new human resource management practices complementarities and the impact on innovation performance in this paper we take our theoretical point of departure in recent work in organisational economics on systems of human resource management hrm practices we develop the argument that just as complementarities between new hrm practices influence financial performance positively there are theoretical reasons for expecting them also to influence innovation performance positively we examine this overall hypothesis by estimating an empirical model of innovation performance using data from a danish survey of 1 900 business firms using principal component analysis we identify two hrm systems which are conducive to innovation in the first one seven of our nine hrm variables matter almost equally for the ability to innovate the second system is dominated by firm internal and firm external training of the total of nine sectors that we consider we find that the four manufacturing sectors correlate with the first system firms belonging to wholesale trade and to the ict intensive service sectors tend to be associated with the second system

analysing the determinants of environmental technology investments a panel data study of spanish industrial sectors abstract the aim of this paper is to empirically assess the determinants of environmental technology investments in the spanish industrial sectors with the help of panel data econometric techniques the paper confirms the relevance of the stringency of environmental regulation to explain overall investment patterns in environmental technologies these investments are also positively related to human and physical capital intensity and r d intensity and negatively related to the export intensity of sectors furthermore the study shows that the determinants for investments are likely to differ between environmental technology types i e end of pipe versus cleaner technologies

the empirical analysis of the determinants for environmental technological change a research agenda abstract technological change is usually considered a necessary albeit not sufficient condition for a transition to sustainability however the empirical analysis of the determinants to environmental technological change has not received too much attention in the environmental ecological economics literature and many open questions remain in this context based on a careful review of the literature this paper argues that further analysis should address several issues at different levels i e regarding the conceptual framework the thematic scope of the studies some methodological issues and other aspects related to the environmental policy variable first an integrated conceptual framework which takes into account the interplay between relevant variables influencing environmental technological change i e factors internal and external to the firm and characteristics of the environmental technologies and all the stages of this process with a greater emphasis on the invention stage should be developed other aspects should then be tackled including a focus on several themes i e a greater attention to cross sectoral technologies the barriers to different types of environmental technologies the international dimension of environmental technological change and environmental technological change in small and medium size enterprises methodological issues combination of case studies and econometric modelling and several issues related to the environmental policy variable

measuring trade strategy in the presence of non tradeables theory and some evidence for the caribbean this article models trade policies in the presence of non tradeables and investigates trade strategy interventions and outcomes where the price of non tradeables endogenously adjusts to trade interventions trade regime bias and neutrality issues are examined within a three sector open economy model the theoretical framework is operationalised using empirical evidence for trinidad and barbados the robustness of partial equilibrium measures of protection for classifying trade strategies is challenged and evidence on alternative general equilibrium or true measures of protection is reported true or revealed trade strategies are shown to differ from those apparently intended by policy makers

horizontal and vertical intra industry trade an empirical test of the homogeneity hypothesis in this paper we study if and how country specific factors affect intra industry trade iit when heterogeneity among sectors is allowed for the paper is novel in that it is the first that addresses an issue raised by greenaway et al oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 1999 61 365 specifically employing data on a sample of oecd countries over a 10 year period 1997 1998 we build on and take forward a methodology pioneered by balassa and bauwens economic journal 1987 97 923 to study the determinants of horizontal and vertical iit using a multi industry approach in doing this we seek to avoid the more extreme measurement problems by allowing for heterogeneity among sectors when country specific factors are analysed and among countries when industry specific factors are considered the results are compared to those obtained using the traditional method that does not consider intersectoral heterogeneity we find that the two models yield statistically different results moreover the tests regarding the choice of model that is econometric tests designed to compare one model with another when different sets of explanatory variables are used confirm the relevance of intersectoral heterogeneity in affecting iit to the best of our knowledge a similar analysis has not yet appeared in the empirical literature on iit

intra industry trade reconsidered the role of technology transfer and foreign direct investment this paper investigates novel determinants of intra industry trade iit of late 1990s japanese trade our empirical analysis shows that iit is increased not only by the similarity of gdp and factor endowment but also by technology transfer via japanese fdi in particular the current high proportion of japanese iit with asian countries can be explained by technology transfer licensing between headquarters and overseas affiliates via fdi

the impact of legitimacy pressure and corporate profitability on green innovation evidence from china top 100 abstract green innovation is an important approach for achieving sustainable development most research on determinants of corporate green innovation has focused on either external or internal drivers combining institutional theory and resource based view the scientific value of this study lies in simultaneously exploring the influence of external legitimacy pressure and internal corporate profitability and their interaction on green innovation samples of the top 100 listed companies in china from 2008 to 2012 were used and the results demonstrated that legitimacy pressure from stakeholders has a significantly positive influence on both corporate green product innovation and process innovation the results also revealed that corporate profitability positively affects green product innovation while there was found to be no significant influence on green process innovation moreover corporate profitability positively moderates the relationship between legitimacy pressure and green product innovation the results show that not only the single factor of external legitimacy pressure and internal profitability but also their interaction affects corporate green innovation practices this offers an integrating perspective on how corporations can be more innovative in sustainability

process innovation and environmental sustainability engagement an application on technological firms abstract this study makes a contribution to the current literature by analysing how an internal strategic decision process innovation interacts with some features of the external environment to explain environmental sustainability engagement by companies drawing on economic and institutional rationales three hypotheses are proposed to examine the relationship between process innovation and environmental sustainability engagement considering the role played by the competitive and institutional context in which the firm operates the hypotheses are tested using a sample of 239 companies in high tech sectors operating in spanish science and technology parks using a non parametric test the results show that companies that perform process innovation are more engaged in environmental sustainability based on hierarchical regression models further results show that performing process innovation more than competitors is related to higher environmental sustainability engagement however when time is considered in the model as an explanatory factor the effect exerted by the institutional environment fades away furthermore the results show that as companies accumulate years operating in a science and technology park the relationship between process innovation and environmental sustainability engagement even becomes negative these findings suggest that there is a strong link between process innovation and sustainability engagement companies tend to satisfy both economic restrictions posed by their competitive environment and institutional pressures exerted by their stakeholders albeit in a manner that is not evenly distributed over time similarly firms devote more attention to institutional pressures at the beginning and to economic requirements in later stages of their evolution within science and technology parks

stimulating different types of eco innovation in the uk government policies and firm motivations in this paper we adopt a recent oecd framework and examine the role of external policy tools and internal firm specific factors for stimulating three different types of eco innovations that range on a spectrum of lower to higher technological and environmental impacts end of pipeline pollution control technologies integrated cleaner production technologies and environmental r d using a novel firm level dataset from a defra survey we estimate a tobit model which provides empirical evidence showing that these eco innovations are motivated by different external policy tools and internal firm specific factors our findings indicate that end of pipeline technologies and integrated cleaner production technologies are mainly driven by equipment upgrade motives with a view of improving efficiency while environmental regulations are effective in stimulating the end of pipeline technologies and environmental r d interestingly alongside government induced regulations we find that market factors mainly motivated by cost savings are effective in driving environmental r d finally iso14001 certification is effective in strengthening the positive impact of environmental management systems on both end of pipeline technologies and environmental r d while csr policies have no significant impact on motivating any of the eco innovations

who bears the incidence of import protection evidence from sri lanka abstract a simple general equilibrium model is employed to measure the incidence of protection this model focuses on the internal relative price effects of protection through the equilibrium conditions of the nontraded goods market the incidence of protection is measured via the concepts of incidence parameter true protection rates and income transfers resulting from protection the model is applied to sri lankan data the results indicate that a high proportion of all trade interventions operate as an implicit export tax that true protection rates to both import competing and exporting sectors are far below the nominal rates of assistance being provided to them and that income loss to exporters is about 4 of gdp we conclude that the incidence of protection falls mostly on the sri lankan exporters

intra industry trade in financial services abstract intra industry trade iit has been central to increasing the variety of products available to consumers unlike traditional trade theories the recent trade theories have placed an emphasis on the role of foreign direct investment fdi in generating trade and increasing the volume of iit this study is the first study of intra industry trade in banking services in which the key elements of the new trade theories of iit have been taken into account in measuring the determinants of iit in banking services the empirical results of the determinants of iit in banking services indicate that factor endowments average per capita income fdi in banking economies of scale in the banking sector trade intensity between the us and its partners and market openness make a positive contribution to the volume of iit in banking services furthermore the empirical results indicate that intra trade activities amongst the us multinational corporations reduce the level of iit in banking services for the us

would you like to reform the pension system the opinions of european citizens most economists would subscribe to the view that the public pay as you go payg pension systems in many european countries are unsustainable and in need of reform yet such reforms are politically very difficult a recent line of research has tried to understand the nature of these difficulties by analyzing the citizens opinions on different aspects of the welfare state and its redistributive programs here we focus specifically on the pension system reporting the results of a survey conducted in germany and italy in fall 2001 germany and italy are particularly interesting countries in this respect because their payg pension systems are very generous and provide about 85 percent of the average retiree s income germany carried out a reform in 2001 in between two waves of our survey thus we also have a natural experiment to draw upon our questionnaire was designed to shed light on the following issues are citizens aware of the unsustainability of the pension system and informed of its costs are reforms opposed by a majority or by a powerful minority which reform options seem politically more feasible and why which groups of citizens are more likely to favor reforms do citizens opinions reflect their economic self interest as presumed by the literature on political economics here is what we find citizens are aware of unsustainability but lack information about the cost of the payg system the status quo is a majoritarian outcome along many dimensions most reform proposals lack a majority and reformers rarely support more than one reform option later retirement is the easier reform in italy where effective retirement age is lower while lower pensions are more popular in germany where the effective replacement rate is higher preferences over policy options seem to reflect both economic self interest and one s normative view about the role of the state opposition to any reform is high even among those aware of unsustainability this could be procrastination or selfishness shifting the burden onto future generations some answers suggest that the latter could play an important role

strategic responses a survey experiment on opposition to pension reforms the responses given in opinion polls on future policy reforms reflect both subjective expectations and preferences we disentangle these factors using data from a controlled survey experiment conducted in germany at the time of the experiment an increased retirement age had been proposed as part of a pension reform thus the survey respondents faced an incentive to give biased responses by understating their expected work ability at the age of retirement they could make the increase of the retirement age a less attractive policy option we find evidence for such strategic response behavior and this strategic bias appears to be stronger in former communist east germany

intra industry trade in agrofood sectors the case of the eec meat market examination of intra industry trade iit and of its determinants has so far been confined to industrial commodity markets taking the case of red meat the possibility of trade overlap in a typical agroffod commodity is observed further based on previous theoretical analyses and empirical indications it tests formally a general and a restricted set of country and industry or demand and supply hypotheses which being particular to the eec meat market may account for cross country variations in iit in 1988 results suggest that taste overlap as approached by countries cultural and economic convergence as well as the imperfectly competitive structure of the market as supported by product differentiation significantly explain iit despite some methodological shortcomings there seems to be ample scope for the application of similar models in other agrofood sectors in what remains a relatively under researched area

horizontal and vertical intra industry trade in australian manufacturing does trade liberalization have any impact this paper contributes to the literature on intra industry trade iit by disentangling such trade into horizontally and vertically differentiated products and investigating their determinants in the context of trade liberalization in australia iit in australian manufacturing has increased following trade liberalization in 1980s and is increasingly dominated by vertically differentiated products industry level evidence confirms that the failure to segregate iit into horizontally and vertically differentiated products produces misleading results as their determinants differ also structural changes brought about by the policy liberalization appear to have an impact on total as well vertical iit

success factors for environmentally sustainable product innovation a systematic literature review the growing awareness regarding environmental sustainability has fully reached business reality consumers and companies alike are looking for alternatives to mitigate pressing environmental demands resulting from continuous population and economic growth on the other hand companies must deal with an increasingly competitive scenario where innovation is regarded as a survival need in most markets it is thus clear that systematic academic research is paramount to guide companies to succeed in environmentally sustainable product innovation in this context this paper i consolidate extant research and aggregate findings of different studies on environmentally sustainable product innovation through an interpretative framework of published literature on the topic and ii map critical success factors that drive the success of product innovation developed in this new logic of production and consumption to achieve these objectives a systematic literature review on environmentally sustainable product innovation was conducted results show that there are four main critical success factors for environmentally sustainable product innovation market law and regulation knowledge interfunctional collaboration innovation oriented learning and r d investments the factors identified in this research and corresponding variables were subjected to a brief empirical test by professionals the test allowed a preliminary approval of the developed framework and identification of the most important variables within each factor a research agenda based on the state of the art on the topic is also proposed

drivers of vertical intra industry trade the case of the hungarian agri food sector this article investigates the drivers of vertical intra industry trade viit in hungarian agri food trade with the european union eu it identifies three possible ways to measure intra industry trade iit flows ghm ff and n methods and defines six hypotheses to test for the drivers of viit with three panel data models static dynamic and fevd the results suggest that factor endowments are negatively while economic size is positively and significantly related to viit distance and viit were found to be negatively related as is commonly the case in the standard gravity model it was also found that viit is greater if a new member state nms is exporting agri food produce to an nms while eu accession has ambiguously influenced the share of viit in general it seems that our results are independent from model estimations and interestingly they do not differ considerably as we a priori expected moreover our results seem surprisingly robust across various measurements of itt

understanding cross national trends in high tech renewable power equipment exports to the united states we track us imports of advanced technology wind and solar power generation equipment from a panel of countries during 1989 2010 and examine the determining factors including country size sector specific us fdi outflow and domestic wind and solar power generation differentiating between the core high tech and the balance of system equipment we find us imports of both categories have grown at significantly higher rate from the relatively poorer countries and particularly china and india larger countries are found to be exporting significantly more and us fdi is found to play a significant positive role in the exports of high tech equipment for the poor countries for the core wind and solar high tech equipment we find domestic renewable power generation of the exporting countries also played a significant positive role

an explanation of intra industry trade in identical commodities abstract a model of international trade under conditions of spatial price discrimination is developed in order to demonstrate that intra industry trade is identical commodities can occur between two countries over a wide range of market structures the geographic extent of intra industry trade is shown to be inversely related to the degree of competition affecting imports in each country in the sale of the homogeneous commodity furthermore the degree of intra industry trade is directly related to the incidence of spatial price discrimination in favor of distant customers

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

intraindustry trade sources and effects on protection this paper provides an empirical analysis of the determinants of intraindustry trade we demonstrate that two way trade flows occur where conditions are favorable to international specialization consistent with the stigler williamson analysis of the division of labor the results are inconsistent with the prevailing product differentiationcum scale economies model of intraindustry trade in addition we show that intraindustry trade has a significant impact on protectionist pressures exports of closely related products have the effect of mitigating the tariff raising effects that imports would otherwise exert

short and long run incidence of protection the case of madagascar the effects of trade policy interventions within a general equilibrium framework are examined the short and long term incidence of protection for a particular low income developing country were measured using time series data on relative prices for the period 1974 84 the results based on cointegration techniques establish that nominal protection of importables was substantially lower than true protection that true protection was lower in the long run that in the short term and that the adjustment to equilibrium relative prices was fairly rapid in this period

on firm and product specific true protection efforts at providing relevant indices of incentive structure comparative advantage and international competitiveness have led to the concept of true protection such a framework can be used to analyse the incidence of protection across sectors analysis has so far been carried out under the assumption of a uniform tariff and calculations limited to average rates nothing could then be said with respect to the incidence at the firm or product level this article expands on an existing model by 1 presenting firm and product specific true protection indices 2 generalising previous conclusions on true protection to encompass firm and product specific analysis it is shown that failure to take into consideration substitution possibilities may yield incorrect evaluation of the structure and level of protection

intra industry trade and the shifting of protection across sectors abstract recent work on commercial policy has focussed on the incidence of protection across sectors this work has focussed on the relative price effects of intervention and has been developed in a setting of inter industry trade this paper focusses on the incidence of protection in a setting of intra industry trade a three sector general equilibrium model is developed and incidence is explored in a variety of settings the analysis suggests that the non tradeable sector may bear the major burden of protection in a setting of intra industry trade

vertical and horizontal intra industry trade a cross industry analysis for the united kingdom a large theoretical literature has emerged directed at explaining the presence of intra industry trade iit one of the distinctions which comes out of these models is that between horizontal iit where goods are differentiated by attributes and vertical iit where goods are differentiated by quality in this paper horizontal and vertical iit in u k trade are disentangled using a unit value dispersion criterion and a range of industry characteristics the paper not only points up the relative importance of vertical and horizontal iit in the united kingdom it also demonstrates how a failure to separate them out can impact on the interpretation of empirical results copyright 1995 by royal economic society

scale economies and intra industry trade abstract this investigation of the relationship between intra industry trade and scale economies shows industries with low scale economies more frequently have high rather than low intra industry trade shares theoretical studies should focus on causes of intra industry trade other than scale economies

focal organisations and eco innovation in consumption and production systems this paper explores the role of focal organisations in stimulating eco innovation at the locus of greatest environmental impacts within a consumption and production system cps focal organisations by definition have considerable power in these systems we combine insights from the innovation studies literature with the sustainable green supply chain literature to explore how focal organisations exercise this power in pursuit of system wide sustainability through a case study of the milk cps in the uk we illustrate different strategies of the focal organisations to stimulate incremental eco innovation along existing trajectories we also show how despite focal organisation support radical eco innovation is inhibited by inherent path dependencies and other institutional dimensions of the cps by demonstrating the complementarities of positioning the case study findings within two synergistic literatures this paper contributes theoretically by extending and elaborating eco innovation studies it also has a practical utility for policy makers seeking to chart a path to more sustainable cps by relying on focal organisations

the redistributive design of social security systems countries with low intragenerational redistribution in social security systems bismarckian are associated with larger public pension expenditures a smaller fraction of private pension and lower income inequality than countries with more redistributive social security beveridgean this article introduces a bidimensional voting model to account for these features agents different in age income and in their ability to invest in the capital market vote on the degree of redistribution of the social security system and on the size of the transfer in an economy with three income groups a small beveridgean system is supported by low income agents who gain from its redistributive feature and high income individuals who seek to minimise their tax contribution and to invest in a private scheme middle income individuals instead favour a large bismarckian system

commercial policy and intra industry trade abstract this paper constructs a model of intra industry trade within a multi product industry whose output range is limited to that obtainable from a particular type of capital intra industry trade is a natural outcome in this structure without requiring increasing returns to scale or imperfectly competitive markets and with its pattern determined along traditional relative factor abundance lines the volume of this trade will vary inversely with the level of trade restrictions as observed empirically other policies are then considered for their influence on the range rather than the level of domestic production since the former is the more likely policy objective under these circumstances

local environmental non profit organizations and the green investment strategies of family firms we add to the debate on the determinants of firms green investment strategies gis by looking at societal stakeholders and explicitly testing the role of local environmental non profit organizations enpos in gis engagement by family and non family firms we argue that enpos favor gis engagement only by family firms which due to their resource constraints risk aversion and local embeddedness are more sensitive to enpos normative pressure we also suggest that the role of enpos is especially important for family firms gis in those sectors with less stringent regulations where enpos may act as a substitute for the coercive pressure of regulation and promote firms self regulatory behaviors we test and find support for our arguments on a sample of about 2000 italian manufacturing firms over the period 2001 2003 our results are robust to the control of observable omitted variables reverse causality and to alternative model specifications

vertical trade specialization and the formation of north south ptas during the last two decades the number of preferential trade agreements pta s grew almost exponentially to over 270 by 2010 a majority of these are agreements between developed and developing countries existing models provide little economic rationale for these agreements but the existing literature lumps north south pta s together with other types of trade pacts this article offers an explanation focused on the movement of less capital intensive manufacturing from north to south which in turn stimulates the exchange of similar goods differentiated by unit value also referred to as vertical intra industry trade the north exports more capital intensive goods while more labor intensive goods are produced and traded by the south this kind of specialization creates incentives for governments to support pta s the author tests this model using a new measure of vertical trade specialization and finds strong evidence that such specialization promotes pta formation north south pta s should therefore be seen as part of a broader shift of manufacturing from high to middle income countries

trade strategy and revealed trade bias an evaluation for a small industrializing economy abstract the traditional classification of trade strategies into import substitution is and export promotion ep is based on the traditional two sector trade model in the context of a three sector model including nontradeables there is potentially greater analytical richness and apparently greater possibility of a wider range of ex ante trade strategies included among these possibilities is a mixed is ep strategy which generates a protradeable bias this paper investigates the properties of a general equilibrium model and the necessary commercial policy interventions required to bring about particular changes in relative prices detailed evidence on revealed trade regime biases within the tradeables good sectors and between tradeables and nontradeables is provided for barbados the evidence indicates that ex post classification of trade strategy may differ significantly from the ex ante or intended strategy and that use of partial equilibrium estimates of effective protection of tradeables alone is likely to be an inappropriate means of classifying trade strategies

exchange rate economics is always and everywhere controversial abstractthis article reviews the major developments in the recent literature on exchange rate economics it is argued that the link between the exchange rate and economic fundamentals is breaking new ground evidence indicates that alternative analytical frameworks such as the new open economy macroeconomics and exchange rate arrangements such as the euro have their theoretical and analytical elegance but are proving empirically very difficult to implement the role of methodological advances and alternative fundamental instruments such as world commodity prices is also highlighted

does the development of environmental innovation require different resources evidence from spanish manufacturing firms in recent years environmental innovations are getting increasingly at the center both of the scientific debate and of the policy maker agenda adopting the resource based view this paper provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the specific role of internal external and hybrid resources in the environmental innovation development using a dataset of 4829 spanish manufacturing firms and estimating probit models it is found that internal resources have greater importance for environmental innovations moreover green innovators seem to be characterized by more intensive external relationships for hybrid resources acquisition of equipment but not of patents is more relevant finally evidence suggest the relevance of complementing the analysis of the external factors triggering environmental innovations with those of the internal resources the firm has access to in order to fully understand and support the development of environmental innovations

lessons for an aging society the political sustainability of social security systems what is the future of social systems in oecd countries in our view the answer belongs to the realm of politics we evaluate how political constraints shape the social security system in six countries france germany italy spain the uk and the us under population aging two main aspects of the aging process are relevant to the analysis first the increase in the dependency ratio the ratio of retirees of workers reduces the average profitability of the unfunded social security system thereby inducing the agents to reduce the size of the system by substituting their claims towards future pensions with more private savings second an aging electorate leads to larger systems since it increases the relevance of pension spending on the policy makers agenda the overall assessment from our simulations is that the political aspect dominates in all countries albeit with some differences spain the fastest aging country faces the largest increase in the social security contribution rate when labor market considerations are introduced the political effect still dominates but it is less sizeable country specific characteristics not accounted for in our simulations such as the degree of redistribution in the pension system and the existence of family ties in the society may also matter our simulations deliver a strong policy implication an increase in the effective retirement age always decreases the size of the system chosen by the voters while often increasing its generosity finally delegation of pension policy to the ec may reduce political accountability and hence help to reform the systems

intra industry trade and protection which way does the causation go abstract this paper analyses the simultaneous determination of intra industry trade iit and tariffs the results demonstrate that which iit is influenced by tariffs reverse relationship does not hold our results indicate the single equation models can suffer from simultaneity bias

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

vertical product differentiation and the import demand function theory and evidence in this paper we use a model of vertical product differentiation to cast doubt on the general validity of the import demand function as specified in macroeconomic models the empirical importance of our theoretical concerns is then established according to our first hypothesis the share of a good s imports in total imports is non increasing in domestic wages if the country has comparative advantage in high quality varieties of this good the second hypothesis states that the share of a good s imports is increasing in non wage domes tic income if the country has comparative advantage in high quality varieties of this good

evaluation of the incentive structure a survey and application to cameroon abstract this article uses a simple general equilibrium framework to evaluate the incentive structure of a country pursuing a mixed import substitution export promotion strategy it illustrates how features of general equilibrium analysis can be incorporated into the traditional balassa corden effective protection framework which is supplemented by the evaluation of the incidence of protection on firms importing and exporting households consumers and taxpayers and the government its application to a less developed country ldc cameroon shows that the burden of tariff protection is shifted 25 in the short run and 64 in the long run on to the unprotected sectors especially exports as a result average nominal protection 58 8 is much higher than protection actually provided to the protected sectors the welfare effect of protection is ambiguous households viewed only as final consumers lose when they are viewed as taxpayers protection may become beneficial in the long run taking substitution possibilities into account when measuring protection has an impact on the ranking of firms according to their nominal and effective protection

what drives public acceptance of reforms longitudinal evidence from a dutch pension reform governments often find it hard to pursue economic reforms even if they eventually will benefit a majority of voters the literature remains inconclusive about the reasons for this some scholars on the one hand stress the role of distributional conflicts between different classes for instance dividing the young and the old in the case of pay as you go pensions others have highlighted that resistance to reform is rather broad based owing to the public s poor understanding of the need for reform this paper attempts to disentangle the drivers of public acceptance of reform by means of a case study the 2012 increase of the dutch statutory retirement age from 65 to 67 we exploit a unique longitudinal dataset on the attitudes of dutch households respecting pension reform in the 2003 2013 period our findings offer various new insights first we find that education occupational status and psychological traits were the most systematic drivers of reform preferences while age had a limited impact second and significantly we find that the year fixed effects were the main drivers of respondents acceptance of reform we interpret the pattern of the year coefficients as evidence of a collective learning process whereby households gradually updated their expectations and reform preferences in light of new information

determinants of environmental innovation new evidence from german panel data sources abstract in most cases empirical analyses of environmental innovations based on firm level data relied on surveys for one point in time these surveys allow for the inclusion of many explanatory variables such as different policy instruments or the influence of pressure groups but it is not possible to address the dynamic character of environmental innovations this paper uses two german panel databases the establishment panel of the institute for employment research iab and the mannheim innovation panel mip of the centre for european economic research zew to explore the determinants of environmental innovations the econometric estimations show that the improvement of the technological capabilities knowledge capital by r d triggers environmental innovations environmental regulation environmental management tools and general organizational changes also encourage environmental innovation a result that has also been postulated by the famous porter hypothesis

voters commitment problem and reforms in welfare programs when will a vote seeking government pursue unpopular welfare reforms that are likely to cost it votes using a game theoretical model we show that a government enacts reforms that are unpopular with the median voter during bad economic times but not during good ones the key reason is that voters cannot commit to re elect a government that does not reform during bad times this voters commitment problem stems from economic voting i e voters tendency to punish the government for a poorly performing economy the voter commitment problem provides an explanation for the empirical puzzle that governments sometimes enact reforms that voters oppose

postponing retirement the political effect of aging abstract conventional economic wisdom suggests that because of the aging process social security systems will have to be retrenched in particular retirement age will have to be largely increased yet is this policy measure feasible in oecd countries since the answer belongs mainly to the realm of politics i evaluate the political feasibility of postponing retirement under aging in france italy the uk and the us simulations for the year 2050 steady state demographic economic and political scenario suggest that retirement age will be postponed in all countries while the social security contribution rate will rise in all countries but italy the political support for increasing the retirement age stems mainly from the negative income effect induced by aging which reduces the profitability of the existing social security system and thus the individuals net social security wealth

co operative r d why and with whom an integrated framework of analysis abstract firms use r d partnerships to access knowledge and build global r d networks this article develops an integrated framework to examine the determinants of the choice of partners with which firms co operate on r d this resource based perspective underscores the interactions between three major questions why co operate who does and with whom it argues in particular that the choice of partners is dictated by the complementary resources which the latter command the framework is then expanded to predict the relative efficiency of r d co operation with different partners including suppliers clients rivals academic institutions and foreign firms the empirical analysis which is based on responses to france s version of the second european community innovation survey cis 2 strongly supports the overall framework of analysis

true protection concepts and their role in evaluating trade policies in ldcs in many ldcs it is not uncommon to find incentives designed to encourage import substitution activities coexisting alongside incentives aimed at encouraging export activities this article evaluates a recent approach to evaluating commercial policy which among other things highlights some of the implications of simultaneously pursuing import substitution and export promotion the study develops a model which emphasises the incidence of protection and identifies the concept of true protection empirical results for a number of ldcs are discussed and the implications of these results evaluated in addition the article contrasts this approach with the effective protection approach to evaluating commercial policy

determinants of environmental innovation in us manufacturing industries abstract this paper provides new evidence on the determinants of environmental innovation we employ panel data models to study how environmental innovation by us manufacturing industries responded to changes in pollution abatement expenditures and regulatory enforcement during the period 1983 through 1992 we find that 1 environmental innovation as measured by the number of successful environmental patent applications granted to the industry responded to increases in pollution abatement expenditures however 2 increased monitoring and enforcement activities related to existing regulations did not provide any additional incentive to innovate we also find some empirical evidence that environmental innovation is more likely to occur in industries that are internationally competitive

dumping in a global world why product quality matters anti dumping actions are now the trade policy of choice of developing and transition economies to understand why these economies have increasingly applied anti dumping laws we build a simple theoretical model of vertical intra industry trade and investigate the strategic incentives of exporting firms to undertake dumping we show that the definition of dumping matters based on a comparison of low quality and high quality prices only unilateral dumping by the low quality firm obtains by contrast the standard wto definition leads to either reciprocal or unilateral dumping by the high quality firm depending on cross country differences in incomes the height of tariff protection and on exchange rate changes

price elasticity in import demand equations considering product quality estimates for the brazilian economy 1996 2013 abstract recent empirical studies argue that traditional trade models ignore product quality usually leading to bias in price elasticities which prevents the correct evaluation of trade determinants and the development of trade policies this article quantifies the effect of quality on brazilian imports for that we estimate import demand equations including a proxy for the quality of imported goods according to pooled data panel results show that price affects the demand for brazilian imports more than quality unlike literature results in developed countries introducing the quality proxy increased the price coefficient this occurred more significantly in estimates for the manufacturing sector supporting the hypothesis of elasticities bias when estimation does not consider product differentiation

intra industry trade and imperfect information about product quality abstract this paper investigates the role of imperfect information on international trade in differentiated products we construct a model within which we capture the feature of differential information that is when consumers information about the quality of products varies according to the suppliers country origin based on this feature we show that the patterns of trade are determined by both production and informational comparative advantage these factors affect either the composition or the viability of exports of differentiated products the nature of the impact on any particular country depends on whether this country is relatively more efficient in the production of low or high quality goods the model generates two major results first it explains two way trade in identical products second it shows that imperfect information is sufficient to lead to the violation of the law of one price i e in the same market identical products are priced differently furthermore we investigate the impact of non tariff barriers to trade such as minimum quality standards on imports as well as various types of subsidies on the pattern of trade and the composition of trade in differentiated products

true protection and the real exchange rate in a capital rich developing country some evidence for saudi arabia this paper investigates how alternative measures of the real exchange rate respond to trade policy and terms of trade changes it employs a modelling framework which endogenises the price of non tradeable goods and applies the model to price and real exchange rate data for saudi arabia for the period 1982 92 the results show that the popular propositions about the response of the real exchange rate to terms of trade or trade policy changes do not necessary hold this is a consequence of the measure of the real exchange rate utilized rather than a product of saudi arabia s capital richness

what drives eco innovators a critical review of the empirical literature based on econometric methods abstract the aim of this paper is to provide a critical review of the literature on the econometric analyses of firm level determinants to eco innovation the review reveals some gaps in knowledge first an integrated theoretical framework which merges the insights from different approaches is missing second the influence of some variables is still unsettled demand pull and cost savings whereas others have hardly been included in previous analyses internal and international factors third studies on the drivers to eco innovation versus general innovation are relatively scarce with respect to those on the drivers to eco innovation in general fourth analyses of the relevance of different determinants to eco innovation for distinct eco innovator and eco innovation types have largely been missing fifth studies on middle income and developing countries are still scarce sixth the econometric analyses have relied on microeconometric methods based on cross section data mostly logit and probit models whereas the use of panel data is virtually absent seventh detailed econometric analyses on the distinct drivers and barriers to eco innovation in different sectors and regions have not been performed so far finally whether the position of the firm in the value chain and the market structure influence the propensity to eco innovate are largely unexplored topics