learning and wage dynamics we develop a dynamic model of learning about worker ability in a competitive labor market the model produces three testable implications regarding wage dynamics 1 although the role of schooling in the labor market s inference process declines as performance observations accumulate the estimated effect of schooling on the level of wages is independent of labor market experience 2 timeinvariant variables correlated with ability but unobserved by employers such as certain test scores are increasingly correlated with wages as experience increases and 3 wage residuals are a martingale we present evidence from the nlsy that is broadly consistent with the model s predictions

the value of hiring through employee referrals using personnel data from nine large firms in three industries call centers trucking and high tech we empirically assess the benefit to firms of hiring through employee referrals compared to nonreferred applicants referred applicants are more likely to be hired and more likely to accept offers even though referrals and nonreferrals have similar skill characteristics referred workers tend to have similar productivity compared to nonreferred workers on most measures but referred workers have lower accident rates in trucking and produce more patents in high tech referred workers are substantially less likely to quit and earn slightly higher wages than nonreferred workers in call centers and trucking the two industries for which we can calculate worker level profits referred workers yield substantially higher profits per worker than nonreferred workers these profit differences are driven by lower turnover and lower recruiting costs for referrals jel codes j24 m51 j30 j63

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

voter turnout in the industrial democracies during the 1980s there are two contending accounts of cross national variation in voter turnout rates one emphasizes the role of institutions and electoral attributes whereas the other stresses cultural and historical factors the authors evaluate the merits of these two arguments they first apply the model developed by r w jackman to turnout rates during the 1980s expanding the sample of industrial states to include three newer democracies with recent authoritarian histories greece portugal and spain they then examine the potential impact of cultural variables on voter turnout rates the authors conclude that the institutional argument outperforms the cultural account of conventional political participation

competition and corporate performance are people right to think that competition improves corporate performance my investigations indicate first that there are some theoretical reasons for believing this hypothesis to be correct but they are not overwhelming furthermore the existing empirical evidence on this question is weak however the results reported here based on an analysis of around 670 u k companies do provide some support for this view most important i present evidence that competition as measured by increased numbers of competitors or by lower levels of rents is associated with a significantly higher rate of total factor productivity growth

economic growth and development towards a catchup model we develop a model for economic growth applicable to a group of countries constituting around half of the gross global production that have been consistently catching up to the us since 1960 or so this group can be termed the convergence club the model has a theoretical basis developed in other publications cited but the present work is essentially empirical it demonstrates that there is a very strong correlation between catchup growth with respect to the us and an energy proxy ep the energy proxy that works best is a linear combination of domestic electric power consumption petroleum oil consumption per capita compared to the us levels the results presented here do not constitute a theory of growth but they are consistent with theory presented elsewhere on a practical level we argue that consistent catchup trends over the past 40 years can safely be extrapolated for a few more decades for scenario construction purposes we also believe that the observed catchup trends can be regarded as potential mid term or long term growth trajectories for transition economies and others that have recently been adversely affected by conflict or mismanagement

product market competition and managerial slack this article analyzes the effect of product market competition on managerial incentives in contrast to hart 1983a i show that competition may actually exacerbate the incentive problem the difference in results derives from our different assumptions about managerial preferences the importance of assumptions about preferences suggests that we do not yet understand the precise mechanism through which competition affects incentives

the role of finance in environmental innovation diffusion an evolutionary modeling approach abstract the implementation of climate adaptation and mitigation policies depend on the development of green technologies whose diffusion is constrained by a number of barriers which prevent them to spread broadly and at a fast pace by means of an agent based computational model the paper investigates the macro and micro economic dynamics considering the role of a traditional commercial bank and a state investment bank that explicitly supports green investments simulation results emphasize that green finance matter and that the market diffusion of environmental innovation is more pronounced when the presence of the public investment bank is combined with strong consumers preferences oriented towards environmental quality the relevance of the paper is twofold besides contributing to the literature on the finance innovation nexus by considering the role of climate finance within a complex systems framework it provides a model that can be used as a tool to explore policies to foster environmental innovation diffusion

innovation imitation and social welfare this paper focuses on the impact of competition by imitation more specifically copying for innovative activity and social welfare in part it is a response to recent empirical work 10 12 that has tried to measure the relationship between innovation and imitation costs these papers include a direct call for theoretical modeling that takes explicit account of such cost relationships and we try to answer this challenge specifically we examine the implications for product quality and social welfare when innovators anticipate that a successful product will be copied by rivals obviously previous empirical research is not the only source of interest in these issues the potential effects of imitation on innovative activity have long been both a theoretical and practical concern in recent years a variety of authors have addressed the appropriability issue raised by imitation and its implications for innovative activity 4 7 2 there has also been work on explicit copying i e photocopying 8 11 in the policy arena the protection of product design and intellectual property rights is the focus of much recent actual and proposed u s legislation and a major issue in the uruguay round of trade talks 1 21 our analysis of this topic differs from that of previous work in a number of important respects first we focus explicitly on product as opposed to process innovations second and perhaps even more important we do not restrict the firm s choice to be to innovate or not to innovate instead we allow the innovator to choose what kind or quality of new good to introduce into the market the higher the quality the higher is the development cost third when the innovating firm decides what kind of new product to market it does so under uncertainty about demand the popularity of the new product is not known until after the innovator has chosen the level of quality and sunk its product development costs fourth at the initial time at which the innovator chooses the quality of product to develop it does so with the knowledge that its innovation if it is popular will be copied by later rival entrants finally in direct response to the empirical work mentioned above we explicitly focus on the ratio of imitation to innovation costs our approach yields a number of insights not the least of which is a more precise identification of the potential gains and losses from imitative competition indeed using a quadratic development cost function we explicitly calculate the impact of copying on social welfare this explicit welfare analysis further distinguishes our analysis from most previous work

advertising and coordination when market information such as price is difficult to communicate consumers and firms may be unable to take advantage of mutually beneficial scale economies so that coordination failures arise ostensibly uninformative advertising expenditures can be used to eliminate coordination failures by allowing an efficient firm to communicate implicitly that it offers a low price this provides a theoretical explanation for benham s 1972 empirical association of the ability to advertise with lower prices and larger scale advertising becomes necessary for optimal coordination when the identity of the efficient firm is uncertain an application to loss leader pricing is developed

layoffs and lemons over the business cycle abstract this paper develops a simple model in which unemployment arises from a combination of selection and bad luck during recessions the proportion of workers who are laid off due to low productivity declines during recessions diminishing the adverse signaling effect of an unemployment spell wage regressions estimated using the displaced workers supplement support this basic prediction of the model

creative destruction among industrial firms in the united states there is a growing interest in dynamic modeling of capitalism as recent experience has demonstrated the importance of innovation in shaping the structure and growth rate of capitalist nations economists recognize that innovation by its nature describes a dynamic evolutionary model of capitalism which is inadequately described by the equilibrium models which have dominated economic thought since the 19th century

dynamic capabilities and internationalization of authentic firms role of heritage assets administrative heritage and signature processes we study mnes that tie their long lasting competitiveness and internationalization to the deployment of their heritage assets administrative heritage and signature processes built in their home markets when faced with changes these authentic firms scan for and buffer against threats to their signature processes use their heritage endowment to focus on their capacity to maintain and defend their niches and preserve their capacity for stability we complement the traditional dynamic capabilities perspective by redefining its boundary conditions furthermore authentic firms resist and limit local adaptation of process and products and internationalize only if opportune by deploying preservation capabilities

endogenous firm efficiency in a cournot principal agent model abstract in a market of cournot firms managed by agents the degree of firm efficiency is inversely related o the number of firms in the market journal of economic literature classification numbers l22 d23 d43

divestiture and its implications for innovation and productivity growth in u s telecommunications this study has sought to determine the impact of policy changes that led to the breakup of the monopoly structure of u s telecommunications on productivity and research activities of at t a simultaneous equations model is used to examine the relationship between research intensity market share firm size and total factor productivity tfp before and after divestiture the results show that the effect of divestiture on productivity is negative but that competition has a significantly positive effect contrary to popular argument competition led to significant increases in r d investment by at t the study also finds a strong and positive relationship between r d and productivity in the postdivestiture period marked by its absence in the predivestiture years scale economies remain important indicating the industry continues to favor large firms

market power cost reduction and consumer search abstract this paper reconciles two opposing views in the r d and agency literatures about how market power influences incentives to reduce costs i develop a model where consumers search for prices firms set prices and technology is determined endogenously through stochastic investment to show that the relation between market power and cost reduction depends on the context i show that shifts in different parameters induce market power and investment to vary in different ways this view is supported by the ambiguity of the conclusions of the empirical literature on the determinants of r d and productivity growth

the logic of appropriability from schumpeter to arrow to teece this note expounds the abstract fundamentals of the appropriability problem re assessing insights from three classic contributions those of schumpeter arrow and teece whereas the first two contributions were explicitly concerned with the implications of appropriability for society at large teece s main concern was with practical questions of business strategy and economic organization this note argues that his practical concerns notwithstanding teece contributed en passant but fundamentally to the clarification of basic questions that previous authors had addressed less comprehensively and less satisfactorily specifically his analysis of the innovator s access to complementary assets undertaken from a contracting perspective can be seen as filling a significant gap in the previous theoretical discussion of appropriability 2006 published by elsevier b v

technological progress and change in market concentration in the u s 1963 77 what effect does r d induced technological progress have on market structure do the concentration ratios the most used indices of market structure increase or decrease in an industry that is faced with a high level of technological opportunity and exploits it through a high rate of r d this paper focusses on a model by nelson and winter as a theoretical starting point to deal with this question in the nelson and winter model concentration increases as a result of dynamic competition in the technologically progressive industries but their model does not allow entry and the effect on concentration may be reversed if the possibility of entry is considered empirically this paper shows that concentration ratios in the high r d industries have decreased in the united states during 1963 77

genetic information in agricultural productivity and product development two prominent features of recent changes in agriculture have been the advent of precision breeding techniques and an increase in the level of information netputs in production this article identifies ways in which these features may complement in expanding the variety of processed products level of productivity and rate of change in productivity using a martingale concept of information we identify conditions under which information increases the incentives to invest and engage in product differentiation activities a theory on how genetic uniformity can enhance the rate of learning through process experimentation and so the rate of technical change is developed

mitigating principal agent problems in base of the pyramid markets an identity spillover perspective the potential for profitably distributing products to previously underserved base of the pyramid bop markets as a means of poverty alleviation has received growing interest within the management field however such business models often struggle with the agency costs that arise between the firm and local sales agents as the institutions and infrastructure in bop markets make traditional contractual and monitoring mechanisms difficult and expensive to employ we present the results of two complementary studies which were both conducted with salespeople in rural guatemala the first study employed a quasi experimental field study combined with in depth interviews while the second study was a laboratory experiment the results of the studies suggest that identity based mechanisms can potentially mitigate agency costs through a positive identity spillover effect in multiproduct settings abstract from author

oligopolistic pricing with sequential consumer search n identical stores compete by choosing prices for a homogeneous good with constant marginal costs consumers search sequentially with perfect recall for the lowest price one class of consumers called shoppers have zero search costs while all other consumers have a positive search cost c there is a unique symmetric nash equilibrium price distribution with the property that it changes smoothly from marginal cost pricing when all consumers are shoppers and or c 0 and monopoly pricing when no consumers are shoppers remarkably as the number of stores increases the nash equilibrium becomes more monopolistic copyright 1989 by american economic association

involuntary layoffs in a model with asymmetric information concerning worker ability this paper examines the contract between a risk neutral firm and its risk averse employees assuming that worker ability is privately learned by the firm after a period of employment employers in an external spot labour market attempt to infer worker quality from the observable actions taken by the firm such as the number of workers it lays off the threat of spot market raids distorts the optimal contract layoffs may be involuntary and can exceed efficient levels a seniority layoff rule may be included in the contract to avoid the adverse selection problems that arise if layoffs are conducted on the basis of ability

search market equilibrium bilateral heterogeneity and repeat purchases abstract we develop a general model of search market equilibrium with heterogeneous buyers and sellers this framework unifies previous models with one sided heterogeneity and clarifies many of their special properties it easily accounts for price dispersion active search and the matching of buyer and seller types it also extends to repeat purchases once we embed it into a dynamic game with incomplete information we formalize the inferences and strategies underlying equilibria where firms charge constant prices and customers patronize them loyally we establish a general correspondence between such equilibria and single purchase markets journal of economic literature classification numbers d83 l13

interdependency competition and industry dynamics asystematic understanding of industry dynamics is critical to strategy research because individual firm performance dynamics both reflect and affect change at the industry level descriptive research on industry dynamics has identified a dominant pattern where prices fall output rises and the number of firms rises and then falls over time several models have been advanced to explain these patterns with a particular focus on explaining why a shakeout in the number of firms occurs in the most prominent models shakeout is generated by rising realized heterogeneity among firms that either is assumed to be unrecognized but determined ex ante or is generated by stochastic innovation outcomes coupled with convex adjustment costs and scale advantages in innovation and learning in this paper we develop an alternative model where heterogeneity develops among firms over time leading to a shakeout because firms must make choices about highly interdependent productive activities where the ideal combinations cannot be easily deduced or imitated by combining two established models a cournot model of competition with an nk model of interdependency in production activities we are able to advance an alternative explanation for the observed patterns of industry behavior including shakeout we show that variation in the potential for interdependency in activities among industries is able to explain varying levels of shakeout as well as differing patterns of entry and exit among industries notably the model generates several empirical predictions not apparent in past research and several that directly conflict with the results of prominent alternative models of industry dynamics specifically we show that when the potential for interdependency within an industry is low entry slows down and incumbent survival is all but assured whereas in industries where the potential for interdependencies is high shakeouts are severe and the rates of entry and exit remain high over longer time periods with decreasing survival rates for incumbents

uncertainty of climate policies and implications for economics and finance an evolutionary economics approach the assessment of the socio economic and financial impacts of climate change represents a main source of uncertainty for policy makers and investors however traditional climate economics and financial risk models are not properly equipped to consider the characteristics of climate risks and the opportunities from climate alignment being constrained by equilibrium conditions and linearity of impacts as well as by representative agents and intertemporal optimization given the closing window of opportunity to achieve the 2 c target there is an urgent need for a new wave of models able to embrace uncertainty and complexity deriving not only from climate impacts on socio economic systems but also from their reaction in this regard approaches rooted on evolutionary economics and complexity science could provide complementary insights to traditional climate economics models this special issue contributes to fill in this knowledge gap by collecting nine papers applying evolutionary and complex systems approaches and agent based and network models to climate change economics presented at the special session of the research area environment economics interactions of the european association of evolutionary political economy eaepe s conference 2016 by introducing conceptual and methodological innovations in climate economics and finance the nine articles analyse the conditions for effective climate policies and financial instruments to align countries to the global climate targets compared to the costs of inaction this information is crucial to support decision makers in the analysis of climate finance policies and instruments to foster the transition to a sustainable and inclusive low carbon economy

evidence on adverse selection and establishment size in the labor market a commonly suggested explanation for the finding that laid off workers have greater mean post displacement earnings losses than workers who lose theirjobs through plant closings is that the former are of lower quality than the latter but there is also an alternative explanation for this result laid off workers suffer larger earnings losses because as a group they have more to lose in the first place having been displaced from larger higher wage establishments an analysis of data from the national longitudinal survey of youth confirms this hypothesis accounting for establishment size removes virtually all of the difference in wage losses for the two groups of displaced workers an adverse selection framework has been employed by many authors to explain various phenomena in the labor market spence 1973 harris and holmstrom 1982 greenwald 1986 recently several authors gibbons and katz 1991 doiron 1995 grund 1997 have investigated whether the postjob loss experiences of two different types of displaced workers those who are laid off from their jobs and those who are displaced by a plant closing reflect adverse selection specifically do laid off workers exhibit larger post job loss wage

spatial concentration location and competitiveness the case of switzerland maggi r and haeni p k 1986 spatial concentration location and competitiveness the case of switzerland ireg studies 20 141 149 this paper considers the relation between location and competitiveness of thirty nine swiss export industries using a factor endowment approach we found that spatial concentration in intermediate areas is important for performance and conclude that spatial proximity offers a significant comparative advantage for swiss industries further findings in the case of switzerland are that scale economies are unimportant and that high technical skill constitutes a comparative advantage while manual skill does not the chosen approach proves to be useful but additional information might be found by analysing companies rather than industries

duration dependence and labor market conditions evidence from a field experiment this article studies the role of employer behavior in generating negative duration dependence the adverse effect of a longer unemployment spell by sending fictitious resumes to real job postings in 100 u s cities our results indicate that the likelihood of receiving a callback for an interview significantly decreases with the length of a worker s unemployment spell with the majority of this decline occurring during the first eight months we explore how this effect varies with local labor market conditions and find that duration de pendence is stronger when the local labor market is tighter this result is consistent with the prediction of a broad class of screening models in which employers use the unemployment spell length as a signal of unobserved productivity and recognize that this signal is less informative in weak labor markets jel code j64

incompetence alienation or calculation explaining levels of invalid ballots and extra parliamentary votes this article focuses on the casting of invalid ballots and voting for extra parliamentary parties drawing on evidence from more than 200 elections in western europe australia new zealand and the americas during the 1980 2000 period it tests how well four sets of factors serve as explanations for the extent of such behavior in parliamentary contests the main finding is that the structure of political competition provides an important explanation for extra parliamentary voting and in particular the number of invalid ballots thus rather than being the unfortunate circumstances of an uninformed or incompetent electorate these forms of voting to a large extent appear to reflect a political situation that offers voters little effective choice in the form of clear alternatives

market structure and worker quality it is frequently asserted although never directly tested that firms in more monopolistic industries hire better qualified workers this paper presents two new results first worker quality education in particular is a strong determinant of whether a worker is employed in a concentrated industry when using a traditional data source second upon expanding the data to include measures of research and development workers of better quality are actually no more likely to locate in concentrated industries these results fit with theories claiming that industries subject to technological opportunities may be more concentrated and that those opportunities demand higher quality workers i introduction at least a score of articles since the 1960s test the hypothesis that more concentrated industries pay workers higher wages other things equal this investigation has been part of a more general examination of whether or not concentrated structure generates inefficiencies beyond the deviation of price from cost unfortunately this large scale effort has not been rewarded with consistent results separate researchers both confirm and fail to confirm an independent role for industrial concentration in wage determination among those who fail to confirm the concentration earnings hypothesis one explanation is offered most often while concentrated industries pay higher wages they obtain better qualified workers the generally acknowledged simple correlation between wages and concentration becomes an insignificant partial correlation in the presence of a vector of controls while some of the typical controls could be considered measures of worker quality others clearly are not it may be one or more of these non quality controls which frequently include industry characteristics which eliminates the significance of concentration for example plant size and unionization known to be correlated with both wages and concentration are among the more likely non quality variables which could explain the lack of the authors thank william j adams william g shepherd gary solon and frank p stafford their suggestions improved early versions of this paper thanks is also expressed to almarin phillips who suggested the association with technological progress those confirming a positive statistical association between wages and industrial concentration include dalton and ford 119771 mellow 119831 kwoka 119831 long and link 119831 and heywood 119861 those failing to find such an association include weiss 119661 rapping 1967 pugel i9801 and freeman and medoff 119811

innovator protection and the rate of technical progress abstract this paper develops two simple models to study the relationship between innovator protection and the rate of technical progress the first model shows that with an inelastic supply of r d resources an increase in patent protection may lead to a reduction in the speed of technical progress this is due to the fact that it now becomes relatively more profitable to invest resources into imitational r d the second model shows that with an r d monopolist the rate of technical progress may be a first increasing and then decreasing function of the time it takes imitators to appear on the market this is due to the fact that the innovator has little incentive to introduce a second cost reducing innovation before the first one has been imitated

managerial incentives and product market competition are imperfectly competitive leibenstein 1966 claims that there may be a substantial amount of x inefficiency where x inefficiency measures the degree to which actual profits depart from the maximum of profits that could be obtained if all operations in the firm were carried out at minimal costs he offers empirical evidence from case studies showing that the welfare loss due to organizational slack is of an order of magnitude bigger than the welfare loss due to monopolistic price distortions on imperfectly competitive markets these results support the common presumption that increasing competition reduces organizational and in particular managerial slack however this early literature does not offer a theoretical explanation for the link between competition and managerial incentives in particular it ignores the fact that managerial incentives can be affected by the design of an incentive scheme in this paper i derive the optimal incentive scheme for a manager as a function of the competitiveness of the environment in which his firm operates the basic impact of increased competition is that it reduces the profits of a firm this has two effects in the model first if a firm has high costs then the reduction of profits may be sufficient to render the firm unprofitable so the probability that it has to be liquidated goes up this unambiguously induces the manager of the firm to work harder for a cost reduction in order to avoid liquidation and to keep his job second the reduction in profits may affect

declining voter turnout in advanced industrial democracies 1950 to 1997 the effects of declining group mobilization past comparative voting behavior research has revealed that electoral institutions can explain much of the variation in voter turnout between nations this study takes an alternative and dynamic approach by identifying and explaining a pattern of turnout decline within industrial democracies which is beyond purely institutional explanation multivariate analysis of a pooled cross section of 18 industrial democracies between 1950 and 1997 suggests that turnout decline can best be explained in terms of changing patterns of group mobilization and electorate demographics the authors specifically point to the decline of unions and labor parties which have traditionally been associated with the mobilization of peripheral voters and the real increases in the cost of mobilization the authors control for institutional changes and find that they are less useful in explaining variation in turnout within advanced industrial democracies

evolutionary analysis of innovation and entrepreneurship sidney g winter recipient of the 2015 global award for entrepreneurship research this article reviews the intellectual contributions of professor sidney g winter who is the recipient of the 2015 global award for entrepreneurship research professor winter has contributed through his theoretical as well as empirical understanding of schumpeterian processes of dynamic competition the generation of differential technological opportunities through appropriability conditions and the mechanisms driving dynamic capabilities in firms his work especially the joint work on evolutionary economics with richard r nelson has led to a revival of interest in theories based upon schumpeterian economics within the study of both entrepreneurship and innovation his work on dynamic capabilities has been highly influential in management professor sidney g winter is deloitte and touche professor emeritus of management the wharton school university of pennsylvania

individual dynamic managerial capabilities influence over environmental and social commitment under a gender perspective abstract the current business market is characterized by rapid and continuous changes companies should adapt to new situations to guarantee sustainable development managers need to have capabilities to understand the new environment s requirements managers individual dynamic capabilities idc help them face these unpredictable changes in the market however few authors have analysed individual dynamic capabilities to ensure business sustainability this study aims to shed light on the relationship between a manager s idc and business sustainability from a gender perspective a survey of 339 managers was conducted and structural equation modelling sem was applied to study the impact of the relationship the results show that managers individual dynamic capabilities help them detect changes in the market earlier and promote a greater social and environmental commitment from those managers in addition significant differences in the environmental and social commitment between men and women were found therefore this paper first provides advice for developing business sustainability to provide an advantage for organizations second individual dynamic managerial capabilities appear to be important for promoting sustainability finally another step in the construction of gender and sustainability is provided thus this paper provides useful empirical evidence for managerial practice from a strategic management viewpoint

evidence of creative destruction in the u s economy schumpeter discusses the importance of innovation and new firm entry in a capitalistic economy as a means to creatively destruct oligopolies and generate new economic wealth he warns of rd schumpeter feared the obsolescence of entrepreneurship would result in an increasing concentration of wealth among large corporations and toward socialism

does amd spur intel to innovate more we estimate an equilibrium model of dynamic oligopoly with durable goods and endogenous innovation to examine the effect of competition on innovation in the personal computer microprocessor industry firms make dynamic pricing and investment decisions while consumers make dynamic upgrade decisions anticipating product improvements and price declines consistent with schumpeter we find that the rate of innovation in product quality would be 4 2 percent higher without amd present though higher prices would reduce consumer surplus by 12 billion per year comparative statics illustrate the role of product durability and provide implications of the model for other industries

unequal participation democracy s unresolved dilemma presidential address american political science association 1996 low voter turnout is a serious democratic problem for five reasons 1 it means unequal turnout that is systematically biased against less well to do citizens 2 unequal turnout spells unequal political influence 3 u s voter turnout is especially low but measured as percent of voting age population it is also relatively low in most other countries 4 turnout in midterm regional local and supranational elections less salient but by no means unimportant elections tends to be especially poor 5 turnout appears to be declining everywhere the problem of inequality can be solved by institutional mechanisms that maximize turnout one option is the combination of voter friendly registration rules proportional representation infrequent elections weekend voting and holding less salient elections concurrently with the most important national elections the other option which can maximize turnout by itself is compulsory voting its advantages far outweigh the normative and practical objections to it

innovation market structure and welfare many writers subscribe to joseph schumpeter s view that while perfectly competitive firms allocate resources efficiently in a static sense they perform poorly when it comes to innovation from this point of view the optimal form of market structure is unlikely to be perfect competition but some other type of dynamic competition which includes significant elements of monopoly recently considerable effort has been focused on modelling schumpeter s notion of competition perhaps best exemplified by the 1980 work of partha dasgupta and joseph stiglitz hereafter d s 2 this approach views free entry to the rd see nelson and winter 1977 3readers will recognize a similarity of this approach with the notion of contestable markets discussed most recently by william baumol 1982 and by baumnol john panzar and robert willig 1982 for an interesting comparison of the schumpeterian with the marxian notion of competition see john elliott 1980 4this was noted for example by robert wilson 1975 5in such industries the long term gains from dynamically efficient innovation become of paramount importance consequently the optimal market structure would consist of a small number of firms the driving force behind such a result is what scherer 1972 has called the lebensraum effect firms performing r d must at least break even they derive their profits from

routinization of innovation in german manufacturing the david goliath symbiosis revisited small and medium sized firms frequently are viewed as the drivers of radical innovation however they often do not have the focus and commitment necessary for improving and extending the innovation tasks better accomplished by routinized large firms using a uniquely rich industry level data set for german manufacturing industries during 1991 2004 this article finds evidence for this david goliath symbiosis although small and medium sized firm innovation rates can explain the within industry variation of productivity growth it is the large firm process innovation rate that explains differences in the level of productivity growth between industries i e differences in the degree of routinization of innovation

schumpeterian competition in experimental markets abstract we report on a series of laboratory experiments that capture key elements of research and development r d rivalry the experimental environment has a small number of sellers who compete in terms of pricing and production decisions and in terms of cost reducing r d rewards for innovation depend on the profitability of product market competition the experiments capture a kind of dynamic schumpeterian competition there is a sharp contrast in experimental results between monopolies and four seller competitive markets aggregate r d is higher under competition than under monopoly and prices follow marginal cost reductions much more quickly under competition than under monopoly the paper examines market performance in the experiments and the sources of market performance problems

the effects of competition on executive behavior economists presume that competition spurs a firm to be more efficient by forcing it to reduce its agency problems this article investigates this presumption it finds that the effects of competition on executive behavior can be decomposed into four effects each of which is of potentially ambiguous sign theory thus offers no definitive defense of this presumption this article also derives sets of conditions under which increased competition has the presumed effect of reducing agency problems in some sets important conditions are that increased competition reduce the executive s expected income and that agency goods e g shirking be normal goods for the executive the article shows that an increase in the shareholder bargaining strength can both reduce the agency problem and make it more sensitive to competition

ghost seats in parliaments abstract in several european countries citizens movements have formed parties whose programme is to reform electoral legislation so that blank votes are transformed into vacant seats in parliament the first objective of this paper is to offer some tools in order to quantify the potential effect of a reform that would allow citizens to cast a dissatisfaction vote we show that such a reform would reduce the ease to pass a proposal and modify the distribution of power among parties the second objective of this paper is to show that this reform could have an impact in parliaments this is illustrated by the case of the basque parliament from 1980 to 2016 at the theoretical level this paper provides some relations between measures of success