learning and wage dynamics we develop a dynamic model of learning about worker ability in a competitive labor market the model produces three testable implications regarding wage dynamics 1 although the role of schooling in the labor market s inference process declines as performance observations accumulate the estimated effect of schooling on the level of wages is independent of labor market experience 2 timeinvariant variables correlated with ability but unobserved by employers such as certain test scores are increasingly correlated with wages as experience increases and 3 wage residuals are a martingale we present evidence from the nlsy that is broadly consistent with the model s predictions

antecedents and outcomes of modular production in the brazilian automobile industry a grounded theory approach our paper focuses on how foreign automobile manufacturers in brazil have implemented and benefited from strategic modularization based on our case studies and in depth interviews we developed a theoretical framework to examine the antecedents and outcomes of strategic modularization our theoretical framework suggests that strategic modularization may help improve a firm s positional advantage by reducing the cost of managing tacit knowledge in addition the adoption of strategic modularization influences the nature of relationships with major suppliers further blurring the boundaries of the firm

the great reversal in the demand for skill and cognitive tasks this paper argues that several of the poor labor market outcomes observed in the great recession can be traced back to a change in the demand pattern for skilled workers that started with the tech bust of 2000 in particular we show that around the year 2000 the demand for cognitive tasks underwent a reversal in response high skilled workers moved down the occupational ladder and increasingly displaced lower educated workers in less skill intensive jobs while these effects were present before the financial crisis of 2008 they became more obvious after jobs associated with the housing bubble disappeared

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

targeting assistance to the poor efficient allocation of transfers when household income is not observed abstract this paper examines the problem of how to transfer money or other forms of assistance to poor households when one observes some characteristics of households but not their incomes this and related issues are often referred to as the targeting problem the paper first sets out the problem formally as one of minimizing a poverty index given a fixed amount of money available for transfers assuming that household survey data are available which include accurate income and or expenditure information the solution for the problem is formulated as a non linear mathematical programming exercise using household survey data from cote d ivoire the technique is applied to both urban and rural areas separately the paper concludes with a general discussion and suggestions for future research

co2 emissions from china s power sector at the provincial level consumption versus production perspectives abstract the chinese electricity sector plays an important role in domestic co2 mitigation efforts due to its large contribution to overall emissions however primary energy resources used for electricity generation are not evenly distributed across the country such a supply and demand mismatch in reality results in large parts of electricity to be transferred from economically less developed provinces in the west to economic growth centres in the east a literature review shows that the emissions embodied in electricity transfer within china have not been explicitly studied although in fact they cause a shift of environmental pollution away from economically well off provinces to resource rich and less developed provinces therefore it is critical for policy makers to address this issue under such a circumstance a bottom up model is developed to calculate direct co2 emissions embodied in electricity export and import between chinese provinces it helps quantifying emissions from the power sector associated with both production and consumption perspectives and sheds lights on the environmental impact of regional supply and demand mismatch in china results show that the difference between consumption and production based co2 emissions from electricity sector in some provinces were higher than the total co2 emissions from electricity sector in netherlands in the case of beijing or as high as the total co2 emission from france s electricity sector in the case of guangdong based upon chinese realities policy implications and suggestions are made such as how to set up appropriate emission reduction targets for electricity sector at provincial level and the inclusion of consumption emissions in designing china s cap and trade mechanism the methodology and findings may be useful for investigation of embodied emissions throughout various regions of the world

contracts as a barrier to entry it is shown that an incumbent seller who faces a threat of entry into his or her market will sign long term contracts that prevent the entry of some lower cost producers even though they do not preclude entry completely moreover when a seller possesses superior information about the likelihood of entry it is shown that the length of the contract may act as a signal of the true probability of entry

a feasible reform for the electricity supply industry in hong kong with the current scheme of control regulation for the hong kong electricity supply industry expiring in 2008 the government has sent out a consultation paper seeking views from the general public on its reform and possible future development this paper investigates the characteristics of the current agreement and the rationale for feasible reform of the hong kong esi it leads to a discussion on a proposed feasible reform using performance based regulation approach modeling and the associated implementation issues related to price capping risk analysis performance indices quality monitoring and governance

the reform of the natural gas industry in the pr of china abstract in light of china s energy revolution reform of the natural gas industry and the acceleration of the natural gas sector development are of strategic significance to ensure china s energy security to optimise the energy consumption structure and to address environmental pollution in recent years the chinese government has introduced numerous policies and developmental plans to speed up natural gas sector reform which have led to considerable progress however china s natural gas industry and reform still encounter many problems and challenges the purpose of this study is to investigate the reform of the natural gas industry in china first the current situation of china s natural gas industry is outlined next four aspects of natural gas industry reform are systematically reviewed natural gas administrative system reform industry structure reform pricing mechanism reform and tax and fee system reform third the major problems and challenges facing further reform of the natural gas industry are analysed in depth finally this study proposes policies and suggestions for china s natural gas sector in the coming future

strategic group formation and performance the case of the u s pharmaceutical industry 1963 1982 the focus of this paper is on three major questions 1 what is the theoretical rationale for the strategic group concept 2 does strategic group membership have performance implications and 3 are strategic groups and membership in strategic groups stable characteristics of industries a statistical procedure is proposed to longitudinally identify strategic groups the empirical setting is the u s pharmaceutical industry over the period 1963 82 while performance differences are found in terms of market share profitability differences between groups are not observed neither are differences found in terms of risk and risk adjusted performance these results are attributed to the existence of performance variation within each strategic group a dynamic model of competitive repositioning is proposed which helps integrate the findings from the study

the national and international impacts of coal to gas switching in the chinese power sector abstract we evaluate the national and international impacts on energy consumption and production trade and economic activity of chinese coal to gas switching in the electric power sector we find that assumptions about growth rates in electricity generation from renewables are the key determinant in evaluating the economic consequences for coal to gas switching in china the ability to supplement natural gas generation with renewables leads to smaller reductions in chinese and global economic activity than the alternatives

assets and actions firm specific factors in the internationalization of u s internet firms by providing a nearly instant connection among parties at opposite corners of the world and enabling a variety of commercial exchanges the internet emerged as the technology expected to create a truly global market space internet firms faced the challenge of capitalizing on this development in this paper we examine what firm specific factors are associated with the propensity of pure u s based internet firms to enhance their international presence on the internet by developing country specific websites despite the assertion that all internet firms are born global our findings show that the pursuit of internationalization by internet firms is related to the levels of their intangible assets and strategic activity two types of intangible assets reputation and website traffic are positively related to the degree of internationalization so are the levels of competitive and cooperative activity and the interaction effects between reputation and competitive and cooperative activity these findings suggest that ideas from both resource based theory and research on competitive dynamics can contribute to understanding the internationalization of internet firms

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

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

the reform of electricity power sector in the pr of china deregulation was launched as a concept in the united states more than a decade ago the european union commission has also formally announced that electric deregulation must be completed by the end of 2005 deregulation or reform has already been a popular topic on the electricity power sector this paper will discuss the restructuring and regulatory reforms in the pr china s power sector it begins with a discussion of the characteristics of electricity reform or deregulation in other countries including the us the united kingdom and so on it will be followed by the industry structure and regulatory framework that characterized china s power industry during the latter part of the 20th century and the history of china s reform to restructure the power industry to competitive suppliers of generating services in recent years it discusses the role of the state power corporation in the reform and gives a detailed description of the latest electricity reform in the year 2002 the paper concludes with some thoughts regarding future challenges and trends on the reform for china s power sector

capital investment as investing in organizational capabilities an empirically grounded process model this article describes a field study in which insights from the resource based view of the firm were combined with models of capital investment decision making to investigate the decision processes

the impact of china s electricity price deregulation on coal and power industries two stage game modeling abstract the regulated price mechanism in china s power industry has attracted much criticism because of its incapability to optimize the allocation of resources to build an open orderly competitive and complete power market system the chinese government launched an unprecedented marketization reform in 2015 to deregulate the electricity price this paper examines the impact of electricity price deregulation at the industry level we first construct two stage dynamic game models to portrait the interaction between the coal and coal fired power industries using the models we compare analytically the equilibriums with and without electricity price regulation concerning electricity price electricity generation coal price and coal production the theoretical analyses find three regulated electricity price intervals that differentiate the reform impacts afterward we collect empirical data to estimate the model parameters the influences on the two industries in terms of market outcome and industrial profitability are simulated our results suggest that the current regulated electricity price falls within the medium interval which means deregulation will result in higher electricity price but lower coal price less coal production and less electricity generation the robustness analyses show that our results hold with respect to the electricity generation efficiency and price sensitivity of electricity demand

an analysis on the short term sectoral competitiveness impact of carbon tax in china abstract market based instruments particularly carbon tax have recently drawn the attention of chinese government by their cost effective contribution to the achievement of china s climate targets most of the recent policy proposals have focused on its long term impact however particularly for policy makers both long term and short term effects of carbon tax would be necessary when determining tax rates we provided a detailed analysis of short term impacts of carbon tax on sectoral competitiveness in this paper we divided china s economy into 36 sectors based on its 2007 input output table in order to examine the ratio of carbon tax added costs to sector gdp we were thus able to determine the impact level of a carbon tax on each sector we then divided the sectoral trade impact into domestic competitiveness with regards to foreign imported products and international competitiveness external to the chinese domestic market we found that a high tax level 100 yuan t co2 may necessitate compensatory measures to certain highly affected industries and that a low tax rate 10 yuan t co2 would generate few competitiveness problems for all industries and may therefore be considered as an appropriate starting point

closing knowledge gaps in foreign markets knowledge and learning are ascribed pivotal roles in firms internationalization processes perceived market uncertainties namely knowledge gaps related to business environments in foreign markets may curb firms inclinations to commit resources to these markets this study explores whether knowledge gaps tend to increase or decrease with time when operating in the foreign market and it discusses which learning components narrow or widen the perceived knowledge gap a theoretical model is developed based on the internationalization process view and the more recent organizational learning perspective including such concepts as overconfidence and absorptive capacity the theoretical model is tested on a set of primary data covering danish and swedish firms and their foreign market operations the results suggest a more subtle relationship between experience and perceived knowledge gaps than the mechanical relationship portrayed by the internationalization process view a relationship in which absorptive capacity and in particular overconfidence play important roles

nonresponse and delayed response to competitive moves the roles of competitor dependence and action irreversibility competitive moves that are unchallenged or to which response is delayed are important weapons in a strategist s arsenal so variables that discourage or delay response are of great interest using

testing an hypothesis about differences in poverty estimated from grouped data abstract this paper develops procedures for testing an hypothesis about differences in poverty estimated from grouped data the methodology developed in the paper is applied to analyze changes in poverty in india between 1983 and 1986 1987

sustaining china s electricity market development abstract china s 12th five year plan addresses new challenges and sets new goals in the country s power sector the structure of power generation development is to be optimised to properly balance coal transportation and power transmission the controversy over the direction of grid transmission and distribution is also to be reconciled the plan puts forward specific requirements for energy conservation developing clean energy optimising the production of coal fired electricity rationalising the allocation of peak power developing distributed energy and constructing a strong smart grid it also strongly advocates renewable and other forms of clean energy resources considering all the above goals and requirements it is necessary for china to adjust its blueprint for electricity market development by fine tuning the original market oriented reform momentum this paper aims to design a policy framework for this and discusses how china should develop policies and strategies to meet these requirements and achieve these goals examples of compatible international experiences illustrate how china can secure a sustainable energy future

patterns of technological competence accumulation a proposition for empirical measurement this article develops a typology that describes and measures different types of technological competence accumulation the notion of accumulation comprises not only the state but also the change in competence and hence it complies with the criticism of the static approaches to competence management the typology of competence accumulation enables a comparison of firm profiles that lead to identification of four groups of firm behavior across the telecommunications industry the relationship between the firm and the industry level is established on the condition that each firm s competence level depends on the firms mutual relationships with other firms in the same industry known as red queen evolution the four groups of firm behaviour are therefore not considered as groups of independent firms that are similar by coincidence but as patterns of behavior within the telecommunications industry which allows for a discussion of more general implications for management of technology copyright 2005 oxford university press

hiring molecules not atoms comobility and wages what role do social connections play in the labor market a vast influential literature has detailed the ways in which ties facilitate the flow of information about job opportunities to workers as well as endorsements or referrals of workers to firms we propose that this role is not constrained to an informational one alone rather relationships between workers can enable a collective job matching process that facilitates the transfer of shared human capital from one organization to another yet comobility has been studied only occasionally and among elite workers in particular industries this study delivers both fieldwork as well as large sample analysis among all nongovernmental workers in denmark finding a 5 5 wage premium for those who move jointly instead of independently both in the full sample as well as when applying strict matching or fixed effects for workers or firms co movers whose skills are related but not identical capture a higher premium and the wage gains associated with comob

an architectural framework for global talent management a unique characteristic of the multinational corporation is that it comprises a geographically dispersed and culturally differentiated workforce that embodies both firm specific and location specific human capital this article takes an architectural approach to describe how different types of human capital develop from the individual level to the unit level and then to the firm level in order to build a talent portfolio for the multinational corporation depending on the company s strategy multidomestic meganational transnational different configurations of the talent portfolio tend to be emphasized and integrated to achieve competitive advantage implications for theory and practice are discussed and a research agenda is introduced

the changing roles of education and ability in wage determination this study examines changes in returns to formal education and cognitive skills over the past 20 years using the 1979 and 1997 waves of the national longitudinal survey of youth we show that cognitive skills had a 30 50 larger effect on wages in the 1980s than in the 2000s returns to education were higher in the 2000s these developments are not explained by changing distributions of workers observable characteristics or by changing labor market structure we show that the decline in returns to ability can be attributed to differences in the growth rate of technology between the 1980s and 2000s

cultural differences mne learning abilities and the effect of experience on subsidiary mortality in a dissimilar culture evidence from korean mnes in a departure from prior studies presuming a beneficial experience effect in foreign direct investment fdi the present paper examines the conditions under which fdi experience may actually harm subsequent subsidiaries we argue that multinational enterprises mnes may draw erroneous inferences and learn incorrectly from their early expansions when new to a dissimilar culture because their learning abilities are eroded by cultural differences we posit that the characteristics of an mne s international expansion including scope pace rhythm and entry mode moderate this negative experience effect by influencing the mne s learning ability in foreign cultures using a data set of fdis by south korean mnes between 1990 and 2006 we find a positive relationship between subsidiary mortality and experience when an mne has a low level of experience in a dissimilar culture this relationship is weaker if the mne s prior fdi has been dispersed across different cultures is stronger if it expanded internationally at a fast pace and becomes negative once the mne has accumulated a high level of experience in the host culture we conclude that when expanding into dissimilar cultures mnes must establish mechanisms to mitigate incorrect learning and reexamine the correctness of inferences drawn from past experience before applying them

reform of china s electric power industry challenges facing the government abstract china s electrical power industry requires substantial reform if the country s economic growth is to be sustained the 1997 electricity law the creation of a state power company and the abolition of the ministry of electric power are important first steps on the path of reform but it seems that a clear plan is lacking objectives of the reform should include increasing the capacity to deliver power constraining the costs of the power industry increasing end user efficiency and minimising environmental damage efforts should be directed at restructuring the industry in such a way that fair competition may be introduced at least in power generation and at establishing a viable regulatory agency both tasks have the potential to be thwarted by a range of vested interests at different levels of government and industry

learning from age difference interorganizational learning and survival in japanese foreign subsidiaries this paper extends research on experiential learning of foreign subsidiaries by exploring the temporal conditions under which a foreign subsidiary can benefit from the experience of its sister subsidiaries building upon organizational evolution and learning literature we propose that differences in entry timing among sister subsidiaries provide structural conditions that bound the opportunities for inter subsidiary learning we argue that different entry cohorts of sister subsidiaries are beneficial to a focal subsidiary as they provide non redundant complementary experience from their different operational stages and ignite the motivation to learn our empirical analysis of japanese foreign subsidiaries provides strong evidence that survival is enhanced by the experience of different entry cohorts of sister subsidiaries but not by that of similar cohorts qualitative evidence also shows that multiple channels of experience exchange across sister subsidiaries lead to actual learning we further show that the survival benefit derived from different cohorts is contingent on the level of environmental change as well as on the level of experience of the focal subsidiary and its parent firm our research highlights the importance of temporal heterogeneity in the internationalization process and offers implications for the temporal strategy of multinational companies

education decisions and labour market outcomes the financial return to a college degree is an increasing concern amid rising tuition costs and stagnant wages using the education longitudinal study of 2002 els 2002 i analyse the effect of po

fdi spillovers over time in an emerging market the roles of entry tenure and barriers to imitation in this study we examine how foreign direct investment fdi spillovers to domestic firms in an emerging market occur over time from the organizational learning perspective we propose that as entry tenure of foreign firms in an industry increases domestic firms can learn from the foreign firms over time and improve their productivity we further build upon the competitor imitation argument to propose that this effect will be stronger when barriers to imitation faced by the domestic firms are lower based upon a comprehensive panel dataset on manufacturing firms in china in 1998 2007 our findings strongly support these arguments we find that entry tenure of foreign firms in an industry has a positive relationship with the productivity of individual domestic firms in the same industry albeit at a diminishing rate we also find that this positive relationship is stronger when the foreign firms have lower export intensity lower intangible asset intensity and have followed a more rhythmic i e less irregular entry pattern situations characterizing lower barriers to imitation

electricity regulation and electricity market reforms in china the electricity industry of china has been in a process of reforms since the 1980s this paper gives a review on the three main stages of reforms in china so as to trace out key features of various reform measures including those for power investment financing the separation between government and power enterprises and the division between power generation firms and power grids the findings suggest that further regulatory change in china s electricity market reform is necessary when integration of the electricity markets and increased competition are paving the way ahead for a market oriented structure prospective electricity regulation in the form of a strong legal system and effective institutions that protect market competition and promote appropriate incentives for efficiency are suggested in the paper

optimal timing of college subsidies enrollment graduation and the skill premium abstract the large increase in the skill premium has led many policy makers to propose increasing college subsidies as a strategy to increase college enrollment and reduce inequality existing analyses typically assume that there is no distinction between enrollment and graduation but in fact more than 50 of college enrollees do not graduate this highlights the need to explicitly model the decision to drop out in assessing the effect of subsidies i build a general equilibrium model of education choice that features an explicit dropout decision calibrate it to match key features of the us economy and use it to evaluate the impact of college subsidies on the supply of college educated labor i show that moving to a system in which subsidies are back loaded i e higher for juniors and seniors than for freshmen and sophomores will increase the supply of college educated labor even holding total subsides constant in fact this effect is larger than what would be accomplished by a uniform 50 increase in subsidies

knowledge transfer capacity and its implications for the theory of the multinational corporation this study updates and extends research on foreign entry modes by examining the impacts of knowledge transfer capacity and knowledge tacitness research on international corporate expansion has long emphasized that deploying intangible knowledge based assets is required for successful international expansion more recently research from a knowledge based perspective has addressed the role of tacitness in constraining a firm s ability to transfer knowledge internationally we combine these perspectives to describe how knowledge tacitness affects the relative suitability of four archetypal entry modes exporting licensing establishing an alliance and wholly owned entry we then examine and develop conceptually a seldom studied firm characteristic knowledge transfer capacity we offer predictions that describe the combined effects of knowledge tacitness and transfer capacity on entry mode choice we distinguish between the transfer capacity of the organization that develops knowledge source transfer capacity and that of the organization that seeks to access that knowledge recipient transfer capacity the discussion addresses how our model generalizes to knowledge seeking strategies and to the study of ongoing multinational networks the study enriches and reconciles multiple theoretical perspectives on entry strategy it brings together the study of knowledge characteristics and firm heterogeneity in the theory of the multinational corporation and in international and strategic management more generally journal of international business studies 2003 34 356 373 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400037

the future of stakeholder management theory a temporal perspective we propose adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory and assess the implications thereof for firm level competitive advantage we argue that a firm s competitive advantage fundamentally depends on its capacity for stakeholder management related transformational adaptation over time our new temporal stakeholder management approach builds upon insights from both the resource based view rbv in strategic management and institutional theory stakeholder agendas and their relative salience to the firm evolve over time a phenomenon well understood in the literature and requiring what we call level 1 adaptation however the dominant direction of stakeholder pressures can also change namely from supporting resource heterogeneity at the firm level to fostering industry homogeneity and vice versa when dominant stakeholder pressures shift from supporting heterogeneity towards stimulating homogeneity in industry the firm must engage in level 2 or transformational adaptation stakeholders typically provide valuable resources to the firm in an early stage without these resources which foster heterogeneity in line with rbv thinking the firm would not exist at a later stage stakeholders also contribute to inter firm homogeneity via isomorphism pressures in line with institutional theory thinking adding a temporal dimension to stakeholder management theory has far reaching implications for this theory s practical relevance to senior level management in business

location specificity and the transferability of downstream assets to foreign subsidiaries we investigate the effect of firm specific advantages being local in scope and the influence of subsequent location specific disadvantages on the choice of foreign entry mode and subsidiary performance to look into this issue we examine japanese fdi data from the wholesale and retail industries two sectors that have productive activity concentrated in downstream processes and location bound resources our theoretical and empirical analyses demonstrate that in situations where required capabilities must be developed through local experience and where location specific resources were subject to market failure acquisition and joint venture strategies were preferred greenfield entries were successful in industries that permitted the offsetting of location specific disadvantages with firm specific advantages from our results we draw implications for the entry mode literature and offer a perspective on the performance of the entry mode choice

interdependency competition and industry dynamics asystematic understanding of industry dynamics is critical to strategy research because individual firm performance dynamics both reflect and affect change at the industry level descriptive research on industry dynamics has identified a dominant pattern where prices fall output rises and the number of firms rises and then falls over time several models have been advanced to explain these patterns with a particular focus on explaining why a shakeout in the number of firms occurs in the most prominent models shakeout is generated by rising realized heterogeneity among firms that either is assumed to be unrecognized but determined ex ante or is generated by stochastic innovation outcomes coupled with convex adjustment costs and scale advantages in innovation and learning in this paper we develop an alternative model where heterogeneity develops among firms over time leading to a shakeout because firms must make choices about highly interdependent productive activities where the ideal combinations cannot be easily deduced or imitated by combining two established models a cournot model of competition with an nk model of interdependency in production activities we are able to advance an alternative explanation for the observed patterns of industry behavior including shakeout we show that variation in the potential for interdependency in activities among industries is able to explain varying levels of shakeout as well as differing patterns of entry and exit among industries notably the model generates several empirical predictions not apparent in past research and several that directly conflict with the results of prominent alternative models of industry dynamics specifically we show that when the potential for interdependency within an industry is low entry slows down and incumbent survival is all but assured whereas in industries where the potential for interdependencies is high shakeouts are severe and the rates of entry and exit remain high over longer time periods with decreasing survival rates for incumbents

foreign aid and poverty in bosnia and herzegovina targeting simulations and policy implications abstract though the current aid program has reached many of the poor it has also excluded a sizable part of the neediest by using simple proxy means tests approach we show that improving targeting accuracy in the aid delivery process can yield improved coverage and reduced leakage and can have a sizable impact in terms of poverty reduction we focus on some variables that are relevant in bosnia and herzegovina the data come from a household survey commissioned by the world bank that covers about 7000 households and is the first of its kind in the country

changes in the characteristics of american youth implications for adult outcomes we examine changes in the characteristics of american youth between the late 1970s and the late 1990s with a focus on characteristics that matter for labor market success the current generation is more skilled than the previous one blacks and hispanics have gained relative to whites and women have gained relative to men however the skill distribution has widened overall shifts in parental education generate many of the observed changes we also provide speculative estimates suggesting that if recent trends in technology and the supply of human capital continue wage inequality will increase substantially by 2025

causes of the difficulties in internationalization we study the causes of the difficulties faced by firms when they internationalize in search of new markets we build on the resource based theory to argue that the difficulties in internationalization can be separated into three main sets based on their relationship to advantage loss of advantage provided by resources transferred abroad creation of a disadvantage by resources transferred abroad and lack of complementary resources required to operate abroad in each set we further distinguish difficulties that are specific to a firm from those that are common to a set of firms we argue that only a few of the resulting types of difficulties of internationalization are exclusive to the cross border expansion and propose solutions that address the root cause of each type

no place like home relocation capabilities and firm survival in the german machine tool industry after world war ii we explore the extent to which organizational capabilities are location specific by studying the location choices and longevity of east german machine tool producers that relocated to west germany after world war ii relocating firms were similar in performance to experienced west german incumbents they outperformed new entrants without prewar industry experience this suggests they were able to build on capabilities acquired before the war even though relocating firms tended lo locate in industry agglomerations and in urbanized regions we find no evidence suggesting that firm performance benefited from agglomeration economies copyright 2011 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

corporate social responsibility product differentiation strategy and export performance this article argues that corporate social responsibility csr may contribute to product differentiation in export markets and thus improve export performance we test this argument by observing a period of decreasing export competitiveness in a leading emerging economy brazil using a large scale survey design with 252 questionnaires completed by medium and large sized brazilian exporters we used structural equations modelling to test our hypotheses the results suggest that csr product differentiation predicts export performance better than product quality differentiation and almost as well as product innovation differentiation multi group analysis further revealed that the positive and significant effect of csr product differentiation on export performance is likely to be contingent on the number and type developing vs developed of countries that are targeted our study contributes to the literature on csr and export performance by developing and empirically validating a model that explains under which conditions csr based product differentiation may lead to improved export performance

reputation and decision making under ambiguity a study of u s venture capital firms investments in the emerging clean energy sector this study examines the role of reputation on decision making under ambiguity drawing on social cognition and behavioral theories we propose that a firm s reputation exerts dual pressures on its decision making under ambiguity on the one hand a firm s reputation increases its aspirations for future performance and promotes its engagement in risky strategies to achieve them on the other hand preserving the already established reputation requires a firm to deliver consistent performance over time which promotes greater use of risk reduction strategies our analyses of the u s venture capital firms investments in the clean energy sector from 1990 to 2008 demonstrate that while reputable firms are more likely to invest in the emerging sector they also employ risk reduction strategies more extensively the sector s legitimation further influences these firms investment decisions both directly and through its interaction with firm reputation

an essay on the origins of entrepreneurial opportunity in this article we apply a process of logical inference to draw conclusions about the origins of entrepreneurial opportunity from existing conversations in the field of strategic management we equate the execution of a competitive strategy as described in the strategic management literature to the exploitation of an entrepreneurial opportunity as described in the entrepreneurship literature given this assumption we survey five extant theories of strategy in an attempt to categorize and describe the circumstances that define how and with what consequence entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation results in future opportunity given this review we characterize the outcomes of strategy execution as a function of the match between strategy and environment in an effort to extend and refine holcombe s holcombe randall 2003 review of austrian economics16 1 25 43 position that entrepreneurial opportunity is born of prior entrepreneurial action let your hook always be cast in the pool where you least expect it there will be a fish ovid a d 17

the labour attributes of demand in the asean economic community this article examines the relative importance of attributes that will directly affect labour markets and employment earnings after thailand participates in the asean economic community agreement in 2016 this research paper considers two types of company 1 companies under asean free movement of labour and 2 companies not under asean free movement of labour in 2016 the conjoint analysis is utilised with an additive model of five variables to generate a parsimonious orthogonal array of 12 profiles the five variables are presented in full profile form withall possible combinations which resulted in 12 rank ordered combinations two hundred and seventeen individual recruiters participated in this study overall this study finds that the most important attributes for employees in both types of company are asean nationality and having a higher degree of education speaking an asean language is found to be crucial for companies under asean free movement of labour while speaking english is revealed to be critical for companies not under asean free movement of labour finally attributes of workplace and identity skill are not significantly important for both types of company

electricity industry restructuring in iran abstract iran as a developing country with a growing population has an increasing energy consumption in particular the electricity consumption with the average annual growth rate of 7 24 has been increasing considerably over the past two decades in step with the changes in the world electricity industry initial steps towards restructuring in iran s electricity industry were taken during the 1990s resulting in the launching of iranian wholesale electricity market in november 2003 achieving long term security of supply clarification of the electricity price and the attraction of the private investments are some of the main goals of the electricity industry restructuring in iran the privatization and breaking of the governmental monopoly was officially started in 2000 with the beginning of the third development plan which led to the 48 05 contribution of the private sector in the annual energy generation in 2015 this paper investigates the process of restructuring in iranian electricity industry comprehensively the current situation and the history of iran s electricity industry as well as the operating principles of iran s electricity market and its prominent characteristics including its regulations entities and administrative process are discussed in this paper moreover some of the results including privatization process and the changes in the electricity price are investigated in this paper

efficiency gains within firms under voluntary environmental initiatives this paper focuses on efficiency gains that voluntary environmental initiatives may achieve within the firm current debate concerning the extent and significance of inefficiencies within firms is critically important to the progress of energy and environmental policies several recent lines of inquiry in microeconomics help explain the persistence of inefficiencies within firms in addition two of the most prominent new approaches in the field of business strategy resource based strategy and the capabilities perspective focus on the heterogeneity among firms and the resulting pockets of inefficiency within firms they suggest at least three generic strategies for voluntary environmental initiatives challenging outdated organizational routines creating opportunities for differentiation or complementing firms resource investment trajectories these generic approaches suggest that there is considerable scope for further experimentation with voluntary environmental initiatives

an empirical test of the resource based theory strategic regulation in the dutch audit industry the resource based view of the firm is a recent strategic management theory that seeks to identify the resources that may provide firms with a sustainable competitive advantage this paper has two purposes first the paper relates strategic management arguments to parallel lines of reasoning in industrial organization theory and argues that strategic regulation is a major source of sustainable competitive advantage the second purpose of the paper is to report the results of an empirical test of the resource based theory on the basis of a longitudinal data set on the postwar history of the dutch audit industry a key determinant of this history proves to be strategic regulation which stimulates demand for audit services and protects rent producing resources

demand side management in china the context of china s power industry reform abstract the reform of china s power industry has lasted for decades while the implementation of demand side management dsm in china is still in its infancy in this paper we present a comprehensive study of the dsm and demand response dr programs in china under the context of china s power industry reform we first present a brief introduction of the background including the socio economic status and geographical location of china the energy policy of china china s power industry the smart grids and microgrid in china and the reform of china s power industry then based on the introduction of dsm and the analysis of dsm practices in some countries we discuss the development status of dsm and the reform of electricity pricing in china finally the main challenges in five aspects for the future development of dsm programs in china are proposed and discussed these challenges include customer understanding and participation advanced metering infrastructure ami and information and communication technology ict pricing mechanisms and optimal scheduling big data analytics based decision support as well as government regulations and market policies

electricity demand and basic needs empirical evidence from china s households an increasing block tariff ibt has been implemented nationwide in the residential sector in china since 2012 however knowledge about ibt design is still limited particularly how to determine the electricity volume for the first block of an ibt scheme assuming the first block should be set based on some measure of electricity poverty we attempt to model household electricity demand such that the range of basic needs can be established we show that in chinese households there exists a threshold for electricity consumption with respect to income which could be considered a measure of electricity poverty and the threshold differs between rural and urban areas for rural urban families electricity consumption at the level of 7th 5th income decile households can be considered the threshold for basic needs or a measure of electricity poverty since household electricity demand in rural urban areas does not respond to income changes until after 7th 5th income decile accordingly the first ibt block for some provinces e g beijing appears to have been set at a level that is too high over time however given continued rapid growth the ibt will begin to better reflect actual basic needs

advertising restrictions and concentration the case of malt beverages the relationship between state imposed advertising restrictions and state level market concentration in the malt beverage industry is examined the authors find that the presence of proscriptions on price advertising significantly increases market concentration at the state level both absolutely and relative to a measure of national concentration the evidence also indicates that banning local nonprice advertising in addition to price advertising yields no marginal significant change in either measure of state level concentration analysis of individual brewers market shares suggests that large national brewers gain at the expense of smaller brewers when price advertising is restricted copyright 1995 by mit press

don t rest on your laurels reputational change and young technology based ventures abstract we combine resource based theory and social cognition theory to investigate the factors both limiting and related to between period reputational change of young firms in a dynamic technology based industry an analysis of computer graphics chipmakers during the period 1992 2003 provides evidence that operational signals are related to reputational change specifically receiving a product award in the current period is associated with positive change and gaps in product announcements are associated with negative change we find little support for our hypothesis that the reputations of older firms are less likely to change

accessing vs sourcing knowledge a comparative study of r d internationalization between emerging and advanced economy firms research and development r d internationalization is on the rise for advanced economy multinationals amnes as well as emerging economy multinationals emnes we study emne r d internationalization by comparing it to that by amnes in the context of an emerging knowledge intensive industry we find that these two are fundamentally different processes while the internationalization of amnes r d activities can largely be explained in terms of the twin strategies of competence exploitation and competence creation emne r d internationalization is rooted in the firms overall catch up strategy to get on par with industry leaders an in depth comparison of knowledge flows reveals that within amnes headquarters often serves the primary source of knowledge for r d subsidiaries in contrast within emnes headquarters accesses knowledge from r d subsidiaries in advanced economies for innovation catch up within this dichotomy the innovative capabilities of emne headquarters develop more slowly and with greater difficulty than those of amne subsidiaries

product complementarities capabilities and governance a dynamic transaction cost perspective the organization and governance of the transactions that comprise a bundling arrangement depend on the distribution of capabilities among firms and the amount of time during which the window of opportunity for earning rents is expected to remain open firms engaged in inter firm collaboration must undertake support transactions related to billing marketing customer support and product repair these support transactions differ from the core transactions that have traditionally been perceived as sufficient to provide a product bundle since support transactions create costs of their own the market may turn out to be an expensive means of governing collaborative arrangements undertaken for bundling purposes the telecommunications service sector provides an illustration copyright 1997 by oxford university press

changing roles of ability and education in u s intergenerational mobility using data on young adults from the 1979 and 1997 national longitudinal survey of youth we investigate the changing roles of ability and education in the transmission of economic status across generations we find that ability plays a substantially diminished role for the most recent cohort whereas education plays a much larger role the first finding results primarily from a smaller effect of children s ability on status the second from an increased correlation between parental status and educational attainment a replication of the analysis by gender reveals that the changes in the role of ability are largely driven by men whereas the changes in education s role are largely driven by women jel j62 i24

performance based regulation of the electricity supply industry in hong kong an empirical efficiency analysis approach this paper presents an empirical efficiency analysis approach to analyze the efficiency and performance of utilities and its effects on prices under the price cap performance based regulation pbr model a data envelopment analysis dea like frontier based method is used to compute the total factor productivity with the malmquist productivity index results of case studies support the use of the approach to account for the relation of the x factor and the pbr model on the two power utilities in hong kong s electricity supply industry

the born global firm an entrepreneurial and capabilities perspective on early and rapid internationalization our 2004 journal of international business studies article innovation organizational capabilities and the born global firm provided a framework for the phenomenon of early and rapid internationalization among young entrepreneurial firms this work can be characterized as an integration of marketing entrepreneurial and capability based thinking around exporting positioned as the born global exporter the article also reported findings from a national study of start up firms that expanded abroad early in their evolution in the present commentary we reflect on the contributions of the 2004 article review the scholarship on the topic over the past decade and offer suggestions for future inquiry while the incidence of early internationalization by firms was a novel concept two decades ago today such firms are found in abundance in many countries yet many unresolved research questions remain including the crucial topic of what happens to born global firms as they grow and mature over time similarly the issue of why some firms internationalize early others late in their evolution and still others choose to remain local is a fundamental question for international business scholarship

an audit of technological innovation capabilities in chinese firms some empirical findings in beijing china abstract recent studies have advocated different technological innovation capabilities tics and discussed their impact on a firm s competitive performance this paper introduces a study framework of innovation audit and examines the relevance of seven tics to building and sustaining the competitiveness of chinese firms empirical data was acquired through a recent study of 213 chinese firms in beijing china regression analysis was employed to examine the correlation between tics and innovation rate sales growth and product competitiveness among these firms the findings verify that r d and resources allocation capabilities are the two most important tics a strong r d capability could safeguard innovation rate and product competitiveness in large and medium sized firms whereas a resources allocation capability would enhance the sales growth in small firms however the impact of learning and organising capabilities on a firm s innovation performance has yet to be investigated the findings of this paper suggest that chinese firms should consider a more balanced focus on their tics harmonising enhancement in order to maintain their sustainable development effectively plan and implement their innovation strategies as well as enhance their whole innovation capability chinese firms should closely relate their tics to the formulation of technology strategy and harmonisation of innovation and r d activities

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

a dynamic game of r and d patent protection and competitive behavior a theory of dynamic optimal resource allocation to r and d in an n firm industry is developed using differential games this technique represents a synthesis of the analytic methods previously applied to the problem static game theory and optimal control the use of particular functional forms allows the computation and detailed discussion of the nash equilibrium in investment rules this paper addresses the problem of resource allocation to research and development among the important issues that a firm engaging in r and d must evaluate are uncertainty regarding the feasibility and profitability of a particular innovation the possibility of a protracted development period the possibility that a rival firm may innovate first capturing either a patent or a significant share of the new market the possibility that a rival firm may imitate the innovation and appropriate some of the profits in the new market in what follows we will develop a theory of optimal resource allocation to research and development which incorporates the aspects of r and d enumerated above we will use a dynamic game theoretic analysis determining the nash equilibrium strategies for n identical firms the availability of perfect patent protection is shown to accelerate development of the innovation and the effect of increasing rivalry is addressed the impact of increasing rivalry on nash equilibrium investment in r and d depends upon the degree of appropriability of rewards if patent protection is perfect then increasing the number of nash rivals results in increased r and d effort however when imitation is rewarded the opposite may be true finally some notions of competitive and perfectly competitive equilibrium are examined in the context of the model developed below

random walks and sustained competitive advantage strategy is concerned with sustained interfirm profitability differences observations of such sustained differences are often attributed to unobserved systematic a priori differences in firm characteristics this paper shows that sustained interfirm profitability differences may be very likely even if there are no a priori differences among firms as a result of the phenomenon of long leads in random walks even a random resource accumulation process is likely to produce persistent resource heterogeneity and sustained interfirm profitability differences a cournot model in which costs follow a random walk shows that such a process could produce evidence of substantial persistence of profitability the results suggest that persistent profitability does not necessarily provide strong evidence for systematic a priori differences among firms nevertheless since the phenomenon of long leads is highly unrepresentative of intuitive notions of random sequences such evidence may still be persuasive