decision specific experience in foreign ownership and establishment strategies evidence from japanese firms in this paper we examine the importance of decision specific experience for a multinational firm s foreign ownership structure and establishment mode decisions a unique procedure to measure the decision specific experience construct is developed based on data for the period 1969 1991 we find strong empirical evidence from experiences of japanese firms to support the hypotheses that firms tend to select ownership structures and establishment modes based on their experiences with similar ownership structures and establishment modes in the past

qualitative and quantitative evidence on the true local welfare costs of forest conservation in madagascar are discrete choice experiments a valid ex ante tool summary protected areas may impose local welfare costs through the enforcement of use restrictions predicting their welfare impacts before their establishment could help with the design of compensation schemes discrete choice experiments dces are increasingly used for ex ante evaluations but their validity is largely untested in low income settings using a case study of a new redd reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation project in eastern madagascar we explore the validity of dces in two ways i whether the estimates of welfare costs derived from dce are affected by respondents prior experience of conservation ii whether dce results have high theoretical and content validity we surveyed households who have varying degrees of experience of restrictions to swidden agriculture we also qualitatively debriefed a sub sample of respondents to better understand their thought processes latent class analysis shows that dce outcomes vary with conservation experience households more experienced with forest protection are less willing to trade off rights to clear forest for swidden agriculture with any compensatory interventions whereas less experienced households highly favor support for alternative agricultural techniques and a secure right to clear one hectare of forest although the results show apparent non attendance to some attributes e g cash payments qualitative debriefings suggest that respondents infact do expect relatively low or no utility from the given attributes and hence have theoretically valid preferences similarly the dce has generally high content validity although dce can elicit current preferences in this context using ex ante dce to estimate the welfare costs of such a long term intervention requires caution we conclude that it is difficult to robustly estimate compensation in advance of an intervention there is therefore a need to rethink conservation approaches and the feasibility of achieving fair compensations for conservation imposed restrictions

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

characterizing the technology firm an exploratory study abstract technology firms occupy a central position in modern economies they drive economic growth productivity gains and have created new industries and innovative products many will agree that technology firms are distinguished from others in their emphasis on technological activities since this observation is too general researchers suggested a variety of specific criteria and definitions a number of definitions of technology firms appear in the literature but many are arbitrary and simplistic and none gained wide acceptance similarly the number of characteristics suggested is large reflecting a variety of perspectives and interests in this case too no agreement exists as to which are the important ones also many seem to be interrelated capturing different aspects of the same underlying concepts this paper is concerned with the issue of definition and classification of technology firms we demonstrate the usefulness of a different approach to the definition and classification problem we rely on executives evaluations of their firms technology profile and level an analysis of these evaluations reveals the underlying dimensions the executives used in making their judgments we regard the dimensions we uncover as capturing the essence of technology firms and use them to classify the firms we study the specific characteristics the executives used to evaluate their firms were derived from a systematic scan of the literature thus the list represents the set of characteristics early researchers viewed as describing and defining technology firms the connection to early work enhances our findings validity and lends some credence to our belief that the three dimensions we uncover r d activities which are closely associated with a set of organizational elements and market conditions product strategy and corporate culture can be used by others to define technology firms and classify firms according to their technology level in our study we use these three dimensions to classify the firms studied we show that the commonly used practice of classifying firms as high and low technology according to the industry to which they belong is flawed our goal in this study is not to offer a new or better definition and characterization of technology firms or to offer the best approach to the generation of the classification criteria rather we demonstrate here the usefulness of a different approach to the problem while our approach does suffer from limitations it has important advantages we hope future studies will confirm not only the usefulness of our approach but also the general applicability of the specific criteria we identify in this study

competitive search equilibrium in this paper i construct an equilibrium for markets with frictions which is competitive in the sense that all agents are price takers and maximize utility subject to a set of market parameters i show that the equilibrium allocation is socially optimal i also show how the competitive search equilibrium can be achieved if employers with vacancies can advertise publicly the wages they pay

i struggled with this money business respondents perspectives on contingent valuation abstract in the long running debates about the validity and legitimacy of contingent valuation cv very little research has engaged directly with respondents during or after the survey to explore what individuals willingness to pay wtp figure meant this paper presents the results of qualitative research with respondents to a cv survey carried out as part of the appraisal of a specific nature conservation policy in the uk the results show that respondents questioned the validity of their wtp figures through discussion of the difficulties they experienced in framing a meaningful reply significant difficulties included problems in contextualising what the scheme was and how much it might be worth in both monetary and non monetary terms an inability to work out a value for one scheme in isolation from others in other parts of the uk and feelings that values for nature were not commensurable with monetary valuation turning to the legitimacy of cv participants in the research challenged claims that cv is a democratic process for ensuring that public values are incorporated in policy decisions recognizing that hard economic choices have to be made in order to achieve nature conservation goals participants argued for a decision making institution where local people could contribute to environmental policy decisions through dialogue with scientists and policy makers in the final part of the paper this project is compared with three studies that have also used qualitative approaches with respondents during and or after a cv survey the paper concludes that more context specific qualitative research with respondents is needed to explore further the conclusion that cv may not be a good methodology for capturing complex cultural values for nature and landscape

search theoretic models of the labor market a survey we survey the literature on search theoretic models of the labor market we show how this approach addresses many issues including the following why do workers sometimes choose to remain unemployed what determines the lengths of employment and unemployment spells how can there simultaneously exist unemployed workers and unfilled vacancies what determines aggregate unemployment and vacancies how can homogeneous workers earn different wages what are the tradeoffs firms face from different wages how do wages and turnover interact what determines efficient turnover we discuss various modeling choices concerning wage determination and the meeting process including recent models of directed search

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

vertical organization of production and firm growth this paper empirically explores if different vertical organizational forms i e vertical integration versus dis integration give rise to unlike growth behaviors within the same industry an econometric analysis is conducted in a sample of around 500 italian machine tool mt builders for the period 1998 2007 implementing instrumental variables to control for the endogeneity of the organizational form in the relation ceteris paribus vertically integrated firms result to be characterized by a less dispersed distribution of growth rates than their dis integrated counterparts several concurring factors such as adjustment costs organizational slacks and a better management of fluctuations in the markets of intermediate and final products may explain the more a stablea growth profile of vertically integrated firms by means of analyzing how different organizational forms map into the distribution of output growth rates this work provides insight into the firm dynamics in a mature industry in which both vertically integrated and dis integrated firms coexist

sunk costs uncertainty and market exit a real options perspective in this article we examine whether the option value of keeping an operation alive will deter firms from exiting an industry we find that uncertainty dissuades firms from exiting an industry but only when the sunk costs of entering and exiting that industry are sizeable moreover we argue and find that sunk costs can be influenced by the technological intensity of an industry by the extent to which a firm competes on the basis of innovation and by the firm s diversification strategy copyright 2009 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

interpretation and temporal stability of cv bids for wildlife existence a panel study existence values are playing an increasingly important role in wildlife preservation decisions but little is known about how these values behave over time and value estimates may often be misinterpreted panel study results suggest that although existence values may be relatively stable many individuals respond to contingent valuation by bidding their fair share or for the satisfaction from contributing to a good cause such as environmental quality although payment of fair share may represent a lower bound estimate of existence value payment for a good cause may or may not be closely related to the value of the resource itself

job search and unemployment insurance new evidence from time use data article i nfo this paper provides new evidence on job search intensity of the unemployed in the u s modeling job search intensity as time allocated to job search activities the major findings are 1 the average u s unemployed worker devotes about 41 min to job search on weekdays which is substantially more than their european counterparts 2 workers who expect to be recalled by their previous employer search substantially less than the average unemployed worker 3 across the 50 states and d c job search is inversely related to the generosity of unemployment benefits with an elasticity between 1 6 and 2 2 4 job search intensity for those eligible for unemployment insurance ui increases prior to benefit exhaustion and 5 time devoted to job search is fairly constant regardless of unemployment duration for those who are ineligible for ui

the impact of the potential duration of unemployment benefits on the duration of unemployment abstract this paper examines the impact of the potential duration of unemployment insurance ui benefits on unemployment in the united states first we use a large sample of household heads to examine differences in the unemployment spell distributions of ui recipients and nonrecipients sharp increases in the escape rate from unemployment both through recalls and new job acceptances are apparent for ui recipients around the time of benefits exhaustion such increases are not apparent at similar points of spell duration for nonrecipients second our analysis of accurate administrative data from 12 states indicates that a one week increase in potential benefit duration increases the average duration of the unemployment spells of ui recipients by 0 16 to 0 20 weeks

is western europe losing the technological race abstract using a variety of indicators this paper compares technological levels in japan the usa and w europe there is no justification for assuming general european technological backwardness whilst it lags in electronics and since 1975 has had a relatively slow rate of growth of innovative activities it also has sectors of strength chemicals machinery production engineering and countries whose relative commitments of resources to innovative activities are at least equal and sometimes superior to those of japan and the usa frg sweden switzerland its main policy challenges are to increase the rate of growth of innovative activities in lagging countries and to ensure pervasive applications of information technology similarly there is no convincing evidence that w europe is relatively backward in converting technology into economically efficient innovations some policy problems are significant in all three regions skill shortages whilst others are in the usa and w europe short term planning horizons of top management particular european problems are the effects of social legislation on worker flexibility and mobility of national regulations on intra european competition and of slow rates of growth of output on the growth of innovative activities japan and the usa have their problems with the latter continuously under challenge from the former and increasingly specialised in defence and raw materials related technologies

yea saying in contingent valuation surveys a number of recent papers have provided estimates of willingness to pay derived in contingent valuation surveys exceeding those revealed in experimental or real life markets one possible explanation for the overestimation of values is the presence of yea saying with the objective of reducing the occurrence of yea saying a new elicitation format referred to as the dissonance minimizing d m format is proposed an empirical comparison of the dm format with the conventional dichotomous choice dc format and the ambivalence reducing polychotomous choice pc format suggested by ready whitehead and blomquist 1995 is made results are encouraging for the dm

when do spinouts enhance parent firm performance evidence from the u s automobile industry 1890 1986 spinouts entrepreneurial ventures founded by ex employees of incumbent firms within the same industry have emerged in numerous industries some existing literature argues that they typically have a negative association with their parents performance because of the loss of human capital the disruption of organizational routines and subsequent adverse competitive effects more recent work however suggests that such negative effects may have been overstated and argues that there are conditions under which spinouts may be linked to enhanced performance of the parent i contribute to this literature by theorizing about and empirically testing for such conditions in particular using data from the u s automobile industry spanning 1890 to 1986 i find evidence that spinouts are associated with enhanced parent performance when they increase the parent s corporate coherence either through a the core competencies and capabilities domain by refocusing the parent s resources on the core or b the cognitive path by resolving a conflict at the top level of the parent s hierarchy i discuss implications for both research and practice

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

knowledge and recognition of ecosystem services among the general public in a drainage basin in scania southern sweden human preferences are likely to depend on such things as knowledge and information propaganda and advertising and formal laws and informal norms institutions we focus on knowledge about how nature works and how this may be manifested in recognition of ecosystem services among the general public participants and non participants in a plant nutrient abatement programme with detention ponds in a river drainage area in scania southern sweden were asked to rank some selected ecosystem services classified as visible services invisible services and services involving human activities in nature three studied groups of local actors were originally not familiar with the concept of ecosystem services but the concept was easily grasped the results of the study include the following findings 1 the groups of local actors were consistent in ranking the groups of visible and invisible services higher than the group of services involving human activities but there were considerable differences in their ranking of individual services 2 the generally high priority given to invisible services can partly but not fully be explained by the existence of the abatement programme 3 there was uncertainty regarding relationships among and the relative importance of different ecosystem services 4 some informants had multiple preferences in fact the role people chose to play may have larger impact on preferences than the level of information 5 several interviewees objected to the idea of ranking services and preferred to view nature as a whole the results are discussed from a knowledge perspective and we conclude that a widespread recognition of ecosystem services in policy and economics cannot be expected until the general public has gained some critical level of basic knowledge about functions in nature

gibrat s law and diversification this article presents an analysis of the growth patterns of the worldwide top 200 firms in the pharmaceutical industry a test of the gibrat s law of proportionate effect is performed and we find in line with previous literature a violation concerning the variance of growth using disaggregated data on sub markets we are however able to show that this violation can be completely accounted for by a diversification effect namely a scale relation between the number of sub markets in which a firm is active and its size to interpret these findings we propose a stochastic branching model of firm diversification consistent with a notion of cumulative corporate competences

what do firms know what do they produce a new look at the relationship between patenting profiles and patterns of product diversification in this work we analyze the relationship between the patterns of firm diversification if any across product lines and across bodies of innovative knowledge proxied by the patent classes where the firm is present putting it more emphatically we investigate the relationship between what a firm does and what a firm knows using a newly developed dataset matching information on patents and products at the firm level we provide evidence concerning firms technological and product scope their relationships the size scaling and coherence properties of diversification itself our analysis shows that typically firms are much more diversified in terms of products than in terms of technologies with their main products more related to the exploitation of their innovative knowledge the scaling properties show that the number of products and technologies increases log linearly with firm size and the directions of diversification themselves display coherence between neighboring activities also at relatively high degrees of diversification these findings are well in tune with a capability based theory of the firm

towards a theory of the technology based firm abstract the modern firm is a very viable economic institution drawing strength from a competitive market economy with embedded super markets for corporate control and sub markets for internal organization the technology based firm in addition draws strength from its co evolution with modern science and technology and vice versa and thereby becomes increasingly important however received theories of the firm of which there are many have not particularly taken account of technology and technology based firms nor their management this paper takes an empirical point of departure from recent findings regarding the positive relationship between technology diversification on the one hand and corporate growth and business diversification on the other these findings are not readily explainable by received theories of the firm which the paper reviews and the findings are thus taken as an explanandum for a proposed approach to formulate a theory of the technology based firm the approach is compatible with various other theoretical approaches such as the resource based the transaction cost and the evolutionary approach but specifically takes the idiosyncrasies of technology i e technical competence as well as management into account through notably strong economies of scale scope speed and space associated with the combination of different technologies and resources the technology based firm is subjected to specific dynamics in its growth and diversification and shifts of businesses and resources in particular a technology based firm tends to engage in technology diversification thereby becoming multitechnological as such the technology based firm has incentives to economize on increasingly expensive new technologies by pursuing strategies of internationalization on both input and output markets technology related business diversification external technology marketing and sourcing r d rationalization and technology related partnering

equilibrium search with time varying unemployment benefits we show how time varying unemployment benefits can generate equilibrium wage dispersion when identical firms post wages and homogeneous risk averse workers search for jobs we model a two tier system similar to real world ui programmes the unemployed initially receive benefit b eventually if a worker does not find a job the benefit falls to s the duration of high benefits is treated as an exponential random variable so the model is stationary we characterise the equilibrium and derive the comparative statics effects of changes in the two benefit levels and the expected duration of the high benefit state on equilibrium wages and unemployment in this article we analyse the implications of time varying unemployment insurance in an equilibrium search model we consider a two tier system i e a system with a high and a low benefit level this is the form taken by most real world ui programmes unemployed workers initially receive unemployment compensation but eventually if a worker does not find a job in the meantime this benefit is terminated the worker then has access only to lower social assistance benefits or in some countries to no benefits at all specifically we consider an economy in which newly unemployed workers initially receive unemployment benefits at rate b eventually if a worker does not find and accept a job in the meantime the unemployment benefit falls to a lower level s we assume the event that triggers the fall from b to s occurs at poisson rate k 1 this allows us to do our equilibrium analysis in a stationary framework while focusing on the most important aspect of time varying unemployment compensation namely that after some point the benefit falls this representation of time varying unemployment compensation enables us to derive a two point equilibrium wage distribution in a simple stationary setting we derive this equilibrium distribution using a wage posting model of sequential search we allow for free entry and exit of jobs and for matching frictions in the sense that the rate at which unemployed workers and vacant jobs contact one another depends on overall labour market tightness the use of a matching function to determine the job contact rate for workers and the worker contact rate for jobs is relatively unusual in wage posting models which typically assume a fixed contact rate our model can thus be viewed we thank participants at the tinbergen institute s conference on search and assignment for useful comments in particular we thank gerard van den berg who shared notes with us on an alternative approach to the topic of this paper we also thank lucas navarro for valuable research assistance 1 our model can be interpreted as one in which the search activity of unemployed workers is imperfectly monitored by a government agency suppose unemployed workers are punished by a reduction in their benefits from b to s when found to be putting forth less search effort than required and that detection of insufficient search effort occurs at poisson rate k if all workers choose to put forth less than the required effort and this is a plausible assumption given that workers are homogeneous then this sanctions model is equivalent to our model with time varying benefits that is our model can

firm knowledge and market value in biotechnology we examine the relationship between the characteristics of the firms knowledge base in terms of knowledge capital and knowledge integration and the stock market value of 84 firms active in biotechnology during the 1990s panel data regression models show that the degree of knowledge integration within firms is a significant explanatory variable of firms stock market value moreover knowledge integration becomes an increasingly important determinant of market value which illustrates the growing integration of biotechnology in several industrial applications however the role of knowledge is sector specific revealing differences in the extent to which biotechnology has become a key technology copyright 2006 oxford university press

valuing the non market benefits of wild goose conservation a comparison of interview and group based approaches wild geese graze on improved pastures and young cereal crops and hence can cause considerable damage to agriculture particularly in areas close to roosting sites this study uses contingent valuation cv to establish whether government compensation payments currently made to farmers represent value for money by estimating the value placed on goose conservation by the general public benefit estimates from a conventional interview approach are compared with a group based approach called the market stall ms this involves two 1 h meetings held 1 week apart and differs from conventional interviews in that participants are given more time to consider their preferences and to discuss their wtp question with other household members we argue that this type of group based approach to environmental valuation offers important advantages over individual interview approaches especially for unfamiliar and or complex environmental goods

recent trends in insured and uninsured unemployment is there an explanation this paper explores the recent decline in the fraction of unemployed workers who receive unemployment insurance benefits using march current population surveys we compare the fraction who are potentially eligible for benefits with the fraction who receive them the decline in insured unemployment is almost entirely due to a decline in the early 1980s in the takeup rate for benefits we analyze the determinants of the takeup rate using both aggregated state level data and micro data at least half the decline is due to an increasing share of unemployment in states with lower takeup rates

economic and ecological concepts for valuing ecosystem services abstract the purpose of this special issue is to elucidate concepts of value and methods of valuation that will assist in guiding human decisions vis a vis ecosystems the concept of ecosystem service value can be a useful guide when distinguishing and measuring where trade offs between society and the rest of nature are possible and where they can be made to enhance human welfare in a sustainable manner while win win opportunities for human activities within the environment may exist they also appear to be increasingly scarce in a full global ecological economic system this makes valuation all the more essential for guiding future human activity this paper provides some history background and context for many of the issues addressed by the remaining papers in this special issue its purpose is to place both economic and ecological meanings of value and their respective valuation methods in a comparative context highlighting strengths weakness and addressing questions that arise from their integration

unemployment insurance take up rates in an equilibrium search model abstract from 1989 to 2012 on average 23 of those eligible for unemployment insurance ui benefits in the us did not collect them to understand the implications of these unclaimed benefits we develop a directed search model with an endogenous ui take up rate in equilibrium ui collectors have longer unemployment durations relative to non collectors the difference results from two forces a consumption effect and a private information effect as ui collection histories are unobservable we characterize both effects analytically and quantitatively with an endogenous take up rate the unemployment rate and average duration of unemployment respond significantly slower to changes in the ui benefit level relative to the standard model with a 100 take up rate the private information effect on non collector job finding rates plays an important role in this result

some empirical evidence on embedding effects in contingent valuation of forest protection abstract we test for an embedding effect on a geographically distributed public good and the extent to which improvements in the cvm design reduce the occurrence and magnitude of embedding effects in valuation using both open ended and dichotomous choice cvm for protection of forests in all of southeastern australia and two smaller portions of that area we find the occurrence of embedding effects in only one of the two levels when embedding effects were present there was a reduction in value much smaller than that found by kahneman and knetsch

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

technological effects of m as in spanish manufacturing this article explores whether mergers and acquisitions m as generate differentiated impacts on the acquiring firms r d expenditures patents granted and product innovations considering m as as a way of foreign expansion we examine whether the technological effects differ between domestic and foreign owned acquirers assuming that the effects on the technological efforts and performance may differ across industries the availability of statistical information for a stable sample of manufacturing companies in spain during the 1990s allows us to follow a dynamic approach to the issue our findings confirm the existence of differentiated effects on technological inputs and outputs across industries as well as diversity between domestic and foreign owned firms involved in m as copyright 2009 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

the moderating role of the complementary nature of technological resources in the diversification performance relationship this article analyzes the moderating role of complementary technological resources in the diversification performance relationship our contention is that entry into a new market poses challenges to complementary resources that are already being exploited and that diversification thus comes at a substantial cost to the diversifying firm using a sample of the world s largest manufacturers we find that the effect of diversification on productivity is positive for firms with an initially low level of overall technological complementarity firms that specialize and have existing complementarities are negatively affected by diversification because the process of unbundling and rebundling technological resources is disruptive to productive firms

unemployment insurance takeup rates and the after tax value of benefits the recent decline in the unemployment insurance ui takeup rate has puzzled researchers using administrative data with accurate information on the potential level and duration of benefits we examine whether a separating employee receives ui we find a strong positive effect of the benefit level on takeup and smaller effects of the potential duration and the tax treatment of benefits simulations indicate that the recent inclusion of ui in the income tax base can account for most of the previously unexplained decline in ui receipt

optimal unemployment insurance in search equilibrium should unemployment benefits be paid indefinitely at a fixed rate or should the rate decline or increase over a worker s unemployment spell we examine these issues using an equilibrium model of search unemployment the model features worker firm bargaining over wages free entry of new jobs and endogenous search effort among the unemployed the main result is that an optimal insurance program implies a declining benefit sequence over the spell of unemployment numerical calibrations of the model suggest that there may be nontrivial welfare gains associated with switching from an optimal uniform benefit structure to an optimally differentiated system

can contingent valuation measure nonuse values the authors outline how potentially coherent consistent economic values can be determined by use of contingent valuation measurement cvm they use as an example three different cv studies to estimate nonuse values for groundwater the authors also point out that rapidly changing political preferences can complicate the issues they feel that the appropriate goal for cvm is to attempt to provide crystallized values for public decisionmaking

an investigation of part whole biases in contingent valuation studies abstract part whole bias is a possible explanation for nonuse contingent valuation estimates that are insensitive to marginal changes in environmental commodities our empirical analyses reveal no statistically significant differences in willingness to pay of independent samples of nonusers to prevent 2000 20 000 or 200 000 migratory waterfowl deaths in the central flyway all numbers less than 2 of the waterfowl population five alternative propositions for explaining this empirical findings do not provide a completely satisfactory explanation more research is necessary to investigate appropriate commodity metrics sample sizes for small changes in environmental commodities and consider how respondents evaluate small changes in environmental commodities

moral hazard optimal unemployment insurance and experience rating abstract this paper is concerned with evaluating alternative unemployment insurance ui schemes in a dynamic economy with moral hazard we consider changes in the size and duration of ui benefits and the effects of experience rating and use a dynamic contracting approach to determine a benchmark optimal allocation radical changes in the current ui system increase welfare but not by much a move to full experience rating has distributional effects but the aggregate effects are negligible

evaluating impacts from noxious facilities including public preferences in current siting mechanisms abstract this paper describes an approach to facility siting that ranks potential sites in terms of their social impacts a contingent choice survey based on paired comparisons is used to construct a utility index to rank sites consistent with predicting results of a hypothetical referendum based on the attributes of the sites the method is likely to be acceptable to public decision makers since it is analogous to site scoring methods that have been commonly used indeed our approach is currently being employed as part of a larger landfill site selection process in the state of rhode island

the technological competencies of the world s largest firms complex and path dependent but not much variety firm specific technological competencies help explain why firms are different how they change over time and whether or not they are capable of remaining competitive data on more than 400 of the world s largest firms show that their technological competencies have the following characteristics 1 1 they are typically multi field and becoming more so over time with competencies ranging beyond their product range in technical fields outside their distinctive core 2 2 they are highly stable and differentiated with both the technology profile and the directions of localised search strongly influenced by firms principal products 3 3 the rate of search is influenced by both the firm s principal products and the conditions in its home country however considerable unexplained variance suggests scope for managerial choice these findings confirm the importance of complexity and path dependency in the accumulation of firm specific technological competencies and show that managers are heavily constrained in the directions of their technological search they also show the limits of the notion of competition through variety given that the same specific field of technological competence is often essential to the development of a range of possible product configurations technological imperatives still exist

how people respond to contingent valuation questions a verbal protocol analysis of willingness to pay for an environmental regulation abstract this paper investigates what a respondent is thinking when answering a willingness to pay question in a contingent valuation using a think aloud technique from psychology called verbal protocol analysis the willingness to pay responses we observed seem to be constructed from a variety of considerations including an obligation to pay a fair share of the cost of the solution and signaling concern for a larger set of environmental issues the finding that respondents seem to construct their values at the time they are asked rather than reporting a more well defined value is seen as consistent with over two decades of research on the psychology of decision making potential uses of verbal protocols in contingent valuation studies are also discussed

brave old world accounting for high tech knowledge in low tech industries abstract lower tech sectors are still commonly regarded as unusual suspects in the modern process of innovation and economic change in this paper we try to understand better how organisations specialising in traditional businesses have been transformed by a period of paradigm shift such as the one that characterised the final decades of the twentieth century we focus on a population of nearly 500 of the world s largest innovative companies to assess the extent to which companies belonging to old economy sectors have been developing cutting edge knowledge about clusters of new technologies such as ict new materials and biotechnology we find that non high tech corporations transformed their patent portfolios in a non trivial way companies in mature trades contributed significantly to the development of technologies that are at the core of the so called third industrial revolution

international coherence and mne performance we introduce the concept of international coherence ic to describe the degree of relatedness in a multinational enterprise mne we propose that ic hinges on the interplay of the relatedness between any two mne units and the linkages that tie them together linkages can be thought of as the often costly pipes that allow the content that is resources and information that define relatedness to flow we argue that greater ic increases the potential of an mne to generate economies by facilitating resource sharing and diffusion as well as learning and knowledge creation among mne units while controlling corresponding bureaucratic costs in turn this will lead to superior mne performance we also hypothesize that firms facing high levels of competition will have greater incentives to capitalize on ic to test our hypotheses we first estimate the relatedness between units by the revealed unit relatedness using data on nearly a half a million global investments by all public mnes worldwide we then use this information and data on 960 us mne units locations to estimate ic and find support for our hypotheses our results indicate the potential for ic as an important new facet of multinationality

corporate diversification coherence and economic performance within the diversification literature the concept of corporate coherence has been referred to as the ability of the firm to generate and explore synergies of various types however the empirical studies have insofar provided only approaches taking explicitly into account the product market side of the phenomenon the present paper operationalizes the concept of corporate coherence as a dynamic interconnectedness between the company s technological competencies and its downstream activities it also provides some further empirical evidence on the widely discussed relationship between corporate diversification and performance specifically it offers some albeit rather weak evidence that economic performance is positively influenced not by the degree of diversification per se but by the ability of the company to increase its corporate coherence copyright 2004 oxford university press

innovation and corporate growth in the evolution of the drug industry abstract this work studies the processes of growth of the worlds top 150 pharmaceutical firms on the grounds of an original database which also allows disaggregate analysis at the level of single therapeutical classes and chemical entities our findings show that the industry whose long term evolution is driven by innovation imitation and permanent creation of new markets displays i fat tails in the distribution of growth shocks present at all levels of aggregation with relatively rare big spurs of growth ii a significant autocorrelation of growth rates iii a fall of variance of growth rates with size entirely dependent on corporate diversification patterns in turn plausibly shaped by the competence scope of each firm and iv different lifecycles of diverse types of products and persistent forms of heterogeneity across firms in terms of innovative output which however do not not seem to affect comparative growth performances

unemployment insurance and unemployment spells this paper tests the effects of the level and length of unemployment insurance benefits on unemployment durations the paper particularly studies individual behavior during the weeks just prior to when benefits lapse higher unemployment insurance benefits are found to have a strong negative effect on the probability of leaving unemployment however the probability of leaving unemployment rises dramatically just prior to when benefits lapse individual data are used with accurate information of spell durations and the level and length of benefits the semiparametric estimation techniques used in the paper yield more plausible estimates than conventional approaches and provide useful diagnostics copyright 1990 by the econometric society

using ex ante approaches to obtain credible signals for value in contingent markets evidence from the field while contingent valuation remains the only option available for measurement of total economic value of nonmarketed goods the method has been criticized due to its hypothetical nature we analyze field experimental data to evaluate two ex ante approaches to attenuating hypothetical bias directly comparing value statements across four distinct referenda hypothetical cheap talk consequential and real our empirical evidence suggests two major findings hypothetical responses are significantly different from real responses and responses in the consequential and cheap talk treatments are statistically indistinguishable from real responses we review the potential for each method to produce reliable results in the field

the impact of m a on the r d process an empirical analysis of the role of technological and market relatedness abstract using information on 31 in depth cases of individual m a deals we show that technological and market relatedness between m a partners distinctly affects the inputs outputs performance and organisational structure of the r d process while the findings in the literature on the effect of m a on r d are quite mixed we can sharpen results by analysing data at the level of the r d process this comes at the price of a smaller sample and more qualitative data for which caution in the interpretation is necessary m a between partners with ex ante complementary technologies result in more active r d performers after the m a in sharp contrast when merged entities are technologically substitutive they significantly decrease their r d level after the m a moreover r d efficiency increases more prominently when merged entities are technologically complementary than when they are substitutive these two findings on the r d level and the performance support the scope economy effect of m a on the one hand and reject the scale economy effect of m a on the other next for cases in which partners were active in the same technological fields before the m a the reduction of r d is more prominent while the r d efficiency gain is smaller if merged entities were rivals in the product market prior to their merger than if they were non rival this suggests that rival firms reap little technology gains from mergers

efficient unemployment insurance this paper constructs a tractable general equilibrium model of search with risk aversion an increase in risk aversion reduces wages unemployment and investment unemployment insurance has the opposite effect insured workers seek high wage jobs with high unemployment risk an economy with risk neutral workers achieves maximal output without any unemployment insurance but an economy with risk averse workers requires a positive level of unemployment insurance to maximize output therefore moderate unemployment insurance not only improves risk sharing but also increases output

location and the multinational enterprise in the early development of the international business field the focus of attention moved from the country level to the firm level and interest in location issues declined more recently firm based research has itself become increasingly concerned with the study of firm location interactions when examining two way knowledge flows or spillovers between multinational enterprises mnes and other actors in specific locations the diversity or heterogeneity of firms matters as does the diversity of locational environments the localization of knowledge sources depends on mne group level strategies for growth and organizational decentralization on subsidiary level evolution towards local competence creating efforts and on the development of suitable business networks within locations mnes now have a greater potential to benefit from a synergistic locational portfolio of complementary sources of knowledge the locational composition of the international network for knowledge sourcing of a given mne depends upon the extent of institutional compatibility between the locations in which the mne is active this compatibility between locations in turn affects the capacity of the mne to become an insider in local business systems and to influence the local institutional environment

contingent valuation and the activation of environmental norms abstract this paper uses contingent valuation cvm as the context in which to explore the implications of a model of altruistic norm activation a model is presented which provides a framework for thinking about the factors that individuals consider when formulating their responses to cvm questions and the processes by which they bring such factors together the activation of personal environmental norms and hence positive willingness to pay depends on four main categories of belief awareness and acceptance of environmental need consequences of personal action responsibility for personal action and acceptance of policy initiatives the model is illustrated with a qualitative case study and some of the implications for cvm are considered in light of these findings it is argued that whilst notions of fairness may not present problems from a demand prediction economic standpoint such notions may be more problematic for the cost benefit analysis use of results

mixing methods within stated preference environmental valuation choice experiments and post questionnaire qualitative analysis abstract assessing public preferences for natural resources is a difficult task the complexity of the research problem has encouraged practitioners to adopt qualitative approaches as exploratory and diagnostic tools within the conventionally more quantitative stated preference research building on best practice from previous studies this paper reports the findings of post questionnaire focus group analysis investigating the adequacy of a choice experiment ce valuation exercise and its public acceptability the specifics of the scenario and design choices are shown to markedly reduce problems of charity like and bid realism fair share responses observed in previous studies and significant sensitivity to good characteristics is observed however a less tractable problem of valuing unfamiliar goods remains with insights given regarding public acceptability and the usefulness of the findings to environmental decision making

the role of diversification profiles and dyadic characteristics in the formation of technological alliances differences between exploitation and exploration in a low tech industry this paper posits that corporate and technological diversification of firms and their relatedness in terms of products and technologies will impact their propensity to form technological alliances it argues that both higher levels of diversification and greater relatedness signal superior capabilities and available resources to prospective partners that will facilitate exploration and exploitation of technological assets in an alliance these theoretical conjectures are tested using a dataset of all tire producers worldwide between 1985 and 1996 that combines detailed firm data on establishment patenting and alliance activities the results indicate that complementarity in terms of corporate and technological diversification strategies as well as partner characteristics e g size age and technological capabilities drive exploitation alliances moreover firms with similar product portfolios are more likely to engage in exploitative interactions in contrast exploration alliances exhibit strong partner similarity across all firm characteristics both corporate and technological diversification have positive effects on firms propensity to engage in exploration while technological distance has a negative nonlinear one

dynamic capabilities and new product development in high technology ventures an empirical analysis of new biotechnology firms abstract in industries populated by entrepreneurial high technology firms the rapid development of new products is viewed as a key determinant of success developing a portfolio of new products is necessary to gain early cash flows external visibility and legitimacy early market share and increase the likelihood of survival schoonhoven eisenhardt and lymman 1990 in addition recent research has shown that new product development improves a firm s ability to raise money through an initial public offering deeds decarolis and coombs 1997 this paper develops a model of new product development which is tested on a sample of 94 pharmaceutical biotechnology companies we hypothesize that new product development capabilities are a function of a firm s scientific technological and managerial skills to test this relationship we develop several firm specific measures in an attempt to triangulate in on the core construct of firm specific new product development capabilities some important implications for entrepreneurs managers of high technology firms flow from our results first entrepreneur managers need to view the choice of geographic location as an important strategic decision which will impact their firm s access to the skilled technical personnel and the streams of knowledge our results indicate that a choice location has a significant concentration of similar firms but the level has not yet reached a point where competition for resources in the local environment offsets any advantages of the location in the case of biotechnology this would seem to indicate that the prime locations would be expanding areas such as san diego seattle and philadelphia rather then the established locations of silicon valley and boston second as scientific knowledge plays an ever more important role in a firm s success the quality of the firm s scientific team is a critical ingredient in a firm s new product development capability but how do you evaluate the quality of scientific personnel our results indicate that there is a strong positive relationship between the impact as measured by citations of a team s prior research in the academic community and the productivity of that team in a commercial research laboratory therefore the judgement of a scientific field captured by citations or perhaps expert judgement should prove to be a useful tool when evaluating personnel for a firm s research team third the results from our measures of ceo experience and the percentage of the top management team with a ph d are interesting as expected the prior experience of ceo in managing a commercial research facility enhances a firm s new product development capabilities however results for our top management team variable appears to indicate that the over reliance on technical personnel in the management of the organization detracts from the product development process taken together these results seem to imply that it is important that the leadership of the organization have knowledge of and experience in managing the new product development process but that diverting the firm s scientific personnel s energies away from the laboratory and into the management of the organization maybe counter productive therefore what a high technology venture appears to need is leadership that understands and has experience in the new product development process but which is separate and distinct from the scientific team this type of leadership keeps the scientific team focused on research and development and out of the boardroom

technologies products and organization in the innovating firm what adam smith tells us and joseph schumpeter doesn t adam smith s insights into the increasingly specialized nature of knowledge production are crucially important in understanding the contemporary problems of managing innovating firms products and firms are based on an increasing range of fields of specialized technological understanding competition is not based on technological diversity but on diversity and experimentation in products etc firms rarely fail because of an inability to master a new field of technology but because they do not succeed in matching the firm s systems of coordination and control to the nature of the available technological opportunities copyright 1998 by oxford university press

delayed collection of unemployment insurance in recessions contrary to assumptions in the unemployment insurance ui literature this paper argues that unemployed workers do not always lose uncollected ui benefits when they start a new job instead they may postpone the collection of leftover benefits to future unemployment spells further using cross time and cross state variations in ui policies the paper finds empirical evidence that allowing unemployed workers to delay the collection of benefits increases their incentives to find a job during recessions when wages are low job separation rates are high and ui benefits are extended i quantify the effects of the policy of allowing delayed collection of benefits on aggregate unemployment by introducing endogenous search effort benefit eligibility and wage indexed benefits into a standard search and matching framework the model demonstrates how the policy increases the future value of employment even though more generous ui benefits in general reduce the net value of employment using a calibrated model i find that allowing delayed benefit collection raises the proportion of unemployed workers receiving benefits and reduces the unemployment rate during 2009 2012

a comparison of stated preference methods for environmental valuation this paper presents an empirical comparison of contingent valuation cvm and choice experiments which are used to value environmental quality changes both of these methods require individuals to state their preferences for environmental qualities however choice experiments differ from cvm in that environmental attributes are varied in an experimental design which requires respondents to make repeated choices between bundles of attributes the empirical application involved the effect of environmental quality changes arising from forest management practices on recreational moose hunting values significant differences were found between the values derived from the two methods however detailed examination of the implied choice behaviour suggested that respondents ignored substitute recreation areas in the cvm question restricting the choice experiment model to consider only the one site where quality was varied resulted in welfare estimates similar to the cvm model this highlights the importance of substitutes in environmental valuation and suggests that choice experiments may be more appropriate than cvm in some cases