food production strategy debates in revolutionary ethiopia abstract for more than a decade two strategies of rural development have competed for the attention of ethiopian policymakers 1 the smallholder approach based on individual freehold a strong private sector and public expenditures in support of essential agricultural sector institutions and infrastructure and 2 the agrarian socialism approach based on collective ownership of the means of production group farming state farms and government control of marketing the article reviews the history and direction of this debate outlining in the process current government policies aimed at promoting agrarian socialism and their effects on food production and the quality of rural life it concludes that ethiopia will suffer ever increasing food deficits until it abandons its current agrarian strategy in favor of smallholder productivity and it offers a range of options for donors involved in programs and projects promoting ethiopia s agricultural development

the political morphology of drainage how gully formation links to state formation in the choke mountains of ethiopia to understand why soil erosion is persistent despite three decades of massive investments in soil conservation this paper explores how drainage and soil conservation change a hill slope in the choke mountains by paying close attention to the practices that reshape the hill we account for the active roles of people and material flows in shaping their identities forms and power relations social relations can be read in the landscape as their material outcomes are literally scoured into the hill slope such a material reading of ethiopia s developmental state reveals three issues first drainage and soil conservation practices are configured by particular historical regimes of land distribution and rent appropriation second the power of the ethiopian government s model of the developmental state derives from the exploitation of this configuration by a new coalition of landholders and government officials government officials mobilize landholders to construct terraces in exchange for government support in conflicts over land and input distribution when the terraces create obstructions that can trigger flooding landowners convert them into drains and divert drainage flows to plots sharecropped by landless families consequently the yearly mobilization for terrace construction does not halt soil erosion but further aggravates it this continues because the performance of this yearly ritual affirms the authority of landholders and government agents third landless families which fail to live up to the model of the farmer interested in soil conservation have created a competing trader model with its own institutions the denial of their non farmer identities by landholders and officials fuels generational conflicts over drainage which deepen the fractures in the hill and pose a challenge to government authority land degradation thus embodies both the powers and the limits of the developmental state

cost reduction competition and industry performance in many markets firms compete over time by expending resources with the purpose of reducing their costs sometimes the cost reducing investments operate directly on costs in many instances they take the form of developing new products that deliver what customers need more cheaply therefore product development can have the same ultimate effect as direct cost reduction in fact if one thinks of the product as the services it delivers to the customer in the way that lancaster pioneered then product development often is just cost reduction

price inertia and policy ineffectiveness in the united states 1890 1980 this paper introduces a new approach to the empirical testing of the lucas sargent wallace lsw policy ineffectiveness proposition which compares the lsw hypothesis with an alternative that states that prices respond fully in the long run but only gradually in the short run to nominal aggregate demand disturbances the empirical equations estimated for a new set of quarterly data extending back to 1890 exhibit uniformly high responses of real output and low responses of price changes to anticipated changes in nominal gnp the paper compares and tests three alternative methods of introducing persistence effects into the lsw framework

knowledge capital and performance heterogeneity a firm level innovation study this paper is an empirical analysis of knowledge capital and performance heterogeneity at the firm level we apply new econometric methods to extensive data on innovation and innovative activities

innovation and performance evidence at micro level this empirical study aims to shed light on the link between innovation and economic performance at micro level based on a comprehensive survey among dairy and crop farms in the netherlands we estimate a structural multi stage model to deliver evidence on the effect of engagement and investment in innovation on the production of product process and organizational or marketing innovations as well as on the effect of such innovations on farm level productivity the results suggest various market and farm behaviour related factors to stimulate an increase in innovation engagement and production furthermore the study reveals that indeed a greater innovation investment per unit innovation input leads to a higher probability of producing at least one successful product process and or organizational or marketing innovation innovation output the production of process and organizational or marketing related innovation leads to significant productivity gains various recommendations towards a more effective and efficient innovation policy are finally given

domestic adjustment to international shocks in japan and the united states economic interdependence complicates domestic policymaking by interposing the decisions of foreigners in the loop that links policy instrument settings to economic outcomes nowhere was this vulnerability to external decisions demonstrated more forcefully even for the world s major economies than by the energy supply shocks of 1973 and 1979 the oil shocks posed challenges that offer unusual insight into the way nations choose policies their severity forced a policy response their unpredictable timing and at least in 1973 unprecedented nature ruled out conventional formulas and brought to the fore explicit policy trade offs this article seeks to explain how policymakers in the world s two major economies responded to these external shocks the analysis successively employs three vantage points system society and state in tracing the sources of domestic adjustment policies it focuses specifically on the extent to which policies accommodated or extinguished each shock s inflationary impulses and on the coherence and consistency with which the executive in each government formulated and pursued particular policy goals a comparison of these four cases illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of increasingly detailed theoretical frameworks for explaining policy choice although the research does not contradict the depiction of the united states and japan in terms of state strength it does underscore the importance of looking beyond formal institutional arrangements to consider how elite policy preferences ambitions and capacities can define the way constraints influence policy

innovation and productivity across four european countries nber working paper seriesinnovation and productivity across four european countriesrachel griffithelena huergojacques mairessebettina petersworking paper 12722http www nber org papers w12722national bureau of economic research1050 massachusetts avenuecambridge ma 02138december 2006we would like to thank laura abramovsky manuel arellano rupert harrison jordi jaumandreu elizabeth kremp pierre mohnen helen simpson the analysis contained in this paper was fundedby the european commission the esrc and esf under grant res 000 23 0901 and the advancedinstitute of management research aim all errors and omissions remain the responsibility of theauthors the views expressed herein are those of the author s and do not necessarily reflect the viewsof the national bureau of economic research 2006 by rachel griffith elena huergo jacques mairesse and bettina peters all rights reserved short sections of text not to exceed two paragraphs may be quoted without explicit permission providedthat full credit including notice is given to the source

r d determinants accounting for the differences between research and development the determinants of r d are an important topic of innovation studies the classical schumpeterian hypotheses about the influence of size and market power have been complemented with the role played by industry determinants such as demand pull technological opportunity and appropriability in determining r d investments however r d has always been considered as a whole even though research and development activities differ in many aspects we take advantage of a new panel database of innovative spanish firms pitec to distinguish between research and development efforts of firms we analyze the differentiated role played by traditional r d determinants in driving research and development results show that demand pull and appropriability have a higher effect on development while technological opportunity is more influential for research differences are statistically significant important in magnitude and robust to the use of different indicators for demand pull technological opportunity and appropriability and to several robustness checks

public goods and political institutions trade and monetary policy processes in the united states basic analytic premises are an issue in contemporary debates about the u s foreign economic policy process in dispute are the power structures alleged to govern the formation of american trade and international monetary policy thus the literature supports both of these assumptions the distribution of power is skewed towards private actors in the issue area generally the distribution of power varies according to issue area within the camp of issue specific power structures as i shall discuss in more detail support can be found for almost any assumption about the distribution of power prevailing in the language of current debate between state and society

accounting for innovation and measuring innovativeness an illustrative framework and an application the purpose of this paper is to propose and illustrate an accounting framework for innovation we characterize the intensity of innovation by a sales weighted measure of innovation the share of sales in innovative products but other output indicators of innovation could be considered as well comparing statistics on the share of innovative sales across countries industries or firms measures but does not explain the intercountry interindustry or interfirm differences in innovation intensity to have a more meaningful basis of comparison we need a model if an exact model of innovation in its various dimensions existed and if we knew it we would be able to understand fully why innovation differs among countries industries or firms of course such a model does not exist nevertheless it is worth trying to account for innovation differences if only very roughly in such an endeavor what remains to be explained is as important to consider as what can be explained because it reflects the extent of innovative ability or capacity or innovativeness to motivate our approach better and make it more explicit we find it appealing to draw a comparison with the standard framework for growth accounting and the underlying model of a production function production output is viewed as resulting from a process of transformation of inputs into output that can be represented and analyzed in terms of a production function based on the production function an accounting framework can be constructed in which changes in output between periods years decades or differences between spatial units firms industries countries are ascribed to changes or differences in the inputs and in a residual that is known as total factor or multifactor productivity tfp or mfp or simply productivity likewise innovation output can be viewed as resulting from innovation inputs such as r d efforts and other contextual determinants such as the pressure of competition this linkage can be represented in terms of an innovation function and an innovation accounting framework on the basis of which changes in innovation output between periods or differences between spatial units can be ascribed to changes or differences in the factors of innovation and in a residual that we call innovativeness or the unexplained ability to turn innovation inputs into innovation output innovativeness is thus to innovation what tfp is to production innovativeness is conditional on a model of an innovation function and a set of factors of innovation just as tfp is conditional on an assumed specification of the production function and measured factors of production both correspond to omitted factors of performance such as technological organizational cultural or environmental factors and to other sources of misspecification errors although tfp is commonly interpreted as being mainly an indicator of technology the produc

paradigms and politics the cultural construction of environmental policy in ethiopia abstract in the wake of the 1985 famine the ethiopian government launched an ambitious program of environmental reclamation supported by donors and nongovernment organizations and backed by the largest food for work program in africa in retrospect it is clear that much of this effort was wasted or counterproductive while many factors contributed to the reclamation program s poor performance this essay is primarily concerned with the role of a neo malthusian environmental policy narrative that was used by government and donors alike to justify the rapid massive and widespread use of standardized environmental management packages without research on their environmental impact or their economic costs and benefits understanding the context in which this happened is important for key elements of the narrative still inform thinking and planning in ethiopia there is mounting evidence that the use of narratives in this type in environmental management programs and more generally in many other types of development planning is widespread and costly

the impact of standards and regulation on innovation in uncertain markets abstract this study analyses the impact of formal standards and regulation on firms innovation efficiency considering different levels of market uncertainty we argue that formal standards and regulation have different effects depending on the extent of market uncertainty derived from theoretical considerations about information asymmetry and regulatory capture our empirical analysis is based on the german community innovation survey cis the results show that formal standards lead to lower innovation efficiency in markets with low uncertainty while regulations have the opposite effect in cases of high market uncertainty we observe that regulation leads to lower innovation efficiency while formal standards have the reverse effect our results have important implications for the future application of both instruments showing that their benefits heavily depend on the market environment

environmental protection innovation and price setting behavior in spanish manufacturing firms abstract in this paper we analyze the effects of environmental protection regulation on process and product innovation decisions and their impact on price setting behavior in spanish manufacturing firms throughout 2009 2014 to this end we estimate several discrete choice probit models using firm level data our results show a positive relationship between the existence of environmental regulations environmental expenditures as a proxy and innovation however the magnitude of the effects and their significance depend on the type of innovation and the size of the firms environmental regulation positively impacts process innovation only in large firms 200 workers while it positively impacts product innovation exclusively in small firms up to 200 workers taking into account innovation activities we additionally explore the behavior of product prices we obtain that process innovation increases the probability of reducing prices for both small and large firms while product innovation only raises the likelihood of increasing prices for the former finally we look into the determinants of investment in environmental protection and find a positive impact of environmental regulation

the international economy as a constraint on u s macroeconomic policymaking international economic factors increasingly influence american trade and exchange policy and interdependence also circumscribes the autonomous choice of domestic policies but the growing concern of organization for economic cooperation and development oecd policymakers over the potential for macroeconomic policy coordination to enhance national as well as world welfare implies that international economic relations present opportunities rather than constraints under some circumstances this suggests that understanding domestic economic policy choice within its international context involves not only how policy choices are made within the bounds of international constraints but also when countries might cooperate to modify the constraints themselves this research looks to four important historical cases for information on these questions the first three are the series of cumulating crises in the international monetary system during the 1960s and early 1970s the fourth is the energy supply shock of 1973 and the recession that followed the article describes the process of policy selection in each of these cases contrasting domestic versus international premises for policy choice the economics literature has emphasized the magnitude of domestic welfare gains available from coordinated national economic policies although the cases considered here do not contradict the importance of payoffs they underline the corresponding role of political economic and strategic uncertainty in conditioning elites policy choices

the irony of state strength comparative responses to the oil shocks in the 1970s like two gigantic waves the oil shocks crested over the advanced industrial world during the 1970s the relatively stable postwar petroleum regime managed by the large oil firms and protected by american diplomatic and military strength collapsed in seven years crude oil prices adjusted for inflation increased more than 500 percent a multitude of national security economic and political challenges confronted the advanced industrial states but unlike war where the threat is observable and lines of conflict quickly become apparent the oil shocks cast up problems that were more insidious problems of energy security economic adjustment and industrial competitiveness these international dilemmas could be defined in various ways and a host of policy responses could be brought to bear upon them

energy research and r d indicators an lmdi decomposition analysis for the iea big 5 in energy research abstract the literature has always shown that there are two important factors in the improvement of a country s research output gross domestic product gdp and r d expenditures taking the discussion a step further and in an effort to provide policy recommendations on what is needed to boost research capacity this paper aims at decomposing the change in energy research papers of five countries australia canada germany uk and us into four factors gdp r d intensity ratio of total r d to gdp energy r d rate of return or productivity number of energy related papers per unit of energy r d expenditure and energy r d priority share of energy r d to total r d expenditure the findings show a general trend in the sign of the four effects on research for all five countries energy r d productivity energy r d priority and gdp are mostly found to be positive contributors while the r d intensity a negative one this pattern has exceptions that are more prominent during periods where economic growth is constrained for example during 2008 09 the results have policy implications not only for these five countries but also for developing countries low gdp that aim at contributing more to the energy related research output globally

political business cycles with endogenous election timing evidence from japan this paper empirically investigates the political business cycle hypothesis for japan taking into account the potential two way interaction that originates from the control within certain limitations by the government over election timing of japanese elections using a mixed qualitative and continuous variable simultaneous equation estimation procedure the authors cannot reject the traditional political business cycle manipulation hypothesis causation running from the timing of elections to real gnp growth they also find some limited support for the opportunistic hypothesis strong real gnp growth triggers elections copyright 1991 by mit press