the effects of human resource management practices on productivity a study of steel finishing lines the authors investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of thirty six homogeneous steel production lines owned by seventeen companies the productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices which include incentive pay teams flexible job assignments employment security and training achieve substantially higher levels of productivity than do lines with the more traditional approach which includes narrow job definitions strict work rules and hourly pay with close supervision their results are consistent with recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among work practices

alcohol prices consumption and traffic fatalities we examine the relationships among alcohol prices consumption and traffic fatalities using data across u s states from 1982 to 2000 some previous studies have found large negative associations between alcohol taxes and fatalities however commonly used price data suggest little or no connection between alcohol prices and fatalities these apparently conflicting findings may result from measurement error and or endogeneity in the price data which biases ordinary least squares estimators toward a finding of no price effects using alcohol taxes as instrumental variables fatali ties are found to be negatively related to prices in addition alcohol consumption is strongly posi tively related to fatalities however biases may still remain because taxes are not entirely suitable as instruments

vector autoregression cointegration and causality testing for causes of the british industrial revolution the existence timing and possible causes of the british industrial revolution are considered by investigating the time series properties of industrial production and various explanatory variables utilising two types of robust cointegration based causality tests we argue that domestic forces notably technological progress shaped the industrial revolution whereas overseas trade expansion was mainly a consequence of industrial growth results from granger type var tests are contrasted with those of toda and phillips working paper 91 07 university of western australia 1991b where the latter manifest some of the potential problems raised by the authors when applied to a data set of this type an understanding of the possible causes of the first industrial revolution may shed more general light on the forces promoting industrialization and growth to the extent that the first industrial revolution offers a template exports appear not to provide a simple pathway to industrialization

complementarity and external linkages the strategies of the large firms in biotechnology in biotechnology large firms enter into different kinds of linkages with universities and small medium sized research intensive firms we test the hypothesis that the strategies of external linkage of the large firms with other parties are complementary to one another we show that if any two strategies are complementary i e undertaking more of one strategy raises the marginal value of the other then they are positively correlated using data for a sample large us european and japanese chemical and pharmaceutical producers we find that the strategies above are positively correlated even after controlling for firm specific characteristics

complementarities of innovation activities an empirical analysis of the german manufacturing sector abstract innovation strategies in manufacturing often involve internal rd it is based on data from the german part of the community innovation survey cis 3 the results provide evidence for significant complementarities between internal r d and r d cooperation but cast doubt on the complementarity of internal and contracted r d since a productivity effect on firms patenting probability or sales with new products cannot be found

innovation complementarity and scale of production we present an econometrically feasible model that uses the information contained in the innovation profile of each firm to test for the existence of complementarity among production and innovation strategies our approach is able to distinguish between complementarity and correlation induced by unobserved heterogeneity we apply the model to analyze the spanish ceramic tile industry where the adoption of the single firing furnace in the 1980 s facilitated the introduction of new product designs as well as opening new ways of organizing production our econometric results show that there is significant complementarity between product and process innovation small firms tend to be more innovative overall

cost structure and productivity growth in european railway systems the purpose of this paper is threefold first to empirically investigate the coststructure of the railway systems in ten european countries belgium denmark france germany greece italy luxembourg the netherlands portugal and the united kingdom of the european union second to provide measures of economies diseconomies of scale and fully investigate the manner by which economies of scale have affected the cost structure of the system and have been affected by the growth in input prices and technology and third to measure economic efficiency and identify its sources in achieving this purpose the translog technology has been used and the translog model was estimated using time series data covering the period 1969 1993 zellner s iterative method was used in estimating the translog model

complementarities in organizational design and the diffusion of information technologies an empirical analysis we use a specially designed survey on french firms located in haute savoie to provide empirical evidence suggesting that information and communication technologies adoption is not only influenced by the traditional factors of technology diffusion but also by complementarity effects between strategies organization and information technologies the data collected permitted several advances firstly we could study authentic ict while the recent literature has mainly focused on computer capital stocks or automation tools secondly we constructed measures of the determinants put forward by the models of technology diffusion thirdly we studied three kinds of practices organizational and strategic practices technological choices

combat exposure cigarette consumption and substance use this study estimates the relationship between combat exposure and several risky health behaviors cigarette consumption binge drinking and drug use we find that the u s active duty military personnel deployed to combat zones with enemy firefight are more likely to subsequently smoke cigarettes consume alcohol and use illicit drugs than their counterparts deployed to noncombat operations our results suggest that the mental health effects of combat can explain up to two thirds of the estimated association between combat exposure and risky health behaviors jel h56 i12

assessing complementarity in organizational innovations for technological innovation the role of knowledge management practices we empirically investigate the pattern of complementarity among four organizational practices firm level data were drawn from the community innovation survey carried out in luxembourg supermodularity tests confirm the crucial role of organizational innovation in raising firms technological innovation the pattern of complementarity across organizational practices differs according to the type of innovation i e product or process as well as according to whether the firm is in the first stage of its innovation process i e being innovative or not or in a later stage i e sales of new products

complementarities between obstacles to innovation evidence from france abstract this paper investigates obstacles to innovation faced by french manufacturing firms using cis2 data we distinguish between obstacles in postponed projects and obstacles in abandoned projects first we highlight the most important barriers to innovation faced by firms and find that lack of skilled personnel is one of these second based on descriptive analysis correspondence analysis and multivariate probit models we explore factors explaining the perception of obstacles and study complementarities between those obstacles we show that while adopting a package of policies increases the pace of innovation a more targeted choice among policies is needed to encourage firms to persevere in their innovative efforts

the accident externality from driving we estimate auto accident externalities more specifically insurance externalities using panel data on state average insurance premiums and loss costs externalities appear to be substantial in traffic dense states in california for example we find that the increase in traffic density from a typical additional driver increases total statewide insurance costs of other drivers by 1 725 3 239 per year depending on the model high traffic density states have large economically and statistically significant externalities in all specifications we check in contrast the accident externality per driver in low traffic states appears quite small on balance accident externalities are so large that a correcting pigouvian tax could raise 66 billion annually in california alone more than all existing california state taxes during our study period and over 220 billion per year nationally

road accidents and traffic flows an econometric investigation this paper develops an empirical model of the relationship between road traffic accidents and traffic flows the analysis focuses on the accident externality which is determined mainly by the difference between the marginal and average risks the model is estimated using a new data set which combines hourly london traffic count data from automated vehicle recorders together with police records of road accidents the accident flow relationship is seen to vary considerably between different road classes and geographical areas more importantly even having controlled for these and other differences the accident externality is shown to vary significantly with traffic flows in particular while the accident externality is typically close to zero for low to moderate traffic flows it increases substantially at high traffic flows

in search of complementarity in innovation strategy internal r d and external knowledge acquisition empirical research on complementarity between organizational design decisions has traditionally focused on the question of existence of complementarity in this paper we take a broader approach to the issue combining a productivity and an adoption approach while including a search for contextual variables in the firms strategy that affects complementarity analysis of contextual variables is not only interesting per se but also improves the productivity test for the existence of complementarity we use our empirical methodology to analyze complementarity between innovation activities internal research and development r d and external knowledge acquisition our results suggest that internal r d and external knowledge acquisition are complementary innovation activities but that the degree of complementarity is sensitive to other elements of the firms strategic environment we identify reliance on basic r dthe importance of universities and research centers as an information source for the innovation processas an important contextual variable affecting complementarity between internal and external innovation activities

short run marginal medical costs from booze and butts evidence from the states this article uses a panel data set of u s states over the 1980 to 2007 period to estimate the demands for medical care cigarettes and beer the estimation process generates own price income and cross price elasticities for all three goods implied per capita beer and cigarette consumption elasticities of per capita health care expenditures suggested by our baseline estimates are 0 83 and 0 14 respectively these results are robust to a number of specification tests simulations suggest that yearly marginal medical costs amount to approximately 12 per bottle and 27 cents per cigarette in the short run in 2012 dollars these results are likely to be driven by the much larger corresponding increases in the consumption of binge drinkers and heavy smokers

co operative r d why and with whom an integrated framework of analysis abstract firms use r d partnerships to access knowledge and build global r d networks this article develops an integrated framework to examine the determinants of the choice of partners with which firms co operate on r d this resource based perspective underscores the interactions between three major questions why co operate who does and with whom it argues in particular that the choice of partners is dictated by the complementary resources which the latter command the framework is then expanded to predict the relative efficiency of r d co operation with different partners including suppliers clients rivals academic institutions and foreign firms the empirical analysis which is based on responses to france s version of the second european community innovation survey cis 2 strongly supports the overall framework of analysis

estimating the impact of incidents on urban controlled access highways an empirical analysis abstractan empirical analysis is developed that quantifies the impact of different types of traffic incidents on the speed and maximum flow averages of vehicles on a controlled access highway the incident types considered include damage to highway infrastructure vehicle rollover crashes into stationary objects collisions with moving vehicles rain fog vehicle breakdowns pedestrians on roadway etc using real world data from chile s most heavily used urban motorway freeway estimates of incident impacts on speed are generated using a multiple linear regression model incorporating instrumental variables to correct for endogeneity flow results are then generated using the fundamental traffic equation relating speed flow and density a ranking of the impacts on highway traffic of the different incident types based on incident frequency as well as impact size demonstrates that for the real case studied the incidents with the greatest cumulative effect are in order of magnitude vehicle breakdow

comparing alternative policies to reduce traffic accidents abstract this paper derives and implements formulas for the welfare effects of uniform mileage taxes gasoline taxes per mile insurance premiums and mileage taxes differentiated across vehicle and driver groups for reducing the external costs of passenger vehicle accidents the average external accident cost is estimated at 2 2 6 6 cents per mile accidents costs differ substantially across driver groups but only moderately across vehicles groups annual welfare gains from a mileage tax equal to marginal external costs for each driver vehicle group are 9 4 billion in the benchmark case the uniform mileage tax and per mile insurance reform can achieve 76 and 65 of this welfare gain respectively while the gasoline tax can achieve only 28 of the welfare gain unlike other policies the gasoline tax induces costly improvements in average fleet fuel economy that have little effect on reducing external costs

complementarities in innovation policy this paper develops a framework for testing discrete complementarities in innovation policy using european data on obstacles to innovation we propose a discrete test of supermodularity in innovation policy leading to a number of inequality constraints we apply our test to two types of innovation decisions to innovate or not and if so by how much we find that the evidence regarding the existence of complementarity in innovation policies depends on the phase of innovation that is targeted getting firms innovative or increasing their innovation intensity as well as on the particular pair of policies that is being considered the two phases of the innovation process i e the probability of becoming an innovator and the intensity of innovation are subject to different constraints interestingly there seems to be a need to adopt a package of policies to make firms innovate while a more targeted choice among policies is necessary to make them more innovative

are causal relationships sensitive to causality tests 1987 are causal relationships sensitive to causality tests applied economics vol 19 no 4 pp 459 465

the virtuous tax lifesaving and crime prevention effects of the 1991 federal alcohol tax increase the last time that federal excise taxes on alcoholic beverages were increased was 1991 the changes were larger than the typical state level changes that have been used to study price effects but the consequences have not been assessed due to the lack of a control group here we develop and implement a novel method for utilizing interstate heterogeneity to estimate the aggregate effects of a federal tax increase on rates of injury fatality and crime we provide evidence that the relative importance of alcohol in violence and injury rates is directly related to per capita consumption and build on that finding to generate estimates a conservative estimate is that the federal tax which increased alcohol prices by 6 initially reduced injury deaths by 4 5 6480 deaths in 1991 and had a still larger effect on violent crime

innovation in services the purpose of this article is to lay the foundations of a theory that can be used to interpret innovation processes in the service sector the hypothesis underpinning this article is based on lancaster s definition of the product in both manufacturing and services as a set of service characteristics the article follows the example of those who have sought to apply lancaster s work to technological phenomena various modes of innovation in the service sectors are highlighted and illustrated