meta paradigm change and the theory of the firm many seemingly unrelated debates on the theory of the firm are in fact part of a single deeper transformation of the social sciences as the foundational assumptions of 20th century social science have slowly been shown by science to be false new sub paradigms have emerged which cumulatively drop i theoretical assumptions about markets to explain firms ii epistemological assumptions about knowledge to explain diversity and iii metaphysical assumptions about causality to explain technical change debates occur across each of these levels

a large scale mapping of territorial development dynamics in latin america summary this paper summarizes a study of changes in per capita income monetary poverty and income distribution in 9 045 subnational administrative units of nine latin american countries between the mid 1990s and mid 2000s the results largely support spatial convergence of mean household incomes although the estimates indicate it has been slow territorial inequality is found to be persistent and reduces the pro poor effect of local income growth although national context specific the estimates also indicate that territorial development dynamics are influenced by the structural features of the territories in view of the evidence territorial development policies in latin america seem well warranted

competition cooperation and innovation organizational arrangements for regimes of rapid technological progress abstract discussions of the link between firm size and innovation are outmoded because the boundaries of the firm have become fuzzy in recent decades strategic alliances constellations of bilateral agreements among firms are increasingly necessary to support innovative activities such alliances can facilitate complex coordination beyond what the price system can accomplish while avoiding the dysfunctional properties sometimes associated with hierarchy antitrust law and competition policy need to recognize that these new organizational forms are often the functional antithesis of cartels though they may have certain structural similarities a more complete understanding of bilateral contracts and agreements ought to reveal when and how cooperation can support rather than impede innovation and competition

a large scale linear complementarity model of the north american natural gas market abstract the north american natural gas market has seen significant changes recently due to deregulation and restructuring for example third party marketers can contract for transportation and purchase of gas to sell to end users while the intent was a more competitive market the potential for market power exists we analyze this market using a linear complementarity equilibrium model including producers storage and peak gas operators third party marketers and four end use sectors the marketers are depicted as nash cournot players determining supply to meet end use consumption all other players are in perfect competition results based on national petroleum council scenarios are presented

corporate led sustainable development and energy poverty alleviation at the bottom of the pyramid the case of the cleancook in nigeria summary corporations are increasingly viewed as key actors in poverty alleviation bottom of the pyramid bop advocates suggest that multinational corporations mncs can simultaneously alleviate poverty and make profits by selling scaled down products to the poor our paper investigates this claim using the case of the cleancook stove and fuel technology introduced in nigeria by an mnc working through a nonprofit organization and local business actors supply and demand side analyses show that the cleancook is least likely to reach the energy poor bop households originally targeted the evidence suggests that serving the bop requires greater differentiation than can be achieved with profit driven business models

understanding corporate coherence theory and evidence abstract multiproduct firms are perceived to be coherent in their scope yet there is no strong theoretical foundations to explain coherence in modern industrial organization theory this paper shows that as u s manufacturing firms grow more diverse they maintain a constant level of coherence between neighboring activities this finding runs counter to the idea that firms with many activities are generally more incoherent a framework is then presented which appeals to the nature of enterprise learning path dependencies and the nature of the selection environment to explain the ubiquity of coherent diversifiers

forms of trust and conditions for their stability of the three principal approaches to trust we decided to investigate in greater detail the one in which trust is regarded as a belief that the individuals involved hold about a relationship trust was defined as a delegatory relationship based on anticipation of the delegatee s behaviour we reached four main conclusions first the solution to the problem posed by the indeterminacy of trust lies in the differentiation and hierarchisation of the various forms of trust contractual organisational and tacit on the basis of their degree of irreversibility and stability second contractual trust is unstable because it comes up against the problem of guarantees of individual intentions this leads to the third conclusion rational evaluation by individuals cannot by itself establish trust which is based on collective beliefs practices and rules fourth we identified two conditions for the stability of trust the creation of irreversibilities through adherence to a rule and the creation of a confidence interval within which different interpretations of contradictory individual strategies are tolerated thus the viability of the various forms of trust depends on the ability of institutions and organisations to create rules that are likely when applied to produce an interval in which tolerance of mutual intentions is the norm these analyses of trust hence highlight the role of time and period of time in the notion of trust

a percolation based model explaining delayed takeoff in new product diffusion a model of new product diffusion is proposed in which a site percolation dynamics represents socially driven diffusion of knowledge about the product s characteristics in a population of consumers a consumer buys the new product if her valuation of it formed after her witnessing the product in use among her friends or neighbors is not below the price of the product announced in a given period our model attributes the empirical finding of a delayed takeoff of a new product to a drift of the percolation dynamics from a nonpercolating regime to a percolating regime this drift is caused by learning effects lowering the price of the product or by network effects increasing its individual valuations by consumers both with an increasing number of buyers

strategizing by firms in the presence of markets for resources strategizing by firms from the resource based view is concerned with the process through which firms acquire a distinctive bundle of resources that is costly and time consuming for competitors to duplicate or imitate a central question facing any firm therefore is its strategy for accumulating the resources that underpin its production activities in this article the process of resource accumulation is discussed as one involving potentially both internal resource development and external resource acquisition from the perspective of the strategic issues involved in making a choice between these options emerging markets for technologies and know how through licensing and other forms of resource exchange have opened up new avenues through which firms may jostle for advantage the article is concerned with three major aspects of this process illustrating the discussion with cases from biotechnology and pharmaceuticals first the strategizing by firms around the internal development vs external sourcing issue is discussed as informed by the practices of leading firms and how these lend greater variety of strategic options for firms second the potential competitive advantages as well as disadvantages to be secured by firms through the process of external sourcing as compared with the well known potential advantages accruing to incumbents through internal development such as time compression diseconomies and causal ambiguity and third the criteria to be used by firms to strategically evaluate resources individually as contrasted with the strategic evaluation of the resource bundle or totality these criteria it is argued turn on the issues of marginal value contribution resource complementarities and synergies resource variety and transferability involving intellectual property issues successful firms it is argued expand their options through blending internal resource accumulation with external resource leverage thereby deepening their distinctive dynamic capabilities this approach extends the framework of the rbv enabling it to encompass resource driven schumpeterian competition and such aspects of industrial dynamics as specialization modularization and imitative challenge copyright 2003 oxford university press

modularity in technology and organization this paper is an attempt to raid both the literature on modular design and the literature on property rights to create the outlines of a modularity theory of the firm such a theory will look at firms and other organizations in terms of the partitioning of rights understood as protected spheres of authority among cooperating parties and it will assert that organizations reflect nonmodular structures that is structures in which decision rights rights of alienation and residual claims to income do not all reside in the same hands 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

competitive dynamics and economic learning an extended resource based view in this paper a conceptual framework for the analysis of economic learning is developed economic learning by analogy with organizational learning results in the development of economic competences or capabilities shared between firms which rest on a foundation of economic resources from which value is generated and economic routines through which resources are utilized it is the mobility of resources and their exchange and production dynamics along evolutionary pathways which underpins the plausibility of a notion of economic learning the paper elaborates this framework as a resource based view rbv of the economy as a whole as an extension of the rbv of the firm such a framework captures the dynamics of exchange and circulation of technologies know how and intangible assets as well as of tangible assets and capital goods it is concerned with investment behavior by entrepreneurs rather than with the behavior of producers and consumers in goods and services markets within this resource economy framework it is possible to generate an account of the resource dynamics that underpin production of goods and services including resource propagation diffusion imitation replication and recombination these processes encompass evolutionary pressures experienced through resource variation selection and retention entrepreneurial initiatives take the form of resource recombinations while resource innovation captures the creation of new economic resources such as technological standards such a perspective brings into focus the resource specialization and configurations that drive real economies within firms and between firms that translates into enhanced or diminished performance of the economy as a whole copyright 2003 oxford university press

hedonic price indexes for spreadsheets and an empirical test for network externalities in this article i first estimate hedonic price equations for computer spreadsheet programs and then use the analysis to empirically test whether network externalities exist in this industry the study shows that consumers are willing to pay a significant premium for spreadsheets that are compatible with the lotus platform and for spreadsheets that offer links to external databases and a similar premium for spreadsheets that offer local area network externalities finally the quality adjusted real price of computer spreadsheets declined by approximately 15 per year from 1986 to 1991

asset stock accumulation and sustainability of competitive advantage given incomplete factor markets appropriate time paths of flow variables must be chosen to build required stocks of assets that is critical resources are accumulated rather than acquired in strategic factor markets barney barney j 1986 strategic factor markets expectations luck and business strategy management sci october 1231 1241 sustainability of a firm s asset position hinges on how easily assets can be substituted or imitated imitability is linked to the characteristics of the asset accumulation process time compression diseconomies asset mass efficiencies inter connectedness asset erosion and causal ambiguity

explaining interfirm cooperation and performance toward a reconciliation of predictions from the resource based view and organizational economics interfirm cooperation and its performance implications are examined in the context of two widely cited theoretical approaches to organizations broadly speaking the resource based view suggests that firms seek to capitalize on and increase their capabilities and endowments whereas organizational economics asserts that firms focus on minimizing the costs of organizing although these perspectives agree on managers likely actions in many areas their predictions diverge when interfirm cooperation is considered we take a step toward reconciling these differences by positing that firms place resource based concerns in front of considerations from organizational economics when deciding whether or not to engage in interfirm cooperation we examined this prediction using data from 94 publicly held restaurant chains the results support our integrated view but also suggest that giving primacy to resource concerns detracts from the performance of some firms we derive several implications of these findings in an effort to guide subsequent inquiry copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

towards a knowledge based theory of the geographical cluster co located firms within related industries enhance the ability to create knowledge by variation and a deepened division of labour the interdependent development between economic activities and local institutions make the cluster attractive to some industries and hostile to others the very reasons why cognitive distance might be small within the cluster tend to make cognitive distance great between clusters and make interfirm co operation across bodies of knowledge more costly the additional value created when clustering may justify the additional cost copyright 2001 by oxford university press

can product demonstrations create markets for sustainable energy technology a randomized controlled trial in rural india abstract the literature on sustainable energy technology sees informational barriers as a major obstacle to technology adoption in the case of solar home systems recent studies report positive socio economic effects on households but technology adoption remains underwhelming in collaboration with a local solar technology provider we conduct a randomized controlled trial in 75 large villages in the state of uttar pradesh india to examine the ability of village solar demonstrations to create markets for solar home systems we find no effect of such demonstrations on technology sales awareness or perceptions of solar technology technology adopters report high levels of satisfaction with product quality and service suggesting that the null finding cannot be attributed to poor technology these findings suggest that lack of awareness is not a binding constraint on the growth of solar technology markets in the study area based on additional surveys we find evidence suggesting that access to credit from rural banks is an important explanation for variation in sales across villages these results do not prove that information and awareness are irrelevant in general but they show that even carefully designed marketing campaigns cannot increase demand for new products in the presence of a binding credit constraint

increasing returns and competitive equilibrium the content and development of marshall s theory this paper reviews alfred marshall s attempts to reconcile increasing returns and competition from the early economic writings to the later editions of his principles it is shown that while marshall s final solution to the problem involved naming external economies the cause of increasing returns in a regime of competition both the life cycle of the firm and internal economies remained necessary to his argument their function was to give some operation al content to the elusive concept of external economies copyright 1992 by oxford university press

from linear fuel switching to multiple cooking strategies a critique and alternative to the energy ladder model abstract promoting sustainable development requires evaluating the technical and policy options that will facilitate the adoption and use of energy efficient and less polluting cooking stoves and practices the transition from traditional to modern fuels and devices has been explained by the energy ladder model that suggests that with increasing affluence a progression is expected from traditional biomass fuels to more advanced and less polluting fuels in this paper we evaluate the energy ladder model utilizing data from a four year 1992 96 case study of a village in mexico and from a large scale survey from four states of mexico we show that an alternate multiple fuel model of stove and fuel management based on the observed pattern of household accumulation of energy options rather than the simple progression depicted in the traditional energy ladder scenario more accurately depicts cooking fuel use patterns in rural households the multiple fuel model integrates four factors demonstrated to be essential in household decision making under conditions of resource scarcity or uncertainty a economics of fuel and stove type and access conditions to fuels b technical characteristics of cookstoves and cooking practices c cultural preferences and d health impacts this model also allows better estimates of the expected fuelwood demand and indoor air pollution in rural households

dynamic competition with network externalities why history matters we consider dynamic competition among platforms in a market with network exter nalities a platform that dominated the market in the previous period becomes focal in the current period in that agents play the equilibrium in which they adopt the focal platform whenever such equilibrium exists yet when faced with higher quality competition can a low quality platform remain focal in the finite horizon case the unique equilibrium is efficient for patient platforms with an infinite time horizon however there are multiple equilibria where either the lowor high quality platform dominates if qualities are stochastic the platform with a better average quality wins with a higher probability even when its realized quality is lower and this probability increases as platforms become more patient hence social welfare may decline as platforms become more forward looking

privatization in eastern europe irreversibility and critical mass effects abstract this paper proposes a model to shed light on two important policy features of privatization in central and eastern europe the idea of a necessary critical mass of privatization on one hand and the great difficulties encountered in the actual privatization process on the other the model incorporates a positive externality related to the size of the private sector multiple equilibria may arise for political and economic reasons policies of free distribution are analysed with the model they may eliminate the danger of policy reversals due to excess unemployment but may at the same time increase the relative cost of restructuring leading in some cases to pareto inferior outcomes

opportunities incentives and the collective patterns of technological change in a few pages in the introductory article for this debate vernon ruttan succeeds in the unlikely task of flagging many issues at the core of the economic interpretation of technological change and by doing so he implicitly addresses also a few sensitive spots for the economic discipline at large here i will not attempt to provide any thorough view of what i consider the achievements and limitations of the current state of the art see however freeman i 994 for a critical survey which i largely share rather i shall put forward a series of remarks which hopefully could be seen as part of a much wider and still largely unexplored research programme as a premise just note that some form of attention to technology related phenomena has spread over the last 20 30 years from small enclaves of heterodox economists and economic historians to become an important concern even for quite mainstream theories of e g the firm industrial organisation macroeconomics trade growth etc from patent races all the way to new trade and new growth theories and even real business cycle macro models technical change has drawn a consideration which is less by default than it was say in robert solow s original growth models orjoe bain s barriers to entry views on industrial structures and in parallel empirical studies at the levels of specific technologies firms sectors and countries have boomed for overviews cf dosi i988 nelson i993 freeman i982 i 994 cohen i 995 and granstrand i 994 among others so at least in this sense those decreasing returns to the economics of technical change suggested by ruttan do not seem to have set in however ruttan s paper raises also substantive questions about the relative success of three interpretative perspectives which he calls induced evolutionary and path dependent in the following i shall argue that an evolutionary perspective broadly defined can easily accommodate both inducement effects and path dependent patterns of technical change let me start from what i consider the major building blocks of an

a mixed complementarity based equilibrium model of natural gas markets we present a new multiseasonal multiyear natural gas market equilibrium model based on the concept of a competitive equilibrium involving the market participants producers storage reservoir operators peak gas operators pipeline operators marketers and consumers the first three classes are depicted as price takers consistent with perfect competition the pipeline operations are described with regulated tariffs but also involve congestion pricing as a mechanism to allocate scarce pipeline capacity the marketers are price takers in all markets except in sales to consumers in which they compete as nash cournot players finally consumers are described by demand curves for each of the four sectors residential commercial industrial and electric power we show that the equilibrium model is an instance of a mixed nonlinear complementarity problem ncp and provide sufficient detail not generally seen in previous complementarity models of natural gas the ncp formulation is derived from considering the karush kuhn tucker optimality conditions of the optimization problems faced by these participants under mild conditions we show that this ncp has a solution and under additional reasonable conditions we show that the market prices are unique we also validate the model on a representative sample network with nine market participants and three seasons using four scenarios

the dynamic capabilities of firms an introduction an expanded paradigm is needed to explain how competitive advantage is gained and held firms resorting to resource bas ed strategy attempt to accumulate valuable technology assets and employ an aggressive intellectual property stance however winners in the global marketplace have been firms demonstrating timely responsiveness and rapid and flexible product innovation along with the management capability to effectively coordinate and redeploy internal and external competences this source of competitive advantage dynamic capabilities emphasizes two aspects first it refers to the shifting character of the environment second it emphasizes the key role of strategic management in appropriately adapting integrating and re configuring internal and external organizational skills resources and functional competences toward changing environment 3 only recently have researchers begun to focus on the specifics of developing firm specific capabilities and the manner in which competences are renewed to respond to shifts in the business environment the dynamic capabilities approach provides a coherent framework to integrate existing conceptual and empirical knowledge and facilitate prescription this paper argues that the competitive advanis tage of firms stems from dynamic capabilities rooted in high performance routines z operating inside the firm embedded in the firm s processes and conditioned by its history it offers dynamic capabilities as an emerging paradigm of the modern business j firm that draws on multiple disciplines and advances with the help of industry studies in the usa and elsewhere

competing technologies the learning curve and rational expectations abstract the problem of choice between several variants of a technology subject to dynamic learning economies is examined in a rational expectations model with overlapping adopters it is shown that even with rational expectations the long term market outcome depends sensitively on the pattern of early chance events and that only one variant of the technology will come to dominate the market in the long run this variant need not be the one which is socially optimal or most promising technically

disequilibrium economic dynamics a post schumpeterian contribution abstract adaptive economizing in a decentralized economy with alternative technologies and scarce resources leads to various kinds of locally unstable behavior economic disequilibrium is the rule in such a world and requires the presence of market mechanisms that make possible continued viability if in addition to local instability economies are also globally unstable as considerable evidence suggests then the discovery and application of new structure is essential a complete dynamic theory of economic change must therefore be based not only on conventional rationality and routinely adapting behavior but on a superior faculty which may perhaps best be called creative intelligence

cooperation between rivals informal know how trading it has long been recognized that it is difficult for an innovating firm to fully appropriate the benefits arising from its innovations and that desired research might therefore not be performed nelson 1959 pp 297 306 one sometimes possible solution to this dilemma is cooperative r d conducted by firms who share the costs and benefits of particular r d projects johnson 1973

light emitting diodes and the lighting revolution the emergence of a solid state lighting industry emergence of new industries from evolving technologies is critical to the global economy yet has been relatively understudied due to the paucity of available data this study draws lessons on industry emergence by analyzing how a solid state lighting ssl industry grew out of light emitting diode led technologies that evolved for half a century with participation by tens of thousands of researchers in universities national laboratories and firms using data on publications patents and firms combined with business history we trace the evolution of ssl through a succession of market niches at times a few researchers with unorthodox research approaches made breakthroughs that greatly advanced particular technology trajectories and pushed led research in unexpected directions a succession of led market niches advanced the technology and provided profits to incentivize continuing research while reducing cost and improving efficacy of leds innovating firms developed a thicket of patents and captured substantial profit but were embroiled in extensive litigation that was ultimately resolved through cross licensing a major new generation of lighting products is now disrupting the traditional lighting industry although the leading incumbent lighting firms all invested early and heavily in ssl the industry s future leadership is uncertain

towards a theory of the technology based firm abstract the modern firm is a very viable economic institution drawing strength from a competitive market economy with embedded super markets for corporate control and sub markets for internal organization the technology based firm in addition draws strength from its co evolution with modern science and technology and vice versa and thereby becomes increasingly important however received theories of the firm of which there are many have not particularly taken account of technology and technology based firms nor their management this paper takes an empirical point of departure from recent findings regarding the positive relationship between technology diversification on the one hand and corporate growth and business diversification on the other these findings are not readily explainable by received theories of the firm which the paper reviews and the findings are thus taken as an explanandum for a proposed approach to formulate a theory of the technology based firm the approach is compatible with various other theoretical approaches such as the resource based the transaction cost and the evolutionary approach but specifically takes the idiosyncrasies of technology i e technical competence as well as management into account through notably strong economies of scale scope speed and space associated with the combination of different technologies and resources the technology based firm is subjected to specific dynamics in its growth and diversification and shifts of businesses and resources in particular a technology based firm tends to engage in technology diversification thereby becoming multitechnological as such the technology based firm has incentives to economize on increasingly expensive new technologies by pursuing strategies of internationalization on both input and output markets technology related business diversification external technology marketing and sourcing r d rationalization and technology related partnering

why have improved cook stove initiatives in india failed summary an estimated 2 7 billion people cook meals on biomass fueled brick stone and clay stoves scarcity of wood and negative impacts on health and environment have motivated efforts to design and distribute improved cook stoves in developing countries in india adoption is limited despite massive promotion over many decades existing research suggests that many rural women in india do not want improved stoves and those who do face obstacles to adoption we step back from the many good case studies to examine the broader story of improved cook stoves ics in india we do so by bringing together technical research of applied science and narrative critique of social science rather than assuming a priori that traditional stoves require replacement we ask why indian cook stoves been a magnet for so much attention why adoptions rates have remained low and what lessons might be learned from a broad multi disciplinary perspective our approach is critical and reflexive given our own involvement in ic efforts and puts gender at the center our big picture review shows that the indian chulha for all its problems is a remarkably successful technology which also satisfies several important household needs hence targeting this device for obsolescence has profound implications that cannot be reduced to energy consumption or environmental hazards rural women do not prioritize ics but addressing their priorities requires either capital intensive investment or challenging powerful institutions in contrast ic interventions are relatively cheap decentralized mechanical and seemingly apolitical hence their popularity in development programs our review of chulha research leads us to reject both the optimism of development planners who frame such problems as technical and the antagonistic pessimism of their critics searching for a middle ground requires stepping back from the dogma of efforts to improve biomass cook stoves

platform selection in the lab abstract emerging literature explores experimental platform selection games these games converge rapidly on the superior platform under a wide range of conditions we replicate the remarkable results of hossain and morgan 2009 in which such a game tips almost perfectly to the superior platform next we show that platform coordination fails when seemingly innocent increases in out of equilibrium payoffs are introduced the inflated payoffs keep the best reply structure unchanged and do not influence players security levels our design allows control for the explanatory force of risk dominance we find that equilibrium selection theory is unable to account for coordination failure while observed behavior is consistent with non rational learning furthermore and contrary to the literature we find that efficiency suffers when an inferior platform is granted initial monopoly

a stochastic version of a stackelberg nash cournot equilibrium model we consider a stochastic version of the stackelberg nash cournot model proposed by murphy et al 1983 ln the first stage the leader chooses and announces his production level taking into account the reaction of the followers the decision of the leader is taken when market demand is uncertain in the second stage the followers knowing the leader s output react to this level according to the cournot assumption at this stage demand is known we study the extension of the murphy et al model and give a numerical illustration of this model using the european gas market

schumpeterian patterns of innovation using patent data for four countries germany france united kingdom and italy for the period 1968 1986 the authors find that the patterns of innovative activities differ systematically across technological classes while remarkable similarities emerge across countries in the patterns of innovative activities for each technological class this result strongly suggests that technological imperatives and technology specific factors closely linked to technological regimes play a major role in determining the patterns of innovative activities across countries schumpeter proposed two major patterns of innovative activities the first one labelled by nelson and winter 1982 and kamien and schwartz 1982 as schumpeter mark i is proposed in the theory of economic development 1934 in this work schumpeter examined the typical european industrial structure of the late nineteenth century characterised by many small firms according to this view the pattern of innovative activity is characterised by technological ease of entry in an industry and by a major role played by new firms in innovative activities new entrepreneurs come in an industry with new ideas new products or new processes launch new enterprises which challenge established firms and thus continuously disrupt the current ways of production organisation and distribution and wipe out the quasi rents associated with previous innovations the second one labelled schumpeter mark ii is proposed in capitalism socialism and democracy 1942 in this work inspired by the features of the american industry of the first half of the twentieth century schumpeter discussed the relevance of the industrial r d laboratory for technological innovation and the key role of large firms according to this view the pattern of innovative activities is characterised by the prevalence of large established firms and by relevant barriers to entry for new innovators large firms have institutionalised the innovation process with the creation of r d laboratories filled with researchers technicians and engineers with their accumulated stock of knowledge in specific technological areas their advanced competence in large scale r d projects production and distribution and their relevant financial resources they create barriers to entry to new entrepreneurs and small firms

arresting the killer in the kitchen the promises and pitfalls of commercializing improved cookstoves summary in a shift exemplary of neoliberal approaches to development major funders of household energy interventions have begun to emphasize market based stove dissemination over partially subsidized models stove promoters are increasingly expected to operate as self sustaining businesses this shift is viewed as a way to scale up in order to reach millions of poor households lacking access to clean cooking technologies using the case of gira an ngo that has successfully distributed cookstoves in mexico s central highlands for nearly two decades we demonstrate how this trend presents challenges for organizations operating effectively with outside funding in highly contextual local conditions 2009 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

beyond fuelwood savings valuing the economic benefits of introducing improved biomass cookstoves in the purepecha region of mexico article i nfo half of the world population relies on biomass for cooking with very significant health as well as climate change impacts improved cookstoves have been disseminated as an alternative to reduce these impacts however few detailed studies about the economic benefits of improved cookstoves ics interventions including environmental and health co benefits exist to date in this paper we perform a comprehensive economic evaluation of a dissemination program of ics in rural mexico the resulting cost benefit analysis cba of the patsari improved cookstove is presented utilizing estimation of direct costs and benefits including fuelwood savings income generation health impacts environmental conservation and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions the analysis is based on comprehensive data obtained through monitoring studies carried out in the study area from 2003 to the present results show that patsari cookstoves represent a viable economic option for improving living conditions of the poorest inhabitants of rural mexico with benefit cost ratios estimated between 11 4 1 and 9 1 the largest contributors to economic benefits stemmed from fuelwood savings and reductions in health impacts which constituted 53 and 28 of the overall benefit respectively

tobin s q and the importance of focus in firm performance using tobin s q as a measure of performance we seek to estimate the relative importance of industry focus and share effects in determining firm performance our methods are analogous to those of richard schmalensee and like him we find that industry effects account for the majority of the explained variance however we also find that firm effects exist in the form of focus effects that is narrowly diversified firms do better than widely diversified firms we interpret this finding as consistent with profit maximization by firms with different factor endowments

examining market power in the european natural gas market in this paper we develop a mixed complementarity equilibrium model for the european natural gas market this model has producers as cournot players with conjectured supply functions relative to their rivals as such these producers can withhold production to increase downstream prices for greater profits the other players are taken to be perfectly competitive and are combined with extensive pipeline seasonal and other data reflecting the current state of the market four market scenarios are run to analyze the extent of market power by these producers as well as the importance of pipeline and storage capacity

socio economic determinants of charcoal expenditures in tanzania evidence from panel data abstract compared to firewood charcoal is a relatively clean and convenient fuel nevertheless the mass production of charcoal can contribute substantially to deforestation rendering it imperative to regulate charcoal use this article uses nationally representative panel data on tanzania conducted in 2008 and 2010 to examine how charcoal expenditures change over time within any given household the focus of the analysis will be on identifying certain socio economic factors that affect charcoal use at the household level the framing of the analysis on variation in time within each household addresses the omitted variable bias that often undermines inference from comparisons across different households we find that while charcoal expenditures increase with household income the rise in charcoal use with income is relatively gradual household size is unrelated to charcoal expenditures but urban rural differences in fuel choice are large even though we include household fixed effects in all specifications in this regard policymakers and urban planners need to pay particular attention to the role of urbanization in predicting trends in charcoal expenditures in developing countries like tanzania

biodiversity conservation in a dynamic world may lead to inefficiencies due to lock in effects and path dependence abstract although biodiversity is generally diminishing in some areas its conservation is expanding however the exact path of this expansion is uncertain this can lead to problems of path dependence and lock in effects path dependence describes situations where history strongly influences present decisions and lock in effects refer to situations where an earlier decision provides strong incentives to follow a particular path even if more efficient alternatives are available later on we develop a conceptual ecological economic model to investigate which ecological and economic parameters favour the appearance of efficiency losses in biodiversity conservation due to path dependence and lock in effects in a dynamic two period two region model generally we find that efficiency losses occur if there are signals that guide the first period budget into a region that later turns out to be suboptimal if both time periods had been considered right from the beginning to illustrate the conservation relevance of our findings we present potential efficiency losses through path dependence in the hypothetical case of applying offsets to conserving the endangered maculinea teleius butterfly near the city of landau in germany

network location and learning the influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation this paper presents a dynamic firm level study of the role of network resources in determining alliance formation such resources inhere not so much within the firm but reside in the interfirm networks in which firms are placed data from extensive fieldwork show that by influencing the extent to which firms have access to information about potential partners such resources are an important catalyst for new alliances especially because alliances entail considerable hazards this study also assesses the importance of firms capabilities with alliance formation and material resources as determinants of their alliance decisions i test this dynamic framework and its hypotheses about the role of time varying network resources and firm capabilities with comprehensive longitudinal multi industry data on the formation of strategic alliances by a panel of firms between 1970 and 1989 the results confirm field observations that accumulated network resources arising from firm participation in the network of accumulated prior alliances are influential in firms decisions to enter into new alliances this study highlights the importance of network resources that firms derive from their embeddedness in networks for explaining their strategic behavior copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

connective power solar electrification and social change in kenya summary market based rural electrification with solar energy is increasingly common in developing countries this article revolves around three main claims about solar electrification in kenya s unsubsidized market 1 the benefits of solar electrification are captured primarily by the rural middle class 2 solar electricity plays a modest role in supporting economically productive and education related activities but connective applications such as television radio and cellular telephone charging often receive a higher priority 3 solar electrification is more closely tied to increased television use the expansion of markets more rural urban communication and other processes that increase rural urban connectivity than to poverty alleviation sustainable development or the appropriate technology movement

a resource based theory of the firm knowledge versus opportunism this paper develops a resource based knowledge based theory of the firm its thesis is that the organizational mode through which individuals cooperate affects the knowledge they apply to business activity we focus on the polar cases of organization within a firm as compared to market contracting there will be a difference in the knowledge that is brought to bear and hence in joint productivity under the two options thus as compared to opportunism based transaction cost theory we advance a separate yet complementary answer to the question why do firms exist our aim is to develop an empirically relevant and complementary theory of why firms are formed a theory based on irreducible knowledge differences between individuals rather than the threat of purposeful cheating or withholding of information we assume limited cognitive abilities on the part of individuals bounded rationality and assume that opportunistic behavior will not occur the latter allows us to determine whether resource based

adaptation as information restriction the hot stove effect individuals and social systems are often portrayed as risk averse and resistant to change such propensities are characteristically attributed to individual organizational and cultural traits such as risk aversion uncertainty avoidance discounting and an unwillingness to change this paper explores an alternative interpretation of such phenomena we show how the reproduction of successful actions inherent in adaptive processes such as learning and competitive selection and reproduction results in a bias against alternatives that initially may appear to be worse than they actually are in particular learning and selection are biased against both risky and novel alternatives because the biases are products of the tendency to reproduce success that is inherent in the sequential sampling of adaptation they are reduced whenever the reproduction of success is attenuated in particular when adaptation is slowed made imprecise or recalled less reliably the propensity to engage in risky and new activities is increased these protections against the error of rejecting potentially good alternatives on inadequate experiential evidence are costly however they increase the likelihood of persisting with alternatives that are poor in the long run as well as in the short run

paradoxes of decentralization water reform and social implications in mexico summary decentralized governance of water resources is a centerpiece of mexico s neoliberal reform strategy we analyze decentralization based on urban rural case studies in distinct geographical regions to ascertain whether it is linked to more efficient water management or sustainable use of water resources and to examine its development implications we assess whether or not private sector management is related to a more efficient sustainable and accountable management of water variety of municipal and private management arrangement in four urban areas we find that it has not resulted in efficiency or sustainability gains for agricultural water management irrigation districts in two case studies benefited from the more democratic participatory management by water users under mexico s transference strategy but did not result in greater equity efficiency or sustainability of water use we argue that decentralization in the mexican water sector is context specific and marked by limited benefits privatization is less an instrument aimed at improving efficiency than a channel for preferred treatment for capital accumulation by private entities as well as a legitimized way for the state to transfer the burden of water management to non state institutions the creation of new forms of water institutions requires not the retrenchment of the state but rather its involvement to ensure accountability transparency equity and sustainability

u s energy research and development declining investment increasing need and the feasibility of expansion investment in energy research and development in the u s is declining despite calls for an enhancement of the nation s capacity for innovation to address environmental geopolitical and macroeconomic concerns we examine investments in research and development in the energy sector and observe broad based declines in funding since the mid 1990s the large reductions in investment by the private sector should be a particular area of concern for policy makers multiple measures of patenting activity reveal widespread declines in innovative activity that are correlated with research and development r d investment notably in the environmentally significant wind and solar areas trends in venture capital investment and fuel cell innovation are two promising cases that run counter to the overall trends in the sector we draw on prior work on the optimal level of energy r d to identify a range of values which would be adequate to address energy related concerns comparing simple scenarios based on this range to past public r d programs and industry investment data indicates that a five to ten fold increase in energy r d investment is both warranted and feasible

dynamic capabilities what are they this paper focuses on dynamic capabilities and more generally the resource based view of the firm we argue that dynamic capabilities are a set of specific and identifiable processes such as product development strategic decision making and alliancing they are neither vague nor tautological although dynamic capabilities are idiosyncratic in their details and path dependent in their emergence they have significant commonalities across firms popularly termed best practice this suggests that they are more homogeneous fungible equifinal and substitutable than is usually assumed in moderately dynamic markets dynamic capabilities resemble the traditional conception of routines they are detailed analytic stable processes with predictable outcomes in contrast in high velocity markets they are simple highly experiential and fragile processes with unpredictable outcomes finally well known learning mechanisms guide the evolution of dynamic capabilities in moderately dynamic markets the evolutionary emphasis is on variation in high velocity markets it is on selection at the level of rbv we conclude that traditional rbv misidentifies the locus of long term competitive advantage in dynamic markets overemphasizes the strategic logic of leverage and reaches a boundary condition in high velocity markets copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

theorizing path dependence a review of positive feedback mechanisms in technology markets regional clusters and organizations the concept of path dependence has often been criticized as vague and only narrowly applicable although we can find some very refined definitions of the concept we also find a wide range of empirical phenomena being described as path dependent we argue that more detailed accounts of the positive feedback mechanisms that form paths can take path dependence beyond this state of being overdetermined but under specified reviewing three well described cases of path dependent dynamics in technology markets regional clustering and organizations we define a core set of positive feedback mechanisms that constitute path dependence at different analysis levels and clarify the relationship between positive feedback and increasing returns we show that path dependent processes that is processes driven by positive feedback that veer toward rigidity or lock in can be but do not have to be found under many labels including structural inertia coevolution or institutional persistence we conclude that a precise definition of path dependence does not need to be at odds with the concept s widespread use in understanding organizational and industrial development processes copyright 2013 the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

capitalism as an engine of progress economists from marx to schumpeter have touted capitalism as an engine of technical progress but what kind of an engine is it what are its key components how does it work

inefficient standard adoption inertia and momentum revisited i introduction since the establishment of the theory of network effects economists have been concerned with the question of whether a market with network effects will tend to settle on the socially optimal standard it has been postulated that markets may exhibit excess inertia once a technological standard is in place a new superior standard may not displace it because of installed base effects alternatively markets may exhibit excess momentum consumers may adopt a new standard too quickly ignoring the stranding effect they are having on previous users similar issues arise in the adoption of language and social norms the literature has investigated various conditions under which one of these inefficiencies arises such inefficiencies are of particular concern for open technologies such as the qwerty and dvorak keyboards 1 the situation is somewhat different when individual firms own standards in that case a simple argument seems to indicate that there is no possibility that an inefficient standard will persist if a new standard is superior in any objective sense there are gains to be made from switching to it once the standard has been adopted the firm can appropriate these gains therefore the firm has incentive to lower the initial price enough to induce adoption of the standard the preceding argument is made in liebowitz and margolis 1999 and repeated in spulber 2002 spulber expresses a general skepticism about the likelihood of inefficiencies when property rights are defined and markets exist critics might claim that previous models that imply inefficient standard adoption are unrealistic in some way and that if such models were modified slightly the inefficiency would disappear i reconsider the issue of inefficient standard adoption using a parsimonious yet compelling model assuming only that there are successive generations of finitely lived consumers that preferences are heterogeneous and that there are network effects among users adoption decisions can be inefficient this is true even if consumers can coordinate efficiently within a generation and a firm can act as a coordinating device across generations the model presented here generates some of the same results found in other papers collectively but in a more general setting and with more robust results if there is an established standard and a superior alternative emerges no single generation of consumers will be willing to switch to the new standard if the switching cost the loss of network benefit from breaking with past users is too high it may be that the benefits to future generations of consumers are large enough that from a social standpoint it would be efficient for one generation to adopt the new standard even if it is privately optimal for that generation to retain the old standard on the other hand the current generation considers only its own switching cost and not the cost it imposes on the previous generation leading to potential overadoption of new technology even for proprietary standards it is not clear that the incentive of the firm to induce adoption matches the social incentive in particular if consumer preferences are heterogeneous the firm will not be able to price in such a way to extract all of the additional surplus gained from the new standard on the other hand the firm will be able to appropriate some of the surplus generated by the network effect itself which is present for any standard and thus does not affect the social incentive to change standards it is not possible to address this issue with a two period model as in some of the previous literature see for example choi 1994 choi and thum 1998 katz and shapiro 1986 if a new technology is introduced in the second period but then the game ends the welfare of future generations of consumers is neglected 2 this article also differs from previous infinite horizon models of technology adoption

critical survey the new geographical turn in economics some critical reflections over the past few years a new geographical economics has emerged focused on the spatial agglomeration of industry and the long run convergence of regional incomes several leading names are associated with this geographical turn including paul krugman michael porter robert barro and w brian arthur this new economic geography it is argued here is neither that new nor is it geography instead it is a reworking or re invention using recent developments in formal mathematical mainstream economics of traditional location theory and regional science as such it is quite opposed to and difficult to reconcile with the work on regional development and industrial agglomeration being carried out in economic geography proper

demand dynamics with socially evolving preferences in this work we first identify a few stylized facts concerning microconsumption acts second building on them we develop a simple model of boundedly rational consumers who endogenously evolve their preferences via both innovation and social imitation third we explore some statistical properties of the demand patterns generated by the model which despite its simplicity are surprisingly in line with the empirical evidence these results we suggest bring encouraging support to microfoundations of demand theory based on cognitive and behavioral foundations more in tune with the psychological and sociological evidence based on heterogeneous agents who are much less rational and much more social than in standard theory and who collectively discover along the way what they like within a growing universe of available commodities

equilibria in an asymmetric duopoly facing a security constraint abstract we consider an asymmetric duopoly producing a homogeneous commodity and facing a competitive demand our model incorporates two asymmetries the first one is relative to the performance indices indeed we assume that one of the player maximizes its profit and the second one being eager to earn hard currencies maximizes its revenue the second asymmetry involves a security or diversification constraint which states that the second player is not allowed to sell more than a certain proportion of the quantity sold by its rival this game is an abstraction of the european natural gas market during the eighties cournot and stackelberg equilibria are characterized and compared an assessment of the impact on consumers and producers of the security constraint is also made

improved stoves in india a study of sustainable business models burning of biomass for cooking is associated with health problems and climate change impacts many previous efforts to disseminate improved stoves primarily by governments and ngos have not been successful based on interviews with 12 organizations selling improved biomass stoves we assess the results to date and future prospects of commercial stove operations in india specifically we consider how the ability of these businesses to achieve scale and become self sustaining has been influenced by six elements of their respective business models design customers targeted financing marketing channel strategy and organizational characteristics the two companies with the most stoves in the field shared in common generous enterprise financing a sophisticated approach to developing a sales channel and many person years of management experience in marketing and operations and yet the financial sustainability of improved stove sales to households remains far from assured the only company in our sample with demonstrated profitability is a family owned business selling to commercial rather than household customers the stove sales leader is itself now turning to the commercial segment to maintain flagging cash flow casting doubt on the likelihood of large positive impacts on health from sales to households in the near term

the duality of collaboration inducements and opportunities in the formation of interfirm linkages i argue that the linkage formation propensity of firms is explained by simultaneously examining both inducement and opportunity factors drawing upon resource based and social network theory literatures i identify three forms of accumulated capital technical commercial and social that can affect a firm s inducements and opportunities to form linkages firms possessing these capital stocks enjoy advantages in linkages formation however firms lacking these accumulated resources can still form linkages if they generate a radical technological breakthrough thus i identify paths to linkage formation for leading as well as peripheral firms i test these arguments with longitudinal data on technical collaborative linkages in the global chemicals industry copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

towards a competence theory of the region this paper argues the case for extending the competence theory of the firm or more generally the competence perspective to analysis of the region the relevance of the perspective follows from the characterisation of productive systems such as firms and regions as ensembles of competences that emerge from but are not reducible to social interaction attention is drawn to an identifiable although unacknowledged convergence of ideas in the recent regional literature arguing that these ideas are best re conceptualised in terms of regional competences the cluster of hightechnology firms in the cambridge region of the uk is briefly referred to in order to illustrate the main ideas of the paper

sectoral systems of innovation and production the concept sectoral system of innovation and production provides a multidimensional integrated and dynamic view of sectors it is proposed that a sectoral system is a set of products and the set of agents carrying out market and non market interactions for the creation production and sale of those products a sectoral systems has a specific knowledge base technologies inputs and demand agents are individuals and organizations at various levels of aggregation they interact through processes of communication exchange co operation competition and command and these interactions are shaped by institutions a sectoral system undergoes change and transformation through the co evolution of its various elements 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

on and off the beaten path the evolution of four technological systems in sweden abstract this paper examines four swedish case studies of technological systems from the perspective of path dependence what are the similarities and differences in this regard between factory automation electronics and computers biotechnology and powder technology what are the distinctive features in each system which set it apart from similar systems elsewhere and what role does path dependence play in explaining these features the essential function of technological systems is to capture diffuse and magnify spillovers of technical and organizational knowledge therefore the nature of knowledge i e the characteristics of knowledge and how it can be transmitted in each system determines what types of spillovers are likely to occur as well as the mechanisms through which they occur other important influences are the initial conditions and the institutions including both organizations and rules of the game

unraveling the process of creative destruction complementary assets and incumbent survival in the typesetter industry when radical technological change transforms an industry established firms sometimes fail drastically and are displaced by new entrants yet other times survive and prosper drawing upon an unusually rich data set that covers the technological and competitive history of the typesetter industry from 1886 to 1990 this paper uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis to unravel this process of creative destruction it argues that the ultimate commercial performance of incumbents vs new entrants is driven by the balance and interaction of three factors investment technical capabilities and appropriability through specialized complementary assets in this industry specialized complementary assets played a crucial role in buffering incumbents from the effects of competence destruction and an analysis that examined investment or technical capabilities in isolation would have led to misleading results this work thus highlights the importance of considering multiple perspectives when examining the competitive implications of technological change 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

thinking creatively about markets abstract the paper takes a broad view of how economists identify market boundaries three types of definition are distinguished trading markets anti trust markets and strategic markets the first is based on the familiar law of one price while the second follows us dij guidelines and is designed to identify positions of market power neither of these definitions suits the needs of one of the more recent and fastest growing users of economics namely those responsible for corporate strategy decisions inside firms the paper reviews why market definitions are a fundamental part of strategy decisions and identifies several ways that such users might define market boundaries

the economics of convention c onventions regulate much of economic and social life yet they have received surprisingly little attention from economists by a convention we mean a pattern of behavior that is customary expected and self enforcing everyone conforms everyone expects others to conform and everyone has good reason to conform because conforming is in each person s best interest when everyone else plans to conform lewis 1969 familiar examples include following rules of the road adhering to conventional codes of dress and using words with their conventional meanings conventions with direct economic implications include species of money and credit industrial and technological standards accounting rules and forms of economic contracts indeed it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that almost all economic and social institutions are governed to some extent by convention the main feature of a convention is that out of a host of conceivable choices only one is actually used this fact also explains why conventions are needed they resolve problems of indeterminacy in interactions that have multiple equilibria indeed from a formal point of view we may define a convention as an equilibrium that everyone expects in interactions that have more than one equilibrium the economic significance of conventions is that they reduce transaction costs imagine the inconvenience if whenever two vehicles approached one another the important exceptions are sugden 1986 and ullman margalit 1977 the interested reader might also refer to the symposium on social norms that appeared in the fall 1989 issue of this journal with articles by sugden 1989 and elster 1989

the two faces of market support how deployment policies affect technological exploration and exploitation in the solar photovoltaic industry the recent years have seen a strong rise in policies aiming to increase the diffusion of clean energy technologies while there is general agreement that such deployment policies have been very effective in bringing technologies to the market it is less understood how these policies affect technological innovation to shed more light on this important question we conducted comparative case studies with a global sample of 9 firms producing solar photovoltaic pv modules complemented by in depth interviews with 16 leading pv industry experts we propose that on the one hand policy induced market growth serves as an important catalyst for innovative activity as it raises the absolute level of firm investments in technological exploration on the other hand however deployment policies create an incentive for firms pursuing more mature technologies to shift their balance between exploitation and exploration toward exploitation firms focusing on less mature technologies cannot tap the potentials of exploitative learning to the same extent as those with more mature technologies therefore stimulating strong market growth may raise the barrier to market entry for less mature technologies we conclude that when designing deployment policies great care should be taken to avoid adverse effects on technological diversity and a premature lock in into more established technologies

bad eggs learning by doing and the choice of technology we model long run economic development through technology adoption under scientific uncertainty about environmental effects there are four possible long run equilibria in a socially planned economy high growth adopt rapidly but abandon damaging technologies once revealed ddt cfcs cautious brake the introduction of new technologies to avoid mistakes genetically modified organisms no growth halt technological progress to preserve secondary knowledge and collapse adopt rapidly without ever abandoning damaging technologies in the base parameterization a short sighted social planner chooses the cautious strategy a far sighted planner chooses the high growth strategy unless damages are irreversible in which case the cautious strategy again dominates regulatory options in the market economy are investigated pollution taxes do not affect the firm s level of precaution if they can only be applied after the adopting firm has reaped the benefits however they do encourage the abandonment of damaging technologies liability rules do affect precaution but may lead to excessive caution or even a no growth trap

a political economy perspective on technology innovation in the kenyan clean cookstove sector abstract in kenya as in many sub saharan african countries clean cookstoves are promoted as a solution to various health environmental and livelihood challenges after decades of programs there is a need to better understand if clean cookstoves are really transforming household energy use and if not why not combining theory from technological innovation systems literature and political economy the article highlights key weaknesses in the sector and offers explanations for the limited success of efforts to introduce clean cookstoves to date clean cookstoves remain a nascent innovation system in kenya its main weaknesses being lack of strategic direction low levels of legitimacy among government and consumers and weak knowledge accumulation and learning in the absence of meaningful government engagement technological choices and business models are influenced by the interests and norms of external actors including a stronger emphasis on health outcomes than other livelihood or environmental benefits going forward achieving a transformation in cooking energy use will depend on what role national and county governments play fiscal incentives introduced in 2016 and work on the country s sustainable energy for all action plan are early signs of greater engagement with household energy challenges

diversification ricardian rents and tobin s q according to prevailing theory firms diversify in response to excess capacity of factors that are subject to market failure by probing into the heterogeneity of these factors we develop the corollary that firms that elect to diversify most widely should expect the lowest average rents an empirical test with tobin s q as the measure of rents is consistent with this theory

technology entrepreneurship and path dependence industrial clustering in silicon valley and route 128 silicon valley and route 128 have been the centers of innovation and commercialization for the electronics computer and data communications industries in the postwar period however since the 1960s silicon valley has grown more rapidly and from approximately 1985 through 1995 route 128 experienced retarded growth their success had diverged dramatically in the last decade the most common explanations for this divergence are differing cultures interfirm relations or and internal organizational style organization this paper builds upon path dependent and dominant design explanations of technical and industrial change arguing that the technological trajectories of the industries underlying the two regions were different and this led to their differential destinies to explain the dynamics of the two regions and analytical separation is made between the economy of the existing firms and a separate economy of institutions that evolved to nurture new firm formation copyright 1999 by oxford university press

regional worlds from related variety in regional diversification to strategic coupling in global production networks this annual lecture paper bridges two influential but parallel literature strands on evolutionary economic geography eeg and global production networks gpn it argues that both strands are prem

the economics of technical change this paper reviews the recent rapidly growing literature on technical change in the economy it concentrates on innovations and their diffusion at firm and industry level since this was the area designated as relatively weak in earlier literature surveys the review argues that the extensive empirical evidence and theoretical analysis now available presents a basic challenge to neoclassical theory after indicating some weaknesses in the neo schumpeterian literature the paper concludes by advocating an experiment with a new form of assessment by neighboring disciplines to economics itself which would take full account of the fundamental issues at stake in this modern methodenstreit c 1994 academic press inc copyright 1994 by oxford university press

the origins and dynamics of taiwan s r d consortia a series of collaborative r d ventures have emerged in taiwan within a quite distinctive institutional framework unlike the case of many of the collaborative arrangements between established firms in the us europe or japan where mutual risk reduction is frequently the driving influence in the case of taiwan it is technological learning upgrading and catch up industry creation that is the object of the collaborative exercises the taiwan r d alliances were formed hesitantly in the 1980s but have flourished in the 1990s as institutional forms have been found which encourage firms to cooperate in raising their technological levels several alliances could be counted in taiwan in the late 1990s bringing together firms and public sector research institutes with the added organizational input of trade associations and catalytic financial assistance from government the article discusses the evolving organizational architecture of these r d alliances utilizing several case studies and seeks to draw comparisons between these institutional innovations in taiwan and established collaborative arrangements in the usa japan and europe