making economics more useful how technological eclecticism could help abstractkeynes thought it would be splendid if economists became more like dentists disciplinary economics has instead become more like physics in focusing on concise universal propositions ver

manufacturing demand for business services in a core and peripheral region does flexible production imply vertical disintegration of business services o farrell p n moffat l a r and hitchens d m w n 1993 manufacturing demand for business services in a core and peripheral region does flexible production imply vertical disintegration of business services reg studies 27 385 400 this paper analyses the demand by manufactures in scotland and south east england for key strategic business services during the past three years the source of supply of the services used and the location of external suppliers for scottish and english manufacturers our evidence suggests that expansion of demand is the primary cause of increasing business service output and not restructuring strategies as predicted by the flexible firm model both externalization and internalization of business services are occurring simultaneously the net balance is consistent with a marginal trend towards vertical integration in manufacturing and a stronger one in business services o farrell p n moffat l a r et hitchens d m w n 1993 la demande de l industrie pour l

growth and profitability of small and medium sized enterprises some welsh evidence foreman peck j makepeace g and morgan b 2006 growth and profitability of small and medium sized enterprises some welsh evidence regional studies 40 307 319 policy makers throughout the organization for economic co operation and development oecd are keen to promote the development of small and medium sized enterprises smes by a wide variety of means the present study of over 1600 welsh smes casts doubt on the effectiveness of doing so by grants by encouraging trade associations by pursuing current initiatives in training or by stimulating innovation as defined by sme management on the other hand it finds that support for selective information technology investment and for marketing planning could be beneficial additional results that might be addressed by policy are short termism by older managers preferring current to future profits more than younger managers signs that fixed costs of tax compliance bear substantially more heavily on the profitability of smaller smes and evidence

fostering change to sustainable consumption and production an evidence based view this note from the field is an edited version of a policy brief summarizing the key findings from the first half of the sustainable consumption research exchange network score for the policy programs in the field of sustainable consumption and production scp we recommend a framework for action to change to scp that mentions the key domains to include food mobility and energy use housing the last two clearly related to urban development it should use a systemic perspective on the scp challenge and differentiate between developed fast developing and base of the pyramid economies score focuses mainly on developed economies and here we propose to differentiate between 1 measures that fit with mainstream beliefs and paradigms here governments could make operational agreements on implementation of instruments like green public procurement stimulating ecodesign etc 2 problems where a rough agreement on goals exists but where change is radical or means are uncertain and hence planning difficult here governments could foster visioning experimentation and support e g international collaboration in leapfrogging programs 3 problems that outright clash with the mainstream beliefs and paradigms here governments could foster informed deliberation on the more fundamental issues related to markets governance and growth 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the price of innovation new estimates of drug development costs the research and development costs of 68 randomly selected new drugs were obtained from a survey of 10 pharmaceutical firms these data were used to estimate the average pre tax cost of new drug development the costs of compounds abandoned during testing were linked to the costs of compounds that obtained marketing approval the estimated average out of pocket cost per new drug is us 403 million 2000 dollars capitalizing out of pocket costs to the point of marketing approval at a real discount rate of 11 yields a total pre approval cost estimate of us 802 million 2000 dollars when compared to the results of an earlier study with a similar methodology total capitalized costs were shown to have increased at an annual rate of 7 4 above general price inflation 2003 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the influence of location on the use by smes of external advice and collaboration this paper provides an analysis of the influence of location on the extent of use and impact of external advice and collaboration on small and medium sized enterprises smes in britain the analysis indicates that for private sector advisers accountants consultants etc and collaboration with suppliers and customers the intensity of use does not vary significantly with location in most cases only the input of business friends and relatives is strongly locationally constrained indicating the importance of personal trust processes operating in a different way from other influences eu structural fund status of an area also has few major effects on use of private sector advice however the impact of external advice and the extent of local collaboration between similar firms are influenced by location with impact generally increasing with the size of business concentration density and closeness to a business centre i e there are positive effects of urban location and agglomeration economies for public sector support agencies such as the small business service business link tecs lecs enterprise agencies and also chambers of commerce the reverse is generally true levels of use are locationally influenced but impact is not use tends to increase in eu assisted areas and in areas with lower levels of business concentration this applies to most local agents but for regional development agencies there is an additionally strong effect of highest focus of use and impact in the most rural and peripheral areas thus public agents appear generally to be most used and have greatest relevance to smes in more peripheral areas where they fill gaps in the market created by agglomeration effects

strike three discrimination incentives and evaluation major league baseball umpires express their racial ethnic preferences when they evaluate pitchers strikes are called less often if the umpire and pitcher do not match race ethnicity but mainly where there is little scrutiny of umpires pitchers understand the incentives and throw pitches that allow umpires less subjective judgment e g fastballs over home plate when they anticipate bias these direct and indirect effects bias performance measures of minorities downward the results suggest how discrimination alters discriminated groups behavior generally they imply that biases in measured productivity must be accounted for in generating measures of wage discrimination

determinants of citizen acceptance of environmental policy regulating consumption in public settings organic food in public institutions abstract increasingly providers of institutional catering consider moving to the procurement of organic food although ample research has investigated the determinants of consumption of organic foods in private households such consumption in institutional settings raises questions of citizen support rather than consumer choice therefore the purpose of this article is to analyse the determinants of citizen support with regard to increasing the share of organic produce in public catering a model is proposed that explains attitude to the procurement of organic produce in public kitchens by life values attitudes to the environment personal and social norms and the use of organic produce for private household consumption data were collected by an online survey representative of the overall population in terms of major demographics in denmark n 978 results indicate that personal norms regarding the use of organic food affect attitudes toward the use of organic produce in institutional settings and that this effect is partly mediated by own purchase of organic products indicating a spillover effect from private to public practices collectivistic values and to a lesser extent individualistic values affect personal and social norms on using organic produce partly mediated by attitude to the environment the authors add a new aspect to the discussion of spillover effects among different forms of pro environmental behaviours and suggest that measures to promote sustainable behaviours in the public and private sector may reinforce each other

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

are group affiliated firms really more profitable than nonaffiliated the role of corporate center in influencing the economic performance of business units has been a central research topic in the industrial organization and strategic management literature a common finding is the limited corporate and business group effects recently an emerging line of studies argues that the market inefficiencies and institutional voids in emerging markets can be overcome more efficiently by large diversified business groups than by non group small firms some empirical evidence also shows that non group small firms are significantly less profitable than group affiliated firms this paper raises this issue by empirically investigating the influence of group affiliation on the return on assets and tobin s q of 340 group affiliated firms versus 423 non group firms in taiwan during the period of 1997 1999 the statistical results show that group affiliation can not always create value for member firms the size of the business group matters when affiliated with the largest business groups member firms indeed show improved stock market performance but when firms are affiliated with small and medium sized groups their accounting performance suffers findings of this paper suggest a threshold effect and a u shape relationship between group affiliation and profitability in emerging economies

green innovation value chain analysis of pv solar power abstract governments around the world have employed a variety of generous subsidies to help promote and develop clean energy technologies in the hope that they will widely replace dirtier carbon based power sources unfortunately these subsidies have not prevented numerous green technology bankruptcies including the infamous 2011 closure of the california based solar panel producer solyndra and these failures have cost taxpayers and private investors billions in lost capital the green innovation value chain givc provides a possible framework for determining the diffusion prospects of green technologies through environmental and financial comparisons to conventional alternatives across the separate chain links comprised of manufacturers distributors customers government and the environment the givc framework is used here to analyze the photovoltaic solar power chain where financial deficits are found in each link that will need to be reduced or eliminated through technology advancements subsidies or changes in market conditions in order to provide the conditions necessary for the technology to achieve mass market acceptance and positive financial returns

welfare egalitarianism in non rival environments we study equity in economies where a set of agents commonly own a technology producing a non rival good from their private contributions a social ordering function associates to each economy a complete ranking of the allocations we build social ordering functions satisfying the property that individual welfare levels exceeding a legitimate upper bound should be reduced combining that property with efficiency and robustness properties with respect to changes in the set of agents we obtain a kind of welfare egalitarianism based on a constructed numerical representation of individual preferences

consumer scapegoatism and limits to green consumerism an axiom that has shaped policy approaches to sustainable consumption has been that if more consumers understand the environmental consequences of their consumption patterns through their market choices they would inevitably put pressure on retailers and manufacturers to move towards sustainable production the result is the proliferation of green consumerism and consumption of green products eco labels to assist consumers in making informed ecologically conscious choices consumer awareness campaigns etc however this paper argues that the dominant focus on green consumerism as against the need for structural changes towards a broader systemic shift is unrealistic furthermore promoting green consumerism at once lays responsibility on consumers to undertake the function of maintaining economic growth while simultaneously even if contradictorily bearing the burden to drive the system towards sustainability given the scope of the sustainability challenge and the urgency with which it must be addressed this paper argues that the consumer is not the most salient agent in the production consumption system and so expecting the consumer through green consumerism to shift society towards scp patterns is consumer scapegoatism this paper draws on the discursive confusion over discourse and practice of sustainable consumption in an attempt to clarify the differences between green consumerism and sustainable consumption and to provide a broadened framework for sustainable consumption policy design that enables wellbeing and ecological sustainability without propagating the economic growth dogma that has a stranglehold on contemporary policy making

farm costs and food miles an assessment of the full cost of the uk weekly food basket changes in both farm production and food transport have resulted in the imposition of new levels of environmental costs this study analyses the full costs of foods in the average weekly uk food basket by calculating the costs arising at diverent stages from farms to consumers plates of the 12 commodities assessed livestock produce contributes the most costs per kg the external cost of uk agriculture up to the farm gate is estimated to be 1 51 bn yr i1 it is calculated that a switch to organic production could lead to avoided costs of 1 13 bn yr i1 agricultural and food produce accounts for 28 of goods transported on uk roads currently imposing estimated external costs of 2 35 bn yr i1 the contribution made by sea and air transport is currently trivial owing to low volumes however road transport to carry food from the shop to home is estimated to impose a further 1 28 bn yr i1 to total external costs subsidies not targeted at environmental improvements cost consumers 2 88 bn yr i1 thus the real cost of the per capita uk food basket 24 79 is calculated to be 2 91 more per person wk i1 11 8 if externalities and subsidies are included with farm externalities 81 p domestic road transport 76 p government subsidies 93 p and shopping transport 41 p contributing the most we assess a variety of scenarios for adoption of organic farming localised food systems and sustainable transport to indicate the substantial potential to reduce environmental costs in the uk food system 2005 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

public procurement and innovation resurrecting the demand side abstract demand is a major potential source of innovation yet the critical role of demand as a key driver of innovation has still to be recognised in government policy this article discusses public procurement as one of the key elements of a demand oriented innovation policy the paper starts by signaling the new significance of public procurement for innovation policy strategies at the eu level and in a range of european countries it then defines the concept of public procurement and embeds this concept within a taxonomy of innovation policies the rationales and justifications of public procurement policies to spur innovation are discussed followed by a consideration of the challenges and potential pitfalls as well as appropriate institutional arrangements and strategies including some recent empirical examples of good practice it concludes by confronting the public procurement approach with two of the most common objections to it and by considering future prospects

an application of the shapley value to fair division with money the author considers fair division when monetary compensations are feasible and utilities are quasi linear four axioms are discussed individual rationality resource monotonicity population solidarity and the stand alone test the latter views the utility from consuming all the goods as an upper bound on every coalition s actual joint utility under efficiency the four axioms show little compatibility however when the goods have enough substitutability in everyone s preferences the shapley value of the surplus sharing game satisfies all four axioms an example is the optimal assignment of indivisible goods when every agent consumes only one good copyright 1992 by the econometric society

the pure compensation problem egalitarianism versus laissez fairism a binary choice problem with side payments and quasi linear utilities is considered we study two compensation rules called social choice functions the egalitarian rule divides equally the surplus above the average utility level the laissez faire rule chooses an efficient decision but performs no transfer egalitarianism is characterized by a monotonicity axiom called agreement no two agents ever disagree in comparing two distinct preferences of a third one laissez fairism is characterized by the no subsidy axiom a coalition would not be worse off if the other agents were not present

the new wave of regional innovation networks analysis characteristics and strategy today the number one priority for competitive advantage is innovation a new approach to regional business development has been pioneered in europe and the u s a this involves building a regional innovation infrastructure learning through networking has proven to be a successful approach in some of europe s more dynamic regional economics such as baden wurttemberg and emilia romagna this involves maximising the complete range of regional innovation assets the state of pennsylvania and other older industry centres are showing that such an approach is transferable from europe to the u s a the paper assesses knowledge transfer at the regional level and outlines the key elements for successful regional innovation networking practices the major finding s are that business networking is an effective way of increasing company turnover that not for profit organizations are excellent for setting up networks because they are trusted and that innovation networks are perhaps the most difficult thought requiring but important of the types of business network conceivable

fostering sustainability through sourcing from small businesses public sector perspectives this article examines the opportunities for fostering sustainable development through public sector sourcing from small and medium sized enterprises smes buying from small businesses can make such contributions in a variety of forms ranging from a contribution to local economic development through providing innovative green products and services particularly in the food sector to helping the public sector organisation to better align its operations with its community sourcing from small businesses also has implications for the governance of sourcing processes and can benefit from a partnership approach barriers to public sector sourcing from small businesses are discussed and suggestions made on how these can be overcome

growth oriented smes in unfavourable regional environments vaessen p and keeble d 1995 growth oriented smes in unfavourable regional environments reg studies 29 489 505 in this paper the research focus is on counterfactual cases of growth oriented smes in peripheral regions of britain scotland northern england wales and merseyside these firms are systematically compared to three control groups made up of growth oriented smes in the south east slow growth firms in the periphery and slow growth firms in the south east apart from some performance measures such as profits and exports three key characteristics of the firms are analysed these are the extent of competition in the markets served levels of innovation and r d and work force and labour market characteristics the analysis is conducted for manufacturing firms and professional and business services separately firms of the research group stand out against the other firms in the sample as businesses with a very favourable r d input output ratio and greater propensity for providing a

the ineffectiveness of entrepreneurship policy is policy formulation to blame entrepreneurship policy has been criticised for its lack of effectiveness some scholars such as scott shane in this journal have argued that it is bad public policy but this simply begs the question why the legislative process should generate bad policy to answer this question this study examines the uk s enterprise policy process in the 2009 2010 period it suggests that a key factor for the ineffectiveness of policy is how it is formulated this stage in the policy process is seldom visible to those outside of government departments and has been largely ignored by prior research the application of institutional theory provides a detailed theoretical understanding of the actors and the process by which enterprise policy is formulated we find that by opening up the black box of enterprise policy formulation the process is dominated by powerful actors who govern the process with their interests

characterizations of the pivotal mechanism the pivotal mechanism is strategyproof demand revealing in public decision problems where preferences are quasi linear moreover no agent has an incentive to free ride by withdrawing from the committee and consuming whatever decision is taken by the remaining agents strategyproofness plus no free ride characterize the pivotal mechanism this mechanism is anonymous and neutral yet together strategyproofness anonymity and neutrality do not characterize it they will however if reasonable lower or upper bounds on final utilities are imposed our last characterization of the pivotal mechanism uses the no free ride axiom and two mild monotonicity properties but not strategyproofness

waste management policies for industrial symbiosis development case studies in european countries industrial symbiosis is emerged as a self organizing business strategy among firms that are willing to cooperate to improve their economic and environmental performance the adoption of such cooperative strategies relates to increasing costs of waste management most of which are driven by policy and legislative requirements development of is depends on an enabling context of social informational technological economical and political factors the power to influence this context varies among the agents involved such as the government businesses or coordinating entities governmental intervention as manifested through policies could influence a wider range of factors and we believe this is an area which is under researched this paper aims to critically appraise the waste policy interventions from supra national to sub national levels of government a case study methodology has been applied to four european countries i e denmark the uk portugal and switzerland in which is emerged or is being fostered the findings suggest that there are commonalities in policy instruments that may have led to an is enabling context the paper concludes with lessons learnt and recommendations on shaping the policy context for is development

local social capital and entrepreneurship we aim to contribute to the analysis of the role that spacebound social capital plays in local regional entrepreneurship we compare social capital with other forms of capital the conclusion is that in the main social capital can be analyzed in the same way as other capital but it has some important special attributes with these attributes as starting point we sketch an outline model of how the spatially defined producer surplus and consumer surplus form a place surplus and of the role played by social capital in the creation of the producer surplus a rereading of schumpeter shows that he was aware of several aspects of what we denominate entrepreneurship inhibiting and facilitating aspects of social capital finally we discuss some formal economic modeling approaches to the theoretical relationship between social capital and entrepreneurship

towards a national circular economy indicator system in china an evaluation and critical analysis abstract it is widely acknowledged that china s economic miracle has been achieved at the expense of its natural capital and environment in order to deal with this problem the circular economy ce has been chosen as a national policy for sustainable development national laws and regulations have been enacted to facilitate the implementation of ce and national ce demonstration projects have been initiated such that national benchmarking activities could be completed china is the first country to release nationally focused ce indicators so that objective and credible information on the status of ce implementation can be recognized these ce indicators are valuable metrics for policy and decision makers and can help achieve ce goals and outcomes this unique indicator system has not been communicated to international communities this paper aims to more broadly introduce this unique national ce indicator system china s ce efforts are first detailed with various provisions of the national indicator system a critical analysis of such an indicator system is presented we show that certain benefits can be gained but substantive revision is also needed due to the lack of a comprehensive set of sustainability indicators which should include social business indicators urban industrial symbiosis absolute material energy reduction and prevention oriented indicators concerns related to barriers on implementation are also presented in this paper the knowledge gained from chinese efforts on ce indicators are valuable to both developed and developing nations seeking to implement sustainable development measures within their regulatory policies

discrimination in the small business credit market we use data from the 1993 and 1998 national surveys of small business finances to examine the existence of racial discrimination in the small business credit market we conduct an econometric analysis of loan outcomes by race and find that black owned small businesses are about twice as likely to be denied credit even after controlling for differences in creditworthiness and other factors a series of specification checks indicates that this gap is unlikely to be explained by omitted variable bias these results indicate that the racial disparity in credit availability is likely caused by discrimination

the competitiveness of business service firms a matched comparison between scotland and the south east of england o farrell p n hitchens d m w n and moffat l a r 1992 the competitiveness of business service firms a matched comparison between scotland and the south east of england reg studies 26 519 533 in this paper we present a comparative analysis of the competitiveness and performance of matched pairs of business service companies in scotland and south east england several dimensions of performance are investigated for five industries market research management consultancy product design graphic design and advertising value added per person is one quarter higher in the english offices and they achieved a much greater degree of export orientation one fifth of sales than the scottish firms at 4 possible demand and supply side causes of such differences are reviewed and potential policy responses considered o farrell p n hitchens d m w n et moffatt l a r 1992 la competitivite des prestataires des services aux entreprises l ecosse par comparaison avec l angleterre du sud est

policy analysis on recycling fund management for e waste in taiwan under uncertainty abstract this study aims to find an efficient and fair policy on using a recycling fund in an uncertain environment after over a decade s experience on e waste management the current policy of taiwan s recycling fund management board rfmb is reviewed in search of a better policy rfbm s environmental goal is to maximize the recycling rate with an uncertain fund the study evaluates the fund on two models yearly balance and multi period and illustrates the concept of two fund settings offset yearly and earmarked we generate four scenarios covering the estimated fund incomes in future years using waste printers as an example in the analysis the results herein show that the multi period model provides more benefits than the yearly balance model for any situation under the four scenarios and that the earmarked setting has an edge over the offset yearly setting in the above situations we recommend that rfmb switch its fund setting into an earmarked fund and use the multi period model as it can obtain more option values against uncertainties in the long run the finding on how to manage a recycling fund offers reference value for other countries adopting such a subsidy system for extended producer responsibility

will affirmative action policies eliminate negative stereotypes a key question concerning affirmative action is whether the labor market gains it brings to minorities can continue without it becoming a permanent fixture in the labor market the authors argue that this depends on how the policy affects employers beliefs about the productivity of minority workers they study the joint determination of employer beliefs and worker productivity in a model of statistical discrimination in job assignments the authors prove that even when identifiable groups are equally endowed ex ante affirmative action can bring about a situation in which employers correctly perceive the groups to be unequally productive ex post copyright 1993 by american economic association

social and symbolic capital and responsible entrepreneurship an empirical investigation of sme narratives this paper investigates links between social capital and symbolic capital and responsible entrepreneurship in the context of small and medium enterprises smes the source of the primary data was 144 business profiles written by the owner managers of small businesses in application for a small business awards competition in 2005 included in each of these narratives were claims relating to the firms contributions to wider society relationships with customers employees and stakeholders these narratives were coded and classified in a framework drawn from nahapiet and ghoshal s 1998 academy of management review 23 2 242 266 categorisation of social capital the analysis revealed a range of strategic orientations towards the development of social and symbolic capital along a conceptual continuum ranging from being responsible for oneself to being responsible for others overall the evidence demonstrates the significance of the power inherent in the social relations of smes as a force for ethical behaviour and suggests that normative theories of the development of social capital may provide competitive advantage through responsible behaviour for small business in the global economy

globalisation of knowledge production and regional innovation policy supporting specialized hubs in the bangalore software industry abstract this paper is concerned with the changing role of regional innovation systems and regional policies in supporting the transition of indigenous firms in developing countries from competing on low costs towards becoming knowledge providers in global value chains special attention is paid to policies supporting the emergence and development of the regional innovation system in this transition process regional innovation systems in developing countries have very recently started to be conceptualised as specialized hubs in global innovation and production networks asheim b coenen l vang lauridsen j 2007 face to face buzz and knowledge bases socio spatial implications for learning innovation and innovation policy environment and planning c government and policy 25 5 655 670 chaminade c vang j 2006a innovation policy for small and medium size smes in asia an innovation systems perspective in yeung h ed handbook of research on asian business edward elgar cheltenham maggi c 2007 the salmon farming and processing cluster in southern chile in pietrobello c rabellotti r eds upgrading and governance in clusters and value chains in latin america harvard university press a specialized hub refers to a node in a global value chain that mainly undertakes one or a few of the activities required for the production and development of a given good or service or serves a particular segment of the global market in global value chains firms in developing countries have traditionally been responsible for the lowest added value activities however a few emerging regional innovation systems in developing countries are beginning to challenge this scenario by rapidly upgrading in the value chain there is however still only a poorly developed understanding of how the system of innovation emerges and evolves to support this transition process and what the role of regional innovation policy is in building the regional conditions that support indigenous small and medium size enterprises smes in this transition process this paper aims at reducing this omission by analyzing the co evolution of the strategies of indigenous smes and the regional innovation system of bangalore india

matching demand and supply in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure experiences with innovation intermediaries abstract the privatization of agricultural research and extension establishments worldwide has led to the development of a market for services designed to support agricultural innovation however due to market and systemic failures both supply side and demand side parties in this market have experienced constraints in effecting transactions and establishing the necessary relationships to engage in demand driven innovation processes to mitigate these constraints a field of intermediary organizations has emerged to assist agricultural entrepreneurs to articulate demand forge linkages with those that can provide innovation support services and manage innovation processes this article aims to give an overview of the different kinds of the so called innovation intermediaries that have emerged in the netherlands and to report on their contributions and the tensions that are being experienced with regard to their functioning the article concludes with a discussion in which it is argued that the state should play a role as a market facilitator by funding such innovation intermediaries

technological capabilities invisible infrastructure and the un social construction of predictability the overlooked fixed costs of useful research the paper explores the idea that unpredictability is a much more pervasive and important feature of technical change than is traditionally supposed it explains how economically important interactions between scientific explanations and technology require the construction of very specific artificially predictable conditions where explanations implications match technologies behaviour the iterative construction of these localised predictable conditions from unpredictable starting materials relies on generates and is made easier by reusable social and physical infrastructure the paper develops a non tautological model of technological capabilities and provides a novel explanation for a range of empirical findings theoretical and policy implications are reported

public sector support for innovating smes innovation support for smes is considered from the point of view of the needs of smes in the context of a specific regional economy london s lee valley region as identified in the literature and more specifically in a survey of 100 innovating smes in the study region attention is focused on the innovation support needs that relate to the size characteristics of smes the difficulties of financing innovation are shown to stem from the attitudes of sme owner managers as well as from supply side failures the paper examines four different innovation support instruments taken as constituting key elements of the support system within the region drawing on the findings of interviews with client businesses the paper considers the strengths and weaknesses of each policy instrument conclusions relate to the overall impact of innovation support provision in particular the need for greater integration in the design and implementation of policy instruments

environmental criteria in the public purchases above the eu threshold values by three nordic countries 2003 and 2005 abstract green public procurement gpp has been considered as an important policy instrument in the context of sustainable consumption and production the state and progress of gpp has earlier been measured by questionnaires and interviews both methods being based on the assessment by the purchaser and questionnaires having low response rates recently a new method was developed analyzing the existence of environmental criteria in the calls for tenders however the studies have dealt neither with the progress in gpp nor the statistical evidence of differences between countries our aim was to analyze more thoroughly whether the differences in the proportions of green calls for tenders between the three nordic countries denmark finland and sweden in 2003 and 2005 were real and whether there had occurred any progress between the years concerned the paper also presents the gpp record method which enables more valid measurement of the environmental soundness of public purchasing the statistical analyses were done using logit models with country year and product group as the explanatory factors it proved to be relevant to take into account the variation that occurred from the random existence of product groups in the samples of calls for tender there were less environmental criteria in the calls for tenders in finland than in denmark and sweden in 2003 but in 2005 no significant difference between finland and denmark was observed both finland and sweden saw progress in this area between 2003 and 2005

distance and private information in lending we study the effects of physical distance on the acquisition and use of private information in informationally opaque credit markets using a unique data set of all loan applications by small firms to a large bank we show that borrower proximity facilitates the collection of soft information leading to a trade off in the availability and pricing of credit which is more readily accessible to nearby firms albeit at higher interest rates ceteris paribus analyzing loan rates and firms decision to switch lenders provides further evidence for banks strategic use of private information however distance erodes our lender s ability to collect proprietary intelligence and to carve out local captive markets suggesting that the requisite soft information is primarily local the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

too much investment a problem of asymmetric information this paper shows that under plausible assumptions the inability of lenders to discover all of the relevant characteristics of borrowers results in investment in excess of the socially efficient level raising the rate of interest above the free market level will restore optimality this conflicts with generally held views and is contrasted with the stiglitz weiss model it is shown that the assumptions which yield overinvestment support debt as the equilibrium method of finance however under the stiglitz weiss assumptions used to derive an underinvestment result equity is shown to be the equilibrium method of finance

food chain evaluator a tool for analyzing the impacts and designing scenarios for the institutional catering in lombardy italy abstract a method was developed and applied to evaluate the impacts of food production for improving institutional catering in lombardy northern italy and to outline possible improved scenarios the research takes into account different crop managements i e organic agriculture and adoption of local products and different dietary choices able to guaranty the same nutritional contents the non renewable energy consumed for the production of foods managed by the institutional catering system is proposed as indicator to compare different policies together with other indicators as productive land and productive cost a case of study is presented to test the overall method the outcomes of the work could support a reorientation of both the production and consumption systems in general the shift towards local and organic products implies a reduction of the impacts evaluated further the important impacts of beef consumption in particular in terms of energy and land consumption are demonstrated the work permits an interesting insight about institutional catering taking into account not only the single food chains but also the composition of the meals by different food products an improvement of the tool is in progress in order to properly evaluate the stages of cooking refrigeration packaging energy consumption in catering areas and food waste management a sensitivity analysis will be carried out for assessing the reliability of the results finally other complex environmental indicators such as carbon footprint or ecological footprint could represent other future interesting developments of the tool

green economy and governance in cities assessing good governance in key urban economic processes cities concentrate a large part of the world economy today understanding how the urban economy and its decision making function as well as how they are connected to a larger world regional national global is fundamental to create governance mechanisms and the institutions to move the world towards a green economy this paper analyzes the city through its key economic processes of the transformation of space circulation transport consumption and production and social knowledge and ecosystem services transforming urban processes will only be achieved with better urban governance as governance is embedded in institutions it is the foundation for building the legitimate political and social mechanisms to green socio ecological and economic systems yet the question of whether or not current governance systems in these processes are steering cities towards a greener economy or if they are how are they affecting people and ecosystems is yet to be addressed thus we propose a set of governance indicators to assess the greening of urban processes that go beyond the decision making procedures and include the capacity to implement change the results of greening the economy and final outcomes on the ground we also look at the obstacles achievements and lessons in the greening of the direct and indirect economic processes in cities

orchestrating impartiality the impact of blind auditions on female musicians a change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras adoption of blind auditions with a screen to conceal the candidate s identity from the jury provides a test for sex biased hiring using data from actual auditions in an individual fixed effects framework we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras

integrating cleaner production into sustainability strategies an introduction to this special volume abstract this special volume of the journal of cleaner production is built primarily upon articles submitted for the 4th international workshop advances in cleaner production held in sao paulo brazil in 2013 the 54 articles underscore the urgent need for changing from unsustainable production and societal patterns to sustainable ones they provide many new approaches to help industries governments and society to speed up the transition to sustainable patterns the authors focus on defining and solving problems with special emphasis upon sustainability strategies raw material replacement renewable energy technological developments product and policy changes the central roles of improved corporate management for sustainable societal transitions are explored with an emphasis upon stakeholder empowerment in promoting implementation of new cleaner technologies within companies industrial sectors supply chains and countries some authors improved assessment tools for environmental accounting at the biospheric scale some authors underscored the need for cooperation among governments industrial sectors and companies to accelerate the integration of cleaner production into policies and practice multiple examples of successful integration of cp in national and local policy structures exemplified how focused work in key industrial sectors is delivering multiplier benefits within and among companies and in the community at large the authors documented numerous benefits of holistic integration of local regional national and global efforts to accelerate the transition to sustainable development and societal well being

innovation strategy choices in the urban economy this paper analyses how the innovation strategies of individual firms reflect the density diversity and international connectivity of their urban locations it makes three contributions theoretically it argues that observed strategies reflect a series of inter related choices and that each may be influenced differently by the knowledge dynamics of firms locations empirically it uses norwegian community innovation survey data to demonstrate how firms in the capital are less inclined to engage in innovation activities but also more likely to commit strongly once engaged than are comparable firms located elsewhere methodologically it illustrates how the results of sequential regressions on inter related strategy choices differ from those obtained using a more conventional estimation strategy implications for innovation policy and research are drawn

case study evidence that direct regulation remains the main driver of industrial pollution avoidance and may benefit operational efficiency abstract environmental regulation is required to reduce industrial pollution to levels that are socially acceptable and economically efficient but there is debate over the most efficient form of such regulation typically a limited range of environmental and economic parameters are accounted for in the econometric studies that inform that debate this paper integrates evidence from two separate studies to assess a broad range of parameters related to the efficiency of industrial environmental regulation questionnaire responses from 25 italian manufacturers of building chemicals and 28 irish pharmaceutical manufacturers provided evidence on the environmental effectiveness and operational impacts of different regulatory instruments combined with extensive emissions data from irish pharmaceutical manufacturers survey results enabled a quantitative estimation of pollution avoidance specifically attributable to direct regulation the monetised social benefit of avoided pollution was found to be equal to direct compliance costs chemical manufacturers in italy and ireland stated that direct regulation is a more important driver of industrial environmental performance than economic or voluntary regulation and their responses indicated that direct compliance costs may be countered somewhat by stimulated operational improvements it was concluded that direct regulation is an effective approach for multi pollutant control in an industrial context and that the efficiency of such regulation may be underestimated in studies that do not consider the full range of pollutants and operational effects

the separability axiom and equal sharing methods a quasi linear social choice problem is defined as selecting one among finitely many indivisible public decision and a vector of monetary transfers among agents to cover the cost of this decision this decision is based upon individual preferences which are assumed to be additively separable and linear in money the separability axiom is a consistency property for choice methods on societies with variable size the decision is not affected if we remove an arbitrary agent under the condition that he be guaranteed his original utility level and the cost to the remaining agents is modified accordingly thus the utility level assigned by the social choice function to agent i is the price at which the other agents are unanimously willing to buy agent is share of the decision power a general characterization of choice methods satisfying this axiom is provided three subclasses of particular interest are characterized by additional milder axioms those are i equal sharing of the surplus left over some reference utility e g the utility at a status quo decision ii utilitarian methods that merely select the efficient public decision and perform no monetary transfers and iii equal allocation of nonseparable costs which divides equally the surplus left over from the utility derived from the pivotal mechanism also known as the vickrey clarke groves mechanism

segregation rent control and riots the economics of religious conflict in an indian city religious conflict is an important problem in many ethnically diverse countries horowitz 1985 a growing literature in economics suggests that conflict over resources is frequently at the root of such violence see for instance esteban and ray 2007 a number of recent empirical papers provide evidence that negative economic shocks to a community and the consequent struggle for control over resources can help explain the eruption of historic tensions into acts of violence miguel et al 2004 oster 2004 and miguel 2005 we explore this link further by studying the relationship between hindu muslim violence and living arrangements in particular residential segregation within cities in india that is conditional on city level demographics and the overall degree of ethnic tension what are the characteristics of specific locations within a city where communal violence tends to emerge and what can this tell us about why some neighborhoods erupt in this manner at certain points in time communal violence at the neighborhood level

factors affecting the power of technological paradigms it is clear that the power of technological paradigms proposed by dosi 1982 varies greatly across fields of practice in the sense that in certain field s progress has been much more rapid than in others where comparable resources have been applied to the effort this essay explores the factors behind these differences it proposes that one important factor is the extent to which the technology in a field is controllable and replicable another factor is the strength of the supporting sciences it is argued that these factors are strongly intertwined with the causal arrows going both ways

small firms social capital and the enhancement of business performance through innovation programmes the paper explores the extent to which social capital is advantageous to small and medium enterprise sme growth social capital is a communal property involving civic engagement associational membership high trust reliability and reciprocity in social networks it is capable of being identified in social political and economic contexts often associated with strong communities however not all strong communities exert the effects of social capital in respect of business activities this paper assesses government programmes to promote collaboration amongst smes for improving innovation capacity by increasing social capital through networking it shows that for a sizeable proportion of programme funded firms in denmark ireland and wales u k social capital building was associated with enhanced business knowledge and innovation performance of particular importance was the opportunity afforded to firms for linkage with external innovation networks and the build up of embeddedness or the institutional basis for the enhancement of social capital as a consequence of discovering the advantages of social capital over a third of respondents planned to continue to develop it in future in many cases funding such activities privately rather than calling on the public purse

combining technology and corporate strategy in small high tech firms abstract the gap between technology management and business planning in the small high tech firm has been variously described as an opportunity area a source of strategic weakness and a root cause of competitive disadvantage similarly the link between technology strategy and corporate strategy has been viewed as a natural concomitant of growing maturity in the small high tech firm an integral and necessary evolution in corporate philosophy and a positive task for an increasingly professional management team the purpose of this paper is to report on an empirical research project into these issues a survey of 223 small high tech firms located on science parks was carried out though the analysis presented here concentrates on the 150 or so of the sample that carried out in house r d work the discussion indicates a strong evolutionary effect within which firms demonstrate a high degree of informality and flexibility in early stages of the firm s life in terms of both technology strategy and overall business strategy as the firm develops formality increases significantly and the technology push imperative gives way to a powerful market orientation the results give empirical support to a number of concepts that have been developed in the literature in small high tech firms and also raise a question about the impact of multinationality on the development of such firms

innovation system strengths and weaknesses in progressing sustainable technology the case of swedish biorefinery development based on the combination of economic challenges and uncertain policy conditions in the united states european union and elsewhere the development of advanced biorefineries has progressed slower than anticipated this has delayed the transition to a more sustainable and less carbon intensive economy in this article we adopt the technological innovation system tis approach to analyze advanced biorefinery development in sweden a front runner country in current development the analysis highlights a number of system strengths e g long term research funding significant research infrastructure strong actor networks that have contributed to developing the swedish tis but also important system weaknesses e g weak coordination among ministries lack of industrial absorptive capacity unclear roles inhibiting it the article highlights a combination of four policy measures that build on the system strengths to address the system weaknesses a the implementation of a deployment policy for creating domestic niche markets b improved policy timing and more structured coordination among different governmental agencies c the provision of stronger incentives for mature industries to invest in rd and d improved organization and financing of existing research infrastructure in addition to the empirical contribution the article contributes with novel insights into the tis framework by highlighting the dynamics between system strengths and weaknesses and suggests that system strengths should be better emphasized in future tis studies

all sorry to disagree a general principle for the provision of non rival goods a group of agents with identical rights but different preferences share the cost of a public good in a situation where each agent is held responsible for his own preferences the principle says that nobody can benefit from the difference between his and other agents preferences all are sorry to disagree this axiom is incompatible with the pay according to benefits approach and in particular with lindahl pricing methods however it is compatible with foley s stand alone core constraints the author s axiom unlike the stand alone properties applies to any number of public goods or bads and to arbitrary public decisions copyright 1992 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

egalitarian equivalent cost sharing of a public good in an economy with one public and one private good egalitarian equivalent cost sharing consists of finding the highest public good level x such that consuming x for free yields a feasible utility distribution the corresponding feasible allocation typically unique called egalitarian equivalent is in the core of the economy conversely any cost sharing method satisfying pareto optimality cost monotonicity nobody suffers a utility loss if the production technology improves upon ceteris paribus and individual rationality no single agent coalition objects or no private transfers no agent receives a positive amount of private good must select an egalitarian equivalent allocation in every economy copyright 1987 by the econometric society

moving beyond the patchwork a review of strategies to promote consistency for extended producer responsibility policy in the u s abstract product oriented environmental policy with an emphasis on extended producer responsibility epr frequently referred to as product stewardship in the u s is being applied in the united states for an increasingly broad scope of products including waste electronics and household hazardous wastes such as paint and mercury containing lamps however due to the lack of a unified federal response these efforts are driven by state level policies and regulations this state led approach is frequently characterized as resulting in a patchwork of disparate regulations historically two strategies are often suggested as offering a remedy for this situation 1 federal legislation and 2 model state legislation however another policy strategy has emerged in the u s that of an overall epr policy framework which creates a clear process for selecting and designating products and articulates the roles and responsibilities for the various players along the product chain this article provides an analysis of the experiences and prospects for each of the three strategies to serve as a policy vehicle for greater consistency of epr regulations throughout the u s in part motivated by global extended producer responsibility policy approaches particularly in the canadian provinces efforts are now underway to investigate a similar comprehensive regulatory approach to be implemented by individual states in the u s the article examines the framework model that is envisioned in the u s and outlines the recommend components of this policy concept finally the article provides a comparison with other jurisdictions most notably british columbia which has implemented a broad extended producer responsibility policy

traveling agents political change and bureaucratic turnover in india abstract we develop a framework to empirically examine how politicians with electoral pressures control bureaucrats with career concerns and the consequent implications for bureaucrats career investments unique microlevel data on indian bureaucrats support our key predictions politicians use frequent reassignments transfers across posts of varying importance to control bureaucrats high skilled bureaucrats face less frequent political transfers and lower variability in the importance of their posts we find evidence of two alternative paths to career success officers of higher initial ability are more likely to invest in skill but caste affinity to the politician s party base also helps secure important positions

cultural proximity and loan outcomes we present evidence that shared codes religious beliefs ethnicity cultural proximity between lenders and borrowers improves the efficiency of credit allocation we identify in group preferential treatment using dyadic data on the religion and caste of bank officers and borrowers from a bank in india and a rotation policy that induces exogenous matching between officers and borrowers cultural proximity increases lending on both intensive and extensive margins and improves repayment performance even after the in group officer is replaced by an out group one further cultural proximity increases loan dispersion and reduces loan to collateral ratios our results imply that cultural proximity mitigates informational problems that adversely affect lending which in turn relaxes financial constraints and improves access to finance

welfare bounds in the cooperative production problem a general model of lower bound individual rationality and upper bound axioms for fair allocation is proposed the unanimity welfare function associates to each individual utility function the highest equal utility feasibile when all agents share this utility if this function is a feasible lower bound resp upper bound then it is the highest lower bound of all resp the lower upper bound applying this to cooperative production of private goods we characterize when the unanimity welfare is a lower upper bound function and when the stand alone welfare is an upper or lower bound our approach unifies several familiar fairness properties

balancing competing policy demands the case of sustainable public sector food procurement a focus on market based green growth strategies to pursue sustainability goals neglects the pursuit of understanding how human health is interwoven with the health of eco systems to deliver sustainability goals the article argues that clarifying the difference between green and sustainable public sector food procurement with political continuity that supports and enables policymakers and practitioners to take an incremental approach to change makes an important contribution to delivering more sustainable food systems and better public health nutrition five european case studies demonstrate the reality of devising and implementing innovative approaches to sustainable public sector food procurement and the effects of cultural and political framings how legislation is enacted at the national level and interpreted at the local level is a key driver for sustainable procurement transition is dependent on political will and leadership and an infrastructure that can balance the economic environmental and social drivers to effect change the development of systems and indicators to measure change reforms to eu directives on procurement and the relationship between green growth strategies and sustainable diets are also discussed the findings show the need to explore how consistent definitions for green public procurement and sustainable public procurement can be refined and standardized in order to support governments at all levels in reviewing and analyzing their current food procurement strategies and practices to improve sustainability

how the brazilian government can use public policies to induce recycling and still save money abstract public policies can leverage the recycling of materials however there is no clear guidance on how to use such policies and still spare public funds to fill this gap a multiple case study was undertaken in brazil eleven companies that can produce new products using the waste generated by their customers were investigated the findings contribute by suggesting how governments can economically use taxes sanctions incentives and other public instruments to induce recycling tax exemptions are not required when the waste recycled reduces the manufacturer s costs or generates revenue for customers who produce it and or for the scrap dealers who collect it sanctions or penalties imposed on the manufacturer s customers can increase the recycling efforts of such manufacturers when the recycling is technically feasible but not economically attractive sanctions are ineffective when wastes have a good market value or are widespread over millions of generation points for such cases the public policies should focus on community awareness campaigns and attention on waste pickers incentives for the technological development can be provided to wastes that present a good market value but do not have an economical recycling technology available granting resources to universities and technological institutes will help spread the solution to sme companies by better understanding how to apply public instruments the governments will be able to save funds on tax exemptions better define sanctions focus its community awareness campaigns focus its waste pickers support and better allocate funds to support the development of new recycling technologies

a proposal to unify some concepts in the theory of fairness so far the theory of distributive justice has tried to single out a unique criterion of justice in our opinion we live in a world in which different people hold conflicting ideas about justice we propose a procedure for representing these individual opinions by means of what we call aspiration functions and we present in this paper three different ways of aggregating such opposing opinions into a socially acceptable judgement furthermore we show that many well known concepts are special cases of our approach we study under a restriction on the form of the aspiration functions the conditions that are necessary and sufficient for a social choice correspondence to be generated from any of our concepts

competitive dialogue procedure for sustainable public procurement the construction sector has adopted green public procurement to improve its environmental performance green public procurement is a process whereby contracting authorities aim to procure services and products that meet environmental requirements in recent years green public procurement has extended to sustainable public procurement which involves the incorporation of both environmental and social considerations in the procurement of goods and services previous studies have suggested the relevance of contractor engagement strategies and the need for appropriate models to promote dialogue in sustainable public procurement this paper illustrates one such model called the competitive dialogue procedure this newly introduced procurement procedure allows the contracting authority to hold discussions with shortlisted contractors regarding the authority s requirements the paper uses the practical case of the kvarnholmen link project in sweden the kvarnholmen link is an infrastructure project that includes the construction of a bridge tunnel underpass and pedestrian and bike path action research was conducted to examine the competitive dialogue procedure this paper has strengthened the conceptualisation that the procedure can facilitate sustainable public procurement with the aid of its key elements such as provisionally preferred solution and dialogue sessions in addition the paper analyses the consequences of the weight used for environmental considerations in the bid evaluation process this paper recommends that contracting authorities implementing competitive dialogue procedure must use provisionally preferred solution to identify sustainable public procurement preferences dialogue sessions with contractors should involve discussions regarding sustainable public procurement to ensure consistency between the weight for environmental considerations and respective preferences

tracking environmental innovations and policy regulations in japan case studies on dioxin emissions and electric home appliances recycling taking dioxin emissions from incineration and the recycling of home electric appliances in japan as two case studies this paper aims to clarify the impact of environmental policy on technological innovation for our case studies relevant japanese patent data were gathered and analyzed for the period 1990 2008 to demonstrate that environmental regulations induce technology innovation we conducted statistical analysis to compare the number of patents related to each regulation between the period under regulation and period outside the regulation the results show that after the regulations were introduced new technological developments occurred for most technological types and the total number of related patent applications was larger even when controlling for other exogenous and endogenous factors such as business cycles and expenditures in research and development r d we finally argue that while a possible weakness in these types of direct regulations is the lack of incentives for further innovations they can still induce innovation if they are flexible and with specific targets

small enterprise affiliations to business associations and the collective action problem revisited the objective of this study is to determine whether there is a consistent case for encouraging business representation through encompassing sector wide associations rather than narrowly constituted trade associations the study draws on evidence from a large scale survey of smes in new zealand to examine whether trade and sector associations attract different types of enterprise the motivations for membership the benefits obtained and how association membership can be made more attractive results suggest that each type of association appeals to a particular range of enterprises and that trade associations play a more diverse role than simply lobbying for a narrow constituency

environmental value chain in green sme networks the threat of the abilene paradox abstract demand side policies are an important complement to subsidies in fostering green product service markets green public procurement gpp in particular presents valuable characteristics in terms of directionality volumes and measurability despite being widely analysed from a public perspective gpp development is still under explored from a corporate point of view to shed some light on the strategic attitude of firms towards gpp this paper discusses an exploratory research in the field of road construction an inductive analysis of direct observations and theoretical contributions suggests the potential for the so called abilene paradox to hamper gpp opportunities for small and medium enterprises in fact in times of crisis increased pressures to improve performance and reduce risk resistance to change and strategic myopia can easily impair inter organizational interactions and thus prevent potentially innovative networks from pressuring public investments in green supply chains the related policy suggestions represent a first attempt to enter the realm of systemic approaches to gpp

carbon footprint in green public procurement policy evaluation from a case study in the food sector abstract several projects across europe are focused on improving sustainability of public procurements however few of them are measuring the environmental savings achieved by specific policies through the application of environmental impact assessment indicators in this paper we calculate environmental savings by applying a carbon footprint analysis to three food policies implemented by the city of turin italy in the school catering service school years 2012 13 and 2013 14 the policies are focused on i the production of food with the requirement of integrated or organic products ii the geographical origin of the food with the requirement of regional food provisioning and iii the improvement of urban distribution with the requirement of shifting to natural gas vehicles the climate change potential of five of the most consumed foods were studied according to three main phases of the supply chain production including all processes in a cradle to gate perspective provisioning focusing on the transportation from production sites to the peripheral food hubs of the city and distribution focusing on the transportation from the city hubs to schools the results of this study highlight the different climate impacts of the three phases of the supply chain in particular 61 70 of the greenhouse gases are emitted in the production phase 6 11 in the provisioning phase and 24 28 in urban distribution as a consequence policies that affect production practices have the greatest potential for reducing the carbon footprint of the catering service other policies such as those on transportation can have controversial effects therefore to improve planning of sustainability policies the greenhouse gas emission savings achieved by each policy must be analysed in depth

does the financing of extended producer responsibility influence economic growth abstract the question of how the financing of extended producer responsibility epr affects the overall performance of the economy is important as products covered by epr comprise an increasing part of the economy in this paper an overlapping generations olg model with endogenous growth is applied to the case and a comparison between two financing schemes an insurance solution and a pay as you go payg solution is made with respect to the effect on the level of production the growth rate the impact of a productivity shock and the risk exposure it is found that in the case of a funded solution both the level of production and the growth rate in production is higher than in the payg case and the short run effect of productivity shock is bigger the policy indication is clear epr should be attached to a financing scheme if welfare is to be maximised

the origins and dynamics of taiwan s r d consortia a series of collaborative r d ventures have emerged in taiwan within a quite distinctive institutional framework unlike the case of many of the collaborative arrangements between established firms in the us europe or japan where mutual risk reduction is frequently the driving influence in the case of taiwan it is technological learning upgrading and catch up industry creation that is the object of the collaborative exercises the taiwan r d alliances were formed hesitantly in the 1980s but have flourished in the 1990s as institutional forms have been found which encourage firms to cooperate in raising their technological levels several alliances could be counted in taiwan in the late 1990s bringing together firms and public sector research institutes with the added organizational input of trade associations and catalytic financial assistance from government the article discusses the evolving organizational architecture of these r d alliances utilizing several case studies and seeks to draw comparisons between these institutional innovations in taiwan and established collaborative arrangements in the usa japan and europe