calculated inequality portfolio benchmarking and regional office property investment in the uk the paper explores the reasons for the persistence in the uk of significant relative interregional variations in office property investment in the face of economic theory and empirical evidence that would support its more even spatial distribution the argument is made from a cultural economy perspective and involves the application to property of a concept drawn from the accountancy literature calculative practice uk investment decision making is distinguished by the primacy attributed to portfolio benchmarking as an influence on investment strategy the wider logic underpinning property benchmarking is subjected to critical appraisal then evidence is presented that suggests that benchmarking is a self referential practice which results in convergence and rigidity in fund structures and in the concentration of performance around a bounded range of sub optimal returns it is a barrier to the greater geographical diversification of office property investment

british regional growth and sectoral trends global and local spatial econometric approaches this article looks beneath the surface of british sub regional aggregate gross value added gva growth over the period 1995 to 2007 by examining how the differing growth dynamics of the secondary and services sectors have influenced the overall regional growth process a spatial econometric analysis is undertaken which tests regional secondary and services real gva per capita for absolute and conditional convergence at the nuts 3 level both local and global spatial analysis techniques are utilized in order to gain a detailed insight into the growth process over the period 1995 to 2007

productivity convergence in the european regions 1980 2003 a sectoral and spatial approach this article analyses the evolution of the eu productivity between 1980 and 2003 both across regions and sectors by making use of various techniques cross section nonparametric and spatial approaches it concludes that 1 the regional and sectoral dispersion of productivity is quite high 2 the gains experienced in aggregate productivity are due entirely to the sectors productivity growth effect 3 there is a weak beta convergence process at the aggregate and sectoral levels 4 the accounting decomposition of the aggregate productivity convergence process reveals the sectoral productivity growth effect to be the only responsible factor for regional catching up 5 finally there are clear signs of spatial dependence which when properly addressed increase the speed of convergence at the aggregate level

convergence across canadian provinces 1961 to 1991 the purpose of this study is to provide a new look at the evolution of regional disparities in canada in the light of the recent convergence studies produced by european and american economists the degree of convergence of a variety of per capita income and output measures from 1961 to today is analysed the empirical analysis suggests that there is evidence of convergence in canada for different measurements of per capita income and output since the early 1960s during this period convergence has been helped by a favorable change in terms of trade and by government transfers and taxes our estimates of the convergence speed for canadian provinces are of the same magnitude as those found for regions within the same country and across countries in european and american studies

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

the income inequality nexus in a developed country small scale regional evidence from austria abstractthe income inequality nexus in a developed country small scale regional evidence from austria regional studies this paper analyses the relationship between regional inequality and average income in a small scale framework for austria the empirical findings are based on a novel inequality database generated from individual wage tax information at the municipality level this study researches the magnitude of regional spillovers of income and inequality using spatial econometric methods the results show a pronounced positive relation between regional income levels and inequality where especially high income municipalities exhibit a large spread in the income distribution furthermore it shows that higher levels of inequality are associated with income gains at the top of the distribution

physical and human capital and brazilian regional growth a spatial econometric approach for the period 1970 2010 carvalho r and silveira neto r physical and human capital and brazilian regional growth a spatial econometric approach for the period 1970 2010 regional studies this paper identifies the determinants of economic growth and analyses the dynamics of income using a panel of 522 brazilian micro regions for period 1970 2010 based on the spatial extension of the mankiw romer weil mrw model and explicitly considering both physical and human capital the parameters of a spatial durbin model sdm with fixed effects are estimated the direct and indirect impacts of the determinants of regional growth are then calculated the results indicate strong spatial dependence among brazilian micro regions and that investments in both physical and human capital are important for the growth of the brazilian regional economies

ecological well being performance growth in china 1994 2014 from perspectives of industrial structure green adjustment and green total factor productivity abstract industrial structure green adjustment isga and green total factor productivity gtfp deriving from development processes for green goals recently attracted great attention as two ways to achieve ecological well being performance ewp growth which is one of the main green development goals that humanity should pursue and which affects the efficiency improvement of transforming ecological consumption into human well being in this paper the effects of isga and gtfp on ewp growth are empirically tested in a dynamic panel model of spatial econometrics using statistics from 30 provinces of china in the 1994 2014 period in particular the indicator system of isga is firstly constructed based on the theories of ewp and three dimensional industrial ecological footprint 3dief the results indicate that spatial spillovers are important factors in the effects the main driving force for ewp growth in provinces of china had gradually shifted from isga to gtfp and gtfp is essential for structural bonuses from isga to take effect in addition a provincial government needs to target reference objects from not only other provinces in the same economic zone s yardstick competition but also isga and gtfp situations in geographically close or economically similar provinces in addition the adverse ewp effects of isga can be mitigated by gtfp increase or a combination of gtfp and isga for provinces in all stages of isga in general improving gtfp will be the main driving force for china s provincial ewp growth and the main venue through which the adverse effects of improper isga can be mitigated the present study contributes to explore the ewp growth effect of isga and gtfp can at least provide a valuable guidance and in depth understanding to researchers operators and policy makers who wish to improve human well being in an ecologically efficient way as well as for the follow up studies

vertical organization of production and firm growth this paper empirically explores if different vertical organizational forms i e vertical integration versus dis integration give rise to unlike growth behaviors within the same industry an econometric analysis is conducted in a sample of around 500 italian machine tool mt builders for the period 1998 2007 implementing instrumental variables to control for the endogeneity of the organizational form in the relation ceteris paribus vertically integrated firms result to be characterized by a less dispersed distribution of growth rates than their dis integrated counterparts several concurring factors such as adjustment costs organizational slacks and a better management of fluctuations in the markets of intermediate and final products may explain the more a stablea growth profile of vertically integrated firms by means of analyzing how different organizational forms map into the distribution of output growth rates this work provides insight into the firm dynamics in a mature industry in which both vertically integrated and dis integrated firms coexist

religious adherence and county economic growth in the us abstract we estimate a barro type conditional convergence model using religious adherence data from the american religious data archive to analyze independent effects of church adherence rates on economic growth in the united states at the county level per capita income growth is modeled as a function of initial per capita income initial human capital stock and a set of control and related variables including religious adherence religious diversity and regional indicator variables we also investigate the independent effects of three main denominations namely catholics evangelical christians and mainline christians on county economic growth our results indicate that the religious adherence in general is significantly greater than zero and not beneficial for us county income growth we find mixed results for effects of various denominations

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

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

the effects of customs unions on the pattern and terms of trade in a ricardian model with a continuum of goods abstract this paper adapts the dornbusch fischer samuelson continuum of goods ricardian model to three countries the pattern of trade and the terms of trade are determined endogenously in this general equilibrium model we derive comparative statics effects of endowment and tariff changes on trade patterns and terms of trade and apply the results to customs union theory trade creation and trade diversion impacts of unions are shown to be determined by the position of countries traded goods on the continuum in addition the desirability of economic integration is found to depend on the level of country development

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

productivity across industries and countries time series theory and evidence the authors examine whether convergence in aggregate productivity is also occurring at the industry level in fourteen oecd countries from 1970 to 1987 using both cross section and time series methods they find convergence in some sectors such as services however surprisingly the authors find that convergence does not hold for the manufacturing sector decomposing aggregate convergence into industry productivity gains and changing sectoral shares of output they find the service sector to be responsible for the bulk of cross country convergence to the united states the authors develop a new result on the asymptotic normality of panel unit root estimators to formally test within sector convergence copyright 1996 by mit press

dynamics of russian regional clubs the time of divergence carluer f 2005 the dynamics of russian regional clubs the time of divergence regional studies 39 713 726 this paper examines the evolution of russian regional disparities in the light of the theory of convergence clubs the first part presents the limits of the methodology traditionally used in most studies of the convergence process for example the choice of indicators usually per capita income or labour productivity and the statistical test applied beta or sigma convergence strongly influence the results obtained sometimes adversely then following the works of quah and fingleton the superiority of an analysis of distribution dynamics especially one based on markov chains is explained the second part presents the main results based on the per capita regional income of the russian database 88 regions over a fairly long period 1985 99 the key conclusion is the strong diversity of regional evolutions which are characterized by both inertia rich regions remain rich poor regions

surviving the great recession the influence of income inequality in us urban counties abstractsurviving the great recession the influence of income inequality in us urban counties regional studies while there has been extensive research on the role of income inequality in economic growth there has been less investigation as to the role of income inequality on economic resilience this paper addresses the relationship between income inequality and resilience by evaluating the vulnerability of urban counties in the united states entering recession between 2006 and 2010 and tests whether income inequality contributes to their probability of recession survival a cox proportional hazards model is used to determine factors contributing toward urban counties resilience to the external shock of the great recession the research is focused on the relationship between the level of income inequality in a county and its recession risk it is found that areas with increased income inequality entered recession earlier

technical progress in a three country ricardian model with a continuum of goods abstract this paper develops a three country extension to the ricardian model with a continuum of goods in contrast to the standard two country version uniform technical progress in one country is shown to make the country which is a close substitute in production unambiguously worse off while improving the welfare of the other less similar country

income convergence among u s states cross sectional and time series evidence we perform convergence tests on the u s states for per capita income from 1930 to 2009 cross sectional tests support overall convergence and convergence but may not hold true for the last three decades time series tests suggest that about half of the states exhibit stochastic convergence and of these all are also converging probit regressions reveal that the likelihood a state is converging is a function of changing capital to labour ratios the size of the agricultural sector and levels of taxation and tax revenue regional disparities in convergence remain among the southern and midwestern states convergence des niveaux de revenus entre les etats americains resultats a partir de donnes transversales et de series chronologiques on presente des tests de convergence des revenus per capita des etats americains entre 1930 et 2009 les tests transversaux supportent l hypothese de convergence de type et de type mais pourraient ne pas tenir pour les trois dernieres decennies les tests utilisant les series chronologiques suggerent que la moitie des etats montrent une convergence stochastique et que de ceux ci tous supportent l hypothese de convergence de type des regressions par la methode probit revelent que la vraisemblance qu un etat converge depend des rapports capital travail changeants de la taille du secteur agricole et des niveaux de taxation et de rentrees fiscales des disparites regionales dans la convergence demeurent entre les etats du sud et du midwest

spatial analysis of change trend and influencing factors of total factor productivity in china s regional construction industry total factor productivity tfp is a measure of long term economic growth and a comprehensive industry level productivity measure there are large gaps in china s regional construction industry dev

credibility and exchange rate management in developing countries abstract the paper discusses the role of credibility factors in the conduct of exchange rate policy in developing countries the analysis is based on a simple framework in which policymakers are concerned about inflation and external competitiveness price setters in the nontradable sector of the economy engage in a strategic game against the authorities the model generates a devaluation bias which undermines the credibility of a fixed exchange rate the role of reputational factors signaling considerations and joining a currency union as possible solutions to this bias is examined

neighborhood effects and pro environmental behavior the case of italian separate waste collection abstract this paper investigates the relationship between neighborhood effects and pro environmental behavior working on 1999 2012 data on separate waste collection in italian provinces a spatial econometric analysis is carried out while a substantial stream of research focuses on recycling behavior determinants spatial dependence among different inter regional geographical areas has been less studied here empirical support is provided to the existence of spatial effects and heterogeneous behavior in the italian context it is found that waste collecting habits tend to be strongly influenced by proximity effects either in a positive or negative way moreover the paper tests the nature of such influence in terms of time effects by evaluating non contemporary spatial dependence good or bad pro environmental behavior as a persistent dynamic effect is found with the possibility of both self sustaining virtuous socio spatial dynamics and perverse lock in these results call for a rethinking of environmental policies and in particular for a stronger focus upon the social dimension of spatial diffusion phenomena in pro environmental behaviors

stochastic convergence amongst mexican states carrion i silvestre j l and german soto v 2007 stochastic convergence amongst mexican states regional studies 41 531 541 the paper investigates the convergence process experienced by the mexican states in the period 1940 2001 the analysis indicates that misleading conclusions can be obtained if the presence of structural breaks is not taken into account when testing for the presence of stochastic convergence thus after allowing for structural breaks evidence in favour of convergence in terms of real per capita gdp is found using both unit root and co integration tests empirical evidence shows that economic convergence has changed over time with mixed effects although changes were toward convergence in the majority of cases consistent with stochastic convergence carrion i silvestre j l et german soto v 2007 la convergence stochastique parmi les etats au mexique regional studies 41 531 541 cet article cherche a examiner le processus de convergence aux etats mexicains entre 1940 et

ex post analysis of economic impacts from wind power development in u s counties wind power development has surged in recent years in the united states policymakers and economic development practitioners to date have typically relied upon project level case studies or modeled input output estimates to assess the economic development impacts from wind power often focusing on potential local state wide or national employment or earnings impacts building on this literature we conduct an ex post econometric analysis of the county level economic development impacts of wind power installations from 2000 through 2008 in a large wind rich region in the country taking into account factors influencing wind turbine location we find an aggregate increase in county level personal income and employment of approximately 11 000 and 0 5 jobs per megawatt of wind power capacity installed over the sample period of 2000 to 2008 these estimates appear broadly consistent with modeled input output results and translate to a median increase in total county personal income and employment of 0 2 and 0 4 for counties with installed wind power over the same period

diversification cones trade costs and factor market linkages abstract this paper finds non uniform differences in the distribution functions of factor usage intensities among 10 rich oecd countries the 10 countries form three distinct groups such that the between group differences are more pronounced than within group differences and capital abundant countries are in capital abundant groups the estimation works even if the same industry codes represent different goods across countries in the data the finding is consistent with the multiple cone factor proportions theory with zero trade costs with each group being one cone an alternative interpretation is non zero trade costs both interpretations imply weak factor market linkages between the countries in different groups

beyond the algebra of explanation hov for the technology age it is hard to believe that factor endowments theory could offer an adequate explanation of international trade patterns while the theory adequately predicts saudi arabian oil exports it hardly seems appropriate for explaining the revolutionary impact of new technologies on world trade yet to take this position is to misunderstand the thrust of recent empirical research in international trade research that is giving shape to a new generation of heckscher ohlin vanek hov thinking the core of this new thinking is a class of hov predictions that allow for international differences in technology and choice of techniques the literature is in the process of rapid evolution as a result the key questions tend to get lost there have been three of them first what empirical regularities account for the poor performance of the hov model second are there alternative assumptions about technology that lead to better test results for the model both of these are interesting questions but they hardly constitute an end point for understanding the impacts of international trade as edward e leamer 1993 p 439 pointed out e conomists ought to abandon the idea that models are either true or false in favor of the notion that models are sometimes useful and sometimes misleading the third and most important question is whether the hov model provides a useful framework for thinking about international technology differences in spite of the defects of the model the answer is a definite yes 9

measurement of the factor content of foreign trade with traded intermediate goods abstract in a recent article helpman 1984 develops readily testable bilateral restrictions in a model of international trade which preserves the spirit of heckscher ohlin trade theory important in any empirical exploration of the heckscher ohlin model is the decision of whether to employ direct or direct plus indirect calculations in determining the factor content of trade this paper extends helpman s analysis to a world of freely traded intermediate goods and shows that direct factor content calculations are the theoretically appropriate measure for use in evaluating these empirical implications of the heckscher ohlin model

regional factor price convergence across four major european countries w ebber d j and w hite p 2003 regional factor price convergence across four major european countries reg studies 37 773 782 neo classical growth models predict that the free movement of goods and factors will result in the spatial convergence of output and an ensuing convergence of factor prices based on distribution free statistics this paper presents an empirical examination of average factor prices for labour across 58 regions of the eu over the period 1980 94 using methods of concordance and discordance that identify the presence of switching persistence stratification and convergence between individual and groups of regions our results suggest swings in the trend between factor price convergence and factor price divergence while switching persistence and stratification characterize the sample s evolution w ebber d j et w hite p 2003 la convergence re gionale des prix des facteurs a travers quatre grands pays europeens reg studies 37 773 782 les modeles de croissance neo

using spatial econometrics to analyze local growth in sweden lundberg j 2006 using spatial econometrics to analyse local growth in sweden regional studies 40 303 316 the paper investigates factors that determine the average income growth and net migration rates in swedish municipalities during 1981 99 the main issue is to test the hypothesis that conditional on a set of other possible determinants of regional growth the growth rate in one municipality is affected by the growth rates in its neighbouring municipalities the hypothesis of conditional convergence is also tested a positive correlation is found between net migration rates in neighbouring municipalities which suggests that net migration tends to spillover to neighbouring municipalities when it comes to average income growth the results indicate spatial dependence in the error terms during the 1980s however there is no clear evidence in favour of the hypothesis of conditional convergence instead the results predict conditional divergence between municipalities located in the stockholm reg

mobility and modality trends in us state personal income we examine the mobility and modality trends in us state per capita personal income and its components during the 1929 1999 period we find strong evidence of convergence for states but that the tendency towards convergence and the associated mobility within the distribution varies during the period and especially for the 1980s our analysis of convergence by income component suggests that transfer income contributes more to the observed convergence than does asset income we also note that distributional mobility need not be accompanied by high rank mobility and find that trends toward convergence in the us have tended to preserve rank ordering cet article cherche a examiner les tendances de mobilite et de modalitequant aux revenus personnels par tete et a ses composants aux etats unis pendant la periode qui va de 1929 a1999 il s avere de fortes preuves d une convergence entre etats qui varie au cours de la periode etudiee et qui va de pair avec une variation de la mobilite associee au sein de

regional income stratification in unified germany using a gini decomposition approach frick j r and goebel j regional income stratification in unified germany using a gini decomposition approach regional studies using representative micro data from the german socio economic panel study soep this paper delivers new insights into the development of income inequality and regional stratification in germany after unification this paper applies a new method for detecting social stratification by a decomposition of the gini index that yields the obligatory between and within group components as well as an overlapping index for the different sub populations it is found that east germany is still a stratum on its own when using post government income but since 2001 no longer is when using pre government income these results remain stable when using alternatively defined regional classifications however there are also indications of some regional variation within west germany frick j r et goebel j les tranches de revenu regional dans l allemagne unifiee employant une decompositi

is income inequality harmful for regional growth evidence from the european union this article examines the relationship between income inequality and economic growth in the regions of several european union countries over the period 1993 2002 using the information provided by the european community household panel taking into consideration the relevance of spatial effects in this context different versions of a spatial econometric model are estimated the results indicate that the degree of income dispersion is negatively associated with regional growth this finding is in fact robust to various alternative specifications including a number of additional explanatory variables such as initial per capita gdp the sectoral composition of economic activity human capital stock population density and market potential furthermore the observed negative correlation between income inequality and economic performance does not depend on the specific measure used to quantify the degree of income dispersion

the narrow moving band the dutch disease and the competitive consequences of mrs thatcher notes on trade in the presence of dynamic scale economies abstract this paper presents a model of trade in which comparative advantage instead of being determined by underlying attributes of countries evolves over time through learning by doing in this model arbitrary patterns of specialization once established tend to become entrenched over time the model sheds light on three widely held views that do not make sense in more conventional models first is the view that temporary protection of selected sectors can permanently alter the pattern of comparative advantage in the protecting country s favor second is the view that seemingly favorable developments such as the discovery of exportable natural resources may lead to a permanent loss of other sectors and reduce welfare in the long run third is the possibility that a temporary overvaluation of a currency due to tight money can lead to a permanent loss of competitiveness in some sectors

3 3 theory of customs unions abstract four recent models those of berglas corden meade and riezman which have extended the theory of customs union to 3 3 dimensions are reviewed the reasons for both apparent and real differences among the welfare propositions from these models are explained some new extensions are derived the main conclusions are that the family of 3 3 models introduce several effects which cannot be present in 3 2 models and that the distinctions among the models are due mostly to diverse assumptions concerning the trilateral pattern of trade which are not readily apparent

regional mobility in the european union regional mobility in the spatial distribution of per capita income in the european union is examined over the period 1977 to 1999 the methodology used to investigate this issue combines a series of measures taken from the literature devoted to the dynamic study of personal income distribution with a non parametric analysis the results show limited mobility in the distribution considered and a decline in mobility over time the empirical evidence presented indicates moreover that mobility patterns vary as a function of regional development levels additionally the analysis carried out investigates the role played in explaining intra distribution mobility by variables such as per capita income population density per capita expenditure in investment market potential and the share in total employment of agriculture advanced services and non market services

economic and social convergence in colombia royuela v and garcia g a economic and social convergence in colombia regional studies gross domestic product gdp has usually been used as a proxy for human well being nevertheless other social aspects should also be considered such as life expectancy infant mortality educational enrolment and crime issues this paper investigates economic and social convergence between regions in colombia in the period 1975 2005 the main results confirm that there is convergence in colombia in key social variables although not in the classic economic variable gdp per capita it is also found that spatial autocorrelation reinforces convergence processes through deepening market and social factors while isolation condemns regions to non convergence

trade agreements vs unilateral tariff reductions evidence from modeling with a continuum of goods the relative merits of preferential trading agreements and unilateral tariff reduction are investigated yielding the conclusion that preferential agreements are superior for plausible specifications of tastes and endowments the attractiveness of agreements however depends crucially on general equilibrium effects on intraunion and external terms of trade game theoretic differences between the alternative policy strategies are emphasized agreements are cooperative equilibria while unilateral action defines a noncooperative stackelberg equilibrium the analytical framework is a three country variant of the dornbusch fischer samuelson classical trade model numerical simulations also illustrate that agreements may enhance government revenue and learning by doing copyright 1989 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

beyond gdp an analysis of the socio economic diversity of european regions abstractthis paper aims to analyze the socioeconomic diversity of the european union eu 28 regions from a dynamic perspective for that purpose we combine a series of exploratory space time anal

spatial disparities in the european agriculture a regional analysis this article examines the territorial imbalances in european agriculture during the period 1980 to 2001 by means of the information provided by various methodological instruments which allow us to overcome the drawbacks of conventional convergence analysis the results obtained reveal that the regional distribution of productivity in the agricultural sector is characterized by the presence of positive spatial dependence this fact implies that the european regions in close spatial proximity register similar levels of the variable under study which highlights the relevance of geographical location in this context the empirical evidence presented also shows that regional disparities have remained almost constant during the time interval considered however the increase in density around the european average explains the observed reduction in the degree of bipolarization while intra distribution mobility is relatively limited finally the analysis carried out allows us to assess the role of variables s

is unilateral tariff reduction preferable to a customs union the curious case of the missing foreign tariffs during the past decade and a half an important part of the literature on customs unions has dealt with the question of whether a country might obtain the gains it would achieve from a customs union cu in an alternative way by a unilateral tariff reduction utr utr may involve a partial reduction in tariffs or a reduction all the way to zero a widely accepted conclusion see eitan berglas p 329 c a cooper and b f massell 1965b pp 745 47 roma dauphin ch 2 harry johnson p 280 melvyn krauss pp 417 19 and peter robson is that utr does indeed hold out the prospect for all the gains from a cuwithout the disadvantagesif two important simplifying assumptions are made namely that we ignore economies of scale and the effects of a customs union on the terms of trade 2 in the words of berglas it is important to note that if a preferential trade agreement does not affect the terms of trade then it does not allow for any mutually beneficial policy opportunities which are not open to each of the member countries separately through utr p 329 if this conclusion is correct it is very important in that it undercuts the earlier literature on customs unions the question asked by jacob viner in his pioneering work whether a cu represents a net gain or a net loss in economic efficiencybecomes unimportant except insofar as a customs union is based on terms of trade effects3 or economies of scale 4 since a cu can be summarily rejected in favor of utr the utr case would mean that for economists the puzzle is not to identify the efficiency gains or losses from a cu but rather to explain why countries form customs unions in the first place berglas p 329 cooper and massell 1965b p 247 and johnson p 270 indeed in his survey of cu theory krauss identifies the problem raised by cooper and massellof why countries form customs unionsas the theoretical issue of the past decade the 1960 s just as in the prior one the major issue as explicitly defined by jacob viner 1950 was whether a customs union represented a movement towards freer trade or greater protection p 413 the typical reply to the cooper massell question is countries tend to form a cu for noneconomic reasons berglas pp 329 30 5

on the evolution of the world income distribution the post world war ii period has seen substantial changes in the distribution of gdp per worker around the world in the upper half of the distribution a number of countries have exhibited large increases in income relative to the richest countries in the bottom half several countries have seen incomes fall relative to the richest countries the net result of these changes is a movement in the shape of the world income distribution from something that looks like a normal distribution in 1960 to a bi modal twin peaks distribution in 1988 projecting these changes into the future suggests a number of interesting ndings first it seems likely that the united states will lose its position as the country with the highest level of gdp per worker second growth miracles have been more common in recent decades than growth disasters if these dynamics continue the future income distribution will involve far more rich countries and far fewer poor countries than currently observed

preferential trading agreements an investigation abstract a three country general equilibrium model of international trade in an arbitrary number of goods is constructed and the welfare effects of the formation of a preferential trading club e g customs union free trade area are analyzed

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

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

convergence clubs and endogenous growth recent data indicate a wide disparity in the growth performance of different nations such disparities have usually been taken to imply that there is to much catching up or convergence taking place using a modified version of the endogenous growth approach we show that convergence is occurring but in a non equalizing manner the world appears to be segmented into two mutually exclusive convergence clubs with the members of the richer club enjoying a real income per capita which is significantly higher than that enjoyed by those belonging to the poorer club copyright 1992 by oxford university press

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

income and employment disparities across european regions the role of national and spatial factors meliciani v 2006 income and employment disparities across european regions the role of national and spatial factors regional studies 40 75 91 the paper analyses the impact of trends in employment rates on income convergence across european regions looking at the evolution of entire distributions between 1988 and 1996 european regions have been characterized by a very slow process of income convergence across countries and by a lack of income convergence within countries while trends in labour productivity have contributed to income convergence trends in employment rates have had a diverging impact polarization in employment rates also appears to be the result of national factors and of the negative performance of objective 1 regions more than the consequence of the emergence of geographical clusters that go beyond national borders regional convergence unemployment spatial correlation non parametric estimation meliciani v 2006 les ecarts de revenu et d emploi a travers les regions d euro

us regional income convergence a spatial econometric perspective rey s j and montouri b d 1999 us regional income convergence a spatial econometric perspective reg studies 33 143 156 this study reconsiders the question of us regional economic income convergence from a spatial econometric perspective recently developed methods of exploratory spatial data analysis provide new insights on the geographical dynamics of us regional income growth patterns over the 1929 94 period strong patterns of both global and local spatial autocorrelation are found throughout the study period and the magnitude of global spatial autocorrelation is also found to exhibit strong temporal co movement with regional income dispersion a spatial econometric analysis of the familiar baumol specification reveals strong evidence of misspecification due to ignored spatial error dependence because of this dependence shocks originating in one state can spillover into surrounding states potentially complicating the transitional dynamics of the convergence process rey s j et montouri

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

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

are regional incomes in the usa converging a non linear perspective christopoulos d k and tsionas e g 2007 are regional incomes in the usa converging a non linear perspective regional studies 41 525 530 this article deviates from the current practice of regional convergence by allowing output convergence to follow a non linear process in this scenario all standard linear unit root tests have low power thus frequently leading to misguided conclusions in light of this a unit root test based on a non linear model is adopted which tests the null hypothesis of a unit root against a non linear alternative the findings overwhelmingly support the tendency of us regions to converge over time christopoulos d k et tsionas e g 2007 les revenus regionaux aux etats unis est ce qu ils convergent un point de vue non lineaire regional studies 41 525 530 l article s ecarte de la pratique actuelle de la convergence regionale en permettant a la convergence du rendement de suivre un processus non lineaire dans ce cas ci tout test lineaire standard de la racine unit