the labour demand of firms an alternative conception based on the capabilities approach the aim of this paper is to offer a theoretical framework for the analysis of labour demand alternative to the neoclassical one taking as its starting point the conception of the firm that derives from the capabilities or competence based theories of the organization after briefly reviewing the essential elements of this approach to the firm we tackle a range of diverse aspects such as the link between labour demand decisions and the firm s strategic planning and its determinants the characterisation of labour demand as a demand for productive competencies the consequences that these competencies are embedded in human beings or the relative independence between labour demand decision making and the process of wage setting in general terms this conception of labour demand allows us to incorporate many of the main peculiarities of labour and the demand for it from a number of different areas of heterodox economics particularly from institutional and post keynesian economics and it fits in with the conventional literature on internal labour markets and labour market segmentation

the geographical dimension of innovation collaboration networking and innovation in norway this paper looks at the geographical dimension of firm networking in norway by examining the impact of manager level firm level and regional level variables on the decisions of firms to collaborate with partners at different levels of geographical distance using data stemming from a survey of 1604 businesses in five norwegian city regions we model firms use of partners located within the region elsewhere in the country and abroad respectively the results indicate that collaboration is affected in different ways by variables related to all three levels at the level of the manager trust is an important predictor of regional and national collaboration but has no significant effect on the formation of international partnerships which are fundamentally associated with factors such as education and the open mindedness of managers at the regional level r d expenditure tends to increase collaboration between regional actors but reduces the likelihood of engagement with international partners education by contrast has the opposite effect it encourages international collaboration at the expense of local links the results highlight the need to balance policies for boosting regional social capital and r d with investments in education and fostering open mindedness as a means to prevent lock in and develop innovation enhancing global pipelines

the hidden persuaders institutions and individuals in economic theory in his classic book the hidden persuaders vance packard claimed that large corporations manipulated consumers using advertising techniques john kenneth galbraith and others have repeated a similar view against this gary becker and george stigler have claimed that advertising is essentially informative rather than manipulative in contrast it is argued here that both of these opposed accounts of human agency neglect the more subtle and undesigned processes by which institutions bear upon and mould individuals this paper proposes a concept of reconstitutive downward causation in which institutions act upon individual habits and dispositions the mechanisms involved do not fall foul of past critiques of holism or methodological collectivism this argument involves a rehabilitation of the concept of habit in social science with far reaching implications

sketching a socio economic model of labour markets using insights from the socio economics of labour markets and building upon critical realist meta theory this paper offers the first sketch of a socio economic model of labour markets as an alternative to the orthodox model the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved

understanding corporate coherence theory and evidence abstract multiproduct firms are perceived to be coherent in their scope yet there is no strong theoretical foundations to explain coherence in modern industrial organization theory this paper shows that as u s manufacturing firms grow more diverse they maintain a constant level of coherence between neighboring activities this finding runs counter to the idea that firms with many activities are generally more incoherent a framework is then presented which appeals to the nature of enterprise learning path dependencies and the nature of the selection environment to explain the ubiquity of coherent diversifiers

the impact of supply constraints on house prices in england we test the theoretical prediction that house prices respond more strongly to changes in local earnings in places with tight supply constraints using a unique panel dataset of 353 local planning authorities in england between 1974 and 2008 exploiting exogenous variation from a policy reform vote shares and historical density to identify the endogenous constraints measures we find that regulatory constraints have a substantive positive impact on the house price earnings elasticity the effect of constraints due to scarcity of developable land is largely confined to highly urbanised areas and uneven topography has a quantitatively less meaningful impact

developing an understanding of meaningful work in economics the case for a heterodox economics of work the idea that work has meaning and is meaningful beyond its contribution to consumption has been largely absent from mainstream economics this paper gives reasons for why mainstream economics has neglected the idea of meaningful work it identifies the idea of the disutility of work the assumption of free choice on the part of workers and the use of a formal and individualistic method as key constraints on the ability of mainstream economics to incorporate the idea of meaningful work it also addresses the contribution of happiness economics and shows how it is unable to encompass the idea of meaningful work ideas on work from heterodox economics are then discussed these ideas provide essential insight and inspiration for the incorporation of the idea of meaningful work into the economics of work in all respects the paper seeks to contribute towards the development and promotion of a heterodox economics of work that has the goal of meaningful work at its centre

urban decline and durable housing urban decline is not the mirror image of growth and durable housing is the primary reason the nature of decline is so different this paper presents a model of urban decline with durable housing and verifies these implications of the model 1 city growth rates are skewed so that cities grow more quickly than they decline 2 urban decline is highly persistent 3 positive shocks increase population more than they increase housing prices 4 negative shocks decrease housing prices more than they decrease population 5 if housing prices are below construction costs then the city declines and 6 the combination of cheap housing and weak labor demand attracts individuals with low levels of human capital to declining cities

social interaction and urban sprawl abstract various authors most notably putnam putnam r d 2000 bowling alone simon and schuster new york have argued that low density living reduces social capital and thus social interaction and this argument has been used to buttress criticisms of urban sprawl if low densities in fact reduce social interaction then an externality arises validating putnam s critique in choosing their own lot sizes consumers would fail to consider the loss of interaction benefits for their neighbors when lot size is increased lot sizes would then be inefficiently large and cities excessively spread out the paper tests the premise of this argument the existence of a positive link between interaction and density using data from the social capital benchmark survey in the empirical work social interaction measures for individual survey respondents are regressed on census tract density and a host of household characteristics using an instrumental variable approach to control for the potential endogeneity of density

the dynamic capabilities of firms an introduction an expanded paradigm is needed to explain how competitive advantage is gained and held firms resorting to resource bas ed strategy attempt to accumulate valuable technology assets and employ an aggressive intellectual property stance however winners in the global marketplace have been firms demonstrating timely responsiveness and rapid and flexible product innovation along with the management capability to effectively coordinate and redeploy internal and external competences this source of competitive advantage dynamic capabilities emphasizes two aspects first it refers to the shifting character of the environment second it emphasizes the key role of strategic management in appropriately adapting integrating and re configuring internal and external organizational skills resources and functional competences toward changing environment 3 only recently have researchers begun to focus on the specifics of developing firm specific capabilities and the manner in which competences are renewed to respond to shifts in the business environment the dynamic capabilities approach provides a coherent framework to integrate existing conceptual and empirical knowledge and facilitate prescription this paper argues that the competitive advanis tage of firms stems from dynamic capabilities rooted in high performance routines z operating inside the firm embedded in the firm s processes and conditioned by its history it offers dynamic capabilities as an emerging paradigm of the modern business j firm that draws on multiple disciplines and advances with the help of industry studies in the usa and elsewhere

what drives migration moves to urban areas in spain evidence from the great recession during the great recession international emigration skyrocketed while internal migration strongly declined however when the focus is on migration to the larger urban areas in spain an increase i

on the social structure of markets economic theorists have seldom discussed the social structures behind markets even though market trading relies heavily on seller buyer roles and personal relations among traders this paper considers the structural basis of markets and proposes a layered approach which accommodates a wide range of competitive and relational trade within a definition of markets that distinguishes them from non market exchange giving due regard to social structures lays bare the institutional character of markets and provides a rationale for case studies of how particular markets function

urban resurgence and the consumer city cities make it easier for humans to interact and one of the main advantages of dense urban areas is that they facilitate social interactions this paper provides evidence for the us suggesting th

beyond economic base theory the role of the residential economy in attracting income to swiss regions segessemann a and crevoisier o beyond economic base theory the role of the residential economy in attracting income to swiss regions regional studies regional development theories are mainly focused on export based activities to explain regional competitiveness the increasing mobility of workers and residents leads to a reconsideration of this approach residential economy has become a strategic issue to generate incomes within regions with this view the paper analyses the link between economic activities and incomes from workers and annuitants residents a spatial typology breakdown is compiled for swiss regions using a hierarchical cluster analysis hca empirical results highlight various regional development profiles conversely to export based theories regions with higher income are those with strong residential economy thus opening new avenues for local governance

work for all those who want it why the neoclassical labour supply curve is an inappropriate foundation for the theory of employment and unemployment this paper questions the usefulness of the neoclassical labour supply curve as a factor in the theory of employment and unemployment this curve rests on the false premise that workers can choose whether to work or not and gives credence to the idea that all unemployment constitutes chosen leisure despite this it was used by keynes to define the point of full employment this contributed to the misleading impression that the level of full employment is determined by psychological factors challenging this view joan robinson sought to integrate a wider set of issues into the theory of labour supply in order to build a different non neoclassical foundation for keynes s theory of effective demand drawing upon robinson the paper argues against the use of the neoclassical labour supply curve within macroeconomic analysis copyright 2006 oxford university press

new housing supply and the dilution of social capital this paper examines the role of local housing supply conditions for social capital investment using an instrumental variables approach and data from the social capital community benchmark survey it is documented that the positive link between homeownership and individual social capital investment is largely confined to more built up neighborhoods with more inelastic supply of new housing the empirical findings provide support for the proposition that in these localities house price capitalization provides additional incentives for homeowners to invest in social capital the findings are also largely consistent with the proposition that built up neighborhoods provide protection from inflows of newcomers that could upset a mutually beneficial equilibrium involving reciprocal cooperation however the results do not appear to be driven by selection based on inherent differences in social aptitudes or by tiebout sorting

wages rents and the quality of life this study focuses on the role of wages and rents in allocating workers to locations with various quantities of amenities the theory demonstrates that if the amenity is also productive then the sign of the wage gradient is unclear while the rent gradient is positive the theory is extended to include the housing market and nontraded goods these extensions require little modification of the conclusion the empirical work on wages shows that the regional wage differences can be explained largely by these local attributes with the use of site price data implicit prices are estimated and quality of life rankings for the cities are computed

composition and determinants of the skilled out migration in the brazilian formal labor market a panel data analysis from 1995 to 2006 this paper aims to examine the composition and identify determinant factors of interstate the skilled labor loss in the brazilian formal labor market between 1995 and 2006 with emphasis on the role of individual motivations and regional factors in order to estimate such determinants we use a fixed effect logit in a wide panel with data from ministry of labor and employment rais migra annual report on social information and ibge the brazilian statistics bureau the estimated results confirm the importance of wage differentials in determining such mobility furthermore an increased skilled out migration probability is explained by skilled workers heading to states showing economic prosperity higher dynamism in the labor market as well as higher population density 2014 national association of postgraduate centers in economics anpec production and hosting by elsevier b v all rights reserved

transactions cost economics and the multinational enterprise an assessment abstract this paper applies transactions cost principles to the multinational enterprise in order to ascertain its distinctive properties as a mode of economic organization the analysis helps identify just when and where contractual alternatives to the multinational firm are likely to be viable this turns out to depend upon the nature of the technology the regime of appropriability within which the firm operates and the characteristics of the markets in question transactions cost analysis is also extended to the multinational enterprise host country relationship implications for management and public policy are derived

cultural amenities and unemployment in dutch cities disentangling a consumerist and productivist explanation for less educated urbanites varying unemployment levels across urban economies previous studies on the advanced economies have shown that unemployment levels of the less educated are low in cities with high employment shares in the advanced producer services scholars have consistently interpreted this finding according to sassen s polarisation thesis this article confronts this production based interpretation with a competing consumption based explanation which focuses on the role of cultural amenities analysing data on 22 dutch metropolitan agglomerations between 1996 and 2008 it is shown that in line with consumerists notions of richard florida advanced producer services settle in cities that are rich in cultural amenities instead of the other way around as classical labour follows capital explanations imply yet only advanced producer services prove to reduce the unemployment levels of the less educated meaning that the polarisation thesis and not the theory on cultural amenities is a valid explanation for the low level of unemployment in post industrial cities

a realist appraisal of post keynesian pricing theory this paper argues that based on the ontological insights of critical realism epistemological guidelines can be established to review post keynesian pricing theories critically consequently the paper suggests a basis on which the coherence of post keynesian pricing theory can be established crucially some often cited contrib u t i o n s are inconsistent with such a realist define d post keynesian economics the role of empirical work in critical realism is discussed

regulation of the employment relationship the old institutional perspective abstract this review article examines the rationale developed by the old institutional economists particularly john r commons and associates of the wisconsin school for the regulation of the employment relationship factors emphasized by the old institutionalists include the promotion of noneconomic social goals the deleterious effects of unrestrained self interest and competition the highly imperfect nature of labor markets the skewed distribution of property rights and labor s inequality of bargaining power the paper then describes the policy strategy and regulatory program advocated by the old institutionalists to improve the efficiency and equity of the market system implications of the old institutional perspective for current debates over the extent and form of employment regulation are then assessed

organizational capabilities and the economic history of the industrial enterprise in my book scale and scope 1990 i focused on the history of the modern industrial firm from the 1880s when such firms first appeared through world war ii i did so by comparing the fortunes of more than 600 enterprises the 200 largest industrial firms at three points in time world war i 1929 and world war ii in each of the three major industrial economies those of the united states britain and germany in this paper i first describe the similarities in the historical beginnings and continuing evolution of these enterprises and then outline my explanation for these similarities next i relate my explanation of these empirical regularities to four major economic theories relating to the firm the neoclassical the principal agent the transaction cost and the evolutionary finally i suggest the value of the transactions cost and evolutionary theories to historians and economists who are attempting to explain the beginnings and growth of modern industrial enterprises

impact of human capital on joint venture investment in vietnam abstract commitments of joint venture investment in vietnam expanded rapidly during 1988 93 as foreign firms eagerly took advantage of the economy s opening this investment concentrated heavily in the metropolitan core regions nevertheless investors remained sensitive to human capital considerations controlling for income they committed greater capital to provinces with higher levels of literacy and poorer provinces outside the core also gained disproportionately the nuanced locational choices for joint venture investments suggest that vietnamese partners provided sophisticated environmental scans to take advantage of high quality labor regardless of income level projected investments favor the south somewhat disproportionately contributing to disparity in development

what is different about urbanization in rich and poor countries cities in brazil china india and the united states abstract are the well known facts about urbanization in the united states also true for the developing world we compare american metropolitan areas with analogous geographic units in brazil china and india both gibrat s law and zipf s law seem to hold as well in brazil as in the u s but china and india look quite different in brazil and china the implications of the spatial equilibrium hypothesis the central organizing idea of urban economics are not rejected the india data however repeatedly rejects tests inspired by the spatial equilibrium assumption one hypothesis is that spatial equilibrium only emerges with economic development as markets replace social relationships and as human capital spreads more widely in all four countries there is strong evidence of agglomeration economies and human capital externalities the correlation between density and earnings is stronger in both china and india than in the u s strongest in china in india the gap between urban and rural wages is huge but the correlation between city size and earnings is more modest the cross sectional relationship between area level skills and both earnings and area level growth are also stronger in the developing world than in the u s the forces that drive urban success seem similar in the rich and poor world even if limited migration and difficult housing markets make it harder for a spatial equilibrium to develop

what makes cities attractive the determinants of urban labour migration in germany striking disparities characterise the population growth of cities in industrialised countries some cities suffer from ongoing population decline whereas other cities have experienced increasing numbers of inhabitants in recent years whether labour market conditions or amenities via their impact on migration primarily account for differences in cities demographic development is an important issue this paper investigates the determinants of the migration balance of german cities between 2000 and 2007 the focus is on the mobility of workers because labour migration in particular affects the future prospects of cities the findings suggest that not only labour market conditions but also amenities have an impact on the net migration rate moreover large cities seem to be ceteris paribus more attractive than small cities this finding possibly points to the importance of amenities such as cultural infrastructure and matching externalities in urban labour markets that are linked to city size urban policy aimed at enhancing the attractiveness of cities should thus consider both boosting the local economy and improving the quality of life

the ubiquity of habits and rules under what circumstances is it necessary or convenient for an agent to rely on habits or rules this paper focuses on the types of decision situations giving rise to their use even optimization requires the deployment of rules and for this reason mainstream economics cannot legitimately ignore these questions the argument is that habits and rules are ubiquitous in human activity in a new taxonomy seven types of decision situations are considered classified according to the type of information problem involved neither neoclassical nor behavioral economics can provide a complete account of the bases of habits or rules in these cases copyright 1997 by oxford university press

transaction cost economics in real time this paper attempts to place the theq of the boundaries of thejirm within the context of the passage of time more precisely it resurrects and places in a modem frame some of the insights of the chsical and marshallian theories of organization the modem reinterpretation of those theories centers around the capabilities view of the jirm taken together with governance costs the capabilities ofjirm and market determine the boundaries of the jirm in the short run ovw time capabilities change as firms and markets learn which implies a kind of information or knowledge cost the cost of trandewing the firm s capability to the market w vice versa these dynamic governance costs are the costs of persuading negotiating and coordinating with and teaching others they arise in the face of change notably txchnological and organizational innovation in fit they are the costs of not having the capabilities you need when you need them dynamic transaction costs provide an explanation for vertical integration that is arguably more general than those dominant in the literature in the face of uncertainty and divwgent views ofthe future common ownership of multiple stages of production is a supwior institutional arrangement for coordinating systemic change asset specrfity is neither necessary nor suffient for this to be true dynamic governance costs may also affit internal organization it may sometimes be costly in 3 terms of persuasion negotiation and teaching to create within the firm capabilities readily available on the market indeed in cases in which systemic coordination is not 4 the issue the market may turn out to be the superior institution of coordination in e 2 genwal the capabilities view of the jirm suggests that we look atfim2 and market as alternative and sometimes overlapping institutions of learning 1 transaction costs in the long rzln and the short 9 x classical and neoclassical perspectives

the approach of institutional economics this paper assesses the old institutional economics it emphasizes the importance of key old institutionalist themes concerning the necessity of habits and rules and the role of institutions a problem in the alternative theoretical program of the new institutionalism is the untenability of its assumption of an original institution free market or state of nature even optimizing behavior requires the prior existence of habits and rules although it still lacks a complete and systematic theory the evolutionary approach of the old institutionalists tackles the problem of the interactive relationship of actor to structure without analytical reduction to one or the other

government action social capital and development reviewing the evidence on synergy abstract instead of assuming a zero sum relationship between government involvement and private cooperative efforts the five preceding articles argue for the possibility of state society synergy that active government and mobilized communities can enhance each others developmental efforts this article draws on these articles to explore the forms and sources of state society synergy i argue that synergy usually combines complementarity with embeddedness and is most easily fostered in societies characterized by egalitarian social structures ard robust coherent state bureaucracies i also argue however that synergy is constructable even in the more adverse circumstances typical of third world countries

towards an economic theory of the multiproduct firm this paper outlines a theory of the multiproduct firm important building blocks include excess capacity and its creation market imperfections and the peculiarities of organizational knowledge including its fungible and taut character a framework is adopted in which profit seeking firms are seen to diversify in order to avoid the high transactions costs associated with using various markets to trade the services of various specialized assets neoclassical explanations of the multiproduct firm are shown to be seriously deficient

do labour supply and demand curves exist the objective of this paper is to show that circumstantial and empirical evidence for the existence of labour supply and demand curves is at best inconclusive and at worst casts doubt on their existence because virtually all orthodox models of labour markets simple and complex are built upon the foundation stones of labour supply and demand curves these models lack empirically supported foundations orthodox labour economists must therefore either provide stronger evidence or stop using labour supply and demand curves as the foundation stones of their models the conclusion discusses implications for future orthodox and heterodox labour economics

globalization regionalization and third world development cook p and kirkpatrick c 1997 globalization regionalization and third world development reg studies 31 55 66 recent decades have seen a strengthening of cross border economic relationships and an increasing integration of the world economy the aim of this paper is to analyse the implications of the these globalization and regionalization trends for the economic growth and development of third world countries the causes of globalization are identified and the competing convergent and divergent interpretations of the impact of globalization and regionalization on developing countries economic welfare are discussed cook p et kirkpatrick c 1997 la globalisation la regionalisation et le developpement du tiers monde reg studies 31 55 66 les decennies recentes ont temoigne d un renforcement des liens economiques transfrontaliers et d une integration croissante de l economie mondiale cet article cherche a analyser les consequences de la tendance a la globalisation et a la regionalisatio

the new institutional economics and the theory of behaviour under uncertainty the new institutional economics nie is diverse in terms of the theory of behaviour under uncertainty some views are close to neoclassical economics but others are similar to those held by heterodox economists distinctions between procedural and substantive uncertainty weak and strong uncertainty and ambiguity and fundamental uncertainty help to identify different approaches to uncertainty in nie regarding the influence of institutions on economics behaviour not all nie focuses on institutions as constraints and takes individuals as given the dominant views of rationality in nie are standard neoclassical maximization and bounded rationality but alternative notions have also been defended