public pension reform in europe policies prospects and evaluation this paper describes the demographic and economic factors underlying the reform of public pension programmes in europe it examines the policy response both at the europe wide level and within individual european countries several programme reform strategies that have been implemented are evaluated these strategies are the greater pre funding of public pensions and expanded second tier private pension components parametric reforms to existing programmes and the development of formula driven actuarially fair public programmes efforts to provide greater incentives for individuals to postpone retirement are also discussed

knowhow trading as economic exchange abstract knowhow trading is the informal exchange of practical technical knowledge between pairs of engineers and other technicians in different firms this paper explains the advantages and disadvantages of this particular mode of knowledge sharing from an economic perspective under a knowhow trading regime long term self selected partners barter knowledge ex post i e they exchange information already known to one of them the paper explains why barter is better suited to the exchange of ideas than to the exchange of conventional goods and points out advantages of ex post knowledge sharing between firms whose priorities differ it is generally cheaper to acquire knowhow through exchanges than to reinvent the wheel but sharing knowhow can cut into the firm s competitive advantage pairwise exchanges limit although they do not eliminate the firm s loss of competitive advantage when it shares technical knowledge because knowhow trading is informal and off the books such trading is difficult for the firm to evaluate and to manage similarly since it eludes the traditional measures of economic activity knowhow trading is difficult to document and integrate into studies of the general economy

are contributions to public pension programmes a tax on employment many studies describe the potentially adverse impact on employment of the payroll costs of financing public pension programmes conventionally empirical studies treat contributions to public pension programmes as a pure tax in for example calculations of the tax wedge by oecd but this approach ignores any future rights to benefits that are perceived by contributors in fact public pension programmes contain both an actuarial and a redistributive component the former closer to saving the latter a tax the paper constructs indicators of the tax component of pension programmes both between and within generations across a range of oecd countries and time periods it uses these measures in a cross country panel analysis of the determinants of age and gender specific economic activity rates the results reveal robust evidence that when public pension programme contributions are broken down into a tax component and a savings component the tax component of the payroll contribution reduces economic activity rates among women while a higher retirement saving component has the opposite effect there is little evidence that average tax rates however constructed have any adverse impact on the economic activity rates of men richard disney

the tangible contribution of r d spending foreign owned plants to a host region a plant level study of the irish manufacturing sector 1980 1996 abstract the rapid growth of the irish economy over the past decade and the simultaneous increase in i the number of foreign owned plants in the high tech sectors and ii the research and development r d activities of foreign owned plants have given rise to an increased interest in the relationship between foreign direct investment fdi and economic growth in ireland the central question explored in this paper is whether the tangible contribution of mnc plants which undertake r d investment in ireland is greater than the tangible contribution of mnc plants which undertake no r d investment we use a plant level data set and conclude that the scale of r d activity in a plant is an important determinant in i lengthening the duration over which that plant will remain in ireland and ii improving the quality of employment created in that plant although it has long been recognised that the attraction of fdi to ireland has been beneficial the results of this paper support the idea that r d active firms generally provide greater benefit to the economy on employment grounds alone policy should favour r d active plants in high tech sectors

income redistribution in a common labor market when households are mobile among jurisdictions income redistribution by individual jurisdictions creates fiscal externalities a model of interjurisdictional migration is used to study the nature of this redistributive externality analysis of optimal redistribution and optimal corrective subsidies from higher level governments shows that benefit levels for the recipients of income transfers and tax rates on mobile taxpayers should be equalized across jurisdictions a system of jurisdictions with a common labor market can achieve welfare improvements through coordination of domestic redistributive policy or through the intervention of a higher level government copyright 1991 by american economic association

the illusory effects of saving incentives on saving the authors evaluate research on how tax based saving incentives iras and 401 k s affect saving previous research overstates the impact of the incentives on saving by failing to account for several issues households with saving incentives have stronger tastes for saving than others saving incentives have interacted with debt nonfinancial assets financial markets and pensions and saving incentives represent pretax balances whereas taxable accounts represent posttax balances accounting for these issues essentially eliminates the impact of saving incentives on saving the authors conclude that little if any of the contributions to existing saving incentives have raised saving

multi dimensional screening a user s guide abstract multi dimensional screening models have many potential applications but economists have so far been hindered by the considerable technical difficulties involved in their resolution this paper studies the simplest formulation of the general screening model and we provide a complete solution to this case we then show how this model can be applied to multi product nonlinear pricing and to multi product monopoly regulation finally we discuss how the model has been applied to other economic situations of interest including auction design and optimal taxation

new perspectives on the innovation strategies of multinational enterprises lessons for technology policy in europe abstract the aim of this contribution is to learn more about changes in the innovation strategies of large multinational corporations whereby one focus is on internationalization aspects as sources for our analyses we reviewed the main empirical studies and gathered information and insights from 21 corporations our results show firstly that the internationalization of research and technology is still characterized by triadization involving companies from the us the european union and japan secondly qualitative motives are increasingly driving r d location decisions like learning from technological excellence and lead markets and dynamic interactions within the value chain thirdly the process of internationalization in research and technology has been accompanied by an increasingly selective focus on a very few locations and the concentration of innovation activities on worldwide centers of excellence we conclude that these changes in the innovation strategies of large multinational companies put several topics on the agenda for technology policy in europe 1 a stronger focus on extra european collaboration and mobility 2 strengthening the attractiveness of the european union to foreign r d investment and 3 the absorptive capacities of r d organizations in europe 4 a stronger integration of different policy areas and of indirect policy measures 5 as well as the establishment of a transparent and global framework for policy coordination and priority setting worldwide

the case for gdp indexed bonds gds indexed bonds this paper seeks to revive the case for countries to insure against economic growth slowdowns by issuing bonds indexed to the rate of growth of gdp we show that gdp indexed bonds could provide substantial benefits in reducing the likelihood of default crises and allowing countries to avoid pro cyclical fiscal policies we simulate the effects of gdp indexed bonds under different assumptions about fiscal policy reaction functions and their output effects and find that they could substantially reduce the likelihood of debt gdp paths becoming explosive the insurance premium would likely be small because cross country comovement of gdp growth rates is low and cross country gdp growth risk is thus largely diversifiable for an investor holding a portfolio of gdp indexed bonds potential obstacles to the emergence of a market for these bonds include the verifiability of gdp data the trade off between insurance and moral hazard and the need for liquidity theory and past experience suggest that financial innovation often requires official intervention and its timing and form are difficult to predict we discuss institutional fixes and suggest an approach for attempting to start up a market eduardo borensztein and paolo mauro

agreements between firms and the technological life cycle model evidence from information technologies abstract contrarily to most previous contributions which have addressed the issue of cooperative agreements essentially in a perspective of comparative statics in this paper a model is proposed that relies on the technological trajectory notion suggested by evolutionary theories and emphasizes the relevance of the technological and market dynamics in explaining why and to what extent firms have recourse to agreements in particular it is claimed that the propensity of firms towards collaborative ventures and the characteristics of the cooperation depend upon the phase of the technological life cycle of the industry branch in which the cooperation takes place based on a cross sectional analysis of 45 industry branches in the information technology industrial system the paper also provides empirical evidence supporting the argument that the propensity towards agreements and the nature of the agreements concluded do change during the technological life cycle to this end it takes advantage of the arpa database developed at the polytechnic of milan and containing detailed information on over 2 000 agreements concluded in the 1980 1986 period all over the world in the semiconductor data processing and telecommunications industries

designing optimal disability insurance a case for asset testing we analyze an implementation of an optimal disability insurance system as a competitive equilibrium with taxes an optimum is implemented by an asset tested disability system in which a disability transfer is paid only if an agent has assets below a specified maximum the logic behind this result is that an agent who plans to falsely claim disability a finds doing so unattractive if he does not adjust his savings and b cannot collect disability insurance if he does adjust his savings in the desired direction upward for a calibrated economy we find that welfare gains from asset testing are significant

risk and potential insurance in europe abstract this paper argues that risk is related to long run volatility of income and therefore stabilization policies should target permanent fluctuations we show that such fluctuations can in principle be insured away by a multinational fiscal federation which smooths income cross sectionally and has no ex ante permanent redistribution effects we propose a measure of risk and a measure of potential insurable risk we estimate these measures for the european countries and compare results with the us results show that potential insurable income risk in europe is about 45 most countries will benefit from an average income tax of 10 but gains differ widely across countries

minimum wages and compliance the case of trinidad and tobago explores compliance to the national minimum wage in trinidad and tobago potential costs associated with the national minimum wage actual incidence of compliance in terms of employment and wage distribution nature of labor market this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from an this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

how retirement saving programs increase saving this paper summarizes the authors work on the effect of ira and 401 k contributions on net personal saving they consider many different nonparametric approaches to controlling for heterogeneity in individual saving behavior and conclude that the weight of the available evidence suggests that contributions to both iras and 401 k s largely represent new saving the authors devote particular attention to reconciling their results with the findings in other studies that reach different conclusions sometimes using the same databases that the authors analyze methodological limitations that undermine the reliability of results in other studies explain many of these disparities

the regional geography of corporate patenting in information and communications technology ict domestic and foreign dimensions in the new techno socio economic conditions characterized by an increasing reduction of temporal and spatial barriers and further globalization of economic activity paradoxically geography seems to matter more than ever before this particularly applies to science based industries e g information and communications technology ict where links between corporate competitors and firm university and user producer relationships are crucial in the development and adoption of new flexible technologies using us patents granted to the largest european electronic firms this paper looks at the interplay between the patenting by domestic and european foreign electronics companies of research and development carried out in ict fields in german uk and italian regions the findings suggest that patenting is attracted to existing areas of industrial strength taking a form of cumulative causation nonetheless policy measures may be successful in reversing the trend sous de nouvelles conditions techno et soc

patterns of internationalisation of corporate technology location vs home country advantages given the trends towards increasing globalisation of markets and of production the globalisation of technology remains a subject of considerable interest to analysts and policy makers in the 1990s this paper provides some new empirical observations for debate and discussion on the patterns of technological activities of large firms outside their home countries it is based on a systematic analysis of the us patenting activities of 220 of the most internationalised firms in terms of their technology in the 1990s although firms are active outside their home countries in the high technology fields such as computers pharmaceuticals telecommunications image and sound and materials quite a sizeable proportion of their foreign activities are concerned with process and machinery technologies moreover a comparison of the technological advantage of the company at home and the advantage of the location shows that in a large majority of cases firms tend to locate their technology abroad in their core areas where they are strong at home these results suggest that adapting products and processes and materials to suit foreign markets and providing technical support to off shore manufacturing plants remain major factors underlying the internationalisation of technology they are also consistent with the notion that firms are increasingly engaging in small scale activities to monitor and scan new technological developments in centres of excellence in foreign countries within their areas of existing strength however there is little evidence to suggest that even these most internationalised firms routinely go abroad to compensate for their weakness at home

currency areas and voluntary transfers this paper discusses the relationship between the formation of a currency area and the use of voluntary fiscal transfers between countries we show that there is a trade off between the benefits of flexible exchange rates and the additional risk sharing benefits of voluntary transfers that can be sustained in a currency area we show that whether a currency area is beneficial or not will depend on the magnitude of economic parameter values in particular we show that in a simple two country model and for a plausible set of economic parameter values a currency area is optimal

britain s industrial performance since 1960 underinvestment and relative decline this article argues first that britain s industrial performance since i960 has been relatively poor secondly that despite the views of crafts and others the deindustrialisation which has resulted from this relatively poor industrial performance is a serious problem for the whole economy not just for the industrial sector itself thirdly that neither the specific problem of deindustrialisation nor the consequent general problem of continued relative economic decline were solved in the 1980s and fourthly that the key reason why british industry has been doing relatively poorly has been underinvestment in manufacturing this underinvestment has been allowed to persist by the lack of any strong modernising forces within british society with the trade union movement having been either too weak or too defensive and with government policy at best being rather ineffectual and at worst positively harmful the reasons for this policy failure lie in britain s economic history and in the resulting distorted nature of both the economy and society this fundamental problem of a lack of any strong modernising force has if anything been exacerbated since 1979

when are voluntary pensions indifferent abstract the mandatory pension pillar is usually supplemented by a voluntary one in our simple model voluntary pensions partly replace mandatory ones without affecting the outcomes the voluntary pensions are indifferent this result may serve as benchmark

technology acquisition de regulation and competitiveness a study of indian automobile industry abstract this paper has attempted to analyse the effects of de regulation policy introduced in india during the mid 1980s on technology acquisition and competitiveness defined in terms of market share changes in the indian automobile industry during the 1980s following evolutionary theoretical framework the paper argues that asymmetry among firms in terms of technology acquisition through technology imports and in house efforts explain much of the firm level differences in competitiveness asymmetry in technology acquisition is largely due to differences in the firms ability to bring about technological paradigm and trajectory shifts the results of the econometric exercise support the view that even in an era of capacity licensing development of competitive skills crucially depended upon the ability to build specific technology trajectory advantages this is achieved by successfully complementing imported technology with in house technological efforts competitiveness in a de regulated regime would however depend upon the ability of the firm to bring about technological paradigm shifts new firms who depended on intra firm transfer of technology and firms with in house r d efforts to accomplish paradigm shifts appear more successful further in a liberal regime advantages of vertical integration over sub contracting also appear to be important in the determination of competitiveness

horizontal collusion and innovation not without reason collusion among horizontal competitors a horizontal price cartel has long been the leading bete noire of monopoly policy collusion is perhaps the most direct means to undermine competition with all its vaunted benefits in particular it is generally agreed that coordination by rivals of their prices and outputs damages the general welfare and some of the severest strictures of the anti trust laws have been directed against it yet recent analysis has abandoned undeviating condemnation of horizontal collaboration and suggested that there are arenas in which it can be beneficial and sometimes even make a critical contribution to social well being see katz and ordover i99o for a discussion and further references the dividing line seems to be that between static and intertemporal efficiency despite its tendency to yield a less than optimal allocation of resources in stationary equilibrium collusion may speed productivity and output growth and even reduce the cost of the growth process but even if it can do so it does not follow that it always will after a brief review of the familiar static efficiency analysis stressing a few less obvious points some of the associated policy issues will be skimmed with similar brevity the bulk of the discussion will deal with collusion in innovation and its dissemination here the literature is hardly unanimous but four conclusions do seem to emerge first that the ceteris paribus effects of dissemination are unambiguously beneficial second that horizontal collusion will sometimes stimulate rd third that even if it restrains innovation the net consequence for growth and welfare can be beneficial because of cost saving and enhanced rapidity of dissemination and finally that a clear peril of technology collusion is that it can be perverted into monopolistic agreement to keep prices high and even to avoid the expense and turmoil of rapid innovation

should income transfers be targeted or universal insights from public pension influences on elderly mortality in canada 1921 1966 we investigate the impact of canada s means tested and universal public pension programs on the mortality rates of age groups eligible for pension benefits for the period 1921 1966 we find that only the universal program significantly reduced pension eligible age group mortality rates the implied social value of the mortality risk reduction from this program is one tenth of the value per statistical life associated with contemporary government policy meaning that canadians did not need to place a high value on the life of a senior to justify the higher cost of the universal program jel classification i3 j1 on analyse l impact des regimes de rentes universels et de ceux qui impliquent une enquete sur la situation de fortune sur les taux de mortalite des groupes d ge eligibles aux prestations de retraite pour la periode 1921 1966 on decouvre que seulement les regimes universels reduisent de maniere significative les taux de mortalite des groupes d ge eligibles la valeur sociale implicite de la reduction du risque de mortalite attribuable a un tel regime est egale a un dixieme de la valeur de la vie statistique associee aux politiques contemporaines des gouvernements voila qui signifie que les canadiens n ont pas a attribuer une grande valeur a la vie d un aine pour justifier le cout plus eleve du programme universel

localised production of technology for global markets given the trends towards increasing globalization of markets and of production the globalization of technology remains a subject of considerable interest to analysts and policymakers in the 1990s the main conclusion of this paper is that there is no systematic evidence to suggest that widespread globalization of technological activities occurred in the 1980s the evidence based on the u s patenting activities of 569 of the world s largest firms based in 13 countries and covering 17 product groups shows that for an overwhelming majority of them technology production remains close to the home base the analysis also shows the dangers of generalizing on the basis of anecdotal evidence from a small sample of firms from a particular country or sector c 1995 academic press inc copyright 1995 by oxford university press

national systems of biotechnology innovation complex interdependence in the global system this paper explores the relationship between national institutional context and the development of biotechnology in the united states united kingdom japan and germany national patterns in biotechnology r d are linked to the configuration of county specific institutional features into a system of innovation which supports or impedes the accumulation and diffusion of knowledge between the scientific and industrial communities building on this comparative analysis it is argued that the particular characteristics of national systems of biotechnology innovation form the basis for complex interdependence within the global system through international technological cooperation and the cross border adoption and adaptation of institutional forms and practices implications for national technological advantage and the stability of national institutional systems are discussed

risk sharing on the labour market and second best wage rigidities the starting point of the analysis is that a significant proportion of the labour force is not covered by efficient labour contracts in particular the non existence of forward labour contracts limits the opportunity of efficient risk sharing through private arrangements among young labour suppliers and capital owners in such a context state dependent labour taxes and employment subsidies would be required to achieve ex ante pareto efficiency in the absence of employment subsidies a certain limited degree of downward wage rigidity is in general pareto superior to full wage flexibility at the second best optimum so defined productive efficiency is sacrificed in some states in order to achieve greater efficiency in risk sharing thus the unemployment associated with wage rigidity is inefficient though voluntary due to the levels of benefits and second best efficient a limited degree of wage discrimination by hiring date is typically part of the second best policy

optimal redistribution with productive social services publicly provided private goods are conventionally considered consumer goods departing from this perspective we analyze the public provision of inputs that improve household productivity e g education and childcare in a two class economy with distorting taxation public provision is always welfare improving with respect to pure taxation given that the public input directly affects household productivity moreover the case for public provision strengthens as households heterogeneity in input demand fades out contrary to consolidated results in the literature the features of optimal provision schemes depend on the nature of publicly provided input namely if it substitutes household productive capacity or just helps households to exploit it

estimating labour supply responses using tax reforms the 1980 s tax reforms and the changing dispersion of wages offer one of the best opportunities yet to estimate labor supply effects nevertheless changing sample composition aggregate shocks the changing composition of the tax paying population and discontinuities in the tax system create serious identification and estimation problems we develop grouping estimators that address these issues our results reveal positive and moderately sized wage elasticities we also find negative income effects for women with children

when borch s theorem does not apply some key implications of market incompleteness with policy relevance today markets are incomplete when the assets available to the agents do not span the space of future contingencies efficiency is then assessed by the weak criterion of constrained efficiency efficiency relative to the set of allocations compatible with the asset structure that criterion requires firms to optimise relative to shadow prices reflecting shareholders preferences yet even when firms do so competitive equilibria on the markets for assets and commodities fail generically to be constrained efficient section 3 pareto superior allocations can be implemented through price wage rigidities and quantity constraints section 4 but nominal rigidities are conducive to multiple equilibria implying endogenous macroeconomic uncertainties that compound the primitive exogenous uncertainties section 5 various policy implications can be drawn which are of some relevance to the current crisis

savings and pensions some uk evidence the sort of problem we shall be interested in is the following how much does a small change in a mature pay as you go pension scheme change aggregate current consumption in the context of a community of workers and pensioners with a variable retirement date and a pension scheme where the government taxes workers to pay pensions two sorts of effects have been posited first changes in pensions re distribute current disposable income this may lead to changes in aggregate consumption the redistribution effect secondly future pension rights constitute a form of wealth and unanticipated changes in the size or composition of wealth holdings may affect current consumption plans wealth effects see gultekin and logue i979 for a survey and references looking at the redistribution effect we observe that if pensioners have a higher short run marginal propensity to consurme than workers and the same long run marginal propensity to consume then an increase in pensions will ceteris paribus raise aggregate consumption initially but cause it to fall in the medium run the long run elasticity will be zero turning to wealth effects we distinguish two principal elements firstly an unanticipated increase in pensions in a pay as you go scheme increases the lifetime income of pensioners and workers close to retirement for workers who intend retiring at pensionable age this will lead to an increase in current consumption so long as it is a normal good this income effect will be less marked for workers at the beginning of their working life since the net income effect may even be negative for many workers as time goes by the aggregate net income effect consequent on a rise in pensions is diminished so that we would expect to see an initial rise in consumption followed by a very slow decline in incremental consumption the long run elasticity of mean consumption with respect to a rise in pensions would be zero note that imperfections in the capital market are unlikely to modify these conclusions since those who wish to increase their consumption are likely to have savings that can be reduced whilst those for whom borrowing constraints are binding i e younger workers are unlikely to wish to increase current consumption by much anyway there are two important caveats to the above the first is that workers who intend to work after the pensionable age may decrease current consumption if the increase in pensions induces a large enough fall in planned post pensionable age labour supply see crawford and lilien i98i for a theoretical discussion

the internationalisation of r d by multinationals a trade off between external and internal proximity overseas production is frequently seen as a force inducing the decentralization of rd it should on the contrary be completed by the implementation of relations of proximity internal to the firm which they refer to as internal proximity from this perspective the multinational firm that manages dispersed r d units is seen as facing a tension an organizational trade off between external proximity and internal proximity copyright 1999 by oxford university press

intergenerational risk sharing abstract in this paper we examine government debt and tax transfer policies that can be improve the allocation of risk between generations markets cannot allocate risk efficiently between two generations whenever the two generations are not both alive prior to the occurence of a stochastic event this implies that government policies transferring risk between generations have the potential to create first order welfare improvements our model provides a non keynesian justification for the debt finance of wars and recessions as well as an added rationale for social security type tax transfer schemes which aid unlucky generations e g the depression generation at the expense of luckier generations

do 401 k contributions crowd out other personal saving during the late 1980s contributions to 401 k plans eclipsed contributions to individual retirement accounts iras as the leading form of tax deferred individual retirement saving in the united states in this paper we describe patterns of participation in 401 k plans contrast these patterns with ira participation and evaluate the net impact of 401 k contributions on personal saving we find that 401 k participation conditional on eligibility exceeds 60 at all income levels in contrast ira participation at the height of that program rose sharply with income we use two methods to evaluate the net saving effect of 401 k contributions on personal saving we compare the financial assets of families who are eligible for 401 k saving with the assets of those who are not eligible and we consider the change over time in the assets of like groups of savers we find little evidence that 401 k contributions substitute for other forms of personal saving including ira contributions

the missing piece in policy analysis social security reform this lecture discusses the economic losses that result from an unfunded social security retirement system and the potential gain from shifting to a funded system the social security payroll tax distorts labor supply and the form in which compensation is paid although each individual s benefits are linked to that individual s previous payroll tax payments the low equilibrium rate of return inherent in an unfunded system implies a net payroll tax that causes distortions the resulting deadweight loss is 1 of each year s gdp in perpetuity an amount equal to 20 of payroll tax revenue and a 50 increase in deadweight loss of the personal income tax also there is the loss of investment income resulting from forcing employees to accept the low implicit return of an unfunded program rather than the much higher return paid on private saving or in a funded social security program the present value of the annual losses from using an unfunded system exceeds the benefit to those who received windfall transfers when the program began and when it expanded shifting to a funded program cannot reverse the crowding out of capital that has already occurred recognizing the existing unfunded obligation only makes that piece of the national debt explicit but shifting to a funded program limits crowding out of capital formation to the amount that already occurred future increases in annual saving that result from economic growth are able to earn the higher rate of return on real capital the present value of these gains is equivalent to a perpetuity of more than 2 of gdp a year the combi nation of improved labor market incentives and higher real return on saving has a net present value gain of more than 15 trillion an amount equivalent to three percent of each future year s gdp forever this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

cooperation between rivals informal know how trading it has long been recognized that it is difficult for an innovating firm to fully appropriate the benefits arising from its innovations and that desired research might therefore not be performed nelson 1959 pp 297 306 one sometimes possible solution to this dilemma is cooperative r d conducted by firms who share the costs and benefits of particular r d projects johnson 1973

regionalization of r d activities dis economies of interdependence and inventive performance abstract this paper examines the impact of the extent of the regionalization of mnes r d activities on their inventive performance by joining the regionalization theory with the recombinant view of invention we challenge the implicit assumption that all foreign knowledge seeking activities will necessarily offer new knowledge to the firm we introduce the dis economies of interdependence defined as the dis advantages that the firm derives due to the interdependence among countries within a region as a new theoretical mechanism explaining the benefits and costs of regionalization our analysis of global pharmaceutical firms shows that an inverted u shaped relationship exists between the number of regions in which a firm has r d activities and its inventive performance our results also indicate that a firm s recombinant capability moderates the inverted u shaped relationship in such a way that when a firm s recombinant capability is high it reaches its turning point in a larger number of regions and the inverted u shaped relationship is flatter these results underscore that recombinant capability significantly influences the firm s ability to derive benefits and reduce costs from the regionalization of its r d activities our findings suggest that it is through the consideration of the dis economies of interdependence that offers the essential reasoning needed to unwind the inferred assumption that all foreign knowledge seeking activities will offer access to new knowledge

multilateral indexed loans and debt sustainability we evaluate the benefits and costs of indexing multilateral loans to variables related to developing countries ability to pay i e whether a reform of multilateral lending is feasible and eco nomically justified the analysis covers 40 international development association ida countries from 1990 to 2010 and focuses on three types of debt gdp indexed loans export indexed loans infla tion indexed loans denominated in local currency the insurance that indexed debt might offer against macroeconomic shocks depends on the conditional covariances of gdp growth real exchange rate depreciation and net exports that we estimate as the covariances of the forecast errors obtained from a vector autoregression var model the analysis shows that both gdp indexed loans and inflation indexed local currency loans would help to stabilize the debt ratio of the majority of ida countries in our sample however the adverse policy incentives created by local currency debt tends to favour gdp indexed debt the cost of indexation would be small the estimation of a capital asset pricing model capm suggests that loans indexed to gdp could be introduced at current interest rates since the estimated risk premium is less than 1 per cent any additional risk for multilateral lenders would be more than offset by a lower frequency of debt crises

schumpeterian patterns of innovation using patent data for four countries germany france united kingdom and italy for the period 1968 1986 the authors find that the patterns of innovative activities differ systematically across technological classes while remarkable similarities emerge across countries in the patterns of innovative activities for each technological class this result strongly suggests that technological imperatives and technology specific factors closely linked to technological regimes play a major role in determining the patterns of innovative activities across countries schumpeter proposed two major patterns of innovative activities the first one labelled by nelson and winter 1982 and kamien and schwartz 1982 as schumpeter mark i is proposed in the theory of economic development 1934 in this work schumpeter examined the typical european industrial structure of the late nineteenth century characterised by many small firms according to this view the pattern of innovative activity is characterised by technological ease of entry in an industry and by a major role played by new firms in innovative activities new entrepreneurs come in an industry with new ideas new products or new processes launch new enterprises which challenge established firms and thus continuously disrupt the current ways of production organisation and distribution and wipe out the quasi rents associated with previous innovations the second one labelled schumpeter mark ii is proposed in capitalism socialism and democracy 1942 in this work inspired by the features of the american industry of the first half of the twentieth century schumpeter discussed the relevance of the industrial r d laboratory for technological innovation and the key role of large firms according to this view the pattern of innovative activities is characterised by the prevalence of large established firms and by relevant barriers to entry for new innovators large firms have institutionalised the innovation process with the creation of r d laboratories filled with researchers technicians and engineers with their accumulated stock of knowledge in specific technological areas their advanced competence in large scale r d projects production and distribution and their relevant financial resources they create barriers to entry to new entrepreneurs and small firms

the policy implications of the globalisation of innovation abstract the paper develops a taxonomy of the globalisation of innovation based on three categories a the international exploitation of technology produced on a national basis b the global generation of innovations c the global technological collaborations the most evident changes implied by the increasing globalisation of innovation and technology are the tougher and increased competition and the greater collaboration between actors both across and within national boundaries the advantages just as the costs of these tendencies can be substantial leading to a higher risk of winners and losers the paper analyses the different impact that each category might have on the economic and innovative performance of countries and regions with the aim of defining the implications for national policies it is suggested that public policies play a different role in each of the three processes of the globalisation of innovation and that a single strategy does not exist neither from a firm s nor from a government s perspective the paper emphasis that none of the three categories in this taxonomy renders national policy obsolete on the contrary public policies are necessary on a far wider range than those currently implemented in the majority of countries

a theory of the welfare state the welfare state can be seen as an insurance device that makes lifetime careers safer increases risk taking and suffers from moral hazard effects adopting this view the paper studies the trade off between average income and inequality evaluating redistributive equilibria from an allocative point of view it studies the problem of optimal redistributive taxation with tax induced risk taking and shows that constant returns to risk taking are likely to imply a paradox where more redistribution results in more post tax inequality in general optimal taxation will either imply that the redistribution paradox is present or that the economy operates at a point of its efficiency frontier where more inequality implies a lower average income redistribution welfare state

federal fiscal constitutions risk sharing and redistribution the paper studies the political and economic determinants of regional public transfers specifically it focuses on how such transfers are shaped by alternative fiscal constitutions where a constitution is an allocation of fiscal instruments across different levels of governments plus a procedure for the collective choice of these instruments realistic restrictions on fiscal instruments introduce a tradeoff between risk sharing and redistribution different constitutions produce very different results in particular a federal social insurance scheme chosen by voting provides overinsurance whereas an intergovernmental transfer scheme chosen by bargaining provides underinsurance

the role of unemployment insurance in an economy with liquidity constraints and moral hazard the potential welfare benefits of unemployment insurance along with the optimal replacement ratio are studied using a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium model to provide a role for unemployment insurance agents in our economy face exogenous idiosyncratic employment shocks and are unable to borrow or insure themselves through private markets in the absence of moral hazard replacement ratios as high as 65 are optimal and the welfare benefits of unemployment insurance are quite large however if there is moral hazard and the replacement ratio is not set optimally but is instead set to an empirically plausible value the economy can be much worse off than it would be without unemployment insurance

transnational firms and the changing organisation of innovative activities it is suggested that a transition is taking place towards new modes of organising transnational corporations innovative activities first different units of multinational firms including foreign based subsidiaries are increasingly involved in the generation use and transmission of knowledge secondly multinationals are developing external networks of relationships with local counterparts through which foreign affiliates gain access to external knowledge sources and application abilities as a result of this evolutionary process multinationals organisation is subject to both centripetal and centrifugal forces considerable efforts are then necessary to innovate coordination procedures and mechanisms in order to enhance the generation circulation and use of knowledge a number of empirical works are reviewed providing some evidence of the evolutionary process discussed in the paper 1 transnational companies as networks of innovators economists have long viewed innovation as being primarily generated by firms in their home countries classic contributions in the economics of multinational corporations have consolidated this view referring mainly to the us based multinationals vernon 1966 kindleberger 1969 and stopford and wells 1972 theorised a quasi colonial relationship between the parent company and foreign subsidiaries wherein the latter are in charge of replicating the former s activities abroad with strategic decisions including r d and innovation strategies being rigidly centralised particularly vernon emphasised that coordinating international innovative activities would be too costly owing to the difficulties of collecting and controlling relevant information across national borders host countries and foreign subsidiaries would then play a role almost exclusively in the adoption and diffusion of centrally created technology this view was supported mainly by us economists and based on us evidence from the early post world war ii period but it was very influential for the development of studies on the economics of transnational companies tncs and the internationalisation of

work arrangements and firm innovation is there any relationship this study investigates the relationship between labour market flexibility proxied by the proportion of workers with different contractual arrangements and other indicators of flexible work relations and firms innovative ability as measured by the percentage of new products in total sales on the one hand more flexibility e g a higher labour turnover might be favourable to a firm s innovation potential aside from having potential wage savings a larger inflow of new personnel may enrich the pool of firm innovative ideas on the other hand higher work flexibility may also have some drawbacks a permanently high turnover rate may diminish social cohesion and trust and increase the probability of opportunistic behaviour results suggest that internal flexibility is positively associated with innovation for both high tech and low tech firms especially for high tech firms however greater external flexibility might hinder innovation copyright oxford university press

regional non adjustment and fiscal policy asymmetric shocks regional non adjustment and fiscal policy how will countries handle idiosyncratic macroeconomic shocks under the single currency since the regional adjustment patterns currently prevailing within european currency unions are likely to prevail at the national level under the single currency looking at the ways in which european countries react to internally asymmetric shocks today provides a good preview for the answer to that question in this paper we compare the usa with germany italy and the uk and with canada which is closer to europe than the usa in its labour market and fiscal institutions europe s and to some extent canada s model of regional response differs from that of the usa changes in regional real exchange rates are small in all countries outside of the usa however there is more reliance on interregional transfer payments less on labour migration and the pace of regional adjustment appears to be slower if emu aims at the same degree of economic and social cohesion that its constituent nations enjoy today this suggests that its members may find it hard to resist the eventual extension of existing eu mechanisms of income redistribution a transfer union we propose an alternative strategy based on a relaxed stability pact further strictures against central eu borrowing labour market and fiscal reform and the issuance by individual member states of debt indexed to nominal gdp maurice obstfeld and giovanni peri

the globalisation of technology a new taxonomy book synopsis international management of research and development brings together the most influential contributions to managing organising and coordinating r d and innovation on a global scale in addition to papers on the fundamental principles trends and drivers of international r d it covers strategies and operations of global r d it also provides an introduction to modern concepts such as knowledge networks open innovation and virtual innovation it is a key reference collection for professors researchers and practitioners

payroll tax financed social insurance with variable retirement the optimal relationship between retirement benefits and retirement age is derived the model assumes ex ante identical workers zero one labor supply no private savings wages and payroll taxes constant over life random onset of an inability to work and the impossibility of distinguishing those unable to work from those choosing retirement this formulation is meant to capture some issues for retirement programs where governments commonly do not measure disability e g ages 65 70 with intertemporally additive preferences optimal benefits rise with the age of retirement but more slowly than would be actuarially fair a nonadditive example is also considered

economic and social security in the twenty first century with attention to europe a partly heuristic attempt at exploring long run policies aimed at a second best compromise between ex ante risk sharing efficiency and ex post productive efficiency wage subsidies for low skilled workers financed by taxes on high wages are advocated together with improved risk sharing between capital and labour between generations and between the countries belonging to emu the scope of the advocated policies is limited by considerations of moral hazard time consistency and fiscal competition also estimates of some key economic parameters remain very imprecise several avenues of further research are identified

the incidence of visible underemployment evidence for trinidad and tobago this article presents an empirical analysis of the incidence of visible underemployment in trinidad and tobago visible underemployment consists of workers who work less than the normal duration of working hours but are willing and available to work more we find that compared to other groups of the labour force the visibly underemployed tend to be less educated and are more likely to work in the private sector we also find that their revealed behaviour is consistent with their desire for more hours only about 50 per cent of the visibly underemployed are able to find full time employment within three months and little except firm size helps predict who will

factor mobility risk and redistribution in the welfare state economic integration reduces the costs of factor mobility producing efficiency gains and contributing to equalization of net factor returns this raises the cost of income redistribution policy thus threatening a basic function of the welfare state a simple model of costly factor mobility under uncertainty shows that greater factor mobility enables factor owners to pool industry specific region specific or occupation specific risks due to uncertain technology or terms of trade economic integration may thus reduce some of the potential social insurance benefits of redistributive policy

institutional and individual investors saving for old age this paper brings together the academic literature on individual and institutional investors in order to understand the nature of difficulties faced by them and set the background for the special issue this introductory article and the papers in the special issue contribute to the debate on how to support individuals in their savings commitments and investment decision making and whether and how institutional investors have fulfilled their role in supporting the development of the funded pension industry there are three main conclusions i individual investors are not ready for the role that has been assigned to them in the pension industry ii institutional investors are a long way short of establishing healthy relational contracts and trustworthy relationships with their clients and iii more effective regulation may be needed

optimal indirect and capital taxation we consider an environment in which agents skills are private information and follow arbitrary stochastic processes we prove that it is typically pareto optimal for an individual s marginal benefit of investing in capital to exceed his marginal cost of doing so this wedge is consistent with a positive tax on capital income we also prove that it is pareto optimal for the marginal rate of substitution between any two consumption goods to equal the marginal rate of transformation this lack of a wedge is consistent with uniform taxation of consumption goods within a period

the globalization of r d results of a survey of foreign affiliated r d laboratories in the usa abstract this paper examines the globalization of innovation and the phenomenon of foreign direct investment fdi in research and development to do so it draws from a survey of foreign affiliated r d laboratories in the united states while the literature on foreign direct investment has emphasized the role of markets in driving off shore investments the main conclusion of this research is that the globalization of innovation is driven in large measure by technology factors of particular importance is the objective of firms to secure access to scientific and technical human capital

should social security benefits be means tested social security retirement benefits distort the saving decisions of workers who are rational enough to save for their future since the implicit rate of return in an unfunded social security program is less than the marginal product of capital the resulting decline in saving causes a welfare loss the present paper examines the conditions under which the welfare loss could be reduced by replacing the current universal social security program with a means tested program that pays benefits only to those individuals with little or no other retirement income or assets every society must solve the problem of supporting those individuals who become too old to work but have not made adequate provision for their own old age by saving when they were young at the present time the major industrial countries of the world have responded to this problem by creating social security programs that tax the working population and use the proceeds to provide a universal benefit to all retirees regardless of their financial condition this universal provision of social security benefits distorts the saving decisions of those workers who are rational enough to plan for the future since the implicit rate of return that taxpayers get on their this research is part of the nber study of the government budget and the private economy a more complete version of this paper with some numerical calculations is available as nber working paper no 1775 feldstein 1985b i am grateful to gilbert metcalf for assistance with the calculations presented in this paper and for helpful discussions for a discussion of the effect of promised retirement benefits on the savings of employees see feldstein 1974 1982 barro 1974 1978 has discussed an interesting

optimal unemployment insurance this paper considers the design of an optimal unemployment insurance system the problem is modeled as a repeated principalagent problem involving a risk averse agent the unemployed worker and a risk neutral principal which cannot monitor the agent s search effort the optimal long term contract subject to the associated incentive constraints is characterized this contract involves a replacement ratio that decreases throughout the unemployment spell and a wage tax after reemployment that under some mild regularity conditions increases with the lenght of the unemployment spell some numerical results are presented that suggest that the gains from switching to this optimal unemployment insurance scheme could be quite large the performance of this optimal contract is also compared to alternative liquidity provision mechanisms

pricing growth indexed bonds abstract growth indexed bonds have been suggested as a way of reducing the procyclicality of emerging market countries fiscal policies and the likelihood of costly debt crises investor attitude surveys suggest that pricing difficulties are seen as a considerable obstacle in an effort to reduce such concerns this article presents a simple way of pricing growth indexed bonds as a pleasant by product the analysis tracks the quantitative implications of an increase in the share of growth indexed bonds in total debt measuring the ensuing decline in the probability of default and the reduction in the spreads at which standard bonds can be issued

old sick alone and poor a welfare analysis of old age social insurance programmes all individuals face some risk of ending up old sick alone and poor is there a role for social insurance for these risks and if so what is a good programme a large literature has analysed the costs and benefits of pay as you go public pensions and found that the costs exceed the benefits this article instead considers means tested social insurance mtsi programmes for retirees such as medicaid and supplemental security income we find that the welfare gains from these programmes are large moreover the current scale of mtsi in the u s is too small in the following sense if we condition on the current social security programme increasing the scale of mtsi by 1 3 benefits both the poor and the affluent when a payroll tax is used to fund the increase

the effects of pensions on household wealth a reevaluation of theory and evidence this paper examines the extent to which households offset pension wealth with reductions in other wealth systematic econometric biases imply that the estimated offsets in previous empirical studies are smaller than the true offset and may even have the wrong sign new empirical estimates that do not correct for the biases generate little offset between pensions and other wealth estimates that correct for the biases show substantially more offset a smaller impact of pensions on overall saving than in most previous studies the estimates also indicate that the effects of pensions on wealth vary significantly across households

declining public pensions in an era of demographic ageing will private provision fill the gap abstract demographic crisis and imprudent commitments have induced a crisis in public pension programmes in oecd countries will present and prospective cutbacks lead to greater private saving either in the form of private pension provision or in other forms of saving the paper surveys existing evidence and provides new results on three questions do individuals substitute private for public provision of savings when public pension programmes are cut back voluntarily do individuals respond to incentives to join sponsored or tax subsidised arrangements if encouraged by the government and if individuals are prepared to make such arrangements and where saving is voluntary do they save enough to replace previous prospective public pension flows

crises in public pension programmes in oecd what are the reform options the paper examines projections of the fiscal liabilities of public pension programmes in a number of oecd countries it investigates the reasons why many countries have built up such liabilities in the past and critically appraises the future projections of pension costs it examines the strengths and weaknesses of four reform options which are currently being discussed and implemented in various countries

the design of income maintenance programmes this paper provides a comprehensive treatment of a basic income maintenance problem for a group of individuals who differ in their income generating abilities it stresses the impact that imperfect information about such abilities has on programme design the analysis serves two purposes first we are able to unify the theoretical literature on the income maintenance problem second we examine the impact of allowing the government to impose workfare on recipients of income support in addition to being of policy interest this is a theoretically challenging problem since it requires solving a multi dimensional screening problem the solution that we find is strikingly simple it separates the poor into two categories with the lower income groups subject to workfare while facing a 100 marginal tax rate on earnings the second group does no public work and is offered a benefit schedule which taxes earnings at a lower rate

moral hazard adverse selection and the optimal provision of social insurance abstract the single period social insurance model of diamond and mirrlees is extended to allow for a diversity of types in the probability of becoming disabled when individual type is observable the utilitarian optimum has both consumption when working and disability benefits increasing with the probability of disability when type is not observable adverse selection is present the optimum is a single pooling policy over a wide range of welfare weights which includes the utilitarian case these results also provide insights into the potential distributional effects of moral hazard and the ways moral hazard and adverse selection problems may interact

sources of innovative activities and industrial organization in italy abstract this paper is based on the information gathered through a survey on industrial innovation in 24 000 italian business units two thirds of the business units surveyed declared they had introduced innovations although there were significant variations across industries and size only 16 percent of the innovating business units monitored declared they had performed r d as many as 13 986 business units have introduced innovations without performing r d the paper focuses on the different sources of technical knowledge which support the innovative activities such as r d design acquisition of capital goods patents etc it considers also the relationship between concentration and innovative intensity at the industry level it emerges that at least at the business unit level there is a weak correlation between the two variables on the basis of the measured industrial concentration the propensity to perform product versus process innovations and the sources of technological change a taxonomy of industrial sectors is proposed which elaborates on pavitt s original approach this taxonomy instead of stressing the role of either small firms as in the flexible specialization model or of the schumpeterian concentration to explain the intensity and nature of the innovative phenomena indicates that sectoral differences explain more than is generally believed in understanding technological change efficient innovation policy should therefore be tailored to match those sectoral characteristics

the impact of technological innovation on international trade patterns the evidence reconsidered abstract this paper presents some new evidence in relation to the role of technical change in particular industrial innovation on the international competitiveness of the various oecd countries its originality consists primarily of a using a technology output indicator to measure technological performance b presenting and comparing various measures of trade and technological performance for each individual oecd country with the exception of iceland c analysing at a relatively high level of product industry disaggregation the relationship between export performance and technological performance at the same time the very limited scope of the paper has to be emphasized a the analysis is purely static all the evidence presented relates to one year 1977 b most of the results obtained are preliminary and should be further substantiated by more detailed empirical and theoretical research c as a consequence little attention has been paid to policy implications which it was felt could only be discussed properly in a later stage the paper consists of four sections a brief review of the state of the art section 1 a discussion on definitions of technology intensity section 2 the development of the best technology output indicator section 3 and the empirical analysis itself section 4 the following most important results emerge from these various sections a there are serious shortcomings in using average technology intensity as bench mark for classifying products or industries in technology intensive or nontechnology intensive categories b there is a substantial difference between technology intensity as measured on the basis of a technology input proxy rd c yet as between countries the most traditional output and input indicators the number of patents granted and the amount spent on rd d foreign patenting in particular foreign patenting in the united states figs 1 and 2 section 3 is a more reliable technology output proxy than domestic patenting e in terms of technological comparative advantage as opposed to technology intensity it is the small oecd countries as opposed to the large ones which seem to base their trade comparative advantage on technological comparative performance table 7 section 4 1 f at the individual industry level it is found that i for most technology intensive industries defined however in a less restrictive way than us r d intensities a close relation exists between technological performance and export performance and ii that as compared to other country specific resource variables technological performance is the most important trade explanatory variable its elasticity increasing with the technology intensity of industries tables 11 and 12 section 4 2 space constraints prevented us from presenting the data in relation to the inter industry and inter country analysis these can however be obtained from the author

large firms in the production of the world s technology an important case of non globalisation us patenting by 686 of the world s largest manufacturing firms shows that their share of the world s production of technology is less than their share of r d activities and varies greatly amongst sectors in most cases the technological activities of these large firms are concentrated in their home country the characteristics of which influence the volume and trends in their technological activities much more strongly then the international component of these activities at the same time these large firms are major elements in the volume and the pattern of sectoral specializations in their home countries technological activities

decentralised r d and strategic competitiveness globalised approaches to generation and use of technology in multinational enterprises mnes abstract using material from surveys of multinational enterprise mne production subsidiaries and laboratories operating in the uk the paper seeks to discern vital changes in the roles of such r d facilities from the primarily tactical and technologically dependent role of adapting established group products for the local market these labs now take more committed positions in support of their group s strategic competitiveness this can involve a much more profound involvement in original product development or inputs into programmes of pre competitive basic or applied research to support the longer term evolution of the core technology of the mne group it is suggested that this evolution of decentralised labs positioning in mne knowledge strategies implies i an increasing involvement in product development rather than adaptation ii an interdependent rather than dependent position in group technology programmes iii increased relevance of supply side influences host country technology competencies capacities and heritage iv decline of centralising forces on r d e g economies of scale communication and co ordination problems concerns of knowledge security

efficiency risk aversion and portfolio insurance an analysis of financial asset portfolios held by investors in the united kingdom using data for the united kingdom the author shows that investors in six different wealth ranges hold mean variance efficient portfolios of financial assets this result permits him to estimate coefficients of relative risk aversion for investors in each wealth range the author finds that these coefficients are much higher than most previous studies have found this implies that investors 1 are unwilling to hold risky assets unless they are compensated with a sufficiently high risk premium and 2 are willing to pay for portfolio insurance the general nonavailability of portfolio insurance in the united kingdom appears to indicate a supply side rather than a demand side failure copyright 1996 by royal economic society

new forms of organisation and r d internationalisation among the world s 100 largest food and beverages multinationals this paper explores the strategic internationalisation of research and development r d activities of the world s 100 largest food and beverages f b multinationals mnes in 1996 and 2000 with a sample of nearly 8000 affiliates for each period we develop a global innovation strategy gis structure where we analyse the r d internationalisation process of f b mnes we argue that in a fully developed gis model the sourcing of creative inputs does not come exclusively from a central r d laboratory but other overseas r d laboratories or technological affiliates can also undertake genuine knowledge creation activity from capitalising on the scientific heterogeneity fostered in individual host countries as well as distinctive demand conditions our results indicate the increasing importance of overseas technological affiliates in the application of a gis in the leading f b mnes which determine the degree of their technological internationalisation two variants of technological affiliates reflect two broad knowledge related activities i e adaptation and genuine forms of knowledge creation

why are latin america s savings rates so low an international comparative analysis abstract this paper presents a theoretical and empirical assessment of the determinants of savings rates with special emphasis on latin american savings rates the study is based on international comparisons using data from 36 countries for 1970 1992 a distinction is made between private and public savings the later are endogenously determined by economic and political variables per capita income growth is the most important determinant of private and public savings public savings are lower in countries with higher political instability public savings crowd out private savings but less than proportionately low latin american savings are due to the magnitudes of their determinants rather than structural differences

pension wealth and individual saving some new evidence attemprs to measure the tmpact of soctal security and private pensions on household saving have occupied much of the literature in empirical public finance over the past decade empirical estimates of those impacts have been quite varied see the discussion in aaron 1982 this paper provides new estimates of the impact of changes in holdings of social security and private pension annuities on the level of non pension wealth the data examined are drawn from surveys conducted for the u s president s commission on pension policy the impact of the social security system on individual saving has been a concern since feldstein s 1974 pioneering paper l the theoretical argument of feldstein and of barro 1974 1978 centers around the funding status of social security i e the degree to which an unfunded social security system reduces private saving empirical tests of the effects of social security on saving in this line of research have been conducted in the perfect certainty version of the life cycle model modigliani and ando 1957 modigliani and brumberg 1954 in that approach social security affects non pension saving through its impact on individual intertemporal budget constraints disposable income during the working period falls by the amount of

patterns of internationalization of spanish innovatory firms abstract the aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate about the factors determining the growing internationalization of small and medium firms originating from intermediate countries the reason for selecting the spanish innovating firms consists of the interest they have for analysing the interaction between the characteristics they have as innovatory agents and their behaviour regarding the global economy the paper is developed from the following hypothesis first in the case of firms of countries with a more recent history of opening up to the international economy the patterns of overseas expansion combine different kinds of elements such as factors included in the eclectic theory and tacit components of the company advantages second in the trajectories followed by those firms some accumulative learning patterns can be found the starting point of this research is a previous one carried out on the patterns of technological innovation of spanish innovatory firms on this basis i have combined two sources for obtaining relevant data the first consists of the creation of a data bank of innovatory firms with 814 innovating companies the second source is a survey carried out with those firms the statistical analysis is made through the application of discriminant analysis and logit models they are good tools for systematic comparison between clusters and allow me to follow a stepwise method for a close study of increasing complex international activity

do agricultural outputs of partly autarkic peasants affect their health and nutrition evidence from rwanda abstract in rural areas of less developed countries because of market imperfections the health and nutritional status of peasants may directly depend on the production levels of specific agricultural goods rather than solely on income levels this channel of health and nutrition determination has never been studied in order to assess and test the empirical possibility of this channel we estimate the responses of health and nutritional status of autarkic agricultural households in rwanda with respect to differences in socio demographic characteristics and the main agricultural outputs and inputs while controlling for local environment and sampling scheme several food outputs are found to have a positive influence on health and nutrition whereas the production of traditional beers has a negative impact moreover greater land negatively affects health and nutrition conditionally on agricultural production perhaps because of a larger relative workload for households who have a large farm an alternative interpretation of the estimates is that they inform on the validity of the common hypothesis of perfect agricultural input output markets with no effect of agricultural inputs outputs on health and nutrition status this hypothesis is rejected

is there a retirement savings puzzle in this paper we ask whether households are saving enough for their retirement we use data on income expenditure and expenditure components to analyse patterns of behaviour at and around the time of retirement for successive date of birth cohorts we compare periods of unemployment to periods of retirement and separate expenditures into categories reflecting work related expenditures basic necessities and other goods we find that income typically falls by more at unemployment than retirement but the reverse is true for expenditure we observe falls in expenditure at retirement for all expenditure categories using a stochastic life cycle model including mortality rates we assess the anticipated impact of retirement on consumption against that of unemployment the inter relationship between goods and leisure explains a large part of the persistent fall in expenditure at retirement we argue that the only way in which the life cycle hypothesis could be reconciled with the remaining unanticipated dip in consumption would be with the systematic arrival of unexpected adverse information at the time of retirement

technical change growth and trade new departures in institutional economics this article analyses the main theoretical and policy issues emerging from the literature on the evolutionary institutional economics of technical change the four distinguishing characteristics of which are that technology is often proprietary in nature only a part of knowledge is codifiable in handbooks blueprints patents and so on there are fundamental variations in the above two points across different technological fields and the evolution of knowledge is highly path dependent