marshall s versus jacobs externalities in firm innovation performance the case of french industry galliano d magrini m b and triboulet p marshall s versus jacobs externalities in firm innovation performance the case of french industry regional studies this paper analyses the influence of different types of spatial externalities related to the location of firms on their innovation performance and how those externalities combine in the territories with regard to the marshall jacobs dichotomy the originality of this study also lies in the consideration of a larger definition of the firm one that takes into account the location of all its units based on a dataset of french industrial firms and specific indicators to evaluate the specialization and or diversification of the employment zones the impacts of the spatial profile of the firm on its innovation performance are tested

barriers and drivers in the adoption of advanced wastewater treatment technologies a comparative analysis of italian utilities abstract the adoption of new environmentally friendly technologies is becoming a key issue in both public debate and policy arenas the paper focuses on innovation adoption by wastewater utilities and investigates why stringent environmental regulations are not sufficient to foster it the adoption of advanced wastewater treatment technologies is made complex by the sunk nature of highly specific infrastructures and the consequent exposure of utilities to political and institutional influences in addition it requires the involvement of various actors utilities suppliers contractors and is influenced by various stakeholders communities business users citizens associations that generally have no aligned objectives with reference to the aforementioned theoretical background our paper develops and analyzes a conceptual framework that unfolds over two dimensions a the role played by firm specific characteristics i e technological and organizational capabilities and managerial professionalism b the influence of community level factors i e citizens voice and pressure exerted by local stakeholders we investigate these issues through multiple descriptive case studies based on semi structured interviews with the ceos and top managers of 11 wastewater utilities operating in a region in north italy the results suggest that firm specific resources could spur wastewater utilities into adopting innovation despite an adverse institutional environment at the same time on the community level side the analysis shows that residents and local businesses are able to mobilize resources and exert pressure to either drive or hinder the adoption of water innovations

the energy efficiency paradox revisited through a partial observability approach the present paper examines the energy efficiency paradox demonstrated in greek manufacturing firms through a partial observability approach the data set used has resulted from a survey carried out among 161 energy saving technology firm adopters maximum likelihood estimates that arise from an incidental truncation model reveal that the adoption of the energy saving technologies is indeed strongly correlated to the returns of assets that are required in order to undertake the corresponding investments the source of the energy efficiency paradox lies within a wide range of factors policy schemes that aim to increase the adoption rate of energy saving technologies within the field of manufacturing are significantly affected by differences in the size of firms finally mixed policies seem to be more effective than policies that are only capital subsidy or regulation oriented

estimating level effects in diffusion of a new technology barcode scanning at the checkout counter cross country or cross industry studies of technology diffusion typically estimate how independent factors affect diffusion speed or timing often based on a two stage approach in many applications however countries industries differ most in the saturation level of diffusion in a single stage econometric approach to a standard diffusion model we therefore estimate how the saturation level covaries with independent factors in our application to diffusion of an important retail information technology we focus on the competitive effect of hypermarkets superstores we also find standard scale income and labour substitution effects

the innovation potential of new infrastructure development an empirical study of heathrow airport s t5 project abstract we propose a conceptual framework to analyze technology adoption in mega infrastructure projects and assess their potential to innovating large socio technical systems drawing on an in depth empirical analysis of heathrow airport s terminal 5 project we find that innovation hinges on technology adoption decisions that are governed systematically by two intertwined determinants assessment of expected profitability and development of absorptive capacity both of which are distributed across various interdependent actors on an ad hoc basis technological decisions are also affected by other factors namely attitudes toward risk politics and lack of established standards we reveal how a schedule driven project framing creates an underlying boundary condition that constrains the longitudinal process of building a whole collective with capacity to absorb new technologies the innovation potential of mega projects is thus subjected to a fundamental unifying tension on the one hand they offer a one off opportunity to invest in cutting edge technologies and innovate socio technical systems on the other hand project stakeholders have limited time to develop capacity to absorb novel technologies and negotiate differences on assessments of profitability and risk stakeholders may therefore be compelled to agree to adopt proven technologies upfront to reduce uncertainty and mitigate risks thus limiting the innovation potential of new infrastructure development

estimating the innovator s dilemma structural analysis of creative destruction in the hard disk drive industry 1981 1998 this paper studies strategic industry dynamics of creative destruction in which firms and technologies experience turnover theories predict that cannibalization between existing and new products delays incumbents innovation whereas preemptive motives accelerate it incumbents cost dis advantage relative to that of entrants would further reinforce these tendencies to empirically assess these three forces i estimate a dynamic oligopoly model using a unique panel data set of hard disk drive manufacturers the results suggest that despite strong preemptive motives and a substantial cost advantage over entrants cannibalization makes incumbents reluctant to innovate which can explain at least 57 percent of the incumbent entrant innovation gap

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

price scarcity rent and a modified r per cent rule for non renewable resources since hotelling s seminal paper on the optimal depletion of exhaustible resources much has been published yet confusion remains about whether scarcity rent and price increase or decrease as a resource is depleted when costs tend to rise with depletion we show that hotelling s fundamental results of rising scarcity rent and price paths are sustained and that the path of scarcity rent converges on the r per cent rule provided the objective function is concave predictions of non monotonic or declining scarcity rent paths are due to implicit assumptions that lead to a non concave objective function we identify the sources of these non concavities jel classification q30 d90 c60 prix rente de rarete et une regle modifiee du r pourcent pour les ressources non renouvelables malgre la volumineuse litterature specialisee qui a fleuri depuis qu hotelling a ecrit son memoire fondateur sur l epuisement optimal des ressources renouvelables une grande confusion regne toujours quand il faut etablir si la rente de rarete et le prix augmentent ou chutent a proportion que la ressource s epuise quand les couts tendent a croitre avec l epuisement ce memoire montre que les resultats fondamentaux obtenus par hotelling quant aux sentiers de croissance de la rente de rarete et du prix tiennent toujours et que le sentier de croissance de la rente de rarete converge vers la regle du r pourcent pourvu que la fonction objective soit concave les predictions de sentiers de croissance non monotone ou de declin de la rente de rarete presentees dans la litterature specialisee sont attribuables a des postulats implicites qui engendrent une fonction objective non concave les auteurs identifient les sources de ces non concavites

innovations and the economics of new technology spreading within and across users gaps and way forward r d subsidies are often considered the main policy tool to stimulate the competitiveness and the innovativeness of firms this is especially true for innovations designed to produce greener products or cleaner and more energy efficient technologies however a consistent literature has now shown that even when a clean or a cost reducing technology is ready available in the market its spreading within intra or across inter households or firms takes several years and in some cases decades therefore it is not only important to generate innovations via investments in r d but it is also important that such innovations are adopted and used by firms this paper briefly illustrates the main theoretical approaches to the analysis of the factors leading to inter firm diffusion and emphasise the existing gap led by the paucity of literature on intra firm diffusion a final section briefly discusses some methodological issues surrounding the diffusion of consumer non durable technologies within and across households and how ad hoc models can be used to test the validity of environmental policies

technology diffusion and international income convergence abstract a macroeconomic model of international income convergence driven by differences in technology is presented ldc firms adopt foreign technology by paying an upfront cost of adaptation and early adopters create a positive externality for followers in equilibrium adoption is gradual and so is income convergence because of the externality small differences in adoption costs across ldcs can lead to large differences in long run income during convergence the ldc economy is dualistic with large high technology firms operating alongside small traditional establishments the effects of trade policy and direct foreign investment are also examined

demographic influences on willingness to pay for cold tolerance technology new technologies in agriculture have the potential to increase production levels reduce risk and improve profits for farm operators however in order for this to take place the technologies must appeal to producers creating enough interest that they decide to invest in them gauging the level of interest in a technology and the types of producers who will be interested in trying it are important steps in technology development cereal crops such as wheat are important to agriculture in canada in terms of both acreage and revenue researchers in canada are currently attempting to develop more cold tolerant cereal crops to reduce the risk of frost damage and increase the area available to produce these crops a producer survey including questions on past adoption behavior attitudinal characteristics and demographics as well as a set of dichotomous choice questions on new varieties was conducted and analyzed using a regression and willingness to pay calculations demographics were the focus during these activities it was determined that producers from areas experiencing frost regularly with high incomes and large land bases had a higher propensity to adopt and higher willingness to pay for this technology

exploring links between innovation and diffusion adoption of nox control technologies at us coal fired power plants while many studies have looked at innovation and adoption of technologies separately the two processes are linked advances and expected advances in a single technology should affect both its adoption rate and the adoption of alternative technologies this paper combines plant level data on us coal fired electric power plants with patent data pertaining to nox pollution control techniques to study this link as in other studies of environmental technologies the effect of other explanatory variables is dominated by the effect of environmental regulations demonstrating that the mere presence of environmental technologies is not enough to encourage its usage nonetheless i do find that technological advances are important for the adoption of existing combustion modification technologies however these advances are less important for the adoption of newer post combustion control techniques which are adopted only when needed to comply with the strictest emission limits

the effects of the market structure on the adoption of evolving technologies abstract we study the speed at which technologies are adopted depending on how the market power is shared between the firms that sell technologies and the firms that buy them our results suggest that because of a double marginalization problem adoption is fastest when either sellers or buyers hold all the market power thus competition between sides of the market may delay the adoption of technologies

rank stock order and epidemic effects in the diffusion of new process technologies an empirical model in this article we construct a general duration model of technology adoption that incorporates the main factors discussed in different theories of diffusion of new process technologies the model is applied to data on diffusion of cnc in the uk engineering industry although we find strong evidence in support of rank and endogenous learning effects there seems to be little evidence in support of the stock and order effects the main factors affecting the diffusion of cnc are found to be endogenous learning firm size industry growth rates the cost of the technology and expected changes in the cost of the technology

the intra firm diffusion of new process technologies the study of intra firm diffusion has largely been neglected and the limited extant literature overwhelmingly relies upon uncertainty reduction via information spreading or epidemic learning as the main driver in this paper an alternative approach is taken whereby the intra firm diffusion of new process technologies reflects the profitability of new technology adoption as proxied by firm characteristics the approach is tested using data relating to the diffusion of computer numerically controlled machine tools within firms in the uk engineering and metalworking sectors the empirical analysis does not reject the hypothesis that profitability considerations are important with a number of firm characteristics being isolated as of special relevance including firm size and the use of complementary technologies and managerial techniques however there is little support for the traditional epidemic effect

induced discrimination and firm size information vs incentive effects this paper characterizes the differences in incentives to respond adversely to the civil rights act of 1991 cra91 across firm size i then empirically test the firm responses and compare them to the incentives i find that responses across firm size match the incentive differences thus firms appear to be rational as well as fully informed the most pronounced adverse response comes from large firms firms with more than 100 employees reversed a trend of increasing employment at a rate of 0 28 weeks worked per year prior to cra91 to a trend of decreasing employment at a rate of 0 21 weeks per year since this group employs 63 7 of the workforce this has a profound impact on opportunities for protected groups

industrial policy and technology diffusion evidence from paper making machinery in indonesia summary in this paper we analyze the diffusion and adoption of paper making machinery in the indonesian pulp and paper industry from 1923 till 2000 we develop a machine level index of technological sophistication mach which measures the technological distance of each paper machine to the world technological frontier the data reveal a pattern of rapid technological catch up but catch up was not an industrywide phenomenon some modern firms installed state of the art machinery while others installed older vintages the paper argues that industrial policy has played an important role in the speed and nature of diffusion of paper making machinery

interdependences in the intrafirm diffusion of technological innovations confronting the rational and social accounts of diffusion this article investigates the intrafirm diffusion of technological innovations and the interdependences that exist among rival firms in this process previous research has offered two potential explanations for these interdependences social accounts in which they result from institutional pressures and rational accounts in which firms are interdependent as a result of how adoption by rivals affects expectations about the profitability of the technology the article offers two contributions first we propose a competitive interaction mechanism that is consistent with the fundamentals of rational accounts of diffusion second the empirical analysis shows the dominance of the proposed rational mechanism over social accounts of innovation diffusion in the generation of interdependences in the process of intrafirm diffusion

is energy intensity important for the productivity growth of eet adopters abstract energy efficient technologies eet have attracted strong interest because of their role in reducing environmental damage their adoption however remains rather low while their impact on productivity is substantial and differentiating with respect to technological characteristics energy intensity being such an obvious characteristic could be employed to classify eet adopters thus giving rise to two heterogeneous technologies i e those corresponding to firms of low and high energy consumption hence this paper examines the impact of energy intensity on the productivity growth of firms adopting eet in varying time intervals through a metafrontier based framework while also decomposing that impact in terms of technical efficiency and scale efficiency changes the analysis is complemented by examining the role of firm specific characteristics on the productivity growth through linear regression

strategic rigidity and foresight for technology adoption among electric utilities abstract the variation in the adoption of a technology as a major source of competitive advantage has been attributed to the wide ranging strategic foresight and the integrative capability of a firm these possible areas of competitive advantage can exist in the periphery of the firm s strategic vision and can get easily blurred as a result of rigidness and can permeate in the decision making process of the firm this article explores how electric utility firms with a renewable energy portfolio can become strategically rigid in terms of adoption of newer technologies the reluctance or delay in the adoption of new technology can be characterized as strategic rigidness brought upon as a result of a firm s core competence or core capability in the other more conventional technology arrangement this paper explores the implications of such rigidness on the performance of a firm and consequently on the energy eco system the paper substantiates the results by emphasizing the case of iberdrola s a an incumbent firm as a wind energy developer and its adoption decision behavior we illustrate that the very routines that create competitive advantage for firms in the electric utility industry are vulnerable as they might also develop as sources of competitive disadvantage when firms confront environmental change and uncertainty

market segmentation and the diffusion of quality enhancing innovations the case of downhill skiing we report econometric results concerning the diffusion of detachable chairlifts in the united states that provide the first empirical evidence that the adoption of a technological innovation by a firm decreases the likelihood that a local competitor will also adopt it we model the effect that an innovation in service speed has on a f s incentive to differentiate the quality of its service from that of its competitors in our model the incentive to adopt is negatively related to the number of competitors who have already adopted our empirical results support this hypothesis

does environmental performance affect financial performance a meta analysis abstract what do we know about the impact of environmental regulations performance on firm performance after more than three decades of theoretical as well as empirical research the results seem to remain inconclusive some papers suggest that regulations harm firms while others claim that regulations may contribute positively and give an impetus to innovations therefore i examine the heterogeneity in financial environmental performance nexus empirically carrying out a meta regression analysis of 64 outcomes from 37 empirical studies to uncover the underlying factors which can influence the observed variation in the empirical results the results suggest both that the empirical method used matters for the nexus and that the likelihood of finding a negative link between environmental and financial performance significantly increases when using simple correlation coefficients instead of more advanced econometric analysis the results also indicate that the portfolio studies tend to report a negative link between environmental and financial performance this likely reflects the omitted factors in portfolio studies the positive link is found more frequently in common law countries than in civil law countries the results also point to the importance of appropriate time coverage to establish a positive link between environmental and financial performance

inter and intra firm effects in the diffusion of new process technology using primarily the example of computerised numerically controlled machine tools cnc in the uk metalworking and engineering industry it is shown that even many years after the date of first use of a new technology although the larger proportion of firms may be using that technology because the extent of intra firm diffusion is limited the proportion of total industry output produced on that technology may be quite small using backward projection techniques it is further shown that intra firm diffusion tends to lag behind inter firm diffusion over the whole of the diffusion process and inter firm diffusion patterns and extent may thus be poor indicators of overall diffusion although intra firm diffusion is therefore crucial to the understanding of overall diffusion patterns the existing literature relating to it has severe limitations and there are no associated policy results it is argued that much greater emphasis should be placed on intra firm issues in future diffusion research it is also suggested that discussions of intra firm policy could usefully proceed within the context of already established general diffusion policy principles

the diffusion of new agricultural technologies the case of crossbred cow technology in tanzania the recent literature on agricultural technology adoption shows that diffusion of new technologies varies significantly across space and time furthermore puzzles exist about why some seemingly profitable technologies are not adopted especially in livestock production we employ a hazard or duration function to explain diffusion of crossbred cow technology in a unique sample of tanzania farmers a farmer s adoption of crossbred technology depends positively on the proximity of his farm to other users on his schooling and on his access to credit and contact with extension agents

the diffusion of computers and the distribution of wages abstract when the costs are decreasing workers adopt technology at the point where the costs equal the increased productivity output per worker increases immediately while productivity benefits increase only gradually if costs continue to fall as a result workers in computer adopting labor market groups experience an immediate fall in wages due to increased supply on the other hand adopting workers experience wage increases with some delay this model explains why increased computer use does not immediately lead to higher wage inequality more specifically the results of the model are shown to be consistent with the question why within group wage inequality among skilled workers as a result of computer technology adoption in the united states increased in the 1970s while between group wage inequality and within group wage inequality among the unskilled did not start to increase until the 1980s the model also predicts that the more compressed german wage structure leads to a lagged diffusion of computer technology along with smaller changes in wage inequality our empirical analysis suggests that this is consistent with the actual developments in germany since the 1980s finally the theoretical predictions seem to be of the right magnitude to explain the empirical quantities observed in the data

e business usage across and within firms in the uk profitability externalities and policy using data from the third uk community innovation survey we model the usage of e business across and within firms in the uk in the year 2000 as a single observation upon an integrated process of inter and intra firm diffusion the intra firm dimension is a significant extension to standard analysis the model estimates indicate that the pattern of e business usage reflects the heterogeneity of firms in terms of size other innovative activity and labour force skills generating differences in the payoffs to use as well as market and non market intermediated externalities the policy implications of the findings are discussed c 2008 elsevier b v all rights reserved

information transmission in irrigation technology adoption and diffusion social learning extension services and spatial effects in this article we investigate the role of information transmission in promoting agricultural technology adoption and diffusion through extension services and social learning we develop a theoretical model of technology adoption and diffusion which we then empirically apply using duration analysis on a micro dataset consisting of recall data covering the period 1994 2004 for olive producing farms from crete greece our findings suggest that both extension services and social learning are strong determinants of technology adoption and diffusion while the effectiveness of each of the two informational channels is enhanced by the presence of the other