individual taxpayer response to tax cuts 1982 1984 with implications for the revenue maximizing tax rate abstract this paper measures the response of taxpayers to the u s personal rate reductions from 1982 to 1984 a baseline income distribution is created to describe what level and distribution could be expected in the absence of tax changes comparison of this baseline with actual tax return data shows that at least one sixth and probably one quarter of the revenue ascribable to the rate reductions was recouped by changes in taxpayer behavior the data also show that federal income tax revenue would have been maximized at a tax rate of about 35 percent and total income tax revenue maximized at a total tax rate of about 40 percent

opening the black box of agglomeration economies for measuring cities competitiveness through international firm networks the ability of cities to operate in global networks is usually measured according to their central position within multinational firm linkages these measures are often used at the interurban level and neglect the intraurban processes of multiplier effects the present study demonstrates that this affects the measurement of city centrality in business networks intraurban capabilities of interaction are considered in the measurement of interurban indices the study is based on hypothetical networks at a micro level between long range links and it mobilises processes as agglomeration economies social capital developments and transaction costs these processes at the intraurban level strengthen the efficiency of interurban linkages it is suggested that the indices used to measure city centrality should include these local effects applied to a small sample of six firm networks the methodology shows advantages for emerging large metropolises but insufficient local effects for specialised clusters the mu

is protection for sale evidence on the grossman helpman theory of endogenous protection grossman and helpman 1994 present a theory of endogenous protection by explicitly modeling government industry interactions for which mere black box models previously existed they obtain a ramsey pricing type solution to the provision of protection which emphasizes the role of inverse import penetration ratios and import elasticities on the lobbying side the model makes predictions about lobbying competition and lobbying spending according to deadweight costs from protection the model not only makes for richer theory in terms of rigor and elegance but its predictions are directly testable whether the grossman helman model stands up to real world data is investigated in this paper predictions from both the protection side and lobbying side are tested using cross sectional u s nontariff barrier data we also compare the second generation grossman helpman model with a more traditional specification our results call for serious consideration of this model in the political economy literature

conceptual framework for regional competitiveness budd l and hirmis a k 2004 conceptual framework for regional competitiveness regional studies38 1007 1020 the concept of territorial competitiveness has gained ground in academic policy and practitioner circles in particular urban competitiveness has generated a large literature however there is a danger that competitiveness at a territorial level becomes a conceptual chimera the essential problem is that territorially based actors and agencies seek to position and maintain the utility of their regions and subregions by reference to a set of measures and indicators that are conceptually suspect and often empirically weak the degree to which regions compete depends on a manifold set of factors the paper proposes a conceptual framework for regional competitiveness based on combining the competitive advantage of firms and the comparative advantage of a regional economy the conceptual transmission mechanism to regional competitiveness combines liebenstein s theory of x inefficiency and aggl

territorial innovation models a critical survey moulaert f and sekia f 2003 territorial innovation models a critical survey reg studies 37 289 302 this paper provides a critical review of the literature on territorial innovation models industrial districts milieux innovateurs new industrial spaces local production systems etc the review is organized in two stages first the main features of each of these models and their view of innovation are compared second their theoretical building blocks are reconstructed and evaluated from the point of view of conceptual clarity and analytical coherence it is found that despite some semantic unity among the concepts used economies of agglomeration endogenous development systems of innovation evolution and learning network organization and governance territorial innovation models tims suffer from conceptual ambiguity the latter is mainly a consequence of the way territorial innovation is theorized i e in terms of technologically driven innovation and a business culture that is ma

making sense of the competitiveness debate the debate over national competitiveness is marked by some basic misperceptions with few exceptions those who use the term have a crude essentially mercantilist view of world trade in which competition among nations is just like competition between corporations not only do the authors and readers of reports on national competitiveness usually not understand comparative advantage they are unaware of the most basic adding up constraints economists however find it hard to believe that seemingly well informed people can really be this naive and assume that there must be more sophisticated ideas lying behind what they say the rationales offered by economists in turn offer false comfort to the would be sophisticates who like the term competitiveness they believe that they have transcended conventional economic theory when the fact is that they have failed to comprehend it in short the actual level of discussion is lower than any of the participants imagines copyright 1996 by oxford university press

upgrading in global value chains lessons from latin american clusters it has been shown that clustering helps local enterprises in industrial districts overcome growth constraints and compete in distant markets in advanced and less developed countries nevertheless recent contributions have stressed that more attention needs to be paid to external linkages and to the role played by global buyers to foster upgrading at cluster levels in this study we contribute to this debate focusing on the analysis of the relationships existing between clustering global value chains upgrading and sectoral patterns of innovation in latin america we find that sectoral specificities matter and influence the mode and the extent of upgrading in clusters integrated in global value chains

the impact of globalisation on different social groups competitiveness social cohesion and spatial segregation in istanbul the main objective of this paper is to explore relations between competitiveness and social cohesion in istanbul it mainly questions whether it is possible to expect a positive change in socio spatial inequalities if increasing competitiveness generates not only international business and high level services but also traditional low cost production activities the findings show that competition in different types of activities has generated large numbers of jobs but has not been able to overcome existing income disparities the increasing income differences however do not mean an increase in socio spatial segmentation since the non market processes and policies related to education gender and the urban land and housing markets have played important roles in the redistribution of different social groups within urban space in addition to the endogenous dynamics of labour markets

the nature of government expenditures and the shape of the laffer curve abstract the existence of a negatively sloped section on the tax revenue tax rate relationship is shown to crucially depend on the nature of government expenditures it is proved that a sufficient condition for existence is that the government expenditures should take the form of cash transfers to consumers rather than being used to provide a government good

on the concept of territorial competitiveness sound or misleading in an era of globalisation the issue of territorial competitiveness is of increasingly central importance for regional development policies this paper aims to deal directly with the issue from a theoretical viewpoint in particular examining two related questions more thoroughly the question of the soundness of the concept of territorial competitiveness itself in terms of economic theory and the question of the new foundations on which this competitiveness is based using a cognitive evolutionary type approach

jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete malecki e j 2004 jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete regional studies38 1093 1112 the realization that places compete for investment has expanded in recent years to encompass competition among places for the attention of migrants tourists and media glow as well as investment the most competitive places have been multidimensional in their attractions and have made the transition to the knowledge based economy the latest priority is being placed on attracting mobile workers and mobile investment creative workers are the core of the knowledge economy and of its geographies such as intelligent places and learning regions knowledge metrics innovation indices and report cards are increasingly common each seemingly developed to sort the list of places in a different order lists or league tables of the best places for business to live retire and visit are key features of economies and societies whose factors of success

competitiveness indices and developing countries an economic evaluation of the global competitiveness report developing countries policy makers worry about national competitiveness and closely watch indices ranking international competitive performance this paper analyzes from a development economics perspective if competitiveness is a legitimate concern and if the leading indices deserve the attention they get it assesses the best known index the global competitiveness report of the world economic forum and finds deficiencies at several levels its definitions are too broad the approach biased and the methodology flawed many qualitative measures are vague redundant or wrong these weak theoretical and empirical foundations reduce the value of the indices for analytical or policy purposes

the clash of liberalizations preferential versus multilateral trade liberalization in the european union there has been an explosion in the number of preferential trade agreements in the past decade preferential trade agreements are characterized by liberalization with respect to only a few partners and thus they can potentially clash with and retard multilateral trade liberalization despite this important concern with preferential trade agreements there is almost no systematic evidence on whether they actually affect multilateral trade liberalization the authors model the effect of preferential trade agreements on multilateral trade liberalization and show that preferential trade agreements slow down multilateral trade liberalization unless they have a common external tariff and allow for internal transfers next they use detailed data on product level tariffs negotiated by the european union in the past two multilateral trade rounds to structurally estimate their model the authors confirm the main prediction the european union s preferential trade agreements have clashed with its multilateral trade liberalization and find that the effect is quantitatively significant moreover they also confirm several auxiliary predictions of the model and provide new evidence on the political economy determinants of multilateral liberalization in the european union

globalization and competitive strategies in european vulnerable regions affuso a capello r and fratesi u globalization and competitive strategies in european vulnerable regions regional studies this paper highlights the role played by structural economic features and industrial competitive strategies in the performance of a group of european regions defined as vulnerable because of their specialization in industries particularly exposed to international trade different growth patterns emerge among them the most successful regions are those with a strong presence of high value added functions of best performing vulnerable sectors but also with high structural funds expenditure on human resources moreover among the industrial strategies analysed it is found that the only winning strategy explaining higher productivity gains is industrial reconversion at the expense of employment growth affuso a capello r et fratesi u la mondialisation et les strategies competitives des regions europeennes vulnerables regional studies cet article cherche a souligner le rol

towards a knowledge based theory of the geographical cluster co located firms within related industries enhance the ability to create knowledge by variation and a deepened division of labour the interdependent development between economic activities and local institutions make the cluster attractive to some industries and hostile to others the very reasons why cognitive distance might be small within the cluster tend to make cognitive distance great between clusters and make interfirm co operation across bodies of knowledge more costly the additional value created when clustering may justify the additional cost copyright 2001 by oxford university press

mega urban regions and world city formation globalisation the economic crisis and urban policy issues in pacific asia summary in pacie c asia the globalisation of trade production and e nance underlies an accelerated urban transition focusing on a limited number of mega urban regions intercity competition for world city status among these regions has intensie ed following the 1997 economic crisis with governments compelled to devote greater amounts of public resources to creating a built environment to host global investment a number of key policy issues are emerging these include demands for inclusive governance and more livable cities the appearance of new forms of urban poverty low economic resilience in the face of growing global economic turbulence and the spatial unevenness of global economic growth with the rise of civil society as a political force addressing these issues calls for a sharper focus on cities not simply as economic agglomerations or collectivities of consumers in the world market but also as arenas for the formation of political communities

on the possibility of an inverse relationship between tax rates and government revenues abstract when arthur laffer and other supply side advocates plot total tax revenue as a function of a particular tax rate they draw an upward sloping segment called the normal range followed by a downward sloping segment called the prohibitive range a brief literature review indicates that tax rates on the prohibitive range in theoretical and empirical models have been the result of particularly high tax rates high elasticity parameters or both the labor tax rate which maximizes total revenue for example will depend on the assumed labor supply elasticity this paper introduces a new curve which summarizes the tax rate and elasticity combinations that result in maximum revenues separating the normal area from the prohibitive area a general purpose empirical u s general equilibrium model is used to plot the laffer curve for several elasticities and to plot the newly introduced curve using the labor tax example results indicate that the u s could conceivably be operating in the prohibitive area but that the tax wedge or labor supply elasticity would have to be much higher than most estimates would suggest

global networks cities and economic performance observations from an analysis of cities in europe and the usa the network paradigm has been highly influential in spatial analysis in the globalisation era as economies across the world have become increasingly integrated so called global cities have come to play a growing role as central nodes in the networked global economy the idea that a city s position in global networks benefits its economic performance has resulted in a competitive policy focus on promoting the economic growth of cities by improving their network connectivity however in spite of the attention being given to boosting city connectivity little is known about whether this directly translates to improved city economic performance and if so how well connected a city needs to be in order to benefit from this in this paper we test the relationship between network connectivity and economic performance between 2000 and 2008 for cities with over 500 000 inhabitants in europe and the usa to inform european policy

protection for sale in a developing country democracy vs dictatorship for a genuine small open economy that has experienced both dictatorship and democracy we find support for the predictions of the grossman helpman 1994 protection for sale model in contrast to previous studies we use various protection measures including tariffs the direct measure of the theoretical model and perform both single year and panel regressions using turkish industry level data the government s weight on welfare is estimated to be much larger than that on contributions more importantly we find that this weight is generally higher for the democratic regime than for dictatorship

evaluating innovation and labour market relationships the case of italy in this paper the link between labour market flexibility and innovation is analysed paying particular attention to the different technological regimes of economic activities and the different geographical areas of the italian economy a dynamic panel data specification is used to assess the endogenous relationship between patents included as a proxy of the innovation and job turnover and wages which represent labour market indicators the results show that higher job turnover only has a significant and negative impact on patent activities in regional sectors of northern italy while a positive and significant impact of blue and white collar wages has been generally found

the new wave of regional innovation networks analysis characteristics and strategy today the number one priority for competitive advantage is innovation a new approach to regional business development has been pioneered in europe and the u s a this involves building a regional innovation infrastructure learning through networking has proven to be a successful approach in some of europe s more dynamic regional economics such as baden wurttemberg and emilia romagna this involves maximising the complete range of regional innovation assets the state of pennsylvania and other older industry centres are showing that such an approach is transferable from europe to the u s a the paper assesses knowledge transfer at the regional level and outlines the key elements for successful regional innovation networking practices the major finding s are that business networking is an effective way of increasing company turnover that not for profit organizations are excellent for setting up networks because they are trusted and that innovation networks are perhaps the most difficult thought requiring but important of the types of business network conceivable

some analytics of the laffer curve abstract it is shown that in a general equilibrium model with one private good one public good labour and an income tax certain widely assumed properties of the laffer curve do not necessarily hold for well behaved functional forms it may not be continuous and may not have an interior maximum its slope depends on technology as well as on the tax elasticity of labour supply for certain technologies a more negative elasticity may imply a more positive slope moreover the relevant tax elasticity is a general equilibrium one which may differ in sign from the widely quoted partial equilibrium one

science and technology parks and cooperation for innovation empirical evidence from spain abstract science and technology parks stps are one of the most important innovation policy initiatives previous studies show that location in a park promotes cooperation for innovation but do not investigate whether this cooperation produces better results we extend this literature by analyzing the effect of location on an stp on the results of cooperation for innovation and the mechanism facilitating this effect we rely on a much larger sample of firms and stps than previous studies and where necessary account for selection bias and endogeneity the results show that location in an stp increases the likelihood of cooperation for innovation and the intangible benefits of cooperation with the main innovation partner due mainly to a more diverse relationship

global investments and regional development trajectories the missing links abstractglobal investments and regional development trajectories the missing links regional studies regional economic development has been long conceptualized as a non linear interactive and socially embedded process these features were traditionally regarded as spatially mediated and highly localized however unprecedentedly fast technological change coupled with the intensification of global economic integration has spurred the need to place regional development in a truly open and interdependent framework despite substantial progress in the academic literature rethinking regional development in this perspective still presents a number of challenges in terms of concepts empirical evidence and policy approaches following an interdisciplinary assessment of how openness and connectivity proxied by one of the many cross border flows i e global investments interact with regional economic development trajectories this paper presents a picture of the geography of foreign investments from and

lobbying and asymmetric information informational lobbying the use by interest groups of their alleged expertise or private information on matters of importance for policymakers in an attempt to persuade them to implement particular policies is often regarded as an important means of influence this paper analyzes this phenomenon in a game setting on the one hand the interest group is assumed to have private information which is relevant to the policymaker whilst on the other hand the policymaker is assumed to be fully aware of the strategic incentives of the interest group to mis report or conceal its private information

information for sale in the european union abstract this paper empirically explores the role of informational lobbying in shaping the eu trade policy to this purpose we construct an original dataset by collecting information on the participation of national and international organizations in the european commission consultations on trade issues and by merging it with newly released data on non tariff measures aggregated at the tariff line level between 1999 and 2007 our results suggest that european lobbies exert a major influence on policy makers drawing upon the panel structure of the dataset we find that participation in consultation meetings increases the probability of a protectionist policy even after controlling for product fixed effects and a number of control variables moreover actual attendance turns out to be more effective than simple registration and organizations representing more than one industrial category are more likely to obtain protection than single sector organizations these findings are interpreted in light of a political economy model of lobbying with possibly endogenous costs

rethinking the economics of location and agglomeration fundamental problems exist with the classical characterisation of agglomeration economies since such definitions do not reflect the various cost issues on which firms may wish to economise a lack of understanding of the relationship between the notions of market hierarchies and locational behaviour leads to confusion not only in applied economic interpretation but more fundamentally in the construction of theoretical location models in particular neo classical location theory can be shown to be crucially flawed as a basis for spatial analysis this paper therefore attempts to provide an alternative definition of the various types of agglomeration economies such that the various strands of economic theory might be used in a more rigorous manner in the discussion of spatial increasing returns

hard and soft networks for urban competitiveness the concept of competitiveness has grown significantly and it is now common for cities regions and nations to assess improve and publicise their competitive standing vis a vis other places yet it remains rather unclear just what competitiveness is when applied to places which have objectives distinct from those of private sector organisations for whom share price and profitability serve as common metrics the blurring of the responsibilities of the public and private sectors also complicates matters with the former making increasing use of the terminology and priorities of business this paper takes the view that both public and private sectors and their interactions are sustained by networks to be effective these networks must operate at the global national regional and local scales gathering knowledge via social interaction that is through soft networks to a growing degree competitive networking also demands technological capability whether in high tech sectors smokestack industries

globalisation competition and the politics of local economic development the study of urban politics in the us is now dominated by issues of local economic development these are situated analytically with respect to a more global space economy this is the new urban politics the central logic of the new urban politics is one of cities or communities competing for mobile capital this competition supposedly has adverse distributional consequences for those living in cities or communities three areas of critical contention are focused on the identity of the competing agents the concept of firm competition underpinning the central idea of mobile capitals and the distributional consequences of the competition for those capitals serious problems in abstraction and in the concept of capital adopted in this literature are identified

measuring the national competitiveness of southeast asian countries national competitiveness is a measure of the relative ability of a nation to create and maintain an environment in which enterprises can compete so that the level of prosperity can be improved this paper proposes a methodology for measuring the national competitiveness and uses the 10 southeast asian countries for illustration the basic idea is to deconstruct the complicated concept of national competitiveness to measurable criteria the observations data on the criteria are then aggregated according to their importance to obtain an index of national competitiveness for data collected from questionnaire surveys a calibration technique has been devised to alleviate bias due to personal prejudice in data aggregation the importance is expressed by both a priori weights and a posteriori weights these two types of weights consistently show that singapore malaysia and thailand have the highest national competitiveness while myanmar cambodia and laos are the least competitive countries the performance of each country in every criteria measured also provides directions for these countries to make improvements and for investors to allocate resources

social capital structural holes and the formation of an industry network the formation of a network is determined by the opposition of two forces the first is the reproduction of network structure as a general social resource for network members the second is the alteration of network structure by entrepreneurs for their own benefit the idea of reproduction is a conventional one in organizational sociology but has taken on increased importance due to the work of bourdieu and coleman in contrast burt stresses the entrepreneurship of individual agents in exploiting structural holes that lie between constrained positions though complementary the theories of social capital and structural holes have fundamentally different implications for network formation this paper investigates these theories by examining empirically the formation of the interorganizational network among biotechnology firms we propose that network structure determines the frequency with which a new biotechnology firm or startup establishes new relationships network structure indicates both where soci

growth clusters in european cities an integral approach this paper analyses and compares the dynamics of clusters in nine urban regions in europe the cluster perspective in the studying of growth processes in cities has added value because increasingl

spatial collocation and venture capital in the us biotechnology industry biotechnology firms operate in a high risk and high reward environment and are in a constant race to secure venture capital vc funds previous contributions to the literature show that the vc firms tend to invest locally in order to monitor their investments and to provide operating assistance to their target firms further biotechnology is a knowledge based industry that tends to exhibit spatial clusters and the firms in such industries may collocate to benefit from gaining access to local markets for specialized inputs e g skilled researchers and from local knowledge spillovers and network externalities if such gains exist we expect that the collocated firms should exhibit positively correlated performance including in their ability to attract venture capital funds the purpose of this paper is to empirically measure the strength and spatial extent of the relationships among the amount of funds raised by proximate biotechnology firms we model these relationships with a spatial autoregression sar model and we control for characteristics of the biotechnology firms and the vc firms that provide their funds as well as site specific factors based on our fitted sar model we find that the amount of venture capital raised by a particular biotechnology firm is significantly influenced by the number of vc firms and the vc funding levels raised by biotechnology firms located within a 10 mile radius but these relationships are not statistically significant beyond this range

the genealogy of modern theoretical public economics from first best to second best abstract the development of second best modelling in the seventies has shaped modern theoretical economics the paper discusses some key changes in the economists conceptions the first two sections examine the efficiency equity dilemma the study of non convexities has shown that counterintuitive efficiency enhancing income redistribution might occur the introduction of asymmetric information has shed doubts on virtues of lump sum compensation the last sections focus on the intricate geometry of second best optimisation and the ambiguous value of the signals provided by the price system outside a first best world

network governance for competitiveness the role of policy networks in the economic performance of settlements in the izmir region some cities and regions grow faster than others and they increase their relative shares in the global economy the literature offers a wide list of factors of competitiveness most of which define individual capacities of cities recently however there has been an increasing focus on the importance of network governance and the policy networks formed between different cities this paper examines the importance of policy networks compared with other widely recognised factors of competitiveness to the economic performance of settlements in the izmir region and investigates the importance of classical competitiveness indicators and network relations on their economic performance with the use of econometric methods in conclusion it discusses the importance of policy networks in administrative reform processes and economic development policies

foreign informational lobbying can enhance tourism evidence from the caribbean there exist legal channels for informational lobbying of u s policymakers by foreign principals foreign governments and private sector principals frequently and intensively use this institutional channel to lobby on trade and tourism issues this paper empirically studies whether such lobbying effectively achieves its goal of trade promotion in the context of caribbean tourism and suggests the potential for using foreign lobbying as a vehicle for development panel data are used to explore and quantify the association between foreign lobbying by caribbean principals and u s tourist arrivals to caribbean destinations a variety of sensitivity analyses support the finding of a strong association the policy implications are obvious and potentially important for developing countries

levelling the uneven playing field inward investment interregional rivalry and the planning system tewdwr jones m and phelps n a 2000 levelling the uneven playing field inward investment interregional rivalry and the planning system reg studies 34 429 440 concern has been mounting recently over the increasing intensity of competition among british regions for foreign direct investment this competition has been at its fiercest in the case of a number of recent very largest inward investment projects with public concern focusing on wasteful bidding up of total incentives packages this government has been alerted to the unfair playing field across the uk in terms of the financial capital grants made to overseas companies to locate to certain regions of the uk particularly wales and have responded by developing initiatives intended to enhance the english regions however little attention has been focused to date on the other factors utilized by successful regions in the interregional rivalry for scarce inward investment these other factors comprise firstly the unique ways in whic

the coming regional crisis and how to avoid it the analysis of regional development and the formation of development policies is currently excessively influenced by the assumption that globalization represents the overriding causal influence and policy imperative this bias seems to derive from insufficiently critical borrowings from the management literature and the emergence of a stratum of economic development actors concerned primarily with regional competitiveness the article suggests that the objectivity of analysis and the economic rationality of policy making can be improved by paying more attention to localized activities to regional economic welfare and to the impact of regionalization on macroeconomic policy making

taxes budgetary rule and majority voting this paper studies majority voting outcomes fora specific class of two dimensional policies one policyinstrument influences efficiency and the other redistribution absent the political process the two dimensions can beaddressed separately with a two dimensional vote the twoaspects will interact in a non trivial way the illustrativepolicy we consider requires taxing an externality generatinggood and determining a budgetary rule which specifies theproportions of the tax proceeds that go to wage earners and tocapital owners we show first a sequential vote wherein thetax rate is determined first and the budgetary rule second always possesses an equilibrium and that this equilibrium isthe median endowed individual s most preferred policy second the reverse sequential choice implies that the median endowedindividual may but need not be decisive third the shepsle procedure also implies that the equilibrium is thepolicy most favored by the median individual fourth thisequilibrium constitutes under certain circumstances thecondorcet winner for the unrestricted simultaneous votinggame

regions in competition inward investment and regional variation in the use of incentives 2000 regions in competition inward investment and regional variation in the use of incentives regional studies vol 34 no 3 pp 291 296

how do flexible labour markets really work the role of profitability in influencing unemployment this paper assesses the theoretical justifications available for policies of flexible labour markets flms in reducing the level of unemployment in developed economies it empirically assesses the oecd s rationalisation of policy linking profitability to investment and job creation in four country cases new capital investment is found to be significant for unemployment in all cases but it is not found to be a consequence of the mechanistic achievement of normal profits without an empirically supported mechanism for how flms reduce unemployment the policy is open to the accusation of being no more than a political tool for altering distribution without concern for the wider socio economic consequences copyright the author 2008 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

low cost carriers economies of flows and regional externalities williams a m and bala v low cost carriers economies of flows and regional externalities regional studies the emergence of low cost carriers following air travel re regulation in europe has major implications for individual firms and regional economies understanding regions as economies of flows the paper explores largely conceptually how uneven fluctuating and fragmentary changes in air travel and connectivity resulting from the activities of low cost carriers have had substantial impacts on flows of labour migrants knowledge business connectivity investment and mobile markets especially tourism the resulting modifications to institutions and regional externalities contribute to net changes in the transaction costs of individual firms regional competitiveness and the unfolding and increasingly interconnected map of uneven regional development in europe williams a m et bala v transporteurs a faibles couts economies de flux et externalites regionales regional studies l emer

higher growth through the blue ocean strategy implications for economic policy a b s t r a c t higher growth is a key goal of companies governments and societies economic policies often attempt to attain this goal by targeting companies of certain sizes that operate in specific industries and focus on a specific business activity this approach to policy making has considerable shortcomings and seems to be less than fully effective in increasing economic growth we suggest a new approach to policy making that stems directly from the entrepreneurial perspective this approach examines a successful business strategy framework the blue ocean strategy to discover conditions for high growth we test the propositions on empirical data for two cases of successful high growth business namely slovenian gazelles and amazon com the results reveal a gap between the macro level of economic policy making to achieve higher growth and the micro level of business growth the findings call for a change in the focus of economic policies on specific size companies industries and business activities to intraindus try cooperation collaboration between companies of different sizes value innovation and creation of uncontested markets

the city network paradigm measuring urban network externalities in recent years network behaviour has been analysed extensively as the emerging model for economic growth by network behaviour a metaphor for co operative behaviour among individuals corporate

protection for sale or surge protection this paper asks whether the results obtained from using the standard approach to testing the influential grossman and helpman protection for sale pfs model of political economy might arise from a simpler setting a model of imports and quotas with protection occuring in response to import surges but only for organized industries is simulated and shown to provide parameter estimates consistent with the protection for sale framework this suggests that the standard approach may be less of a test than previously thought

the political economy of non tariff measures over the last decades non tari measures ntms have seen an important upsurge how ever little research has focused on the political economy of non tariff protection and the existing studies are mainly based on a single country or a specific type of measures this paper seeks to fill the gap by empirically evaluating the determinants of ntms in several countries both developed and developing overall results show certain protectionist purposes behind the adoption of ntms this conclusion is reinforced for restrictive measures i e subject to trade concerns but does not hold for non restrictive measures suggesting the legitimate goal of several ntms furthermore transnational lobbying defined as the influence exerted by national business groups during the ministerial conferences the highest authority of the world trade organization wto increases the probability of adopting ntms in both developed and developing countries

key findings of the ntm impact project this introduction summarises some of the key research findings of the papers in this special issue of the world economy drawn from a european commission co funded project on non tariff measures ntms affecting agri food trade of the eu and its trade partners the project created a large symmetric international database of regulations and standards constructed measures of their heterogeneity and evaluated the effects of heterogeneity on trade cases studies for selected dairy meat and fruit and vegetable products complement the aggregate analysis the findings suggest that at least for some import standards the harmonisation of regulations will increase trade additional findings address the potential protectionist leaning of some ntms their welfare impact third country consequences of their imposition interface of ntms with tariffs and other border measures negotiation strategies north south dimensions of ntm impacts and the value added from the application of diverse and novel models to the assessment of their effects resume d auteur

interactions between flows of human resources in functional regions and flows of inventories in dynamic processes of global supply chains abstract according to the ageing report 2015 ec 2015 the number of workers in europe will decline for 20 million by 2060 the question thus arises how this shrinking pool of workers unequally dispersed in the european regions will influence the competitiveness and profitability of global supply chains and location of the production and distribution nodes within the human resource market commuting costs are compensated thus influencing wage rates and or land rent capitalised in the value of residential properties these aspects influence the total costs of human resources in the activity cells of supply chains and the stream of profit achieved in a chain the corporation whose activity cells are located in the local area which is a net importer of human resources has to pay higher average wages than the corporation whose facilities are located in the district from which the labour is exported if higher wages do not cover these differences they create incentives to commute into other functional regions the edges of the functional regions are the lines from which human resources are indifferent regarding commuting to a given central place where the activity cell is located or in the competing central place these indifference curves move as relative wages change therefore those planning the location and intensity of activities in the nodes of a supply chain should consider the influence of the required level of wages which depends on the spatial dispersion of dwellings of workers so the intensity of the flow of items inventories in the process and intensity of the inflow of human resources interact in the area in which the activity cell is located and influence the profit of corporations therefore our aim is to present an innovative approach to the integration of the gravity model of spatially dispersed human resources with the supply systems described by extended mrp theory here the dynamics of delineation of functional regions is assumed to respond immediately to the changes in the differences between wages and commuting costs which is also a novelty of this compound model in our study these two analytical models interact and merge in the compact form for studying the profitability of activities under the volatile intensity of the production flows this represents a new approach to the evaluation of the present value of chain our method enables us to evaluate an expected long term stream of profit this is an important tool for managers and owners who might have different options regarding where to place and invest in an activity cell they can forecast the influences of the localities and wages on the profit stream before deciding to open or to close and to intensify or not their activities in the particular central place of a functional region

impacts of climate policy on the competitiveness of canadian industry how big and how to mitigate competitiveness concerns have been at the forefront of climate policy debates in canada particularly as a result of its high energy intensity and significant exposure to international markets this paper uses a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to assess the likely impacts on sectoral competitiveness that would accompany efforts to meet greenhouse gas mitigation targets that have been set by the canadian government additionally it evaluates several design mechanisms that could be used to reduce the negative competiveness impacts associated with adoption of domestic climate policies the analysis suggests that several sectors would likely face significant competiveness challenges under a reference scenario in which permits are given to emitters in lump sum however it finds that competiveness impacts can be minimized by using output based recycling of permits or by using border tax adjustments

competitiveness and industrial policy from rationalities of failure towards the ability to evolve this article elaborates a dynamic rationale of industrial policy focusing on how to strengthen the socio economic system s ability to evolve i e how to achieve high real income together with qualitative change it highlights that the ubiquitous rationalities of failure be it of markets governments or systems are rooted in a peculiar habit of accepting hypothetical perfect states as normative benchmarks in contrast a dynamic logic of intervention should start from the question what the system aims to accomplish combining the structuralist ontology of micro meso and macro with the functional principles of evolutionary change the paper proposes a general typology of economic policies based on their respective contributions to the system s ability to evolve

the industrial policy of competitiveness a review of recent developments in the uk the article reviews the recent developments in uk competitiveness policy and explores its relationship with industrial policy including regional industrial policy it argues that competitiveness is virtually synonymous with productivity growth but that while four competitiveness white papers of the 1990s potentially broadened the scope of uk industrial policy the shift from sectoral to horizontal measures has in fact helped much reduce the content of this policy the article reviews current industrial policy and expenditure distinguishing between the areas of science and technology small firms and regional policy it argues that industrial policy is now a part of competitiveness policy being closely aligned to the efficiency role of government it finds that while policy has converged on a narrower set of measures the traditional boundaries between the science and technology small firm and regional policy components have become much less clear cut

information transmission and inefficient lobbying abstract in a seminal paper grossman and helpman 1994 introduced a framework to understand how lobbying influences the choice of import export tariffs in this paper we extend their analysis and assume that lobbies have private information to analyze the effects of information transmission in a grossman and helpman lobby game information transmission leads to two agency costs one refers to the cost of signaling and the other to the cost of screening the lobby s competitiveness the signaling cost reduces distortions resulting from the screening cost on the other hand distortions from the screening cost enhance the signaling cost the two combined effects generate more distortions in the political game than each effect separately tariff protection and lobbies rents are lower than those found in grossman and helpman s truthful equilibrium therefore information transmission may improve welfare through the reduction of rent seeking activities

embryonic knowledge based clusters and cities the case of biotechnology in scotland the cluster concept has been promoted in recent years as a panacea for economic development both locally and nationally one source of theoretical and empirical ambiguity in the concept is related to the spatial processes underpinning cluster development and to the relationship between cities and clusters in particular this paper examines the case of the biotechnology cluster in scottish cities with particular reference to glasgow and edinburgh the promotion of a biotechnology cluster has become a priority for scotland s economic development strategy because of its potential role in the knowledge driven economy the paper examines the major locational dynamics affecting biotechnology in scotland and interrogates the balance between the major forces driving the development of biotechnology firms in their urban location it concludes that the importance of cities to cluster growth lies mainly in the size and diversity of their labour markets in the presence of key research institutions and public sect

local economic policies as determinants of the local business climate empirical results from a cross section analysis among east german municipalities blume l 2006 local economic policies as determinants of the local business climate empirical results from a cross section analysis among east german municipalities regional studies 40 321 333 for the period after 1995 there is empirical evidence that differences in east german local economic policies explain a significant part of the variation in the local business climate a cross section analysis among 92 municipalities shows that successful economic policies consisted of a balanced mix of traditional instruments consulting real estate management investment in infrastructure and modern competition oriented activities city marketing new public management regional cooperation and public private partnerships at the current level of intergovernmental competition among east german municipalities there are no signs of a ruinous race in subsidies discriminating subsidies even have a negative effect on the business climate in cities that have implemented these blume l 2006 les politiques

trade policy trade costs and developing country trade this paper briefly reviews new indices of trade restrictiveness and trade facilitation that have been developed at the world bank the paper also compares the trade impact of different types of trade restrictions applied at the border with the effects of domestic policies that affect trade costs based on a gravity regression framework the analysis suggests that tariffs and non tariff measures continue to be a significant source of trade restrictiveness for low income countries despite preferential access programs this is because the value of trade preferences is quite limited a new measure of the relative preference margin developed in the paper reveals that this is very low for most country pairs most countries with very good duty free access to a market generally have competitors that have the same degree of access the empirical analysis suggests that measures to improve logistics performance and facilitate trade are likely to have the greatest positive effects in expanding developing country trade increasing the trade impacts of lowering remaining border barriers by a factor of two or more

firm level knowledge accumulation and regional dynamics two bodies of literature have contributed significantly to our insight into the forces driving competitiveness and economic growth regional agglomeration studies emphasise the favourable impact of geographical proximity on regional economic performance particularly through knowledge spillovers however the firms that constitute those agglomerations largely remain black boxes in contrast studies dealing with technological learning explain economic performance at firm level without systematically taking account of the effects of geographical proximity the aim of the paper is to propose a possible way to bridge this gap this contributes to our understanding of the determinants of economic growth in industrial clusters an empirical illustration of a capital goods cluster is elaborated

new patterns of governance for industrial change perspectives for brazil brazil is one of many developing countries that are struggling to upgrade their industries to attain international competitiveness sustained industrial competitiveness this article argues rests not only on firms capabilities micro level and a stable economic framework macro level but also and in particular on a tissue of supporting sector specific and specialised institutions and targeted policies meso level and on governance structures that facilitate problem solving between state and societal actors meta level the concept of systemic competitiveness seeks to address the interrelationship between the four levels the article analyses various obstacles to achieving systemic competitiveness in the particular case of brazil

taxation as a social choice problem the scope of the laffer argument abstract this paper studies the form of the tax equilibrium set in simple diamond mirrlees models and characterizes the corresponding laffer curves the curves need not ever slope downward and can have multiple local maxima local information about them is thus not sufficient to place restrictions on optimal choice among tax systems in this simple framework the problem of choice among tax systems is shown to have no more structure than an abstract social choice problem