the effect of product introduction delays on operating performance this paper provides empirical evidence on the effect of product introduction delays on accounting based measures of operating performance based on a diverse set of 450 publicly traded firms that experienced product introduction delays we find that delays have a statistically significant negative effect on profitability depending on the method used to estimate abnormal performance the median abnormal decline in return on assets roa ranges from 2 70 to 3 44 over a three year period around the year of the delay announcement the median decline in sales over assets ranges from 5 92 to 10 99 and the median decline in return on sales ranges from 1 48 to 3 06 cross sectional regression analysis indicates that the impact of delays on abnormal roa is more negative for smaller firms and for firms that are more profitable before the delay furthermore the impact is more negative for firms that operate in industries that are larger and more profitable we also find a positive association between abnormal roa and abnormal stock price performance around the product introduction delay announcements

determinants of the equilibrium real exchange rate n b professor neary was based at university college dublin and queen s university ontario canada when this article was first published the full text of this article is not available in ora at this time citation neary j p 1988 determinants of the equilibrium real exchange rate american economic review 78 1 210 215

the penn balassa samuelson effect through the lens of the dependent economy model abstract the positive correlation between per capita income and cross country price levels is called the penn balassa samuelson effect the most influential explanation of this effect centers around sectoral output productivities as the determinant of the relative price of nontraded goods the interaction between the change in relative prices and the change in per capita income the dynamic pbs effect is less well known this paper extends the turnovsky and sen 1995 model of a small open economy by adding external economies into the production function the model s dynamics accord well with several features of the empirical data on the dynamic pbs effect

the costs and benefits of foreign borrowing a survey of multi period models this article surveys the literature on multi period models of foreign borrowing to shed light on the issue of how much a country should borrow and under what circumstances there is a role for public intervention it identifies the essential structural elements of multi period models and draws out the ramifications of the alternative specifications adopted it discusses the insights and shortcomings of three classes of models non optimising optimising borrower and jointly optimising borrower and lender

you can t manage right what you can t measure well technological innovation efficiency abstract this paper proposes a new approach to tackle the innovation performance relationship it addresses the so far mixed and inconclusive results of studies analyzing this relationship we argue that the undifferentiated use of innovation inputs and outputs to measure firm innovativeness is not without problems and that from a productive perspective they should be simultaneously analyzed this study follows a two stage empirical analysis using a sample of spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1992 2005 by examining two inputs and two outputs of the innovation process in the first stage we estimate technological innovation efficiency by means of an intertemporal data envelopment analysis dea bootstrap and also observe the yearly efficiency changes based on a global malmquist index in the second stage we analyze the effect of technological innovation efficiency on firm performance through a generalized method of moments gmm system the results support our arguments that the best measurement of outcomes of technological innovations is through the efficiency with which they are developed in addition we test the moderating effect of technological intensity level and firm size on the efficiency performance relationship

agricultural price distortions trends and volatility past and prospective thanks are due to the australian research council the rural industries research and development corporation and the world bank for financial assistance

can a carbon permit system reduce spanish unemployment this paper analyses the impact of carbon policy on unemployment in spain and whether recycling the public revenues earned from permit auctions can alleviate this problem while spain s deviation from the european union s intermediate emission goals is more serious than most other member countries unemployment in spain is also well above average for the european union we use a computable general equilibrium model that includes unemployment in the markets for unskilled and skilled labour we find that introducing carbon permits does not aggravate spanish unemployment in fact if supplied with revenue recycling schemes unemployment rates may actually fall contrary to other european studies we find that the best option is to reduce payroll taxes on relatively skilled types of labour this reform is successful in both increasing labour demand and dampening the supply response to rising wages however while all of the recycling schemes generate dividends in terms of aggregate welfare none entirely offsets the abatement costs

sources of productivity growth in the spanish pharmaceutical industry 1994 2000 abstract the spanish pharmaceutical industry underwent an important transformation during the 1990s to survive under the new market conditions labs had to refocus their competitive strategies towards increasing productive efficiency or reinforcing research and development r d activities this paper analyzes the evolution of the productive patterns in a sample of 80 pharmaceutical laboratories that operated in spain from 1994 to 2000 we estimate malmquist productivity indexes and decompose them into four sources of productivity change the results suggest that pure technical efficiency change and the scale change of the technology explain most of the productivity growth observed during the period the contribution of technical change to productivity growth is negligible indicating a poor result from r d activities at least in the groups of small and medium sized labs

an exploration in the theory of exchange rate regimes three exchange rate regimes a float a one sided peg and a cooperative peg are evaluated and compared in terms of efficiency and welfare levels the framework of analysis embodies country specific monies with the money of each country being used to transact in its commodity markets and its currency denominated bonds welfare levels depend only on consumption levels in the presence of perfect foresight all equilibrium allocations are pareto efficient in a floating exchange rate regime the perfect foresight equilibrium allocation coincides with an equilibrium of a costless barter economy the same result holds in a one sided peg if the pegging country s exchange rate stabilizing authority breaks even over time in a cooperative peg regime there is a different equilibrium allocation for each combination of exchange rate levels and monetary policies problems of policy coordination and conflicts in desired monetary policies are discussed

growth and employment the scope of a european initiative this paper is an abridged version of a policy initiative paper prepared with a dozen colleagues in louvain la neuve and paris we propose a set of policies to cope with europe s persistent unemployment including two medium term programs a drastic reduction of the indirect cost of unskilled labour and an ambitious stimulation of targeted investments the bottom line is that policies addressing meaninfully europe s unemployment problem must be pursued on a bolder scale than currently contemplated

environmental taxation and unemployment some evidence on the double dividend hypothesis in europe abstract the employment double dividend hypothesis suggests that an appropriately designed fiscal reform in which emission charges are used to subsidize employers social security contributions may realize at least two relevant policy goals a better quality of the environment and at the same time an increase in employment levels this paper uses a newly developed econometric general equilibrium model for the european union as well as for each member country and presents simulation results up to the year 2010 of the effects of a european carbon tax the revenues from which are recycled to reduce employers social security contributions the results show that recycling carbon tax revenues may provide an employment double dividend only in the short run

devaluation fiscal deficits and the real exchange rate this article examines the use of fiscal policies to sustain the effects of a nominal devaluation on the real exchange rate it is shown that the magnitude of the change in the real exchange rate depends not only on the size of the devaluation and the degree of fiscal adjustment but also on the means by which the fiscal deficit is reduced the change in the nominal exchange rate necessary to maintain the depreciation of the real exchange rate will depend on whether the fiscal deficit is eliminated by increasing taxes or by reducing government expenditures on traded and nontraded goods the required depreciation of the domestic currency will be larger if the fiscal deficit is reduced by increasing taxes than it will be if the deficit is cut by lowering government expenditures further the depreciation would be smaller if the cuts in expenditure fell on traded rather than nontraded goods this result implies that the authorities must ensure consistency between exchange rate action and policies to reduce fiscal imbalances in order to achieve a desired level of the real exchange rate necessary to attain balance of payments equilibrium the real exchange rate represents a key relative price in the economy and policies to change it are often the centerpiece of adjustment programs designed to improve international competitiveness and shift resources toward the production of tradable goods consequently it is critical for policymakers to have some idea of the magnitude and time path of the likely response of the real exchange rate to nominal exchange rate action it is a well accepted proposition however that a nominal devaluation will only have a transitory effect on the real exchange rate in the long run domestic wages and prices will rise by the full amount of the devaluation and the real exchange rate will return to its original level to alter the real exchange rate on a permanent basis therefore devaluation has to be supplemented by policies that restrain the increase in domestic factor costs that results from a devaluation generally speaking the effects of a devaluation on the real exchange rate can

border tax adjustments and rationed foreign exchange abstract in the case of a traditional developed country the choice of tax base for border adjustments is thought of no consequence because of the long run neutrality of tax basis switches we show how border tax adjustments can be non neutral whether or not developing countries have rationed foreign exchange

would freeing up world trade reduce poverty and inequality the vexed role of agricultural distortions trade policy reforms in recent decades have sharply reduced the distortions that were harming agriculture in developing countries yet global trade in farm products continues to be far more distorted than trade in nonfarm goods those distortions reduce some forms of poverty and inequality but worsen others so the net effects are unclear without empirical modeling this paper summarizes a series of new economy wide global and national empirical studies that focus on the net effects of the remaining distortions to world merchandise trade on poverty and inequality globally and in various developing countries the global linkage model results suggest that removing those remaining distortions would reduce international inequality largely by boosting net farm incomes and raising real wages for unskilled workers in developing countries and would reduce the number of poor people worldwide by 3 percent the analysis based on the global trade analysis project model for a sample of 15 countries and nine stand alone national case studies all point to larger reductions in poverty especially if only the non poor are subjected to increased income taxation to compensate for the loss of trade tax revenue

do inventory and gross margin data improve sales forecasts for u s public retailers firm level sales forecasts for retailers can be improved if we incorporate cost of goods sold inventory and gross margin defined by us as the ratio of sales to cost of goods sold as three endogenous variables we construct a simultaneous equations model estimated using public financial and nonfinancial data to provide joint forecasts of annual cost of goods sold inventory and gross margin for retailers using historical data we show that sales forecasts from this model are more accurate than consensus forecasts from equity analysts further the residuals from this model for one fiscal year are used to predict retailers for whom the relative advantage of model forecasts over consensus forecasts would be large in the next fiscal year our results show that historical inventory and gross margin contain information useful to forecast sales and that equity analysts do not fully utilize this information in their sales forecasts

sectorial wages and the real exchange rate abstract this paper considers a multi sector economy subject to exogenous demand shocks that alter the equilibrium structure of relative prices and relative wages contracts set nominal wages in advance of the realization of stochastic shocks formulae for optimal sectorial wages indexation rules are provided these optimal rules alter the absolute and the relative structure of sectorial nominal wages the rules depend on the heterogeneity of the skill distribution the effects of shocks on the real exchange rate and on real wages are determined and the limited role of second best nominal exchange rate policy is analyzed

accounting earnings and future economic rents an empirical analysis abstract this study reexamines competition cost structure and growth opportunities effects on earnings response coefficients and extends this literature in several ways first it presents a more refined theoretical motivation for investigating competition and cost structure effects second it introduces new economic factor proxies that confirm prior findings with respect to competition but differ from prior findings with respect to cost structure and growth opportunities overall the evidence suggests that accounting earnings reflect information about future economic rents generated by firms assets in place the evidence also suggests contrary to prior studies that accounting earnings are not very informative about firms growth opportunities

foreign exchange premia and non neutrality of monetary policy in general equilibrium models abstract we present a simple monetized extension of a traditional small country real side general equilibrium trade model in which premia on foreign exchange occur with the value of the quota and the quota premium endogenously determined monetary policy is non neutral in the model and has real effects illustrated using a small open economy general equilibrium model of the philippines which includes foreign exchange premia the results emphasize the importance of incorporating domestic monetary policy fixed exchange rates and associated foreign exchange premia when analyzing the trade policy regime in such a country

government spending and the real exchange rate i study the effect of government spending on the real exchange rate in an open economy version of the sidrauski model with a time varying rate of time preference that introduces complementarity between consumption at different points in time i show that a balanced budget fiscal expansion causes a real depreciation and a current account surplus if the expansion falls on traded goods if the increase falls instead on nontraded goods both the stylized results of a real appreciation and a current account deficit and the perverse result of an appreciation and a surplus can occur

intertemporal optimizing models of trade and current account balance a survey abstract this study surveys the intertemporal optimizing models of trade and current account balance that were developed calibrated and empirically tested since they came into vogue in the 1980s the implications of these models often differ from those of static and dynamic conventional non optimizing models the literature on optimizing models has not only grown reasonably fast but has also witnessed significant advances in methodology and these models have culminated into a distinct strand of new open economy macroeconomics the studies conducted until the late 1980s have used deterministic perfect foresight models while several studies conducted since the 1990s relax the perfect foresight and certainty equivalence assumptions and develop stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models to account for uncertainty confronting the optimizing agents the future research needs to explore the possibility of tracing any preferred specification of household preferences model the effect of time varying discount factor on household utility function and intertemporal budget constraint examine the role of costs in international trade place a parallel emphasis on the empirical verifications of theoretical propositions examine the relative performance of optimizing vis a vis non optimizing models and rationalize the extreme propositions of perfect and imperfect capital mobility in the wake of moderately open capital accounts

supply chain efficiency value creation and the economic crisis an empirical assessment of the european automotive industry 2002 2010 abstract this paper seeks to evaluate the development of supply chain sc efficiency and the resulting impacts on company value in a secondary data analysis of the european automotive industry the trends of cost efficiency and working capital performance in the years 2002 2010 and the resulting value impacts are assessed it is detected that many companies failed to manage cost and working capital in a balanced and value adding way which resulted in considerable value losses the economic crisis is identified as an amplifier but not the major cause of these negative trends originality and value of the paper arise from the scarcity of financial analyses that focus on the car sector or that measure and compare several factors of sc efficiency or value creation

a general equilibrium analysis of foreign exchange shortages in a developing economy an acute shortage of foreign exchange has been a recurring problem for many developing economies this paper reexamines the foreign exchange gap issue and the debate between structuralists and neoclassicists by providing a quantitative assessment of the role of different assumptions about the values of key trade elasticities it also seeks to complement the existing descriptive analysis of the consequences of alternative adjustment mechanisms with a quantitative analysis that indicates the relative importance of different behavioural assumptions and policy regimes the empirical analysis is based on a computable general equilibrium model which is walrasian in spirit and captures price mechanisms market interactions and structural interdependence in a non linear multisector framework the analysis lends support to the structuralist view that it is not sufficient to look at problems of adjustment only at the macroeconomic level

the capital inflows problem revisited a stylized model of southern cone disinflation in the late 1970s countries in latin america s southern cone initiated attempts to lower domestic inflation rates through the progressive reduction of a preannounced rate of exchange rate devaluation the stabilization programs gave rise to massive capital inflows real exchange rate appreciation and current account deficits this paper develops a stylized intertemporal framework in which the effects of a credible preannounced disinflation scheme can be studied it is shown that even when agents have perfect foresight and markets clear continuously the capital inflows phenomenon and the associated real appreciation may result while unanticipated permanent inflation changes are neutral in the paper anticipated inflation is neutral only in exceptional circumstances a preannounced disinflation operates by altering the path of an expenditure based real domestic interest rate that depends on expected changes in the prices of liquidity services and nontradable consumption goods

the domestic demand compensated effects of changes in the exchange rate foreign prices tariffs and foreign demand macroeconomic models for open economies are often quite similar in terms of the supply side of the economy but specification of the demand side varies substantially in this paper aggregate domestic demand is assumed to be exogenous the choice of how to specify what determines aggregate domestic demand is thus avoided the simple treatment of the demand side of the economy makes it possible to render other parts of the model more general than usual in particular our model has several goods which may be divided into tradeables with exogenous prices tradeables with endogenous prices and nontradeables with endogenous prices intermediate inputs of imported and domestically produced goods are allowed for changes in exogenous variables such as the exchange rate tariff rates foreign prices government consumption and foreign demand are analyzed

a multi research method approach to studying environmental sustainability in retail operations abstract retailers increasingly incorporate environmental protection measures to improve their value chain operations although environmental sustainability in operations management has been widely examined in the manufacturing context its adoption in the retail industry is largely recent in this study we explore through both qualitative and quantitative approaches in the real retail context what green practices retailers have put in place to meet the needs of diverse stakeholders and examine whether or not such practices improve retailers financial performance undertaking this study in two phases we first conducted a secondary data analysis of 345 publicly traded retailers in japan to identify the green retail operations gros that retailers have adopted we presented empirical evidence on the performance impact of gros adoption and analyzed changes in the performance before and after gros adoption as measured by return on assets roa in the second phase we carried out an empirical study with survey data collected from 141 retailers in hong kong to validate the measurement of gros and examined the financial implications of gros adoption we conclude that there is a positive impact of gros adoption on firms financial performance in the retail industry

traded and non traded goods an empirical test with nigerian data abstract an income expenditure model is used to describe the relationship between the balance of payments and price inflation of non traded goods real and monetary approaches to the balance of payments suggest different relationships among these variables and compatible elements of the monetary approach are incorporated into the income expenditure model the model is then tested with nigerian data for the period 1960 1979 the pattern of economic growth and conduct of monetary policy make the nigerian economy a convenient test of the empirical significance of these macroeconomic relationships

influencing factors on hydrogen energy r d projects an ex post performance evaluation abstract to enhance its energy security korea made a significant r d investment in developing hydrogen energy technology over a period of 10 years the hydrogen energy r d center was established in 2003 with a 100 billion korean won krw government investment that would fund the initiative through 2012 this paper is a meaningful attempt to evaluate the ex post performance of completed hydrogen energy r d projects using data envelopment analysis dea through empirical analysis we focus mainly on measuring ex post performance and uncovering the influencing factors on that performance the results of our empirical analysis reveal several interesting findings first overall the ex post performance of completed projects is relatively low however there are major performance gaps among projects second r d type technology type and private sector investment are factors influencing project performance more specifically projects identified as basic research storage technology or without private sector investment had the highest performance with an acceptable level of statistical significance third dea can provide unique information such as results of returns to scale and slack analysis which cannot be gleaned from parametric methods as time went on the decreasing returns to scale drs ratio increased and the increasing returns to scale irs ratio decreased this means that the r d budget was used less and less effectively as time passed moreover among the three year project period the second year s r d budget was used most efficiently in each r d project this study can provide meaningful information to policy makers to enhance the performance of future r d projects and to promote hydrogen r d projects as well as advance the hydrogen economy

time based procurement this study investigates the design of a time based procurement contract when a supplier possesses private information about intrinsic completion time and may choose to exert time reduction effort we first derive the optimal complex contract for the buyer and then evaluate the performance of a simple fixed price and fixed time fpft contract our analysis shows that the structure of the optimal time based contract and the performance of an fpft contract depend largely on time reduction forms specifically if time reduction follows a multiplicative model the optimal contract induces the intrinsically slow supplier to reduce time and offers a fixed payment to the intrinsically fast supplier this result is opposite to what could occur when time reduction follows an additive model we also show that in a specific multiplicative model the fpft contract achieves at least eight ninth of the available surplus for the buyer whereas the performance of an fpft contract deteriorates dramatically in an additive model in response to this underperformance we then propose an enhanced linear contract and demonstrate that using this contract the buyer loses no more than one sixteenth of the available surplus our results shed light on the important effect of time reduction forms on time based contract design

agricultural trade distortions during the global financial crisis the authors are grateful for financial support from the australian research council rural industries research and development corporation and world bank

the impact of employment tax cuts on unemployment and wages the role of unemployment benefits and tax structure abstract i model and simulate the effects of employment tax cuts on unemployment and wages in four equilibrium models competitive union bargaining search and efficiency wages i find that if the ratio of unemployment compensation to wages is fixed the effect of the tax cut is mainly on wages but if income out of work is fixed in real terms there are substantial employment effects when wages are determined by bargaining revenueneutral reforms that make the tax more progressive also reduce unemployment thus policy towards unemployment compensation and tax structure are key influences on the effect of taxes on unemployment

labour market outliers lessons from portugal and spain iberian labour markets why spain and portugal are oecd outliers spain has the highest unemployment rate 22 2 of any european union country portugal one of the lowest 7 3 superficially these countries share many labour market features the toughest job security rules in the oecd an apparently similar architecture of wage bargaining and comparable generosity of their unemployment insurance systems at least since 1989 we address the puzzle by examining portuguese and spanish labour market institutions in particular job security unemployment benefits and the system of wage bargaining we then conduct empirical analysis of spanish and portuguese unemployment outflows and wage distributions using micro data we find differences in unemployment benefits non existent in portugal until 1985 and less generous nowadays differences in wage flexibility wage floors by category established by collective agreements are set at a lower relative level in portugal and in practice higher firing costs in spain a key explanation of the difference in portuguese and spanish unemployment rates is the wage adjustment process generous benefit levels may have been necessary for the path spanish unions took but this was not the sole explanation of different wage setting in spain and portugal olympia bover pilar garcia perea and pedro portugal

environmental policy and the equilibrium rate of unemployment abstract this paper integrates environmental policy instruments with the theory of equilibrium unemployment we investigate the question of whether a low equilibrium rate of unemployment and a high quality of the environment are complementary policy goals or must be traded off it turns out that an interval exists for a tax on emissions where the two goals are indeed complementary the tax stimulates the emergence of an abatement sector which provides pollution control and vacancies for the job seekers for constrained efficiency the policy maker operates five instruments to internalize the environmental and the search externalities a tax on emissions employment subsidies and recruiting allowances for the polluting industries are sufficient to implement the first best the optimal emission tax is an increasing function of the workers bargaining strength for labor markets where workers have a strong bargaining position the optimal pollution tax may easily exceed the pigouvian tax

productivity shocks non traded goods and optimal capital accumulation this paper considers the interaction of saving and investment in determining the current account for a small open economy subjected to productivity shocks by emphasizing the distinction between traded and non traded goods the analysis highlights the crucial role of the real exchange rate in macroeconomic adjustment our results demonstrate the importance of intertemporal substitution for determining the response of investment to anticipated productivity disturbances we also show how the correlation of movements in saving and investment following an anticipated disturbance depends critically on relative sectoral factor intensities

immiserizing growth and endogenous protection abstract this paper focuses on immiserizing growth in the two senses of bhagwati 1958 and johnson 1967 and how both the likelihood that either may occur and their extent can be affected by the presence of endogenous protection i e quota and other forms of protection for which the ad valorem equivalent level of protection is endogeneously determined we use a general equilibrium model of the philippines due to clarete 1984 to compute counterfactual equilibria involving changes in domestic policies terms of trade and resource endowments immiserizing growth in the sense of bhagwati is less likely because the terms of trade fall required to offset the growth of resources has to be significantly larger if no distortions are in the model immiserizing growth in the sense of johnson tends to be more likely if endogeneous protection is present as unbalanced growth occurs focused on the factor intensive in the protected sector resources are drawn out of the export sector and export earnings decline and if the level of protection is endogenously determined the welfare costs of protection increase

a shoven whalley model of a small open economy an illustration with philippine tariffs abstract this paper describes an applied general equilibrium model of a price taking economy in both imports and exports sector specific factors are incorporated to avoid complete specialization problems a hicksian composite traded good market is used for achieving trade balance in the model foreign and domestic goods are assumed perfect substitutes for illustration philippine tariffs and export taxes are analyzed using the model

regional r d efficiency in korea from static and dynamic perspectives han u asmild m and kunc m regional r d efficiency in korea from static and dynamic perspectives regional studies research and development r d efficiency has gained great attention in regional innovation research this study examines the r d efficiency patterns of 15 korean regions for 2005 09 it employs data envelopment analysis to identify the regions r d performances relative to the best practices from the static perspective and the malmquist productivity index to evaluate their changes in performance within a given timeframe providing a dynamic perspective the results classify the korean regions into deteriorating lagging and improving groups and indicate that most regions suffer from declining r d productivity over time because of their inability to catch up with the best practices

first to market is technological innovation in new product development profitable in health care industries abstract do innovative products incorporated advanced technologies help firms improve operating performance in this study we traced the operating performance of 168 publicly traded manufacturing firms in the usa that announced technologically innovative products in two major industries from the health care domain namely pharmaceuticals and medical instruments we employed the event study methodology and collected objective financial data from compustat we found that technologically innovative products have a statistically significant positive effect on operating performance the median abnormal increase in return on assets ranged from 2 20 to 7 07 over a four year period the median abnormal increase in return on sales ranged from 4 16 to 4 70 and the median abnormal increase in sales over assets ranged from 5 85 to 7 38

wage flexibility and openness this paper analyzes the degree of short run real wage flexibility in a two sector economy under floating rates this is done by deriving optimal wage indexation in a contracting framework we find that the more closed the economy the lower the degree of wage indexation as a result output will fluctuate less around its desired level in a more closed economy these findings further imply that a given unexpected monetary shock will cause as maller output shock in a more open economy whereas a given real shock will induce a smaller output shock in a more closed economy this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

traded goods competitiveness and aggregate fluctuations in the united kingdom this paper presents an investigation of the relations between wage adjustment competitiveness and aggregate fluctuations in the united kingdom it uses a real business cycle model based on the distinction between internationally traded and nontraded goods the traded goods sector is assumed a price taker and the focus is on the supply side the model can account quite well for fluctuations in competitiveness output wages and the terms of trade the results suggest output flexibility and wage price rigidity a combination that produces interesting patterns of macroeconomic adjustment which parallel the predictions of more traditional keynesian models copyright 1990 by royal economic society

private and quasi social rates of return on pharmaceutical r d in japan abstract this paper calculates the rates of return ror on r d in the pharmaceutical industry in japan by estimating the r d function and the return function where the former refers to the link between r d expenditures and new drug development and the latter to the link between new drug development and profits since the ror estimated with industry data must include the effect of technological spillover to other firms and the contribution to industrial profits through generic production it is interpreted as quasi social ror quasi because consumers surplus is not taken into account while the ror estimated with company data does not include these effects and are interpreted as the private ror our finding clearly indicates that the quasi social ror about 33 percent exceeds the private ror about 19 percent suggesting the presence of both spillover and generic effects

product development decisions a review of the literature this paper is a review of research in product development which we define as the transformation of a market opportunity into a product available for sale our review is broad encompassing work in the academic fields of marketing operations management and engineering design the value of this breadth is in conveying the shape of the entire research landscape we focus on product development projects within a single firm we also devote our attention to the development of physical goods although much of the work we describe applies to products of all kinds we look inside the black box of product development at the fundamentaldecisions that are made by intention or default in doing so we adopt the perspective of product development as a deliberate business process involving hundreds of decisions many of which can be usefully supported by knowledge and tools we contrast this approach to prior reviews of the literature which tend to examine the importance of environmental and contextual variables such as market growth rate the competitive environment or the level of top management support

measuring the change in r d efficiency of the japanese pharmaceutical industry this paper presents a data envelopment analysis dea malmquist index methodology for measuring the change in r d efficiency at both firm and industry levels letting each of ten firms in each year be a separate decision making unit and employing one input and three outputs in a dea case of r d activity input output lag we measure total factor r d efficiency change of japanese pharmaceutical firms for decade 1983 1992 as defined by the period of r d input decomposing malmquist index into catch up and frontier shift components and using cumulative indices proposed in this study we evaluate r d efficiency change for each firm and empirically show that r d efficiency of japanese pharmaceutical industry has almost monotonically gotten worse throughout the study decade

anticipated devaluations currency flight and direct trade controls in a monetary economy mendation for a country facing a balance of payments deficit this advice is often resisted by country governments instead direct trade controls such as tariffs quotas and subsidies are frequently used in this paper i propose an economic explanation for the reluctance to devalue and the use of trade controls namely the currency flight that can be expected to occur if the devaluation is anticipated in an effort to avoid or offset the effects of this currency flight countries may use direct controls i shall analyze the properties of using import tariffs and export subsidies with or without an anticipated devaluation to affect the balance of payments and obtain the social optimum

agricultural incentives in developing countries measuring the effect of sectoral and economywide policies the impact of sector specific direct and economywide indirect policies on agricultural incentives for 18 developing countries for the period 1975 84 are estimated the direct effect is measured by the proportional difference between the producer price and the border price adjusting for distribution storage transport and other marketing costs the indirect effect has two components 1 the impact of the unsustainable portion of the current account deficit and of industrial protection policies on the real exchange rate and thus on the price of agricultural commodities relative to nonagricultural nontradables and 2 the impact of industrial protection policies on the relative price of agricultural commodities to that of nonagricultural tradable goods the authors found that a in almost all cases the direct effect is equivalent to a tax on exportable goods and to a subsidy for importables b the indirect effect also taxes agriculture and dominates the direct effect and c the direct policies for both importables and exportables stabilize domestic producer prices

real interest rates home goods and optimal external borrowing the paper investigates the optimal time path of consumption and external borrowing in the dependent economy model the small country faces given world prices and a given world real interest rate the presence of a home goods sector implies that the relevant real interest rate appropriate to consumption decisions depends on the rate of change of the real price of home goods the paper shows how transitory disturbances in output or in the world real interest rate affect the time profile of consumption and the trade balance in particular it is shown that the presence of a home goods sector dampens the consumption effects of changes in the world interest rate

delays in new product introductions and the market value of the firm the consequences of being late to the market this paper empirically estimates the impact of not meeting promised new product introduction dates on the market value of the firm we estimate the average abnormal change in the market value for a sample of 101 firms around the date when information about delaying the introduction of new products is publicly announced on average delay announcements decrease the market value of the firm by 5 25 the average dollar change in the market value in 1991 dollars is 119 3 million the evidence suggests that there are significant penalties for not introducing new products on time to provide further insight regression analyses are used to identify factors that influence the direction and magnitude of the change in market value we find that the competitiveness of the industry in which the firm operates the size of the firm and the firm s degree of diversification are statistically significant predictors for the change in the market value of firms that announce delays in the introduction of new products

international competitiveness the demand for exports and real effective exchange rates in developing countries abstract most measures of the real effective exchange rate reer do not capture the complex ways in which the structure and direction of trade adapt to changes in exchange rates conventional measures of the reer are based on the stringent assumptions that cross price elasticities with respect to exports of third party competitors are all zero and with respect to trading partners they are all equal this paper develops an alternative index of competitiveness that captures the effects of a whole set of bilateral price changes by estimating an import demand system a reer for the philippines is computed and compared to a conventional reer

export restrictions and price insulation during commodity price booms for individual countries variable trade barriers can be used to reduce the volatility of domestic relative to world prices if this is done by countries accounting for a large share of the market its effect is offset by increases in world price volatility this study shows the nature of the resulting collective action problem with the policy being ineffective on average in stabilizing domestic prices while increasing the volatility of the income transfers from terms of trade changes a simple approach to assessing the contribution of insulation to the price increases is developed and used with new estimates of agricultural distortions to assess its contribution to the price spikes in 1972 74 and 2006 08 for rice and wheat the analysis suggests that 45 percent of the increase in rice prices in 2006 08 and 30 percent of the increase in wheat prices was due to insulating behavior one sign of progress since 1972 74 was a substantial reduction in the extent of price insulating behavior by the industrial countries this provides little stabilizing benefit in the rice market because countries not classifying themselves at the world trade organization as developing account for only 3 percent of world rice consumption but it does offer some benefit for the wheat market where non developing countries account for 27 percent of consumption

productivity growth technical progress and efficiency change in industrialized countries this paper analyzes productivity growth in 17 oecd countries over the period 1979 1988 a nonparametric programming method activity analysis is used to compute malmquist productivity indexes these are decomposed into two component measures namely technical change and efficiency change we find that u s productivity growth is slightly higher than average all of which is due to technical change japan s productivity growth is the highest in the sample with almost half due to efficiency change jel c43 d24 in this paper we apply recently developed

psychic distance and performance of mncs during marketing crises when multinational corporations face foreign marketing crises the psychic distance between the home and host country represents a distinct challenge this paper examines the curvilinear relationship between psychic distance and firm performance during marketing crises and the moderating role of marketing capabilities we test our hypotheses using an event study on a panel dataset of 217 firms based in 19 countries facing crises in 41 host countries the results show that 1 marketing crises are most harmful when the host country is either very close or far away and 2 firms can mitigate this effect with marketing capabilities

interactions between trade policies and domestic distortions in a small open developing country abstract this paper reports results from a price taking open economy numerical general equilibrium model of the philippines whose purpose is to explore the ways in which trade policies and other domestic distortions interact in a small open developing economy the trade policies featured in the model include tariffs export taxes and import quotas while the domestic distortions considered are rent seeking and harris todaro labour market dualism results clearly indicate that interactions between trade policies and other domestic distortions are significant and need to be more fully considered in numerical economic policy analyses for developing countries

a short note on updating the grilli and yang commodity price index the grilli and yang commodity price index is one of the most widely used commodity price series in the applied economics literature this note provides some practical advice on updating this data series by listing the base period index values identifying relevant data sources and describing a method for computing subindex weights in 1988 enzo grilli and maw cheng yang published their seminal article on the long run development of an index of 24 primary commodity prices gycpi deflated by an index of manufactured goods unit values the sample of average annual primary commodity prices covers about 54 percent of the primary commodity trade in the index reference period 1977 79 the deflators considered for manufacturing prices were the u s manufacturing price index usmpi and the manufacturing unit value index muv 1widely used and discussed the grilli and yang data set has been extended by a number of researchers the data have been employed in a variety of contexts in later studies thus the gycpi data continue to enjoy wide popularity in their own right and as a benchmark for new approaches to empirical studies

tax reform structural unemployment and the environment the effects of environmental tax reform i e using the proceeds of a higher energy tax rate to lower the labour tax rate on wage formation employment and environmental quality are analysed in the context of a small open economy with structural unemployment caused by hiring costs we find that such a reform may boost employment if it shifts the tax burden away from workers towards those without employment in the formal sector environmental tax reform succeeds in shifting the tax burden away from workers in the formal sector if higher energy taxes reduce earnings in the informal sector by reducing labour productivity

managing new product definition in highly dynamic environments in highly dynamic environments characterized by changing customer preferences and uncertainty about competitive products managing the development of a new product is a complex managerial task the traditional practice recommended in the literature of reaching a sharp definition early in the new product development npd process may not be optimal desirable or even feasible in such dynamic situations under high uncertainty forcing early finalization of specifications may result in a firm getting locked into an incorrect definition based on our study of npd in the high technology industry we present a model of an approach called real time definition in which a firm adapts its product definition process to the market and competitive environment uncertainty in the product definition is resolved through frequent repeated interactions with customers and using a flexible development process we find that early definition is optimal only in a limited set of situations to maximize its anticipated profits a firm should tune its definition process to the prevailing level of market uncertainty the marginal value of information obtained from the customer during the npd process and its own risk profile and internal development capabilities effects of competition on a firm s definition approach are also examined and implications for managers of a npd process are presented using a conceptual framework

micro foundations of external economies the first purpose of this paper is to specify certain microeconomic determinants of external economies and then analyze the consequences of these economies for production and welfare in a simple general equilibrium model the second purpose is to explore the circumstances under which the implied industry production functions are consistent with the ad hoc specifications used in trade theory and growth theory the motivation for the latter exercise is that despite progress in general equilibrium analysis of internal economies these industry production functions allow the author to capture the very powerful analytical advantages of competitive general equilibrium and duality theory