dividend taxes corporate investment and q abstract taxes on corporate distributions have traditionally been regarded as a double tax on corporate income this view implies that while the total effective tax rate on corporate source income affects real economic decisions the distribution of this tax burden between the shareholders and the corporation is irrelevant recent research has suggested an alternative to this traditional view one explanation of why firms in the united states pay dividends in spite of the heavy tax liabilities associated with this form of distribution is that the stock market capitalizes the tax payments associated with corporate distributions this capitalization leaves investors indifferent at the margin between a corporation s decision to pay out dividends or to retain earnings this alternative view holds that while changes in the dividend tax rate will affect shareholder wealth they will have no impact on corporate investment decisions this paper develops econometric tests which distinguish between these two views of dividend taxation by extending tobin s q theory of investment to incorporate taxes at both the corporate and personal levels the implications of each view for corporate investment decisions can be derived the competing views may be tested by comparing the performance of investment equations estimated under each theory s predictions british time series data are particularly appropriate for testing hypotheses about dividend taxes because of the substantial postwar variation in effective tax rates on corporate distributions the econometric results suggest that dividend taxes have important effects on investment decisions

the effect of human capital on countries economic efficiency the paper applies time dependent conditional frontier estimators in order to examine the effect of human capital on countries economic efficiency levels specifically time dependent conditional full and partial efficiency measures are applied to a sample of 123 countries for the period of 1970 2011 the results from the nonparametric analysis reveal a nonlinear relationship between countries human capital technological change and efficiency levels

voting in firms the role of agenda control size and voter homogeneity voting is a common feature of most firms unrestricted voting however can lead to unstable decision making the authors find that firms make trade offs among collective decision making production scale firm structure and voter characteristics that are consistent with efforts to economize on the costs of voting firm responses include agenda control restrictions to obtain a homogeneous voting population and limits on firm size the authors consider three long surviving producer cooperatives representing extreme cases of collective decision making and find that their organization is sensitive to the costs of voting and to the employment of mechanisms to constrain those costs copyright 1991 by oxford university press

the role of energy in productivity growth the objective of this paper is to analyze the role of energy in the growth of productivity the special significance of energy in economic growth was first established in the classic study energy and the american economy 1850 1975 by sam schurr and his associates 1960 at resources for the future for the period from 1920 to 1955 schurr noted that energy intensity of production had fallen while both labor and total factor productivity were rising the simultaneous decline in energy intensity and labor intensity of production ruled out the possibility of explaining the growth of productivity solely on the basis of substitution of less expensive energy for more expensive labor since the quantity of both energy and labor inputs required for a given level of output had been reduced technical change is also a critical explanatory factor an alternative explanation for growth of output with declining energy and labor intensity required an examination of the character of technical change this examination was motivated by the fact that from 1920 to 1955 the utilization of electricity had expanded by a factor of more than ten while consumption of all other forms of energy only doubled the two key features of technical change during this period were that the thermal efficiency of conversion of fuels into electricity increased by a factor of three and that the unusual characteristics of electricity had made it possible to perform tasks in altogether different ways than if the fuels had to be used directly schurr 1983 p 3 schurr 1982 has recently extended the analysis of energy and the american economy through 1981 for the period through 1969 his conclusions are as follows although the inverse relationship between total factor productivity and energy intensity virtually disappeared during the 1953 1969 period it is still noteworthy that high rates of improvement in total factor productivity were essentially not associated with increases in energy intensity 1982 p 6 schurr 1982 has analyzed the experience of the u s economy in the aftermath of the oil embargo of 1973 he points out that energy intensity of production has fallen steadily since 1973 and that the rate of decline accelerated sharply after the second oil price shock in 1979 following the iranian revolution he goes on to point out that

is there an inflation productivity trade off some evidence from the manufacturing sector in greece this paper examines the effect of inflation on total factor productivity growth tfp using time series data for every two digit greek manufacturing industries in order to do the above a translog flexible cost function is estimated and used to decompose tfp growth into scale economies inflation and technical change the advantage of estimating a very general and flexible cost function is that it allows us for the first time to examine empirically a large number of significant relationships between tfp growth and economies of scale inflation and technical change the main conclusion drawn from this analysis is that inflation reduces tfp growth in a way which is sizeable furthermore using standard causality test the direction of causality between inflation and tfp growth was tested at the manufacturing level

platform economy as a new form of capitalism a regulationist research programme the terms platform economy or sharing economy have become widespread with the development of digital platforms like uber this economy is transforming capitalism and raising important questions about its nature is it a new process of embeddedness or is it the next step for deregulation following the crisis of the financialised regime of accumulation ra is it a possible new growth regime using the approach of the french regulation school of thought we describe the nature and transformations of the form of competition inherent in platforms although this may favour some forms of re embeddedness we show that it will accelerate some of the trends and characteristics of the institutional forms of the financialised ra and that it is an endogenous product of its crisis this raises further questions and uncertainties related to the ability of platforms to generate stable long run growth due to the dysfunctionality of the mode of regulation and the conflicts it could generate

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 effects of american and japanese style employment and compensation practices on innovation success in the global marketplace increasingly requires that firms develop capabilities in innovation in this paper we argue that firms can use employment and compensation practices to foster innovation and support for innovation by employees conversely some employment and compensation systems will inhibit innovation a system that allows gain sharing by employees and provides employment assurance will foster innovation in the firm however a system that compensates employees with a fixed wage and allows for termination at will contains anti innovative incentives the former system is the prototypical japanese system particularly in large firms while the latter system is the prototypical american system the commercial success of japanese firms is increasingly attributed to successful innovation particularly in processes we argue that this success is partly attributable to the japanese style system of employment and compensation none of this suggests however that the japanese style practices c

technical progress and the growth of the japanese economy past and future this paper considers technical progress and the growth of the japanese economy many economists are pessimistic about the economy s future because of the rapid ageing of the population however capital and total factor productivity tfp are much more important than labour in determining economic growth during the high growth era of the 1950s and 1960s tfp contributed almost 4 percentage points to the 10 per cent annual growth rate since then however tfp growth has fallen significantly during the 1970s japan s machinery industries became world leaders and made possible the export led growth of the period 1975 85 i argue that the stagnation of the 1990s was caused by demand deficiency and that demand creation by technical progress is the key to economic growth copyright 2000 by oxford university press

the implications of the historical decline in us energy intensity for long run co2 emission projections this paper analyzes the influence of the long run decline in us energy intensity on projections of energy use and carbon emissions to the year 2050 we build on our own recent work which decomposes changes in the aggregate us energy gdp ratio into shifts in sectoral composition structural change and adjustments in the energy demand of individual industries intensity change and identifies the impact on the latter of price induced substitution of variable inputs shifts in the composition of capital and embodied and disembodied technical progress we employ a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model of the us economy to analyze the implications of these findings for future energy use and carbon emissions comparison of the simulation results against projections of historical trends in gdp energy use and emissions reveals that the range of values for the rate of autonomous energy efficiency improvement aeei conventionally used in cge models is consistent with the effects of structural changes at the sub sector level rather than disembodied technological change even so our results suggest that us emissions may well grow faster in the future than in the recent past

inequality control rights and rent seeking sugar cooperatives in maharashtra this paper presents a theory of rent seeking within farmer cooperatives in which inequality of asset ownership affects relative control rights of different groups of members the two key assumptions are constraints on lump sum transfers from poorer members and disproportionate control rights wielded by wealthier members transfers of rents to the latter are achieved by depressing prices paid for inputs supplied by members and diverting resulting retained earnings the theory predicts that increased heterogeneity of landholdings in the local area causes increased inefficiency by inducing a lower input price and a lower level of installed crushing capacity predictions concerning the effect of the distribution of local landownership on sugarcane price capacity levels and participation rates of different classes of farmers are confirmed by data from nearly 100 sugar cooperatives in the indian state of maharashtra over the period 1971 93

why capital suppliers usually hire workers what we know and what we need to know abstract a fundamental question for economics is why large firms in market economies usually assign control rights to capital suppliers rather than labor suppliers a diverse collection of answers can be found in the literature but unfortunately little theoretical consensus has emerged and few attempts have been made to resolve this issue through systematic empirical investigation this paper reviews a number of different hypotheses clustering around work incentives the financing of firms and collective choice we identify the strengths and weaknesses of each approach filling in theoretical gaps where necessary and conclude with some suggestions for empirical research

the allocation of resources by voting a general theory of voting which explains under what conditions voting will be chosen as a means for allocating resources and how the constitution that governs the voting will be structured is presented it is hypothesized that developers of voting organizations will structure their organizations in order to maximize the value of shares sold by minimizing the expected costs of wealth transfer and decision making in the voting organization implications regarding the allocation of votes and assessments within the organization the domain of voting decisions and the optimal voting rule are tested with data on the constitutional structure of condominium homeowner associations

the recent slowdown of productivity growth the slowdown of productivity growth in the developed countries during the seventies will in this paper be viewed as a combined effect of three closely interacting forces i a long term deterioration in the efficiency and flexibility of some basic mechanisms of the economic and political systems of these countries ii the fading away of a number of uniquely favourable circumstances for productivity growth during the fifties and sixties and iii the exposure of these economies to unusually severe macroeconomic disturbances in the seventies careful inspection of time series with attempted modifications for cyclical factors suggests that there was hardly any general slowdown of productivity growth among developed countries before approximately i972 4 1 as we know the situation is radically different since then labour productivity growth per year for the entire national economy gdp per man hour seems to have fallen between the periods i960 73 and i973 9 by about i 2 percentage points in the united states 45 by about 24 percentage points in western europe2 45 and by about 5 9 percentage points in japan 6o table i see also fig i the slowdown was of about the same size in the business and manufacturing sectors see table i to calculate the extent of the slowdown of total factor productivity growth is of course a much more hazardous matter to which i will return later if just the various system changes and the fading away of the uniquely favourable factors had been the dominating forces behind the productivity growth slowdown we would expect the slowdown to have been gradual rather than abrupt as it turned out to be this abruptness as well as its timing makes the dramatic macroeconomic disturbances around i972 4 a prime suspect when looking for the villain behind the productivity growth slowdown indeed it is a basic hypothesis of the paper that these macroeconomic disturbances were not only by themselves strongly unfavourable for productivity growth but that they also revealed and accentuated the gradual deterioration of the

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

economic growth and human capital accumulation simultaneity and expanded convergence tests abstract earlier economic growth studies are extended to account for simultaneity between economic growth and human capital accumulation the speed of income convergence and contribution of human capital to economic growth are underestimated if contemporaneous human capital growth effects are ignored

technology detail in a multisector cge model transport under climate policy a set of three analytical models is used to study the imbedding of specific transport technologies within a multisector multiregion evaluation of constraints on greenhouse emissions the key parameters of a computable general equilibrium cge model are set to mimic the behavior of a model of modal splits and a market allocation markal model of household and industry transport activities in simulation mode the cge model provides key economic data to an analysis of the details of transport technology under policy restraint results focus on the penetration of new automobile technologies into the vehicle market

productivity and economic growth in japan and the united states during the period from 1960 to 1973 the economic growth rate in japan was at the rate of 10 or 11 percent per year japan was not the only country that grew rapidly during that period france and germany grew at 5 9 and 5 4 percent per year between 1960 and 1973 and italy grew at 4 8 percent per year even the united kingdom grew at a respectable 3 8 percent per year the united states grew at 4 3 percent per year during this period to fill out the roster of the seven major industrialized countries canada grew at 5 1 percent per year after the first oil crisis in 1973 and even more so after the second oil crisis in 197879 there was a dramatic decline of economic growth among industrialized countries growth in the oecd countries dipped to 2 6 percent per year between 1973 and 1979 japanese growth dropped from the doubledigit levels of the 1960 s and the early 1970 s to 3 8 percent per year from 1973 to 1979 in the united states the growth rate dropped to slightly above the oecd average at 2 8 percent per year the rate of economic growth in germany dropped to 2 4 percent and in france to 3 1 percent in every major industrialized country there was a precipitous fall in the rate of economic growth the sources of economic growth in japan and the united states over the whole period from 1960 to 1979 are given in table 1 if we compare japan and the united states during the period 1960 79 we see that the growth of output over the whole period was 8 3 percent in japan and only 3 5 percent in the united states we can allocate this growth in output in the two countries among its three sources namely the contribution of capital input the contribution of labor input and the rate of technical change by far the most important contributor to economic growth in both countries is the growth of capital input this growth source accounts for about 5 percentage points of the japanese economic growth rate and about 1 5 percentage points of the u s economic growth rate this amounts to 60 percent of japanese growth and 40 percent of u s growth labor input in the two countries is a major contributor to economic growth accounting for 1 5 percent of the japanese growth rate and 1 2 percent of the u s growth rate the rate of technical change is an important contributor as well at nearly 2 percent in japan and 0 7 percent in the united states i conclude that by far the most important contributor to economic growth in the two countries is the growth of capital input the relative importance of capital input is much greater in japan than in the united states focusing attention on the period from 1973 to 1979 after the energy crisis we can see that capital input retained its lead as a source of economic growth in both countries however the decline in the growth of tdiscussants john w kendrick george washington university j randolph norsworthy rensselaer polytechnic institute rolf r piekarz national science foundation

contracts and exits in venture capital finance using a sample of european venture capital vc investments i study the relation between vc contracts and exits the data indicate that ex ante stronger vc control rights increase the likelihood that an entrepreneurial firm will exit by an acquisition rather than through a write off or an ipo my findings are robust to controls for a variety of factors including endogeneity and cases in which the vc preplans the exit at the time of contract choice my findings are consistent with control based theories of financial contracting such as aghion and bolton 1992

the interruption of productivity growth in the united states cessation or near cessation of productivity growth in the united states started in i974 and has continued until now the change from the previous steady advance was abrupt and its timing unmistakable although retardation earlier in the postwar period can be identified it was small readily explained and not particularly worrisome this paper will therefore focus on comparisons of changes from i973 to i98i with changes from i948 to i973

inflation and the productivity decline during the past fifteen years the united states has experienced a dramatic decline in productivity growth in the two decades before the mid 1960 s real output per hour of labor input in the private nonfarm sector grew at an average rate of 2 1 2 percent a year fueling a dramatic rise in both the amount of goods and services produced and the average real wage of american workers since then productivity performance has been much poorer falling to about 2 percent per year between 1965 and 1973 and then to less than two thirds of a percent per year between 1973 and 1979 recent experience is particularly discouraging current estimates indicate that productivity in the private nonfarm sector is still lower than it was in 1977 while the productivity slowdown has rekindled interest in the sources of growth none of the new research has yielded a satisfactory solution to the great productivity mystery most growth accounting studies have indicated that less than half of the observed slowdown in the growth of output per unit of labor input can be explained by the capital intensity of production the education and experience of workers increased regulation and the age of the capital stock some researchers claim that the increase in energy prices and the resulting reduction in energy input is responsible for much of the decline but their case is far from proven little attention has been paid to the close correlation between slower productivity growth in the united states and the other major economic development since world war ii the shift from price stability before the mid 1960 s to persistent inflation since then the timing of reductions in productivity growth strongly suggest that the productivity slowdown is related to the inflationary process labor productivity started increasing more slowly in the mid1960 s just as the current inflationary spiral began to gain momentum in the 1970 s as inflation increased productivity performance deteriorated even further the negative correlation between inflation and productivity growth is particularly striking when the cumulative deviation of the price level from its pre 1965 trend is compared to the cumulative deviation of productivity from its trend over the same period as in figure 1 abstracting from cyclical wiggles in productivity the increases in the inflation rate closely track the reductions in productivity growth that the economy has experienced over the past fifteen years each increase of one percentage point in the annual inflation rate has been accompanied by a reduction in labor productivity growth of about one fourth of a percentage point per year a number of sound theoretical reasons suggest that this correlation is more than a statistical accident and that inflation has been a major cause of the recent productivity slowdown first by increasing the variance of relative prices inflation may have reduced the ability of the price system to transmit information and cut into real efficiency gains second inflation may have created a downward bias in the measurement of real output producing a fictitious reduction in productivity growth third energy price increases may have generated significant reductions in productivity growth either by causing a shift toward more labor intensive means of production or by altering the environment in which technical progress takes place fourth inflation has eroded tax deductions for depreciation and raised the rental price of capital services which may have retarded the growth of capital per worker in addition to these possibilities which have causation running from higher inflation to lower productivity growth the correlation between productivity and the price level may have been federal reserve board of governors the views expressed in this paper are my own and do not necessarily represent those of the board of governors or the staff of the federal reserve system a bibliography for this article is available from the author on request

human capital and economic growth tests based on the international evaluation of educational achievement abstract using the secondary school science achievement scores obtained by the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement this paper provides more direct tests than others on the effect of human capital on economic growth bearing important implications for theory and olicy

comprehensive income taxation investments in human and physical capital and productivity abstract this paper analyses the implications of the comprehensive income tax for the accumulation of human and physical capital and for the overall productivity level of the economy a comprehensive income tax applying to both labour income and capital income is shown to discriminate against investments in human capital relative to investments in physical capital it has an adverse impact on human capital accumulation and lowers productivity

does productivity growth lower inflation in korea we investigate granger causality between productivity growth and inflation in korea using quarterly data for the period 1985q1 2002q4 our results indicate unidirectional granger causality from productivity growth to inflation in light of such causality we estimate the effect of productivity and other variables on productivity according to our regression results a 1 increase in labour and total factor productivity tfp reduces consumer price index cpi inflation by 0 07 0 08 and 0 37 0 44 respectively our results also suggest that the productivity inflation nexus became stronger in korea since the asian financial crisis and that this was largely due to structural reform and technological progress

real wages inflation and labour productivity in australia this paper presents an analysis of real wages inflation and labour productivity interrelationships using cointegration granger causality and most importantly structural change tests applications of tests to australian data over the 1965 2007 period corroborate the presence of a structural break in 1985 and show that a 1 percent increase in manufacturing sector real wages led to an increase in manufacturing sector productivity of between 0 5 and 0 8 percent comparable estimates for the effect of inflation on manufacturing sector productivity have limited statistical significance granger causality test results suggest that real wages and inflation both granger cause productivity in the long run

the synthesis of bottom up and top down approaches to climate policy modeling electric power technologies and the cost of limiting us co2 emissions abstract in the us the bulk of co 2 abatement induced by carbon taxes comes from electric power this paper incorporates technology detail into the electricity sector of a computable general equilibrium model of the us economy to characterize electric power s technological margins of adjustment to carbon taxes and to elucidate their general equilibrium effects compared to the top down production function representation of the electricity sector the technology rich hybrid specification produces less abatement at a higher welfare cost suggesting that bottom up models do not necessarily generate lower costs of abatement than top down models this result is shown to be sensitive to the elasticity with which technologies generating capacities adjust to relative prices

the effect of inflation and real wages on productivity new evidence from a panel of g7 countries this article examines the effect of inflation and real wages on productivity within a panel unit root and panel cointegration framework for the g7 countries over the period 1960 to 2004 the main contribution of the article is to provide panel long run estimates of the effect of inflation and real wages on productivity in the g7 countries over this period the article finds that for the panel as a whole a 1 increase in real wages generates a 0 6 increase in productivity while the effects of inflation on productivity are statistically insignificant for most of the individual countries and for the panel as a whole

the structure of u s agricultural technology 1910 78 this paper utilizes 1910 78 time series data and a single product aggregate translog profit function to measure the structure of u s agricultural technology duality relations are used to devise a multifactor measure of biased technical change a measure of nonhomotheticity is introduced which indicates the effects scale change has had on aggregate cost shares the empirical analysis finds that different nonhomothetic technologies characterized the prewar and postwar periods differing technical change biases are consistent with relative price trends during the two periods showing that the long run structure of u s agricultural technology has been consistent with the hayami ruttan induced innovation theory

trends in the substitution of production factors to technology empirical analysis of the inducing impact of the energy crisis on japanese industrial abstract japan successfully overcame the energy crises of 1973 and 1979 maintaining productivity in the face of drastically increased energy prices despite the fragile nature of its energy structure this was due to technological innovation efforts that led to rapid improvement in japan s industrial technology as a whole this paper tries to prove this hypothesis on the basis of an examination of the trends in the substitution of production factors by technology as represented by r d investment efforts since the first energy crisis in 1973 there have been a number of attempts to identify the possibility of substitutability of energy by other production factors but none have been successful in taking technology into account this paper tackles this subject on the basis of the measurement of the technological knowledge stock and en empirical analysis using a translog cost function incorporating this stock and shows that over the last two decades all production factors have been substituted by technology in japan s manufacturing industry or have been moving towards that direction

towards an explanation of the productivity slowdown an acceleration deceleration hypothesis after two and a half decades of prosperous post war development western industrialised countries recently experienced a slowdown of economic growth and productivity advance together with an increase in the rates of inflation and unemployment in trying to explain this malaise we are looking at a diagnosis that could help us to identify early indicators of a future turnaround or some policy variables which deserve to be included in a therapeutic programme although we shall focus on what can be measured complying with the standards of the guild we shall not refrain from considering complex relationships which can be grasped only intuitively even if they include phenomena which lie beyond the limits of official statistics 2 the outcome may be soft economics but we find some consolation in the dictum that it is better to be vaguely right than to be precisely wrong

the productivity inflation nexus the case of the australian mining sector this paper examines the causal links between productivity growth and two price series given by domestic inflation and the price of mineral products in australia s mining sector for the period 1968 1969 to 1997 1998 the study also uses a stochastic translog cost frontier to generate improved estimates of total factor productivity tfp growth the results indicate negative unidirectional causality running from both price series to mining productivity growth regression analysis further shows that domestic inflation has a small but adverse effect on mining productivity growth thus providing some empirical support for australia s inflation first monetary policy at least with respect to the mining sector inflation in mineral price on the other hand has a greater negative effect on mining productivity growth via mineral export growth

equality under threat by the talented evidence from worker managed firms does workplace democracy engender greater pay equality are high ability individuals more likely to quit egalitarian organisational regimes the article revisits this long standing issue by analysing the interplay between compensation structure and quit behaviour in the distinct yet underexplored institutional setting of worker managed firms the analysis is based on novel administrative data sources which allow constructing a simple ordinal measure of the workers ability type the article s key findings are that worker managed firms have a more compressed compensation structure than conventional firms and high ability members are more likely than other members to exit

heterogeneity social esteem and feasibility of collective action abstract in the presence of individual heterogeneity a major problem with egalitarian partnership such as complete income pooling is that individuals of comparatively high ability are induced to exit the arrangement this is nevertheless ignoring the possible impact of social esteem considerations based on a comparison of members performances in this paper drawing inspiration from pooling experiences in a japanese fishery we show that the exit problem can be surmounted if sensitivity to social esteem is neither too strong nor too weak if it is too strong the lower ability agents will exit out of social shame whereas if it is too weak the higher ability agents will not consider it worthwhile to transfer income to their partners when the arrangement is sustainable the lower ability people strive towards limiting the income gap

a general index of technical change this paper outlines a procedure for estimating a general index of technical change within the context of a quite general production technology specifically when panel data are available for firms in an industry time specific dummies can be combined in a nonlinear estimation procedure to yield a general index of technical change that may be both nonneutral and scale augmenting this approach offers numerous advantages over the traditional time trend representation of technical change for example the general index can serve as the basis for analysis of the determinants of technical change results for a sample of 30 electric utilities over the period 1951 78 show that the productivity decline of the 1970s can be attributed primarily to sulphur oxide restrictions and secularly declining capacity utilization due to rapidly increasing peak load demands

financialisation and the slowdown of accumulation over the past decades financial investment of non financial businesses has been rising and accumulation of capital goods has been declining the first part of the paper offers a novel theory to explain this phenomenon financialization the shareholder revolution and the development of a market for corporate control have shifted power to shareholders and thus changed management priorities leading to a reduction in the desired growth rate in the second part the link between accumulation and financialization is tested econometrically by means of a time series analysis of aggregate business investment for usa uk france and germany extensive test of robustness are performed for the first three countries evidence that confirms the negative effect of financialization on accumulation is found author s abstract

the stock market and the productivity slowdown international evidence extending baily s model of the productivity slowdown to the manufacturing sectors of five other countries we find that a decline in the growth of capital services reflected in declines in the stock market can explain much of the 1973 1978 decline in productivity abroad as well as in the united states we also show however that the stock market declines often preceded the declines in productivity growth and the model is less successful when the sample period is extended through 1981

financialization and productive models in the pharmaceutical industry this study analyzes the effects of financialization and competition on productive models in major pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies and discusses current theses which may help explain the transformation of productive models occurring under growing pressure from institutional investors and shareholder value management we provide evidence of a large dispersion of shareholding and an increase in distribution of shareholder value occurring through large pharmaceutical companies we show that large pharmaceutical companies have adopted a blockbuster model in an effort to maximize shareholder value which is explained by various factors including financialization technical change product market regulations and market competition the stock market is used to make large acquisitions and control the us drug market creating a growing dependency on stock performance and blockbuster drug sales we describe how the process of financialization has impacted the biopharmaceutical industry and argue that the blockbuster model as a dominant productive model for the industry since the 1990s is unsustainable copyright 2013 the author 2013 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

industry migration and growth in the south for at least the last two decades the south and southwest have been the fastest growing regions in the united states during this period we have witnessed considerable shifts in the location of economic activity and overall the movement has been decidedly toward the south since the early sixties when this southern migration began to accelerate an increasing amount of public attention has been directed to this topic so much so that it is now popularly referred to as the sunbelt phenomenon numerous explanations have been advanced to account for this rapid growth in the south but three explanations have persistently evoked an impressive level of debate first many have argued that a significant portion of this regional redistribution can be attributed to differentials in state and local taxing policies in particular the state corporate income tax these rates vary considerably across states but even more important is the observation that there have been significant changes in the structure of corporate taxes over the last few decades beginning in the early 1950s the relative tax rate for several southern states particularly those in the east south central and west south central divisions began to decline sharply on the other hand relative tax rates for three divisions new england the east north central and the midatlantic rose in the early sixties by 1970 the relative tax rate ranged from 0 60 in the west south central down from 1 20 in 1950 to 1 37 in the mid atlantic up from 1 15 in 1950 notwithstanding these stylized facts the consensus from previous empirical work on industry location suggests that state taxes have not influenced the direction or magnitude of industry migration however there are reasons to believe that acceptance of this conclusion may be premature for example in the early body of work results were based on simple correlations of tax levels and changes in either value added or employment 2 more recent attempts to empirically model corporate tax effects have arrived at somewhat ambiguous results carlton 1977 examining three 4 digit industries found that corporate tax differentials failed to explain any of the variation in new births of firms across smsas hodge 1979 while confirming carlton s results for the same industries discovered that taxes have significantly affected regional investment patterns in another industry not covered in carlton s study 3 why taxes mattered in one industry and not in the other three remained a matter of ad hoc speculation a second explanation alleges that states in the south have begun to exhibit a more favorable business climate although it is difficult to measure directly a state s business climate one important manifestation of that climate is its position with respect to the division of power between union and management in the collective bargaining process legal obstacles to union organization and bargaining power will be viewed by firms as a positive signal of a pro business environment the creation of legislative obstareceived for publication october 29 1981 revision accepted for publication april 16 1982 miami university the author is especially indebted to michael ward at the rand corporation for numerouls helpful discussions throughout the preparation of this study also the author benefited from the advice and comments of john antel robert cotterman lee lillard john lunn william j moore james smith finis welch and two referees of this review financial suppoi t was provided by the foundation for research in economics and education at ucla and the university of british columbia humanities and social sciences committee i the relative tax is defined as a state s tax rate divided by the average for all states as in most economic discussions it is relative price that matters 2 for a review of earlier work see due 1961 some of the studies reviewed include bloom 1955 campbell 1958 floyd 1952 and larson 1957 see also garwood 1952 3 most of the other empirical work focused exclusively on intt urban location decisions and hence had no reason to examine state corporate taxes however they found local tax differentials inter zonal were unimportant in determining intra urban movement for example see moses and williamson 1967 and schmenner 1978