deregulation technology imports and in house r d efforts an analysis of the indian experience abstract this paper analyses the effects of the deregulation policy introduced in india in the mid 1980s on the relationship between technology imports and in house r d efforts using appropriate statistical techniques it examines the interactions between policy regime economic environment and the determinants of inter industry variation in technology imports in indian manufacturing in doing so it introduces r d efforts as one of the main determinants literature suggests that there is simultaneity in the relationship between technology imports and r d efforts to tackle this problem lagged r d expenditure intensity is adopted as a proxy for in house r d efforts the empirical results reveal that technology imports were only weakly related with the past in house r d efforts in the protective regime deregulation promoted complementarity between technology imports and r d efforts significantly the results also suggest that after deregulation the impact of product differentiation demand conditions and technology related factors increased significantly in determining the inter industry patterns of technology imports thus unlike in a regulated regime where technology imports are viewed important for filling gaps in domestic technological capabilities in a deregulated regime technology upgradation seems to be the major role of technology imports

the effect of health savings accounts on group health insurance coverage this paper presents new empirical evidence on the impact of tax subsidies for health savings accounts hsas on group insurance coverage hsas are tax free health care expenditure savings accounts coupled with high deductible health insurance plans hdhps they together represent new health insurance options the tax advantage of hsas expands the group health insurance market by making health care more affordable using individual level data from the current population survey and exploiting policy variation by state and year from 2004 to 2012 i find that hsa tax subsidies increase small group coverage by a statistically significant 2 5 percentage points although not coverage in larger firms moreover if the tax price of hsa contribution decreases by 10 cents small group insurance coverage increases by almost 2 percentage points i also find that for older workers or less educated workers hsa subsidies are associated with 2 3 percentage point increase in their group insurance coverage

developmental financial institutions as technology policy instruments implications for innovation and entrepreneurship in emerging economies abstract developmental financial institutions dfis in emerging economies regularly assess new technology platforms to support their investments in new ventures established firms and technology institutions tis their financing decisions are guided by national priorities such as achieving technological self reliance by providing attractive financing options and related support dfis are well placed to consciously channel finance into designated priority technology areas to better understand dfi roles we conducted multiple interviews with participants affiliated with dfis firms and tis in india from data gathered from these interviews and secondary data on dfis in emerging economies we develop a preliminary framework to suggest that dfis when proactive in making technology assessments form an important link between developing a firm s absorptive capacity and building a nation s innovative capacity also dfi financing facilitates new venture creation in the context of underdeveloped capital markets prevalent in emerging economies to illustrate these roles we consider technology support programs of dfis in india and their role in the information technology it industry

managing technological development lessons from the newly industrializing countries this survey looks at the technological development of the newly industrializing countries to draw some important lessons for firms and governments in other developing countries first inventing products and processes is not at the center of the technological development needed for successful industrialization it is at the fringe what is at the center is acquiring the capabilities needed for efficient production and investment second some countries have overemphasized the drive for technological self sufficiency and paid a high price in poor productivity what makes the best economic sense is to combine foreign and local technological elements and to do this in a way that progressively develops local capabilities in areas where they can be more efficient third the acquisition of technological capability does not come merely from experience though experience is important fourth the economic environment through its influence on the technological efforts of firms is very important in determining the productivity of a country s resources

productivity growth protection and plant entry in a deregulating economy the case of india in this paper we study the comparative performance of indian manufacturing industries during relatively recent periods of domestic regulation and de regulation of plant entry the period of de regulation is accompanied by largely unchanging levels of import competition and higher output growth the growth of labour and total factor productivity tfpg is observed to be higher during the deregulation period we use data on 42 three digit manufacturing industries our sample covers consumer intermediate and capital good industries we study the relationship between levels of effective protection and total factor productivity growth tfpg we found that increasing effective rates of protection was not associated with lower tfpg we test the hypothesis that higher degree of trade protection induces greater entry of plants this hypothesis is statistically supported our econometric estimates found a positive association between net entry and tfpg after controlling for inter industry differences in effective protection asset size of plants and demand growth our results support the proposition that competition positively contributes to tfpg during deregulation

agreements between firms and the technological life cycle model evidence from information technologies abstract contrarily to most previous contributions which have addressed the issue of cooperative agreements essentially in a perspective of comparative statics in this paper a model is proposed that relies on the technological trajectory notion suggested by evolutionary theories and emphasizes the relevance of the technological and market dynamics in explaining why and to what extent firms have recourse to agreements in particular it is claimed that the propensity of firms towards collaborative ventures and the characteristics of the cooperation depend upon the phase of the technological life cycle of the industry branch in which the cooperation takes place based on a cross sectional analysis of 45 industry branches in the information technology industrial system the paper also provides empirical evidence supporting the argument that the propensity towards agreements and the nature of the agreements concluded do change during the technological life cycle to this end it takes advantage of the arpa database developed at the polytechnic of milan and containing detailed information on over 2 000 agreements concluded in the 1980 1986 period all over the world in the semiconductor data processing and telecommunications industries

when credit bites back using data on 14 advanced countries between 1870 and 2008 we document two key facts of the modern business cycle relative to typical recessions financial crisis recessions are costlier and more credit intensive expansions tend to be followed by deeper recessions in financial crises or otherwise and slower recoveries we use local projection methods to condition on a broad set of macro economic controls to study how past credit accumulation impacts key macro economic variables such as output investment lending interest rates and inflation the facts that we uncover lend support to the idea that financial factors play an important role in the modern business cycle

government policy and performance of the indian engineering industry abstract a major liberalization of the indian industrial policy framework has been undertaken in the 1980s the proponents of liberalization expected not only a general increase in the efficiency of indian industry but also an improvement in its innovative performance detailed industry studies as well as macro level data suggest that the simultaneous liberalization of industrial licence and foreign technological collaboration policies resulted in a large scale entry of new firms into a range of industries industry structures best characterized as miniature replications of the global industry were created chiefly in response to an inherently large demand for foreign disembodied technology in the indian industrialization model foreign technological collaborations became the overwhelming source of product technology in the process the indian capital goods industry has been given the opportunity to better fulfil its role as diffuser of globally generated new technology to indian customers in doing so the liberalization measures have been successful in improving the performance of indian industry within the limits of an import substituting industrialization model the extremely fierce competitive situation coupled with nearly free access to foreign technology has however not been associated with an improvement in the indian engineering industry s innovative performance indeed the greater domestic competition has been associated with greater technology imports rather than greater in house innovative efforts

the imf as a biased global insurance mechanism asymmetrical moral hazard reserve accumulation and financial crises a large literature has established that the international monetary fund imf is heavily politicized we argue that this politicization has important consequences for international reserve accumulation and financial crises the imf generates moral hazard asymmetrically reducing the expected costs of risky lending and policies for states that are politically influential vis a vis the institution using a panel data set covering 1980 to 2010 we show that proxies for political influence over the imf are associated with outcomes indicative of moral hazard lower international reserves and more frequent financial crises we support our causal claims by applying the synthetic control method to taiwan which was expelled from the imf in 1980 consistent with our predictions taiwan s expulsion led to a sharp increase in precautionary international reserves and exceptionally conservative financial policies

technology imports and r d efforts of korean manufacturing firms abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between technology imports and r d efforts of korean manufacturing firms by a two stage method in the first stage using a sample representing the whole population of firms the paper shows that firms importing technology tend to commit themselves to r d efforts through having formal r d institutes in the second stage it shows that among firms with formal r d institutes technology imports have non complementary relationship with r d efforts moreover when technology imports are considered interactively with international inventive activity they turn out to have rather a substitutive relationship with r d efforts

is western europe losing the technological race abstract using a variety of indicators this paper compares technological levels in japan the usa and w europe there is no justification for assuming general european technological backwardness whilst it lags in electronics and since 1975 has had a relatively slow rate of growth of innovative activities it also has sectors of strength chemicals machinery production engineering and countries whose relative commitments of resources to innovative activities are at least equal and sometimes superior to those of japan and the usa frg sweden switzerland its main policy challenges are to increase the rate of growth of innovative activities in lagging countries and to ensure pervasive applications of information technology similarly there is no convincing evidence that w europe is relatively backward in converting technology into economically efficient innovations some policy problems are significant in all three regions skill shortages whilst others are in the usa and w europe short term planning horizons of top management particular european problems are the effects of social legislation on worker flexibility and mobility of national regulations on intra european competition and of slow rates of growth of output on the growth of innovative activities japan and the usa have their problems with the latter continuously under challenge from the former and increasingly specialised in defence and raw materials related technologies

agglomeration advantages and capability building in industrial clusters the missing link accumulation of technological capability is crucial for industrial growth and competitiveness of firms particularly in the context of liberalisation and increasing international economic integration the article sheds new light on the forces driving capability building by complementing the micro economic perspective on learning with a meso economic perspective that takes account of interaction effects arising from firms embeddedness in regional networks the missing link at the interface between the two levels is explored by means of a taxonomy linking various agglomeration advantages to investments in technological effort the framework results in new policy relevant insights about the factors underpinning the acquisition of capabilities in comparison to conventional studies a case study about farm equipment manufacturing in pakistan s punjab province is used as an empirical illustration

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

foreign ownership and technology adoption evidence from indian firms abstract firms in developing countries rely on foreign technology purchases to improve their technology we use a theoretical framework developed by katz and shapiro to examine the ongoing technology adoption behavior of foreign owned and domestic firms using firm level data on indian firms from 1989 to 1993 we test this theoretical model we find that foreign ownership firm size and market structure are among the variables that impact a firm s probability of adopting new technology we also find that the 1991 liberalization of technology transfer policies in india appears to have had a larger impact on foreign owned firms than domestic firms

tax preferences for fringe benefits and workers eligibility for employer health insurance abstract in this paper i estimate the effect of the tax preference for employer provided health insurance on the probability that an employee will be eligible for health insurance at work i instrument for marginal tax rates with state level state income tax rates and i control for unobservable state effects that could be correlated with the state income tax instrument by comparing the estimated tax effect on employer provided health insurance to the tax effect on sick leave a fringe benefit that does not enjoy any tax advantage the size of the tax effect on health insurance eligibility is positive as predicted and is both statistically and economically significant

inward technology transfer and competitiveness the role of national innovation systems this paper examines the role of national innovation systems in the inward transfer of technology that has underpinned the transformation of japan and other east asian economies since 1945 the economies that have benefited most from inward technology transfer have national innovation systems that have strengthened their national absorptive capacity this capacity relies primarily on investments in scientific and technical training and on economic policies that enforce competition among domestic firms the particular channels for inward technology transfer the identity of any strategic industries targeted for public intervention and the overall level of a nation s trade restrictions are ail of secondary importance a central theme of global economic change during the postwar period has been the application in less developed countries of technologies developed within economically advanced regions this phenomenon underpinned the post 1945 transformation of japan and other east asian economies and influenced the reconstruction of western european economies after world war ii the application of externally developed technologies within latecomer economies is hardly unique to the postwar period however samuel slater s introduction of british textile manufacturing is but one example of inward technology transfer in the nineteenth century us economy and david 1992 traces the origins of patent monopolies to efforts by medieval european city states and nations to attract experts in industrial arts to practice their craft within these jurisdictions both international technology flows and government efforts to influence them for national competitive advantage thus have ample historical precedent several characteristics nevertheless distinguish the post 1945 era from earlier historical periods the influence of international technology transfer on national economic development has increased as the postwar development of such economies as taiwan and south korea has relied much less on natural resource endowments than nineteenth

explaining foreign support for china s global economic leadership we analyze the factors that increase the likelihood that other nations will follow china s global economic leadership while our theoretical framework incorporates the conventional argument that china pulls in followers with economic benefits we focus on grievances with the current global order that have the effect of pushing countries toward the rising new leader we find that grievances about global financial instability are particularly important push factors our results show that countries that have experienced more financial crises more variable capital account policies more volatile portfolio capital outflows and more social unrest during imf programs are more likely to support china s global leadership than leaders of nations that have been less exposed to these problems we find no evidence that grievances about global governance or grievances about discriminatory us trade policies are related to foreign support for china s global economic leadership overall our evidence is consistent with the interpretation that leaders want to reform and preserve the wto and the imf which have worked reasonably well for them under us leadership at the same time they have incentives to follow china s economic leadership on global capital flows emphasizing long term infrastructure and development finance over short term flows which under the current order have imposed large costs on many economies

faculty support for the objectives of university industry relations versus degree of r d cooperation the importance of regional absorptive capacity abstract the growing importance of regions in the analysis of innovation and the pressure on european universities to interact with their environment justify this article it argues that faculty support for the objectives of university industry relations uir does not vary across disciplines and does not respond to university encouragement in a region with low absorptive capacity these results are in contrast with those obtained in studies of technology leading countries like the usa furthermore incentives for uir may generate unpredicted dynamics while instruments to cooperate are not significant finally support for the objectives of uir should not be confused with the degree of r d cooperation the former is sensitive to university age while the latter is sensitive to gender discipline commitment to r d and university encouragement empirical evidence is obtained from a sample of faculty from the valencian community spain and analysed through a set of models for discrete choice

informal institutions and absorptive capacity a cross country meta analytic study the informal institutions construct has not been well understood in prior research we contribute to the informal institutions literature by developing a generalized two by two conceptualization of institutions that juxtapose the dimension of behavioral uncertainty versus environmental uncertainty and the dimension of informal institutions versus formal institutions in particular we theorize informal institutions based on the extent to which they reduce behavioral uncertainty or environmental uncertainty as well as their alignment with the formal institutional environment with respect to the two types of uncertainty leveraging this fourfold typology we shed new light on the importance of informal institutional conditions in theories of firms absorptive capacity and performance using a cross country meta analytical approach we find that a firm s absorptive capacity is more positively related to performance outcomes in countries with informal institutions that reduce behavioral uncertainty and environmental uncertainty furthermore the misalignment between informal and formal institutions with respect to behavioral uncertainty and environmental uncertainty weakens the relationship between absorptive capacity and performance outcomes overall by re emphasizing the fundamental role of informal institutions in reducing behavioral and environmental uncertainties our typology offers a fine grained perspective to conceptualize informal institutions and constitutes an opportunity to advance theory in informal institutions and international business

does welfare play any role in female headship decisions abstract previous studies have examined whether the welfare system has contributed to the dramatic increase in single parent families this paper explores why the results in this literature are sensitive to the presence of state fixed effects it considers one natural explanation namely that the composition of the population differs across states in ways that are related to welfare program generosity after controlling for individual effects the results provide no evidence that welfare raises the propensity to form female headed households for either whites or blacks these results illustrate the potential pitfalls of assuming that state factors are fixed over a long period of time they also suggest that previous studies may have overstated the effect of welfare programs on family structure

development of national innovation policy in small developing countries the case of cyprus abstract this paper analyses the concept of national innovation policy nip and puts forward arguments supporting the need for a nip for small developing economies like cyprus a brief outline is given of the science technology infrastructure and current innovation related policies in cyprus while the attitudes of owners managers of private manufacturing firms towards these policies based on a research survey are examined the survey reveals an ambivalent attitude towards nip which is probably due to unrealistic expectations as well as inefficiency in design and implementation of innovation policy measures case research confirms these conclusions and highlights the importance of nip for private firms despite the rhetoric of their managers against it the formulation of a specific nip for cyprus is then considered from which lessons for other developing countries are drawn

technical change growth and trade new departures in institutional economics this article analyses the main theoretical and policy issues emerging from the literature on the evolutionary institutional economics of technical change the four distinguishing characteristics of which are that technology is often proprietary in nature only a part of knowledge is codifiable in handbooks blueprints patents and so on there are fundamental variations in the above two points across different technological fields and the evolution of knowledge is highly path dependent

tax incentives and the decision to purchase health insurance evidence from the self employed the tax reform act of 1986 introduced a new tax subsidy for health insurance purchases by the self employed we analyze the changing patterns of insurance demand before and after tax reform to generate new estimates of how the after tax price of insurance affects the discrete choice of whether to buy insurance we employ both traditional regression models and difference in difference methods that compare changes in insurance coverage across groups around tra86 the results from our most carefully controlled comparison suggest that a 1 percent increase in the cost of insurance coverage reduces the probability that a self employed single person will be insured by 1 8 percentage points

university technology transfer how in efficient are french universities this paper presents the first assessment of the efficiency of the technology transfer operated by the french university system and its main determinants the analysis is based on a detailed and original database of 51 ttos categorized by type of university they belong to over the period 2003 2007 overall we find a low level of efficiency and both intra category and inter categories efficiency variation the analysis of determinants showed that french ttos efficiency depends extensively on the nature of the category with universities specialised in science and engineering being the most efficient ones on institutional and environmental characteristics we found that both the seniority of tto and size of the university have a positive effect in terms of environmental variables the intensity of rd however in terms of growth rate only the private r d activity seems to be the main driver lastly we find that the presence of a university related hospital is detrimental for the efficiency an extended discussion of the results within the existing literature is also offered

the restructuring of the indian automobile industry indian state and japanese capital abstract this paper analyzes the changing institutional context in which the restructuring of the indian automobile industry is taking place it explains the internationalization of the industry under the aegis of deregulation of a heavily statist economy economic liberalization however has not resulted in withdrawal of the state from the industry transnational corporations have not necessarily weakened domestic capital instead japanese capital and technology have transformed the industry with mixed outcomes creating both benefits of and constraints to restructuring the reorganization of the indian automobile industry reflects not only global forces but rather the interplay of changing institutional factors in influencing industrial restructuring in a developing economy

who is interested in biotech r d strategies knowledge base and market sales of indian biopharmaceutical firms this paper addresses three main questions on indian pharmaceutical firms that have integrated biotechnology in their marketing production or research activities i what kind of labour stocks of the knowledge base have an impact on market sales ii which components of the r d strategy are strategic substitutes and which are strategic complements iii what are the distinguishing features of firms that have already integrated biotechnology in their research activities the paper shows that market sales are an increasing function of qualified labour stocks internal r d and foreign collaborations are strategic substitutes while patents and publications are strategic complements firms that are active in biotechnology research are likely to be younger and implementing more aggressive learning strategies

the impact of increased tax subsidies on the insurance coverage of self employed families evidence from the 1996 2004 medical expenditure panel survey the share of health insurance premiums that self employed workers can deduct when computing federal income taxes rose from 30 percent in 1996 to 100 percent in 2003 data from the 1996 2004 medical expenditure panel survey are used to show that the increased tax subsidy was associated with substantial increases in private coverage among self employed workers and their spouses estimated effects on public coverage and the coverage of children were smaller in magnitude and less precisely estimated simulation results show that much of the post 1996 subsidy increase represented an inframarginal transfer to persons who would have had held private insurance anyway nevertheless increased subsidization expanded private coverage by 1 1 to 1 7 million persons at a cost per newly insured person less than 2 300 in all simulations a cost below that found in simulations of more broadly based subsidies

the u s national innovation system origins and prospects for change in recent years the concept of national innovation systems has attained considerable currency and interest although a precise definition of a national innovation system is difficult analyses of the japanese and u s national innovation systems have implicitly defined them as the array of public and private institutions and organizations within an economy that fund and perform rd nelson 1993 interest in national innovation systems stems in part from a growing acknowledgment of the contributions to national economic welfare of superior performance in the commercialization and adoption of new technologies this awareness in turn has been heightened by the innovative and economic strength of postwar japan

partnerships in transition economies international strategic technology alliances in russia abstract this paper explores general patterns and particularities of international strategic technology alliances of western companies with russian companies and other organizations the objective of this paper is to examine whether alliances with russian companies follow the general pattern of international inter firm collaboration given the very different investment climate in russia in particular this paper focuses on a range of specific issues at the heart of debates in the current literature it considers the choice between equity and contractual forms of alliances this is followed by an examination of the particular organizational configuration of post socialist firms in that context it analyses alliances with new or older partner companies in different technological settings

the transformation of competitive advantage in east asia an analysis of technological and trade specialisation summary in recent years there has been considerable interest in the relationship between a country s export competitiveness and the role played by technology in strengthening and maintaining competitive advantage a central feature of recent empirical work mainly focused on the oecd countries has rested on examining patterns of export and technological specialization between economies and sectors this paper moves attention away from the advanced industrialized economies to examine the trends for trade and technological specialization among the east asian developing economies in particular two aspects of specialization are examined first to what extent have patterns of competitive advantage changed over time and second to measure the relationship between patterns of trade and technological specialization important differences are found in the patterns of specialization and in the relationship between them among the advanced east asian economies and those catching up

the effect of premiums on the small firm s decision to offer health insurance many small firms fewer than 50 employees do not offer health insurance we investigated the role of premiums in the small firm s decision to offer health insurance using data from a 1993 survey of 2 000 small firms in minnesota selectively corrected equations were estimated to predict the premiums faced by firms offering and not offering insurance the elasticity of demand for health insurance calculated at the mean of the data was 3 91 for single coverage and 5 82 for family coverage we contrast these results to the much lower responsiveness found in experimental studies and suggest that our findings are more likely to model the small firm s demand for health insurance

capital market liberalization globalization and the imf one of the most controversial aspects of globalization is capital market liberalization not so much the liberalization of rules governing foreign direct investment but those affecting short term capital flows speculative hot capital that can come into and out of a country in the 1980s and 1990s the imf and the us treasury tried to push capital market liberalization around the world encountering enormous opposition not only from developing countries but from economists who were less enamoured of the doctrines of free and unfettered markets of market fundamentalism that were at that time being preached by the international economic institutions the economic crises of the late 1990s and early years of the new millennium which were partly or even largely attributable to capital market liberalization reinforced those reservations this paper takes as its point of departure a recent imf paper to provide insights both into how the imf could have gone so wrong in its advocacy of capital market liberalization and into why capital market liberalization has so often led to increased economic instability not to economic growth copyright 2004 oxford university press

the bumpy road of technology partnerships understanding causes and consequences of partnership mal functioning abstract research on technological partnerships has traditionally sought explanation of their high failure rates in partner characteristics and relationship features this study introduces the notion of a bumpy road in technology partnerships which refers to undesired outcomes such as partnership mal functioning and instability to the degree to which innovation activities are hampered we explain how firm level strategies can reduce the probability of a bumpy road in partnerships we also assess the impact of this bumpy road on innovative performance we find that firms that excel in diversification of external activities in terms of different types of partners perform best moreover a persistent product oriented innovation strategy geared at developing new products new markets or higher product quality will yield more stable partnership outcomes our results confirm that engagement in partnerships is beneficial for innovative performance however firms that experienced a bumpy road in their technological partnerships have to pay a price in terms of a negative effect on their innovative performance

the impact of state tax subsidies for private long term care insurance on coverage and medicaid expenditures abstract in spite of the large expected costs of needing long term care only 10 12 of the elderly population has private insurance coverage medicaid which provides means tested public assistance and pays for almost half of long term care costs spends more than 100 billion annually on long term care in this paper i exploit variation in the adoption and generosity of state tax subsidies for private long term care insurance to determine whether tax subsidies increase private coverage and reduce medicaid s costs for long term care the results indicate that the average tax subsidy raises coverage rates by 2 7 percentage points or 28 however the response is concentrated among high income and asset rich individuals populations with low probabilities of relying on medicaid simulations suggest each dollar of state tax expenditure produces approximately 0 84 in medicaid savings over half of which funnels to the federal government

perspective absorbing the concept of absorptive capacity how to realize its potential in the organization field the purpose of this perspective paper is to advance understanding of absorptive capacity its underlying dimensions its multilevel antecedents its impact on firm performance and the contextual factors that affect absorptive capacity twenty years after the cohen and levinthal 1990 paper the field is characterized by a wide array of theoretical perspectives and a wealth of empirical evidence in this paper we first review these underlying theories and empirical studies of absorptive capacity given the size and diversity of the absorptive capacity literature we subsequently map the existing terrain of research through a bibliometric analysis the resulting bibliometric cartography shows the major discrepancies in the organization field namely that 1 most attention so far has been focused on the tangible outcomes of absorptive capacity 2 organizational design and individual level antecedents have been relatively neglected in the absorptive capacity literature and 3 the emergence of absorptive capacity from the actions and interactions of individual organizational and interorganizational antecedents remains unclear building on the bibliometric analysis we develop an integrative model that identifies the multilevel antecedents process dimensions and outcomes of absorptive capacity as well as the contextual factors that affect absorptive capacity we argue that realizing the potential of the absorptive capacity concept requires more research that shows how micro antecedents and macro antecedents influence future outcomes such as competitive advantage innovation and firm performance in particular we identify conceptual gaps that may guide future research to fully exploit the absorptive capacity concept in the organization field and to explore future fruitful extensions of the concept

explaining institutional change policy areas outside options and the bretton woods institutions i propose and test a theoretical framework that explains institutional change in international relations like firms in markets international institutions are affected by the underlying characteristics of their policy areas some policy areas are prone to produce institutions facing relatively little competition limiting the outside options of member states and impeding redistributive change in comparison institutions facing severe competition will quickly reflect changes in underlying state interests and power to test the theory empirically i exploit common features of the bretton woods institutions the international monetary fund and world bank to isolate the effect of variation in policy area characteristics the empirical tests show that despite having identical membership and internal rules bargaining outcomes in the bretton woods institutions have diverged sharply and in accordance with the theory

us monetary policy and the global financial cycle us monetary policy shocks induce comovements in the international financial variables that characterize the global financial cycle a single global factor that explains an important share of the variation of risky asset prices around the world decreases significantly after a us monetary tightening monetary contractions in the us lead to significant deleveraging of global financial intermediaries a decline in the provision of domestic credit globally strong retrenchments of international credit flows and tightening of foreign financial conditions countries with floating exchange rate regimes are subject to similar financial spillovers

the triple helix model as a motor for the creative use of telematics abstract this paper opposes the view which points to the declining importance of nation states and the elimination of space and territory as an effect of the increased trends towards globalisation the argument has its foundations in the evolutionary approach of economic development and argues that the importance of the national level grows within a globalised world which is becoming increasingly complex disorganised and simultaneously monotonous monotony can be reduced through the emergence of national diversity based on specific development paths of spatially defined regional economic systems in which creativeness and selective capacity generate innovation and replication processes national and regional productive systems must be organised according to a triple helix model of institutional networking this model can be applied to the particular case of developing economies based on traditional and mature sectors these economies can start a catching up process by becoming creative users of technology and advanced users of telematics the theoretical framework is used to discuss the innovative capacity of the portuguese economy and to point out some solutions to overcome barriers to innovation

how elastic is the firm s demand for health insurance abstract we investigate the impact of tax subsidies on the firm s decision to offer insurance and on conditional firm spending on insurance we do so using the micro data underlying the employment cost index which has a major advantage for this exercise the matching of very high quality compensation data with information on a sample of workers in the firm we find that overall there is a moderately sized elasticity of insurance offering with respect to after tax prices 0 25 and a larger elasticity of insurance spending 0 7 we also find that the elasticities are driven primarily by small firms for whom the elasticity is larger and we find that there is significant value added to this employer based data replicating methods from standard micro data sources in our data lead to misleading estimates of these key parameters our simulation results suggest that major tax reform could lead to an enormous reduction in employer provided health insurance spending

health insurance and labor market outcomes joint decision making within households abstract most americans obtain access to health insurance through an employer in this paper we ask how the link between health insurance and employment affects labor market choices such as whether to work full time to understand the effect of the incentives embedded in the employer based insurance system we study the joint decision making of husbands and wives that determines the household s access to health insurance we estimate the effect on a wife s husband s labor market outcomes of husband s wife s health insurance allowing the health insurance of both spouses to be endogenous obtaining unbiased estimates of such effects is complicated by the likelihood that positive assortative mating creates correlations between a couple s characteristics and the possibility that there are important unobservable household income effects our innovation is to measure these biases by examining a second fringe benefit paid sick leave in addition to health insurance we find that as predicted spouse s insurance has statistically significant negative effects on being offered own employer insurance as well as on the probability of working full time with health insurance

how states ration flexibility tariffs remedies and exchange rates as policy substitutes a close look at the commitments of world trade organization wto members presents a striking paradox most states could raise their duties significantly before falling afoul of their wto obligations moreover such binding overhang varies between countries some could more than double the amount of trade protection they offer overnight whereas others are tightly constrained what accounts for this variation the author argues that more flexibility is not always better obtaining it and subsequently using it are both costly rather than maximize flexibility states thus seek an optimal amount if they have access to policy space through other means such as currency devaluations and trade remedies they will exercise restraint in seeking binding overhang the same supply side logic holds at the domestic level governments strategically withhold binding overhang from industries that are able to rely on trade remedies despite the fact that these tend to have the greatest political clout

national innovation systems and the intermediary role of industry associations in building institutional capacities for innovation in developing countries a critical review of the literature abstract developed over the past three decades the national innovation system concept nis has been widely used by both scholars and policy makers to explain how interactions between a set of distinct nationally bounded institutions supports and facilitates technological change and the emergence and diffusion of new innovations this concept provides a framework by which developing countries can adopt for purposes of catching up initially conceived on structures and interactions identified in economically advanced countries the application of the nis concept to developing countries has been gradual and has coincided in the nis literature with a move away from overly macro interpretations to an emphasis on micro level interactions and processes with much of this work questioning the nation state as the most appropriate level of analysis as well as the emergence of certain intermediary actors thought to facilitate knowledge exchange between actors and institutions this paper reviews the nis literature chronologically showing how this shift in emphasis has diminished somewhat the importance of both institutions particularly governments and the political processes of institutional capacity building in doing so the paper suggests that more recent literature on intermediaries such as industry associations may offer valuable insights to how institutional capacity building occurs and how it might be directed particularly in the context of developing countries where governance capacities are often lacking contributing to less effective innovation systems stagnant economies and unequal development

liberalization outward orientation and in house r d activity of multinational and local firms a quantitative exploration for indian manufacturing abstract in an increasingly globalizing and knowledge based world economy the declining importance of r d activity in india is a matter of concern this paper analyzes the determinants of r d behaviour of indian enterprises over the 1990s in the context of the reforms of 1991 and their impact on the r d behaviour of mne affiliates and local enterprises the analysis suggests that although average levels of spending have fallen increased competition due to liberalization seems to have pushed local firms to rationalize their r d activity and make it more efficient also r d spending seems to rise more than proportionally with firm size after a certain threshold level has been reached the analysis brings out differences in the nature of r d activity of mne affiliates and local firms local firms direct their r d activity primarily towards the assimilation of imported technology and to providing a backup to their outward expansion via exports and fdi mne affiliates on the other hand focus on exploiting the advantages of india as an r d platform for their parents the paper is concluded with some policy implications of the findings

technology production and technology purchase in indian industry an econometric analysis an econometric analysis of the decisions of indian firms to invest in their own r d and to purchase technology through licensing agreements is undertaken these decisions are treated as being jointly determined by characteristics of indian industries indian prices and the supply of purchasable foreign technology the study finds that industrial structure firm size and public and private ownership influence the mix of own r d and technology purchase the pool of purchasable foreign technology indices both increased adaptive r d and technology purchase by indian firms copyright 1989 by mit press

organizations firms and institutions in the generation of innovation abstract the purpose of this paper is to develop the innovation system analysis by bringing together the institutional and organizational dimensions of the process of innovation at the firm level the objective is to start elaborating a systemic theory of innovation in firms the paper summons up the contributions and limits of organizational and institutional approaches to innovation this preliminary investigation leads to a series of relevant questions in a second section an attempt is made to overcome the dichotomy and make progress towards a more exhaustive and better articulated representation of the innovation process considered at the firm level

trade unions v statistical discrimination theory and application to post apartheid south africa a simple model of statistical discrimination is analyzed which captures some stylized facts of the south african labor market it shows that this type of discrimination disappears when the wage rates are determined by efficient bargaining between a representative firm and a union with endogenous membership this may explain why the wage gap between black and white workers in post apartheid south africa is smaller among unionized workers than among non unionized ones

the income tax and nonwage compensation d ramatic changes in the division of labor compensation between wage and nonwage payments have occurred since world war ii voluntary employer contributions to private pension and welfare funds have risen from 1 2 of wage and salary compensation in 1947 to 8 3 in 1979 with half the increase taking place since 1969 see table 1 major changes in the composition of the fringe benefit package have also taken place during this period employer contributions to group health insurance plans have risen from 24 of total fringe benefits in 1947 to 40 o in 1979 if this growth continues group health insurance will replace pension and profit sharing plans as the largest fringe benefit expenditure by employers these trends in the compensation mix have long been noted by researchers and various factors have been offered as explanations including the favorable tax treatment of fringe benefits demographic changes such as increased life expectancy and unionization rice 1966 ture 1976 mabry 1973 freeman 1978 however most explanations have not been subjected to rigorous empirical testing and the few results that have been published are both questionable and dated for example rice 1966 estimated that changes in the tax rate structure had little influence on the relative increase in fringe benefits from world war ii to 1963 more recent studies schiller and weiss 1979 1980 have examined a specific fringe benefit the private pension plan for its impact on turnover and its role as an equalizing difference but these studies have not analyzed the determinants of the compensation mix this paper discusses the theoretical determinants of the division of labor compensation between fringe benefits and cash income and empirically estimates their importance it concentrates on the impact of taxation on the compensation mix for several reasons first the assumption that rising tax rates encourage individuals to substitute fringe benefits for cash income underlies estimates of the welfare cost of tax preferences browning 1979 second proposals to fully tax employee fringe benefits under a comprehensive9 income tax have surfaced in recent years nolan 1977 clotfelter 1979 finally current federal tax policy is calling for large tax rate reductions to increase supply incentives unlike the determinants of the compensation mix that change slowly over time such as life expectancy tax rate changes can occur rapidly through legislative action reducing tax rates might enlarge the tax base by increasing the fraction of labor income received as taxable cash wages and salaries section ii outlines the tax treatment of various forms of labor compensation and in section iii other factors thought to influence the choice between wage and nonwage compensation are discussed empirical analyses of the compensation mix are presented in section iv a brief summary and implications of the major findings for the future growth of fringe benefits follow in section v

taxes and the number of fringe benefits received abstract discussion about tax policy towards fringe benefits has often assumed that taxing benefits would cause a large change in the composition of employee compensation previous evidence though indicates that changes in marginal tax rates do not have a large effect on expenditures on major fringe benefits as a share of total compensation this paper examines whether employees respond to higher tax rates by getting additional kinds of fringe benefits the results suggest that the effect of tax rates on the probability of receiving additional fringe benefits is quite small

learning and technical progress in the commuter aircraft industry an analysis of embraer s experience abstract companies in industrializing nations face major hurdles when moving into complex and highly competitive manufacturing industries this paper examines the example of such an entrant the brazilian aircraft company enbraer the paper is concerned with the technological strategy pursued by embraer and its learning experience with the brasilia commuter turboprop which achieved a 25 world market share in its seat category due in no small measure to its cost competitiveness and technological proficiency the paper presents econometric evidence of substantial learning effects as captured by the learning curve elasticities of the brasilia which conforms to frontier parameters although embraer was successful in its early product offerings aimed at a narrow niche its subsequent difficulties in moving to a broader product line and sustaining its technological development illustrate some of the problems that industrializing nations enterprises may encounter in building on a successful entry in technology intensive industries at a time of growing competition without crafting alliances to share the large associated technological and commercial risks

recovery from financial crises evidence from 100 episodes we examine the evolution of real per capita gdp around 100 systemic banking crises part of the costs of these crises owes to the protracted nature of recovery on average it takes about eight years to reach the pre crisis level of income the median is about 6 years five to six years after the onset of crisis only germany and the us out of 12 systemic cases have reached their 2007 2008 peak in real income forty three percent of the 100 episodes recorded double dips post war business cycles are not the relevant comparator for the recent crises in advanced economies

contracting for tacit knowledge the provision of technical services in technology licensing contracts abstract recent research on the economic payoff from new technology has emphasized the importance of tacit knowledge or know how this paper shows that arm s length contract can overcome the problems in contracting for know how by bundling complementary inputs with know how in a technology package and leveraging the superior enforceability of contracts over the latter in the empirical part of this paper the relationship between bundling and transfer of know how is analyzed using indian data the results imply that tied sales of inputs may increase the efficiency of contracts involving the transfer of know how a striking result in the context of the current north south debates on intellectual property rights is the packaging of patents with know how

technology policy for industrialization an integrative framework and korea s experience abstract first this article reviews three policy perspectives 1 the market mechanism perspective includes the demand for and supply of technology and the linkage between the two 2 the technology flow perspective consists of technology transfer diffusion and r d 3 the dynamic perspective refers to technological trajectory it then integrates these three perspectives to develop a new three dimensional framework that may be useful to analyze technology policy for industrialization second this article applies the framework to analyze korea s technology policy as a case in point conclusions are 1 technology policies on foreign technology transfer technology diffusion and r d should change over time in response to changing external environment 2 technology policies become effective only when three major components policies to promote the demand side of technology policies to promote the supply side of technology and policies to provide effective links between demand and supply sides are well balanced finally it discusses implications for other developing countries

global horse trading imf loans for votes in the united nations security council we investigate whether temporary members of the united nations security council receive favorable treatment from the international monetary fund imf using panel data for 197 countries over the period from 1951 to 2004 our results indicate a robust positive relationship between temporary security council membership and participation in imf programs even after accounting for economic political and country specific factors there is also evidence that security council membership reduces the number of conditions included in imf programs imf loans seem to be a mechanism by which the major shareholders of the fund can win favor with voting members of the security council

who captures value from science based innovation the distribution of benefits from gmr in the hard disk drive industry abstract we analyze the discovery of giant magneto resistance gmr and its development and commercialization by the global disk drive industry to answer the question of who captures the benefits from innovation in a global innovation system we assess the returns to the scientists firms and countries associated with gmr we find that the french and german scientists that discovered gmr and their labs benefited by receiving the nobel prize and small licensing fees the firm that first commercialized the technology ibm captured profits from selling hard disk drives and magnetic heads using gmr other hard disk drive and head manufacturers based in the u s and japan were able to quickly assimilate the technology and catch up with ibm france and germany reaped limited returns due to the lack of domestic firms with the absorptive capacity to commercialize gmr the u s and japan benefited from the success of their firms in commercializing gmr as did other countries which were part of the global value chains of those companies consumers and firms that incorporated hard drives in their products ultimately benefited from cheaper hard drives with greater capacity these findings illustrate the importance of absorptive capacity at the firm and national level in capturing benefits from innovation they also show that the benefits to first mover firms can be short lived in a competitive industry with open transfer of knowledge and limited appropriability regimes finally they show that the location of jobs and wages associated with innovative products depends on the structure of the global value chains of leading firms

large firms in the production of the world s technology an important case of non globalisation us patenting by 686 of the world s largest manufacturing firms shows that their share of the world s production of technology is less than their share of r d activities and varies greatly amongst sectors in most cases the technological activities of these large firms are concentrated in their home country the characteristics of which influence the volume and trends in their technological activities much more strongly then the international component of these activities at the same time these large firms are major elements in the volume and the pattern of sectoral specializations in their home countries technological activities

substitution between wage and nonwage benefits you gotta be kidding ollie you re just robbing yourself schuylkill mutual offers a terrific deal on keogh and we could plug you in in fact we advise plugging you in on the corporate end so not a nickel comes out of your personal pocket it comes out of the corporate pocket and there s that much less for uncle to tax these poor saps carrying their own premiums with no company input are living in the dark ages there s nothing shady about rigging it this way we re just using the laws the government has put there they want people to take advantage it all works to up the gross national product you know what i mean by keogh don t you you re looking kind of blank john updike p 296

u s technological leadership where did it come from and where did it go abstract during the quarter century following the second world war the united states was the world s most productive economy by virtually all measures and the technological leader across a very broad front this paper is concerned with the sources of u s technological leadership during that era and the reasons for the erosion of that leadership it is proposed that there were two distinguishable components of post war u s technological dominance one was a lead in mass production industries and this was of long standing the other was leadership in high technology industries due to massive american investments in science and technology eduction and research and development and this was new the u s advantage in mass production industries eroded when after bretton woods the world became a common market the u s preeminence in high technology industries diminished as other countries matched u s investments in science and technology it is argued that since the late 1960s the major industrial nations are bound together technologically as never before