as income to have some influence on brand choice behavior moreover hoch et al hoch s j b d kim a j montgomery p e rossi 1995 determinants of store level price elasticity j marketing res 32february 17 29 using store level data find that a relatively small set of demographic variables is much more influential than competitive variables in explaining differences in price sensitivity across retail trading areas in light of such contradictory findings there is a need for a better conceptualization of the role of income and other demographic variables in household purchasing and this is the primary objective of this study this paper presents a microeconomic based framework called the indivisible alternatives ida framework to model household brand choice a key aspect of the ida framework is that it explicitly models alternatives in the market as being indivisible while past work has either explicitly or implicitly assumed perfect divisibility indivisibilities force a household s selection of a brand size and its level of category expenditure into a single joint decision hence demographic variables that influence category expenditure e g income also influence the choice of a brand size in addition since alternatives in the category come in several discrete sizes indivisibilities introduce differences in holding costs in the choice of a brand size combination consequently demographic factors that influence holding costs through consumption rate differences e g household size impact the choice of a brand size in a product category in this manner indivisibilities in market offerings naturally lead to differences in choice behavior across households that can be linked to demographic factors in a logical fashion in empirical applications to two different scanner panel data sets ketchup and ground coffee the proposed framework compares favorably with two benchmark specifications in terms of both goodness of fit and predictive validity the results from these product categories indicate that a household s price sensitivity is inversely related to its income level and that factors such as household size and seasonality which are likely to influence consumption rates make households more or less willing to buy larger package sizes income elasticity estimates from the model confirm that ceteris paribus households with lower incomes will have a higher propensity to purchase private labels and generic brands and a lower propensity to purchase national brands compared with households with higher incomes the micromarketing potential of the ida framework is explored in market simulations conducted for two different zip codes within a metropolitan area that vary with respect to income levels and other demographic factors the results indicate that for the product categories studied there are substantial differences across market areas in their response to the retail promotion of very large and very small package sizes within the same brand s product line the differences in response suggest that it may be beneficial to customize promotional programs to market areas based on their underlying demographic composition finally our findings suggest a link between household income and deal proneness that is conditional on other demographic variables and the expenditure required for the brand size in question specifically we find that smaller households with lower income levels are more likely to respond to promotions for smaller less expensive items within a category while larger households with higher incomes are more likely to respond to promotions for larger more expensive items within a category

evaluating innovation and labour market relationships the case of italy in this paper the link between labour market flexibility and innovation is analysed paying particular attention to the different technological regimes of economic activities and the different geographical areas of the italian economy a dynamic panel data specification is used to assess the endogenous relationship between patents included as a proxy of the innovation and job turnover and wages which represent labour market indicators the results show that higher job turnover only has a significant and negative impact on patent activities in regional sectors of northern italy while a positive and significant impact of blue and white collar wages has been generally found

modes of labor flexibility at firm level are there any implications for performance and innovation evidence for the swiss economy the aim of this study is to define and measure numerical and functional labor flexibility at the firm level and investigate empirically the impact of each of these flexibility modes on performance and innovation measures as well as the interrelationship between them our estimation equation contains besides the classical production factors labor and physical capital information and communication technologies ict capital human capital variables for flexible organizational practices as well as measures for numerical labor flexibility the empirical investigation is based on data for about 1400 swiss firms copyright 2005 oxford university press

what if supply side policies are not enough the perverse interaction of flexibility and austerity abstract in this work we develop a set of labour market and fiscal policy experiments upon the labour and credit augmented schumpeter meeting keynes agent based model the labour market is declined under two institutional variants the fordist and the competitive set ups meant to capture the historical transition from the post wwii toward the post thatcher reagan period inside these two regimes we study the different effects of supply side active labour market policies almps vs demand management passive labour market ones plmps in particular we analyse the effects of almps aimed at promoting job search and at providing training to unemployed people next we compare the effects of these policies with unemployment benefits meant to sustain income and therefore aggregate demand considering the burden of unemployment benefits in terms of the public budget we link such provision with the objectives of the european stability and growth pact our results show that i an appropriate level of skills is not enough to sustain growth when workers face adverse labour demand ii supply side policies are not able to reverse the negative interaction between flexibility and austerity iii plmps outperform almps in reducing unemployment and workers skill deterioration and iv demand management policies are better suited to mitigate inequality and to sustain long run growth

technical change sectoral dislocation and barriers to labor mobility factors behind the great recession abstract the global financial and economic crisis which began in late 2007 great recession is the worst international crisis since 1929 great depression and still affects many countries this paper attempts to determine if the theory of extended crises presented by delli gatti et al 2012 is consistent with empirical evidence the analysis is carried out using two approaches the first part of the paper is purely descriptive and is dedicated to a comparison between structural differences and different patterns of development in six countries france germany italy spain uk and us using data on the major world economies klems and stan since 1970 we show that the fundamentals behind the extended crisis theory apply to these economies we focus particularly on italy germany and the us among large economies italy is one of the most affected and still not recovering even though the italian financial sector appeared to have been less exposed to the 2008 shock than other countries the crisis in italy could be directly connected to the failure of the italian economy to move to an economic system based on more skill intensive production in particular in the service sector as in the us the us financial sector was extremely exposed to the 2008 sub prime crisis but us economy recovered much faster than in many european countries germany is the leading european economy generally considered in european public debate as the example to be followed in the last part of the paper the analysis is broadened involving more countries in a panel analysis approach different specifications of panel probit logit models are presented in a first attempt to investigate the roles of both structural features and financial shock in explaining the extent of the crisis in different countries

investigating heterogeneity in brand preferences in logit models for panel data in analyzing panel data the issue of heterogeneity across households is an important consideration if heterogeneity is present but is ignored in the analysis it will result in biased and inconsi

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

labor market regulation the diversity of knowledge and skill and national innovation performance abstract the diversity of knowledge and skill is an important element of a national system of innovation we propose a theory of how certain labor market institutions affect diversity and through that route affect levels of innovation specifically unemployment protection up encourages diversity by reducing the risk burden of a broad range of learning or human capital investment for that reason up fosters innovation employment protection ep reduces the risk burden of a much narrower range of learning for this reason it will not enhance diversity to the extent up does and it may actually depress overall diversity and innovation our approach differs from previous research on labor market insurance and skill formation much of which has dealt with a distinction between general and specific skills and which has treated the effects of up and ep as similar estimating the effects of up and ep on patenting for 25 oecd countries over 24 years we find a positive effect from up a negative effect from ep and evidence that the up effect is mediated by diversity of skill

removing heterogeneity bias from logit model estimation this paper introduces a new estimation procedure for the logit model that is an extension of a conditional estimation procedure developed by chamberlain chamberlain g 1978 on the use of panel data working paper harvard university 1 52 chamberlain g 1980 analysis of covariance with qualitative data rev econom stud 47 225 238 the method eliminates heterogeneity bias which is present in the estimates produced by traditional estimation techniques it improves the goodness of fit and explanatory power of these models while incorporating purchase event feedback

decoupling waste generation from economic growth a cge analysis of the swedish case abstract over the past decades we have seen the quantities of solid waste increase in close relation to economic growth to tackle this problem of continuing waste growth the eu has on its agenda that waste generation should decouple from economic growth within the eu in the future sweden also has stated a target of non increasing future waste quantities the strength of the policy measures needed to attain this target is here illustrated by comparing the waste intensity outcomes in a decoupling scenario and a baseline scenario of the swedish economy 2006 2030 a computable general equilibrium cge model is used for linking waste generation to firms material input firms production and households consumption when projecting future quantities of hazardous and non hazardous waste in sweden we show that to offset the effect of economic growth on waste generation in the decoupling scenario the intensities of material related wastes must decrease at a yearly rate that is about twice the historically estimated reduction rate used in the baseline scenario the reduction in the intensities of waste related to firms production and households consumption must also be substantial compared to historical estimates

the demand for solid waste disposal in this paper we estimate the elasticity of demand for landfill disposal of municipal solid waste using data from the portland oregon metropolitan area efficiency losses associated with deviations from marginal cost pricing of disposal services are then derived the efficiency losses of small deviations from long run marginal disposal costs are not large however many municipalities finance solid waste services from general tax revenues in which case waste generators effectively face zero marginal costs here the efficiency losses are much larger indicating that communities would benefit from introducing volume or weight based pricing

linear regression estimation of discrete choice models with nonparametric distributions of random coefficients random coefficient discrete choice models are a popular method for estimating demand in differentiated product markets we introduce a computationally simple estimator that uses linear regression to estimate the distribution of random coefficients the estimator is nonparametric for the distribution of the random coefficients we compare our estimator to several alternatives in a monte carlo exercise and find the estimator predicts out of sample market shares well we discuss extensions to panel data and dynamic programming bajari department of economics university of minnesota twin cities and nber 1035 heller hall 271 19th ave south minneapolis mn 55455 email bajari econ umn edu fox department of economics university of chicago 1126 e 59th st chicago il 60637 email fox uchicago edu ryan massachusetts institute of technology and nber 50 memorial drive e52 262c cambridge ma 02142 email sryan mit edu

taste variation in discrete choice models this paper develops an extension of the classical multinomial logit model which approximates a class of models obtained when there is uncontrolled taste variation across agents and choices in addition to the stochastic noise inherent in the logit model unlike semiparametric and parametric alternatives the extended logit model is easy to estimate even when there are many potential choices unlike parametric alternatives it does not require the specification of a distribution of varying tastes the extended logit model can give a quick indication of the impact of taste variation on estimates and it generates estimates of the covariances of the taste shifters it can be used as an exploratory device en route to the construction of a model incorporating a particular form of random taste variation and it can be used to determine whether such effort is required at all when the amount of taste variation is not excessive the approximate model can be adequate itself the model nests the conventional logit model which leads to a misspecification diagnostic a method for estimating the model using conventional logit model software is proposed asymptotic properties of estimators are derived and an application is presented

investigating household purchase timing decisions a conditional hazard function approach the purchase timing decision is an important component of the dynamics of a household s purchase behavior this decision is influenced by marketing and other variables and the modeling of this dependence has recently received attention in the literature in this paper we build on previous studies and develop a comprehensive stochastic model that incorporates the major factors influencing interpurchase times specifically we use a generalized version of cox s proportional hazard model to test among competing probability distributions for the interpurchase times while incorporating effects due to marketing variables observed household characteristics and unobserved heterogeneity across households the empirical finding from analyzing the iri coffee data suggests that the interpurchase times cannot be adequately described by probability distributions such as exponential erlang 2 or weibull the effects of unobserved heterogeneity are significant and they impact the estimates of the effects of the covariates we also find that a nonparametric procedure for estimating the effects of unobserved heterogeneity provides the best overall fit to the data and yields covariate estimates that are more consistent with prior expectations our model is validated by replicating the substantive empirical findings on an additional product category

price induced patterns of competition this research focuses on how price changes influence the observed pattern of brand competition the paper begins with a basic utility model formulation and examines the implications of three major classes of preference distributions on the expected patterns of competition a price tier model is proposed to operationalize the theory and to allow predictive testing the price tier model is estimated on 28 brands across four product categories the results show a specific asymmetric pattern of price competition higher price higher quality brands steal share from other brands in the same price quality tier as well as from brands in the tier below however lower price lower quality brands take sales from their own tier and the tier below brands but do not steal significant share from the tiers above the results are consistent with a bimodal preference distribution with the regular price indifference point being located toward the lower quality end of the preference distribution for the categories analyzed

patterns of work across the oecd market work per person of working age differs widely across the oecd countries and there have been some significant changes in the last forty years how to explain this pattern taxes are part of the story but much remains to be explained if we include all the elements of the social security systems like early retirement benefits sickness and disability benefits and unemployment benefits then we can capture some aspects of the overall pattern but still a lot remains unexplained the story favoured by alesina et al cepr dp 5140 2005 is that the nexus of strong unions generous welfare and social democracy implies both high taxes and pressure in favour of work sharing in response to adverse shocks this story however falls foul of the simple fact that most scandinavian countries now do much more work than the french and germans despite having stronger unions more generous welfare higher taxes and more social democracy ultimately we are forced into the position that there is no simple story some of the broad patterns can be explained but there remain country specific factors which are hard to identify but lead to substantial differences from one country to another

parameter bias from unobserved effects in the multinomial logit model of consumer choice abstract over the past two decades validation of choice models has focused on predictive validity rather than parameter bias in real world validation of choice models true parameter values are unknown so examination of parameter bias is not possible in contrast the main focus of this study is parameter bias in simulated scanner panel choice data with known parameter values study of parameter bias enables the assessment of a fundamental issue not addressed in the choice modeling literature the extent to which the logit choice model is capable of distinguishing unobserved effects that give rise to persistence in observed choices e g heterogeneity and state dependence although econometric theory provides some information about the causes of bias the extent of such bias in typical scanner data applications remains unclear the authors present an extensive simulation study that provides information on the extent of bias resulting from the misspecification of four unobserved effects that receive fr

an economic analysis of household recycling of solid wastes the case of portland oregon abstract solid waste is one of the residuals generated by economic activities faced with rising disposal costs communities are implementing programs to encourage recycling activities this paper investigates the role of price incentives and other socio economic factors in household recycling participation in recycling is modeled as an ordered probit choice using a large sample of households from the portland oregon metropolitan area demand for solid waste collection is estimated using two stage least squares results indicate that increases in disposal fees encourage recycling although demand for solid waste collection services is not reduced substantially

trust contract and economic cooperation after providing a brief overview of the standard economic analysis of incomplete contracts in terms of property rights transaction costs and self enforcing implicit contracts the author shows why in the orthodox view trust is not a pertinent category to their negotiation or effectiveness drawing on various empirical studies which he has undertaken in the area of industrial relations the author develops an alternative approach to the study of incomplete contracts in which the concept of trust is central in this alternative vision boundedly rational agents with limited foresight form provisional judgements about the trustworthiness of their trading partners based on the success of their past encounters a consequence of this alterna tive understanding of incomplete contracts is that there is no guarantee that coopera tion will succeed even when the circumstances appear to promise mutual gain the author argues however that by establishing an appropriate set of procedural rules to guide their response to the unanticipated agents can promote the kinds of mutual learning that contribute to the build up of trust and that increase the likelihood of successful cooperation

work arrangements and firm innovation is there any relationship this study investigates the relationship between labour market flexibility proxied by the proportion of workers with different contractual arrangements and other indicators of flexible work relations and firms innovative ability as measured by the percentage of new products in total sales on the one hand more flexibility e g a higher labour turnover might be favourable to a firm s innovation potential aside from having potential wage savings a larger inflow of new personnel may enrich the pool of firm innovative ideas on the other hand higher work flexibility may also have some drawbacks a permanently high turnover rate may diminish social cohesion and trust and increase the probability of opportunistic behaviour results suggest that internal flexibility is positively associated with innovation for both high tech and low tech firms especially for high tech firms however greater external flexibility might hinder innovation copyright oxford university press

modeling multiple sources of heterogeneity in multinomial logit models methodological and managerial issues we offer a framework to specify and estimate various sources of heterogeneity in multinomial logit brand choice models we let each brand specific intercept and each parameter of the explanatory variable vector vary randomly across households in addition we distinguish loyal households from the rest our results suggest that incorporating multiple sources of heterogeneity improves the model fit and suggests higher impact of marketing mix elements on brand choice we highlight the importance of incorporating multiple sources of heterogeneity the model we implement yields valuable managerial insights

household responses to pricing garbage by the bag this paper estimates household reaction to the implementation of unit pricing for the collection of residential garbage we gather original data on weight and volume of weekly garbage and recycling of 75 households in charlottesville virginia both before and after the start of a program that requires an eighty cent sticker on each bag of garbage this data set is the first of its kind we estimate household demands for the collection of garbage and recyclable material the effect on density of household garbage and the amount of illegal dumping by households we also estimate the probability that a household chooses each method available to reduce its garbage in response to the implementation of this unit pricing program we find that households 1 reduced the weight of their garbage by 14 2 reduced the volume of garbage by 37 and 3 increased the weight of their recyclable materials by 16 we estimate that additional illegal or at least suspicious disposal accounts for 0 42 pounds per person per week or 28 of the reduction in garbage observed at the curb this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a model of brand choice and purchase quantity price sensitivities many consumer decisions involve a discrete choice and a continuous outcome examples of such decisions are whether to own a home or rent one and how much to spend which brand of orange juice to buy and how many ounces to buy in cases like these the choice decision is typically modeled separately say using a logit model and the continuous outcomes modeled separately using regression analysis however the continuous outcomes may not be independent of the discrete choice and vice versa and modeling the two decisions independently can lead to inefficient choice parameter estimates and biased and inconsistent regression parameter estimates in this paper we present a methodology from the limited dependent variable literature to model the dependence between the choice and quantity decisions our substantive interest is in the role of price in the choice and quantity decisions when choosing among alternatives we argue that consumers consider prices of all the competitive brands in the quantity decision on the other hand only the price of the chosen alternative is expected to impact how much of the alternative is purchased the analysis of three brands using disaggregate level panel data strongly supports our hypothesis about the role of competitive prices in the choice and quantity decisions

household responses to price incentives for recycling some further evidence this paper investigates the role of waste disposal service fees and household characteristics in determining recycling rates and waste generation using individual household data from portland oregon we model a multistage household decision process regarding waste generation and recycling effort under a block pricing system including the choice of container size and reduced form demand equations for recyclables non recyclables and recycling rate the choice of container size is not affected by the price of waste disposal services but within a given container size households respond to a price increase by increasing recycling to avoid charges for waste generation above contracted volumes

mobility and innovation a cross country comparison in the video games industry open labour markets are often seen as a precondition for innovation particularly for new industries however this view ignores two core findings of the economic systems literature first that mobility patterns are institutional microsystems that need to be complementary to other institutions in the labour market and second that new industries may be characterised by incremental and complex innovation based on these considerations we ask how mobility affects innovation in the video games industry in the us and japan we find that inter firm mobility is beneficial for innovation in the us but has negative effects in japan we further find that inter functional mobility is beneficial for innovation in both countries our analysis is based on career histories from the video games industry in the us and japan we present an empirical study based on the game development of 815 video games and the careers of 28 426 video game developers who were involved in the development of games released between 1999 and 2009

little innovation many jobs an econometric analysis of the italian labour productivity crisis during the past twenty years italy has realized changes in labour legislation leading to a decentralization of wage bargaining and increased flexibility in labour relations both these factors have helped to curb wage growth and to enhance employment growth but have also led to a crisis in italian labour productivity growth our estimates among 3 000 firms show that firms with high shares of flexible workers a high labour turnover and lower costs of labour relative to capital experienced significantly lower rates of labour productivity growth our findings raise doubts about the mainstream call for flexibilisation of european labour markets we argue hat the italian shift towards a low productive and labour intensive growth path is problematic gainst the background of an ageing population

temporary workers and productivity the case of spain the primary focus of this paper is on efficiency wages and their testable implications in particular the nature of the relationship between efficiency wages productivity and the make up of the labour force is analysed modelled and subjected to an empirical test this theory is consistent with the views of many managers and personal administrators who tend to ascribe primary importance in wage setting to indirect control of the firm s workforce here we test a labour augmenting production function where effort depends not only on wages but also on the proportion of temporary workers

logit demand estimation under competitive pricing behavior an equilibrium framework discrete choice models of demand have typically been estimated assuming that prices are exogenous since unobservable to the researcher product attributes such as coupon availability may impact consumer utility as well as price setting by firms we treat prices as endogenous specifically prices are assumed to be the equilibrium outcomes of nash competition among manufacturers and retailers to empirically validate the assumptions we estimate logit demand systems jointly with equilibrium pricing equations for two product categories using retail scanner data and cost data on factor prices in each category we find statistical evidence of price endogeneity we also find that the estimates of the price response parameter and the brand specific constants are generally biased downward when the endogeneity of prices is ignored our framework provides explicit estimates of the value created by a brand i e the difference between consumers willingness to pay for a brand and its cost of production we develop theoretical propositions about the relationship between value creation and competitive advantage for logit demand systems and use our empirical results to illustrate how firms use alternative value creation strategies to accomplish competitive advantage

environmental regulation of households an empirical review of economic and psychological factors abstract the literature on sustainable consumption and environmental regulation of household behavior is dominated by conceptual and normative approaches as a result many suggestions lack a firm empirical basis to overcome this deficiency econometric studies in three areas of environmentally relevant activities of households are reviewed residential use of energy generation of solid waste and recycling and residential use of water next to price and income elasticities attention is devoted to individual socio economic features and psychological factors such as attitudes knowledge perceptions and values potential psychological determinants and related insights are further examined by discussing a range of representative and illustrative statistical psychological studies of environmental behavior one important general finding is that there are very few empirical studies that systematically combine socio economic and psychological determinants a range of insights for environmental policy is derived and research recommendations are offered

causes and consequences of hysteresis aggregate demand productivity and employment in this work we develop an agent based model where hysteresis in major macroeconomic variables e g gross domestic product productivity unemployment emerges out of the decentralized interactions of heterogeneous firms and workers building upon the schumpeter meeting keynes family of models cf in particular dosi et al 2016b 2017c we specify an endogenous process of accumulation of workers skills and a state dependent process of firms entry indeed hysteresis is ubiquitous however this is not due to market imperfections but rather to the very functioning of decentralized economies characterized by coordination externalities and dynamic increasing returns so contrary to the insider outsider hypothesis blanchard and summers 1986 the model does not support the findings that rigid industrial relations may foster hysteretic behavior in aggregate unemployment on the contrary this contribution provides evidence that during severe downturns and thus declining aggregate demand phenomena like decreasing investment and innovation rates skills deterioration and declining entry dynamics are better candidates to explain long run unemployment spells and reduced output growth in that more rigid labor markets may well dampen hysteretic dynamics by sustaining aggregate demand thus making the economy more resilient

rigidities through flexibility flexible labour and the rise of management bureaucracies judging from organisation level survey data we find that organisations employing high shares of flexible workers have higher shares of managers in their personnel this is in line with earlier findings that anglo saxon countries with deregulated labour markets have thicker management bureaucracies than countries with more regulated labour markets of the rhineland style we argue that flexibility in labour markets i e easier firing and higher labour turnover damages trust loyalty and commitment this requires more management and control related research suggests that easy hire and fire is at the cost of organisational learning knowledge accumulation and knowledge sharing thus damaging innovation and labour productivity growth

municipal waste kuznets curves evidence on socio economic drivers and policy effectiveness from the eu waste generation and waste disposal are becoming increasingly prominent in the environmental arena from a policy perspective and in the context of delinking analysis in general waste generation is still increasing proportionally with income and economic and environmental costs associated to landfilling are also increasing this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of waste generation incineration and landfill dynamics based on panel data for the eu25 to assess the effects of different drivers economic structural policy and the eventual differences between western and eastern eu countries we show that for waste generation there is still no waste kuznets curve wkc trend although elasticity to income drivers appears lower than in the past landfill and other policy effects do not seem to provide backward incentives for waste prevention and in terms of landfill and incineration as expected they are respectively decreasing and increasing with policy acting as a strong driver eastern countries appear to be performing generally quite well thus benefiting from eu membership and related policies in terms of environmental performance we can conclude that although absolute delinking is far from being achieved for waste generation there are some first positive signs of an increasing relative delinking for waste generation and robust landfill diversion and varying evidence of a significant role of the eu waste policies implemented in the late 1990s and early 2000s our evidence suggests that if while landfill diversion is currently associated to a delinking partly explained by eu policies waste prevention must be the next objective of waste regulation efforts

quality perceptions and asymmetric switching between brands rotating indifference curves are used to induce an income effect that favors superior brands at the expense of inferior brands in a discrete choice model when calibrated on scanner panel data the model yields an objective measure of brand quality which is related to the rate of rotation the model also leads to asymmetric responses to price promotions where switching up to high quality brands is more likely than switching down the model is capable of nesting the standard logit model and is similar to a nested logit model when there exists clusters of brands of like quality the model is used to explore a product line pricing decision where profits are maximized subject to the constraint that consumer utility is maintained

does food sorting prevents and improves sorting of household waste a case in sweden this paper analyses household behaviour as response to changes in waste management systems the paper discusses the results of a case study from vellinge municipality sweden where the introduction of separate food waste collection is thought to have a role in reducing the total amount of household waste and improving the sorting of packaging waste the study relies on data from official waste statistics and a survey of 117 municipal residents focusing on households perceptions attitudes and self reflected changes in waste sorting behaviour the respondents mentioned the increased environmental awareness and the convenience of food waste sorting among the primary reasons for the perceived changes in personal waste sorting routines the study also tested the significance of other variables such as income employment economic activity socio demographics infrastructure waste tariffs illegal dumping and awareness raising campaigns most of the variables were static and none showed sufficient correlation to the observed reduction of waste collection rates and the improvements in sorting other waste fractions the analysed case had particularly high income levels which were the main dynamic variable under study the analysis suggests that we may be observing an example of a decoupling between economic growth and waste generation rates this observation is explained by the kuznets phenomena and it is being discussed in this paper less

endogeneity and individual consumer choice abstract in many markets there is likely to be correlation both across periods in terms of the choices of one consumer and across consumers in terms of their choices in each period the former is caused by consumer heterogeneity and the latter may be the result of demand common shocks across consumers furthermore if firms partially observe these common shocks their market decisions may end up being endogenous and correlated with the common shocks because researchers cannot typically fully observe consumer heterogeneity and the common shocks the estimation method must account for the endogeneity of firms decisions in this article the authors present a test for endogeneity under unobserved consumer heterogeneity and common shocks which is based on a quasi likelihood estimation method to estimate the model parameters consistently when endogenous firm behavior unobserved heterogeneity and common shocks are present the test examines the differences in general method of moments coefficient estima

unemployment and the real wage the economic basis for contesting political ideologies using the keynesian theory of effective demand this paper demonstrates how particular models such as that of cooperative capitalism enunciated by the left keynesian social democrats the marxian model of profit squeeze emphasizing distributive conflict and even the conservative model relying on supply side stimulus fit in as particular variants of a more general theoretical scheme through a reconstruction of the familiar is schedule the argument is weaved around the theme of the relations between unemployment and real wage in the context of both a closed and an open economy to explain the common macroeconomic basis of contesting ideologies copyright 1990 by oxford university press

is flexible labour good for innovation evidence from firm level data whether the use of flexible workers is damaging to innovation or not depends on the dominant innovation regime in a sector in sectors with a routinised innovation regime high shares of low paid temporary workers have a negative impact on the probability that firms invest in r d in sectors that tend towards a garage business regime however flexibility has no impact the two innovation regimes differ in the nature of their knowledge base reliance on generally available knowledge or dependence on a firm s historically accumulated knowledge base innovation in the latter regime benefits from longer job durations our results are consistent with findings in macro level studies that coordinated market economies with rigid labour markets have higher labour productivity gains than liberalised market economies

the effects of neighbour influence and cultural consumption on separate waste collection theoretical framework and empirical investigation abstract separate waste collection swc is a policy priority for eu countries this work investigates the effect of neighbour influence and cultural consumption on municipal swc with a twofold focus first it outlines a simple theoretical framework where the motivations underlying pro environmental behaviours are influence by neighbour effects and cultural consumption second it tests the theoretical results implementing a quantile regression on italian municipal data for 2012 the results confirm that neighbours influence each other while different cultural goods produce different effects these findings indicate that the cultural policy may play a relevant role in tackling environmental issues

is labour market flexibility harmful to innovation in a neoclassical framework one can argue that unemployment can be reduced by means of institutional changes that allow for a better working of the labour market and notably by achieving downward wage flexibility i argue that although various policy recommendations about removing labour market rigidities are indeed advantageous in the short trun they are detrimental from a schumpeterian perspective since they discourage product and process innovation reduced innovation efforts will in turn weaken the supply side strength of an economy the paper explores the implications of schumpeter s notion of creative destruction and of schmookler s hypothesis of demand pulled innovations borrowing from recent empirical innovation research

household behavior under alternative pay as you throw systems for solid waste disposal in 1994 residents of marietta georgia participated in a pay as you throw solid waste demonstration project rather than pay a fixed monthly fee for collection half of the resi dents paid a fee per reusable trash can and half paid for each nonreusable trash bag collected data from both a sample of households and city wide totals indicate that the programs signifi cantly reduced waste set outs even after account ingfor increases in unpriced recycling the bag program caused larger reductions 36 than the subscription can program 14 rough esti mates of the program indicate both savings for residents and social welfare increases jel q20

estimation of beauty contest auctions beauty contests are auction mechanisms used to buy or sell differentiated products where the auctioneer does not specify a decision rule to pick the winning bidder beauty contests are widely used in procuring welfare to work projects freelance services selling online ads real estate transactions and hiring dating marriage decisions unlike price only auctions beauty contests have no closed form bidding strategies and suffer from nonmultiplicatively separable unobserved auction heterogeneity which makes their estimation challenging to address these challenges we formulate beauty contests as incomplete information games and present a two step estimator a key contribution of our method is its ability to account for common knowledge auction specific unobservables using finite unobserved types we show that unobserved auction types and distributions of bids are nonparametrically identified and recoverable in the first step using a nonparametric expectation maximization em like algorithm and that

endogenous economic growth a new approach this new approach incorporates on the demand side the problem of effective demand and unemployment while rejecting on the supply side the oversimplistic use of a production function with or without capital labour substitution the focus on the adoption and diffusion of labour productivity growth permits viewing supply as being driven endogenously by inter class conflict over distribution as well as inter class conflict among rival firms over market shares the result is a race between growth rates in labour productivity and in the real wage rate which drives demand and productivity growth on the one hand while making wage share reasonably constant on the other the existence and stability properties of the steady state are also examined copyright 2006 oxford university press

when labour market rigidities are useful for innovation evidence from german iab firm level data abstract supply side economists made numerous pleas for removing labour market rigidities through structural reforms from a schumpeterian viewpoint however one can argue that labour market rigidities create useful incentives for innovation our estimates on german panel data 2007 2015 support the schumpeterian view using the taxonomy of industries by peneder 2010 we find that evidence of the schumpeterian view is particularly strong in r d intensive manufacturing industries as well as in service industries with high degrees of cumulativeness of knowledge evidence of the schumpeterian view is weaker in low technology industries and in start ups when firms rely more on generally available knowledge rather than on firm specific and tacit knowledge accumulated in the past

on the benefits from rigid labour markets norms market failures and social insurance the common view that far reaching labour market deregulation is the only remedy for high european unemployment is too simplistic first the evidence suggests that deeply rooted social customs are