the paradox of openness revisited collaborative innovation and patenting by uk innovators we revisit the paradox of openness in the literature which consists of two conflicting views on the link between patenting and open innovation the spillover prevention and the organizational openness views we use the data from the survey of innovation and patent use and the community innovation survey cis6 in the uk to assess the empirical support for the distinct predictions of these theories we argue that both patenting and external sourcing openness are jointly determined decisions made by firms their relationship is contingent upon whether the firms are technically superior to their rivals and lead in the market or not leading firms are more vulnerable to unintended knowledge spillovers during collaboration as compared to followers and consequently the increase in patenting due to openness is higher for leaders than for followers we develop a simple framework that allows us to formally derive the empirical implications of this hypothesis and test it by estimating whether the reduced form relationship between patenting and collaboration is stronger for leaders than for followers

money capital and real liquidity effects with habit formation the money in utility model is reconsidered in the presence of endogenous labour and habits with standard assumptions about preferences and a policy rule that sets the nominal interest rate by adjusting the growth rate of money the model exhibits superneutrality in the steady state nevertheless habits give rise to real liquidity effects in the short run after an increase in the nominal interest rate employment falls resulting in a fall in capital accumulation and in the short and long term real interest rates the adjustment of the capital stock is non monotonic employment and the short and long term real interest rates may also adjust non monotonically jel classification e22 e52 e58 monnaie capital et effets reels de liquidite quand il y a formation d habitudes on re examine le role de la monnaie dans un modele d utilite quand travail et formation d habitudes sont endogenes dans le cadre des postulats usuels a propos des preferences et d une regle de politique qui definit le taux d interet en ajustant le rythme de croissance de la monnaie le modele fait preuve de super neutralite en regime permanent neanmoins les habitudes entrainent des effets reels de liquiditea court terme apres un accroissement dans le taux d interet nominal l emploi chute ce qui entraine un ralentissement dans l accumulation du capital et une chute des taux d interet reels a court et a long terme l ajustement dans le stock de capital n est pas monotone l emploi et les taux d interet reels a court et a long terme peuvent aussi ne pas s ajuster de facon monotone

gone but not lost the different performance impacts of employee mobility between cooperators versus competitors this article extends research on the relationship between employee mobility and firm performance by exploring how mobility between competitors and mobility between potential cooperators are differe

specialized supply firms property rights and firm boundaries the proper specification of intellectual property rights iprs is a delicate and controversial matter in this paper we consider one specialized context in which iprs can add to efficiency we build on contributions of both firm capabilities scholars e g teece pisano et al and property rights economists e g hart to show that iprs can affect efficiency by influencing the location of technological innovation using a simple set up where the key choice is whether a technology intensive input will be supplied by an independent firm or produced in house we analyze how the choice is affected by the strength of iprs and by the existence and nature of information spillovers specifically we show that when the supply relationship is likely to produce new information of value to the supplier stronger property rights favor independent suppliers over vertical integration an important implication of our model backed by empirical case studies is that strong iprs therefore encourage investments in specialized firms with strong firm capabilities in the area of innovative input supply iprs therefore may play a role along with multiple other factors in the location of firm boundaries in some cases this contribution to the viability of small specialized firms with their superior ability to innovate in some cases must be taken into account in evaluating recent criticisms of over fragmented ipr ownership i e the anticommons problem it also contributes to an understanding of iprs in the post chandlerian economy where smaller specialized firms play a prominent role copyright 2004 oxford university press

aspects of labor market adjustments in japan this article discusses some aspects of labor market adjustments in japan that may be relevant to the low unemployment rate there japanese statistics treat kyugyosha persons not at work as being employed but some of these workers would be counted as unemployed in the united states the kyugyosha group appears to increase in size during downturns and decreases during upturns suggesting that temporarily laid off persons are an important part of this group japanese employers evidently rely less on employment adjustments and more on adjustments in hours of work and inventory while employers in the united states rely more on employment adjustments to deal with cyclical changes in product demand japanese manufacturing employment became less sensitive and hours of work more sensitive to demand shocks after the introduction of the employment insurance law in 1975

beyond privatization institutional innovation and growth in china s large state owned enterprises abstract this article demonstrates that china s large state owned enterprises soes are not stagnant fossils waiting to die under economic reform policies this sector has undergone large change due to enhanced enterprise autonomy the impact of market forces rapid growth of domestic demand for upstream products strategic integration with the world economy and the state s policy to promote large businesses china s large soes are developing new institutional forms that do not neatly fit into existing patterns china is experimentally changing its institutions through a combination of central policy local initiative and interaction with international investment this presents a challenge to the transitional orthodoxy and to ideas concerning property rights in development economics there is not a universal model of property rights and government action that works best in all circumstances china s experience with the reform of large soes shows the diverse possibilities for effective industrial institutions

the age wage profile and structural change in the japanese labor market for males 1964 1982 the focus of this paper is on the impact of demographic change and the catching up of japanese industry with the west technologically upon the age wage profile in japan over the period 1964 1982 we argue that changes on the supply side of the aggregate labor market especially the aging of the japanese labor force have had a profound influence on determining the relative wages of senior to junior workers but we also argue that structural shift on the demand side especially that associated with the slowing down of output growth as japan caught up with western economies was important in determining the age wage profile finally we offer a variety of statistical findings consistent with our thesis including new evidence on the dualistic structure of the japanese labor market

panel tests of okun s law for ten industrial countries donald g freeman i introduction okun s law describes an empirical regularity between unemployment and real output growth each extra percentage point in the unemployment rate above four percent i e full employment has been associated with about a three percent decrement in real gnp okun 1962 9 1 okun s law has proved to be one of the more durable relationships in modern macroeconomics and is now often presented as an element of core beliefs as in textbooks by hall and taylor 1993 77 and in policy discussions by blinder 1997 durability and simplicity being relatively scarce commodities in macroeconomics okun s law is appealing as a shorthand guide to policy outcomes whether okun s law travels well is another question cross country comparisons of the relationship between unemployment and output have been estimated for other countries by knoester 1986 paldam 1987 and moosa 1997 among others but magnitudes vary depending on country and time period estimates in these papers of the increase in output growth associated with unemployment reduction of one percent range from a low of around two percent in the u s and canada to three to five percent in europe to more than 10 percent in japan with estimates for europe tending to be higher for more recent time periods because of the way that okun s law is framed tests of its proposition involve two imposing empirical problems first as usually stated the law refers to the relationship between departures of real gdp 2 and unemployment from their long run or equilibrium trends often referred to as potential gdp and the natural rate of unemployment respectively these equilibrium trends must be estimated either by time series methods as in moosa 1997 or by construction using a modified production function approach in which potential output is estimated using fully employed inputs as in gordon 1984 or adams and coe 1989 either of these fapproaches invites considerable criticism of assumptions and methods see for example the comments of clark 1984 and of baily 1984 on gordon 1984 second in formulating his law okun seems clearly not to be referring to a ceteris paribus relationship between changes in the unemployment rate and changes in real gdp writing later okun posited that other factors and inputs would be changing pari passu with employment the 3 percent result from a reduction of one percent in the unemployment rate implies that considerable output gains in a period of rising utilization rates stem from some or all of the following induced increases in the size of the labor force longer average weekly hours and greater productivity okun 1970 p 140 thus a complete specification of the effect of changing unemployment rates on output would include factors such as capital inputs labor hours and participation rates all measured as deviations from long run trends this article addresses these two obstacles by using a recent trend cycle decomposition developed by baxter and king 1999 to measure gaps in output unemployment capital stock and the labor force the baxter king bandpass filter extracts the trend component of economic time series by eliminating both high frequency those less than two years and low frequency more than eight years components it is both flexible and easy to implement by using the bandpass filter to filter all the time series using the same methodology this paper departs from previous research of prachowny 1993 and attfield and silverstone 1997 incorporating capital and labor to augment estimates of okun s law additionally using the bandpass filter allows the estimates in this article to incorporate more timely data reflecting the shift to lower levels of unemployment in the u s and higher levels of unemployment in europe and japan during the 1990s the latest year of observation for the constructed data sets of gordon and of adams and coe used for example by prachowny 1993 and attfield and silverstone 1997 is 1988

perceptual and structural barriers to investing in natural capital economics from an ecological footprint perspective this paper argues that perceptual distortions and prevailing economic rationality far from encouraging investment in natural capital actually accelerate the depletion of natural capital stocks moreover conventional monetary analyses cannot detect the problem this paper therefore makes the case for direct biophysical measurement of relevant stocks and flows and uses for this purpose the ecological footprint concept to develop the argument the paper elaborates the natural capital concept and asserts the need of investing in natural capital to compensate for net losses it shows how the ecological footprint can be used as a biophysical measure for such capital and applies this concept as an analytical tool for examining the barriers to investing in natural capital it picks four issues from a rough taxonomy of barriers and discusses them from an ecological footprint perspective it shows why marginal prices cannot reflect ecological necessities how interregional risk pooling encourages resource liquidation how present terms of trade undermine both local and global ecological stability and how efficiency strategies may actually accelerate resource throughput affirming the necessity of biophysical approaches for exploring the sustainability implications of basic ecological and thermodynamic principles it draws lessons for current development

foreign influence control and indirect ownership implications for productivity spillovers how does the presence of controlled foreign firms affect the productivity of domestic firms in the same industry we revisit the historical distinction between control and influence by the foreign owner and define controlled foreign firms as those with a foreign ultimate owner holding 50 or more of voting shares connecting insights from new internalization theory with knowledge based views of the mne we posit that controlled foreign firms will generate larger productivity spillovers than non controlled foreign firms we use a firm level panel dataset of 575 844 manufacturing firms 2 343 495 observations across 20 european countries to test our proposition we pay careful attention to how firms are categorized as foreign taking into account both direct and indirect ownership links allowing for indirect ownership turns out to be pivotal there are just as many indirectly controlled foreign firms as foreign firms captured with direct ownership data we find positive horizontal spillovers from controlled foreign firms and zero spillovers from non controlled foreign firms interestingly the strongest positive spillovers come from the indirectly controlled foreign firms the implications of our study extend beyond productivity spillovers to areas such as cross border m as joint ventures mne strategies of legitimation and corporate groups

coordination of internal supply chains in vertically integrated high tech manufacturing organizations htmos abstract this paper uses economic mechanisms to coordinate supply chains within high tech manufacturing organizations htmos it models the one shot initial production and allocation decisions involved in the production and marketing of new technologies these decisions are driven by the economic objectives of the firm and of the employees with private information the experts it analyzes and compares the efficiency of three coordination policies centralized command and control centralized revelation and decentralized revelation it shows that decentralized policies introduce an additional cost and it proposes rules of thumb for coordinating supply chains within firms that use many experts

the changing technology of technological change general and abstract knowledge and the division of innovative labour abstract in the past most innovations have resulted from empiricist procedures the outcome of each trial yielding knowledge that could not be readily extended to other contexts while trial and error may remain the primary engine of innovation developments in many scientific disciplines along with progress in computational capabilities and instrumentation are encouraging a new approach to industrial research instead of relying purely on trial and error the attempt is also to understand the principles governing the behaviour of objects and structures the result is that relevant information whatever its source can now be cast in frameworks and categories that are more universal the greater universality makes it possible for the innovation process to be organised in new ways firms can specialise and focus upon producing new knowledge and the locus of innovation may be spread across both users and producers more generally the use of general and abstract knowledge in innovation opens up the possibility for a division of labour in inventive activity the division of innovative labour the implications for public policy especially that on intellectual property rights are discussed

long term employment and job security over the past 25 years a comparative study of japan and the united states the authors document and contrast changes or lack thereof in job stability over the past 25 years between japan and the united states prime age male workers with at least five years of tenure in japan continued to enjoy much higher job stability than did their u s counterparts most remarkably japan s lost decade had little discernible adverse effect on the job stability of this group of japanese employees by contrast job stability for mid career hires and youth workers deteriorated in japan the authors cross national regression analysis of job loss confirms the consistently more important role that seniority plays in protecting workers from job loss in japan than in the united states and reveals that this gap in seniority s influence on job stability between the two countries widened overall it is the u s economy with the longest economic expansion not the japanese economy with the longest economic stagnation that experienced deteriorating job stability pointing to the absence of converg

uncertainty and the specificity of human capital this paper studies the choice between general and specific human capital a trade off arises because general human capital while less productive can easily be reallocated across firms accordingly the fraction of individuals with specific human capital depends on the amount of uncertainty in the economy our model implies that while economies with more specific human capital tend to be more productive they also tend to be more vulnerable to turbulence as such our theory sheds some light on the experience of japan where human capital is notoriously specific while japan benefited from this predominately specific labor force in tranquil times this specificity may also have been at the heart of its prolonged stagnation

knowledge management does capture impede creation economists and strategic management theorists interested in sustained competitive advantage often examine firms management of knowledge somewhat surprisingly the interaction between knowledge creation and knowledge capture practices has received little attention using survey data from nearly 900 australian firms we examine this issue paying particular attention to whether knowledge capture impedes knowledge creation we find that firms which favor closed learning practices tend to rely more upon patents and secrecy and eschew lead time and brands as ways to capture profits firms that favor open styles of learning operate in the opposite manner copyright 2009 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

when do spinouts enhance parent firm performance evidence from the u s automobile industry 1890 1986 spinouts entrepreneurial ventures founded by ex employees of incumbent firms within the same industry have emerged in numerous industries some existing literature argues that they typically have a negative association with their parents performance because of the loss of human capital the disruption of organizational routines and subsequent adverse competitive effects more recent work however suggests that such negative effects may have been overstated and argues that there are conditions under which spinouts may be linked to enhanced performance of the parent i contribute to this literature by theorizing about and empirically testing for such conditions in particular using data from the u s automobile industry spanning 1890 to 1986 i find evidence that spinouts are associated with enhanced parent performance when they increase the parent s corporate coherence either through a the core competencies and capabilities domain by refocusing the parent s resources on the core or b the cognitive path by resolving a conflict at the top level of the parent s hierarchy i discuss implications for both research and practice

long term effects of a recession at labor market entry in japan and the united states abstract we examine effects of entering the labor market during a recession on subsequent employment and earnings for japanese and american men using comparable household labor force surveys we find persistent negative effects of the unemployment rate at graduation for less educated japanese men in contrast to temporary effects for less educated american men the school based hiring system and the dismissal regulation prolong the initial loss of employment opportunities for less educated japanese men the effect on earnings for more educated groups is also stronger in japan although the difference between the two countries is smaller than for less educated groups

an exploration of alternative measures of natural resource scarcity the case of petroleum resources in the u s abstract the concern about natural resource scarcity has traditionally focused on changes in the cost quality and availability of energy and material inputs to the production process ecological economists are increasingly concerned with an additional aspect of scarcity the growing scarcity of environmental services that sustain human economic existence the analysis here explores economic and biophysical indicators of natural resource scarcity the indices are quantified for the extraction of petroleum resources in the u s the economic indicators are the market price of crude oil and natural gas the unit capital plus labor cost of extraction and the average total cost of extraction dollars per btu extracted the biophysical index is the energy return on investment eroi all indices show a trend of decreasing and then increasing scarcity of petroleum at the wellhead the economic and biophysical cost indices indicate that the 1960s marked the transition from a decreasing to an increasing cost resource base the market price of oil is influenced by nonscarcity forces to the extent that it does not reflect that turning point the increase in the energy cost of petroleum extraction is in stark contrast to the changes in the energy cost of producing other goods and services in the u s economy which generally declined in the last 20 years the increase in the energy cost of extraction has important economic implications from 1954 to 1987 the fraction of total industrial output in the u s generated in the petroleum extraction sector declined almost 40 despite the declining share of its output the petroleum industry s share of direct energy use fossil fuels and electricity generally increased in that period the result is a clear increase in the amount of energy diverted from other potential uses to secure an additional unit of output in the petroleum sector none of the indicators reflect to any degree substantial nonmarketed environmental cost of petroleum extraction the biophysical perspective however emphasizes the coupling between physical scarcity and the demands that extraction places on renewable resources and ecosystem services the extraction of one barrel of oil equivalent for example requires 250 gallons of fresh water and emits more than 60 pounds of co2 and these costs are increasing

social capital for hire mobility of technical professionals and firm influence in wireless standards committees the movement of personnel between firms has been shown to have important implications for firms yet there has been little direct investigation of the underlying mechanisms we propose that in addition to their human capital mobile individuals carry social capital affecting the outcomes of the firms they join and leave by altering the patterns of interaction between firms in this study we examine how job mobility affects firm influence in a technical standards setting committee for u s wireless telecommunications we hypothesize and find that hiring individuals who are richer in social capital increases firm influence in technical standards setting committees by increasing the hiring firm s social capital we also find the benefits of hiring social capital are attenuated when an interfirm relationship is maintained by multiple individuals in contrast we find that the loss of personnel does not affect a firm s social capital or influence over standards directly but that it does have an effect on firm social capital and influence contingent on changes in the firm s business strategy in advancing these arguments we address the broader question of individuals as carriers of social capital and the conditions under which interpersonal connections are appropriable by firms

high school graduation performance and wages using data from the panel study of income dynamics and a proprietary sample of semiskilled production workers this paper investigates the reasons for the discontinuous increase in wages associated with graduation from high school i find a discontinuous decrease in workers propensities to quit or be absent however i do not find that high school graduates have a comparative advantage in production jobs requiring more training nor in either sample is there a discontinuous increase in required training associated with the jobs held by high school graduates the wage premium associated with graduation from high school appears to be procyclical falling during slumps periods in which employers are likely to be hoarding labor and in which quits and absences are least important to firms there is also some evidence suggesting that prior quits have a larger effect on the wages of high school graduates than on the wages of high school dropouts

the relative effectiveness of patents and secrecy for appropriation abstract changes in patent law global competition and the rise of several new technologies suggest that patents could be of greater value than secrecy for many innovative firms particularly small firms that are unable to use market power or other factors to appropriate their investments in innovation data from the 1993 european community innovation survey cis for up to 2849 r d performing firms is analysed to determine the relative importance of secrecy vs patents this particular combination of appropriation methods is interesting because secrecy can act as a mutually exclusive alternative to patents the results show that a higher percentage of firms in all size classes rate secrecy as more valuable than patents however ordered logit regressions show that the probability that a firm rates secrecy as more valuable than patents declines with an increase in firm size for product innovations while there is no relationship for process innovations the firm s r d intensity has no effect on the relative value of secrecy vs patents there is weak evidence to show that participation in cooperative r d increases the value of patents over secrecy for product innovations the results are relevant to ongoing debates over changes to the patent system and the need for policies to encourage small firms to patent more

natural capital as an economic concept history and contemporary issues natural capital is usually presented as a recent concept used for the first time in the 1970s adopted in an important contribution by david pearce in 1988 and widely used by ecological economists in the early 1990s first employed to incorporate natural constraints into the economic lexicon and to oblige economists to take the environment into account the concept has also been used to include the environment in narrow economic valuations to take a global view of these controversial uses this paper reconsiders the genesis of natural capital as an economic concept not in its present day form but from its almost unknown ancient origins in the 1900s 1910s in the writing of alvin s johnson the article first sheds light on this historical and theoretical moment and then shows how it can help interpret current controversies about natural capital

employment relations in dual labor markets it s nice work if you can get it jobs in big firms command higher wages i examine four theories that could explain this relation first large firms incur higher fixed employment costs including more specific training second monitoring costs are greater in big firms and can be spread by hiring more productive workers third large firms may choose to pay efficiency wages to deter shirking finally large employers organize production around teams and pay higher wages to get workers who comply with the discipline of team production the dispersion of wages and working conditions in the u s labor market reflect the heterogeneity of jobs employment relations and individuals

when competitive advantage doesn t lead to performance the resource based view and stakeholder bargaining power what if rent from a competitive advantage is appropriated so it cannot be observed in performance measures the resourcebased view was not formulated to examine who will get the rent yet this essay argues that the factors leading to a resource based advantage also predict who will appropriate rent knowledge based assets are promising because firm specificity social complexity and causal ambiguity make them hard to imit ate however the roles of internal stakeholders may grant them a great deal of bargaining power especially relative to investors this essay integrates the resource based view with the bargaining power literature by defining the firm as a nexus of contracts this new lens can help to explain when rent will be generated and simultaneously who will appropriate it in doing so it provides a more robust theory of firm performance than the resource based view alone it is also suggested that this lens might be useful for examining other theories of firm performance

the acquisition and commercialization of invention in american manufacturing incidence and impact abstract recent accounts suggest the development and commercialization of invention has become more open greater division of labor between inventors and innovators can enhance social welfare through gains from trade and economies of specialization moreover this extensive reliance upon outside sources for invention also suggests that understanding the factors that condition the extramural supply of inventions to innovators is crucial to understanding the determinants of the rate and direction of innovative activity this paper reports on a recent survey of over 5000 american manufacturing sector firms on the extent to which innovators rely upon external sources of invention our results indicate that between 2007 and 2009 16 of manufacturing firms had innovated meaning had introduced a product that was new to the industry of these 49 report that their most important new product had originated from an outside source notably customers suppliers and technology specialists i e universities independent inventors and r d contractors we also compare the contribution of each source to innovation in the us economy although customers are the most common outside source inventions acquired from technology specialists tend to be the more economically significant in term of their gross commercial value as a group external sources of invention make a significant contribution to the overall rate of innovation in the economy innovation policies both public and private should pay careful attention to the external supply of invention and the efficiency of the mechanisms affecting the relationships between inventors and innovators

labor market advantages of organizational status a study of lateral partner hiring by large u s law firms prior research demonstrates product market advantages of organizational status but largely neglects factor market advantages we propose that status is advantageous in labor markets because individuals generally consider employer status a nonpecuniary employment benefit dyadic analyses of lateral partner hiring by large u s law firms demonstrate two status based advantages in employee hiring and retention first high status firms are more likely than low status ones to hire an employee from a more profitable competitor second high status firms are most likely to lose an employee to a lower status competitor when the competitor is atypically more profitable we discuss implications of these findings for individual and organizational status attainment and for the stability of industry status hierarchies

a systems perspective on the interrelations between natural human made and cultural capital in recent years substantial progress has been achieved in the field of ecological economics for clarifying human nature interrelations the fundamental role of the life support functions of the environment odum 1975 for economic development and sustainability has entered from ecology into economics and has started to be theoretically as well as empirically analyzed this has in part given rise to the terminology of natural capital and human made capital in contrast to the assumptions of standard economic theory ecological economists regard human made capital and natural capital as fundamentally complementary natural capital and its derived goods and services are the preconditions or the basis for economic development it is not possible for human ingenuity to create human made capital without support from natural capital e g daly 1990 moreover it is not possible to approach sustainability by only focusing on these two factors natural capital and human made capital interrelations we need a third dimension what we refer to as cultural capital as well from a systems perspective we emphasize that the three types of capital are strongly interrelated and form the basis for guiding society towards sustainability

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

gender stratification in contemporary urban japan japanese women participate in the labor force at rates similar to women in western industrial nations but gender stratification patterns are sharper women in japan are less apt to work as employees a tendency that increases with age likewise female employees tend to shift from larger to smaller firms across the life cycle whereas male employees do not these aggregate patterns imply that japanese women are seldom placed in career track positions in large firms early in their careers analyses on labor market entry data from the 1984 survey on work patterns substantiate this view although japanese men and women enter large firms at equivalent rates upon leaving school 22 of men and only 7 of women enter career ladders the majority of women enter large firms as clerical workers 3 4 of whom are in low level assistant clerical positions causal processes governing entrance to large firms and career tracks are examined in the paper with particular attention to the relative returns to different levels and types of education for japanese men and women authors

wages seniority and the demand for rising consumption profiles abstract in many occupations wages rise faster than productivity over the life cycle other authors have suggested a variety of explanations for this pattern we argue that these explanations fail for at least two occupations commercial airline pilots and intercity bus drivers we then explore an alternative explanation based on the assumption that satisfaction depends on not only the level of consumption but also its rate of change we argue that upward sloping wage profiles are an expedient substitute for personal savings as a means for achieving upward sloping consumpion profiles

the importance of lifetime jobs differences between union and nonunion workers the authors use cps micro data to derive estimates of retention rates and eventual lifetime tenure probabilities for union and nonunion workers although both groups enjoy a considerable degree of

the earnings of soviet workers evidence from the soviet interview project micro data gathered by the soviet interview project provide one of the first opp ortunities for western researchers to investigate the determinants of soviet earnings the data show that soviet labor markets operate in many respects like u s labor markets yet institutional differences remain the most striking institutional impact is that soviet workers are rewarded and penalized for political behavior external to the firm as in the u s education and experience are rewarded men earn more than women however the soviet pattern of returns to education is different returns to experience are lower and occupational segregation of women is less important copyright 1988 by mit press

earnings patterns of japanese women 1976 1988 the structure of the japanese labor market and how it has changed in response to demographic and economic conditions has drawn considerable attention most of the well known characteristics of this system of industrial relations relate to lifetime employment contracts the seniority based wage system and the widespread use of mandatory retirement these characteristics apply to regular full time employees in japan primarily to male employees in large firms regular full time male employees have longer job tenure and more rapidly rising earnings than comparable workers in the united states japanese women are much less likely to be employed under these lifetime contracts considerably less is known concerning the structure of women s wages in japan this study provides new information concerning the determinants of earnings for female workers in japan by estimating earnings equations for full time paid employees using two different data sources first the basic survey of wage structure bsws is used to examine the earnings function of japanese women using the bsws for 1976 1981 and 1986 we estimate how the determinants of earnings have changed during the last decade second the 1988 national survey on the family hereafter referred to as the family survey is employed to examine the presence of children and the resulting intermittent pattern of female labor supply on earnings key findings indicate that earnings of women rise with job tenure however the magnitude of tenure effect on earnings has declined over time education increases the earnings of women more than it does

careers in foreign owned firms in japan this article examines how organizational environments affect labor market processes in japan i hypothesize that labor market inequality is generated through workers being positioned in either domestic or in foreign firms i apply the concept of social versus economic exchange to distinguish the nature of transactions between domestic and foreign firms i argue that foreign firms operate under an institutional context that is conducive to the economic mode of exchange which has enormous consequences for their personnel practices and reward systems using a dataset of japanese workers collected in 2000 i examine the extent to which employment practices in foreign firms deviate from the benchmark features observed in the japanese labor market my results confirm that employment in foreign firms significantly affects career outcomes the highcommitment culture commonly associated with the japanese workforce is an outcome of the organizational environment i find little evidence of japanese employment pra

managerial objectives capital structure and the provision of worker incentives worker incentive schemes are invariably assumed to be administered by an owner entrepreneur who has an incentive to understate worker performance after the event while tournaments can overcome this problem they discourage cooperation between workers we show that a professional manager concerned with equality between workers and with avoiding bankruptcy rather than maximizing shareholder wealth will conduct a tournament that preserves individual effort incentives while promoting cooperation between workers the theory predicts lower debt levels and more compressed pay scales as cooperation becomes more important in the limit this becomes a group bonus scheme supported by blue chip debt

an examination of country and culture based differences in compensation practices this study explores the relationship between country based and culture based differences in pay practices pay data from forty one manufacturing industries in twenty eight countries across five different culture clusters were examined although significant differences were found between countries in terms of pay level the largest portion of the variance in the relationship between wages and benefits is due to cultural affiliation the implications for cultural clustering theory and internationally pay decisionmaking are discussed

what percentage of innovations are patented empirical estimates for european firms abstract a 1993 survey on the innovative activities of europe s largest industrial firms obtained useable results on patenting activities for 604 respondents the data are used to calculate the sales weighted propensity rates for 19 industries the propensity rates equal the percentage of innovations for which a patent application is made the propensity rates for product innovations average 35 9 varying between 8 1 in textiles and 79 2 in pharmaceuticals the average for process innovations is 24 8 varying from 8 1 in textiles to 46 8 for precision instruments only four sectors have patent propensity rates for both product and process innovations combined that exceed 50 pharmaceuticals chemicals machinery and precision instruments regression results that control for the effect of industry sector show that patent propensity rates increase with firm size and are higher among firms that find patents to be an important method for preventing competitors from copying both product and process innovations the effect of secrecy is not so straightforward firms that find secrecy to be an important protection method for product innovations are less likely to patent as expected but secrecy has little effect on the propensity to patent process innovations the r d intensity of the firm has no effect on patent propensity rates for both product and process innovations the sector of activity has a strong influence on product patent propensities but very little effect on process patent propensities after controlling for the effect of other factors

status and incentives this article introduces status as reflecting an agent s claim to recognition in her work this is a scarce resource increasing an agent s status requires that another agent s status be decreased higher status agents are more willing to exert effort in exchange for money better paid agents would exert higher effort in exchange for improved status the results are consistent with actual management practices i egalitarianism is desirable in a static context ii in a long term work relationship juniors compensation is delayed and iii past performance is rewarded by pay increases along with improved status within the organization s hierarchy

within or without how firms combine internal and external labor markets to fill jobs we examine which jobs are more likely to be filled by internal mobility specifically promotions and lateral transfers than by hiring building on the assumptions of transaction cost accounts of

r d intensity and international joint venture performance in an emerging market moderating effects of market focus and ownership structure in this study we examine the contingent relationship between r d intensity and performance of international joint ventures ijvs in an emerging market context based on teece s 1986 arguments regarding the appropriability of innovation we identify two types of appropriability hazard related to ijvs r d activities in this context local market related and local partner related hazards we argue that a positive relationship between r d intensity and ijv performance is more likely to occur if these appropriability hazard can be mitigated results using a sample of manufacturing ijvs in china provide support for these arguments we find that r d intensity is positively related to performance in export market focused ijvs but not in local market focused ijvs in addition using a configuration approach we find that r d intensity is positively related to performance in ijvs that have an export market focus and in which the multinational companies mncs have a majority ownership but not in other market focus ownership structure configurations these findings contribute to our knowledge of r d activities of mncs overseas subsidiaries

has japan s long term employment practice survived developments since the 1990s japan s traditional long term employment practice loosely termed lifetime employment once attracted much attention but its fortunes have not been tracked since the 1990s the authors use micro data from the japanese government s basic survey on wage structure to estimate permanent full time workers tenure patterns in the years during and following japan s decade long recession mean tenure they find grew for both genders between 1990 and 2003 the main explanation for this trend was a changing relationship between tenure and the attributes of workers and firms rather than changes in the attributes themselves although the importance of the latter increased for some women beyond the tendency at the mean the authors find substantial variation notably workers who had gained employment protection under the traditional system mostly in large firms saw larger gains in mean tenure than did other workers this divergence the authors suggest could eventually exacerbate lifetime income inequality in

the structural reshaping of globalization implications for strategic sectors profiting from innovation and the multinational enterprise the rapid reshaping of the global economic order requires fundamental shifts in international business scholarship and management practice new forms of protectionist policies new types of internationalization motives and new tools of techno nationalism may lead to what we call bifurcated governance at the macro level and value chain decoupling at the micro level as a result innovation networks will require novel reconfigurations we examine the emerging constraints on multinational enterprises imposed by a bifurcated world order we also discuss how the dynamic capabilities framework can guide scholars and managers alike to achieve new forms of evolutionary fitness

knowledge seeking and location choice of foreign direct investment in the united states to what extent do firms go abroad to access technology available in other locations this paper examines whether and when state technical capabilities attract foreign investment in manufacturing from 1987 1993 we find that on average state r d intensity does not attract foreign direct investment most investing firms are in lower tech industries and locate in low r d intensity states suggesting little interest in state technical capabilities in contrast we find that firms in research intensive industries are more likely to locate in states with high r d intensity foreign firms in the pharmaceutical industry value state r d intensity the most at a level twice that of firms in the semiconductor industry and four times that of electronics firms interestingly not only firms from technically lagging nations but also some firms from technically leading nations are attracted to r d intensive states this suggests that beyond catching up firms use knowledge seeking investments also to source technical diversity

estimating a new keynesian phillips curve with a corrected measure of real marginal cost evidence in japan we estimate a new keynesian phillips curve nkpc in japan focusing on the measurement of real marginal cost rmc especially we correct labor share by taking account of two kinds of labor market frictions i labor adjustment costs and ii real wage rigidity our results show that the consideration of these labor market frictions greatly improves the fit of japan s nkpc furthermore if we additionally incorporate materials prices in the calculation of rmc then the fit of the nkpc is further improved our most important finding is that the conventional backward looking component is no more needed to explain japan s inflation dynamics if we use a corrected measure of rmc

property rights and stratification in socialist redistributive economies in socialist economies work organizations differ widely in the compensation they provide employees despite the absence of key product and labor market processes thought to ex plain such inequalities in market economies existing theories of stratification in socialist economies focus on the power and privilege of elites but inequalities among organizations are not created by political particularism or elite power in this paper i sketch elements of an institutional theory of stratification anchored in a conception of property rights the right to derive income from productive assets two aspects of property rights guide the analysis 1 the dispersion of property rights across a hierarchy of governmentjurisdictions and 2 the exercise of these rights by government jurisdictions as they extract revenues primarily through taxation extraction of revenues from a work organization varies with the budgetary resources of a government jurisdiction and the dependence of that jurisdiction on the out puts of the organization variation in revenue extraction in turn creates inequalities among work organizations in their abilities to provide benefits to employees an analysis of survey data on the provision of housing and benefits by work organizations in the large industrial city of tianjin china provides provisional support for these ideas s tudents of communist states have had little reason to dispute lenski s 1966 claim that the distribution of rewards in a society is a func tion of the distribution of power p 63 as ex emplified in szelenyi s wedding of elite theory to institutional economics this idea has been de veloped primarily in terms of the power of class es or occupational groups szelenyi 1978 be gan with the observation that planned economies operate according to redistributive rather than market principles however the process of re

unemployment insurance and job duration in canada we use data from the canadian 2 year longitudinal labour market activity survey of 1986 87 to estimate the effect of the unemployment insurance ui system on job duration particular attention is focused on the entrance requirements of the ui system which relate eligibility for ui benefits to an individual s recent employment history the article makes operational the ui entrance requirement provisions which take into account variations in the regional unemployment rate controlling for many personal and job characteristics we find evidence that a significant number of jobs terminate when they have reached the duration that would permit a ui claim

seniority wages and productivity a turbulent decade why does a worker s wage tend to grow with seniority in the firm and what does this have to do with productivity two decades ago neoclassical labor economists thought that the theory of human capital provided a good answer to this question the last decade has however been one of puzzles and doubt at this point few would give an unambiguous answer and much hinges on the answer an attractive feature of human capital theory is that it yields a consistent and coherent explanation for several aspects of the employer employee relationship for example seniority systems layoff policies that vary with skill and the relationship between tenure and turnover can be explained in terms of human capital the fact that these explanations are connected leads however to something like a domino effect doubts about one cast doubt on the others if the human capital explanation for the wage seniority relationship is flawed then human capital explanations for other phenomena may require reevaluation in addition an important body of empirical research is built around the assumption that at any point in time a person s wage indicates the person s productivity included here is the extensive literature on the human capital earnings function as well as work on labor demand market discrimination and compensating differentials that assumption has become controversial in recent years in part because implicit contract theories predict that compensation will be redistributed over the period of the contract if a person s spot wage has little to do with spot productivity but rather is an instrument of a complex insurance or deferred compensation scheme then a reassessment of the empirical research may be necessary

macroeconomics and methodology probabilistic reasoning is essential to discourse in economics this is true in any discipline in which as in economics data collection is constrained and beliefs about the phenomena being studied are crucial to decisions that cannot be delayed some economists have recently turned away from form probabilistic inference in part because of legitimate discontent with the prescriptions of specialized econometricians however this turning away has gone in mutually inconsistent directions and is in the long run unsustainable it should be more widely recognized that careful applied work in macroeconomics using steadily advancing probabilistic modeling techniques has been steadily increasing

perspectives on multinational enterprises in emerging economies multinational enterprises mnes play a pivotal role in the development of many emerging economies in consequence they became the focus of scholarly research by economists and policy analysts in contrast international business scholars have been comparatively uninterested in analysing this role of mnes yet they could make important contributions to these debates first studies taking the individual firms as starting point would enhance understanding of the interaction between mnes and the local environment second theories and research methodologies developed in international business research could provide new insights into the dynamics of mnes in emerging economies the objective of this paper is to motivate more international business scholars to engage in research on positive and negative spillovers from foreign direct investment fdi in emerging economy societies to advance this research agenda scholars need to analyse the specific activities and capabilities of the firms involved and the impact of fdi on the broader social and environmental context for management this agenda raises the ethical question to what extent ought businesses to care about their local stakeholders

property rights and sustainable nature tourism adaptation and mal adaptation in dalarna sweden and maine usa abstract tourism is viewed in many industrial nations as an environmentally friendly way to revitalize distressed rural economies and communities in the forest regions of dalarna and interior maine hopes are pinned on nature based tourism with the presumption that natural capital is underutilized this paper explores the potential and pitfalls of nature tourism as a basis for sustainable rural development in regions where most land is held privately but quasi open access for recreation has been either a right dalarna or a customary entitlement maine the paper applies theories of common pool resources and impure public goods to show that both property regimes are mal adapted for sustainable nature tourism limited exclusion combined with rivalness in land uses mis aligns incentives facing landowners tourists and recreation businesses short term effects include congestion reduced economic opportunity and depressed production of non recreational goods longer term effects include environmental degradation and weak incentives for value added investment tourism development is further impeded by a scale mis match between small ownerships and large efficient recreation management units the analysis suggests that sustainable nature tourism faces four land use challenges

equal employment opportunity in japan a view from the west the japanese equal employment opportunity law of 1985 effective in april 1986 prohibits gender discrimination with respect to recruitment hiring promotion training and job assignment the author describes the law and assesses its probable impact on the economic opportunities of japanese women she argues that two aspects of japan s socioeconomic environment the lifetime employment system used by large japanese private firms and the labor supply pattern of japanese women make it unlikely that the law will have a large impact on the economic status of women in japan

the labor contract and true economic pension liabilities most pension covered workers in the united states are covered solely or primarily by defined benefit plans in these plans workers are typically promised a pension that is proportional to their years of service in the firm and their final wage depending upon how workers pay for it the existence of a pension in the labor contract may play either an important role or no role at all in the worker firm relationship this paper addresses the issue how workers pay for the cumulating pension benefit over their tenure cycle in the firm and derives several economic implications for the worker firm contract while the theory itself has ambiguous implications the data confirm the longstanding presumption that pensions offer strong incentives for the worker to complete the normal tenure cycle in the firm not to quit early but if this intuitive notion is accepted it is shown that a perhaps less intuitive notion is also true firms make workers longterm bondholders in the firm the same flow of worker pension savings that tie workers to the firm are not accounted for in the pension trust fund pension plans are significantly underfunded in a true economic sense this is a peculiar characteristic of the labor contract which raises several unanswered questions the paper also shows that the nature of the pension contract can play an important role in determining the wage service profile and the capitalized value of the firm recent contributions to the literature pose an interesting and unconventional view of pensions one which leads to the conclusion that pensions play a relatively minor role in the worker firm contract the argument has been implicitly made by burt barnow and ronald ehrenberg 1979 and william sharpe 1976 but has recently been stated more directly by jeremy bulow 1982 2 in essence their views rest on a legal interpretation of pension liabilities namely since the firm can legally terminate its pension plan anytime the firm s pension liabilities cannot exceed the present value of the nominal pension promises it would owe workers if the firm terminated the plan immediately if workers believe the firm will exercise its legal right it is intuitively apparent and easy to show that workers will deposit only that amount of compensation into the pension plan that they expect to receive upon immediate termination using this interpretation of pension plan liabilities pensions have no influence on whether the worker leaves or remains in the firm moreover it will be shown that if the pension contract is written in nominal terms reflecting the legal view workers are not bondholders in the firm pension plans are excessively overfunded an alternative view is that the pension plan is an implicit contract between the worker and the firm see for example jack treynor 1977 an implicit contract theory implies that workers anticipating careers with a firm will consider the package of wage and pension benefits they expect to collect over their life cycle it is shown that these expectations lead quite directly to several implications that the pension contract is written in real terms that firms intend to meet their pension promises and that the firm will re u s department of labor s 4521 washington d c 20210 the views expressed in this paper are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the department of labor the paper has substantially benefited from the comments of pauline ippolito and discussions with jeremy bulow i am also indebted to robert clark gary fields alan gustman olivia mitchell james pesando john turner michael ward and participants at the labor relations workshop at cornell university and the law and economics workshop at the university of chicago for comments see my 1985a book 2 the argument is also implicit in other related papers see for example martin feldstein and randall morck 1982

promotion turnover earnings and firm sponsored training i develop a model in which different technological conditions lead to distinct equilibria with different patterns in labor mobility promotion earning distribution and provision of firm sponsored training key is the asymmetric learning of workers characteristics because of the information that is conveyed to the market by promotion firms have incentives to adopt strategic promotion policies which result in different patterns in the use of internal labor market the theory explains well the differences between the japanese and the united states labor markets

a theory of the optimal cost barrier to corporate takeovers this paper characterizes financial and employment contracts in the presence of both worker moral hazard and the threat of opportunistic takeovers firms in which worker efforts or specific investments are of greater importance are shown to exhibit a greater degree of deferred compensation supported by governance structures that allow managers to resist hostile takeovers more vigorously this effect is most pronounced in firms where workers pay for their job by accepting low wages early in their careers firms in which large deferred payments cannot be offset by low starting wages will offer less resistance to a hostile bidder copyright 1997 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

unintentional unavoidable and beneficial knowledge leakage from the multinational enterprise knowledge leakage as an undesirable outcome for mnes is an accepted view in ib literature we challenge this view and argue that knowledge leakage is often unintentional unavoidable and beneficial for the mne in a highly networked and information rich society knowledge leakage from mnes 1 happens naturally due to interfirm relationships interactions and socialization 2 is unavoidable due to employee mobility and 3 facilitates knowledge inflows due to the reciprocity nature of knowledge exchange and hence is beneficial for mnes in addition the costs of protecting knowledge incurred by an mne will often outweigh the benefits

contracts job experience and cyclical labor market adjustments longitudinal estimates of the variability of individual wages hours and weeks worked over the course of changing demand states are provided for all workers generally and for workers of varied levels of job experience emphasis is placed on that part of job experience represented as years on current job a commonly used proxy for the magnitude of firm specific skills interpretation of resulting estimates in the context of the labor market contracting literature is attempted generally significant procyclical patterns are found for real weekly wages weekly hours and weeks worked the extent of weekly wage variability is much greater than is generally suggested in the literature furthermore workers with greater tenure exhibit greater cyclical wage and hours variability and less weeks variability finally empirical distinctions are drawn separately for white collar and blue collar as well as union and nonunion workers

employment tenure and earnings profiles in japan and the united states comments the relationship between job tenure and annual earnings in japan has received considerable attention from social scientists examining employment contracts and the japanese compensation system in their widely cited article masanori hashimoto and john raisian 1985 using data for 1980 showed that japanese men have greater job tenure than comparable workers in the united states and that the earnings of japanese men rise more rapidly with increased tenure they found that an additional year of tenure increases earnings in both small and large firms in japan more than does an additional year of general market experience their results for the united states indicate that general market experience increases earnings more than an additional year of job tenure the 1970 s and 1980 s were a period of substantial change in japanese labor markets due to the rapid aging of the population and the restructuring of the economy following the oil crisis the present analysis extends the work of hashimoto and raisian by estimating earnings equations for japanese men for the years 1971 1976 1981 and 1986 specifically we wish to investigate whether hashimoto and raisian s findings have been stable over time or whether changes in the labor market have altered the importance of tenure relative to total labor market experience in the japanese labor market i changes in the labor market

capturing knowledge within and across firm boundaries evidence from clinical development how do firm boundaries influence employees acquisition of information using detailed project level data and qualitative evidence i document that pharmaceutical firms are more likely to outsource the coordination of data intensive clinical trials while they are more likely to assign knowledge intensive trials to internal teams managers do not choose between market and hierarchy but between the hierarchy of the firm in which subjective performance evaluations are combined with flat explicit incentives and the hierarchy of its subcontractor whose virtue stems precisely from the ability to provide high powered incentives on a narrow set

equilibrium unemployment with internal labour markets the flow approach to the labour market is based on a clear distinction between trade and production this paper argues that this separation is not realistic because many firms in developed economies usually fill an important share of their vacancies by upgrading incumbent employees the implications of the existence of internal labour markets are explored with the help of a simple model that extends the well known pissarides setup the main result is that the distribution of unemployment by education is correlated with the relative importance of internal labour markets in particular i show that more internalization is associated both with more inequality in the distribution of unemployment with the burden falling mainly on the less educated and with less inequality in the distribution of wages by education the model also generates in a simple way upward sloping wage profiles which are offered by firms with internal labour markets to their recruits who face a nonzero probability of promotion to a skilled job

the importance of lifetime jobs in the u s economy though the u s labor market is justly notorious for high turnover and consequent high unemployment it also provides stable near lifetime employment to an important fraction of the labor force this paper investigates patterns of job duration by age race and sex with the following major conclusions 1 the typical worker today is holding a job which has lasted or will last about eight years over a quarter of all workers are holding jobs which will last twenty years or more sixty percent hold jobs which will last five years or more 2 the jobs held by middle aged workers with more than ten years of tenure are extremely stable over the span of a decade only twenty to thirty percent come to an end 3 among workers aged thirty and above about forty percent are currently working in jobs which eventually will last twenty years or more three quarters are in jobs which will last five years or more 4 the duration of employment among blacks is just as long as among whites even though the jobs held by blacks are worse in almost every other dimension they are no more unstable than those held by whites 5 women s jobs are substantially shorter than men s on the average only about a quarter of all women over the age of thirty are employed in jobs which will last over twenty years whereas over half of men over thirty are holding these near lifetime jobs this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

an east asian model of economic development japan taiwan and south korea the east asian model of economic development focuses on 5 shared characteristics that seem significant in the contemporary economic development of japan taiwan and korea they are economic characteristics and include 1 high investment ratios 2 small public sectors 3 competitive labor markets 4 export expansion and 5 government intervention in the economy large and efficient investments in human capital and well developed capacities to absorb new technology are 2 other economic features shared by the three one could add overcrowding high man land ratios and scarcity of natural resources though these are handicaps rather than sources of economic strength it is possible however that virtue springs from necessity and that ample arable land or abundant natural resources mainly permit governments to postpone the difficult decisions needed to promote development rather than provide the wherewithal needed to finance development other noneconomic characteristics of the three such as ethnic and linguistic homogeneity relatively compact geography manageable population size and the confucian tradition have not been considered in the model even though they have undoubtedly influenced labor productivity savings behavior and other aspects of economic performance whether the east asian model ought to be followed depends on whether current and foreseeable circumstances are sufficiently like those faced by the three to justify using the same policies that they used applicability of the east asian model should also depend on whether the strategy employed by the three has been responsible for their economic success 2 aspects of the east asian models policy features are noteworthy 1 the policies typically work by influencing rather than replacing private market decisions and 2 the public expects government to intervene to influence economic growth

excess labour and the business cycle a comparative study of japan germany the united kingdom and the united states against the background of firm specific human capital theory this paper investigates empirically the relative propensity of manufacturing industries in japan germany the united kingdom and the united states to hold excess labour over the business cycle both stock and utilization dimensions of the labour input are integrated into the study throughout discussion is linked to earlier research that has analysed the relative international performance of the japanese labour market

finishing high school and starting college do catholic schools make a difference in this paper we consider two measures of the relative effectiveness of public and catholic schools finishing high school and starting college these measures are potentially more important indicators of school quality than standardized test scores in light of the economic consequences of obtaining more education single equation estimates suggest that for the typical student attending a catholic high school raises the probability of finishing high school or entering a four year college by thirteen percentage points in bivariate probit models we find almost no evidence that our single equation estimates are subject to selection bias

japanese labour in the 1990s stability and stagnation we review the state of the labour market and employment practices in japan over the past 15 years and try to evaluate the nature of the changes that have been occurring we also look at how government policy has reacted to the conditions in the labour market and what implications this has for the future although there has been a continual shift of resources away from manufacturing and agriculture into services employment practices have not been changing so rapidly and job protection is actually stronger this along with wage restraint accounts for why unemployment has only increased by some 2 5 percentage points during almost a decade of stagnation we also note that much government policy has acted to maintain existing employment practices and that labour economists are divided as to whether or not this is a good thing

labor economics and the psychology of organizations this essay is a discussion of how economists are attempting to understand institutions within the organizations of the labor market the institutions and issues discussed include mandatory retirement discontinuous jumps in wages pay compression rights of tenure up or out hierarchies timing of raises promotions and evaluations the existence of partnerships the use of bonuses vs penalties and pay as a motivator

employment tenure job expectancy and earnings profile in japan the purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between employment tenure and earnings profile in japan since the japanese labour market has recently experienced substantial changes it is natural for the japanese employment and compensation system to be influenced by such changes in this study the changes that have happened to the japanese employment and compensation system in recent years have been considered empirically by focusing on the relationships between employment tenure and earnings profiles to do this a forward looking variable called expected job tenure or job expectancy is introduced and the effects of it on earnings profile

collective invention during the british industrial revolution the case of the cornish pumping engine in this paper we argue that together with individual inventors and firms what robert c allen 1983 has termed as collective invention settings that is settings in which rival firms freely release each other pertinent technical information were also a crucial source of innovation in the industrial revolution period until now this has been very little considered in the literature this paper focuses on one of these cases the cornish mining district in cornwall during the early nineteenth century a notable collective invention setting gradually emerged this case is particularly remarkable because it was capable of generating a continuous and sustained flow of improvements in steam pumping technology which in the end greatly contributed to improve the thermodynamic efficiency of the steam engine in this paper we study in detail the specific economic circumstances that led to the formation of this collective invention setting and we analyses its consequences for the rate of technological innovation

can a firm find the balance between openness and secrecy towards a theory of an optimum level of disclosure the purpose of this article is not merely to counter assertions about technology leakage spillovers being innocuous or benevolent but to go further and illuminate an under researched question how can companies seek the optimum balance between conscious disclosure and secrecy the article works towards a theory of optimum disclosure by identifying possible benefits and costs of disclosure or openness in paradigm 1 most companies find the net benefits of disclosure openness to be negative in paradigm 2 applicable to a few highly networked or open source mnes there could be net benefits over a limited range and up to an optimum point

internal labour markets causes and consequences the paper analyzes the causes and consequences of internal labor market rules that yield long tenure promotion from within seniority pensions and due process in dismissals about half the workforce are estimated to be in such markets competitive reasons for internal labor markets as a response to specific training and arms length relationships between workers and firms are surveyed these reasons are found to be consistent with the pattern of internal labor markets among non union firms however some internal labor markets e g among small unionized firms are probably a response to union pressure and government regulations in these circumstances low labor mobility could pose problems for policy copyright 1991 by oxford university press

pensions bonding and lifetime jobs a well known if underappreciated finding in the mobility literature is that turnover is much lower in jobs covered by pensions than in other jobs this could result from capital losses for job changes created by most benefit formulas the tendency of turnover prone individuals to avoid jobs covered by pensions or higher overall compensation levels in such jobs a switching bivariate probit model of pension coverage and turnover is developed to estimate the effect of each of these factors the results show that capital losses are the main factor responsible for lower turnover in jobs covered by pensions but self selection and compensation levels also play an important role this is the first direct evidence that bonding is important for understanding long term employment relationships

knowledge connectivity an agenda for innovation research in international business the innovation driven multinational enterprise mne has dominated international business ib research for several decades now beginning with the award winning research of dunning there have been calls for ib researchers to rediscover the importance of locations recent work has emphasized that firms and locations co evolve with one another as knowledge is transferred and leveraged across space integrating insights from ib and economic geography we propose a research agenda for ib scholarship on spatially dispersed yet connected innovation processes this agenda is premised on the current reality of global value chains in which mobile mnes people and immobile locations factors interact the research perspective suggested recognizes that locations are host to increasingly fine sliced activities whose nature and composition are continuously changed by mne driven innovation processes as today s specialized activities become tomorrow s standardized ones the shifting distribution of global value creation depends on the pattern of international knowledge connectivity

the effect of mandatory retirement on earnings profiles in japan using data from the japanese basic survey on wage structure for 1981 and 1986 the authors estimate the effect of the age of mandatory retirement on the rate of growth of earnings with job tenure i

the human side of open innovation the role of employee diversity in firm level openness abstract the use of external knowledge for innovation i e inbound or outside in open innovation has received substantial attention in the innovation literature however the human side of open innovation is still poorly understood we consider the role of employee characteristics with respect to predicting firm level openness drawing on the human capital learning and creativity literatures we theorize that knowledge diversity of the firm s employees is positively associated with employees ability to identify and absorb external knowledge which aggregates to increased firm level openness that is firms use of external knowledge in their pursuit of innovation based on a combination of three data sources namely two survey data sources and register data we find support for our hypothesis that employees educational diversity is positively associated with firm level openness however we find no direct association between employees work history diversity and firm level openness but rather as also hypothesized a conditional relationship based on educational background which implies that diverse work history only has a positive impact at higher levels of educational diversity to reduce endogeneity concerns we undertake a series of robustness checks

heterogeneous firms and the organization of production firms in the same industry exhibit systematic differences in the organization of production and the structure of employment entrepreneurial ability is the specific scarce input that limits the size of a firm this input must be allocated to two activities coordinating production and monitoring workers able entrepreneurs can convert calendar time into larger supplies of coordinating effort that enable them to assemble large firms greater ability implies a higher shadow price of time which increases the implicit costs of monitoring a dispersion of entrepreneurial abilities generates an equilibrium size distribution of firms differences in monitoring costs affect the choice of worker productivities the design of products and the organization of production the monitoring cost hypothesis advanced in this paper goes a long way in explaining the equilibrium of an industry containing heterogeneous firms that differ in size and behavior

the paradox of openness appropriability external search and collaboration a b s t r a c t to innovate firms often need to draw from and collaborate with a large number of actors from outside their organization at the same time firms need also to be focused on capturing the returns from their innovative ideas this gives rise to a paradox of openness the creation of innovations often requires openness but the commercialization of innovations requires protection based on econometric analysis of data from a uk innovation survey we find a concave relationship between firms breadth of external search and formal collaboration for innovation and the strength of the firms appropriability strategies we show that this concave relationship is stronger for breadth of formal collaboration than for external search there is also partial evidence suggesting that the relationship is less pronounced for both external search and formal collaboration if firms do not draw ideas from or collaborate with competitors we explore the implications of these findings for the literature on open innovation and innovation strategy 2013 the authors published by elsevier b v all rights reserved

the role of relative performance in inter firm mobility of inventors abstract prior research has emphasized the influence of inter firm mobility on knowledge flows and innovation yet we have an incomplete picture of the antecedents of inventor mobility building on theoretical traditions related to decision making based on limited asymmetric bounded information and economic and other incentives our paper suggests that after controlling for individual performance and other variables previously shown to affect inter organizational mobility an inventor s performance relative to his co patenting group alters his likelihood of mobility our analysis of 2648 inventors in the pharmaceutical industry shows that for those performing above their reference group of past and current co inventors in patenting an increase in relative performance decreases the likelihood of mobility and for those performing below the reference group a decrease in relative performance decreases the likelihood of mobility we also find that when inventors have more external scientific collaborations their likelihood of mobility increases and this variable moderates the relationship between the performance gap and mobility but only for those performing above their peers