regional bias in new firm formation in the uk whittington r c 1984 regional bias in new firm formation in the uk reg studies 18 253 256 theories explaining regional differences in new firm formation rates are tested and refining previous theory a model is constructed the major influences on new firm formation rates are found to be the regional proportions of manual workers and home ownership and the change in the rate of regional unemployment in the preceding year new firm formation rates are measured by new vat registrations the implications of these results for government small firm policy are discussed

nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the balance of power in rural marketing networks a case study of snake trading in cambodia abstract producers in small scale rural markets often receive unfavourable prices for their goods as a result of more powerful market participants this study uses a combination of price analysis and interview data to assess the position of snake hunters in the aquatic snake market from tonle sap lake in cambodia despite the hunters dependence on intermediary traders for market access and credit the evidence implies that they are not powerless participants intermediary traders operate under high competition as a result of the increasing scarcity of snakes and therefore despite interlocked credit and snake markets offer relatively high prices to hunters

status in markets this project tests for the effect of social status in a laboratory experimental market we consider a special box design market in which a vertical overlap in supply and demand ensure that there are multiple equilibrium prices we manipulate the relative social status of our subjects by awarding high status to a subset of the group based on one of two procedures in the first a subject s score on a trivia quiz determines his or her status in another subjects are assigned randomly to a higher status or lower status group in both treatments we find that average prices are higher in markets where higher status sellers face lowerstatus buyers and lower when buyers have higher status than sellers across all sessions the higher status side of the market captures a greater share of the surplus earning significantly more than their lower status counterparts

labour migration and social networks participation in southern mozambique this paper investigates how social networks in poor developing settings are affected by migration using a unique household survey from southern mozambique we test the role of labour mobility in shaping participation in groups and interhousehold cooperation by migrant sending households in village economies at origin we find that migration cum remittances boosts household engagement in community based social networks our findings are robust to alternative definitions of social interaction and to endogeneity concerns suggesting that stable migration ties and higher income stability through remittances may decrease participation constraints and increase household commitment in cooperative arrangements in migrant sending communities

location and the multinational enterprise john dunning s thoughts on receiving the journal of international business studies 2008 decade award a retrospective by john h dunning on location and the mne written in the form of responses to questions posed by rajneesh narula in an interview recorded at the university of reading which was shown at the jibs decade award session at the aib annual meetings in milan june 2008

differences in social capital between 54 western european regions beugelsdijk s and van schaik t 2005 differences in social capital between 54 western european regions regional studies 39 1053 1064 based on the extant literature a newly developed index measuring social capital at the regional level in europe is presented it is shown that there are large regional differences on this social capital index it was tested if higher scores on this social capital index correlate with higher levels of economic development and regional economic growth in 54 western european regions though further research is required these preliminary results suggest a positive relationship exists between social capital and regional economic development the paper concludes with suggestions for future empirical research

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

does industrialization build or destroy social networks abstract this article estimates the relationship between changes in industrialization and changes in social networks measures in indonesia during 1985 97 using repeated cross sections of nationally representative surveys we analyze a rich set of social interaction measures including various measures of voluntary associational activity levels of trust and informal cooperation districts that experienced rapid industrialization showed significant increases in most measures of social interaction however districts that neighbor rapidly industrializing areas exhibited high rates of out migration significantly fewer community credit cooperatives and a reduction in mutual cooperation as assessed by village elders manufacturing growth can be thought of as a proxy for income growth here the findings are contrary to several recent claims regarding the role of social capital in economic development

transforming traditional university structures for the knowledge economy through multidisciplinary institutes within the uk considerable policy support has been provided to create multidisciplinary institutes that encourage academics to develop new knowledge for industry and societal problems we consider four large traditional uk universities that have gained significant funding for such activities we examine the changes in institutional structures necessary to enable universities to transform from single discipline based schools to multidisciplinary institutes new incentives for working across schools the cross subsidy transfer of industry funded research and teaching income and senior role models are observed to enable the development of a multidisciplinary research capability yet this capability is not easily sustained it appears that for institutes to survive beyond the initial funding round they regress towards traditional school activities of peer reviewed research and teaching we conclude that to transform academic behaviour a fundamental shift in promotion procedures which remain heavily weighted towards peer reviewed journal publication within single disciplines is required copyright the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

clusters dispersion and the spaces in between for an economic geography of the banal while the geographical clustering of economic activities remains an enduring feature of the industrial landscape and a perennial source of theoretical and empirical interest the geographical scale at which external economies and agglomerative effects are now claimed to operate is on the increase such changes in the spatial form and potential causes of agglomeration over time pose important questions how should we analyse changes in the spatial extent of external economies and agglomerative effects ought we to pay more attention to the sorts of banal economic spaces thrown up as part of increasingly diffuse forms of agglomeration to answer the first of these questions it is noted how economists and geographers have explained agglomerations often in the rather singular and invariant categories of pecuniary and marshallian externalities respectively this paper considers the relevance of neo marshallian analysis and the concept of borrowed size as variations on these classical principles to an analysis of the mobility and fixity of external economies and contemporary diffuse forms of agglomeration whilst reflecting important changes in the spatial extent of industrial agglomerations they are insufficiently sensitive to the interaction of different types of external economies with different scale dependencies in answering the second question it is noted that part of the value of analysing the economic basis of largely overlooked banal intermediate places lies in what they may reveal about the functioning of diffuse forms of agglomeration

the determinants of earnings a behavioral approach we survey the determinants of earnings and propose a framework for understanding labor market success we suggest that the advantages of the children of successful parents go considerably beyond the benefits of superior education the inheritance of wealth or the genetic inheritance of cognitive ability we suggest that noncognitive personality variables such as attitudes towards risk ability to adapt to new economic conditions hard work and the rate of time preference affect both earning and the transmission of economic status across generations

the rise fall and rise again of industrial location theory m ccann p and sheppard s 2003 the rise fall and rise again of industrial location theory reg studies 37 649 663 in this paper we will argue that new academic fashions new international institutional arrangements new communications technology and new developments in data availability have all renewed the need for a redevelopment of analytical industrial location theory our paper will argue that the microeconomic foundations of industrial location theory must now be reconsidered in particular the methodological basis of traditional industrial location models needs to be reconciled with recent models of clustering the new economic geography literature and also more aggregate systemic levels of analysis we will argue that in order to do this it is necessary first to specify the transactions cost assumptions underlying these various approaches second to adopt broader definitions of spatial transactions costs and third to incorporate environmental characteristics within an orthodox loca

on the empirics of social capital this paper critically examines the way in which empirical evidence is developed in support of a role for social capital in socioeconomic outcomes three leading studies of social capital are reviewed and in each case argued to suffer from various identification problems a general set of conditions under which social capital effects may be identified in linear models is given careful attention to these conditions combined with greater openmindedness as to what constitutes appropriate evidence seems the best route to improving empirical studies of social capital

financial hierarchy and banking strategies a regional analysis for the brazilian case the aim of this paper is to investigate whether brazil s financial system has a differentiated strategy in space the analysis is based on the theory of liquidity preference regionally differentiated in addition it assumes that the banking strategies are associated with centrality as defined in christaller s central place theory the analysis used indicators of 2 924 cities grouped according to the type of financial services they provide in addition the paper presents an estimation using a dynamic panel data econometric model for the period 2000 08 in order to test if the banking strategies are related to the centrality of the cities

the emergence of technology systems knowledge production and distribution in the case of the emilian plastics district the emergence of technology systems is the result of interdependen t dynamics of generation and diffusion of complementary bits of localised technological knowledge technological communication is the crucial element assessing the collective conditions under which technological knowledge is accumulated and diffused the case study of the emerging emilian technological system in the plastics sector shows that the synchronic and diachronic localised interactions among industrial dynamics institutional r d efforts and technological interrelatedness are the determinants of the systematic production accumulation and distribution of localised technological knowledge in turn explaining the origin and development of the technology system itself

fundamentals panics and bank distress during the depression we assemble bank level and other data for fed member banks to model determinants of bank failure fundamentals explain bank failure risk well the first two friedman schwartz crises are not associated with positive unexplained residual failure risk or increased importance of bank illiquidity for forecasting failure the third friedman schwartz crisis is more ambiguous but increased residual failure risk is small in the aggregate the final crisis early 1933 saw a large unexplained increase in bank failure risk local contagion and illiquidity may have played a role in pre 1933 bank failures even though those effects were not large in their aggregate impact

evaluating the impact of the structural funds on objective 1 regions an exploratory discussion martin r and tyler p 2006 evaluating the impact of the structural funds on objective 1 regions an exploratory discussion regional studies 40 201 210 evaluation evidence on the impact of the structural funds on employment in objective 1 regions remains elusive this paper seeks to make a contribution to this task by evaluating the impact of european union regional policy on cumulative job creation in the least prosperous objective 1 regions at the nuts 2 level it adopts an evaluation methodology pioneered originally by moore and rhodes in 1973 in the uk while tentative it estimates that the cumulative effect of european union cohesion policy is around 1 million jobs as at 2002 which is a significant contribution despite the considerable methodological and measurement problems this paper aims to encourage further research to be undertaken in this important area objective 1 regions impact employment counterfactual determination martin r et tyler p 2006 evaluer l impact des fonds structu

unemployment duration in the recession the local labour market area scale green a e 1985 unemployment duration in the recession the local labour market area scale reg studies 19 111 129 this paper examines spatial variations in the duration of uncompleted unemployment spells using median lower and upper quartile duration measures within a local labour market area llma framework regional hierarchical and functional differentials in unemployment duration during the recession are investigated using a nineteen fold llma classification it is discovered that pre existing spatial differentials in unemployment duration experience were largely maintained with longer durations recorded in the north than in the south around provincial conurbations than in the london metropolitan region at higher than at lower levels of the urban hierarchy and in llmas with a manufacturing employment base than in those with a service or commercially oriented employment structure

rethinking the economics of location and agglomeration fundamental problems exist with the classical characterisation of agglomeration economies since such definitions do not reflect the various cost issues on which firms may wish to economise a lack of understanding of the relationship between the notions of market hierarchies and locational behaviour leads to confusion not only in applied economic interpretation but more fundamentally in the construction of theoretical location models in particular neo classical location theory can be shown to be crucially flawed as a basis for spatial analysis this paper therefore attempts to provide an alternative definition of the various types of agglomeration economies such that the various strands of economic theory might be used in a more rigorous manner in the discussion of spatial increasing returns

new firms and rural industrialization in east anglia gould a and keeble d 1984 new firms and rural industrialization in east anglia reg studies 18 189 201 the paper analyses key aspects of the formation of new independent manufacturing firms in east anglia between 1971 and 1981 special attention is paid to trends in formation rates over time to the spatial bias of new firm origins towards both rural areas and the cambridge region and to the location character and impact of high technology new firms original findings include the contention that spatial variations chiefly reflect variation in the occupational structure of the resident workforce together with industrial mix plant size and previous industrial immigration some implications for government policy to new firms are discussed

an economic approach to social capital a standard optimal investment model can be used to analyse an individual s decision to accumulate social capital we analyse six facts that support the predictions of this individual based approach 1 social capital first rises and then falls with age 2 social capital declines with expected mobility 3 social capital rises in occupations with greater returns to social skills 4 social capital is higher among homeowners 5 social connections fall sharply with physical distance 6 people who invest in human capital also invest in social capital we fail to find robust evidence that social capital investments fall with the value of time or that geographic religious groups generate social capital complementarities

regional social capital why it matters malecki e j regional social capital why it matters regional studies social capital refers to a culture of interaction among people with productive economic outcomes social capital promotes regional learning both within a region and beyond as it reinforces openness to the ideas of others regional cultures vary in the degree to which people individually and within their organizations trust and interact with one another which is why regional outcomes vary innovation learning and entrepreneurship key processes of regional development take place largely within and among people as members of companies and territorial organizations innovative milieus industrial districts and knowledge economies are among the regions with extraordinary pools of social capital malecki e j

does financial agglomeration promote the green development in china a spatial spillover perspective abstract the role of financial agglomeration in china s green development has generated many fascinating debates for scholarly research but few studies have considered environmental effects of financial agglomeration from the spatial spillover perspective taking both natural and socio economic factors into accounts this paper explores the interaction between financial agglomeration and green development using the panel data of 285 prefecture level chinese cities from 2003 to 2015 the results show that both financial agglomeration and green development have demonstrated a trend of spatial convergence secondly financial agglomeration can promote the green development of both focal and surrounding cities thirdly financial agglomeration is conducive to enhance regional green development level in western china while only eastern and central china witness significant spatial spillover effects fourthly the direct effect of financial agglomeration on green development at the city level exists whereas megacities and large cities witness a significantly adverse spatial spillover effect this paper also presents policy recommendations

the role of social capital in financial development to identify the effect of social capital on financial development we exploit social capital differences within italy in high social capital areas households are more likely to use checks invest less in cash and more in stock have higher access to institutional credit and make less use of informal credit the effect of social capital is stronger where legal enforcement is weaker and among less educated people these results are not driven by omitted environmental variables since we show that the behavior of movers is still affected by the level of social capital of the province where they were born

performing housing markets this paper offers an interpretation of how housing markets work which complements more traditional economic approaches building on a wider movement within cultural economy and economic sociology it considers how housing markets are variously performed in the power filled negotiations of buyers sellers and market professionals this is part of a larger undertaking but here the focus is particularly on the role of legal financial and information intermediaries in shaping local cultures of property exchange this is a social rather than economic analysis of housing markets it is a qualitative rather than a quantitative study it is designed to shed light on how markets are made though it might in the end change the way they are modelled

distance based agglomeration externalities and neighbouring firms characteristics abstractthis paper tests the hypothesis that firms with different characteristics can differ in their capability to produce local externalities by investigating the relationship between firm specific distance based weighted agglomeration measures and firms short run productivity growth in the italian manufacturing industry the results suggest that positive localization economies increase with distance when neighbouring firms characteristics are accounted for diversification type forces have negative effects on productivity growth at short distances while there are positive effects at longer distances regardless of the weighting scheme considered moreover the negative effect of inter industry externalities seems to persist over distance when neighbouring firms characteristics are accounted for

to lobby or to partner investigating the shifting political strategies of biopharmaceutical industry associations in innovation systems of south africa and india the role of industry associations in shaping policy through various lobbying activities is well established in most cases while such activities are deemed essential from an industry perspective they also carry negative connotations connected to narrow rent seeking and the pursuit of elites interests which run counter to the public good and discourage competition and subsequent innovation as such industry associations have long been excluded from discussions regarding the relational dynamics and evolution of innovation systems in contrast this paper builds upon more recent work that places industry associations as key intermediary actors that facilitate knowledge exchange and institutional capacity building particularly in the context of developing countries where limited institutional capacities and substantial knowledge gaps can limit both innovation and development employing a qualitative cross national comparison this paper examines the changing roles and activities of biopharmaceutical industry associations in the development of the south african and indian pharmaceutical industries with a particular focus on government industry relations for doing so the paper captures developments during three main periods through which both the south african and indian biopharmaceutical industries have similarly evolved although within different national contexts 1 pre liberalization 2 expanding pluralism and 3 increasing partnership we argue that in south africa and india particular historical trajectories and lack of institutional capacities are shifting industry associations away from ineffective lobbying to a new political approach that emphasizes partnering with government in the pursuit of not only narrow industry objectives but also broader development aims

endogenous institutional selection building trust and economic growth abstract private order market institutions founded on trust based relational contracts suffer adverse selection and moral hazard problems while public order market institutions have a limited capacity to enforce contracts i model agent selection between contract enforcement institutions and demonstrate that the state s contract enforcement capacity is complementary to private order contract enforcement institutions for low to moderate levels of public order enforcement capacity this suggests that initial improvements to public order institutions cause the accumulation of trust and result in economic growth in both institutions however i show that the private order institution must collapse once the public order contract enforcement capacity is too great

evolution roots and influence of the literature on national systems of innovation a bibliometric account the literature on the national systems of innovation nsi is a relatively new field of research that has spread remarkably in the past 20 years this article offers a complementary quantitative description of the state of the art of the literature based on bibliometric methods by explicitly addressing the roots evolution and influence of nsi literature the exercise shows that over time the rate of published articles was quite irregular and that contributions on nsi have not yet converged to an integrated analytical framework although historically detailed descriptions on nsi showed a noticeable increase in the more recent period 2006 2010 analyses using more formal and diversified quantitative methodologies for assessing the performance of nsi remained lacking reflecting its persisting methodological weaknesses the roots of the nsi literature can be found at the core of innovation studies by certain well known scholars in the area of economics of innovation and science policy research even though publications on nsi are falling in relative importance and are highly concentrated on a small set of countries united kingdom denmark and the united states their influence is global they are cited by authors affiliated in organisations around the world notably in latin america and asia such an influence goes far beyond the area of innovation studies and has resonated in fields such as economic geography environmental studies international business and managerial sciences this demonstrates that the nsi literature is not self referential

zipf s law for cities an explanation zipf s law is a very tight constraint on the class of admissible models of local growth it says that for most countries the size distribution of cities strikingly fits a power law the number of cities with populations greater than s is proportional to 1 s suppose that at least in the upper tail all cities follow some proportional growth process this appears to be verified empirically this automatically leads their distribution to converge to zipf s law

spatial variations in personal insolvency choices the role of stigma and social capital this article offers an explanation for the wide spatial variations in choice of insolvency route by personal debtors across local authorities in england and wales it is argued that formal bankrupt

time should tell more evolutionary economic geography and the challenge of history abstractevolutionary economic geography theory stresses the importance of time and history to explain the evolution of regional economies yet consistent empirical treatment of longitudinal patter

private equity investment decisions in family firms the role of human resources and agency costs abstract this study examines decision making criteria that are employed by private equity pe investors selecting family firms hypotheses test the likelihood of investment based on family firm characteristics findings show that pe professionals take into account family specific criteria including human resources and opportunities to reduce agency costs furthermore pe professionals prefer family firms that are already professionalized this research contributes to the family firm literature on both a theoretical and a methodological level exploring nonfamily succession routes and employing techniques conjoint analysis for data collection and multilevel models for data analysis that have seldom been used in this context

family values and the regulation of labor flexible labor markets requires geographically mobile workers to be e cient otherwise rms can take advantage of the immobility of workers and extract monopsony rents in cultures with strong family ties moving away from home is costly thus individuals with strong family ties rationally choose regulated labor markets to avoid moving and limiting the monopsony power of rms even though regulation generates lower employment and income empirically we do nd that individuals who inherit stronger family ties are less mobile have lower wages are less often employed and support more stringent labor market regulations there are also positive cross country correlations between the strength of family ties and labor market rigidities finally we nd positive correlations between labor market rigidities at the beginning of the twenty rst century and family values prevailing before world war ii which suggests that labor market regulations have deep cultural roots

the failure of the bank of united states a defense of joseph lucia note in a recent article in an economic history journal joseph l lucia 1985 reappraised the analysis by milton friedman and anna j schwartz 1963 of the failure of the bank of united states in december 1930 in their extraordinary reply friedman and schwartz 1986 question lucia s scientific integrity as well as the scientific standards of the journal in which lucia s article appeared their opening paragraph states

forms of emergence and the evolution of economic landscapes abstract over the past two decades the notion of emergence has attracted increasing attention and controversy across the social science including economics within this context as economic geographers our concern in this paper is with the usefulness of the idea of emergence for studying the economic landscape and its evolution the paper considers in what sense geographical processes and places can legitimately be described as emergent how such places themselves produce emergent effects and how we should conceive of and study the emergent space economy to do this we apply deacon s 2006 models of first order second order and third order emergence and trace through their implications for constructing an emergence perspective in economic geography the notion of third order emergence is argued to be the most promising since it focuses explicitly on emergence as an evolutionary process what is evident however is that a notion developed mainly for applications in physical and biological systems requires further elaboration and exploration if it is to provide explanatory leverage in studying the evolution of economic landscapes

clustering of economic activities in polycentric urban regions the case of the randstad local contexts are becoming more important as the impact of the process of globalisation on the spatial distribution of economic activities seems to generate not so much processes of homogenisation as of heterogenisation between regions in advanced economies the combination of specialisation and spatial concentration of economic activity in advanced economies has attracted much attention from economists and geographers here we explore at what level of spatial aggregation contemporary tendencies of clustering of economic activities articulate themselves within the archetypal polycentric urban region of the dutch randstad to examine this question we look at profiles of business start ups in the individual cities of the randstad our focus is on business start ups as they respond most directly to the changes taking place in the economic environment and especially those regarding the supply of labour our findings point to the direction of cluster formation at a supraurban level the profiles of business

impact of historical conflict on fdi location and performance japanese investment in china historical relations between countries bring important explanatory power for foreign direct investment fdi decisions yet little is known on whether a home host country relation exhibits heterogeneous effects on fdi across the country s subnational regions in this study we examine the long term impact of historical conflict on fdi location choices and performance using a sample of 8 646 japanese fdi in china we show that civilian casualties in different provinces of china during the second sino japanese war exert deterring effects on japanese fdi location choices furthermore we demonstrate that civilian casualties negatively affect japanese fdi performance and political capital accumulation strategies in the forms of excessive tax payment and local employment can reduce this negative effect this study contributes to the discussion on how within country differences of historical factors affect fdi location decisions and performance the findings on firms political capital accumulation strategies also provide important implications for fdi operation in an environment characterized by historical animosity

the evolution and performance of biotechnology regional systems of innovation the paper maintains that biotechnology regions develop as complex systems they start with star scientists in research universities generating knowledge spillovers then move progressively towards regional technology markets in the process they attract venture capital or modify the behaviour of existing venture capital firms with the addition of biotechnology portfolios the routines of universities are also modified with the addition of intellectual property and technology transfer offices intervening as sellers in the newly created knowledge markets the paper also considers whether companies located in regional agglomerations grow faster than isolated ones and whether companies spun off from universities have a better performance than start ups the study is based on about 90 canadian based publicly quoted biotechnology companies

just in time inventory control and the economic integration of japanese owned manufacturing plants with the county state and national economies of the united states reid n 1995 just in time inventory control and the economic integration of japanese owned manufacturing plants with the county state and national economies of the united states reg studies 29 345 355 this paper attempts to shed light on the ongoing debate concerning the spatial implications of just in time jit manufacturing systems the central issue around which this debate has focused concerns the extent to which use of jit inventory control encourages the spatial clustering of the members of a jit network this paper tests the hypothesis that plants which use jit inventory control purchase a greater proportion of their material inputs from inside their host economy than plants which do not use jit inventory control using survey data collected from 239 us based japanese owned manufacturing plants this hypothesis is tested for host economies defined at three geographic scales county state and national support for the hypothesis is found at the county but not at the state and national scales

global linkages the chinese high tech community and industrial cluster development the semiconductor industry in wuxi jingsu the development of industrial clusters in china has become a subject of international interest but attention has primarily focused on government efforts to attract fdi to promote industrial clusters and regional development the local process which supports the rise and growth of clusters driven by the domestic firms has been relatively ignored in this debate thus this article considers the analytical framework of strategic coupling and uses a case study of the wuxi semiconductor industry to investigate the cluster formation dynamics and effects driven by domestic rather than fdi firms with the mediating role of the transnational chinese technical community the state and domestic firms it concludes that the rise and growth of the semiconductor domestic led cluster in wuxi is not dependent on fdi but instead results from the dynamic interplay of several elements effects of technology spillover from the government funded research institutions as well as mutual competition and co operation in tech

small firms borrowed size and the urban rural shift in this paper we suggest that some elements of the observed urban rural shift in firm formation and growth may centre on the phenomenon of borrowed size in doing so we make a link between literature on the geography of small firm formation and growth the theory of agglomeration and the relations among settlements within urban systems spatial externality fields have expanded over time so that small firms can locate in smaller settlements and yet access specialized labour and informational external economies of nearby larger urban areas we examine the relevance of aspects of borrowed size in the relationship of small firms in leighton linslade and lichfield to the local economy and nearby larger urban centres in particular we question the contribution of local institutional support to the growth of rural enterprise stressed in recent analysis we conclude by briefly noting the implications of borrowed size for conceptions of the local economy and local economic policy cet article cherche a avancer

social capital conflict and welfare abstract this paper analyzes the role of external conflict as a force that can create social capital hostile inter group interactions can help to resolve intra group social dilemmas but these potential gains must be weighed against the insecurity of hostile relations with an out group our central result is that the presence of an outside threat can induce higher levels of social capital either because a protective aspect of social capital comes into play and or as a reallocation of investments from private to social capital given that social capital is potentially subject to free riding the threat by promoting a greater level of social capital can be welfare improving when the threat is severe social capital and welfare are more likely to fall this effect of an external threat on social capital is stronger in poor economies these results can shed light on the sometimes contradicting empirical evidence on the relationship between conflict and social capital

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

globalization of production and innovation how outsourcing is reshaping an advanced manufacturing area cusmano l mancusi m l and morrison a globalization of production and innovation how outsourcing is reshaping an advanced manufacturing area regional studies this paper investigates the determinants and the spatial and functional dimensions of firms outsourcing based on a large survey of manufacturing firms in lombardy italy the analysis shows that outsourcing is remarkably wide across sectors and has a clear regional dimension concerning highly skilled firms at most offshoring is still a minor fraction of the deverticalization process largely related to wider strategies of internationalization by foreign group subsidiaries at intermediate stages of the value chain the evidence suggests the regional system is inserting onto global knowledge networks but also points at the risk of branch plant effects in high technology segments cusmano l mancusi m l et morrison a la mondialisation de la production et de l innovation comment l approvisionnement a l exterieur reorganise une zone ind

industrial alliances and firm location behaviour some evidence from the us semiconductor industry this study uses a log linear model in order to analyse data on interfirm strategic alliances within the us semiconductor industry the findings suggest that although the finding that the intensity of information transaction between firms is directly associated with geographical proximity this effect is much less localized than would be usually expected the results cast doubt on much of the existing qualitative literature on the nature of agglomeration externalities

does wal mart reduce social capital social capital has attracted increasing attention in recent years we use county level and individual survey data to study how wal mart affects social capital estimates using several proxies for social capital such as club membership religious activity time with friends and other measures do not support the thesis that wal mart destroys communities by reducing social capital we measure exposure to wal mart two ways wal marts per 10 000 residents and wal marts per 10 000 residents aggregated over the years since 1979 to capture a more cumulative wal mart effect we find that the coefficients on wal mart s presence are statistically insignificant in most specifications

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

observational equivalence regional studies and regional science mccann p 2007 observational equivalence regional studies and regional science regional studies 41 1209 1221 this paper considers the methodological and empirical issues raised by the adoption of stylized constructs in the development of regional policy public policies invariably require funding and the greater levels of public data availability and press scrutiny nowadays have led to increasing requirements for policy transparency driven by evidence based policy design implementation monitoring and evaluation at the same time however many current urban and regional policy frameworks are increasingly being based on constructs that do not lend themselves to empirical evaluation therefore there appears to be something of a mismatch this paper discusses these problems and argues that instead of being seen as contradictory one can regard certain aspects of regional analysis as raising topical questions and issues to be examined while other methodological approaches are always required in ord

information sharing price negotiation and management buy outs of private family owned firms perspectives relating to agency theory information asymmetries and game theory were utilized to explore two outcomes associated with the management buy out mbo or management buy in mbi of former private firms whether information was shared equally between vendors i e family firm owners and purchasers i e mbo i management teams and whether a mutually agreed price was achieved with reference to the themes of company ownership structure governance structure and company objectives several hypotheses were derived survey evidence was gathered from the managers of 114 former private family owned firms located across europe that recently reported an mbo i multiple logistic regression analysis detected that respondents in founded first generation family firms and those reporting a high focus on the strategic importance of the market value increment were more likely to report that information was shared equally between vendors and purchasers respondents reporting no suitable family successor had been identified a high focus on the strategic importance of the market value increment and the involvement of venture capitalists in succession planning were more likely to report that a mutually agreed sale price had been achieved implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed

does incarceration length affect labor market outcomes abstractthis paper studies how longer incarceration spells affect offenders labor market outcomes by using a reform that increased incarceration lengths by approximately 1 month i use detailed register data for offenders who predominantly serve incarceration spells of 1 2 months i analyze the sample for several years prior to and after incarceration and show that the reform led to an exogenous increase in incarceration lengths i find that the longer incarceration spells result in lower unemployment rates and higher earnings possibly because marginal increases in short incarceration spells improve conditions and incentives for rehabilitation while the costs of jail related to these outcomes are unaffected i show that the estimates are robust to different econometric specifications and further provide evidence that my results are not driven by changes in macroeconomic conditions

the growing importance of social skills in the labor market the labor market increasingly rewards social skills between 1980 and 2012 jobs requiring high levels of social interaction grew by nearly 12 percentage points as a share of the u s labor force math intensive but less social jobs including many stem occupations shrank by 3 3 percentage points over the same period employment and wage growth were particularly strong for jobs requiring high levels of both math skill and social skills to understand these patterns i develop a model of team production where workers trade tasks to exploit their comparative advantage in the model social skills reduce coordination costs allowing workers to specialize and work together more efficiently the model generates predictions about sorting and the relative returns to skill across occupations which i investigate using data from the nlsy79 and the nlsy97 using a comparable set of skill measures and covariates across survey waves i find that the labor market return to social skills was much greater in the 2000s than in the mid 1980s and 1990s

is cumulative growth in manufacturing productivity slowing down in the eu12 regions the cumulative causation in the relation between labour productivity and output growth known as verdoorn s law is empirically tested using data from 109 eu12 regions during the period 1977 2005 several specifications of verdoorn s law are put forward in this paper which attribute the process of cumulative causation to a series of factors including manufacturing agglomeration spatial interaction and responses to the problems of growth the findings suggest that although cumulative causation holds over this period the slowdown of its pace is nonetheless apparent post 1992 revisions in responses e g policy along with further research are thus recommended the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved

private business sales environments in the united kingdom abstract when an owner manager of a business firm decides to sell the company it is not a trivial decision whether it is a sale forced by circumstances outside company control or a positive strategic choice it is certainly significant moreover the method of exit the advice taken and the deal that is eventually struck will clearly affect the nature of the owner s eventual lifestyle in such circumstances there are four choices open to the owner 1 sale to a third party 2 sale to the management and or employees 3 public quotation on the stock exchange 4 liquidation this research first analyzes the magnitude of activity in the united kingdom in each of the above categories during the five year period 1983 1987 the results show very clearly that there is a strategic loosening taking place in the corporate marketplace more firms are being sold and more owner managers are choosing to exit from ownership of their firms moreover the most frequently used exit route by far is that of the private advertized sale the second part of this paper analyzes in detail the data for the private advertized sale by means of principal component analysis and cluster analysis seven ecological incubator environments were constructed at a county level significant differences were observed between the environments in respect to private advertized sales private advertized sales rates and industrial structure these results show clearly that the nature of the supply of owner managers wishing to realize their ownership is geographically biased and is in part a reflection of the existing industrial and commercial base