employment misclassification in survey and administrative reports abstract this paper analyses measurement error in the classification of employment using matched survey and administrative data from new zealand we show that the true employment rate and time invariant error rates can be identified given access to two measures of employment with independent errors empirical identification requires data with time varying employment rates over at least two periods we find that both measures have error with the administrative data being substantially more accurate than the survey data and false positives are much more likely than false negatives in both sources allowing for errors substantially affects estimated employment rates

accuracy of response in labor market surveys evidence and implications this paper examines the extent of response errors in labor market survey data and explores the implications of such errors for economic analysis explicitly examined are responses to questions on industry occupation union status hours worked and wages analyses are based on two sources 1 a special supplement to the january 1977 current population survey that obtained data from workers and their employers and 2 an exact match of workers and their employers interviewed in the employment opportunity pilot project survey the dual nature of these surveys provides a basis for analyzing the effect of response error on a variety of economic analyses including the trade off between wages and risk the wage impact of unionism and the sensitivity of wage determination models to alternative responses to earnings questions

quantitative effects of the shale oil revolution abstract the aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the so called shale oil revolution on oil prices and economic growth we employ a general equilibrium model of the world oil market in which saudi arabia is the dominant firm with the rest of the producers as a competitive fringe our results suggest that most of the expected increase in us oil supply due to the shale oil revolution has already been incorporated into prices and that it will produce an additional increase of 0 2 in the gdp of oil importers in the period 2010 2018 we also employ the model to analyze the collapse in oil prices in the second half of 2014 and conclude that it was mainly due to positive unanticipated supply shocks

measurement error and misclassification a comparison of survey and administrative data we provide both a theoretical and empirical analysis of the relation between administrative and survey data by distinguishing between different sources of deviations between survey and administrative data we are able to reproduce several stylized facts we illustrate the implications of different error sources for estimation in simple econometric models and find potentially very substantial biases this article shows the sensitivity of some findings in the literature for the assumption that administrative data represent the truth in particular the common finding of substantial mean reversion in survey data largely goes away once we allow for a richer error structure

quality improvements and the incentive to leapfrog abstract in a model of an uncovered market of vertically differentiated products incentives of non identical duopolists to improve the technological maximum quality are analyzed it is assumed that initially firms offer products with different qualities and that the r d cost function changes exogenously this induces a reconsideration of firms quality decisions both firms have the same r d costs for improving the maximum quality quality changes within the existing quality range are assumed to incur only fixed adjustment costs it is shown that the firm which initially is in the low quality position always has a higher incentive to improve industry s quality than its rival if adjustments costs are sufficiently high persistence of dominance may occur for a low degree of initial differentiation low adjustment costs and r d cost functions with a high slope

trouble in the tails what we know about earnings nonresponse thirty years after lillard smith and welch earnings nonresponse in household surveys is widespread yet there is limited knowledge of how nonresponse biases earnings measures we examine the consequences of nonresponse on earnings gaps and

disruption costs learning by doing and technology adoption abstract we study technology adoption in a dynamic model of price competition adoption involves disruption costs and learning by doing because of disruption costs the adopting firm begins in a market disadvantage which may persist if its rival captures the customers that the adopting firm needs to learn the technology the prospect of future rents by the rival results in i a failure to adopt socially efficient technologies ii an equilibrium preference for technologies that are learned faster but have lower social value and iii more technologies being adopted if more firms enter the market

rising r d intensity and economic growth over the past decades private r d spending in the us and other developed countries has been growing faster than gdp at the same time the growth rates of per capita and aggregate output have been rather stable possibly declining slightly this paper proposes a growth model that can account for the observed phenomenon by explicitly describing competition among technological leaders and followers in individual markets in a way that is consistent with existing studies on firms motivation to invest in r d the model shows the possibility that the unsustainable trend of rising r d intensity persists for a very long time

does sticky information affect the locus of innovation evidence from the japanese convenience store industry abstract scholars have long discussed the locus of innovation and its determinants there is empirical evidence that innovations can be developed by those holding any of a number of functional relationships to them such as manufacturers users or materials suppliers past studies have considered two factors important in predicting the functional locus of innovation one is expected profit of a player involved in the innovation and the other is stickiness of innovation related information although some studies have shown empirically the link between an innovator s expected profits and the locus of innovation no research has yet been conducted to test the hypothesized relationship between stickiness of innovation related information and the locus of innovation in the study reported upon here i explore relationships between these two variables via a study of 24 innovations for the japanese convenience store industry my study shows empirically that stickiness of innovation related information does have the hypothesized relationship to the functional locus of innovation i discuss implications of these findings and some directions for future research

competition or predation consumer coordination strategic pricing and price floors in network markets although network effects can make predation more likely to succeed we find that the leading anti predation rules may lower or raise efficiency and consumer welfare in network markets we find that a the extensive debates about the correct measure of cost on which to base price floors are unlikely to be productive b the ordover willig rule that is widely thought to be correct in theory but difficult to apply in practice is in fact incorrect in theory and c efficient price floors would have to depend on consumer expectations and coordination processes that are unlikely to be observable in practice

a model of the evolution of duopoly does the asymmetry between firms tend to increase or decrease this paper is an attempt to identify some of the factors that affect the evolution of market structure in a model of dynamic competition between two firms the stochastic evolution of the state of competition depends on the respective effort rates of the firms the question is whether the current leader works harder than the laggard does the gap between firms tend to increase or decrease we show that several effects are at work the state tends to evolve in the direction where joint payoffs are greater since joint payoffs are related to joint product market profits less joint effort costs there are two classes of effect the joint profit effect and various joint cost effects the latter result in part from the pattern of profits and in part from endpoint effects that give relief from efforts asymptotic expansions illuminate these influences moreover we show by numerical simulation that there is another kind of joint cost effect the pattern of joint effort costs can influence the pattern of evolution of market structure and the evolution of the pattern of market structure can influence the pattern of efforts in a mutually self reinforcing manner in particular there may be equilibria in which this last effect means that the laggard works harder than the leader even though all the other effects work in favour of the leader

entry and competitive dynamics in the mobile telecommunications market abstract we propose an extension of the gans stern gans j s stern s 2003 the product market and the market for ideas commercialization strategies for technology entrepreneurs research policy 32 2 333 350 framework that includes entry by existing firms an incumbent firm possessing complementary assets and strong appropriability is in a formidable position teece d j 1986 profiting from technological innovation implications for integration collaboration licensing and public policy research policy 15 6 285 305 however a de alio entrant can leverage complementary assets to enter along a new technological trajectory and then develop appropriability we illustrate how several mobile telecommunications firms ericsson nokia and samsung pursued this strategy to catch up with the market leader motorola we also identify several shortcomings in motorola s approach it was too inward looking in developing technologies but ironically not inward looking enough in exploiting its most valuable patents

when do auctions ensure the welfare maximizing allocation of scarce inputs we determine when an unfettered auction will ensure the welfare maximizing allocation of a scarce input that enhances product quality and may reduce production costs a supplier values the input for this use value and for its foreclosure value because once the input is acquired it is unavailable to rivals an unfettered auction often ensures the welfare maximizing allocation of an input increment however it can fail to do so when the input would increase relatively rapidly the competitive position of a rival with a moderate competitive disadvantage bidder handicapping that ensures auctions generate welfare maximizing input allocations differ from standard handicapping policies

generic drug industry dynamics both the economics literature and the business press suggest that a typical pattern for a new industry or what jovanovic and macdonald 1994 call an invention i s to have an initial phase in which a small number of firms each earn significant profits followed by a phase in which rapid entry of new firms leads to increased competition and dissipation of some of those profits often accompanied by a shakeout whereby only a few large firms remain especially if subsequent innovations increase the optimal scale although this pattern seems to characterize many industries the length of time during which early movers retain their profits how prices adjust during the entry process and the

changes in job instability and insecurity using monthly survey data this article provides evidence on changes in short term job instability and insecurity using the survey of income and program participation monthly measures from this data set are contrasted with annual measures from the survey of income and program participation and the panel study of income dynamics neither data set shows an increase in job turnover during the 1980s and 1990s we also examine indicators of increased insecurity these include the probability that a job ends involuntarily is followed by a spell of nonemployment or that the subsequent job has lower wages these indicators of insecurity also show no upward trend

when do stronger patents increase continual innovation under continual innovation greater patent strength expands innovating firms profit against imitation but also shifts profit from current to past innovators we show how the impact of patents on innovation as determined by these two opposing effects varies with industry characteristics when the discount factor is sufficiently high the negative profit division effect is negligible and innovation monotonically increases in patent strength otherwise innovation has an inverted u relationship with patent strength and stronger patents are more likely to increase innovation when the discount factor or the fixed innovation cost is higher we also show how the impact of patents on innovation may change with firms innovation capability and with the intensity of competition from imitators

is there adverse selection in life insurance markets adverse selection theory predicts people with a high risk of death are more likely to own life insurance using a unique data set merging administrative and survey records we test this theory and find the opposite people with high death risk are less likely to own life insurance we postulate advantageous selection and price discrimination swamp adverse selection in individual life insurance markets to determine which effect is more powerful we analyze group life insurance markets where insurance companies cannot price discriminate as well as in individual markets our data suggest that price discrimination has a stronger effect than advantageous selection jel d8 g1 i1

evidence on the validity of cross sectional and longitudinal labor market data this article investigates error properties of survey reports of labor market variables we use the panel study of income dynamics psid validation study a two wave panel survey of workers employed by a large firm that shared its detailed payroll records individuals reports of annual earnings are fairly accurate errors are negatively related to true earnings reducing bias due to measurement error when earnings are used as an independent variable biases are moderately larger for changes in earnings earnings per hour are less reliably reported than annual earnings biases in estimating earnings functions are relatively small but those in labor supply functions may be important

wti and brent futures pricing structure abstract wti and brent crude oil futures are competing pricing benchmarks and they jockey for the number one position as the leading futures market the price spread between wti and brent is also an important benchmark itself as the spread affects international trade in oil refiner margins and the price of refined products globally in addition the shapes of the wti and brent futures curves reflect supply and demand fundamentals in the u s versus the world market respectively on the analysis of the relationship between the two futures prices we identify a structural break in the wti brent price spread in january 2011 and a break in the corresponding shapes of the futures curves around the same time the structural break was a consequence of a dramatic rise in u s production due to fracking a series of supply disruptions in europe binding storage constraints and the u s crude oil export ban these events are studied in the context of a simulation model of world oil prices we reproduce the stylized facts of the oil market and conclude that the 2011 break in pricing structure was consistent with standard commodity storage theory

choosing the competition and patent licensing this article examines licensing as a means of choosing the competitors which a patentee monopolist will face in the period after the patent expires the queue of entrants consists of two firms which differ in their relative strengths as competitors for example by size or level of marginal cost by structuring the industry to be composed of weak competitors the incumbent is able to prolong its dominant position in the industry after the patent expires examples are presented in which the evidence suggests that choosing the competition was an important motivation of the licensor s behavior

dynamics of electricity consumption oil price and economic growth global perspective this study uses the data from 157 countries from 1960 to 2014 to analyze the relationship between economic growth electricity consumption oil prices capital and labor the economic growth of developing countries with industrial infrastructure has a more significant association with electricity consumption than oil prices we use oil prices and electricity consumption jointly to study highly predictive observations for economic growth the data are categorized by income oecd and regional levels the panel cointegration long run parameter estimation and pool mean group tests are used to analyze the cointegration and short run and long run relationships between the variables the empirical results indicate the presence of cointegration between the variables the presence of feedback effects between electricity consumption and economic growth oil prices and economic growth is valid these findings confirm that in spite of the oil prices developing countries rely heavily on electricity consumption for economic growth in the short run growth and feedback effects suggest that more vigorous electricity policies should be implemented to attain sustainable economic growth for the long term

is it a car or a truck managerial beliefs the choice of product architecture and the emergence of the minivan market segment new markets segments are a common setting for studies in technology strategy these studies generally assume that new segments already exist or have formed following the introduction of a product innovation by an entering firm thus theory on the role of established firms in the emergence of new market segments is underdeveloped this study informs current research by explaining the product innovation decisions of established firms during the emergence of a new market segment the results of a case study on the development and commercialization of the minivan at chrysler ford and general motors between 1970 and 1985 indicate that existing theories based on managerial cognition firm capabilities economic incentives and organizational structure are insufficient to explain the decisions this article develops theory based on the interrelationship of these four mechanisms

innovation and the persistence of monopoly abstract the auction framework enables us to highlight a crucial feature of many r d races the losing firm can recoup part but not the entirety of its r d investments this feature is shown to account for the marked differences in results obtained by gilbert and newbery and by reinganum when the firm investing the largest amount wins with certainty we establish the existence of a unique equilibrium neither firm employs a pure strategy and the incumbent wins more often than the challenger

earnings dynamics and measurement error in matched survey and administrative data this article analyzes earnings dynamics and measurement error using a matched longitudinal sample of individuals survey and administrative earnings in line with previous literature the reported

dynamic inducements in r d investment market signals and network locations this research shows that alliance networks shape how firms respond to uncertainty reducing information generated outside a network product awards signal the potential commercial success of the awa

regulation innovation and the introduction of new telecommunications services i examine the effects of fcc regulation on the innovation and introduction of advanced telecommunications services in the united states an interim of lighter regulation provides an experiment to test the regulatory regime s impact the econometric model comprises an arrival process for service innovation followed by a duration process for regulatory delay the number of services the firms created during the interim is 60 99 higher than the model predicts they would have created if the stricter regulation had still been in place overall firms would have introduced 62 more services to consumers during the study period if the regulation had not been in place

persistence of innovation in dutch manufacturing is it spurious this paper studies the persistence of innovation and the dynamics of innovation output in dutch manufacturing using firm data from three waves of the community innovation surveys cis pertaining to the periods 1994 1996 1996 1998 and 1998 2000 we estimate by maximum likelihood a dynamic panel data type 2 tobit model accounting for individual effects and handling the initial conditions problem we find that there is no evidence of true persistence in achieving technological product or process innovations while past shares of innovative sales condition albeit to a small extent current shares of innovative sales

sleeping quotas pre emptive quota bidding and monopoly power abstract we rationalize the puzzling existence of binding quotas that are not fully utilized our model has its roots in bhagwati 1965 in r baldwin et al eds trade growth and the balance of payments essays in honor of g haberler mit press new york on tariffs quotas equivalence and is related to the io literature on preemption we study the conditions that lead a monopolist facing a quota restricted market to buy the quota licenses itself and the conditions under which they may remain unused the divisibility of the quota is crucial for the monopolist to pre emptively buy the quota furthermore we study the implications of use it orlose it clauses commonly imposed on auctioned quotas

a blessing in disguise the implications of high global oil prices for the north american market abstract we examine the implications of increased unconventional crude oil production in north america this production increase has been made possible by the existence of alternative oil recovery technologies and persistently elevated oil prices that make these technologies commercially viable we first discuss the factors that have enabled the united states to expand production so rapidly and the glut of oil inventory that has accumulated in the midwest as a result of logistical challenges and export restrictions next we assess the extent to which the increase in u s domestic production will affect global supply conditions and whether the u s experience can be repeated in other countries with unconventional oil sources the evidence suggests that even in the best case scenario the increase in u s oil production is unlikely to have a large effect on the global oil market s demand supply balance so its effect on the price of oil is expected to be limited furthermore the united states enjoys unique infrastructural and technological advantages that make it unlikely that rapid increases in unconventional production can be achieved elsewhere

competition and growth with step by step innovation an example this paper develops a simple example to analyse the relationship between product market competition and growth in a model with step by step innovations where laggards can never leapfrog the current industry leaders but instead must first catch up with the leaders before battling for technological leadership in the future unlike in existing schumpeterian models of growth more intense product market competition and or imitations may be growth enhancing

global oil depletion a review of the evidence within the polarised and contentious debate over future oil supply a growing number of commentators are forecasting a near term peak and subsequent decline in production but although liquid fuels form the foundation of modern industrial economies the growing debate on peak oil has relatively little influence on energy and climate policy with this in mind the uk energy research centre ukerc has conducted an independent thorough and systematic review of the evidence with the aim of establishing the current state of knowledge identifying key uncertainties and improving consensus the study focuses upon the physical depletion of conventional oil in the period to 2030 and includes an in depth literature review analysis of industry databases and a detailed comparison of global supply forecasts this communication summarises the main findings of the ukerc study a key conclusion is that a peak of conventional oil production before 2030 appears likely and there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020

invention and innovation under alternative market structures the case of natural resources this paper examines the interactions between market structure and resource allocation over time when there is endogenous technical progress the structures considered are a planned economy pure monopoly and competition with patent rights in an efficient allocation the date of invention coincides with the date of innovation the date at which technology is used this is also true with a pure monopoly but monopoly retards technical progress relative to the efficient level competition for patents rights to a new technology results in excessively rapid technical progress if the resource endowment of the economy is sufficiently large also competition may lead to sleeping patents where invention strictly precedes the date of innovation

price cap regulation and technical change abstract existing analyses of the implications of price cap regulation for the development of cost reducing technologies assume that all r d is done by the regulated industry this is unrealistic we present a simple model of non cooperative r d by a regulated firm and a single external developer under a price cap regime of the sort characterised by cabral and riordan in equilibrium the external developer exerts less r d than is socially optimal the regulated firm may exert more or less a tightening of the regulatory regime impacts the r d incentives of both players though in different ways the optimal regulatory adjustment parameter may be bigger or smaller than that suggested by existing studies despite the scope for duplication of results research by an outsider necessarily enhances welfare

are earnings inequality and mobility overstated the impact of non classical measurement error abstract measures of inequality and mobility based on self reported earnings reflect attributes of both the joint distribution of earnings across time and the joint distribution of measurement error and earnings while classical measurement error would increase measures of inequality and mobility there is substantial evidence that measurement error in earnings is not classical in this paper we present the analytical links between nonclassical measurement error and some summary measures of inequality and mobility the empirical importance of nonclassical measurement error is explored using the survey of income and program participation sipp matched to tax records we find that the effects of nonclassical measurement error are large however these nonclassical effects are largely offsetting when estimating mobility as measured by the intertemporal correlation in earnings as a result sipp estimates of the correlation are similar to estimates based on tax records though sipp estimates of inequality

strategic behaviour of incumbent firms in the uk abstract the main purpose of this paper is to examine the incidence of strategic behaviour in the uk by means of a questionnaire study performed across three broad manufacturing industries food electrical engineering and chemicals of the strategies which have received substantial theoretical attention r d and advertising appear widely used patenting pricing and excess capacity much less so vertical instruments such as purchasing policy also stand out as important but possibly only a minority of firms in our sample actively pursue strategic instruments

imitation costs and patents an empirical study it has long been recognised that the costs of imitating new products have an important effect on the incentives for innovation in a market economy as arrow i962 and others have pointed out if firms can imitate an innovation at a cost that is substantially below the cost to the innovator of developing the innovation there may be little or no incentive for the innovator to carry out the innovation in their discussions of the innovation process economists frequently have called attention to the major role played by the costs of imitation but there has been little or no attempt to measure these costs to test various hypotheses concerning the factors influencing them or to estimate their effects in this paper we report some findings of what seems to be the first study of this topic in addition we present data regarding the effects of patents on imitation costs and on the rate of innovation

employment dynamics of immigrants versus natives evidence from the boom bust period in spain 2000 2011 this article studies whether the durations in unemployment and employment for immigrants and natives respond differently to changes in economic conditions and to the receipt of unemployment benefits using spanish administrative data for the period 2000 2011 we estimate multi spell duration models that disentangle unobserved heterogeneity from true duration dependence our findings suggest that immigrants are more sensitive to changes in economic conditions both in terms of unemployment and employment hazards the effect of the business cycle is not constant but decreases with duration at a higher rate among immigrants we provide evidence that the higher job separation rates and lower capital labor complementarity of immigrants are mechanisms that are possibly compatible with these results we also find evidence of a disincentive effect of unemployment benefits on unemployment duration which is stronger for immigrants but only at the beginning of the unemployment spell especially under good economic conditions finally unemployment benefits increase job match quality only for native workers with temporary contracts jel j64 j61 c23 c41 j65

preemptive patenting and the persistence of monopoly this article takes a different tack and inquires whether institutions such as the patent system create opportunities for firms with monopoly power to maintain their monopoly power the results apply to other situations such as brand identification spatial location and capacity expansion which share the characteristic that early or preemptive actions may lower the returns to potential competitors

competition imitation and growth with step by step innovation is more intense product market competition and imitation good or bad for growth this question is addressed in the context of an endogenous growth model with step by step innovations in which technological laggards must first catch up with the leading edge technology before battling for technological leadership in the future in contrast to earlier schumpeterian models in which innovations are always made by outsider firms who earn no rents if they fail to innovate and become monopolies if they do innovate here we find first that the usual schumpeterian effect of more intense product market competition pmc is almost always outweighed by the increased incentive for firms to innovate in order to escape competition so that pmc has a positive effect on growth second that a little imitation is almost always growth enhancing as it promotes more frequent neck and neck competition but too much imitation is unambiguously growth reducing the model thus points to complementary roles for competition anti trust policy and patent policy

differences in the rates of return to r d for european and us young leading r d firms this paper examines the sources of europe s lagging business r d performance relative to the us particularly the role played by missing young leading innovators in high technology intensive sectors in europe it investigates through econometric analysis differences in the rates of return to r d of european and us large r d firms it finds that while in the us young firms succeed in realizing significantly higher rates of return to r d as compared to their older counterparts including in high tech sectors european firms fail to generate significant rates of return even if they are yollies and even if they are in high tech sectors these findings can at least partly explain why europe has less r d intensive young leading innovators in high technology intensive sectors

modelling errors in survey and administrative data on employment earnings sensitivity to the fraction assumed to have error free earnings kapteyn and ypma journal of labour economics 2007 is an influential study of errors in survey and administrative data on employment earnings to fit their mixture models kapteyn and ypma assume a specific fraction of their sample have error free earnings using a new uk dataset we assess the sensitivity of model estimates and post estimation statistics to variations in this fraction and find some lack of robustness

competition market selection and growth we study the effect of the competitive selection process on the economy s rate of growth in an extension of standard quality ladder models of endogenous growth we allow for the possibility that in each period several asymmetric firms representing an endogenously determined number of past innovators may be simultaneously active in an industry stronger competitive pressure then has conflicting effects on the incentive to innovate lowering prices but also selecting the more efficient firms we show that the market selection effect of competition always increases the incentive to innovate and find circumstances in which it can outweigh the traditional negative effect of lower prices

production experiences and market structure in r d competition abstract in the rd and ii the likelihood of persistent leadership increases with the value of being the winner and the value of being a loser but decreases with expected waiting time of r d innovation and the flow of monopoly profits however destructive innovations may still occur even when production experiences are allowed to play an important role in the r d competition

second mover advantages in the strategic adoption of new technology under uncertainty abstract this paper introduces technological uncertainty into a timing game of new technology adoption it is shown that the timing neither necessarily involves first mover advantages in precommitment equilibria reinganum review of economic studies xlviii 1981 395 405 nor rent equalization due to the threat of preemption fudenberg and tirole review of economic studies lii 1985 383 401 rather there may be second mover advantages because of informational spillovers furthermore the model predicts that the equilibrium payoffs will typically be discontinuous and non monotonic in the probability that the new technology is profitable a welfare analysis reveals several market failures and suggests that policy intervention should adequately depend on the nature of uncertainty and the rate of technological progress

monopoly incentives for cost reducing r d abstract it is shown in this paper that there exist cost innovations for which a monopolist has a higher incentive to invest than a social planner this unveils the limits of the claim based on arrow 1959 that a monopoly always has a lower incentive to innovate than a social planner and therefore than is socially desirable in contrast to previous results the comparison of incentives may also depend upon the demand function finally for a restricted domain of analysis a rule for comparing the monopoly and the social planner incentives is derived

and the winner is acquired entrepreneurship as a contest yielding radical innovations new entrants to a market tend to be superior to incumbents in originating radical innovations we provide a new explanation for this phenomenon based on markets for technology it applies in industries where successful entrepreneurial firms or their technologies are acquired by incumbents that then commercialize the innovation to this end we analyze an innovation game between one incumbent and a large number of entrants in the first stage firms compete to develop innovations of high quality they do so by choosing at equal cost the success probability of their rd the bigger the number of entrants the more radical the most radical project generally entrants tend to choose more radical r d approaches and generate the highest value innovation in case of success we illustrate our theoretical findings by a qualitative empirical study of the electronic design automation industry and derive implications for research and management

2014 oil plunge causes and impacts on renewable energy abstract following four years of relative stability at around 106 per barrel bbl oil prices have declined sharply since june 2014 and are expected to remain low for a considerable period of time there are multiple factors which are being considered behind the plunge in the price of oil since june 2014 most observers have conjectured that domestic oil boom in the united states and iraq is the major cause for the falling oil prices some have suggested that a major shock to oil price expectations occurred after the november 2014 meeting of opec when they did not cut production despite the steady increase in non opec oil production in this paper first we analyzed the effect of various factors on the oil prices and then we studied impacts of the falling oil prices on non hydro renewable energy we compare the recent decline in oil prices with previous episodes up to 1996 we show that the demand and supply formula cannot be implemented to the current oil plunge the study shows that so far the recent plunge in oil prices has produced no major impact on renewable energy sector we found that renewable energies such as solar and wind are increasingly becoming cost competitive with fossil fuel energy however the oil price crash could hurt the short term outlook for certain specific clean energy technologies such as bio fuel and electric vehicles that do compete with oil based transportation while long term low oil prices may threaten renewable energies climate policies have the potential to act as a counterweight encouraging long term low carbon investment

analyzing literature based innovation output indicators the italian experience abstract this paper presents the results of a study on the product innovations introduced in the italian market in 1989 and reported in a selected number of trade journals the analysis of data collected by means of this literature based counting procedure confirms that r d oriented industries and large firms do not in italy have a marked competitive advantage in innovation the country appears to be instead characterized by a significant presence of consumer goods industries and small firms in innovation our data indicate a statistically significant association between trade competitiveness and strength in product innovation and show the comparatively higher capacity for product innovation of some of the industries in which italy achieves a positive performance in international trade moreover the presence of spillovers at the regional level from both private and public r d expenditures proves to be positively correlated with the development of product innovations finally small firms with fewer than 50 employees appear to be more innovative than is usually believed to be the case

licensees as entry barriers in a more general setting than has been considered hitherto this paper examines how the incumbent in a market threatened by entry can exploit its first mover advantage by licensing its technology not to a potential entrant but to firms that would have remained outside the industry it is shown among other things that the incumbent may subsidize the variable costs of its licensees in order to deter entry even when entry is not deterred it is demonstrated that the incumbent might opt to invite outsiders as licensees

intellectual property rights and the mode of technology transfer abstract transferring technology in an environment where patent protection is uncertain can pose significant risks to an innovating firm s ability to appropriate rents this paper incorporates asymmetric information in a screening game where the innovating firm has the choices of licensing a new product at arm s length to a foreign firm exporting it or licensing it to a subsidiary subsidiary production avoids the risk of imitation but involves higher costs for the innovating firm the gains to the southern country from the lack of intellectual property right protection may be offset by strategic behavior by northern firms who opt for technology transfer via subsidiary or monopoly production

estimating measurement error in annual job earnings a comparison of survey and administrative data we propose a new methodology that does not assume a prior specification of the statistical properties of the measurement errors and treats all sources as noisy measures of some underlying true value the unobservable true value can be represented as a weighted average of all available measures using weights that must be specified a priori unless there has been a truth audit the census bureau s survey of income and program participation sipp survey jobs are linked to social security administration earnings data creating two potential annual earnings observations the reliability statistics for both sources are quite similar except for cases where the sipp used imputations for some missing monthly earnings reports