an empirical investigation of coalitional bargaining procedures abstract models of government formation processes in multi party democracies are usually highly sensitive to the rules that govern the selection of formateurs i e the parties selected to propose a potential government the theoretical literature has focused on two selection rules selection proportional to seat share and selection in order of seat share in this paper we use a new data set on government formations in 11 parliamentary democracies to empirically assess which selection rule most closely approximates the data we find that while there is little empirical support for selection in order of seat share proportional selection fits the data well however we also find that a simple alternative that combines the insights of the two selection rules outperforms both of them in their ability to explain the data

rockets and feathers understanding asymmetric pricing prices rise like rockets but fall like feathers this stylized fact of most markets is con rmed by many empirical studies in this paper i develop a model with competitive rms and rational partially informed consumers where such asymmetric response to costs by rms emerges naturally in contrast to public opinion and past work collusion is not necessary to explain such result using a rich dataset of retail gasoline prices i nd the observed price dispersion pattern to be consistent with the model s prediction

gasoline price volatility and the elasticity of demand for gasoline abstract we examine how gasoline price volatility impacts consumers price elasticity of demand for gasoline results show that volatility in prices decreases consumer demand for gasoline in the intermediate run we also find that consumers appear to be less elastic in response to changes in gasoline price when gasoline price volatility is medium or high compared to when it is low moreover we find that when we control for variance in our econometric model gasoline price elasticity of demand is lower in magnitude in the long run

temporary wholesale gasoline price spikes have long lasting retail effects the aftermath of hurricane rita abstract i study u s gasoline prices following hurricane rita to show that short lived geographical differences in the severity of wholesale gasoline price spikes are associated with long lasting geographical differences in retail prices in most u s cities wholesale prices spiked significantly for roughly 2 weeks following the hurricane however in cities where this spike was particularly large retail margins remained higher than in other cities for nearly 2 months high retail margins dissipated more quickly after the hurricane in cities where competition between stations tends to generate cyclical retail price fluctuations independent of wholesale cost movements i discuss why prices may have fallen faster in cities exhibiting retail price cycles and present additional results identifying differences in market characteristics between cities with and without price cycles i find that cycling cities tend to have higher population density and have independent nonrefinery brand stations that are mor

what makes basic research economically useful abstract economic analysis has helped us understand the strong economic dimension in the explosive growth of science and more recently the reasons for continuing public subsidies however the growing domination of the market failure approach has led to the analytical neglect of two major questions for policy makers how does science contribute to technology are the technological benefits from science increasingly becoming international on the former too much attention has been devoted to the relatively narrow range of scientific fields producing knowledge with direct technological applications and too little to the much broader range of fields the skills of which contribute to most technologies on the latter national systems of science and of technology remain closely coupled in most major countries in spite of the technological activities of large multinational firms empirical research is needed on concentration scale and efficiency in the performance of basic research where techniques and insights from the applied economics of industrial r d are of considerable relevance there is no convincing evidence so far of unexploited economies of scale in basic research this evidence shows that many policies for greater selectivity and concentration in basic research have been misconceived economists and other social scientists could help by formulating more persuasive justifications for public subsidy for basic research and by making more realistic assumptions about the nature of science and technology

size r d productivity and decision styles we extend the size innovation debate by incorporating decision making style as a relevant factor in the innovation process we propose that the size of firms affects the scale and quality of product innovation through the adoption of different decision making styles using the literature on cognition we conceptualize decision making style as the degree to which firms rely on analytical information for decision making during the r d process using longitudinal data of spanish firms we show that as firms increase in size they rely more extensively on analytical decision tools for the innovation activity additionally we show that the size of firms is negatively related to product innovation productivity in terms of scale and positively related to the quality and that these relationships are mediated by firms reliance on analytical decision making style we discuss theoretical and managerial implications for innovation research and practice

managing technological development lessons from the newly industrializing countries this survey looks at the technological development of the newly industrializing countries to draw some important lessons for firms and governments in other developing countries first inventing products and processes is not at the center of the technological development needed for successful industrialization it is at the fringe what is at the center is acquiring the capabilities needed for efficient production and investment second some countries have overemphasized the drive for technological self sufficiency and paid a high price in poor productivity what makes the best economic sense is to combine foreign and local technological elements and to do this in a way that progressively develops local capabilities in areas where they can be more efficient third the acquisition of technological capability does not come merely from experience though experience is important fourth the economic environment through its influence on the technological efforts of firms is very important in determining the productivity of a country s resources

innovation and diffusion in small firms theory and evidence the article provides an inventory of the strengths and weaknesses of small firms in a dynamic context to do this it considers verbal accounts of the processes of innovation and diffusion as well as quantitative studies testing cause effect relations it consider both economic and noneconomic factors concerning issues of motivation perception and knowledge first an overall summary is given of the characteristics of small business compared with large business as a basis for an assessment of strengths and weaknesses perhaps the most important characteristic of small business is its diversity and the article gives the conditions and sources of it other core characteristics are small scale personality and independence of the small firm from these derived characteristics strengths and weaknesses and core strategies can be inferred from the perspective of the firm strengths and weaknesses are subsequently analysed for the successive stages of innovation invention development tooling production introduction to practice market strengths and weaknesses in diffusion are analysed for the successive stages in the adoption process as proposed by rogers reference is made to theory and to empirical studies from the literature and from research by the present author

technological learning in singapore a test case of leapfrogging some technology analysts have suggested that developing countries dcs might be able to leapfrog earlier technological paradigms and catch up in the field of electronics this paper provides a partial test case of the leapfrogging argument using evidence from singapore s electronics industry it shows that technology was accumulated through a gradual process of learning rather than by leapfrogging indeed corporate learning was incremental painstaking long term and cumulative also in contrast with the leapfrogging hypothesis firms tended to enter electronics at the mature phase of the product cycle rather than the early stage furthermore much of the technology accumulated by singapore s electronics industry was pre electronic in character involving crafts mechanical and precision engineering electro mechanical interfacing and basic manufacturing skills rather than the software computer and r d skills usually associated with electronics the evidence from singapore suggests that industri

a structuralist perspective on the role of technology in economic growth and development abstract this paper presents an integrated view of what is termed a structuralist perspective to economic growth and development that stands in contrast to the mainstream orthodox or neoclassical view in the structuralist view structural changes are causes of growth rather than outcomes of a process of capital accumulation and of rising per capita incomes moreover the growth process may be punctuated by periods of discrete shifts in resource allocation creative destruction and growth acceleration rather than being smooth throughout structural changes need not be automatic they require a skill specific infrastructure of new capabilities which when established generate new comparative advantages market failures may be pervasive due to problems of human capital accumulation critical mass and discrete choice among alternative growth paths thus in addition to creating a favorable environment for business and assuring through macroeconomic policy adequate investment successful growth may require an adequate industrial and technological policy particularly at nodes of structural change the paper surveys the structuralist insights appearing in the literature starting with the early postwar economic development literature and including recently developed formal models it also proposes a kinked or scalloped aggregate production function as a simple tool for structuralist analysis

agreements between firms and the technological life cycle model evidence from information technologies abstract contrarily to most previous contributions which have addressed the issue of cooperative agreements essentially in a perspective of comparative statics in this paper a model is proposed that relies on the technological trajectory notion suggested by evolutionary theories and emphasizes the relevance of the technological and market dynamics in explaining why and to what extent firms have recourse to agreements in particular it is claimed that the propensity of firms towards collaborative ventures and the characteristics of the cooperation depend upon the phase of the technological life cycle of the industry branch in which the cooperation takes place based on a cross sectional analysis of 45 industry branches in the information technology industrial system the paper also provides empirical evidence supporting the argument that the propensity towards agreements and the nature of the agreements concluded do change during the technological life cycle to this end it takes advantage of the arpa database developed at the polytechnic of milan and containing detailed information on over 2 000 agreements concluded in the 1980 1986 period all over the world in the semiconductor data processing and telecommunications industries

industrialisation catching up and economic growth a comparative study across the world s capitalist economies various hypotheses are examined seeking to explain inter country convergence at the upper end but divergence at the lower end of the world income rankings a model of disequilibrium growth with sector specific technological progress and spillover is developed and then estimated on two samples of capitalist economies 1960 85 it is found that the degree of disequilibrium between agriculture and industry is greatest in the least developed economies but their rate of labor transfer has been slow technological spillover has stimulated productivity growth in less developed agricultural sectors but not in the industrial sectors of the least developed economies copyright 1991 by royal economic society

consumer search and dynamic price dispersion an application to gasoline markets this article studies the role of imperfect information in explaining price dispersion we use a new panel data set on the u s retail gasoline industry and propose a new test of temporal price dispersion to establish the importance of consumer search we show that price rankings vary significantly over time however they are more stable among stations at the same street intersection weestablishtheequilibriumrelationshipsbetweenpricedispersionandkeyvariables from consumer search models price dispersion increases with the number of firms in the market decreases with the production cost and increases with search costs

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

science park location and new technology based firms in sweden implications for strategy and performance one logical way to assess the performance of science parks is to compare the performance of their firms to similar firms not located there a total of 273 new technology based firms ntbfs were surveyed of which 134 were on a science park and 139 were not on a park there were significant differences in the means of strategy dimensions between the on park and off park firms it can be seen that the ntbfs who located in science parks showed significantly greater emphasis on firm characteristics as innovation ability competitor and market orientation sales and employment growth high profits etc the differences indicates a slight advantage for the science park firms the off park sample reported proximity to other firms to be of higher importance than the on park sample in their choice of location however these differences do not show any clear pattern making it difficult to understand if ntbfs who locate on science parks are systematically looking for something different in their location

demand commitment and legislative bargaining a response in this reply i will focus on the implications of montero and vidal puga s finding acknowledging that their result is correct thus what follows should not be interpreted as a defense of the proposition 2 of morelli 1999 but as a clarification of the impact of this correction for the demand bargaining research agenda as a whole

elasticities of demand for gasoline in canada and the united states abstract fluctuations in the world price of oil the concern with greenhouse gas emissions and the efforts to revive the 1997 kyoto protocol have resulted in renewed interest in the estimation of elasticities of demand for gasoline in this paper a complete system of demand equations is estimated including an equation for the demand for gasoline canadian family expenditure famex and united states consumer expenditure cex survey data are used household level data permits estimation of elasticities for various household groups also differences in demand responsiveness to own price and income changes are estimated for different regions in canada and the united states demand is found to be own price and income inelastic on the whole as reported in earlier studies there is also variation in these elasticities across regions of canada and the united states however larger differences are observed with respect to household size and housing tenure than to region of residence

an evolutionary approach to technological innovation in agriculture some preliminary remarks abstract this article proposes an interpretation of the process of technological innovation in agriculture we begin with a criticism to the idea of agriculture as a particular environment in economic analysis we argue that some dynamic concepts from economics of innovation especially as seen by the evolutionary literature can be used as an adequate theoretical reference to study innovation in agriculture we then suggest an interpretation in terms of technological trajectories in order to explain the complexity of the technological regime in agriculture finally we discuss the present stage of transformation in this technological regime and the perspectives of the arising new trajectories

the demand bargaining set general characterization and application to majority games abstract the cooperative solution concept introduced here the demand bargaining set contains the core and is included in the zhou bargaining set eliminating the dominated coalition structures the demand vectors belonging to the demand bargaining set are self stable in the class of constant sum homogeneous weighted majority games the demand bargaining set is nonempty and predicts a unique demand vector namely a proportional distribution within minimal winning coalitions the noncooperative implementation of the demand bargaining set is obtained for all the games that satisfy the one stage property

the influence of entrepreneur s personal characteristics on mses growth through innovation abstractresearch in the separate areas of innovation and growth has considerably intensified in recent years however little scholarly attention has been paid to the entrepreneurs personal characteristics that might explain the growth of micro and small enterprises mses through innovation this study examines the key entrepreneurs personal characteristics affecting micro and small enterprises mses upgrading defined here as substantial growth through innovation six major determining types of entrepreneurs characteristics were identified from the innovation and the growth literature education work experience gender motivations nationality and age the empirical results which are based on t tests of the differences between upgraders and non upgraders the linear probability model and the logit model all suggest that work experience and motivations are cornerstones in the likelihood that an mse will upgrade the policy implications of this study on promoting mses upgrading are also discussed

the size distribution of innovating firms in the uk 1945 1983 a survey of 4 378 significant innovations shows that firms with fewer than 1 000 employees commercialized a much larger share than is indicated by their share of r and d expenditures innovations per employee have been consistently above average in firms with more than 10 000 employees and have become so in firms with fewer than 1 000 intersectoral variation in the size distribution of innovating firms can be explained as a function of r and d based technological opportunities and of technological ease of entry by user firms with principal activities outside the sector copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

firm size effects on transaction costs associated with effects of scale scope experience and learning there are effects of firm size on transaction costs in the stages of contact contract and control these effects are due to threshold costs in setting up contacts contracts and governance schemes and to differences with respect to the factors that cause transaction costs bounded rationality opportunism uncertainty and transaction specificity of assets implications are considered for firm strategy and public policy

the environmental and economic impact of the carbon tax in australia to fulfil its emission reduction target pledged in the copenhagen accord the australian government has determined to introduce a carbon tax from july 1st 2012 this paper simulates the effects on the environment and on the economy of a carbon tax of a 23 per tonne of carbon dioxide proposed by the government with and without a compensation policy we employ a computable general equilibrium model with an environmentally extended social accounting matrix according to the simulation results the carbon tax can cut emissions effectively but will cause a mild economic contraction because the price signal is intact the proposed compensation plan has little impact on emission cuts while significantly mitigating the negative effect of a carbon tax on the economy

contribution of new technology based firms to the strengthening of technological capabilities in intermediate economies this paper argues that the main contribution of new technology based firms ntbfs is their technological dynamism which invests them with two major roles a challenging role implicit in their creation whereby they break with the inertia of existing organisations and a more long standing technology transfer role acting as a source of new technologies which they acquire and deliver by several means the performance of these roles can be particularly valuable in less advanced economies contributing to a strengthening of the indigenous capabilities in new technologies empirical research on a sample of portuguese ntbfs has shown that these firms have indeed performed an important function by accessing new technological knowledge both from local public research and from more advanced countries which they further developed turned into marketable applications and commercialised but the conditions found in an intermediate economy such as portugal present ntbfs with particular problems the limited number of knowledgeable users prepared to adopt their products and the firms difficulty to reach other type of clients can be a major obstacle to their development therefore if the country is to profit from ntbfs challenging behaviour and technological competences their acquisition and diffusion efforts should be backed and complemented by demand oriented policies

the price and welfare effects of biofuel mandates and subsidies the coordination of agricultural environmental and energy policies requires a thorough understanding of the interactions between crop food and energy markets this paper develops a general equilibrium model to analyze the interactions and to evaluate the price and welfare effect of biofuel mandates and subsidies results suggest that biofuel mandates are a primary cause of some of the major concerns associated with crop based biofuel production including higher food prices and lower consumer welfare the price and welfare effects of biofuel subsidies depend on the level of the biofuel mandate when the mandate is weak or not binding a biofuel subsidy becomes a transfer from consumers to biofuel producers which tends to reduce food and fuel prices because of the negative income effect however with a strong mandate a biofuel subsidy will increase the prices of crops food and fuel when crops account for a large share of production cost and when the supply of crops is inelastic using parameter values consistent with empirical evidence found in the u s we calculated the price and welfare effects of the biofuel mandates and subsidies specified in the energy independence and security act of 2007 results suggest that the biofuel mandates and subsidies increased the price of corn by 25 40 increased the price of food by 1 5 2 5 and lowered the price of gasoline by 5 10 overall the biofuel policies had only a small effect on consumer utility

a stage contingent model of design and growth for technology based new ventures abstract stage of growth developmental models have traditionally been used to enhance our understanding of the organizational creation and growth process until recently most of this literature has been primarily conceptual and descriptive this paper presents a stage of growth model theorized to hold for technology based new ventures the model consists of four stages conception and development commercialization growth and stability and views each stage of growth as a reflection of the dominant problems faced over the course of growth by the venture the model predicts that the organization of a venture will be a function ofthe dominant problems that define a stage of growth more specifically it is argued that a technology based venture s rate of growth depends in part on the consistency or fit between its stage of growth and certain structural features of its organization including decision making centralization and formalization and functional specialization in the areas of marketing and sales manufacturing and engineering technology data were collected from 105 technology based ventures in the electronics computer and peripherals industries to test the model the results were generally consistent with the theory and showed that centralization of decision making decreased as the firms moved to higher stages while formalization of decision making increased in higher stages specialization of roles in the functional areas of manufacturing and marketing also increased by stage however specialization in the engineering and technology functions remained high across all stages the contingency hypothesis was also supported indicating that technology based ventures growth is partially attributable to the fit between a venture s stage of growth and aspects of its structure these findings indicate that different patterns of decision making and functional specialization are required at each stage if growth is to be achieved as such this research validates a long standing but untested belief in the venture management field that performance of new ventures depends upon

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

innovation and industry evolution the theoretical literature on innovation has been concerned with a single innovation produced by a number of identical agents by contrast we consider a market in which one firm is the current incumbent while the remaining firms are challengers moreover we consider a sequence of innovations so that success does not imply that the successful firm reaps monopoly profits forever after but only until the next better innovation is developed we begin with a fully optimizing behavioral model and derive the equivalent of the schumpeterian process of creative destruction that is a firm enjoys temporary monopoly power but is soon overthrown by a more inventive challenger the essential point to grasp is that in dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process the fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers goods the new methods of production or transportation the new markets the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates schumpeter 1942 pp 82 83

creative destruction among industrial firms in the united states there is a growing interest in dynamic modeling of capitalism as recent experience has demonstrated the importance of innovation in shaping the structure and growth rate of capitalist nations economists recognize that innovation by its nature describes a dynamic evolutionary model of capitalism which is inadequately described by the equilibrium models which have dominated economic thought since the 19th century

r d in smes a paradox this paper has three objectives 1 to survey the relevant literature addressing the apparent paradox of research development investments carried out within small and medium enterprises 2 to provide focused summaries of the articles in this special issue 3 to draw some general conclusions in terms of policy implications

leading companies and networks of strategic alliances in information technologies abstract strategic alliances joint ventures and a wide array of cooperative r d pacts have received considerable attention in recent years in this paper an attempt is made to understand not only some recent trends in inter firm cooperation in information technologies but also to reveal the role played by a large group of companies the research is based on a large databank with information on thousands of alliances and their participating companies applying a number of statistical techniques it is possible to identify the major players within information technology and its sub fields the analysis enables us to recognize the major international networks of inter firm alliances the changes over time and different positions taken by world leading companies in several industrial and technological settings

marginal reductions in vehicle emissions under a dual blend ethanol mandate evidence from a natural experiment among the many reasons policy makers across the world have sought to supplement fuel supplies with ethanol blended fuels are the cited environmental benefits that come with replacing a fossil fuel with a cleaner burning alternative dual blend ethanol mandates in which multiple ethanol blends are simultaneously available are one way policy markers can move forward with more aggressive mandates more quickly the recent ethanol mandate in the state of new south wales australia offers a unique natural experiment to quantify the potential environmental benefits and costs of a dual blend ethanol policy this paper estimates the impact on carbon dioxide co2 emissions from road activity that are attributable to the implementation of the new south wales ethanol requirements we find that there was a decrease in emissions due to the policy but that the decrease is relatively minor given the size of the market and that it comes at a high cost the cost was over 1200 per ton of carbon to reduce gasoline emissions by just 1 2

the u s national innovation system origins and prospects for change in recent years the concept of national innovation systems has attained considerable currency and interest although a precise definition of a national innovation system is difficult analyses of the japanese and u s national innovation systems have implicitly defined them as the array of public and private institutions and organizations within an economy that fund and perform rd nelson 1993 interest in national innovation systems stems in part from a growing acknowledgment of the contributions to national economic welfare of superior performance in the commercialization and adoption of new technologies this awareness in turn has been heightened by the innovative and economic strength of postwar japan

the relevance of stakeholder theory and social capital theory in the context of csr in smes an australian perspective the concept of business responsibility usually termed as corporate social responsibility csr originated in the early 1930s after the wall street crash of 1929 exposed corporate irresponsibility in large organisations the understanding of csr has evolved since then and its scope has now broadened from mere compliance to corporate laws to active alignment of internal business goals with externally set societal aspirations unfortunately the significance of this multidimensional concept within the small and medium enterprise sme sector has continued to be overshadowed by its application in large and multinational organisations more importantly this has led to the practice of judging smes which are experiencing increasing pressure to engage in social activities as if they are no different from their larger counterparts this study therefore investigates csr from the perspective of smes in australia without any theoretical presumptions and then comments on the relevance and applicability of the two theories that have been commonly used to investigate business responsibility namely stakeholder theory st and social capital theory sct the research findings indicate that csr within the sme sector is more aligned to the fundamentals of sct mainly owing to the unique resource and survival challenges that they face and which are arguably not so pronounced in large organisations

transaction costs and standardisation in professional services to small business in the market of business services the easier segment of large business is being saturated therefore suppliers of business services must seek to cater to the growing but more difficult segment of small business if their growth is to be maintained with appropriate extensions transaction cost economics can facilitate understanding of the nature of the difficulty involved due to effects of scale in transaction costs it is relatively more expensive to provide services tailored to the individual smaller firm standardisation of services may be required to make access to this market viable the question arises whether such standardised methods should be stimulated by the government to see how this issue is perceived by suppliers of various business services a survey was conducted on a sample of 1 000 firms with a response of 30 the issue of economies of scale in transaction costs did emerge but was not universally perceived as a problem many respondents confirmed the need for standardised modules opinions were sharply divided on the issue whether the government should step in to promote standardisation across suppliers

measuring r d in small firms how much are we missing the oecd surveys on r d are considerably biased towards underestimating r d in small firms this conclusion is derived from the author s comparison between the official dutch r d survey and the findings of his own survey among 3000 firms although being based on dutch observations only the author s considerations have an impact on other oecd countries since the official dutch r d survey is fully compatible with those in other countries the findings call into question the results from a number of empirical studies bearing on subjects such as market structure and r d firm size and r d or r d and growth

an overview of innovation intensity in the indigenous oilfield services firms in nigeria the study examined the types and intensity of innovations in the indigenous nigeria s oil and gas servicing sub sector the study used primary and secondary data sources 100 firms were purposefully selected and sampled focusing on the period between 2001 and 2010 a total of 400 questionnaires were ad min istered of wh ich 70 were returned and found suitable for analysis the responses were aggregated such that the unit of analysis was the firm secondary data were sourced fro m the internet and other published sources the data so obtained were analy zed using descriptive and inferential statistics of the 4 types of innovation that the study examined o rganizat ional innovation was the most prevalent 46 while diffusion based innovation was least 10 product and process innovations were implemented respectively by 17 and 22 of the firms innovation intensity was lo w only two patents were granted to the firms within the period 2007 2010 level of organizat ional learning was lo w the nu mber of r d staff was low while the impact of innovation on firms performance was expressed in increase in profit process improvement and new product development in conclusion our study found out that the overall innovation capability of the firms was expressed in organizational innovations

dealing with uncertainties when governing csr policies as corporate social responsibility involves a voluntary business endeavour to address social and environmental issues beyond legal compliance governments cannot fall back on hierarchical command and control policies to support it as such it is complementary with the increasing popularity of public policies known as new governance policies where the government is engaged in a horizontal inter organizational network of societal actors and where public policy is both formed and executed by the interacting and voluntary efforts from a multitude of stakeholders however such policies are known to generate substantive uncertainty about the content of csr and its related issues strategic uncertainty regarding the behavior of the actors involved and institutional uncertainty related to the interaction process involved in the institutional change we explore new governance policy instruments to address these uncertainties in the context csr and discuss the experiences with these methods in the european union

a review of literature and hypotheses on new technology based firms abstract this paper examines the existing literature on new technology based firms in an attempt to understand how such companies contribute to the vitality of an economy and to see which variables are critical in enabling them to do so from recent research efforts we have drawn together a set of hypotheses and organized them around four central questions 1 what do new firms contribute to the economy 2 what factors contribute to the success of such enterprises 3 in what cultural contexts do new businesses succeed and 4 which government policies are effective in stimulating and supporting new companies we found that existing studies suggest 1 that new technology based firms contribute significantly to an economy in terms of exports employment taxes paid research and development and innovations 2 that the founders of these new businesses tend to have a strong entrepreneurial heritage a development rather research oriented background and a high need to achieve and are young and highly educated 3 that sector differences may be a more important influence on company location than are regional policies and 4 that no one government program has proven itself to be more than marginally successful in stimulating industrial innovation

the speed of gasoline price response in markets with and without edgeworth cycles retail gasoline prices are known to respond fairly slowly to wholesale price changes this does not appear to be true for markets with edgeworth price cycles recently many retail gasoline markets in the midwestern u s and in other countries have been shown to exhibit price cycles in which competition generates rapid cyclical retail price movements we show that cost changes in cycling markets are passed on 2 to 3 times faster than in markets without cycles we argue that the constant price movement inherent within the edgeworth cycle eliminates price frictions and allows firms to pass on cost fluctuations more easily

creative adaptation the role of new technology based firms in portugal this paper reviews two recent research studies on portuguese new technology based firms ntbfs attention is given to the role and contribution of ntbfs to innovation the main argument is that by and large ntbfs are less concerned with the introduction of major innovations and more with creative adaptive improvements to products and services based upon new technologies first introduced elsewhere the empirical research found that portuguese ntbfs are a recent phenomenon associated with diffusion of electronics and information technologies eit during the late 1980s they perform a wide variety of knowledge intensive activities which enhance local users adoption processes and they are associated with different forms of technology transfer through external linkages overall ntbfs undertake a frequently unobserved role as technology searchers and acquirers that pushed by idiosyncratic local niche market opportunities selectively choose among and enhance technologies developed elsewhere introducing them into the local market

a technology gap approach to why growth rates differ abstract this paper contains a discussion and test of the technology gap approach to development and growth the basic hypotheses of the theory are tested on pooled cross sectional and time series data for 25 industrial countries for the period 1960 1983 the sample includes in addition to 19 oecd countries 6 of the most important industrial economies from the non oecd area the findings of the paper confirm that there exists a close correlation between the level of economic development measured as gdp per capita and the level of technological development measured through r d or patent statistics furthermore for the group of 25 countries as a whole technology gap models of economic growth are found to explain a large part of the actual differences in growth rates both between countries and periods as expected both the scope for imitation growth in innovative activity and efforts to narrow the gap investment appear as powerful explanatory factors of economic growth however when the non oecd countries and later usa and japan are removed from the sample the explanatory power of the technology variables especially growth in innovative activity diminishes

to protect or not to protect modes of appropriability in the small enterprise sector abstract what appropriation strategies are chosen by innovative small firms a cluster analysis of data from the german cis was carried out to indentify four distinct modes of appropriability in the small enterprise sector the results show that for many innovative small firms the key question is not whether to use intellectual property rights iprs or not but whether to protect their innovations from imitation at all furthermore formal and informal innovation protection mechanisms should not be seen as mutually exclusive since several are employed jointly secrecy and lead time advantages over competitors are often combined with iprs yet a number of small firms use complexity of design as a substitute to patent protection the relevance of each appropriation mode depends on such factors as the degree of innovativeness the type of innovator and the general market environment which implies that the importance of iprs is limited to specific business contexts furthermore regarding firm performance as measured by innovation effects some evidence is found that choosing both ipr and non ipr oriented appropriation strategies can prove to be effective in achieving company goals taken all together the study implies that the use of iprs by innovative small firms is highly selective the paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for policy and research

interactive innovation in financial and business services the vanguard of the service revolution abstract the concept of the reverse product cycle as a theoretical model of innovation in services is developed further in this paper using the vanguard sector of financial and business services as a case study example of how innovation operates as an interactive process the parallels between the emerging service revolution and the nineteenth century industrial revolution are explored in order to identify the key characteristics of the vanguard sectors in each technological revolution the particular nature of the new techno economic paradigm based on information technology is then identified leading to a discussion of the unique conjunction of factors favouring financial and business services as the vanguard sector of the service revolution the central part of the paper then offers an elaboration of the reverse product cycle model stressing the interactive nature of the innovation process as it reflects the prevailing technological opportunities market conditions and industry structures within the adopting sector the example of retail banking is used to illustrate how the innovation cycle proceeds from increases in efficiency through improvements in service quality to the generation of new network service products there is then a discussion of the question of the optimal industry structure for innovation suggestion that in the reverse product cycle large corporations are likely to dominate the early stage of incremental process innovations whereas later in the cycle there is an important role for small entrepreneurial firms to advance more radical process and product innovations the concluding section summarises six major characteristics of the service revolution and suggests how it may proceed from its first to its second phase as the focus of innovation shifts from the vanguard sector of financial and business services to a much broader range of higher level knowledge based services many of which are currently delivered by the public sector

substitution between biofuels and fossil fuels is there a green paradox we show that i subsidies for renewable energy policies with the intention of encouraging substitution away from fossil fuels may accentuate climate change damages by hastening fossil fuel extraction and that ii the opposite result holds under some specified conditions we focus on the case of subsidies for renewable resources produced under increasing marginal costs and assume that both the renewable resources and the fossil fuels are currently in use such subsidies have a direct effect and an indirect effect working in opposite directions the direct effect is the reduction in demand for fossil fuels at any given price the indirect effect is the reduction in the current equilibrium price for fossil fuels which tends to increase the amount of fossil fuels demanded whether the sum of the two effects will actually result in an earlier or later date of exhaustion of the stock of fossil fuels depends on the curvature of the demand curve for energy and of the supply curve for the renewable substitute

a meta analysis of the price elasticity of gasoline demand a sur approach abstract automobile gasoline demand can be expressed as a multiplicative function of fuel efficiency mileage per car and car ownership this implies a linear relationship between the price elasticity of total fuel demand and the price elasticities of fuel efficiency mileage per car and car ownership in this meta analytical study we aim to investigate and explain the variation in empirical estimates of the price elasticity of gasoline demand a methodological novelty is that we use the linear relationship between the elasticities to develop a meta analytical estimation approach based on a seemingly unrelated regression sur model with cross equation restrictions this approach enables us to combine observations of different elasticities and thus increase our sample size furthermore it allows for a more detailed interpretation of our meta regression results the empirical results of the study demonstrate that the sur approach leads to more precise results i e lower standard errors than a standard meta analytical approach we find that with mean short run and long run price elasticities of 0 34 and 0 84 respectively the demand for gasoline is not very price sensitive both in the short and the long run the impact of a change in the gasoline price on demand is mainly driven by responses in fuel efficiency and mileage per car and to a slightly lesser degree by changes in car ownership furthermore we find that study characteristics relating to the geographic area studied the year of the study the type of data used the time horizon and the functional specification of the demand equation have a significant impact on the estimated value of the price elasticity of gasoline demand

regulated and unregulated substitutes aversion effects of an ethanol mandate i introduction regulation is a tool policymakers can use to steer markets away from private outcomes deemed to be socially suboptimal or inefficient regulations work either by altering market incentives or changing consumers choice sets as they attempt to reshape or restrict private market equilibria they can sometimes lead to unexpected consumer reactions and unanticipated consequences such as higher consumer costs or reduced effectiveness in meeting goals the extent to which a regulation can have adverse and unanticipated consequences depends on the nature and design of the regulation in this article we highlight a case where the design of an unpopular and hurried regulation led to especially adverse consequences the case is that of the recent ethanol mandate in the state of new south wales nsw australia ethanol mandates have become popular with legislators over the past decade and currently 62 countries have some form of one grfa 2014 a typical mandate requires producers to blend a certain percentage or certain volume of ethanol into the overall supply of gasoline the u s mandate for example requires 18 2 billion gallons of renewable fuels primarily ethanol be blended into the gasoline supply in 2014 up from 16 6 billion in 2013 epa 2013 the european union mandate requires 5 75 renewable fuels in gasoline by 2010 and 10 by 2020 eu 2003 2009 ethanol mandates have been controversial however griffin 2013 grafton kompas and van long 2012 rodriguez et al 2009 serra and zilberman 2013 westbrook et al 2014 and others proponents argue they help slow greenhouse gas accumulation promote renewable energy and reduce dependence on foreign oil they also point out benefits to the domestic farming and ethanol production industries which is sometimes a goal in itself critics on the other hand question their environmental value the need for fossil fuel replacement the lower energy yield and potential for food price inflation when crops grown for food are converted to ethanol use carter rausser and smith 2013 1 they also point out that ethanol blends tend to be more expensive for consumers on an energy adjusted basis than unblended gasoline mandates tend to be on net unpopular with consumers 2 an important consideration when transitioning to a new ethanol mandate or a higher ethanol blend under an existing mandate is ensuring compatibility with the vehicle fleet ethanol is an alcohol and in higher concentrations can be corrosive to engine valves seals and gaskets in older vehicles not designed with ethanol s properties in mind an option many jurisdictions have used in implementing ethanol mandates is to limit the ethanol blend to a level tested and widely believed to be compatible with the vast majority of vehicles on the road in the united states and canada for example a 10 blend has been implemented almost universally while a 5 blend has been used universally in many european countries if regulators instead deem that higher blends are desirable another option is to mandate that newly built vehicles be compatible with the new higher blend and then implement the fuel mandate once the vehicle fleet has largely turned over however vehicle turnover can take decades and this approach has not been as popular with regulators a third option that has found some favor is to introduce a higher ethanol blend that a majority of vehicles can use while still making the previous possibly ethanol free blend available as long as there are those who still need it in principle this dual blend approach promises to accommodate more aggressive ethanol mandates and lead to more ethanol in the fuel supply more quickly however we show that this kind of dual blend or selective mandate in its efforts to hurry ethanol blending beyond the capabilities of the vehicle fleet as a whole or beyond the confidence of consumers in its safety can have severe negative consequences

demand competition and policy compromise in legislative bargaining i propose a new majoritarian bargaining model in which more than one implicit proposal can be on the table at the same time institutional differences from system to system affect the order of play the equilibrium majorities and the policy outcome the ex post distribution of payoffs within a winning coalition is however invariant to fundamental institutional differences and it is always proportional to the distribution of relative ex ante bargaining power the bargaining process is modeled as a sequential demand game in which players are called to propose a policy and to specify their desired share of the private benefits related to being in office the order of play is endogenous and the distribution of payoffs within an equilibrium majority usually does not depend on who is the proposal maker the role of the head of state and the advantages to center parties are also studied

do retail gasoline prices respond asymmetrically to cost shocks the influence of edgeworth cycles asymmetric price cycles similar to edgeworth cycles are appearing in increasingly many retail gasoline markets in the united states and worldwide the asymmetry in the cycles can give rise to a finding of asymmetric price responses to cost shocks asymmetric passthrough this article estimates asymmetric passthrough for the market of toronto which exhibits cycles and decomposes it into two components that part explainable by the cycles and that part driven by other unknown sources significant asymmetric passthrough is found with increases passed through more quickly than decreases a significant cause of the finding is the presence of the cycles themselves

biofuel economics in a setting of multiple objectives unintended consequences this paper examines biofuels from an economic perspective and evaluates the merits of promoting biofuel production in the context of the policies multiple objectives life cycle implications pecuniary externalities and other unintended consequences the policy goals most often cited are to reduce fossil fuel use and to lower greenhouse gas emissions but the presence of multiple objectives and various indirect effects complicates normative evaluation to address some of these complicating factors we look at a several combinations of policy alternatives that achieve the same set of incremental gains along the two primary targeted policy dimensions making it possible to compare the costs and cost effectiveness of each combination of policies for example when this approach is applied to u s produced biofuels they are found to be 14 31 times as costly as alternatives like raising the gas tax or promoting energy efficiency improvements the analysis also finds the scale of the potential contributions of biofuels to be extremely small in both the u s and eu mandated u s corn ethanol production for 2025 reduces u s petroleum input use by 1 75 and would have negligible net effects on co2 emissions and although eu imports of brazilian ethanol may look better given the high costs of other alternatives this option is equivalent at most to a 1 20 reduction in eu gasoline consumption

innovation performance and embeddedness in networks evidence from the ethiopian footwear cluster this study focuses on innovation in a cluster of informal shoemaking firms in ethiopia namely the mercato footwear cluster it examines how differently those firms are embedded in networks and how heterogeneous they are in absorptive capacity and how this heterogeneity affects their innovation performance business interactions with buyers suppliers and other producers are the major channels through which knowledge flows into the cluster these business networks are mainly built on trust and long term relationships and tend to be selective the study reveals that despite homogeneity in social background the firms in the cluster behave and perform differently based on econometric analysis we document a positive and strong effect of local network position and absorptive capacity on innovation performance

offshoring of r d looking abroad to improve innovation performance the offshoring of knowledge services has become a phenomenon of increasing importance for firms but many of its implications are yet to be discussed thoroughly this paper analyzes whether r d offshoring contributes to enhancing firms innovation capabilities specifically the study distinguishes between two governance models of offshoring captive offshoring and offshore outsourcing and two types of innovation outcomes product and process innovations we suggest that r d offshoring has different impacts depending on the innovation results and governance models considered the study empirically tests these relationships using the spanish technological innovation panel this survey contains information on a large sample of firms from diverse sectors for the period 2004 2007 the empirical findings allow us confirm our hypotheses and highlight the strategic importance of r d offshoring the empirical evidence reveals a positive relation between offshoring and innovation performance with a greater effect on product than on process innovations the results for different governance models show that captive offshoring has a greater effect on innovation outcomes than offshore outsourcing these findings lead us to conclude that firms that look overseas can benefit from location specific and specialization advantages to improve innovation performance

entry spending and firm size in a stochastic r d race a model is developed to explain participation and spending on rd a flow cost of expenditure for the duration of the race which affects both the profitability of winning and the speed of development the poisson parameter both with diminishing returns allowance for an effect of firm size on the effectiveness profit cost of development the operational decision concerning the level and intensity of commitment in case of participation is modelled in a traditional fashion as the maximization of expected returns the strategic decision whether or not to participate at an optimal level and intensity is modelled as a stochastic process of deliberation between different makers and influencers of decisions in the firm the latter is to be seen as an introduction of the political and resource dependence views of organisations the resulting model of r d participation as a function of firm size is tested empirically on data from an r d survey in the netherlands

starting up in a turbulent environment a process model of failure among firms with high customer dependence abstract this paper proposes a process model on how new and small organizations may fail based on prior research the paper builds a foundation for a process model and then elaborates it inductively by explaining how and why significant reversals and shifts occurred between 1983 and 1985 in the entrepreneurial organizational and ecological conditions of ten new educational software companies the process model states that all organizations engage in transactions with others in the normal conduct of business and it is inevitable that a certain proportion of these transactions fail the probability of transaction failures is a product of the failure rate at the level of the organizational population as well as the kinds of transactions in which individual firms engage new and small firms in a turbulent environment represent a subset of the organizational population particularly vulnerable to the chance occurrence of a failed transaction because of liabilities of newness and small size these firms lack legitimacy furthermore in many industries there is an absence of tangible physical assets that entrepreneurs can use as collateral to attract valuable resources and customers in such situations entrepreneurs often use transactions with key external constituencies as a surrogate to attract other resource constituents thus giving rise to a leveraged set of transactions this leveraging strategy however makes the set of transactions of the firm tightly coupled and when any one transaction in a tightly coupled set fails the set often collapses hence a small business firm in this situation fails when a transaction in which it is highly dependent or leveraged happens to fail the very strategies that contributed to overcoming the problems of liabilities of newness and small size turn out to be the root causes of failure the experiences of the courseware companies are generalized to a process model of failure of new small businesses in turbulent environments

optimal cognitive distance and absorptive capacity in this paper we test the relation between cognitive distance and innovation performance of firms engaged in technology based alliances the key finding is that the hypothesis of an inverted u shaped effect of cognitive distance on innovation performance of firms is confirmed moreover as expected we found that the positive effect for firms is much higher when engaging in more radical exploratory alliances than in more exploitative alliances the effect of cumulative r d turns out to be mixed it appears to increase absorptive capacity as expected but there is clear evidence that it also reduces the effect of cognitive distance on novelty value making it increasingly difficult to find additional novelty

behavioral identification in coalitional bargaining an experimental analysis of demand bargaining and alternating offers alternating offer and demand bargaining models of legislative bargaining make very different predictions in terms of both ex ante and ex post distribution of payoffs as well as in the role of the order of play the experiment shows that actual bargaining behavior is not as sensitive to the different bargaining rules as the theoretical point predictions whereas the comparative statics are in line with both models we compare our results to studies that attempt to distinguish between these two approaches using field data finding strong similarities between the laboratory and field data regardless of the underlying bargaining process

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

the roles of science in technological innovation abstract one of the central issues in science policy during the past decade has been the extent to which the national levels of expenditure on scientific education and research influence the standard of living this paper provides empirical evidence to show that the pay off from this investment in science is more complex and indirect than previously supposed

networks and innovation in a modular system lessons from the microcomputer and stereo component industries in this paper we examine theoretically and through case studies the phenomenon of the modular system which we distinguish from a product conceived of as a prepackaged entity or appliance we argue that such systems offer benefits on both the demand side and the supply side supply side benefits include the potential for autonomous innovation which is driven by the division of labor and provides the opportunity for rapid trial and error learning demand side benefits include the ability to fine tune the product to consumer needs and therefore blanket the product space more completely both of our case studies suggest that innovation in a modular system can lead to vertical and horizontal disintegration as firms can often best appropriate the rents of innovation by opening their technology to an outside network of competing and cooperating firms we conclude by speculating on the increased importance of modular systems in the future since flexible manufacturing and rising incomes are likely to increase the driving requisites of modular systems low economies of scale in assembly and sophisticated consumer tastes

growth and inventiveness in technology based spin off firms abstract this study focuses on technology based spin off firms that have had their initial product idea originated in the previous employment of the founder such entrepreneurial spin offs esos arise when an entrepreneur leaves an organisation to start a firm of his own using the data from 60 small swedish technology based firms 30 such entrepreneurial spin offs are identified it was found that as many as two thirds of the spin offs had originated in private firms and only one sixth from universities in this paper the background and the performance in terms of growth and inventiveness are compared for the spin off and the non spin off firms it was found that after an initial ten year period the spin offs were growing significantly faster than the non spin offs however no significant difference in the inventiveness was found between the two groups neither the growth nor the inventiveness could be explained by pre spin off variables but it is speculated that the earlier employment within the spin off parent has indirectly influenced the performance of the spin off firms

locational and organizational determinants of r d employment in high technology firms felsenstein d and shachar a 1988 locational and organizational determinants of r d employment in high technology firms reg studies 22 477 486 a causal model is presented that predicts the relationship between the organizational structure and location of the high technology firm on the one hand and its r d employment intensity on the other the organizational structure of the firm is treated in two ways the intra organizational internal structure of the firm is analysed and found to be significantly and negatively related to the level of r d employment in the firm this is contrary to the hypothesisied direction of relationship variables representing the inter organizational environment of the firm however are found to be associated with r d employment intensity in the manner expected the results further show that r d employment intensity is positively associated with metropolitan location unmediated by the effects of firm size this suggests that small high technology firms due to their liab

technology and industrial innovation in sweden a study of technology based firms formed between 1965 and 1980 abstract interest in the economic and technological contributions of new enterprises has grown steadily and has captured an international audience the formation of new companies especially those competing in technology based fields may even be generally viewed as a potential indicator of a country s economic competitiveness and its capacity for industrial innovation this paper reports a study of swedish technology based enterprises examining the contributions of such firms to the overall economy and their essential characteristics in the areas of product innovation organization growth and finance

factors governing the development of high tech industry agglomerations a tale of three cities glasmeier a 1988 factors governing the development of high tech industry agglomerations a tale of three cities reg studies 22 287 301 high tech industries are thought to precipitate structural change in local economies through the creation of backward and forward linkages and new firm spinoffs case studies of high tech firms and products indicate interindustry linkage development is closely associated with product type and organizational structure of firms three product configurations one of a kind customized and standardized generate differing levels of linkage and spinoff potential firms producing customized products with highly variable input structures and established subcontracting relationships are more amenable to linkage and spinoff creation than firms producing one of a kind or standardized products the potential for linked industry development is further diluted because the spatial expansion path of high tech firms has been through the creation of technical branch plants which a

do gasoline prices respond asymmetrically to crude oil price changes the authors test and confirm that retail gasoline prices respond more quickly to increases than to decreases in crude oil prices among the possible sources of this asymmetry are production inventory adjustment lags and market power of some sellers by analyzing price transmission at different points in the distribution chain the authors attempt to shed light on these theories spot prices for generic gasoline show asymmetry in responding to crude oil price changes which may reflect inventory adjustment effects asymmetry also appears in the response of retail prices to wholesale price changes possibly indicating short run market power among retailers