for better or for worse till the human development index do us part abstract this paper describes the results of research intended to explore the volatility inherent in the united nations development programme s undp human development index hdi the hdi is intended to be a simple and transparent device for comparing progress in human development and is an aggregate of life expectancy education and gdp per capita values of the hdi for each country are presented in the human development reports hdrs the first being published in 1990 however while the methodology is consistent for all countries in each year there are notable differences between years that make temporal comparisons of progress difficult the paper presents the results of recalculating the hdi for a simplified sample of 114 countries using various methodologies employed by the undp the results are a set of deviations of recalculated hdi ranks compared to the original ranks given in the hdrs the volatility that can result from such recalculation is shown to be substantial 10 15 ranks yet reports in the popular press are frequently sensitive to movements of only a few ranks such movement can easily be accounted for by changes in the hdi methodology rather than genuine progress in human development while the hdrs often carry warnings about the inadvisability of such year on year comparisons it is argued that the existence of such a high profile index and the overt presentation within league tables do encourage such comparison assuming that the hdi will be retained as a focal point within the hdrs then it is suggested that greater focus be upon more meaningful and robust categories of human development e g low medium and high rather than league tables where shifts of a few places perhaps as a result of nothing more than a methodological or data artefact may be highlighted in the press and by policy makers

investment and market structure in industries with congestion we analyze investment incentives and market structure under oligopoly competition in industries with congestion effects our results are particularly focused on models inspired by modern technology based services such as telecommunications and computing services we consider situations where firms compete by simultaneously choosing prices and investments increasing investment reduces the congestion disutility experienced by consumers we define a notion of returns to investment according to which congestion models inspired by delay exhibit increasing returns whereas loss models exhibit nonincreasing returns for a broad range of models with nonincreasing returns to investment we characterize and establish uniqueness of pure strategy nash equilibrium we also provide conditions for existence of pure strategy nash equilibrium we extend our analysis to a model in which firms must additionally decide whether to enter the industry our theoretical results contribute to the basic understanding of competition in service industries and yield insight into business and policy considerations

credible spatial preemption it is often argued that incumbent firms may deter entry by preemptive investment in new goods we show that these conclusions are reversed when multiproduct incumbentfirms may exit in response to entry once entrants are in an industry an incumbent will often want to withdraw some goods to prevent competition with the entrant from reducing profits on other goods such a reaction makes entry more attractive to a potential entrant the equilibrium industry structure is less likely to be monopolistic as the goods are better substitutes as exit costs are low and as the competition between producers of the same good is more intense

a dynamic game of airline network competition hub and spoke networks and entry deterrence article in a hub and spoke network the profit function of an airline is supermodular with respect to the airline s own entry decisions for different city pairs this source of complementarity implies that a hub and spoke network can be an effective strategy for deterring the entry of competitors this paper presents an empirical dynamic game of airline network competition that incorporates this entry deterrence motive for using hub and spoke networks we summarize the results of the estimation of the model with special attention to empirical evidence regarding the entry deterrence motive

can private airport competition improve runway pricing the case of san francisco bay area airports abstract travelers and airlines are frustrated by long and costly travel delays at public airports that are attributable to runway charges that do not account for aircraft congestion because the inefficient charges are likely to persist we explore whether private airport competition could lead to more efficient charges that improve travelers welfare increase airlines profits and enable the airports to be profitable we use the san francisco bay area for our assessment and identify important conditions to achieve those outcomes including competition among separately owned airports bargaining between airports and airlines and the ability of airports to differentiate prices and service

strategic interactions and airline network morphology under demand uncertainty abstract in this paper we examine how strategic interactions affect airline network under demand uncertainty we develop a three stage duopoly game at stage 1 airlines determine their network structure linear versus hub and spoke at stage 2 they decide on their capacities at stage 3 firms compete in quantities the main feature of the model is that firms have to decide on network structure and capacities while facing demand uncertainty we show that while hubbing is efficient airlines may choose a linear network for strategic reasons furthermore we show that this structure softens competition by preventing contagion of competition across markets

competition in airline networks the case of constant elasticity demands abstract this paper is concerned with the effect of competition in airline hub and spoke networks using constant elasticity demand functions we demonstrate that competition in a single market may generate positive or negative network externalities depending on price elasticities of demand

airport presence as product differentiation there is now widespread recognition that an airline s operation at a given airport greatly affects its competitive position on routes flown out of that airport see m levine 1987 s borenstein 1989 s morrison and c winston 1989 and myself 1989 among many others airlines typically defend any competitive advantage as stemming from the lower costs and better service that are said to be generated by hub and spoke route systems airline critics typically respond that airlines gain market power by dominating individual airports both views are at least plausible huband spoke transportation networks reduce the number of round trips necessary to carry a given number of passengers on a given set of itineraries while increasing the number of passenger miles flown if there are sufficient economies of scale in plane size then the advantages of hubbing can overcome the disadvantage in passenger miles resulting in lower total costs by pooling passengers with different ultimate destinations a hubbed system can also offer more frequent flights than would be economically feasible under a nonstop system it also appears however that airlines gain other advantages from a large presence at an airport incumbent airlines are the major source of financing for many airports and therefore gain a large degree of bureaucratic control over airport operations this control may enable them to block the entry or expansion of rivals airlines with a large presence in a given city also gain advantages from frequent flyer plans and nonlinear travel agent commission schedules see again levine and others if the bureaucratic and marketing advantages of airport presence are sufficient to prevent most attempts at entry then incumbents may gain the ability to exercise traditional market power by restricting output and driving up prices this paper argues that both simple costreducing and naive market power stories are inappropriate for the airline industry i present a model in which consumers are willing to pay a premium for the services of the dominant airline this premium may be related to a number of factors including flight frequency frequent flier miles and travel agent commission overrides this model has the advantage of treating oligopoly product differentiation in an explicit way of treating price as an endogenous variable and of allowing for airport presence to affect both costs and demand

social rate of return to r d on various energy technologies where should we invest more a study of g7 countries abstract the importance of investment in research and development r d in the energy sector is indisputable especially considering the benefits of new technologies to sustainability security and environmental protection however the nature and potential of various energy technologies that are capable of improving the energy and environmental conditions globally is a challenging task for governments and policy makers that have to make decisions on the allocation of funds in r d to do so the optimal resource allocation to r d should be determined by estimating the social rate of return for r d investments this paper aims to estimate the social rate of return of r d on various energy applications and technologies such as energy efficiency fossil fuels renewable energy sources and nuclear for the g7 countries the results show that primarily r d investment on energy efficiency technologies and nuclear are the ones that yield high social benefits for all g7 countries while exactly the opposite holds for fossil fuels

are there diminishing returns to r d abstract semi endogenous models and to some extent also schumpeterian models are based on the assumption of diminishing returns to r d this paper shows that the null hypothesis of constant returns to r d cannot be rejected for the oecd countries

long run competition in capacity short run competition in price and the cournot model in this article we investigate the nature of equilibrium in markets in which firms choose the scale of operation before they make pricing decisions we analyze a duopoly model in which firms choose their capacities before engaging in bertrand like price competition we demonstrate that the cournot outcome is unlikely to emerge in such markets and that the equilibrium tends to be more competitive than the cournot model would predict in addition our results indicate a tendency toward asymmetric firm sizes and price dispersion that results from the mixed strategies firms use in equilibrium

total factor productivity and the measurement of technological change tfp is interpreted in the literature in different mutually contradictory ways changes in tfp are shown to measure not technological change only the super normal returns to investing in such change returns that exceed the full opportunity cost of the activity thus in the limit technological change can proceed with unchanged tfp measuring the effects of technological change instead requires counterfactual estimates reasons why changes in tfp are imperfect measures of super normal returns are also studied reasons connected with the timing of output responses the treatment of r d in the national accounts the omission of resource inputs and two types of aggregation la productivite totale des facteurs et la mesure du changement technologique la productivite totale des facteurs ptf est interpretee dans la litterature de manieres differentes et mutuellement contradictoires on montre que les changements dans la ptf ne mesurent pas le changement technologique mais seulement les rendements supra normaux sur les investissements dans de tels changements des rendements qui depassent le plein cout d opportunite de cette activite donc a la limite le changement technologique peut proceder sans que la ptf change mesurer les effets du changement technique reclame des evaluations d hypotheses de rechange les raisons pour lesquelles les changements dans la ptf sont des mesures imparfaites des rendements supra normaux sont aussi etudiees raisons connectees avec la reponse des niveaux de production le traitement de la r d dans les comptes nationaux l omission des intrants de ressources et deux types d agregation

spatial competition and price discrimination with capacity constraints abstract we characterize mixed strategy equilibria when capacity constrained suppliers can charge location based prices to different customers we establish an equilibrium with prices that weakly increase in the costs of supplying a customer despite prices above costs and excess capacities each supplier exclusively serves its home market in equilibrium competition yields volatile market shares and an inefficient allocation of customers to firms even ex post cross supplies may restore efficiency only partly we show that consumers may benefit from price discrimination whereas the firms make the same profits as with uniform pricing we use our findings to discuss recent competition policy cases and provide hints for a more refined coordinated effects analysis

the impact of high tech capital on productivity evidence from australia i introduction the bulk of the empirical research on the relationship between high tech capital investment and productivity has been based on data for the united states given the relatively large size of the high tech capital sector in the u s economy it is likely that the united states is a special case most economies resemble australia s in being net importers of high tech capital not producing high tech capital was often cited as a weakness in these economies relative to the united states however since the end of the late 1990s tech boom there has been a reappraisal of whether the production or the use of high tech capital is most beneficial hence to shed light on this debate the main purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between high tech capital use and the multifactor productivity mfp of 10 industries in the australian market sector using annual data for 1966 2002 alternative specifications of production functions are considered and estimated alternative measures of high tech capital are included with combinations of computers software and electronics capital in the first production function high tech capital is allowed to be more or less productive than other capital to determine whether there is a relationship between high tech capital and mfp it is also possible to test whether there are excess returns to high tech capital for robustness testing purposes a second production function is specified with high tech capital as a separate input into production other potential sources of mfp growth such as public capital research and development stocks and microeconomic reform are also included in the production functions we find evidence of a positive relationship between high tech capital and mfp in the market sector there is less evidence however of excess returns to high tech capital which suggests that current investment levels are not inadequate the results by industry suggest that the benefits of investing in high tech capital are not distributed evenly across the economy with only some industries experiencing a positive relationship between high tech capital and mfp the structure of this article is as follows in section ii the theoretical contribution of high tech capital to mfp and the evidence to date is reviewed in section iii the methodology is outlined in section iv data sources and trends are described in section v the results are presented and interpreted and section vi concludes ii the impact of high tech capital on output and productivity the theory and evidence the impact of investment in high tech capital has been the subject of debate between new economy sceptics and optimists for several years it is widely accepted that mfp has increased substantially in u s high tech producing industries in which the rate of technological change has been phenomenal over the past 40 years several publications have found a quantifiable contribution by computer producing industries to u s output growth 1 however australia is not generally regarded as a producer of computers data from the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd 1998 indicate that the high tech share of australian manufacturing value added was 4 5 in 1995 compared to 15 8 in the united states therefore the substantial u s economy wide mfp improvements specifically associated with its computer producing industry are unlikely to be replicated in the australian economy over the past 30 years there has been rapid accumulation of high tech capital in many countries australia was the third most intensive user of high tech capital in the oecd in 1995 behind the united states and new zealand simon and wardrop 2002 find that this rapid accumulation of high tech capital may have substantially contributed to australia s economic growth during the 1990s this accumulation has been driven by technological change in high tech producing industries lowering the price of high tech capital

the economics of hubs the case of monopoly in this paper we study the optimization problem of an unregulated air carrier which is given the exclusive right to satisfy demand for air travel between any pair of cities it chooses a network of connections and a set of prices to maximize profits thus both network design and prices are endogenous we characterize the solution to this optimization problem when demands and costs are symmetric our main result is that if there are economies of density in the number of individuals travelling between two directly connected cities the optimal network is either a hub of size n 1 or one in which every pair of cities is connected directly

energy research and r d indicators an lmdi decomposition analysis for the iea big 5 in energy research abstract the literature has always shown that there are two important factors in the improvement of a country s research output gross domestic product gdp and r d expenditures taking the discussion a step further and in an effort to provide policy recommendations on what is needed to boost research capacity this paper aims at decomposing the change in energy research papers of five countries australia canada germany uk and us into four factors gdp r d intensity ratio of total r d to gdp energy r d rate of return or productivity number of energy related papers per unit of energy r d expenditure and energy r d priority share of energy r d to total r d expenditure the findings show a general trend in the sign of the four effects on research for all five countries energy r d productivity energy r d priority and gdp are mostly found to be positive contributors while the r d intensity a negative one this pattern has exceptions that are more prominent during periods where economic growth is constrained for example during 2008 09 the results have policy implications not only for these five countries but also for developing countries low gdp that aim at contributing more to the energy related research output globally

on measuring aggregate social efficiency abstract cross country comparisons of social indicators controlling for income and or social spending have been widely used to measure and explain social efficiency analogously to technical efficiency in production the article argues that these methods are clouded in ambiguities about what is being measured standard methods of measuring technical efficiency require assumptions that are unlikely to hold for social indicators in the context of a simple parametric model of life expectancy conditions are identified under which there will be a systematic pattern of bias in estimates of efficient public health spending

convergence scale and the relative productivity performance of canadian us manufacturing industries this research is a comparative investigation of productivity performance within the manufacturing sectors of canada and the united states labour and multifactor productivity levels and growth rates are measured and analysed for an exhaustive sample of two digit level manufacturing industries an aggregate analysis is conducted by grouping industries in accordance with their degree of capital intensity the findings generally suggest that productivity in canadian manufacturing industries initially converged upon but has more recently diverged from those level displayed by their us counterparts an empirical analysis focuses on the convergence hypothesis and scale effects in explaining differences in measured productivity growth rates

taxes and the quality of capital abstract this paper shows that tax policy toward investment by changing the relative prices of capital varieties even within narrow classes of equipment can have a direct effect on the quality composition of capital goods that firms purchase detailed data on farming mining and construction machinery suggest that this impact is economically important firms significantly shift investment toward higher quality varieties when they receive investment subsidies and do not do so when investment is high for other reasons in the aggregate all of the new investment generated by tax subsidies appears to come from firms shifting to higher quality capital goods rather than buying a larger number of their existing capital types the paper also applies a methodology for calculating the implied deadweight loss from the quality distortion and shows that its magnitude may represent a substantial efficiency cost from capital taxation that is neglected in conventional work

technology development and the environment abstract in an attempt to achieve the positive externalities from a more knowledge intensive economy many developing countries have emphasized improvements in their science and technology st a substitution of energy for other factors of production and greater energy consumption by households our findings underscore the importance of considering the economy wide implications of a technology policy recognizing that better technology does not necessarily imply a cleaner environment

the transatlantic productivity gap a survey of the main causes abstract during the last 2 decades europe s economy experienced a productivity slowdown whereas the united states us economy exhibited a marked acceleration the result is that since the early 1990s the relative productivity levels between the two regions have continuously diverged leading to a transatlantic productivity gap much of the explanation for this is the strong performance of the us in the so called new economy or knowledge economy and in particular the underinvestment in r d and as a result productivity and innovation has been at the forefront in the european policy agenda however various explanations for the us european union transatlantic productivity gap suggest that the picture is rather more complex than simply the effects on or the result of particular technology driven sectors

bounds on the welfare loss from moral hazard with limited liability we study a principal agent problem with discrete outcome and effort level spaces the principal and the agent are risk neutral and the latter is subject to limited liability quantifying welfare loss as the ratio between the first best social welfare and that arising from the principal s optimal pay for performance contract we provide simple parametric bounds for problem instances with moral hazard relying on that we compute the worst case welfare loss ratio among all problem instances with a fixed number of effort and outcome levels as a function of the number of possible effort levels and the likelihood ratio evaluated at the highest outcome as extensions we look at linear contracts and at cases with multiple identical tasks our work constitutes an initial attempt to quantify the losses arising from moral hazard when the agent is subject to limited liability and shows that these losses are non negligible in the worst case

the role of product market regulations in the process of structural change abstract the sectoral allocation of labor differs considerably across developed economies even in the presence of similar patterns of structural change a general equilibrium model that captures the stylized facts of structural change is presented in this framework economy wide product market regulations hinder the development of dynamic sectors such as service industries this is consistent with the negative cross country relationship between product market regulations and the service employment share discussed in the paper additionally the model suggests that higher service prices and rents in regulated economies reduce labor supply providing a rationale for the negative association between product market regulations and the employment rate previously found in the literature

the value of risk measuring the service output of u s commercial banks rather than charging direct fees banks often charge implicitly for their services via interest spreads as a result much of bank output has to be estimated indirectly in contrast to current statistical practice dynamic optimizing models of banks argue that compensation for bearing systematic risk is not part of bank output we apply these models and find that between 1997 and 2007 in the u s national accounts on average bank output is overestimated by 21 percent and gdp is overestimated by 0 3 percent moreover compared with current methods our new estimates imply more plausible estimates of the share of capital in income and the return on fixed capital

post war productivity patterns in u s agriculture influences of aggregation procedures in a state level analysis annual data for forty eight states are used to account for changes in the composition of input and output aggregates over space and time and thereby to obtain new evidence on changes in inputs outputs and productivity in u s agriculture the measures change significantly when we use state specific rather than national prices and when we allow for changes in the composition of the aggregates especially of labor and capital inputs we compare our estimates and those reported by ball et al american journal of agricultural economics 81 1999 164 79 the national estimates are similar but substantial differences are found in state level productivity growth

ict capital and services complementarities the italian evidence this article investigates whether information and communication technologies icts hardware and services play a complementary role in boosting economic growth the main argument is that investments in ict fixed capital are a necessary but not sufficient condition leading to productivity gains above all in late adopter countries their effective implementation indeed requires on the one hand a changing economic structure characterized by a growing weight of service sectors and on the other hand complementary investments in ict services directed to ease the integration of the new technologies within firms boundaries the analysis is conducted on a late industrialized country like italy and shows that in lagging countries the weak impact of ict adoption is the result of three converging forces relatively high share of manufacturing sectors low adoption levels of icts in traditional manufacturing sectors inadequate investments in ict services

the europe u s productivity gap in a rear view mirror will measurement differences in the services sector output please rise the deterioration in 1995 of europe s productivity performance relative to the u s coincided with the renaissance of the u s statistical system which can be regarded by now as the frontier in official statistics this paper raises the natural question whether the european statistical system was left at the station while its u s counterpart departed making it possible for measurement differences to become the primary suspect for the existing productivity gap my retrospective review of the development path in the services sector productivity statistics suggests that europe lags significantly behind the u s in the services producer price index program both in terms of scope and timing of its implementation accordingly the role of these measurement differences in the post 1995 europe u s productivity story cannot reasonably be ruled out the paper concludes with a structured guess that provides a circumstantial evidence on the benefits generated by the upgrades in the u s services sector statistics the results show that these enhancements led to two kinds of benefits during the post 1995 period a considerable reduction in the contribution of industries that traditionally dampened the aggregate productivity trend combined with a larger contribution of those that generally lifted it this contrasts markedly with europe where the contribution of these two sources remained unchanged in the meantime

improving human development a long run view abstract the pessimistic flavour of the human development reports appears to be in contradiction with their own numbers as developing countries fare comparatively better in human development than in per capita gdp terms this paper attempts to bridge this gap by providing a new improved human development index ihdi informed by welfare economics the ihdi is presented here alongside the united nations development programme s undp hdi for the world and its main regions since the late 19th century social dimensions in the ihdi are derived following kakwani journal of development economics 41 1993 pp 307 336 with a convex achievement function whereas a geometric average is employed to combine its dimensions longevity knowledge and income thus the ihdi does not conceal the gap between rich and poor countries and casts a much less optimistic view than the conventional undp index while it fits with the undp concern for international differences the paper s findings highlight main weaknesses in human development dimensions of present day developing countries

reflections on agricultural r d productivity and the data constraint unfinished business unsettled issues sixty years ago t w schultz introduced the idea of the productivity residual to agricultural economics 1956 schultz s main message was that growth in conventional inputs accounted for little of the observed growth in agricultural output and that there was work to be done by agricultural economists to understand and ultimately eliminate this unexplained residual called productivity thus was launched the economics of agricultural productivity as a sub field within agricultural economics along with the economics of agricultural r d and innovation and related government policy much progress has been made in the decades since still critical issues remain unresolved this matters because agricultural innovation and productivity matter and so do the related policies that rest to some extent on our established understanding of the economic relationships in this paper i review some unsettled issues related to economic models and measures applied to agricultural r d and productivity and some unfinished business in terms of economic and policy questions that are not yet well answered before doing that i present some evidence on agricultural productivity and why it matters next with a nod to factology i present available productivity measures from the u s department of agriculture usda and international science and technology practice and policy instepp center and compare them in the context of translog cost function models in subsequent sections i use these and other data to develop new evidence related to two contentious questions a do farmers benefit from public agricultural r d b has u s agricultural productivity growth slowed in recent decades the answers are revealed within

investment adjustment costs an empirical assessment we evaluate empirical evidence for costs that penalize changes in investment using us industry data in aggregate models such investment adjustment costs have been introduced to help account for a variety of business cycle and asset market phenomena so far no attempt has been made to estimate these costs directly at a disaggregated level we consider an industry model with investment adjustment costs and estimate its parameters using generalized methods of moments the ndings indicate small costs associated with changing the ow of investment at the industry level the weighted average of the industry elasticities with respect to the shadow price of capital which depends inversely on the adjustment cost parameter is more than seven times larger than the largest estimate based on aggregate data we examine potential sources which may account for the large industry aggregate dierence overall our results suggest

price indexes for r and d inputs 1969 1983 this paper presents the first r and d price indexes based largely on actual prices and expenditures reported by firms the results based on a carefully designed sample of about 100 firms show that the gnp deflator which is used in the official government r and d statistics has tended to underestimate the rate of inflation in r and d for managerial and economic purposes such as r and d budgeting and productivity studies these indexes should be of widespread use

entry deterrence and strategic alliances researchers have written extensively on the impact that strategic alliances between airlines have on airfare but little is known of the market entry deterrent impact of strategic alliances using a structural econometric model this paper examines the market entry deterrent impact of codesharing a form of strategic alliance between incumbent carriers in domestic air travel markets we find evidence of market entry deterrence but deterrence impact depends on the specific type of codesharing between market incumbents as well as the identity of the potential entrant we quantify the extent to which market incumbents codesharing influences potential entrants market entry cost and probability of market entry

canadian manufacturers relative productivity performance 1907 1990 in this paper i calculate tfp ratios for a sample of canadian manufacturers relative to their american counterparts on an annual basis throughout most of the twentieth century the data used to calculate these ratios are drawn from both industry level and firm level statistical sources i find that in contrast to the relative labour productivity evidence in the literature when tfp is used as the measuring stick there is virtually no evidence of consistent and substantial relative technical inefficiency on behalf of the canadian manufacturers represented in my sample jel classification d24 n60 dans ce memoire l auteur calcule les ratios de la productivite totale des facteurs de production ptf des manufacturiers canadiens par rapport a celle de leurs collegues americains sur une base annuelle pour la plus grande partie du vingtieme siecle les donnees utilisees sont tirees des sources statistiques tant au niveau de l industrie que de l entreprise on montre que contrairement a ce que suggere la litterature specialisee a propos de la productivite relative du travail quand la ptf est utilisee comme etalon de mesure on ne trouve vraiment pas vraiment de resultats qui suggereraient une inefficacite technique relative substantielle et persistante des manufacturiers canadiens de l echantillon

modeling the length and shape of the r d lag an application to uk agricultural productivity this article updates total factor productivity tfp growth in uk agriculture from 1953 2005 and shows that public and private research and returns to scale explain tfp cointegration and causality tests are used to investigate the validity of attempts to explain uk agricultural productivity with r d and related technology variables then the length and shape of the lag structures are modeled and compared with the structures that are commonly imposed on the data the rates of return ror to r d using the data determined lags differ considerably from those obtained by imposing lag shapes these comparisons show that the ror to public r d are sensitive to the lag shape as well as its length and that the omission of other technology variables such as mechanical and chemical patents pertaining to agriculture and farm size can bias the ror

export orientation and domestic merger policy theory and some empirical evidence abstract recent open economy industrial organization literature finds export orientation enhances the weight of post merger international competitive gains favouring lenient domestic merger policy however mergers seldom generate the significant synergies supportive of international competitive gains since a joint economies of production effect suggests domestic mergers tend to generate international competitive losses not gains export orientation favours strict not lenient domestic merger policy we show how non synergistic domestic mergers in the presence of international sales might reduce national welfare and incur stringent merger reviews a panel data set of u s merger policy by manufacturing sector 1990 2001 empirically supports export orientation leading to strict merger policy jel classification l40 f10

equilibria in networks we study a model in which two carriers choose networks to connect cities and compete for customers we show that if carriers compete aggressively e g bertrand like behavior one carrier operating a single hub spoke network is an equilibrium outcome competing hub spoke networks are not an equilibrium outcome although duopoly equilibria in nonhub networks can exist if carriers do not compete aggressively an equilibrium with competing hub spoke networks exists as long as the number of cities is not too small we provide conditions under which all equilibria consist of hub spoke networks

canadian manufacturing u s r d spillovers and communication infrastructure canada is highly integrated with the u s economy this north south link coupled with its east west dimension also renders canadian production dependent on communication infrastructure we investigate the influence of research and development r d spillovers from u s manufacturing and canadian communication infrastructure on canadian manufacturing canadian production becomes relatively more r d intensive from communication spillovers however manufacturers substitute knowledge from u s spillovers for domestic r d u s spillovers cause production to become more plant and equipment intensive spillovers also enhance productivity communication infrastructure accounted for 8 5 of the growth with the major source emanating from u s spillovers they contributed 76 of the gains

airline network rivalry in this paper the effects of the strategic interaction between deregulated airlines on their network choice are analyzed the authors examine whether switching from a linear to a hub spoke network confers a strategic advantage because it saves costs and improves service quality they find that if hubbing lowers total cost which includes both airline and passenger inconvenience costs the pursuit of strategic advantages usually intensifies the extent of hubbing even if hubbing raises total cost it might be pursued by the airline either because hubbing is a dominant strategy in an oligopolistic setting or because hubbing will be useful in deterring entry

tying foreclosure and exclusion in recent years the leverage theory of tied good sales has faced heavy and influential criticism in an important sense though the models used by its critics are actually incapable of addressing the leverage theory s central concerns here the author reconsiders the leverage hypothesis and argues that tying can indeed serve as a mechanism for leveraging market power the mechanism through which this leverage occurs its profitability and its welfare implications are discussed in detail copyright 1990 by american economic association

knowledge capital and performance heterogeneity a firm level innovation study this paper is an empirical analysis of knowledge capital and performance heterogeneity at the firm level we apply new econometric methods to extensive data on innovation and innovative activities

dynamic oligopoly behaviour in the airline industry abstract this paper examines the dynamic interaction between united airlines and american airlines on a set of duopoly routes we estimate quarterly conduct parameters or conjectural variations and test constant behaviour bertrand cournot and collusive models we also test two regimeswitching models derived from the green porter price war model one based on reversion to bertrand behaviour during price wars the other on reversion to cournot behaviour the three constant behaviour models are all rejected the regime switching models can both describe the data but the cournot based version is preferred

public agricultural r d design and technological spill ins a dynamic model the paper presents a dynamic model for the analysis of the national agricultural research systems narss strategy in a context of increasing globalisation both intersectoral and international technology spill ins may greatly affect the nars design and this paper proposes an analytical framework for its study when major spill ins are present these spill ins are calculated by applying the yale technology concordance ytc methodology a var vec model is then specified to detect empirically given the calculated spill ins what nars design prevails in a dynamic framework the model is estimated for the italian agriculture data and provides evidence of close dependency on external r d sources

oligopolistic competition it use for product differentiation and the productivity paradox abstract empirical studies suggest that the huge investment in information technologies it of the past two decades has led to no significant increase in productivity this phenomenon is known as the productivity paradox it has been argued that the paradox might result from oligopolistic competition because of strategic interaction each individual firm might find it profitable to invest in cost reducing it but total investment might then be excessive from the industry s point of view i confirm this view and strengthen it by allowing it investment to be also devoted to product differentiation which makes the productivity paradox more likely the emergence of web based electronic commerce provides an illustration of the forces identified in the model

good and bad growth the human development reports abstract the 1996 human development report undp 1996 is about economic growth and human development in keeping with past reports in the series it emphasizes the diversity of country performance in improving human development indicators at given rates of growth this article reviews what the human development reports have said on this topic looking at how well the main messages have been supported by data and analysis and how compelling they are as a basis for public action

airlines strategic interactions and airport pricing in a dynamic bottleneck model of congestion abstract this paper analyzes efficient pricing at a congested airport dominated by a single firm unlike much of the previous literature we combine a dynamic bottleneck model of congestion and a vertical structure model that explicitly considers the role of airlines and passengers we show that a stackelberg leader interacting with a competitive fringe partially internalizes congestion and that there are various toll regimes that induce the welfare maximizing outcome widening the set of choices for regulators in particular charging the congestion toll that would apply for fully competitive carriers and that ignores any internalization to both the leader and the fringe yields the first best outcome

the existence of equilibrium in discontinuous economic games i theory the article presents information about the existence of equilibrium in discontinuous economic games in this paper and its sequel presents study the existence of nash equilibrium in games where agents payoff functions are discontinuous the enquiry is motivated by a number of recent studies that have uncovered serious existence problems in seemingly innocuous economic games in the sequel to this paper authors have explained the utility function in the economic games referred to earlier are neither continuous nor quasi concave however they demonstrate that the payoff functions in mildly modified versions of these constructs exhibit two weaker forms of continuity which together with the requirement of quasi concavity suffice for the existence of an equilibrium from this one may conclude that at least in the modified versions of these models discontinuities in the payoff functions are not the real source of the problem rather it is the failure of the payoff functions to the quasi concave which is responsible for the non existence of equilibrium these observations bear on the existence of nash equilibrium in pure strategies

modelling technical change in italian agriculture a latent variable approach this paper presents an alternative approach to the measurement of technical change it is based on the latent variable level of technology that enters explicitly the input demand system and on a hypothesis about the innovation generating process by adding measurement error equations the behavioral system can be viewed as a multiple indicators multiple causes mimic model the parameter estimates are obtained with a maximum likelihood estimator which involves the implicit covariance matrix the analysis refers to italian agriculture and the results provide some evidence on the nature and level of technical change during the years 1961 1991

human development in poor countries on the role of private incomes and public services development is often taken to mean rising incomes discussions of the goals of development now often emphasize the reduction of poverty rather than raising average incomes per se the role of social services particularly basic health and education has also received greater emphasis in the 1980s viewed mainly as instruments for raising the incomes of the poor but in all these approaches income growth of one sort or another is what development is all about a rather different view of the meaning of development has recently found expression in the 1990 human development report hrd produced by the united nations development programme a conceptual underpinning for this approach can be found in the work of amartya sen the essence of this view is that human development what people can actually do and be is the overriding purpose of economic development underdevelopment is viewed as the lack of certain basic capabilities rather than lack of income per se we do not aim here to advocate one of these approaches over the other but rather to explore their implications for development policy for instance what does the human development approach imply about the role of economic growth and in particular about reducing income poverty should development priorities shift toward the provision of public services in poor countries even if such a shift is at the expense of income growth

productivity in manufacturing industries canada japan and the united states 1953 1986 was the productivity slowdown reversed this paper analyzes total factor productivity growth and trends in relative efficiency levels in the national two digit manufacturing industries of japan canada and the united states during the last quarter century the well known slowdown in productivity growth rates in the 1973 80 period was a common phenomenon across the three countries but was felt most strongly in japan and least in canada while the 1980s saw a pick up in productivity growth over the slowdown period growth in productivity has not returned to the pre 1973 level the productivity slowdown and any subsequent increase in productivity growth rates have been correlated across industries in the three countries to a very high degree

productivity technology and economic growth what is the relationship the relationship between productivity technology and economic growth has been debated extensively in the endogenous growth growth accounting new economy and policy literature this paper briefly surveys the literature on total factor productivity tfp calculations the various techniques and problems associated with it we argue that tfp is not a measure of technological change and only under ideal conditions does it measure the supernormal profits associated with technological change the critical driving force of economic growth is not the super normal profits that technological change generates but rather the continuous creation of opportunities for further technological development six illustrations of when tfp fails to correctly measure these super normal profits are provided a version carlaw and lipsey s 2003b model of endogenous general purpose technology driven growth is then utilized to make some progress toward answering prescott s 1998 call for a theory of tfp the model is used to simulate artificial data and connect theoretical assumptions of returns to scale and resource costs to the conditions under which tfp miss measures the actual growth of technological knowledge

technical efficiency and u s manufacturing productivity growth this paper establishes that new inputs increase technical efficiency levels for u s manufacturing over the period 1950 1998 intermediate inputs exhibited higher rates of efficiency growth than labor and capital efficiency adjusted productivity growth annually averaged 0 4 percentage points above measured growth the gap between efficiency adjusted and measured productivity growth arises from aggregating inputs using observed and not efficiency adjusted cost share weights in the calculation of measured growth specifically the decline in efficiency adjusted material cost shares compared to the measured shares coupled with the comparatively high material input growth rate was the main source of the productivity gap

is rising rts a figment of poor data abstract while using detailed firm level data from the private business sector this study identifies two empirical puzzles i returns to scale rts parameter estimates rise at higher levels of data aggregation and ii estimates from the firm level suggest decreasing returns to scale the analysis shows that although consistent with rising estimates neither entry exit nor the basu fernald returns to scale in u s production estimates and implications journal of political economy 105 249 283 aggregation bias effect drives this result rather rising and too low rts estimates seem to reflect a mixture of random errors in factor inputs at the firm level it turns out in fact that a 7 5 10 percent error in labor hours worked can explain both puzzles

public infrastructure and the productive performance of canadian manufacturing industries this article examines the effects of public infrastructure on the productive performance of 12 two digit canadian manufacturing industries a flexible cost function incorporating public capital infrastructure is estimated for each industry separately using annual time series data for 1961 1995 the effects of public infrastructure on productivity are measured in terms of both cost saving dual and output augmenting primal measures we also investigate how public capital influences the input demand and cost structure in each industry and calculate the rate of return to public capital the empirical results provide strong evidence of the important role public infrastructure plays in the productivity of manufacturing industries the public capital serves as a substitute for both private capital and labor in most industries the rates of return to public capital are significant and vary over the years

r d productivity and the spillover effects of high tech industry on the traditional manufacturing sector the case of taiwan this study sets out to estimate the impact of r d on productivity within the private sector with further analysis of the different impacts of r d within high tech and traditional manufacturing firms we also attempt to examine the spillover effects from r d investment in the high tech sector on productivity growth within the traditional industries using a sample of 136 large manufacturing firms during the period 1994 2000 we develop an extended version of the cobb douglas production function model and our findings suggest that taiwan s r d investment had a significant impact on firm productivity growth with output elasticity standing at around 0 18 when the sample is divided into high tech and traditional firms the r d output elasticity in high tech firms is significantly greater than that found in traditional firms in addition the average rate of return in high tech firms is much greater than that estimated for other industries besides our empirical results show that although significant the impact of r d investment from the high tech sector on the productivity growth of traditional firms is rather limited

directed search with multi vacancy firms abstract i construct a directed search model in which firms decide whether to enter a market and how many positions to create within this framework the number of firms and the size of each firm are determined endogenously wages play an allocative role in the matching process and the frictions inherent in this process derive from the equilibrium behavior of workers and firms i characterize the unique equilibrium comparative statics generate testable implications for cross sectional variation in matching efficiency as well as the dynamic behavior of vacancies and unemployment moreover allowing for ex ante heterogeneity across firms the model can easily and naturally generate the observed relationship between firm size wages profitability and hiring

do it yourself digital the production boundary the productivity puzzle and economic welfare part of the debate about the productivity puzzle concerns potential mismeasurement of gdp due to digital activities this paper discusses some measurement issues arising from digitally enabled substitutions in activity across the conventional production boundary production boundary issues are not new as conventionally defined gdp statistics account for the monetary cost but not the time cost of consumption and production this means that changes in the way in which time is allocated between market and home production affect measured growth and productivity as well as economic welfare just as technological innovation in domestic appliances led to a substitution from home production into market consumption in the second half of the 20th century today s digital innovations are driving some reverse substitution out of the market into home production statistical agencies do not currently collect the data needed to measure the scale of the switch but the available evidence suggests that it may be enough to make a contribution to understanding the current productivity puzzle

poverty human development and growth an emerging consensus this paper considers several issues relevant to the debate on the extent to which poverty or development progress in general should be measured by income or by a broader set of objectives issues covered here are practical implications of the two approaches for poverty reduction efforts the impact of growth on basic social indicators and how national achievement on social indicators is best measured sri lanka and pakistan countries often cited in this debate are used as examples

quantifying the social welfare loss in moral hazard models abstract the main aim of this paper is to measure the social welfare loss for a continuous moral hazard model when a set of minimal assumptions are fulfilled by using a new approach we are able to reproduce the results of balmaceda balseiro correa and stier moses 2010 pertaining to the social welfare loss for discrete and continuous models respectively previous studies rely on the validity of the first order approach at the expense of strong assumptions in particular the convexity of the distribution function condition while we do not make such a restrictive assumption in our developments in addition we obtain new bounds for the social welfare loss that are both tight and easy to compute

who is to blame canadian manufacturers and the absence of income per capita convergence no significant convergence between canadian and american income per capita occurred during the first ninety years of the twentieth century this lack of convergence does not appear to have been due to technological dependence input price distortions or diseconomies of scale within the canadian manufacturing sector the evidence presented in this paper is based on total factor productivity measurement statistical testing and counterfactual experimentation using data from national statistical agencies and firm level sources

economies of scale in networks abstract a network s capacity can typically be increased in a variety of ways for example in a highway network existing roads can be made wider or new roads added this paper is concerned with the determination of the degree of local economies of scale in the cost function for the outputs of a congestible network when there are multiple margins for making adjustments to capacity the main result is that under the provision of a cost minimizing network one for which the sum of user and capacity costs for the network s outputs is at a minimum the degree of local economies of scale in the cost function for the network s outputs is the same along all margins for adjusting capacity this includes what routes to establish

u s agricultural research deflators 1890 1985 abstract using newly developed time series on u s public sector agricultural research expenditures two new deflators for agricultural research are constructed these deflators differ from others currently used in the literature in that factor level price indices are weighted with time varying weights which capture the shifting factor mix of research spending by the state agricultural experiment station saes the substantial differences in measuring real resource allocation to agricultural research using these deflators and alternatives found in the literature including that used by the national science foundation to report official r d statistics are demonstrated in addition the factor level expenditure series are used to contrast measurement of resource allocation in agricultural research from 1890 to the present using real research service flows as opposed to real research expenditures

performance in living standards abstract our ultimate objective is to enhance the standard of living of our societies but the standard of living has different meanings for different people a thorough investigation of the concept of the standard of living has been made only recently by sen who defines it in terms of functioning and capabilities functioning is an achievement whereas capability is the ability to achieve the main objective of the present paper is to compare achievements levels and improvement changes in the standard of living across countries using an axiomatic approach an achievement index is derived which accomodates the view that a further increase in the standard of living of a country when it is already at a higher level signifies an achievement greater than that of another with an equal increase but from a lower base the paper also tests for the statistical relationship between indicators of the countries standards of living so derived in their capita gdp the question posed is whether the aggregate income which provides people with the means to achieve a better life can be used as proxy measure of the standard living and extent to which the country s improvement in the standard of living can be explained by the levels and changes in the per capita income the analysis presented in the paper is based on the data from 80 developing countries

bigger establishments in thicker markets can we explain early productivity differentials between canada and the united states we use establishment level data describing manufacturers located in 128 border and near border counties in michigan new york ohio pennsylvania and ontario to calculate canadian relative to u s total factor productivity ratios for 25 industries the data have been compiled from the manuscripts for the 1870 u s and 1871 canadian census of manufacturing our results illustrate that the average u s establishment was approximately 7 more efficient than its canadian counterpart in 1870 71 when we control for establishment size and market density the u s productivity advantage shrinks to slightly less than 3 de plus gros etablissements dans des marches plus denses peut on expliquer les differentiels de productivite entre le canada et les etats unis au siecle dernier on utilise les donnees au niveau de l etablissement decrivant des installations manufacturieres localisees dans 128 comtes a la frontiere ou pres de la frontiere dans les etats du michigan de new york de l ohio de la pennsylvanie et dans la province de l ontario pour calculer la productivite totale relative des facteurs de production dans 25 industries les donnees ont ete extraites des manuscrits des recensements des manufactures des etats unis 1870 et du canada 1871 les resultats indiquent que l etablissement americain moyen etait a peu pres 7 plus productif que sa contrepartie au canada quand on normalise pour tenir compte de la taille de l etablissement et de la densite du marche l avantage comparatif des americains tombent a un peu moins de 3

long run technical change and multifactor productivity growth in us manufacturing this study utilizes a translog cost function to produce econometric estimates of the separate influences of technical change versus scale efficiency in contributing to multifactor productivity growth within the us manufacturing sector the analysis generates two digit industry specific parameters that capture the effects of output versus time related shifts in the cost function over the 1949 1991 period thus initial evidence concerning the relative importance of technical progress versus scale cannot be provided as a source of productivity gains within two digit industries the parametric estimates of total factor productivity growth are compared with existing divisia measures to explore the shortcomings of the growth accounting technique these long run patterns hold implications for the productivity convergence hypothesis traced to knowledge spillovers between industries

product line rivalry with brand differentiation competition with product rivalry is examined in a model where products are differentiated by both quality and brand name with no commitment firms produce a full product line when firms can commit to restrict their product offerings firms specialize if the degree of brand specific differentiation is small and they produce a full product line if brand specific differentiation is large relative to intrafirm differentiation firms may crowd a product space when all competitors would be better off with specialization brand proliferation is a credible entry deterring strategy if the degree of brand specific differentiation is not too large copyright 1993 by blackwell publishing ltd

price and capacity competition we study the efficiency of oligopoly equilibria in a model where firms compete over capacities and prices our model economy corresponds to a two stage game first firms choose their capacity levels second after the capacity levels are observed they set prices given the capacities and prices consumers allocate their demands across the firms we establish the existence of pure strategy oligopoly equilibria and characterize the set of equilibria we then investigate the efficiency properties of these equilibria where efficiency is defined as the ratio of surplus in equilibrium relative to the first best we show that efficiency in the worst oligopoly equilibria can be arbitrarily low however if the best oligopoly equilibrium is selected among multiple equilibria the worst case efficiency loss is 2 n 1 n 1 with n firms and this bound is tight we also suggest a simple way of

trade liberalization comparative advantage and scale economies stock market evidence from canada abstract the canada united states free trade agreement fta provides an excellent opportunity to analyze the impact of a comprehensive trade liberalization in this paper a stock market event study is employed to capture investors expectations about the consequences of this agreement for manufacturing firms in canada the primary question addressed is whether abnormal stock market returns corresponding to news about the fta are consistent with hypotheses based on comparative advantage and economies of scale the results indicate that both comparative advantage and scale economies played a role in determining investors perceptions of the impact of the fta

swedish business research productivity sweden experienced an increase in the ratio of granted patents to research and development spending r d between 1989 and 1998 a period when r d spending grew rapidly the ratio of patents granted to r d spending research productivity increased by 40 over the period and the ratio of quality adjusted patents to r d exhibited an even more impressive increase of 60 sectors with especially high research productivity and quality adjusted research productivity include low and medium technology manufacturing chemicals and transportation however the growth in quality adjusted research productivity was primarily generated by the high tech pharmaceuticals and electronics industries the service based sectors experienced a significant increase in r d spending over the period but the research productivity decreased less

patent quality and research productivity measuring innovation with multiple indicators we analyse the determinants of the decline in research productivity using panel data on manufacturing firms in the us for the period 1980 93 we focus on three factors the level of demand the quality of patents and technological exhaustion we develop an index of patent quality using detailed patent information and show that using multiple indicators substantially reduces the measured variance in quality research productivity at the firm level is inversely related to patent quality and the level of demand as predicted by theory and patent quality is positively associated with the stock market value of firms

reinventing strategies for emerging markets beyond the transnational model with established markets becoming saturated multinational corporations mncs have turned increasingly to emerging markets ems in the developing world such em strategies have been targeted almost exclusively at the wealthy elite at the top of the economic pyramid recently however a number of mncs have launched new initiatives that explore the untapped market potential at the base of the economic pyramid the largest and fastest growing segment of the world s population reaching the four billion people in these markets poses both tremendous opportunities and unique challenges to mncs as conventional wisdom about mnc global capabilities and subsidiary strategy in ems may not be appropriate how mncs can successfully enter these low income markets has not been effectively addressed in the literatures on global and em strategies an exploratory analysis involving interviews with mnc managers original case studies and archival material indicates that the transnational model of national responsiveness global efficiency and worldwide learning may not be sufficient results suggest that the success of initiatives targeting low income markets is enhanced by recognizing that western style patterns of economic development may not occur in these business environments business strategies that rely on leveraging the strengths of the existing market environment outperform those that focus on overcoming weaknesses these strategies include developing relationships with non traditional partners co inventing custom solutions and building local capacity together these successful strategies suggest the importance of mncs developing a global capability in social embeddedness

do we need a price index for industrial r d abstract price deflators for research expenditures of 12 individual industries and of all u s industries combined are constructed for the period 1969 1988 these indexes are derived with a set of proxy price series that are highly correlated with surveyed r d input prices and that may be easily extended forward in time as the requisite proxy data become available the approach could be replicated for other countries given the recent consideration to treat r d as part of capital formation in satellite accounts to the international system of national accounts and the u s national income and product accounts there is an immediate need for such deflators trends in u s industrial r d expenditures utilizing these r d deflators and others found in the literature are contrasted although broad based deflators such as the gnp deflator used in reporting most official r d statistics provide reasonable approximations of changes in aggregate industry r d costs they are much less appropriate for calculating real r d expenditures of individual industries the industry specific r d indexes built here rather readily capture variations in inter industry r d cost trends that broader deflators miss