competition and industrial policies in a history friendly model of the evolution of the computer industry abstract in this paper we explore some problems that industrial policy faces in industries characterized by dynamic increasing returns on the basis of a history friendly model of the evolution of the computer industry how does policy affect industry structure over the course of industry evolution is the timing of the intervention important do policy interventions have indirect and perhaps unintended consequences on different markets at different times we focus on two sets of policies antitrust and interventions aiming at supporting the entry of new forms in the industry the results of our simulations show that if strong dynamic increasing returns are operative both through technological capabilities and through customer tendency to stick with a brand there is little that antitrust and entry policy could have done to avert the rise of a dominant firm in mainframes on the other hand if the customer lock in effect had been smaller either by chance or through policies that discouraged efforts of firms to lock in their customers the situation might have been somewhat different in the first place even in the absence of antitrust or entry encouraging policies market concentration would have been lower albeit a dominant firm would emerge anyhow second antitrust and entry encouraging policies would have been more effective in assuring that concentration would decrease the leading firm would continue to dominate the market but its relative power would be reduced

a model of demand with interactions among consumers abstract the aim of this paper is to study emergent patterns of demand when there are social interactions between different consumers specifically our concern is with the case in which consumers preferences are influenced by the consumption behaviour of others the analysis recognises three reference groups the first is a peer group of similar consumers with whom the individual interacts on a regular basis and with whom the individual desires to share some consumption activities the second is one or several contrast group s with which the individual seeks actively not to interact and from whom the individual wishes to distinguish himself herself the third is an aspirational group with whom the individual does not interact on a regular basis but wishes that he she did and with whom the individual would like to share consumption activities but cannot in this relatively simple model these groups influence the individual s behaviour the paper derives steady state and dynamic properties of the distribution of consumption over users the degree to which consumption is restricted to a small group of similar agents is determined by the strength of the contrast and aspiration effects these effects also drive the distribution away from the natural distribution i e the one that would prevail were consumers to consider only the properties of the good and not the actions of other consumers the paper discusses the potential application of this modeling framework in a large number of consumption settings

an aggregate model of technical change a simple aggregate growth model is presented in which technology is described by a probability distribution from which new plants are drawn especially good draws are viewed as technological innovations that shift the mean of the following period s plant distribution function the resulting technical change is endogenous random and cumulative in contrast to conventional growth models the model s growth path displays nonstationary drift rather than deterministic trend and the long run per capita growth rate has positive rather than zero sensitivity to the model s saving parameter

r d and technology policy in nics as learning processes abstract this paper presents a dynamic learning perspective to research and development activity and to policies promoting these activities and technological development more generally the basic idea is that successful penetration of research and development rd multidisciplinary learning both technoeconomic and managerial organizational and learning which is cumulative through time this is especially so at an early infant phase of diffusion of this process through the economy a dynamic view of externalities and market failures is presented one that provides the basis for a catalytic perspective of technological policy this perspective is based on the distinction between an infant and a mature phase of policy where massive flexible search oriented support in the early phase sets the base for endogenization routinization of r d in the economy and for the possibility of drastic reductions in government support for traditional forms of r d in the later phase

neither crowding in nor out public direct investment mobilising private investment into renewable electricity projects abstract rapid structural change towards a low carbon energy supply requires significant additional investments into innovative but high risk low carbon technologies mobilising greater private investments requires applying the right policy instruments but while fiscal measures and regulation have been well researched systematic quantitative evidence about the effect of public direct investment is lacking absent empirical evidence contradictory theoretical arguments claim that such public co investments either crowd out or crowd in private investors in this paper we show that the macroeconomic concept of crowding out in is inapplicable to sectoral studies such as of renewable electricity instead both neoclassical microeconomics and evolutionary economics suggest public direct investment to have a positive effect due to either externalities or market creation effects we also provide the first quantitative estimate of the effect of public direct investment on private investment into renewable electricity technologies for 17 countries in the period 2004 2014 using fgls and static and dynamic gmm estimators we find that public investments not only have a positive but also consistently the largest effect on private investment flows relative to feed in tariffs taxes and renewable portfolio standards in general and for wind and solar technologies separately implications for policy aimed at accelerating the low carbon transition are discussed

evolutionary finance and central banking this article considers minsky s contribution to evolutionary economics paying attention to his concepts of evolutionary finance and central banking evolutionary finance is defined by minsky as the process through which changes in effective demand uncertainty and cash flows trigger solvency and liquidity risk that increase financial fragility and the possibility of financial instability and debt deflation emphasis is placed on the role of ponzi position making operations and failed margins of safety in inducing low quality leverage and liability structures evolutionary central banking is defined by minsky as the process that central banks use by applying qualitative monetary policy through discount window procedures and lender of last resort interventions to target ponzi leverage structures and financial stability evolutionary central banking provides operational guidelines and objectives that help us understand the monetary policies adopted by central banks after the global financial crisis of 2007 2008 as well as the limitations of the non conventional monetary policies

technology diffusion and the rate of technical change the way in which the process of technical change is formulated at the macroeconomic level implies generally speaking immediate diffusion or adoption of new technologies whether primarily disembodied in nature accounting for any shift in the production function as in the early technology index formulations or embodied in new investment as in the subsequent vintage growth models technical progress will be identified with advances in inventiveness or best practice technologies at first this might well seem the most appropriate way to separate out the contribution of the technology production factor from the other production factors from a straightforward economic point of view though advances in technology or best practice productivity levels are only relevant to the extent that they have been translated in actual achieved productivity levels the issue is a well known one in most empirical research on the measurement of the contribution of technical change to economic growth and has received much attention in the recent productivity slowdown debate denison i 979 griliches i980 nordhaus i980 and i 98i in particular there it was generally agreed that other technology factors including a slowdown in the rate of the spread of technology to use kendrick s i 98i term were more important than the actual decline in r d expenditure in contributing to the overall slowdown in productivity the importance of the diffusion of innovation rather than the mere occurrence of innovations is of course the major factor underlying most of the microeconomic diffusion literature the fundamental reasons for delay in adopting the so called retardation factors have been found to relate both to uncertainty and lack of information about the new technology and the often proprietary nature of the new technology since griliches i957 and mansfield s i96i seminal papers most of this literature has focused on the theoretical arguments underlying the traditional s shaped epidemic diffusion curve in more recent research particularly the mechanical static nature of these diffusion models has been questioned and various alternative diffusion models suggested including dynamic supply models metcalfe 1981 i982 stoneman i983 in which both the economic characteristics of the innovation and its diffusion environment have been made endogenous to the diffusion process these latter models in particular allow for an interpretation of the diffusion of technology in a broader macroeconomic growth and structural change perspective

the evolution of economic institutions as a propagation process based on some notions from recent game theoretic approaches to explain the emergence of institutions a model is put forward which implies some generalizations and extensions first the evolution of institutions is interpreted as a diffusion process this interpretation provides a general formal framework to cover both the case of strategic and that of non strategic interaction second different forms of interdependency effects between the individuals involved are identified as making the crucial difference between the case where institutions emerge spontaneously in an unorganized form and the case where they do not

history friendly models of industry evolution the computer industry the model presented in this paper is the first of a new generation of evolutionary economic models history friendly models history friendly models are formal models that aim to capture in stylized form qualitative and appreciative theories about the mechanisms and factors affecting industry evolution technological advance and institutional change put forth by empirical scholars of industrial economics technological change business organization and strategy and other social scientists in this paper we have analyzed the long term evolution of the computer industry in particular we have examined the emergence of a dominant firm in mainframes the introduction of a major innovation microprocessor the opening up of a new market segment personal computers ad the competition there between newcomers and diversified old established firms we have taken a body of verbal appreciative theorizing developed a formal representation of that theory and found that the formal version of that theory is consistent and capable of generating the stylized facts the appreciative theory purports to explain going through this analytic exercise has significantly sharpened our theoretical understanding of the key factors behind salient aspects of the evolution of the computer industry copyright 1999 by oxford university press

controlling risk in global multimanager portfolios the issue of country and sector effects is important for portfolio construction and risk management unlike the many studies that have addressed the issue by analyzing individual stocks this article focuses on analyzing managed portfolios using global data on manager excess returns and portfolio characteristics i examined the relative effects of country versus sector bets on excess return variations i then evaluated alternative portfolio construction strategies by using optimization and simulation methods i found that active country exposure is a larger driver of variations in individual managers excess returns than is active sector exposure using this information money managers can learn current investment industry trends in country and sector selection and fund managers can construct their multimanager portfolios to reduce tracking error by weighting individual managers to limit country exposure in an overall portfolio

cooperative agreements and the theory of the firm focusing on barriers to change abstract cooperative agreements between firms have become a significant phenomenon in the 1980s and have been analyzed by various approaches including economics organizational theory and business strategy this paper draws on these different strands of the literature to argue that cooperative agreements have led to focus the analysis of firms organization on the issue of change as a consequence cooperative agreements have contributed to recent developments of the theory of the firm in favor of competence based and evolutionary approaches the analysis is then extended to the case of multinational firms

a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy this paper proposes a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy based on the coevolution of ecosystems technologies institutions business strategies and user practices within a multi level micro meso macro perspective this builds on and develops previous coevolutionary analyses of long term technological and industrial change and recent renewed interest within ecological economics on coevolutionary approaches previous work has analysed how the coevolution of technologies and institutions has led to the lock in of current high carbon energy systems and how the coevolution of physical and social technologies and business strategies has brought significant material and welfare benefits to the minority of the world s population living in industrialised countries the coevolutionary framework proposed here may be used to undertake 1 detailed empirical analyses at a micro meso level of the challenges relating to the innovation and adoption of particularly low carbon technologies 2 as a framework for analysing the multi level interaction of social and technological elements within potential transition pathways to a low carbon energy system 3 to assess the implications for economic growth and prosperity of a transition to a low carbon economy and 4 to assist in the development of more formal multi level evolutionary economic models

the structure of european stock returns analysis of the daily localcurrency returns on 105 stocks from 11 european countries over the 1986 89 period reveals the importance of various market and sector factors to stock price volatility factor analysis as well as an analysis of variance with currency market and industry factors show that national stock market factors clearly dominate stock price variances even after adjusting for currency world stock market european stock market and industry trends

evolutionary theories in environmental and resource economics approaches and applications recent advances in evolutionary theory have important implications for environmental economics a short overview is offered of evolutionarythinking in economics subsequently major concepts and approaches inevolutionary biology and evolutionary economics are presented andcompared attention is devoted among others to darwinian selection punctuated equilibrium sorting mechanisms lamarckian evolution coevolution and self organization basic features of evolution such assustained change irreversible change unpredictability qualitativechange and disequilibrium are examined it is argued that there are anumber of fundamental differences as well as similarities betweenbiological and economic evolution next some general implications ofevolutionary thinking for environmental economics are outlined this isfollowed by a more detailed examination of potential uses ofevolutionary theories in specific areas of environmental economics including sustainability and long run development theories technologyand environment ecosystem management and resilience spatial evolutionand environmental processes and design of environmental policy

explaining the attacker s advantage technological paradigms organizational dynamics and the value network abstract understanding when entrants might have an advantage over an industry s incumbent firms in developing and adopting new technologies is a question which several scholars have explained in terms of technological capabilities or organizational dynamics this paper proposes that the value network the context within which a firm competes and solves customers problems is an important factor affecting whether incumbent or entrant firms will most successfully innovate in a study of technology development in the disk drive industry the authors found that incumbents led the industry in developing and adopting new technologies of every sort identified by earlier scholars at component and architectural levels competency enhancing and competency destroying incremental and radical as long as the technology addressed customers needs within the value network in which the incumbents competed entrants led in developing and adopting technologies which addressed user needs in different emerging value networks it is in these innovations which disrupted established trajectories of technological progress in established markets that attackers proved to have an advantage the rate of improvement in product performance which technologists provide may exceed the rate of improvement demanded in established markets this mismatch between trajectories enables firms entering emerging value networks subsequently to attack the industry s established markets as well

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

another look at the role of the industrial structure of markets for international diversification strategies abstract this paper re examines the extent to which gains from international diversification are due to differences in industrial structure across countries recent papers by roll 1992 journal of finance 47 3 42 and heston and rouwenhorst 1994 journal of financial economics 36 3 27 investigate this issue and find conflicting evidence using a new database the dow jones world stock index with coverage in 25 countries and over 66 industry classifications we decompose comprehensively both country and industrial sources of variation we confirm that little of the variation in country index returns can be explained by their industrial composition we also uncover differences in the proportion of variation in industry index returns that is captured by country and industry factors and discuss the implications for global diversification strategies

the heterogeneous dynamics between growth and profits the case of young firms while there is an increasing interest in the literature about the relationship between profits and business growth the empirical evidence is mixed and inconclusive this can be explained by the difficulty of fully addressing the complex nature of this relationship building on resource based and evolutionary considerations the present study investigates the dynamics between growth and profits of young firms by explicitly considering the endogeneity and heterogeneity aspects of the relationship data are based on a cohort of spanish manufacturing firms tracked during the period 1996 2010 the results indicate that young firm growth has a positive impact on profits in contrast the effect of profits on growth is not significant neither is there a significant correlation between past and current growth importantly we find that the results are strongly influenced by inter firm heterogeneity implications from these findings are discussed

a micromodeling approach to investigate the advertising sales relationship the purpose of this paper is to derive a model of advertising effects on the firm s sales a micromodel is postulated and aggregated across individuals and over time to produce a macromodel of the aggregate sales advertising relationship for a single product the micromodel postulated is very simple it incorporates two factors reach of the ads and rate of decay of their effectiveness over time this approach to modeling advertising effects is shown to be fruitful in several respects 1 the coefficients of the aggregate equation are easily interpretable in terms of the reach and decay parameters 2 the model derived is nonlinear yet estimable 3 a special case of the model is very similar to lag models that have been in use 4 the model can be used whatever the unit of time is 5 the carryover effect of advertising as commonly defined is not constant but depends upon the previous spending levels and 6 the model helps illustrate that the duration of advertising may be greatly overstated if aggregate lagged dependent variable models are simplistically interpreted

a political economy approach to the neoclassical gradualist model of transition a political economy approach to the neoclassical gradualist model of transition requires the exposition of what i define the primary elements of the model which are economic analysis definition of a good society speed political structure ideological structure and whether the initial conditions were incorporated in the model after the identification of the primary elements of the neoclassical gradualist model the next step is to identify secondary elements the desired changes with respect to price liberalization stabilization privatization institutional structure monetary policy and the financial system fiscal policy international trade and foreign aid and social policy the analytical framework developed makes possible to understand the neoclassical gradualist model from a new and more enlightening perspective we are better able to comprehend the complexities involved and the disagreements about the reform process the adoption of a gradual process of transition did not only involve specifying the required policies of a successful transition but also entailed a process a sequence by which the reforms should be introduced as such a process of transition consistent with the policies recommended by the neoclassical gradualists economists is developed the conclusion reveals the inconsistencies in the model copyright blackwell publishers ltd 2005

the new institutional economics and the theory of the firm abstract concepts of importance in the literature of the new institutional economics such as transaction costs and bounded rationality have been used to extend the standard neoclassical model of the firm but the hybrid models created have failed to provide adequate explanations of enterprise behavior an alternative neoinstitutional model of the firm is developed in the paper that differs from the pure neoclassical model and hybrid models in respect to both the nature of the solution it yields and the process by which it reaches a solution the neoinstitutional firm cannot be expected to achieve either the hypothetical allocative efficiency promised by the frictionless neoclassical model or the relatively efficient constrained pareto optimal solutions predicted by the largely frictionless hybrid models the orthodox marginal rules of neoclassicism can only be used to solve lower level problems that appear within the firm

absorptive capacity socially enabling mechanisms and the role of learning from trial and error experiments a tribute to dan levinthal s contribution to international business research the concept of absorptive capacity ac of firms cohen and levinthal 1989 and 1990 is a foundational feature of organizational learning and adaptation that has had enormous influence in international business ib and innovation studies and management research in general in this tribute to dan levinthal we discuss the close connection between ac and learning two areas central to dan levinthal s research in relation to different contexts where ac comes into play in extant ib research we discuss four specific aspects of the nexus of ac and learning in the context of ib 1 bridging between intra and inter firm learning 2 a routine based framing of ac that emphasizes processes and capabilities underlying seeking assimilating and innovation in a global setting 3 the role of socially enabling mechanisms and 4 the logic of learning through trial and error experiments within firms and countries

a policy approach to the environmental impacts of technological lock in abstract the broadening spectrum of environmental problems the uncertainty regarding their scale and duration and their possible irreversibility in the context of the growing social preference for environmental quality make it necessary to undertake an ex ante approach to the link between productive activity and environmental quality this link lies in technology and the right approach is to understand how the process of technological change can lead towards sustainability the added value of evolutionary economics in the context of environmental policy resides mainly in the fact that it warns that certain inferior environmental technologies may be locked in to the economic system the results of our model show that it would be advisable to undertake policies expressly aimed at the process of sustainable technological change applying an ex ante precautionary approach in a way that is complementary to the conventional equilibrium oriented environmental policies the nature of these policies and how they might be implemented are questions we will address from this novel approach to the concept of sustainable development in short the main objectives of this paper are to understand more fully the dynamics of the process of technological change its role in sustainable development and to assess the implications of this dynamic approach to techno environmental policy to achieve these goals we have developed an agent based model abm using distributed artificial intelligence dai concepts drawn from the general methodology of social simulation

evolutionary strategies in environmental policy abstract many of today s environmental problems can be attributed to a difference in the development of ecological and economic systems both kinds of systems develop over time but so far they have followed different organizational principles with respect to the basic factors energy matter information space and time the types of environmental problems encountered pose particular difficulties because of the different temporal and spatial characteristics of markets and ecosystems in the long run cultural evolution and hence economic development cannot progress without considering fundamental laws and principles of nature equilibrium oriented concepts in environmental economics aiming at the internalization of externalities do not offer adequate solutions to these problems policy approaches favouring environmental standards based on current knowledge and technology equally are of little help either the knowledge of complex interactions in natural systems is missing to exactly determine precise standards or past and continuing processes often time delayed make them obsolete chronic and pervasive environmental problems call for an enhancement of environmental policy that encompasses a process orientation while considering ecological principles of system development evolutionary strategies increasingly have to adapt economic patterns of development to ecological patterns of development environmental policy goals and corresponding instruments can be designed to continuously set signals for long term structural change the basic factor energy will be used to illustrate evolutionary strategies regarding direct and indirect effects an analysis of the scandinavian experience with carbon and energy taxes exemplifies first successful steps at implementation

industrial districts old wine in new bottles harrison b 1992 industrial districts old wine in new bottles reg studies 26 469 483 according to the theory of industrial districts a new wave of economic growth is being led in a number of regions in europe north america and east asia by spatially concentrated networks of mostly small and medium sized enterprises often using flexible production technology and characterized by extensive local interfirm linkages does this amount to a re emergence of the dominance of what urban and regional economists call agglomeration economies over the well known pressures on business to spatially disperse its operations neoclassical economic theorizing from marshall to perroux provides one perspective on the contemporary industrial district phenomenon another is afforded by granovetter s more recent elaboration of the ideas of embedding under and over socialization confronting each of these theoretical approaches with the other leads me to conclude that the industrial district prototypes involv

enterprise restructuring and embeddedness a policy and systems perspective this paper presents a dynamic analysis of technological and industrial policies directed to business sector restructuring in increasingly knowledge based economies it simultaneously considers policies which are aimed at promoting restructuring directly and policies aimed at influencing the facilitating structure of largely non business institutions and organizations this paper also offers an explicit analysis of the changing portfolio of policies recognizing the complementarity of both incentives and institutional development and the likelihood of having to adopt under a broad set of circumstances a changing portfolio of horizontal and target incentives policies programs copyright 2000 by oxford university press

evolutionary diffusion internal and external methods used to acquire encompassing complementary and incremental technological changes in the lithotripsy industry this study links theories concerning methods that firms use to acquire technology with theories concerning types of technological change we place particular emphasis on interorganizational relationships we predict that firms will often acquire know how needed for encompassing technological change through equity based arrangements with other organizations complementary technological changes through nonequity interorganizational arrangements and incremental changes through internal r d our theory draws on perspectives that emphasize the need to develop new competencies within a business organization and to protect the value of existing competencies our empirical analysis examines methods of technology acquisition that firms have used in the commercialization of medical lithotripters which are devices that fragment stones in the kidney and gall bladder the analysis contributes to a better understanding of how technology acquisition methods vary with the manner in which technological change relates to a firm s existing capabilities the study also helps develop our understanding of the evolutionary processes by which capabilities diffuse through an industry 1998 john wiley sons ltd

opportunities incentives and the collective patterns of technological change in a few pages in the introductory article for this debate vernon ruttan succeeds in the unlikely task of flagging many issues at the core of the economic interpretation of technological change and by doing so he implicitly addresses also a few sensitive spots for the economic discipline at large here i will not attempt to provide any thorough view of what i consider the achievements and limitations of the current state of the art see however freeman i 994 for a critical survey which i largely share rather i shall put forward a series of remarks which hopefully could be seen as part of a much wider and still largely unexplored research programme as a premise just note that some form of attention to technology related phenomena has spread over the last 20 30 years from small enclaves of heterodox economists and economic historians to become an important concern even for quite mainstream theories of e g the firm industrial organisation macroeconomics trade growth etc from patent races all the way to new trade and new growth theories and even real business cycle macro models technical change has drawn a consideration which is less by default than it was say in robert solow s original growth models orjoe bain s barriers to entry views on industrial structures and in parallel empirical studies at the levels of specific technologies firms sectors and countries have boomed for overviews cf dosi i988 nelson i993 freeman i982 i 994 cohen i 995 and granstrand i 994 among others so at least in this sense those decreasing returns to the economics of technical change suggested by ruttan do not seem to have set in however ruttan s paper raises also substantive questions about the relative success of three interpretative perspectives which he calls induced evolutionary and path dependent in the following i shall argue that an evolutionary perspective broadly defined can easily accommodate both inducement effects and path dependent patterns of technical change let me start from what i consider the major building blocks of an

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

changing risks in global equity portfolios given recent changes in sector and style risk and in manager betting behavior in the global equity markets we analyzed the relative importance of the major active risk drivers and the implications of their relative importance for global multimanager portfolio construction using cross sectional regressions and multimanager portfolio simulations we found that the effect of style and sector bets on active manager risk increased after 1998 and that using style balanced portfolios could have substantially reduced active risk during the 1998 2002 period most of the risk reduction however would have come from the diversification of stock sector selection risk because growth and value managers make different bets on certain sectors common bets on major countries such as japan or the united states persisted during this period but their importance decreased because of smaller benchmark relative bets and country risk in light of the changes using multiple risk control strategies to construct multimanage

heterogeneous preferences and new innovation cycles in mature industries the amateur camera industry 1955 1974 this paper examines the amateur camera industry between 1955 and 1974 the case raises important issues for our understanding of the product lifecycle first an industry can experience more than one round of radical product and process innovation in its history second there is not a strict sequence of product innovation followed by process innovation third the existence of a dominant design depends on there being a relatively homogeneous set of consumers heterogeneous consumer preferences support different camera designs in two distinct market niches in the amateur camera industry fourth new rounds of entry and exit and new industry shake outs can occur with new innovative entrants displacing old firms fifth when the new firms are from developing countries a shift in global production occurs the success of new japanese entrants in this period lay in their being more successful innovators not in their exploiting wage cost advantages

is firm renewal stimulated by negative shocks the status of negative driving forces in schumpeterian and darwinian economics the idea that firms are more innovative under difficult external condition has no prominent place in evolutionary economics the neo schumpeterians agree with schumpeter that innovation is stimulat

does industrial structure explain the benefits of international diversification abstract we examine the influence of industrial structure on the cross sectional volatility and correlation structure of country index returns for 12 european countries between 1978 and 1992 we find that industrial structure explains very little of the cross sectional difference in country return volatility and that the low correlation between country indices is almost completely due to country specific sources of return variation diversification across countries within an industry is a much more effective tool for risk reduction than industry diversification within a country

light emitting diodes and the lighting revolution the emergence of a solid state lighting industry emergence of new industries from evolving technologies is critical to the global economy yet has been relatively understudied due to the paucity of available data this study draws lessons on industry emergence by analyzing how a solid state lighting ssl industry grew out of light emitting diode led technologies that evolved for half a century with participation by tens of thousands of researchers in universities national laboratories and firms using data on publications patents and firms combined with business history we trace the evolution of ssl through a succession of market niches at times a few researchers with unorthodox research approaches made breakthroughs that greatly advanced particular technology trajectories and pushed led research in unexpected directions a succession of led market niches advanced the technology and provided profits to incentivize continuing research while reducing cost and improving efficacy of leds innovating firms developed a thicket of patents and captured substantial profit but were embroiled in extensive litigation that was ultimately resolved through cross licensing a major new generation of lighting products is now disrupting the traditional lighting industry although the leading incumbent lighting firms all invested early and heavily in ssl the industry s future leadership is uncertain

a multisectoral micro macrodynamic model e crescimento economico uma resenha tematica sobre a nova economia institucional this is a simulation model that intends to integrate macro dynamics with structural and sectoral features that shape and modify it it is an attempt to analyze the macrodynamic effective demand effects of endogenous structural changes in the same setup micro macro interactions result in the model from each level having its own dynamics dependent on the inputs it receives from the others each sector is modeled according to neo schumpeterian evolutionary microfoundations with additional unorthodox micro behavioral assumptions together with exogenous foreign and government sectors they are integrated into a multisectoral model the main features of the model are 1 simulated sectoral trajectories of a stylized economy derive from endogenous competitive dynamics as well as direct input output and indirect income consumption interactions 2 sectors are distinguished according to their role in the productive structure and demand categories consumption intermediate and capital 3 no equilibrium is assumed dynamic interactions among firms decisions based on adaptive expectations and their effects generate open ended trajectories even though the simulation results presented in this paper

economics and the biologists a review of geerat j vermeij s nature an economic history this essay reviews and criticizes vermeij s nature an economic history and places it in the context of evolutionary economics vermeij presents a natural history written in what he considers economic terms and argues that biologists should know more about economics while the exchanges between economics and biology can sometimes be hazardous and misleading quite a bit could be learned by economists from reading this book

an interpretive history of challenges to neoclassical microeconomics and how they have fared contemporary microeconomics has witnessed a resurgence of behavioral institutional and evolutionary critiques of the neoclassical mainstream that came to dominate the field during the 1980s today s critiques and proposals for reform have a long tradition in economics while synthesizing the intellectual history of these challenges this article explores the reasons why such critical strands of microeconomics fared poorly in the past and in contrast what factors may account for their partial acceptance into the mainstream in recent times

institutional voids or organizational resilience business groups innovation and market development in latin america summary the paper compares the innovativeness of group affiliated firms gafs and standalone firms safs and it investigates how country specific institutional factors affect the group innovation relationship the paper analyzes the contrasting predictions of two competing views the institutional voids and the organizational resilience theses the empirical analysis focuses on a large sample of firms in latin america in line with the organizational resilience thesis the results point out that the superior innovation performance of gafs is stronger for national economies with more efficient financial legal and labor market institutions

dispersion as cross sectional correlation we introduce the concept of cross sectional dispersion of stock market returns as an alternative to the time series approach to estimating the global correlation level of equity markets our objective is to derive a simple instantaneous measure of the general level of global market correlation our cross sectional method of estimating global correlation is dynamic and using cross sectional data gives instantaneous information on the trend of global correlation the traditional time series method requires a long period of observations and overlapping data have to be used to study the change in correlation both methods yield similar estimates for a long period however so a combination of the cross sectional and time series approaches should be of practical use to global asset managers

managing r d in technology followers the r d effort even of the largest most technologically advanced developing countries and their most sophisticated firms cannot match that of the major industrial nations or the largest corporations our objective in this paper is to analyse innovation technical change and r d management in technology leaders to build a framework for r d in technology followers outside of those major nations this framework emphasises the importance of specific learning mechanisms and puts forward an argument that in house r d is indeed required in technology followers but a profoundly different type of r d r d units based in the firm can become the location for organised learning the problem solver of last resort in production the in house knowledge store and gatekeeper and the focus for independent design and product development capacity

revisiting legal realism the law economics and organization perspective the contrast between american legal realism which ran itself into the sand schlegel 1979 p 459 and the law and economics movement which is perhaps the most important development in legal thought in the last quarter century posner 1986 p xix is dramatic that the one foundered while the other flourished is explained in large measure by the absence of an intellectual framework for legal realism and the use by law and economics of the powerful framework of neoclassical economics

the rise of sector effects in major equity markets historically country effects have been dominant in explaining variations in global stock returns even in the developed markets and investors have segmented their allocations accordingly we set out to investigate whether this situation still prevails we found a significant shift in the relative importance of national and economic influences in the stock returns of the world s largest equity markets in these markets the impact of industrial sector effects is now roughly equal to that of country effects in addition to supporting the notion of increasing global capital market integration these findings suggest that country based approaches to global investment management may be losing their effectiveness

green electricity in the market place the policy challenge the paper explores the implications of the liberalization of electricity markets in europe and north america for policy means and mechanisms to enhance the market penetration of renewables applying a co evolutionary approach the argument highlights the need for policy intervention to help producers and consumers move out of technological trajectories favoring non renewable electricity on the production side energy generation is locked into the central power station system deriving from more than a hundred years of technological development along a specific system trajectory on the consumption side the locked in effect results from a similarly long experience with electricity provision by monopoly suppliers and the associated lack of consumer choice and responsibility for product differentiation as the analysis shows policy strategies targeting both the production and consumption sides of the electricity market are needed for effective intervention furthermore policy strategies should draw on a clear analysis of the inertia and dynamism underlying the production and consumption of electricity in the light of such evolutionary dynamics the analysis demonstrates the insufficiency of the policy approaches currently employed to foster the market share of renewables based electricity instead the authors suggest a reflexive policy approach to initiate and support a reorientation towards green electricity emphasizing the need for learning and communication between and among societal actors

reconsidering the bayh dole act and the current university invention ownership model abstract the bayh dole act of 1980 provided u s universities with the right to commercialize employees inventions made while engaged in government funded research this paper argues that the current university invention ownership model in which universities maintain de jure ownership of inventions is not optimal either in terms of economic efficiency or for advancing the social interest of rapidly commercializing technology and encouraging entrepreneurship we argue that this model is plagued by ineffective incentives information asymmetries and contradictory motivations for the university the inventors potential licensees and university technology licensing offices tlos these structural uncertainties can lead to delays in licensing misaligned incentives among parties and obstacles to the flow of scientific information and the materials necessary for scientific progress the institutional arrangements within which tlos are embedded have encouraged some of them to become revenue maximizers rather than facilitators of technology dissemination for the good of the entire society we suggest two alternative invention commercialization models as superior alternatives the first alternative is to vest ownership with the inventor who could choose the commercialization path for the invention for this privilege the inventor would provide the university an ownership stake in any returns to the invention the inventor would be free to contract with the university tlo or any other entity that might assist in commercialization the second alternative is to make all inventions immediately publicly available through a public domain strategy or through a requirement that all inventions be licensed non exclusively both alternatives would address the current dysfunctional arrangements in university technology commercialization

a critical realist interpretation of evolutionary growth theorising the article discusses a critical realist interpretation of evolutionary growth theorising by focusing on some of its basic characteristics the evolutionary ontology is complex differentiated structured systemic open ever changing and radically uncertain its methodology tends to be increasingly based on appreciative theorising retroductive explanations and interdisciplinary analysis after discussing these features the article suggests that critical realism may indeed constitute an important philosophical and methodological foundation for the future development of evolutionary theories of economic growth

note optimal long run equilibrium advertising level for the blattberg jeuland model the purpose of this note is to formulate and solve a dynamic optimization problem based on the blattberg jeuland advertising model also examined is the behavior of the optimal long run equilibrium level of advertising with respect to changes in some important parameters of the problem in particular a new interesting result showing that the equilibrium optimal level of advertising for the b j model is a nonmonotone function of the rate of decay parameter is derived that is the equilibrium optimal level of advertising is an increasing function of the rate of decay for smaller rates of decay and a decreasing function for larger rates of decay than a critical rate of decay this phenomenon is analogous to a sink effect and is intuitively appealing it is also shown that the equilibrium optimal level of advertising is a decreasing function of the insertion cost and discount rate parameters finally the framework presented in this note is also useful in analyzing further extensions of the problem solved here

cognitive and institutional perspectives of eco efficiency the paper sketches out a theoretical framework for analysing the interplay between eco efficiency cognition and institutions it derives from analytical shortfalls of the prevailing literature which features strongly engineering and business economics by using insights from new institutional economics from cognitive science and partly from evolutionary economics it emphasises the role cognition and institutions play in the adoption of green technologies by firms a cognitive perspective derives from recent research on simple heuristics and context based rationality it is proposed that those findings can serve to analyse decision making of individual actors respectively firms and thus should complement economic analysis a second proposition is that eco efficiency and normative rules such as a factor four strongly rely upon institutions i e the ability of institutions to evolve over time and the development of those institutions that are most appropriate to enhance technological change in this regard business institutions and competition are crucial but regulatory needs remain in order to safeguard continuity of knowledge creation the framework allows for an analysis why overall adoption of eco efficiency still can be considered relatively slow and why some markets and firms are far ahead as a brief case study the article reflects upon german waste law s ability to enhance eco efficiency

evolutionary policies for sustainable development adaptive flexibility and risk minimising abstract an evolutionary perspective on policies to foster sustainable development is presented it is argued that policies suggested by the traditional economic theory of environmental policy can stimulate unsustainable socio economic structures and patterns in addition they are unable to remove undesired locked in systems and technologies drawing on evolutionary thinking characterised by diversity selection innovation path dependence and bounded rationality an alternative partly complementary theory of environmental policy is suggested specific attention is given to the role of strategies that are aimed at increasing diversity and adaptive flexibility and at reducing risk

a coevolutionary understanding of agroenvironmental change a case study of a rural community in brazil abstract this paper studies the coevolutionary ecological economic dynamics of agro environmental change the case study is santa rosa brazil and the modernization of subsistence agriculture followed by the more recent emergence of organic farming we use coevolution as an integrative framework for explaining how and why economic production changed over time in santa rosa in interdependence with the ecosystem resulting in a mosaic of diverse farm practices a coevolutionary framework expands the explanatory breadth of prevailing accounts of agro environmental change that rely on a notion of shifts from one singular homogeneous production economy to the next it unveils the complex processes driving agro environmental change instead of focusing on the structures resulting from it

developments in non expected utility theory the hunt for a descriptive theory of choice under risk this article reviews recent developments in the economic theory of individual decision making under risk since the 1950s it has been known that individual choices violate the standard model of expected utility in predictable ways considerable research effort has now been devoted to the project of developing a superior descriptive model following an overview of non expected utility theories which distinguishes between conventional and non conventional approaches the paper seeks to assess these alternative models in terms of empirical success using laboratory and field data and theoretical usefulness the closing sections reflect on some new directions emerging in this literature

national versus global influences on equity returns simple factor models of worldwide equity returns are used to explore the level and trend in international capital market integration global influences and national influences are of roughly equal importance in explaining the common movements in equity returns significant evidence indicates a trend toward increasing integration within the european union but not worldwide

technological and organisational change in a process of industrial rejuvenation the case of the italian cotton textile industry the coevolution of technological and organizational change shapes modernization in mature industries only large vertically integrated managerial firms can bear the delays between the adoption of new information technologies and their positive effects on productivity growth a feature of the italian cotton industry is the highly specialized colocalized family owned small firm that is functionally organized it emerged in the 1970s to cope with the introduction of technological changes such as shuttleless looms and open end spinning this structure risks delaying the successful implementation of technological innovations an industrial policy aimed at the adoption of both technological and organizational change could counterbalance the trend toward decline copyright 1998 by oxford university press

the evolution of new industries and the determinants of market structure several empirical regularities concerning firm growth rates and industry firm size distributions have been developed by studying primarily mature industries the primary purpose of this article is to bring together and extend empirical regularities on the evolution of new industries and to use these regularities to gain further insight into the forces governing industry evolution to explain these regularities a model is constructed which emphasizes how factors governing the early evolution of industries may shape their market structure at maturity it stresses how chance events and exogenous factors that influence the number of potential entrants to the industry the growth rate of incumbents and the ease of imitation of industry leaders will influence the ultimate number and size distribution of firms in the industry

a maximin procedure for the optimal insertion timing of ad executions it has been recommended that dominant brands should not suffer from long periods with little or no advertising for such brands in a product category which is not subject to seasonality it is important not to let the minimum effectiveness level fall too low toward this end we present an analytical model for determining the optimal insertion timing pattern of a long run ad campaign which consists of a number of varying executions we develop a computational procedure to calculate the time between the insertions within a pulse in order to maximize the minimum effectiveness level at any point in time the focus of the procedure is to provide conceptual insights and on benchmark solutions which can reduce the computational burden of simulations rather than on providing an exact solution we also provide a theoretical justification for the two common economic axioms of nonsatiation and diminishing marginal returns in the context of an advertising model with exponential forgetting

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

selection and variation in organizational evolution many organizational populations display increasing variation over time in characteristics thought to be central to survival as we show here for hard disk drive producers we develop a simple model that might account for this pattern in it technological advance follows a trajectory consistent with a proportionate random process akin to a gibrat process that favors technology leaders but only stochastically we demonstrate through computer simulations that evolution in an organizational population with selection favoring a characteristic evolving as a proportionate random process can under plausible conditions generate increased variation over time copyright 2012 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

recent evolutionary theorizing about economic change this famous passage from marshall s principles of economics it first appeared in the fifth edition which came out in 1907 nicely brings out two issues which are as germane to economics today as they were when marshall wrote the first is the heavy reliance by economists in their formal theorizing on the notion of equilibrium the other is the appeal that biological conceptions3x201d have for many economists particularly when their focus is on economic change

evolution in the finitely repeated prisoner s dilemma abstract this paper examines some aspects of evolutionary dynamic behavior in the finitely repeated prisoner s dilemma the fitness of cooperation found in the best known simulation of this type that by robert axelrod stems from strategy set restrictions the game used for the simulation has a continuum of pure cooperation equilibria and no pure defection equilibrium some new simulations are presented here for the finitely repeated game although cooperation is ultimately exploited and extinguished dynamic paths can pseudo converge in ways that allow partial cooperation to flourish for extended periods of time

sectoral systems of innovation and production the concept sectoral system of innovation and production provides a multidimensional integrated and dynamic view of sectors it is proposed that a sectoral system is a set of products and the set of agents carrying out market and non market interactions for the creation production and sale of those products a sectoral systems has a specific knowledge base technologies inputs and demand agents are individuals and organizations at various levels of aggregation they interact through processes of communication exchange co operation competition and command and these interactions are shaped by institutions a sectoral system undergoes change and transformation through the co evolution of its various elements 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

public policies and changing boundaries of firms in a history friendly model of the co evolution of the computer and semiconductor industries in this paper we explore the effects of alternative policies ranging from antitrust to public procurement open standards information diffusion and basic research support on the dynamics of two vertically related industries in changing and uncertain technological and market environments the two industries are a system industry and a component industry and the evolution of these industries is characterized by periods of technological revolutions punctuating periods of relative technological stability and smooth technical progress we have been inspired by the co evolution of the computer and component industries from their inceptions to the 1980s on the basis of that evolution we have developed a history friendly model this co evolution in sum this paper has stressed that various types of policies may sometimes have contrasting effects on the industry mainly on concentration and technical change and innovation it has also shown that the consequences of policies may spillover from one industry to another and from one type of firms to another policies that aim at a specific industry may provoke major changes in a related industry through the product market the changing boundaries of firms or knowledge and technological interdependencies the policy maker has to be aware of that finally a major point of the paper regards the unintended consequences of policies

knowledge and competitive advantage the coevolution of firms technology and national institutions this issue of jibs offers reviews of two books that analyse the dynamic interaction between the business environments and business strategies in very different ways the institutional underpinnings for business strategies are a major research topic for comparative management aiming to explain why in different contexts firms pursue different strategies and with different implications for performance j peter murman in knowledge and competitive advantage takes a historical perspective focusing on the co evolutionary processes between national innovation systems business strategies and performance this books thus adds to the industry level longitudinal research reviewed in jibs no 4 2003 tom murtha et al s managing new industry creation and david mckendrick et al s from silicon valley to singapore

prospective voluntary agreements for escaping techno institutional lock in the paper looks for evolutionary policy responses to techno institutional lock in a persistent state that creates systemic market and policy barriers to technological alternatives we address the coordination role for authorities rather than corrective optimisation and elaborate three evolutionary policy objectives including fostering of i the diversity of technological options ii common vision for the implementation of technological alternatives and iii changes in social and physical networks we use these objectives to analyse documented experiences from environmental voluntary agreements and foresight activities we argue that combining the virtues of these tools into a new policy tool named prospective voluntary agreement can help facilitate an escape from techno institutional lock in the merit of the prospective voluntary agreement lies with the enhancement of collaborative policy cultures and inter sectoral and interdisciplinary stakeholder learning that creates commitment to desired action for escaping lock in d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

schumpeterian dynamics part ii technological progress firm growth and economic selection abstract business firms strive for survival and growth they innovate in order to grow they imitate in order to survive the purpose of this paper the second in the series on schumpeterian dynamics is to construct a simple mathematical model which is capable of studying the evolution of an industry s state of technology as a dynamic outcome of the interactions among innovation imitation and capacity growth at the micro level of firms the doctrine of economic selection insists by means of the analogy to the biological theory of natural selection that only the most efficient firms will survive the long run competitive struggle for capacity growth indeed if neither innovation nor imitation is possible for the firm a firm or a group of firms which is lucky enough to start with the most efficient technology will outgrow all the other firms in the long run once however the possibility of technological imitation is allowed for the firms the industry will settle down to a static equilibrium of perfect technological knowledge not by the success of the most efficient firms in their striving for the higher growth rate but by the success of the less efficient in their effort to imitate the others the blind force of economic selection is thus outwitted by the human force of imitative activities finally when firms are allowed to innovate in their technology the selective force of market competition is no longer capable of weeding out the less fit even in the long run indeed it is shown in the present paper that the dynamic interplay of the processes of innovation imitation and growth will keep the industry s state of technology from settling down to the static equilibrium but reproduce in the long run a relative dispersion of efficiencies across firms in a statistically balanced form

economic production as chemistry inspired by the hypercycle model of the origins of chemical life on earth this paper develops an autocatalytic model of the co evolution of economic production and economic firms represented as skills the production and distribution of goods by firms are only half of what is accomplished in markets firms are produced and transformed via learning through goods passing through them through means of both agent based and analytic modeling this article establishes three principles of social organization that provide sufficient foundations for the unconscious evolution of technological complexityc structured topology altruistic learning and stigmergy copyright 2003 oxford university press

structural reforms technological gaps and economic development a latin american perspective this paper explores the impact that recent structural reforms have had upon macro to micro linkages as well as upon the pattern of production specialization the entry and exit of firms during the adjustment process and the sources of technical change in the present more open and deregulated latin american macroeconomic scenarios from this exploration a major question emerges is the new market oriented development paradigm sustainable in the long run the interpretation presented in this paper suggests that the present pattern of production specialization strongly biased in favour of industries featuring low domestic knowledge generation and value added content and the inhibition of local r d and engineering activities resulting from the rapid expansion of internationally integrated production systems are pushing latin american economies into a low development trap from which it might prove extremely difficult to escape on the basis exclusively of free market principles copyright 2003 oxford university press

systems competition and network effects this paper discusses firm behavior market performance and the public and private institutions that arise in systems markets i e markets where consumers use compatible components together to generate benefits in such markets which include communications networks and hardware software networks popular products are inherently more valuable these network effects can drive corporate strategies and are critical in understanding innovation in many high technology markets the discussion here emphasizes the dynamics of consumer adoption decisions in the presence of network effects competition between incompatible systems and how suppliers choose which components are compatible and which are not

vested interests energy efficiency and renewables in japan this paper sets out to analyze japanese renewable energy policy a default expectation is that countries with unsolved energy problems will have more ambitious renewable energy policies including energy efficiency the japanese case only partially conforms the theoretical proposition made here is that it is essential to analyze a country s vested interest structure before we can make any inferences about its renewable energy policies the vested interest perspective derived from a combination of joseph schumpeter and mancur olson and focusing on structural economic change both complements and rivals the default expectation structural economic change like the rise of renewables typically leads to resistance from the existing vested interest structure which feels that it stands to lose from the rise of new industries the position of a new industry vis a vis the existing vested interest structure is thus crucial in the japanese case the solar industry has been far more on the inside of this structure than wind this has made it far harder for the wind industry to rise than for solar energy efficiency is however the ultimate insider approach to energy policy not challenging any vested interest structures and has been the favored approach for over three decades

wasted waste an evolutionary perspective on industrial by products abstract every production process gives rise to unintended outputs we argue that whether an output is desired or undesired is not given per se but depends on the economic circumstances which change over time as a result by products of one industry first perceived as non marketable wastes may become desired inputs into other production processes by adopting an evolutionary perspective on economic dynamics in particular by exploiting the concept of niche exclusion we identify favorable circumstances for undesired outputs to become marketable to cope with the pace and unpredictability of economic evolution we argue for a flexible policy system which favors outcome over process oriented waste management policies and balances the responsibility between consumers and producers on the one side and the society as a whole on the other side

learning and catching up in different sectoral systems evidence from six industries this article claims that catching up is a learning process that requires a long time and often differs significantly across economic sectors in the factors leading to success or failure we support these claims by examining the major factors affecting catching up by several countries in six industries india and brazil for pharmaceuticals korea china and brazil for autos india ireland israel china brazil and other countries for software korea and india for telecommunication equipment korea taiwan china and malaysia for semiconductors and china brazil costa rica and nigeria for some agricultural crops the article uses the framework of sectoral systems and argues that there are significant differences across these sectors in the variables and mechanisms involved in catching up the article identifies the common factors affecting catching up and the main differences across sectoral systems it then discusses the interplay between national systems and sectoral systems copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

introduction to the special issue on agent based computational economics abstract a brief overview of agent based computational economics ace is given followed by a synopsis of the articles included in this special issue on ace and in a companion special issue on ace scheduled to appear in computational economics

economic ethics and institutional change our economic system the market economy is a part of a broader system or society we frequently study the operation of the market economy as if it were autonomous even though there are many complex and mutual relationships between society the economic system and the other systems political cultural religious legal etc that form part of society in a market economy we may identify several components a frame or background in which the economic activity takes place a set of ideas and theories the values shared by this society the set of institutions norms and rules that control the economic behavior of people and the incentives or motivations of the economic agents the play of these elements defines the operation of a market economy is ethics an institution or does it belong to the set of values and ideas in this paper i will discuss the role of institutions norms and rules in society with special reference to the economic system in order to gain insight into the relationship between institutions and ethics i study first the concept and features of social institutions and norms second institutional change and third the relationship between ethics and institutions