catch up cycles and changes in industrial leadership windows of opportunity and responses of firms and countries in the evolution of sectoral systems this study proposes a framework that aims to explain why successive changes in industry leadership called also the catch up cycle occur over time in a sector in catch up cycles latecomer firms and countries emerge as international leaders whereas incumbents lose their previous positions new leaders are then dethroned by newcomers to identify factors at the base of catch up cycles this article adopts a sectoral system framework and identifies windows of opportunity that may emerge during the long run evolution of an industry this study proposes three windows related to the specific dimensions of a sectoral system one dimension is related to changes in knowledge and technology the second dimension pertains to changes in demand and the third includes changes in institutions and public policy the combination of the opening of a window technological demand or institutional policy and the responses of firms and other components of the sectoral system of the latecomer and incumbent countries determines changes in industrial leadership and catch up sectors differ according to the type of windows that may open and the responses of firms and other components of systems empirical evidence of catch up cycles is presented from six sectors namely mobile phones cameras semiconductors steel mid sized jets and wines

empathy or antipathy the impact of diversity mixing across ethnic and class lines could potentially either spur understanding or inflame tensions between groups we find that white students at a large state university who were randomly assigned african american roommates in their first year are more likely to endorse affirmative action policies several years later whites who were randomly assigned black roommates are also more likely to say they have more personal contact with and interact more comfortably with members of minority groups whites who were assigned either black or low income roommates are more likely to view a diverse student body as essential for a high quality education students become less supportive of higher taxes for the wealthy when assigned roommates from high income families and they appear more likely to volunteer when assigned roommates from low income families taken together these results suggest that students become more empathetic with the social groups to which their roommates belong

exposure to female colleagues breaks the glass ceiling evidence from a combined vignette and field experiment abstract we study discrimination among recruits in the norwegian armed forces during boot camp in a vignette experiment female candidates are perceived as less suited to be squad leaders than their identical male counterparts adding positive information leads to higher evaluations of the candidates but does not reduce the amount of discrimination however randomized intense collaborative exposure to female colleagues reduces discriminatory attitudes male soldiers who were randomly assigned to share room and work in a squad with female soldiers during the recruit period do not discriminate in the vignette experiment

making sense of the competitiveness debate the debate over national competitiveness is marked by some basic misperceptions with few exceptions those who use the term have a crude essentially mercantilist view of world trade in which competition among nations is just like competition between corporations not only do the authors and readers of reports on national competitiveness usually not understand comparative advantage they are unaware of the most basic adding up constraints economists however find it hard to believe that seemingly well informed people can really be this naive and assume that there must be more sophisticated ideas lying behind what they say the rationales offered by economists in turn offer false comfort to the would be sophisticates who like the term competitiveness they believe that they have transcended conventional economic theory when the fact is that they have failed to comprehend it in short the actual level of discussion is lower than any of the participants imagines copyright 1996 by oxford university press

upgrading in global value chains lessons from latin american clusters it has been shown that clustering helps local enterprises in industrial districts overcome growth constraints and compete in distant markets in advanced and less developed countries nevertheless recent contributions have stressed that more attention needs to be paid to external linkages and to the role played by global buyers to foster upgrading at cluster levels in this study we contribute to this debate focusing on the analysis of the relationships existing between clustering global value chains upgrading and sectoral patterns of innovation in latin america we find that sectoral specificities matter and influence the mode and the extent of upgrading in clusters integrated in global value chains

china s competitive performance a threat to east asian manufactured exports there is growing concern in southeast and east asia about the competitive threat posed by china s burgeoning exports exacerbated by its accession to the wto the threat is not confined to labourintensive products but spans the whole technological and skill range at the same time china is rapidly raising its imports from the region and it is not clear whether its burgeoning exports will damage its neighbours we examine the dimensions of china s competitive threat in the 1990s benchmarking competitive performance by technology and market and finds that market share losses are so far mainly in low technology products with japan being the most vulnerable market we analyse market share changes and highlight product groups that are directly or indirectly exposed to a competitive threat we examine intra regional trade and find that china and its neighbours are raising high technology exports in tandem the nature of the international production systems involved lead to complementari ty rather than confrontation china is thus acting as an engine of export growth for its neighbours in terms of direct trade however this will change as china moves up the value chain and takes on the activities that have driven east asian export growth

taste based or statistical discrimination the economics of discrimination returns to its roots we briefly review the evolution of empirical work on discrimination we discuss why traditional regression based approaches neither convincingly measure market discrimination nor disentangle the relative importance of animus versus statistical discrimination in explaining such discrimination as exists we describe the development of modern correspondence studies we argue that these studies have the promise to credibly identify the presence of discrimination if not its magnitude can inform us about the underlying mechanism generating discrimination and can also point to avenues for new theoretical and empirical work on discrimination we discuss two articles with exemplary applications of these new methods at least since becker 1957 economists have been deeply interested in the presence of discrimination in markets in the 1970s and into the 1980s there was an active debate in the literature about whether discrimination was better described by becker s taste based discrimination model or by arrow and phelps statistical discrimination model that debate gave way to a theoretical literature that advanced each model separately and to an empirical literature focused on documenting the presence of disparities and the effects of policies designed to counteract discrimination only recently has the literature returned to the question of whether taste based or statistical discrimination is a more appropriate description of the phenomenon the two articles that follow are good examples of the move towards an understanding of the mechanisms underlying discrimination in this article we attempt to place the literature s recent direction into context and to show how it is a natural place for economists studying discrimination to arrive given where we began in the economics of discrimination becker explored ways in which individual tastes for discrimination might interact in a market setting to produce discriminatory outcomes for market participants becker described three models each considering a different source of discriminatory tastes employers co workers and customers the economics of discrimination included deep insights about discrimination becker clarified the distinction between individual tastes for discrimination and market discrimination he clarified the difference between segregation and market discrimination and he showed how the market might produce incentives for those with discriminatory tastes to avoid interaction with those towards whom they harbour animus 1

jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete malecki e j 2004 jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete regional studies38 1093 1112 the realization that places compete for investment has expanded in recent years to encompass competition among places for the attention of migrants tourists and media glow as well as investment the most competitive places have been multidimensional in their attractions and have made the transition to the knowledge based economy the latest priority is being placed on attracting mobile workers and mobile investment creative workers are the core of the knowledge economy and of its geographies such as intelligent places and learning regions knowledge metrics innovation indices and report cards are increasingly common each seemingly developed to sort the list of places in a different order lists or league tables of the best places for business to live retire and visit are key features of economies and societies whose factors of success

competitiveness indices and developing countries an economic evaluation of the global competitiveness report developing countries policy makers worry about national competitiveness and closely watch indices ranking international competitive performance this paper analyzes from a development economics perspective if competitiveness is a legitimate concern and if the leading indices deserve the attention they get it assesses the best known index the global competitiveness report of the world economic forum and finds deficiencies at several levels its definitions are too broad the approach biased and the methodology flawed many qualitative measures are vague redundant or wrong these weak theoretical and empirical foundations reduce the value of the indices for analytical or policy purposes

public policy and catching up by developing countries in global industries a simulation model this paper examines the effects of different public policies strengthening capability building favouring firms learning protectionism and support of entry of new domestic firms on the catch up of a latecomer with respect to an incumbent country in changing and uncertain technological environments the effects of these policies are analysed with a simulation model first separately and then jointly to assess possible complementarities we reach several results first we confirm that capability building and firms learning are important drivers of catch up second we find that when a large technological discontinuity takes place entry support favours catch up while protectionism has the opposite effect protectionism favours catch up only when no technological discontinuity opens up third we find that depending on the technological conditions different policy complementarities exist therefore different policy mixes should be at the base of a country catch up strategy these results add to the previous literature on public policy and catching up by developing countries in an industry by distinguishing the different effects of various types of public policy and relating them to the technological conditions that are present in an industry

a field experiment of discrimination in the norwegian housing market gender class and ethnicity we test for gender class and ethnic discrimination in the norwegian rental housing market by using fake application letters females individuals with high job status and ethnic norwegians are more likely to receive positive responses for example being an arabic man and working in a warehouse is associated with a 25 percentage point lower probability of receiving a positive response when showing interest in an apartment as compared to an ethnically norwegian female economist we conclude that gender class and ethnic discrimination do exist in the norwegian housing market and ethnic discrimination seems to be the most prevalent form of discrimination jel r21

technology and competitiveness this paper reviews the literature on technology and competitiveness first the concept of the international competitiveness of a country and various theoretical approaches on the relationship between trade and growth are discussed then a number of empirical studies of the impact of technology as evidenced by r d patents etc on exports are examined the final section summarizes the evidence and considers the lessons for policy copyright 1996 by oxford university press

the visible hand race and online market outcomes we examine the effect of race on market outcomes by selling ipods through local online classified advertisements throughout the us each advertisement features a photograph including a dark or light skinned hand or one with a wrist tattoo black sellers receive fewer and lower offers than white sellers and the correspondence with black sellers indicates lower levels of trust black sellers outcomes are particularly poor in thin markets suggesting that discrimination may not survive competition among buyers and those with the most racial isolation and property crime consistent with channels through which statistical discrimination might operate economic outcomes in the us are highly correlated with race but the causal mechanisms underlying these correlations are not well understood in particular it remains unclear how much of the correlation is due to discrimination and how much is due to other characteristics that are correlated with race such as education there is an extensive literature on the effect of race on market outcomes focusing on both labour and goods including housing markets however discrimination is not a monolithic phenomenon and it is important to investigate its extent and causes in a variety of different contexts across which they may differ our study asks the following question when the typical person engages in a consumer transaction usually as a buyer does he or she try to avoid dealing with minority sellers and does she treat minority sellers differently

market stimulating technology policies in developing countries a framework with examples from east asia abstract this paper proposes an analytical framework for technology development based upon evolutionary approaches and drawing upon asian development strategies the analysis rests on the concept of market stimulating technology policies comprising a broad array of policies to promote industrial and technological development some market and others government determined these policies may be functional horizontal or vertical and can be analyzed at three levels national strategic and specific the paper suggests that strategic choices are involved at all stages that cannot be resolved entirely by recourse to free markets

measuring the national competitiveness of southeast asian countries national competitiveness is a measure of the relative ability of a nation to create and maintain an environment in which enterprises can compete so that the level of prosperity can be improved this paper proposes a methodology for measuring the national competitiveness and uses the 10 southeast asian countries for illustration the basic idea is to deconstruct the complicated concept of national competitiveness to measurable criteria the observations data on the criteria are then aggregated according to their importance to obtain an index of national competitiveness for data collected from questionnaire surveys a calibration technique has been devised to alleviate bias due to personal prejudice in data aggregation the importance is expressed by both a priori weights and a posteriori weights these two types of weights consistently show that singapore malaysia and thailand have the highest national competitiveness while myanmar cambodia and laos are the least competitive countries the performance of each country in every criteria measured also provides directions for these countries to make improvements and for investors to allocate resources

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

the east asian miracle study does the bell toll for industrial strategy the world bank s east asian miracle study1 has been anticipated with considerable interest by the development community it was intended not least by the japanese government that financed it to be an objective re examination of the role of government interventions in economic particularly industrial development it reflected a widespread unease that the bank was too strongly committed to a neoliberal view of the development process 2 this approach evolved over the 1980s drawing mainly upon evidence from east asia and fuelled by a shift in mainstream economics and political perceptions in the leading developed countries it formed the basis of the bank s subsequent lending and policy advice and was at the core of the structural adjustment programs that have shaped policy in many developing countries this review confines itself to the study s analysis of industrial policy concentrating on the approach and the analysis of the established nies the four tigers

using futures prices to control inflation reply to garrison and white in a recent paper garrison and white g w 1997 offered a thoughtful and skeptical assessment of several recent proposals to use price index futures contracts to achieve price level targets their main focus is a scheme put forward by sumner 1995 but they also addressed a scheme that i suggested dowd 1994 1995 and made substantial criticisms of price index futures schemes in general sumner 1997 has already replied to those that pertain to his scheme and this reply responds to those that pertain to mine 1 the objective of my scheme is to achieve price stability whilst also making the monetary system fully automatic and so doing away with discretionary monetary policy this objective would be achieved by the central bank pegging the price of price index futures contracts and then relying on private sector arbitrage to ensure that the money supply is consistent with a stable expected price level the actual price level would then be equal to this expected price level plus or minus a hopefully small random error

technology systems and technology policy in an evolutionary framework the central purpose of this paper is to outline an evolutionary theory of technology policy and to connect it with the emerging literature on national systems of innovation any understanding of technology policy must be based on a clear understanding of the nature of technology and the important differences between science and technology technology can be treated in terms of knowledge skills and artifacts and in each case there are different variety generating mechanisms different selection processes and different institutional structures for policy purposes the degree of connection between these different dimensions of technology is at the core of technology policy c 1995 academic press inc copyright 1995 by oxford university press

stochastic multi attribute acceptability analysis smaa an application to the ranking of italian regions we consider the issue of ranking regions with respect to a range of economic and social variables departing from the current practice of aggregating different dimensions via a composite index usu

the rise of anti foreigner sentiment in european societies 1988 2000 the study examines change over time in sentiments toward out group populations in european societies for this purpose data were compiled from four waves of the eurobarometer surveys for 12 countries that provided detailed and comparable information on attitudes toward foreigners between 1988 and 2000 a series of multilevel hierarchical linear models were estimated to examine change in the effects of individual and country level sources of threat on anti foreigner sentiment the analysis shows a substantial rise in antiforeigner sentiment between 1988 and 2000 in all 12 countries the rise in anti foreigner sentiment was steep in the early period between 1988 and 1994 then leveled off after that although anti foreigner sentiment tends to be more pronounced in places with a large proportion of foreign populations and where economic conditions are less prosperous the effects of both factors on anti foreigner sentiment have not changed over time the analysis also shows that anti foreigner sentiment i

can discrimination in the housing market be reduced by increasing the information about the applicants we investigate how increasing the information about applicants affects discrimination in the rental housing market we let four fictitious applicants two with typical arab muslim names and two with typical swedish names use application letters containing different amounts of information to apply for apartments over the internet in sweden the arab muslim applicants received fewer responses from the landlords than did the swedish applicants all of the applicants gained by providing more information about themselves but the amount of discrimination against the arab muslim applicants remained unchanged indicating that increasing the amount of information about the applicants will not reduce discrimination

sex discrimination in restaurant hiring an audit study in an audit study of sex discrimination in hiring comparably matched pairs of men and women applied for jobs as waiters and waitresses at restaurants in philadelphia in high price restaurants where earnings are higher job applications from women had an estimated probability of receiving a job offer that was lower by about 0 4 and an estimated probability of receiving an interview that was lower by about 0 35 both estimated differentials are statistically significant additional evidence suggests that customer discrimination partly underlies the hiring discrimination

field experiments of discrimination in the market place controlled experiments using matched pairs of bogus transactors to test for discrimination in the marketplace have been conducted for over 30 years and have extended across 10 countries significant persistent and pervasive levels of discrimination have been found against non whites and women in labour housing and product markets rates of employment discrimination against non whites in excess of 25 have been measured in australia europe and north america a small number of experiments have also investigated employment discrimination against the disabled in britain and the netherlands and against older applicants in the united states

the assessment international competitiveness the concept of international competitiveness as applied to national economies is a popular one politicians businessmen and economists alike re fer to it in day to day discussion when looking at the external export import market share or trade balance performance of different countries indi cators are produced showing changes in or levels of various countries competitiveness e g the relative price or cost indices regularly published by the imf and the oecd or the absolute measures produced by organizations such as the geneva world economic forum and the lausanne institute for management development governments of ten instigate research on the matter as for instance in the case of the 1993 us competitiveness policy council orthe 1995 eu competitiveness advisory group yet it has recently been argued by paul krugman that competitiveness is a meaningless word when applied to national economies and the obsession with competitiveness is both wrong and dangerous krugman 1994 p 44 apositionkrugman forcefully reaffirms in his contribution to this issue of the oxford review of economic policy

higher growth through the blue ocean strategy implications for economic policy a b s t r a c t higher growth is a key goal of companies governments and societies economic policies often attempt to attain this goal by targeting companies of certain sizes that operate in specific industries and focus on a specific business activity this approach to policy making has considerable shortcomings and seems to be less than fully effective in increasing economic growth we suggest a new approach to policy making that stems directly from the entrepreneurial perspective this approach examines a successful business strategy framework the blue ocean strategy to discover conditions for high growth we test the propositions on empirical data for two cases of successful high growth business namely slovenian gazelles and amazon com the results reveal a gap between the macro level of economic policy making to achieve higher growth and the micro level of business growth the findings call for a change in the focus of economic policies on specific size companies industries and business activities to intraindus try cooperation collaboration between companies of different sizes value innovation and creation of uncontested markets

identification of endogenous social effects the reflection problem this paper examines the reflection problem that arises when a researcher observing the distribution of behaviour in a population tries to infer whether the average behaviour in some group influences the behaviour of the individuals that comprise the group it is found that inference is not possible unless the researcher has prior information specifying the compisition of reference groups if this information is available the prospects for inference depend critically on the population relationship between the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes inference is difficult to implossible if these variables are functionally dependent or are statistically independent the prospects are better if the variables defining reference groups and those directly affecting outcomes are moderately related in the population

south africa s international cost competitiveness and exports in manufacturing abstract the new south african government has embraced globalization with mixed results to date controversies center on south africa s international cost competitiveness and whether south african exports respond to changes in competitiveness we measure competitiveness by relative unit labor costs we find that south african relative unit labor costs declined in the 1990s but are still high relative to other developing countries econometric analysis reveals a strong effect of relative unit labor costs on exports