where do markets come from production markets have two sides producers are a fully connected clique transacting with buyers as a separate but aggregated clique each producer is a distinctive firm with a distinctive product each side continually monitors reactions of the other through the medium of a joint social construction the schedule of terms of trade each producer is guided in choice of volume by the tangible outcomes of other producers not by speculation on hypothetical reactions of buyers to its actions each producer acts purely on self interest based on observed actions of all others summarized through a feedback process the summary is the terms of trade schedule which reduces to constant price only in limiting cases the market emerges as a structure of roles with a differentiated niche for each firm explicit formulae both for firms and for market aggregates are obtained by comparative statics methods for one family of assumptions about cost structures and about buyers evaluations of differentiated products not just any set of firms can sustain terms of trade with any set of buyers there prove to be three main kinds of markets and three sorts of market failure within a parameter space that is specified in detail one sort of market paradox has a madison avenue flavor another is more conventional grind and a third crowded is a new form not included in any existing theory of markets current american industrial markets are drawn on for 20 illustrations of which three are presented in some detail inequality in firms market shares measured by gini coefficients is discussed

kinship in the shadow of the corporation the interbuilder network in clyde river shipbuilding 1711 1990 the authors identify a system of intercompetitor affiliation that helped clyde river shipbuilding companies to thrive but was ultimately undermined by the rise of corporate capitalism they find that connections between companies through their leaders family ties or friendships were common and beneficial as every such tie maintained by a company reduced its annual risk of failure by 10 percent this average effect however masks an important contingency the direct benefits of interbuilder ties accrued only to family firms which enjoyed a reduced risk of failure of 34 percent with each tie and not at all to corporations the authors maintain that the shift to the corporate form inhibited the operation of the interbuilder network by reducing the autonomy of leaders to work through personal relations with their competitors the results encourage heightened attention both to the idea that horizontal ties within an industry may be a key determinant of organizational success and to the idea that some m

the price of pollution a dual approach to valuing so2 allowances under the 1990 clean air act amendments a market based scheme to reduce u s sulfur dioxide emissions takes effect in 1995 indications are that participation in the market will be light and allowance prices will be lower than was once expected using an output distance function approach for wisconsin coal burning utility plants we estimate the shadow price of so2abatement which should approximate the allowance price the estimated average shadow price is above the prices at which the few observed allowance trades have occurred wisconsin s stringent state so2legislation may explain a portion of this divergence

competitive tension the awareness motivation capability perspective this paper investigates competitive tension or the strain between a focal firm and a given rival that is likely to result in the firm taking action against the rival drawing on the awareness motivation capability perspective we show how perceived competitive tension as constructed from managers and industry stakeholders competitor assessments is influenced by the independent and interactive effects of three factors relative scale rival s attack volume and rival s capability to contest our results provide a new avenue for studying competitors and the relationship between competitor analysis and interfirm rivalry in science there is a steady state in which opposing forces hold each other in check until the build up of tension turns the static relationship into dynamic interplay the point when the steel cable snaps the steam chamber s pressure valve opens or one psychological force overwhelms the other in business practice a similar phenomenon exists when tension that one opponent imposes on another triggers rivalrous actions competitor analysis is central to strategy and organization research hitt ireland hoskisson 2005 porter 1980 previous research has explored a number of important issues including conjecture variation amit domowitz fershtman 1988 competitor identification porac thomas 1990 and blind spots zajac bazerman 1991 and has made advances in such areas as theoretical integration of competitor analysis and interfirm rivalry chen 1996 fundamental questions such as who a focal firm s competitors are and how much competition the firm faces from each rival have been implicitly or explicitly addressed by a variety

the social structure of a national securities market in this article a national securities market the stock options market is characterized as a social structure represented by the networks of actors who traded options on the floor of a major securities exchange trading among actors exhibited distinct social structural patterns that dramatically affected the direction and magnitude of option price volatility the argument that this market is socially structured is constructed in four parts behavioral assumptions about the nature of economic actors models of micronetworks models of macronetworks and price consequences in the ideal typical model of the market actors are assumed to be hyperrational and never to act opportunistically with these behavioral assumptions the micronetworks of actors should be expansive a condition which would result in undifferentiated and homogeneous macronetworks such macronetworks would tend to reduce the volatility of option prices but in the empirical market studied here actors are subject to bounded rationality a

bank control owner control or organizational dynamics who controls the large modern corporation there has been a long standing debate over who controls the large american corporation the results presented here indicate that existing power relations within the firm the conception of control that dominates the firm s actions and the actions of competitors account for the economic actions undertaken by large firms while the differences in manager or owner or bank control and the presence of bank interlocks do not a sociology of markets is therefore more likely to account for the courses of actions of large firms by considering these relations rather than focusing on the construction of interests by bankers owners or board interlocks

sulfur dioxide control by electric utilities what are the gains from trade title iv of the 1990 clean air act amendments caaa established a market for transferable sulfur dioxide so2 emission allowances among electric utilities this market offers firms facing high marginal abatement costs the opportunity to purchase the right to emit so2 from firms with lower costs and this is expected to yield cost savings compared to a command and control approach to environmental regulation this paper uses econometrically estimated marginal abatement cost functions for power plants affected by title iv of the caaa to evaluate the performance of the so2 allowance market specifically we investigate whether the much heralded fall in the cost of abating so2 compared to original estimates can be attributed to allowance trading we demonstrate that for plants that use low sulfur coal to reduce so2 emissions technical change and the fall in prices of low sulfur coal have lowered marginal abatement cost curves by over 50 percent since 1985 the flexibility to take advantage of these chan

global microstructures the virtual societies of financial markets using participant observation data interviews and trading transcripts drawn from interbank currency trading in global investment banks this article examines regular patterns of integration that characterize the global social system embedded in economic transactions to interpret these patterns which are global in scope but microsocial in character this article uses the term global microstructures features of the interaction order loosely defined have become constitutive of and implanted in processes that have global breadth this study draws on schutz in the development of the concept of temporal coordination as the basis for the level of intersubjectivity discerned in global markets this article contributes to economic sociology through the analysis of cambist i e trading markets which are distinguished from producer markets and by positing a form of market coordination that supplements relational or network forms of coordination

origins and development of the eu ets the successful creation of the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets was not inevitable countries such as canada and japan which might be thought to have a less complex and more cohesive cultural and institutional context failed to do so europe succeeded for a number of reasons with a single market for the economy the logic of a single market for environment is inexorable the european commission which had failed in its earlier efforts to introduce a carbon energy tax made the case for trading with great skill and persistence on the basis of qualified majority voting which meant no country had a veto the uk and denmark initiated their own national schemes and there was a serious risk of balkanising the market with up to 27 different schemes with the losses of scale and scope this would entail meeting the union s kyoto commitments required a substantive pan european response and eu ets was the most credible and effective way of doing so the european parliament and environmental non governmental organisations played a constructive role pushing for more auctioning of allowances and less of them allocated centrally free allocation managed by member states ms was a necessary condition to achieve the support needed so they failed to achieve these objectives in the initial phase but they characterize the commission s proposals post 2012

comparing systems approaches to innovation and technological change for sustainable and competitive economies an explorative study into conceptual commonalities differences and complementarities this paper makes a distinction between three theoretical frameworks that have been highly influential in the discourse on innovation competitiveness and sustainability sectoral systems of innovation ssi technological innovation systems tis and socio technical systems st systems these frameworks share a common systems approach to innovation but are often positioned as different bodies of literature that correspond to different epistemic communities this paper is explorative and conceptual in nature it presents a systematic comparative review of ssi tis and st systems based on the following analytical dimensions 1 system boundaries 2 actors and networks 3 institutions 4 knowledge 5 dynamics and 6 policy approach in the concluding section commonalities and differences of the three approaches are presented and suggestions for complimentarily are made c 2010 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

cap and trade a sufficient or necessary condition for emission reduction influenced by the success of emission trading in the us for sulphur dioxide so 2 some economists have argued for an upstream economy wide cap and trade scheme as the primary tool for achieving the required reduction in greenhouse gas ghg emissions this paper addresses that argument and concludes that cap and trade will need to be accompanied by complementary regulatory measures while it is a necessary component in a climate mitigation programme it is unlikely to be sufficient by itself to accomplish the desired emission reductions the paper reviews the evidence on how so 2 emissions were reduced and the extent to which actual emission trading was responsible for the reduction as opposed to other innovations it also identifies differences between the past regulation of so 2 and other air pollutants and the challenges presented by the regulation of ghg emissions what actually happened in the us with so 2 emission trading deviated in several significant respects from what would be predicted based on the conventional theoretical analysis while there was a dramatic reduction in so 2 emissions it occurred because of several factors some of which are unlikely to apply for ghg emissions and others of which argue for an activist regulatory policy by the government as a complement to the functioning of an emissions market for ghgs copyright 2010 oxford university press

agricultural revolution and elite reproduction in qing china the transition to capitalism debate revisited recent actor centric theory about the historical rise of capitalism emphasizes the role of the autonomous agrarian elite in fostering a sustained agricultural revolution this revolution generated ample agrarian surplus in the form of rural elite s elevated income to fuel a capitalist industrial takeoff in late eighteenth century england the nontransition to capitalism in eighteenth and nineteenth century china despite the vast surplus generated in its advanced agrarian sector shows that high agricultural productivity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a capitalist takeoff by comparing qing china with eighteenth century england where capitalist industrialization erupted spontaneously and nineteenth century japan where capitalist industrialization succeeded under intensive state sponsorship this article argues that a strong urban entrepreneurial elite capable of centralizing the agrarian surplus and investing it in productive industrial innovation were as important as the existence of the surplus itself in fomenting capitalist transition the reproduction of the elite in eighteenth century china was constrained not by the anticommercial oriental despotic state as presumed in earlier literature but by the state s paternalist disposition in managing urban class conflict capitalist industrial development in china was further impeded in the nineteenth century when a nexus of local predatory military elite emerged in response to millenarian uprisings and wasted most of the agrarian surplus in their accumulation of means of violence the negative case of china helps us advance the actor centric model of capitalist transition by bringing urban entrepreneurs and class politics back in

a classical model of the class struggle a game theoretic approach the class struggle is formalized as a differential game in a strictly supply side model an approach that synthesizes the models of lancaster and goodwin four different steady state equilibria are derived each corresponding to different assumptions about the degree to which each class is organized to promote its own interests in particular the goodwin growth cycle is shown to emerge from a world characterized by unorganized capitalists and workers in which individuals ignore the effects of their own actions on economywide variables more relevant for discussion of modern capitalism are the hierarchical equilibria especially the codetermination equilibrium in which the existence of a full employment equilibrium turns out to be problematic finally comparative statics results suggest that the incentives for technological change differ widely among the four regimes

power shifts the dynamics of energy efficiency induced technical change is crucial for tackling the problem of timing in environmental policy however it is by no means obvious that the state has the ability to impose its will concerning technical change on the other relevant actors therefore we conceptualize power in a non linear model with social conflict and induced technical change the model shows how economic growth business cycles and innovation waves interact in the dynamics of energy efficiency we assess three different ways of government control energy taxes energy and labor subsidies and energy caps energy taxes help to select more energy efficient technologies however a successful selection of such technologies presupposes that they are available in the pool of technologies as for energy subsidies their existence helps to explain why in contemporary economies labor productivity grows faster than energy efficiency with an energy cap the social network of the relevant agents may be stabilized via social norms it seems plausible that innovation waves comprise several business cycles and that such a wave is currently in the making proposals to postpone policies for improving energy efficiency increase the risk of energy inefficient lock in effects

tools of the trade the socio technology of arbitrage in a wall street trading room to analyze the organization of trading in the era of quantitative finance we conduct an ethnography of arbitrage the trading strategy that best exemplifies finance in the wake of the quantitative revolution in contrast to value and momentum investing we argue arbitrage involves an art of association the construction of comparability across different assets in place of essential or relational characteristics the peculiar valuation that takes place in arbitrage is based on an operation that makes something the measure of something else associating securities to each other the process of recognizing opportunities and the practices of making novel associations are shaped by the specific socio spatial and socio technical configurations of the trading room calculation is distributed across persons and instruments as the trading room organizes interaction among diverse principles of valuation

economic growth and conflict over the distribution of income abstract a thorough analysis of economic growth inflation and fluctuations resulting from the class struggle is presented the paper begins with the formulation of an extended predator prey model and pays attention to population growth technical progress differential saving consumption out of wealth trade union activity inflation labour hoarding affluence and the inherent contradictions of capitalism the paper proceeds with a neo classical reformulation to allow for smooth substitution possibilities in production and for time taken to recruit and fire labour an alternative extension of the model based on maximising the reduction in unit costs subject to kaldor s technical progress function is also provided

capital formation in japan introduction this chapter analyses the relationship between the input of capital and economic growth in japan during the past century the assigned task of exploring the role of investment in japan necessarily imposes a certain sectoral as well as temporal emphasis only relatively little attention will have to be devoted to agriculture since this sector never became an important recipient of either public or private capital in japan at least an understanding of the advances created by a rising level of investment deals largely with the growth of modern nonagricultural industry this also means that unlike taira and yamamura we must concentrate especially on the history of the twentieth century when factories machines and new social overhead implements reached sizeable dimensions for the first time of course no attempt will be made to slight the crucial transitional years of the meiji era or even the preceding years of tokugawa rule but one should always keep at the forefront the sharp distinction between the hesitant beginnings of economic modernization in the late nineteenth century and its full flowering during the past sixty odd years one further limiting item should be mentioned at the outset we are concerned with the input of capital i e with the investment rather than the saving side of the equation how the necessary funds were raised by individuals banks the state or foreigners will be treated only as a side issue but to a considerable extent this matter has been studied by other authors

environmental policy government and the market environmental policy is made in a context of both market failure and government failure on the one hand leaving environmental protection to the free market relying on notions of corporate social responsibility and altruistic consumer and shareholder preferences will not deliver optimal results on the other hand nationalizing the delivery of environmental protection is likely to fail because nation states rarely have the depth and quality of information required to instruct all the relevant agents to make appropriate decisions thus as for many areas of policy appropriate models of environmental intervention will lie between these two extremes while it is impossible to specify general rules concerning the precise form of intervention in part because the type of intervention depends upon value judgements this paper sets out some of the considerations that are particular to environmental policy and explores several principles for policy design including information coordination and principal agent problems with a particular focus on the international context

getting off to a good start the effects of upper echelon affiliations on underwriter prestige the initial public offering ipo is one of the most critical events in the lifetime of a young firm prior research has shown that firms tend to have successful ipos if they go public with the endorsement of a prestigious lead underwriter this paper examines the antecedents to receiving endorsement by a prestigious underwriter and links this to the experience base of a firm s upper echelon we theorize that the amount and type of upper echelon experience serve as important symbols of a young firm s legitimacy to critical outsiders we introduce a typology of upper echelon experience that distinguishes between upper echelon upstream horizontal and downstream employment based affiliations and suggest that these different types of upper echelon affiliations allay different types of endorser concerns regarding firm legitimacy affecting the endorsement process further we theorize that the relationships between upper echelon experience and investment bank prestige will be moderated by technological uncertainty we test our assertions on a comprehensive sample of public and private biotechnology firms that were founded between 1961 and 1994 and that went public between 1979 and 1996 analyses of the five year career histories of the over 3 200 executives and directors that make up the upper echelons of these firms show that firms with upper echelons with affiliations with prominent downstream organizations i e pharmaceutical and or healthcare companies and with prominent horizontal organizations i e biotechnology companies are more likely to attract the endorsement of a prestigious investment bank we also find that the greater the range of upper echelon affiliations across the categories of upstream horizontal and downstream affiliations the more prestigious the firm s lead underwriter we also find that these latter results are moderated by technological uncertainty the present research has implications for the study of organizational legitimacy interorganizational endorsements and entrepreneurship

the spread of the multidivisional form among large firms 1919 1979 the multidivisional form is the favored form of organization for the large firms that dominate the american economy this study takes up the causes of the dissemination of that form among large firms from 1919 to 1979 five theories are initially proposed as possible explanations for the changes observed and these theories are operationalized and tested the model that seems most consistent with the data emphasizes the ability of key actors to alter structure under three circumstances when the firm has a product related or unrelated strategy which is consistent with chandler s 1962 theorizing when the corporate presidents have a background in sales or finance and when other firms in the industry alter their structures the implications of these results for theories of organizational change are discussed with special reference to the importance of conceiving how actors operate with varying rationalities in this process

addressing climate change with a comprehensive us cap and trade system there is growing impetus for a domestic us climate policy that can provide meaningful reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide co2 and other greenhouse gases i describe and analyse an up stream economy wide co2 cap and trade system which implements a gradual trajectory of emissions reductions with inclusion over time of non co2 greenhouse gases and includes mechanisms to reduce cost uncertainty initially half of the allowances are allocated through auction and half through free distribution with the share being auctioned gradually increasing to 100 per cent over 25 years the system provides for linkage with emission reduction credit projects in other countries harmonization over time with effective cap and trade systems in other countries and regions and appropriate linkage with actions taken in other countries in order to establish a level playing field among domestically produced and imported products

a role based ecology of technological change this article considers what factors determine whether an innovation becomes a foundation for future technological developments rather than a dea end the authors introduce the concept of the technological niche which includes a focal innovation the innovations on which the focal innovations builds the innovations that build upon the focal innovation and the technological ties among the innovations within the niche using patents and patent citations to measure characteristics of innovation niches within the semiconductor industry the authors show that the size of the niche and the status of the actors within the niche have a positive effect on the likelihood that subsequent innovations will build upon the focal innovation competitive intensity within the niche has a negative effect on this likelihood

defense against recession u s business mobilization 1950 19701 the unexpected investment decisions of companies during recessions often frustrate commentators and policy makers who view the economy from the top down companies may act against immediate market signals during recessions because of uncertainties about strategy and the future direction of the economy a mesolevel sociological model of how firms interpret and respond to economic conditions in uncertain times improves understanding of firms variable responses to recessions which cumulatively shape macroeconomic trajectories examining firm level employment during four recessions from 1950 to 1970 the author generates results from dynamic panel models to show that firms set their employment levels against profits and market share and in alignment with peers and political affiliations firms manage uncertainty by imitating peers but also by endeavoring to construct their environment collectively through business associations this article s counterintuitive economic findings and the evidence of social and

the persistence of lenient market categories research across disciplines presumes that market categories will have strong boundaries categories without well defined boundaries typically are not useful and so are expected to fade away we suggest many contexts contain lenient market categories or less constraining market categories that persist and become important we argue that this fact can be explained by looking at market categories from the producer perspective lenient market categories have more flexibility and allow for a wider range of fit as a result we expect to see high rates of entry into lenient categories at the same time lenient market categories have drawbacks they do not clearly convey what an organization does and do not identify specific sets of potential consumers this means organizations are more likely to exit when entry rates are higher than exit rates lenient market categories will endure over time we also predict that organizations exiting lenient categories will enter other lenient categories further fueling the persistence of such categories finally this trend is exaggerated when influential external agents favor leniency we find support for these ideas in a longitudinal analysis of organizational entry into and exit from market categories in the software industry

the efficiency paradox bureaucratic and organizational barriers to profitable energy saving investments abstract the paradox of why profitable energy saving investments are not undertaken continues to provoke debate the underlying phenomenon might be called the efficiency paradox because it represents a case in which business firms which are often presumed or taken axiomatically to be economically efficient make decisions that do not maximize profits new data from one of the us environmental protection agency s voluntary pollution prevention programs enables this paradox to be explored statistically the data show that both the level and variation in returns to lighting upgrade investments cannot be explained by standard economic models substantial gains in energy efficiency can be achieved without sacrificing profitability both economic and organizational factors account for some of the variation in observed returns to these investments but the results suggest a need for improved and more comprehensive theories of the investment behavior of firms and other organizations

the embeddedness of networks institutions structural holes and innovativeness in the fuel cell industry plentiful research suggests that embeddedness in alliance networks influences firms innovativeness this research however has mostly overlooked the fact that interorganizational ties are themselves embedded within larger institutional contexts that can shape the effects of networks on organizational outcomes we address this gap in the literature by arguing that national institutions affect the extent to which specific network positions such as brokerage influence innovation we explore this idea in the context of corporatism which fosters an institutional logic of collaboration that influences the broker s ability to manage its partnerships and recombine the knowledge residing in its network as well as the extent of knowledge flows among network participants we argue that differences in institutional logics lead brokerage positions to exert different effects on firm innovativeness we propose that the firm spanning structural holes obtains the greatest innovation benefits when the firm the broker or its alliance partners are based in highly corporatist countries or under certain combinations of broker and partner corporatism we find support for these ideas through a longitudinal study of cross border fuel cell technology alliance networks involving 109 firms from nine countries between 1981 and 2001

endogenous technical change with externalities in a classical growth model abstract a growth model with three inputs capital labor and land extends foley and michl s d foley t r michl s growth and distribution harvard university press cambridge ma 1999 classical accumulation model by adding a goodwin r goodwin a growth cycle in c h feinstein ed socialism capitalism and economic growth cambridge university press cambridge 1967 labor market and a model of endogenous technical change that can represent either dumenil and levy s metroeconomica 46 1995 213 j econ behav org this issue or kennedy s econ j 74 295 1964 541 models when land is priced there is a stable steady state growth path with desirable allocational properties when land is not priced no steady state exists and the growth path leads to a catastrophe these results hold when the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is less than unity

market networks and corporate behavior data on market relations between a large population of corporations and investment banks are used to study the organization market interforce the pattern of direct market ties between a firm and its banks forms of interfaces range from a long term exclusive tie the relationship interface to many short lived episodic ties the transaction interface with hybrid forms between the two poles contrary to widespread belief the article finds that strong relationships still exist transactions interfaces are rare most firms use hybrid interfaces a firm s interface is conceptualized as the intentional result of its efforts to reduce dependence and exploit power advantages observed interfaces are shown to be related systematically to various power dependence concepts including resource intensity number of transactions and dollar amounts raised criticality the availability of resource alternatives power asymmetry between a firm and its main bank organization size standardization of exchange and

on the social structure of markets economic theorists have seldom discussed the social structures behind markets even though market trading relies heavily on seller buyer roles and personal relations among traders this paper considers the structural basis of markets and proposes a layered approach which accommodates a wide range of competitive and relational trade within a definition of markets that distinguishes them from non market exchange giving due regard to social structures lays bare the institutional character of markets and provides a rationale for case studies of how particular markets function

the stability of american markets much of the evidence of coordination between corporations and their markets comes from cross sectional conducted within portions of the american economy during the past two decades we know especially for manufacturing during the late 1960s that certain structural qualities of markets predict profits and the organization of large firms but this evidence is open to an uncomfortable empirical question to what extent did the social structural qualities determining resource dependence in american markets change during the 1960s and 1970s so as to limit the generalizability of cross sectional evidence the analysis here shows that markets were dramatically stable in he social structure of production relations known to predict the structure of large firms relying principally on department of commerce data the article traces the american economy through the 1960s and 1970s in terms of 77 broadly defined markets describing the stability of market boundaries and patterns of transactions with suppliers and c

the emergence of a market society changing mechanisms of stratification in china this article examines the effect of institutional change the shift from redistribution to markets in altering the mechanisms of stratification new institutionalists maintain that interests are emb

goodwin s mks system a baseline macro model we extend goodwin s distributive cycle by effective demand forces and endogenous process innovations driven by the evolution of the employment rate of workers in the sphere of production and its consequences for the income distribution between capital and labour we show that the extended dynamics can create persistent fluctuations in employment income distribution and productivity growth if their balanced growth path is surrounded by an unstable multiplier accelerator process a basic variant of its well known goodwin formulation our integration of global stability through a marxian reserve army mechanism with locally destabilising keynesian demand and schumpeterian process innovations provides a basic model of what goodwin describes as the mks system approach to the understanding of the evolution of capitalism

pseudo goodwin cycles in a minsky model goodwin cycles result from the dynamic interaction between a profit led demand regime and a reserve army effect in income distribution the paper proposes the concept of a pseudo goodwin cycle we define this as a counter clockwise movement in output and wage share space which is not generated by the usual goodwin mechanism in particular it does not depend on a profit led demand regime to illustrate this a simple minsky type model is extended by a reserve army distribution adjustment in this model the cycle is generated by the interaction of financial fragility and demand the wage share rises at higher levels of output but this generates no feedback so that by design demand does not react to changes in income distribution but the model does exhibit a pseudo goodwin cycle in the output wage share space this holds true even if we introduce a wage led demand regime this demonstrates that the existence of a counter clockwise movement of output and the wage share cannot be regarded as proof of the existence of a goodwin cycle and a profit led demand regime

an asian route to capitalism religious economy and the origins of self transforming growth in japan modern capitalism is a self transforming dynamic that proliferates market niches new products and techniques the industrial revolution could take place only in the context of preexisting agricultural capitalism that in turn required a breakout from the obstacles constituted by agrarian coercive societies organizational conditions necessary for self sustaining capitalist growth included markets not only for commodities but for all factors of production land labor and capital combined under control of entrepreneurs motivated by an economic ethic of future oriented calculation and investment weber was mistaken in holding that the capitalist breakthrough occurred only in christian europe the author proposes a neo weberian model in which the initial breakout from agrarian coercive obstacles took place within the enclave of religious organizations with monasteries acting as the first entrepreneurs the model is illustrated by the case of buddhism in late medieval japan the leading sector of monastic capitalism spread into the surrounding economy through religious movements of mass proselytization which narrowed the gap between clergy and laity confiscation of buddhist property at the transition to the tokugawa period transferred the capitalist dynamic to the secular economy of an agricultural mass market opening the way for a distinctive japanese path through the industrial revolution

when market information constitutes fields sensemaking of markets in the commercial music industry in this paper we outline a key mechanism through which organizational fields are constituted we suggest that in competitive fields the market serves as a magnet around which groups of actors consolidate and that cognition of markets occurs through the creation distribution and interpretation of a web of information about the market to illustrate our theory we present a case study of thebillboard music chart from the commercial music industry to show that changes in either scope methodology or political tone with which market information is presented can provide a major jolt to the participants understanding of their field

market positioning the shifting effects of niche overlap organizational ecology models of market dynamics emphasize the competitioninducing role of inter organizational niche overlap targeting similar market niches increases competitive pressure and thus reduces organizations fitness recent studies however have suggested that moderate niche overlap may positively influence organizational viability by enhancing comparability and promoting legitimacy spillovers data on consumers impressions of dutch music festivals and on the growth and decline of early internet search engines were used to test the proposition that niche overlap may in fact be non monotonically related to organizational fitness since new organizations must first gain recognition by being comparable to others they will benefit more from niche overlap than older incumbents the results confirm that both the appeal that organizations generate as well as their growth rates are non monotonically related to niche overlap and that positive effects of niche overlap decrease with organizational age

the economics of organization the transaction cost approach the transaction cost approach to the study of economic organization regards the transaction as the basic unit of analysis and holds that an understanding of transaction cost economizing is central to the study of organizations applications of this approach require that transactions be dimensionalized and that alternative governance structures be described economizing is accomplished by assigning transactions to governance structures in a discriminating way the approach applies both to the determination of efficient boundaries as between firms and markets and to the organization of internal transactions including the design of employment relations the approach is compared and contrasted with selected parts of the organization theory literature

shrouded attributes consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets bayesian consumers infer that hidden add on prices e g the cost of ink for a printer are likely to be high prices if consumers are bayesian firms will not shroud information in equilibrium however shrouding may occur in an economy with some myopic or unaware consumers such shrouding creates an inefficiency which firms may have an incentive to eliminate by educating their competitors customers however if add ons have close substitutes a curse of debiasing arises and firms will not be able to profitably debias consumers by unshrouding add ons in equilibrium two kinds of exploitation coexist optimizing firms exploit myopic consumers through marketing schemes that shroud high priced add ons in turn sophisticated consumers exploit these marketing schemes it is not possible to profitably drive away the business of sophisticates it is also not possible to profitably lure either myopes or sophisticates to nonexploitative firms we show that informational shrouding flourishes even in highly competitive markets even in markets with costless advertising and even when the shrouding generates allocational inefficiencies

the market for sulfur dioxide emissions the 1990 clean air act amendments initiated the first large scale use of the tradable permit approach to pollution control the theoretical case for this approach rests on the assumption of an efficient market for emission rights the authors empirical analysis shows that the emission rights market created by the 1990 amendments had become reasonably efficient by mid 1994 they also show that the auctions specified in the amendments to jump start trading had become a small part of the overall market finally the authors demonstrate that the strategic bidding behavior discussed in the literature has had no effect on market prices copyright 1998 by american economic association

phase i completed an empirical assessment of the 1990 caaa with the conclusion of phase i trading of so2 allowances the epa declared the allowance trading policy to be a success the time had come to include cap and trade programs in the arsenal of effective policy tools in terms of reducing atmospheric emissions of sulfur dioxide the program appears to be successful it is not clear however whether or not the program has minimized the cost of achieving the emission reductions the measure of the true success of a market based incentive program however has yetto be quantified has the program resulted in converging marginalabatement costs across participant plants in this study i report theshadow prices of phase i power plants from 1994 to 1998 anddetermine that there are more costs to be saved within theambitious public policy experiment

transaction costs and tradeable permits abstract tradeable permit systems are at the center of current interest and activity in market based reforms of environmental policy because these systems can offer significant advantages over conventional approaches to pollution control unfortunately claims made for their relative cost effectiveness have often been exaggerated transaction costs which may be significant in these markets reduce trading levels and increase abatement costs in some cases equilibrium permit allocations and hence aggregate control costs are sensitive to initial permit distributions providing an efficiency justification for politicians typical focus on initial allocations

inequality among equals embedding market and authority in league sports in league sports the regulatory authority of leagues is thought to counter market pressures that would otherwise concentrate player talent in smsas with the largest market potential the presumed opposition between authority and markets is not supported by league histories in the four major team sports these histories show that contrary to expectations market potential has the greatest influence on winning when league authority is formally strongest market potential has no influence on performance when league authority is opposed by antitrust law player unions rival leagues or league members to explain this anomaly authority and market relations must both be seen as embedded within the multiplex relations among team owners these relations changed dramatically with the rise of national audiences in the past three decades inequality among equals replaced inequality among unequals as the support of a rootless national audience replaced rooted and unequal local audiences altering the opportunity

network location and learning the influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation this paper presents a dynamic firm level study of the role of network resources in determining alliance formation such resources inhere not so much within the firm but reside in the interfirm networks in which firms are placed data from extensive fieldwork show that by influencing the extent to which firms have access to information about potential partners such resources are an important catalyst for new alliances especially because alliances entail considerable hazards this study also assesses the importance of firms capabilities with alliance formation and material resources as determinants of their alliance decisions i test this dynamic framework and its hypotheses about the role of time varying network resources and firm capabilities with comprehensive longitudinal multi industry data on the formation of strategic alliances by a panel of firms between 1970 and 1989 the results confirm field observations that accumulated network resources arising from firm participation in the network of accumulated prior alliances are influential in firms decisions to enter into new alliances this study highlights the importance of network resources that firms derive from their embeddedness in networks for explaining their strategic behavior copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

growth cycles with induced technical change this paper concerns itself with two related topics the relative shares of workers and capitalists in the national income and the labour augmenting bias of technical change both have been dealt with in contrasting fashion in two seminal papers on distribution theory kennedy i964 attempts to explain the then observed constancy of relative shares with the help of the now famous invention possibility frontier however the wage and profit rates are exogeneous to his model goodwin i967 on the other hand presents a model of cycles in growth rates in which the share of labour the wage rate and the profit rate are endogenously determined however unlike the kennedy analysis technical change is assumed to be constant and exogeneously given given that these pioneering works have addressed themselves to important questions it seems a worthwhile task to build a model in which the shares of labour and capital the wage rate the profit rate and technical change are all endogenously determined the perspective we have chosen here introduces the key element of kennedy s perception induced technical change into the goodwin scheme and the consequences of so doing are traced out in the following terse account there are two classes in the economy workers and capitalists only one good q t is produced and it can be either consumed or invested capital stock k t is homogeneous and for simplicity also assumed to be non depreciating the capital output ratio at time t is denoted by o t labour i t is also homogeneous and its productivity at time t a t q t l t improves at the rate ac t labour s share in the national income denoted by u t is

coordination failures and government policy a model with applications to east asia and eastern europe abstract poor countries must specialize in standardized labor intensive commodities middle income countries may have a richer menu of options if their labor force is reasonably well educated and skilled the multiplicity of equilibria is due to a coordination problem inherent in activities that require specialized inputs if no intermediate inputs are presently produced there may be little incentive for any single firm to do so on its own the economy may get stuck in a low wage low tech equilibrium an investment subsidy or a minimum wage policy can enhance welfare by moving the economy to a superior equilibrium

stretchwork managing the career progression paradox in external labor markets changes in employment relationships have diminished the degree to which internal labor markets shape careers using comparative field studies we examine how contract workers try to achieve career

capital market development and mass privatization are logical contradictions lessons from russia and the czech republic the introduction of mass privatization policies in russia and the czech republic depended on the creation of impersonal capital markets to finance the needs of privatized companies and to provide a secondary market for the trading of securities yet mass privatization created the contradictory conditions of generating millions of poorly informed shareholders with no efficient markets for the sale of the shares the absence of financial markets created systematic pressures to move assets by illegal or non transparent means to users who value them more privatization created the incentives to destroy the financial markets critical to its success a comparative case analysis of post privatization market formation in both these countries demonstrates that the functional necessity for these markets does not engender their own creation in the absence of institutional mechanisms of state regulation and trust markets become arenas for political contests and economic manipulation the irony of these policies is that a principal lesson has been that market reforms cannot create viable markets only institutional formation can copyright 2002 oxford university press

oppositional identities and resource partitioning distillery ownership in scotch whisky 1826 2009 we build on recent theory and research on the role of categories in resource partitioning we analyze scotch whisky making between 1826 and 2009 a case that seemed initially to fail to conform to the pattern of the beer industry now treated as prototypical on close examination both qualitative and quantitative we find that high concentration in the center of the market is not sufficient to generate a partition rather we see a long delay between the heightening of concentration in the industry and the emergence of a cluster of peripheral producers that claim an identity in opposition to the dominant generalists we explain the source of the delay as a function of the nature of the audience which until recently did not regard conglomerate or foreign ownership of distilleries as an impediment to producing authentic whisky only when critics started to question how ownership of distilleries related to authenticity did the revival of the traditional form of ownership begin to occur by analyzing entries

historical sociology s puzzle of the missing transitions a case study of early modern japan prominent accounts of the transition to capitalism have a far too limited understanding of pre capitalist agrarian economies potential for dynamism recent research shows that conditions earlier accounts identify as triggers for a transition to capitalism could be present without a transition occurring i expand on implications of these cases of missing transitions for theorizing the dynamics of pre capitalist agrarian economies i present a theoretical framework that shows how phenomena previously associated with the transition to capitalism such as flexible property rights in land and labor extensive markets and accumulation of industrial and mercantile wealth emerged in pre capitalist societies without leading to capitalist development i illustrate the analytic upshot of this framework by considering the case study of japan in the tokugawa era 1603 to 1868 for historical sociologists early modern japan has long been seen as an anomalous case puzzlingly mixing developments thought to represen

organizing contests for status the matthew effect vs the mark effect what is the best way to design tournaments for status in which individuals labor primarily for the esteem of their peers what process in other words should organizers of status based contests impose upon those who covet peer recognition we propose a formal model of status based competition that contrasts two competing alternatives the first following merton is the matthew effect according to which a tournament s architect directs slack resources to elite actors and thus widens the distribution of rewards by favoring cumulative advantage the second is the mark effect under which a tournament s designer instead pushes slack resources to marginal actors and thus tightens the distribution of rewards our results suggest that although the mark effect is better for the social welfare of most tournaments the matthew effect is preferable in two distinct contexts in small tournaments where variation in underlying ability translates into acute advantages for the most capable contestants and in large tournaments whose contestants face constant rather than rising marginal costs a condition we relate to contestants perception of their work as intrinsically valuable our contributions are twofold we find counter to the thrust of merton s work that cumulative advantage is not invariably optimal for the functioning of status contests and we identify circumstances in which the production of superstars is likely to make contests for status better off in aggregate implications for future research on status and management are discussed this paper was accepted by olav sorenson organizations and social networks

globalization pressures and the state the worldwide spread of central bank independence the authors examine the impact of globalization on state structures in the specific instance of the central bank following the world system world society and neoinstitutional perspectives in sociology they assume that states are in cultural political and economic competition with each other thereby seeking to maintain their position and status frequently by adopting organizational forms or practices that make them isomorphic with their environment the authors predict that countries boost the independence of their central bank from the political power as their exposure to foreign trade investment and multilateral lending increases they also model the cross national dynamic process of diffusion of central bank independence by examining the impact of cohesive and role equivalent trade relationships between countries they find support for their hypotheses with information on 71 countries between 1990 and 2000

economic ideas for a complex climate policy regime abstract the parsimony of economic theory provides general insights into an otherwise complex world however the most straightforward organizing principles from theory have not often taken hold in environmental policy or in the decentralized climate policy regime that is unfolding one reason is inadequate recognition of a variety of institutions this paper addresses three ways that the standard model may inadequately anticipate the role of institutions in the actual implementation of climate policy with a u s focus multilayered authority across jurisdictions the impressionistic rather than deterministic influence of prices through subsidiary jurisdictions and the complementary role of prices and regulation in this context the economic approach is built on the premise that incentives affect behavior we suggest that an important pathway of influence for economic theory is to infuse incentive based thinking into the conventional regulatory framework in a complex policy regime incentives can be shaped by shadow prices as well as market prices

the potential for cost savings in the sulfur dioxide allowance market empirical evidence from florida since the passage of the 1990 clean air act amendments researchers have hastened to appraise the new market for sulfur dioxide so2 emission allowances as the epa s program moves into its second phase some analysts question whether large enough savings are available to induce widespread market participation this study calculates the shadow prices of emission reductions for power plants that serve florida and compares the actions of utility owners to the actions predicted by the shadow prices the evidence suggests that plant owners have not taken full advantage of the opportunities the allowance market has provided to date

determinants of environmental innovation in us manufacturing industries abstract this paper provides new evidence on the determinants of environmental innovation we employ panel data models to study how environmental innovation by us manufacturing industries responded to changes in pollution abatement expenditures and regulatory enforcement during the period 1983 through 1992 we find that 1 environmental innovation as measured by the number of successful environmental patent applications granted to the industry responded to increases in pollution abatement expenditures however 2 increased monitoring and enforcement activities related to existing regulations did not provide any additional incentive to innovate we also find some empirical evidence that environmental innovation is more likely to occur in industries that are internationally competitive

an ecological analysis of competition among us communities we apply the ecological concept of the organization s niche pioneered by john freeman and mike hannan to the study of geographic communities we define a community s market niche by the ties linking a community to the industries on which it depends for growth we then hypothesize that the extent to which a community s market niche is occupied by other communities is a source of constraint and opportunity depending on the geographical locations of the communities that occupy the same market niche geographically distant communities occupying similar market niches are hypothesized to experience primarily constraint arising from competition for opportunities of exchange geographically proximate communities occupying similar market niches are hypothesized to face constraint arising from competition for exchange opportunities as well as opportunity arising from access to valuable resources associated with the existence of similar others empirical analyses of firm foundings and exits across us communities support these hypotheses implications of our findings for ecological research on the niche and for the literature on communities are discussed copyright 2012 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

goodwin cycles and the bopc growth paradigm a macrodynamic model of growth and fluctuations abstract the paper builds a non linear macrodynamic model to study the relation between the functional distribution of income technological progress and economic growth in the short term the interaction between the productivity regime the demand regime and the distributive conflict generates cyclical paths a la goodwin in the long term output growth rate is constrained by the balance of payments a la thirlwall in which the elasticities of foreign trade are modeled as a function of the complex relation between the wage share and the innovation capabilities of theeconomy

a multiple constituency status based approach to interorganizational mobility of faculty and input output competition among top business schools a study of inputs students and new faculty and outputs mba and ph d graduates of 20 business schools found that status perceived by certain stakeholder groups constituencies affects the mobility of individuals between schools and limits the competition among schools for student inputs and for output placement the study examined schools that differed in status perceived by three constituencies the national business community the academic community and mba students the results indicate that depending on their status in the opinion of different constituencies the schools engaged in different degrees of student input creaming scrambling for inputs input targeting input avoidance and output streaming all terms developed as part of the model proposed herein the results suggest that in ph d markets status hierarchies tend to make groups of schools a closed system leading to homosocial reproduction of senior faculties and social isolation and immobility for certain ph d graduates barrier

innovation and the international diffusion of environmentally responsive technology abstract new evidence is presented on environmental innovation and diffusion over the 1970s and 1980s at a global level a substantial amount of innovations occurred in the united states japan and germany the share of environmental patents in all patents varied between 0 6 and 3 and as such was higher than the corresponding share of pollution abatement expenditure in gdp japanese environmental innovation rates were consistently high certain plausible connections between environmental regulation and innovation also emerge across these three countries and over time innovation responded to pollution abatement expenditure an indicator of the severity of environmental regulations environmental patenting rates in developing countries were also high reaching 2 in many years in brazil developing country innovators obtained a non trivial number of patents most of which appear geared towards adapting imported technologies to local conditions however domestic innovation was only one path to new technologies imports of disembodied environmental technologies foreign patents registered in developing countries were substantial foreign patents were typically important or generic patents evidence also suggests that such patents protected intellectual property in equipment exported developing countries especially in east asia often chose to obtain technologies embodied in pollution abatement equipment

distributing pollution rights in cap and trade programs are outcomes independent of allocation standard economic theory predicts that if property rights to pollute are clearly established equilibrium outcomes in an efficient emissions permit market will be independent of how the emissions permits are initially distributed this so called independence property has important implications for policy design and implementation past studies document a strong positive correlation between the initial permit allocation and firm level emissions raising concerns that the independence property is failing to hold in real world settings we exploit the random assignment of firms to different permit allocation cycles in southern california s reclaim program in order to test the independence of permit allocation and emissions our results lend empirical support to the independence hypothesis

market culture and authority a comparative analysis of management and organization in the far east three frameworks purport to explain industrial arrangements and practices a market approach that emphasizes economic characteristics a cultural approach that sees organization as the expression of patterned values and an authority approach that explains organization as a historically developed structure of domination the efficacy of each approach is tested in explaining the organizational structures of three rapidly growing east asian economies japan south korea and taiwan the paper argues through comparative analysis that organizational growth is best explained by market and cultural factors but that authority patterns and legitimation strategies best explain organizational structure

purchasing behavior in embedded markets this article explores the concept of market embeddedness and its impact on purchasing behavior in a consumer market embeddedness exists when consumers derive utility from two sources simultaneously from attributes of the product and from social capital found in preexisting ties between buyers and sellers this framework is applied to the home party method of direct sales we find that the degree of social capital present as measured by the strength of the buyer seller tie and buyer indebtedness to the seller significantly affects the likelihood of purchase we cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed as in filling a vessel drop by drop there is at last a drop which makes it run over so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over boswell 1777 1835

economic interests and sectoral relations the undevelopment of capitalism in fifteenth century tuscany1 many preconditions for a rapid transition to industrial capitalism existed in tuscany in the late medieval early modern period including relatively efficient agricultural production a well developed commercial manufacturing sector the absence of a powerful feudal nobility and feudal obligations a large precocious urban economy and the development of a territorial state no such transition occurred however previous explanations for this are inadequate because they discount the strength of the tuscany economy or downplay the presence of these preconditions to explain the tuscan outcome this article draws on sectoral theories agriculture vs manufacturing from the neoclassical and marxist literature since these theories often give the wrong prediction because they are based on formal attributes of actors the author combines them with a weberian conceptualization of substantively specific economic interests