does entry size matter the impact of the life cycle and technology on firm survival a wave of empirical studies has recently emerged showing that smaller scale entry is confronted with a lower likelihood of survival than their larger counterparts the purpose of this paper is to examine whether the relationship between size of a firm when entering an industry and the likelihood of survival holds under different technological conditions and across the different stages of the industry life cycle the empirical evidence suggests that the relationship between firm size and the likelihood of survival is shaped by technology and the stage of the industry life cycle while the likelihood of survival confronting small entrants is generally less than that confronting their larger counterparts the relationship does not hold for mature stages of the product life cycle or in technologically intensive products in mature industries that are still technologically intensive entry may be less about radical innovation and possibly more about filling strategic niches thus negating the impact of entry size on the likelihood of survival

default and aggregate income abstract this paper studies how default varies with aggregate income we analyze a model in which optimal contracts enable risk sharing of privately observed idiosyncratic income by allowing for default default provisions allow agents with low idiosyncratic income realizations to repay less and thus provide insurance default penalties ensure that only these agents default we show that default can occur under the optimal contract and that default provisions vary with aggregate income we provide conditions such that both the amount of default and default penalties vary countercyclically with aggregate income and show that the default rate can be discontinuous

cultural differences in labor force participation among married women both the distribution of income and the role of ethnicity in economic behavior can be illuminated by an analysis of ethnic differences in married women s labor supply differences in wives labor supply are the main source beside differences in rates of female headship and wages of the disparities in family income among racial and ethnic groups in the united states see my 1984 article moreover differences among ethnic subcultures may affect the labor supply of wives more than they influence many other types of economic behavior ethnic groups are distinguished by among other things views about male and female roles in the family and about wives and mothers working outside the home as well as by the value placed on children family size household composition and the education of women these cultural differences may give rise to systematic differences in utility functions that lead to systematic differences in behavior by women in different ethnic or nativity groups who face the same constraints or opportunity set such cultural differences in utility functions no doubt are historically shaped by economic as well as other circumstances and they evolve but more slowly than the economic conditions ethnic differences in attitudes are therefore presumably more pronounced in the first generation of immigrants than in their american born descendants these cultural attitudes may have both direct and indirect effects on wives labor supply they directly affect the allocation of time between home and market work by women with the same education number of children etc they also affect decisions about education fertility and other choices which in turn influence the market work opportunities and value of home time and so indirectly affect labor force participation virtually all of the numerous studies of black white differences in female labor supply have found that black wives have higher labor force participation rates lfpr than whites even after adjusting for differences in measured variables such as age children education location other family income and wages for a summary of the results see mark killingsworth 1983 pp 122 195 202 404 and phyllis wallace 1982 ch 2 several explanations have been suggested such as blacks greater marital instability their extended family households black husbands lower wages and less stable employment but none has proved satisfactory it seems that black wives higher labor force participation is in large part a cultural difference rooted in the historical experience of blacks in america and not explainable by current conditions alone no one has yet attempted to measure and account for the differences in wives labor supply among the other ethnic and nativity groups as this paper will do these differences are large with the variation in annual lfprs among ethnic and nativity groups being greater than the variation in annual hours worked for those in the labor force as shown in table 1 the ranking of groups in terms of annual hours worked by those in the labor force differs from the ranking in terms of lfprs this suggests that different parameters govern the participation and hours worked decisions perhaps because the groups face different fixed costs of working these two aspects of labor supply therefore need to be analyzed separately in this paper i focus on the differences in labor force participation rates department of economics hunter college and graduate school of the city university of new york 695 park avenue new york ny 10021 i thank cecilia conrad for helpful discussions a psc cuny research award helped support this research

a model of financial crises in emerging markets recent events in mexico asia russia and brazil have underscored that a satisfactory explanation of financial crises in emerging markets remains elusive not too long ago the prevailing view was that crises were the inevitable outcome of ongoing fiscal imbalances coupled with fixed exchange rates but this first generation view pioneered by krugman 1979 has fallen out of fashion because in many crises the crucial fiscal disequilibria were absent and as obstfeld 1994 has argued currency crises have sometimes occurred even though central banks had more than enough resources to prevent them witness much of europe in the early 1990s obstfeld put forward a second generation view in which central banks may decide to abandon an exchange rate peg when the unemployment costs of defending it become too large this new perspective implied that crises could be driven by self fulfilling expectations since the costs of defending the peg may themselves depend on anticipations that the peg will be maintained but obstfeld s emphasis on mounting unemployment and domestic recession while appropriate for the erm 1992 crisis was at odds with the facts in mexico in 1994 and east asia in 1997 asian

the relationship between firm size and export behavior revisited many academic studies and government leaders are asking small and medium sized firms to become more involved in exports unfortunately the role that can be played by smaller firms is unclear despite the vast number of studies on size and export behavior discrepancies in study findings and the absence of variance statistics prevent researchers from understanding the importance of size this study has sought to examine the direct and indirect effects of firm size by examining three dimensions of export behavior propensity of export countries exporting to and export attitudes for 14 072 canadian manufacturers the results indicate that while firm size is positively related to all dimensions of export behavior its importance is limited as the amount of variance explained is modest

on the relationship between firm size and export intensity export marketing literature supports the view that firm size is positively related to export intensity although the empirical findings have been mixed a number of theoretical arguments are used to support this proposition i e international marketing economies of scale limited managerial and financial resources of small firms decisionmaker s risk perception based on a large survey of the italian manufacturing industry the article falsifies the proposition and challenges some widely held assumptions in export marketing literature

sovereign and private default risks over the business cycle abstract sovereign debt crises are often accompanied by deep recessions with sharp declines in external credit to the private sector in a sample of emerging economies we find that both sovereign and private interest rate spreads are countercyclical this paper presents a model of a small open economy that accounts for these empirical regularities it includes private firms which finance a fraction of imports by external debt and are subject to idiosyncratic productivity risk and a government which borrows internationally and taxes firms to finance public expenditures the model gives rise to endogenous private and sovereign interest rate spreads and a dynamic feedback mechanism between sovereign and private default risks through the endogenous response of fiscal policy to adverse productivity shocks

alfred chandler and capabilities theories of strategy and management alfred d chandler s scholarship on the large industrial enterprise has deepened understanding of economic development and helped establish the field of strategic management research chandler s monumental work emphasized the importance of organizational innovation managerial acumen and business performance a particular contribution was the support provided for a capabilities theory of the business enterprise this article also looks at recent developments in industrial organization that are less well explained and appreciated in the chandler framework copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

worlds apart the changing market geography of the german machinery industry german producers of advanced machinery have long enjoyed a reputation for technical excellence and export success the literature attributes much of the industry s success inter alia to various forms of interfirm cooperation between smes within spatial clusters such as that found in baden wurttemberg however this industry entered a period of relative crisis in the early 1990s experiencing stagnant or declining sales and growing competition from foreign firms among the reasons commonly advanced to explain this crisis are the decline of intraregional cooperation especially with other machinery producers the loss of domestic sales in the wake of the german car industry s downturn and excessively costly wages and benefits for workers in the machinery industry this paper offers an alternative interpretation based on geographical shifts in the industry s markets and the difficulty of sustaining close mutually beneficial interaction with customer firms abroad evidence comes from a study of the production and use of advanced manufacturing technologies involving interviews with machinery producers in germany and user firms in canada interviews reveal that in the light of less than satisfactory relations with german machinery firms north american customers are turning increasingly to domestic sources of supply in responding to these challenges the german machinery industry is now instituting changes to its spatial organization which may undermine the future integrity of its traditional home production regions

corporate dollar debt and depreciations much ado about nothing abstract emerging markets firms often carry foreign currency debt on their balance sheets following a depreciation the expanding peso value of dollar liabilities could via a net worth effect offset the expansionary competitiveness effect to assess which effect dominates we use accounting data including the currency composition of liabilities for 450 nonfinancial firms in five latin american countries in the 1990s we find that firms holding more dollar debt do not invest less than their peso indebted counterparts following a depreciation we also show that these firms match the currency denomination of their liabilities with the exchange rate sensitivity of their profits

are there cultural effects on saving some cross sectional evidence why are there such large differences in saving rates across countries conventional economic analyses have not been successful in explaining international saving differences so economists have sometimes suggested that national saving differences may be explained by cultural differences this paper tests the hypothesis that cultural factors influence saving by comparing saving patterns of immigrants to canada from different cultures using data from the canadian survey of family expenditures we find no evidence of cultural effects on saving

on crises contagion and confusion abstract since the tequila crisis of 1994 1995 the asian flu of 1997 and the russian virus of 1998 economists have been busy producing research on the subject of contagion yet few studies have examined empirically through which channels the disturbances are transmitted if there are indeed fundamental reasons for the spillovers we observe we attempt to fill this gap by analyzing how both trade links and the largely ignored financial sector links influence the pattern of fundamentals based contagion we examine the role of international bank lending the potential for cross market hedging and bilateral and third party trade in the propagation of crises

the gender wage gap a comparison of australia and canada using data from the 1989 canadian labour market activity survey and for australia the 1989 90 income distribution survey the authors investigate the reasons for the significantly lower gender wage gap in australia than in canada key similarities and differences between these two countries the authors argue make them a good basis for a natural experiment to investigate the effects of different labor market institutions in particular australia has a stronger union movement and a greater degree of centralization in wage determination than canada and most of its workers are covered by legally binding minimum working conditions the authors conclude that several differences between the countries in labor market structure notably a lower rate of return to education a lower rate of return to labor market experience and a lower level of wage inequality in australia than in canada are largely responsible for the smaller gender wage gap in australia

wage structure and gender earnings differentials an international comparison using microdata to analyse the gender pay gap in ten industrialized nations we focus on the role of wage structure the prices of labour market skills in influencing the gender gap we find wage structure enormously important in explaining why the us gender gap is higher than that in most other countries we conclude that the us gap would be similar to that in sweden and australia the countries with the smallest gaps if the united states had their levels of wage inequality this finding reflects the larger penalty in the united states for those with low skill levels or employed in low wage sectors 650 o 75 the united states was amoung the countries with the largest differ entials oecd ilo usbls this paper uses microdata to analyse inter national differences in the gender pay gap among a sample of ten industrialized nations we focus particularly on explaining the surprisingly low ranking of the united states in comparison with other industrialized countries an advan tage of an international perspective is that countries vary considerably with respect to governmental policies women s relative labour market qualifications and wage setting institutions such variability allows one to infer reasons for differences in the pay gap and by implication the impact of alternative govern ment policies empirical research on gender pay gaps has traditionally focused on the role of gender differences in qualifications and on differences in the treatment of otherwise equally qualified male and female workers i e labour market dis crimination analyses of trends over time in the gender differential within countries as well as inter country comparisons of gender earnings ratios have tended to emphasize these types of gender specific factors an innovative feature of our study is to focus on the role of wage structure as an additional factor influencing the gender gap to analyse the impact of wage structure we adapt a framework developed by juhn et al 1991 to analyse trends over time in race differentials in the united states our findings suggest that labour market institutions that affect overall wage inequality have an extremely impor tant effect on the gender earnings gap wage structure describes the array of prices set for various labour market skills measured and unmeasured and rents received for employment in par

labor market distortions under sovereign debt default crises risk of sovereign debt default has frequently affected emerging market and developed economies such financial crisis are often accompanied with severe declines of employment that are hard to justify using a standard dynamic stochastic model in this paper i document that a labor wedge deteriorates substantially around swift reversals of current accounts or default episodes i propose and evaluate two different explanations for these movements by linking the wedges to changes in labor taxes and in the cost of working capital with these two features included a dynamic model of equilibrium default is able to replicate the behavior of the labor wedge observed in the data around financial crisis in the model higher interest rates are propagated into larger costs of hiring labor through the presence of working capital as an economy is hit with a stream of bad productivity shocks the incentives to default become stronger thus increasing the cost of debt this reduces firm demand for labor and generates a labor wedge a similar effect is obtained with a counter cyclical tax rate policy the model is used to shed light on the recent events of the euro area debt crisis and in particular of the greek default event

multimarket analysis of agricultural price policies in an operational context the case of cyprus this article presents a method of analysis of agricultural price policies its basic features are i the incorporation of important supply and demand substitution possibilities ii a flexible structure which can account for institutional features of the agricultural sector and its relationships with the rest of the economy and iii a focused policy oriented approach an application to cyprus is presented which highlights the differences between this approach and analyses of single markets the method incorporates supporting software on personal computers with the longer term objective of developing this type of approach as a standard tool in pricing policy analysis

the japanese economy and corporate reform what path to sustainable prosperity in the 1980s as japan reaped the rewards of its extraordinary economic development of the post world war ii decades companies around the world sought to learn from japanese managerial practices even as in the united states financial interests including a growing number of corporate ceos were more aggressively advocating maximization of shareholder value as a managerial ideology within american industrial corporations slogans such as total quality management also vied for attention goldstein 1997 but the collapse of japan s bubble economy in 1990 and the persistence of recessionary conditions during the 1990s have raised doubts about the viability of the japanese model particularly in the west but increasingly in japan as well japan s negative rates of economic growth in 1997 and 1998 have prompted calls for japanese corporations to embrace the corporate governance principle of maximizing shareholder value

financial intermediation and delegated monitoring this paper develops a theory of financial intermediation based on minimizing the cost of monitoring information which is useful for resolving incentive problems between borrowers and lenders it presents a characterization of the costs of providing incentives for delegated monitoring by a financial intermediary diversification within an intermediary serves to reduce these costs even in a risk neutral economy the paper presents some more general analysis of the effect of diversification on resolving incentive problems in the environment assumed in the model debt contracts with costly bankruptcy are shown to be optimal the analysis has implications for the portfolio structure and capital structure of intermediaries

research and development cash flow agency and governance uk large companies this paper investigates the determinants of r d expenditure using a sample of uk listed companies with the highest spend from 2000 to 2005 we investigate the effect of corporate governance and ownership on r d using panel data the results provide some evidence that more governance tends to depress r d activity a finding that is robust to whether a composite or disaggregated index of governance is used one innovation of the paper is that we treat agency and finance effects interactively the ownership stake of the ceo appears to be supportive for r d

a survey of the literature on human capital intensive firms the aim of this paper is to provide an exhaustive survey of the academic research dedicated to the study of human capital intensive firms hcifs we use a bibliometric analysis based on the three widely used databases econlit science direct and wiley over the period 1992 2015 we are adapting a methodology developed in previous works to our specific object of study and we generate a bottom up clustering on keywords titles and abstracts our examination of the data sheds a light on five main clusters of works that respectively focus on 1 critical human resource management 2 intellectual capital assessment 3 funding risk and innovation 4 high skilled employees supporting economic development and 5 internal and external valuable social networks in a critical appraisal of our results we stress that the bibliometric analysis remains silent on how the different clusters are linked with each other based on our own appreciation of the hcifs literature we propose a further step in the identification of a central question linking up these clusters a transversal review of the five clusters reveals that hcifs appear as a network of specialized agents whose complementary human resources are decisive for the value creation process

finance capital in chandlerian capitalism alfred chandler wrote a great deal on finance capital in the development of big business in making bold and provocative statements he provided scholars with a variety of stimulating ideas to a large extent however we still do not know whether chandler s assertions were correct ultimately the value of revisiting chandler s research on finance capital in the rise of us big business is to understand how much research needs to be done and the questions it needs to address copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

the labor supply of immigrants in the united states the role of changing source country characteristics economists have long explored the role that source country characteristics have in determining the labor market performance of immigrants for example george j borjas 1987 models the migration decision as determined by the expected difference in the immigrant s position in the earnings distribution in the host and source countries deborah a cobb clark 1993 extends borjas s model to immigrant women similarly other studies explore how culture or traditional gender roles in the source country persist across borders and influence the labor market outcomes of immigrant women in the united states for example heather antecol 2000 2001 and francine d blau lawrence m kahn and kerry l papps 2008 find a positive relationship between source country characteristics and the labor market outcomes of immigrant women in the us absent from the existing literature however is an examination of how changes over time in a source country s characteristics are associated with changes in the labor market outcomes of immigrants from that source country in this paper we study how changes in the source country characteristics are associated with changes in the labor supply outcomes of immigrants in the us and whether these relationships are different across men and women in particular we focus on the changes in three the labor supply of immigrants in the united states the role of changing source country characteristics

self selection and the earnings of immigrants this paper analyzes the way in which the earnings of the immigrant population may be expected to differ from the earnings of the native population because of the endogeneity of the decision to migrate the empirical study shows that differences in the u s earnings of immigrants with the same measured skills but from different home countries are attributable to variations in political and economic conditions in the countries of origin at the time of migration excerpt

forbearance and prompt corrective action this article investigates whether a bank regulator should terminate problem banks promptly or exercise forbearance we construct a dynamic model economy in which entrepreneurs pledge collateral borrow from banks and invest in long term projects we assume that collateral value has aggregate risk over time that in any period entrepreneurs can abscond with the projects but lose the collateral and that depositors can withdraw deposits we show that optimal regulation exhibits forbearance if the ex ante probability of collapse in collateral value is sufficiently low but exhibits prompt termination of problem banks if this probability is sufficiently high copyright 2007 the ohio state university

r d and ceo departure date do financial incentives make ceos more opportunistic the purpose of this article is to examine whether research and development r d expenditure is biased downward because of self serving behavior of highly incentivized managers this offers an insight into the general relationship between incentives and opportunism using instrumental variables and panel data methods for a sample of high r d spenders in the uk we examine whether r d is reduced in cases of imminent departure of the ceo results show evidence for this but only for the sample above the median in intensity of stock and options in the compensation package this suggests that opportunism is enhanced by inappropriately strong incentives the main results are robust to the inclusion of a number of corporate governance variables jel classification g30 o30

dynamic capabilities and sustained innovation strategic control and financial commitment at rolls royce plc rolls royce plc is currently a powerful competitor in the turbofan engine industry notwithstanding its own troubled history and the relative lack of international success of british companies in high technology manufacturing over the past halfcentury this paper seeks to contribute to the development of a theory of innovative enterprise by analyzing the roles of strategy and finance in sustaining the innovation process at rolls royce over four decades from the mid 1960s through an analysis of strategic control and financial commitment as conditions of innovative enterprise at different stages in rolls royce s evolution we adduce evidence that innovation depends in part on who strategic managers are and how they gain control over financial resources

international and domestic collateral constraints in a model of emerging market crises abstract we build a model of emerging markets crises which features two types of collateral constraints firms in a domestic economy have limited borrowing capacity from international investors they also have limited borrowing capacity with respect to each other we study how the presence and changes in these collateral constraints affect financial and real variables a binding international constraint in the aggregate leads to a sharp rise in interest rates and fire sales of domestic assets while limited domestic collateral can lead to wasted international collateral these two collateral constraints can interact in important ways the first is disintermediation a fire sale of domestic assets causes banks to fail in their function of reallocating resources across the economy leading to wasted international collateral the second is a dynamic effect we show that firms in an economy with limited domestic collateral and a binding international collateral constraint will not adequately precaution against adverse shocks increasing the severity of these shocks

the architecture and dynamics of industrial ecosystems diversification and innovative industrial renewal in emilia romagna the paper aims at advancing our understanding of the architecture and diversification dynamics of industrial ecosystems and identifying policies for the innovative industrial renewal of mature economies industrial ecosystems are here defined as multi tiered production systems involving heterogeneous agents operating in sectoral value chains and contributing to the capability domains of the ecosystem and its participants with closely complementary but dissimilar sets of resources and capabilities the geographical boundaries of the industrial ecosystem are shaped by the evolving interdependencies linking organisations within the ecosystem and by the new linkages consolidating beyond that thus the industrial ecosystem is a structured production space centred mainly on its productive organisations as well as other institutions intermediaries and demand side actors purposefully involved in co value creation processes along various types of diversification and innovative industrial renewal trajectories drawing on a five year research programme in the emilia romagna industrial ecosystem a number of case studies are introduced to highlight these trajectories and the underpinning structural learning dynamics the paper concludes by identifying a number of policy implications focusing on strategies for enhancing the structural readiness of the industrial ecosystem and promoting smart diversification and innovative industrial renewal policies jel classifications d20 o25 o30

innovation and size at the firm level empirical studies examining the relationship between firm size and innovative activity have produced what superficially might appear to be contradictory results while some studies have found a positive relationship between firm size and technological change still others have identified no relationship or even a negative one there are two main reasons for these seemingly inconsistent findings the first is that different measures have been used to quantify technical change these measures have typically involved either some measure of inputs into the innovative process such as r d expenditures or else the number of patented inventions while neither of these are direct measures of innovative output they clearly represent different aspects of the innovative process thus it is perhaps not too surprising that different results have tended to emerge when the r d input measures are used than for the patent measures the second reason is that virtually every study examining the relationship between firm size and technical change has had to use a truncated distribution of firm sizes where either no or only a few small firms were included for example scherer s 14 234 35 conclusion that the empirical results tilt on the side of supporting the schumpeterian hypothesis that size is conducive to vigorous conduct of r d was based on the responses of 443 large corporations participating in the federal trade commission s line of business survey similarly scherer 15 used the fortune annual survey of the 500 largest u s industrial corporations and found that the number of patented inventions increases less than proportionately along with firm size soete 16 found that r d expenditures tend to increase more than proportionately along with firm size using a sample from business week consisting of the most r d intensive firms bound et al 6 were able to include a considerably wider spectrum of firm sizes in their sample of 1 492 firms from the 1976 compustat data they found that r d increases more than proportionately along with firm size for the smaller firms in their sample but that a fairly linear relationship exists for the largest firms inferences about the relationship between firm size and technical change based on a severely we thank f m scherer and an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions as well as sigrid raasch and jianping

the stock market and innovative capability in the new economy the optical networking industry the purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of the stock market on the innovative capabilities of high technology companies that have been central to what in the last half of the 1990s came to be called the new economy the empirical focus is on equipment suppliers in optical networking an industry that integrates the bandwidth potential of fiber optics with the data communications potential of the internet the study covers the period from 1996 to 2003 during which the optical networking industry was first central to the new economy boom and then from 2001 ensnared by the bursting of the new economy bubble this paper shows how responding to the new economy business model brought into the industry by cisco systems three old economy companies nortel networks lucent technologies and alcatel sought to use their corporate stock as a currency to acquire technology companies and compensate talented people and thus accumulate innovative capability to understand the relation between the stock market and innovative capability in the cisco growth through acquisition and integration model and in the creative responses of the old economy companies to the cisco challenge we apply an analytical framework that links four functions of the stock market control combination compensation and cash with three social conditions of innovative enterprise strategic control the abilities and incentives of strategic decision makers to allocate resources to uncertain investments in innovative capabilities organizational integration the structure of incentives that motivates employees to apply their skills and efforts to collective learning processes and financial commitment the availability to the enterprise of resources to sustain cumulative learning processes until by accessing markets they can generate financial returns using this framework we show that the ways in which the old economy companies used their stock to accumulate innovative capability in the new economy boom of 1998 2000 made them more vulnerable to the stock market collapse and the slowdown in the optical networking industry in 2001 2003

some new evidence on the determinants of large and small firm innovation empirical analyses presented by acs and audretsch suggest differences in the market structure determinants of innovation between large and small firms in u s manufacturing the evidence they offer is ambiguous by using data for a different country the netherlands a different measure of innovation and a different aggregation level we offer new evidence allowing a revaluation of the findings for the u s material moreover the influence of the market structure determinants does not appear to differ between a period of sluggish growth 1983 and one of relatively high growth 1989

internal debt crises and sovereign defaults internal and sovereign debt crises occur together and happen more frequently in economies with weak bankruptcy institutions this paper provides a novel explanation internal crises arise because of the inability to liquidate private debtors when many default in an optimal contract a successful entrepreneur repays yet an unsuccessful one defaults and liquidates his assets the bounds on liquidation generate however a second equilibrium where domestic borrowers default because others are also defaulting during these coordinated defaults tax collections fall which increases sovereign default risk in the model joint debt crises are an optimal response to informational problems in private sector lending

structural cycles and industrial policy alignment the private public nexus in the emilian packaging valley the article investigates changes in the interaction between business organisations local governments and public technology intermediaries resulting from business organisations shifts towards higher value product segment opportunities specifically we analyse how local governments can or not align their industrial policies to the industrial transformations both technological and organisational underpinning firms value creation capture dynamics the concept of structural cycle is introduced here to study the two interdependent processes of technology transition and organisational reconfiguration characterising those firms shifting towards higher value product segments this private public nexus is investigated in the emilian packaging valley context the mixed method study focuses on the case of ima spa its shifts from the food to the pharmaceutical value product segment of the packaging machine industry and its changing relationships with regional public policies and institutions a number of industrial policy implications for sustainable value creation dynamics in local production systems are finally derived

the chandlerian corporation and the theory of innovative enterprise through the synthesis of business history into a coherent and powerful analytical framework alfred chandler made an enduring intellectual contribution to the social sciences this essay outlines the implications of chandler s perspective for the theory of innovative enterprise embeds that theory in the social conditions of innovative enterprise analytical framework demonstrates the illogic of the neoclassical monopoly model and contends that the analysis of the dynamics and performance of industrial capitalism requires a methodology that integrates theory and history

the vanishing hand the changing dynamics of industrial capitalism alfred chandler s portrayal of the managerial revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries does not extend well into the late twentieth century when widespread vertical disintegration began replacing the classical multi unit managerial enterprise this paper attempts to explain the new economy in a manner consistent with chandler by providing an enlarged theoretical account of industrial evolution in this account clusters of chandlerian firms appeared as a temporary episode within a larger smithian process of the division of labor

flexible technology and industrial structure in the u s this paper analyzes the development over the postwar period of output employment and the number of plants in manufacturing in the united states it is shown that the distribution of flexible technology in the form of machine tools ncmts shifted markedly toward small plants during the 1980s it is found that the probability of adoption and the penetration rate of ncmts are higher in large than in small plants even though the number of ncmts per worker is much higher in small plants this apparent paradox is explained it is also suggested that the shift of output towards smaller plants is correlated with the increased use of flexible technology and that this reflects changes in the division of labor among plants of various sizes as well as changes in the composition and organization of production in large plants

the competitive characteristics of u s manufacturers in the machine tool industry this paper examines the competitive characteristics of u s manufacturers in the machine tool mt industry after several decades of decline this industry has recently shown signs of a modest but sustained recovery empirical evidence from a national survey of 104 mt producers suggests that the revival of this sector has been driven by a combination of factors including renewed export involvement improved customer support and better product design although most mt companies are small to medium sized enterprises smes the survey data show that very small smes are poorly represented in the recovery thrust of the industry as a whole our principal conclusion is that the mt industry has been following an export led path toward stabilization but that certain types of small producers are unlikely to thrive for very long the most serious problems facing small producers include shrinking local markets import competition shortages of skilled labor and cyclical demand

international lending with moral hazard and risk of repudiation in this paper i examine the constrained optimal pattern of capital flows between a lender and a borrower in an environment in which there are two impediments to forming contracts the first impediment to contracting arises from the assumption that lenders cannot observe whether borrowers invest or consume borrowed funds this assumption leads to a moral hazard problem in investment the second impediment arises from the assumption that the borrower as a sovereign nation may choose to repudiate his debts the optimal contract is shown to specify that the borrowing country experience a capital outflow when the worst realizations of national output occur this seemingly perverse capital outflow forms a necessary part of the optimal solution to the moral hazard problem in investment

why is there interethnic variation in the gender wage gap the role of cultural factors this paper analyzes interethnic variation in the gender wage gap among immigrants in the united states controlling for human capital factors does not eliminate interethnic variation in the gender wage gap moreover a positive correlation exists between the gender wage gaps of first generation immigrants and the same gaps in those groups countries of origin although i cannot detect a home country effect for second and higher generation immigrants the pattern for the first generation gap is consistent with a role for cultural factors in addition to human capital and institutional factors in explaining why some women earn more relative to men than others