informal investment in transition economies individual characteristics and clusters this paper investigates the factors driving informal investment in croatia hungary and slovenia using global entrepreneurship monitor gem data we find that the low rates of informal investment activity and the small amounts of investments in these countries are driven by entrepreneurial behaviors consistent with limited market economy experience we extend prior studies by investigating the role of business ownership and identify significant differences between individuals with and without business ownership experience in terms of having start up skills knowing an entrepreneur and fearing failure cluster analysis identifies seven distinct groups of informal investors and reveals the heterogeneity in terms of investors age gender level of education amount of investment start up skills ownership status income opportunity perception and country of residence

renewable to total electricity consumption ratio estimating the permanent or transitory fluctuations based on flexible fourier stationarity and unit root tests abstract this paper examines the stationarity properties of the renewable to total electricity consumption ratio for this purpose we use becker et al s 2006 flexible fourier stationarity test as a benchmark and the recent advanced fourier adf unit root test for 90 countries over the period 1980 2011 the results of the first test document the stationarity of the renewable to total electricity consumption ratio for 65 countries from different geographic areas namely africa america asia pacific and europe however when validated the fourier adf test shows that the null hypothesis of unit root is rejected in all the cases except for the united kingdom the fact that the stationarity in the share of renewable to total electricity consumption is documented by the new proposed more powerful tests does not necessarily mean that the renewable energy policies are ineffective as the previous literature states a wide range of elements might influence the stationarity or non stationarity of this ratio however our findings are important from the modeling perspective as the empirical studies on renewable energy can produce reliable results and use appropriate techniques for modeling and forecasting only if the stationarity or non stationarity is correctly documented

entry propensity the supply of entrants and the spatial distribution of business units beesley m e and hamilton r t 1994 entry propensity the supply of entrants and the spatial distribution of business units reg studies 28 233 239 an extensive new database is used in the estimation of models explaining entry propensities across the cross section of british manufacturing industries few previous studies of industrial entry have adequately incorporated the supply of prospective entrants this is redressed here by allowing for the possibility that prospective business founders are industry specific with their numbers varying among industries the spatial distribution of business units within an industry is also shown to have an important bearing on entry an effect which also appears to have been overlooked in previous studies beesley m e et hamilton r t 1994 la propension a se faire immatriculer le nombre d immatriculations et la distribution spatiale des unites industrielles reg studies 28 233 239 on se sert d une nouvelle base de donnees plus etendue pour estimer des

approaches to risk and uncertainty in the appraisal of new technology capital projects abstract an important issue raised in the literature is that of management s attitude to risk and the somewhat subjective nature of taking risk into account in the investment appraisal of capital projects especially investments in new technology although managers are not completely ignorant of what the future holds investment decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty and as a result the cash flows used in the appraisal calculations are in themselves uncertain and present an element of risk this paper considers the nature and acceptable level of risk together with management s personal attitude to risk the state of the art techniques used in the identification and assessment of project risk are identified from current research

do renewable electricity policies promote renewable electricity generation evidence from panel data using the poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimation technique this paper evaluates the effects of renewable electricity policies on renewable electricity generation using a large panel dataset that covers 122 countries over the period of 1980 2010 the results suggest that renewable electricity policies play a crucial role in promoting renewable electricity generation but their effectiveness is subject to diminishing returns as the number of policies increases there is also evidence that the effects of renewable electricity policies are more pronounced before 1996 as well as in developed and emerging market countries and the negative policy interaction effect fades with the stage of economic development lastly policy effectiveness varies by the type of renewable electricity policy and energy source only investment incentives and feed in tariffs are found to be effective in promoting the development of all types of renewable energy sources for electricity considered in this paper

international technology transfer and the technology gap abstract we build a quality ladders product cycle model that explores how the quality of technology transferred through foreign direct investment fdi is linked to innovation and imitation when the absorptive capacity of ldcs is limited successful imitation of low quality levels makes fdi involving high quality levels possible through reduction of the technology gap a subsidy to imitation or a tax on low quality fdi production encourages imitation relative to innovation thus releasing the constraint faced by foreign firms seeking to produce in the south these forces that stimulate high quality fdi raise southern welfare through lower prices faster innovation and higher wages

production function regressions returns to scale and externalities a number of recent papers have used simple linear regressions in an attempt to identify market structure the extent of returns to scale and possible external effects in u s manufacturing industries the results obtained from these regressions have important implications for several branches of modern macroeconomics as a result the macro literature frequently cites specific numerical evidence from caballero and lyons 1992 and hall 1990 which suggests that there are quantitatively significant increasing returns to scale or external effects in u s manufacturing in contrast it is the argument of this paper that this evidence is not convincing the most robust evidence suggests that the typical u s manufacturing industry displays constant returns with no external effects on the other hand there is significant heterogeneity across industries

how good are small firms are predicting employment this paper utilises some data from an interview survey of very small firms in the north of england to examine the relationship between actual and forecast employment in small firms over a twelve month period the paper first provides some summary statistics on actual and forecast employment for the survey firms over the reference period it then looks at how successful the firms are in their short term forecasts and finds that there is systematic over estimation the causes of the systematic forecast error are investigated it is suggested tentatively that the firms may in some way be incorrectly interpreting the information embodied in their own employment figures when making their forecasts the paper concludes with a brief review of the results and possible policy implications avenues for future work are also proposed

the tangible contribution of r d spending foreign owned plants to a host region a plant level study of the irish manufacturing sector 1980 1996 abstract the rapid growth of the irish economy over the past decade and the simultaneous increase in i the number of foreign owned plants in the high tech sectors and ii the research and development r d activities of foreign owned plants have given rise to an increased interest in the relationship between foreign direct investment fdi and economic growth in ireland the central question explored in this paper is whether the tangible contribution of mnc plants which undertake r d investment in ireland is greater than the tangible contribution of mnc plants which undertake no r d investment we use a plant level data set and conclude that the scale of r d activity in a plant is an important determinant in i lengthening the duration over which that plant will remain in ireland and ii improving the quality of employment created in that plant although it has long been recognised that the attraction of fdi to ireland has been beneficial the results of this paper support the idea that r d active firms generally provide greater benefit to the economy on employment grounds alone policy should favour r d active plants in high tech sectors

the interrelationships between births and deaths this paper provides a preliminary study of the way in which the births and deaths of firms interactover time it uses the retailing sector as a case study although the results also have relevance for other sectors section i of the paper introduces the background to the paper section ii provides a non mathematical theoretical framework for analysing the births deaths interrelationship it identifies three separate types of effect operative in these interrelationships the competition multiplier and marshall life cycle effects the data used in this study value added tax registrations and deregistrations and their limitations are considered in section iii section iv presents the preliminary empirical results this section utilises panel data vector autoregression techniques to identify the salient birth death relationships the final section concludes the paper and draws out possible policy conclusions it also suggests avenues for further work

the liability of localness in innovation i analyze differences in the innovativeness of domestic firms and subsidiaries of foreign firms operating in the same country i argue that domestic firms suffer a liability of localness in innovation or a competitive disadvantage in product innovation relative to subsidiaries of foreign firms i propose that this liability of localness is driven by the relatively lower levels of multiculturalism in employees of domestic firms in comparison with subsidiaries which limit the identification transfer and integration of a large diversity of knowledge that supports product innovation i also propose that managers of domestic firms can compensate for this liability of localness in two ways by investing in the training of their employees and by exporting training modifies the mindsets and abilities of employees and enables them to become more cognitively multicultural which facilitates product innovation exporting changes employees mindsets as they become exposed to new ideas available abroad which also facilitates product innovation i test these arguments on a sample of manufacturing firms and find that although domestic firms introduce fewer new products than subsidiaries of foreign firms they introduce more new products than subsidiaries at the same level of investment in language training and of exports

observability and the payback criterion among the enigmas of corporate finance theory that have received little attention is the puzzling use of the payback method as a capital budgeting tool although the payback method has many drawbacks it is widely used in industry see klammer 1972 fremgren 1973 schall sundem and geijsback 1978 1 gordon 1955 attempted to explain this anomaly by observing that the inverse of the payback period is an approximation for the internal rate of return but as sarnat and levy 1969 point out the accuracy of the approximation depends on the life of the project and its irr for low values of irr the inverse of payback is a very poor approximation moreover it is difficult to believe that corporations that use complex and sophisticated technologies need a rule of thumb to approximate something as simple to compute as the irr in fact empirical evidence shows that most firms compute both the irr and the payback period see schall the payback criterion continues to be widely used in industry although there is little support for it among the academicians this paper attempts to find an economic rationale for it by using an incentive model with asymmetric information it argues that when the managers possess private information regarding projects selected for implementation it is in their interest to choose ceteris paribus projects that pay back faster since manager s wages depend on output because their productivity is unknown by choosing projects that pay back fast they hope to improve their reputations i wish to thank milton harris and an anonymous referee for their helpful suggestions while i retain the responsibility for any remaining errors 1 it has been found that payback is rarely used as a primary capital budgeting method it is used as a secondary criterion to a discounted cash flow method such as npv net present value or irr internal rate of return

spatial variations in new firm formation in the republic of ireland 1980 1990 hart m and gudgin g 1994 spatial variations in new firm formation in the republic of ireland 1980 1990 reg studies 28 367 380 this paper presents results of an investigation into regional 26 county differences in the formation of new manufacturing firms in the republic of ireland over the period 1980 90 the results of a multivariate analysis of the determinants of new firm formation at the regional level reveal that the proportion of small manufacturing establishments in an area growth in local industrial demand the proportion of professional and managerial occupations in the population and the impact of government new and small firms policy are all positive influences on gross formation rates the paper concludes by arguing that the process of new firm formation should not be viewed as the sole means of generating local economic growth and that the growth of existing small firms should also form an integral part of any development strategy hart m et gudgin g 1994 les variations geograp

measures of technology and the business cycle empirical evidence on the relationship between technology shocks and e g hours worked hinges crucially on the identification of the unobservable technological progress in this paper we study different measures of technology in order to find out i to what extent they capture the same underlying phenomenon and ii whether the implications for macroeconomic theory are robust across the approaches several versions of the productions function approach and structural var models are investigated our main finding is that the different technology measures are highly correlated however the exact formulation of the identifying restrictions seems to matter for the results while we replicate the standard finding of a strongly procyclical solow residual all other measures of technology are either acyclical or countercyclical

the misuse of net present value in energy efficiency standards abstract consumers are often blamed for not making necessary investments in energy efficient durables despite that these investments have positive net present value npv several papers have argued that when investments have option like characteristics e g irreversibility uncertainty flexible timing and lumpiness the aphorism invest if the net present value of investing exceeds zero isn t the best advice yet curiously the department of energy doe in the united states proposes new regulations mandating higher energy efficiency standards for consumer durables on the basis of non negative npv over an investment s lifetime in this paper we provide a step by step deconstruction of doe s npv methodology and show that doe s method purges volatility volatility persistence and nonstationarity that are otherwise present in energy prices as a result doe s projections of future energy prices are artificially smooth and statistically biased casting serious doubt on the reliability of the magnitude of energy savings from energy efficient durables

rule of thumb consumers productivity and hours in this paper we study the transmission mechanism of productivity shocks in a model with rule of thumb consumers in the literature this nancial friction has been studied only with reference to scal shocks we show that the presence of rule of thumb consumers is also very helpful in accounting for recent empirical evidence on productivity shocks rule of thumb agents together with nominal and real rigidities play an important role in reproducing the negative response of hours and the delayed responses of output and

foreign direct investment competition and industrial development in the host country this paper analyses the impact of foreign direct investment fdi on the development of local firms we focus on two likely effects of fdi a competition effect which deters entry of domestic firms and positive market externalities which foster the development of local industry using a simple theoretical model to illustrate how these forces work we show that the number of domestic firms follows a u shaped curve where the competition effect first dominates but is gradually outweighed by positive externalities evidence for ireland tends to support this result specifically applying semi parametric regression techniques on plant level panel data for the manufacturing sector we find that while the competition effect may have initially deterred local firms entry this initial effect has been outpaced by positive externalities making the overall impact of fdi largely positive for the domestic industry

new business formation in a rapidly growing economy the irish experience the extraordinary growth of the irish economy since the mid 1990s the celtic tiger has attracted a great deal of interest commentary and research indeed many countries look to ireland as an economic development role model and it has been suggested that ireland might provide key lessons for other eu members as they seek to achieve the objectives set out in the lisbon agenda much of the discussion of ireland s growth has focused on its possible triggers the long term consequences of the late 1980s fiscal stabilisation eu structural funds education wage moderation and devaluation of the irish punt the industrial policy perspective has highlighted the importance of inflows of foreign direct investment but a notable absence from the discourse on the celtic tiger has been any mention of the role of new business venture creation and entrepreneurship in this paper we use unpublished irish vat data for the years 1988 2004 to provide the first detailed look at national trends in business birth and death rates in ireland over the take off period we also use sub national vat data to shed light on spatial trends in new venture creation our overall conclusions are that new business formation made no detectable contribution to the acceleration of ireland s growth in the late 1990s although we do find evidence of spatial convergence in per capita business stocks

evidence of long memory behavior in u s renewable energy consumption this study examines the degrees of time persistence in u s total renewable energy consumption using innovative fractional integration and autoregressive models with monthly data from 1981 1 to 2010 10 the results indicate that renewable energy consumption is better explained in terms of a long memory model that incorporates persistence components and seasonality the degree of integration is above 0 5 but significantly below 1 0 suggesting nonstationarity with mean reverting behavior the presence of long memory behavior persistence in renewable energy consumption suggests that random shocks may very well move renewable energy consumption from pre determined target levels for a period of time

small business growth in the short run this paper examines the determinants of short run employment growth in very small firms in the services sector the study shows evidence of non linearities in the growth size relationship and it is argued that these non linearities reflect the short run constraints that small firms face in adjusting to demand shocks the paper also suggests that there are other systematic influences on growth apart from size the paper draws on survey evidence from the northern region of the united kingdom

price and investment dynamics theory and plant level data we construct a model of a firm competing for market share in a customer market and making investments in physical capital the firm is financially constrained and there are implementation lags in investment our model predicts that product prices should depend on costs and competitors prices but respond weakly to demand shocks also prices should be strongly related to investment we estimate price and investment equations on panel data for swedish manufacturing plants and find results that are qualitatively in line with these predictions though the relation between investment and prices is stronger than predicted by our model

prices productivity and wage bargaining in open economies according to the standard union bargaining model unemployment benefits should have big effects on wages but product market prices and productivity should play no role in the wage bargain we formulate an alternative strategic bargaining model where labour and product market conditions together determine wages a wage equation is derived and estimated on aggregate data for four nordic countries wages are found to depend not only on unemployment and the replacement ratio but also on productivity international prices and exchange rates there is evidence of considerable nominal wage rigidity exchange rate changes have large and persistent effects on competitiveness

could the irish miracle be repeated in hungary it is widely recognized that foreign direct investment fdi plays an important role in economic development however its impact on entrepreneurial activity has not been well researched internalization theory is used to explore how inward fdi impacts entrepreneurial activity using data from global entrepreneurship monitor gem we find significant differences in entrepreneurial activity between ireland and hungary in both the type of people starting businesses and the opportunities pursued economic development policies should focus on increasing human capital promoting enterprise development and upgrading the quality of fdi

sectoral shifts and cyclical unemployment a substantial fraction of cyclical unemployment is better characterized as fluctuations of the frictional or natural rate than as deviations from some relatively stable natural rate shifts of employment demand between sectors of the economy necessitate continuous labor reallocation since it takes time for workers to find new jobs some unemployment is unavoidable this paper presents evidence that most of the unemployment fluctuations of the seventies unlike those in the sixties were induced by unusual structural shifts within the u s economy simple time series models of layoffs and unemployment are constructed that include a measure of structural shifts within the labor market these models are estimated and a derived natural rate series is constructed

applied econometrics and implications for energy economics research abstract developments in applied econometrics particularly with regard to unit root tests and cointegration tests have motivated a rich empirical literature on energy economics over the last decade this study reviews recent developments in time series econometrics applications in the energy economics literature we first consider the literature on the integration properties of energy variables we begin with a discussion of the implications of whether energy variables contain a unit root and proceed to examine how results differ according to the specific unit root or stationarity test employed we then proceed to examine recent developments in the literature on cointegration granger causality and long run estimates between disaggregated energy consumption and economic growth we review both single country and panel studies and pay particular attention to studies which have expanded the literature through adding variables such as financial development and trade in addition to energy consumption to the augmented production function as well as studies which have extended the literature through examining disaggregated energy consumption by type in each case we highlight best practice in the literature point to limitations in the literature including econometric modeling challenges and suggest recommendations for future research a key message of our survey is that the profession needs to guard against overload of research in these areas as most applied studies are no longer adding anything more to what is already known

how good are the uk vat registration data at measuring firm births this paper utilises some data from a survey of recent vat registrations in the north of england to examine two issues first the extent to which registrants are involved in setting up entirely new businesses and secondly the relationship between the date of registration and the start of trading the paper suggests that some caution should be exercised in the use of vat registration statistics in the analysis of firm births

state of the art unit root tests and purchasing power parity although the question of whether purchasing power parity ppp holds in the long run has been extensively studied the answer is still controversial some of the strongest evidence is provided by taylor the review of economics and statistics 84 2002 139 150 who concludes that long run ppp held over the 20th century we argue that this conclusion is quite sensitive to the use of sub optimal lag selection in unit root tests using superior lag selection methods we find that long run ppp held for the real exchange rates of only 9 out of the 16 industrialized countries in taylor s sample with the u s dollar as the base currency

on the economics of renewable energy sources abstract with the global expansion of renewable energy re technologies the provision of optimal re policy packages becomes an important task we review pivotal aspects regarding the economics of renewables that are relevant to the design of an optimal re policy many of which are to date unresolved we do so from three interrelated perspectives that a meaningful public policy framework for inquiry must take into account first we explore different social objectives justifying the deployment of re technologies and review model based estimates of the economic potential of re technologies i e their socially optimal deployment level second we address pivotal market failures that arise in the course of implementing the economic potential of re sources in decentralized markets third we discuss multiple policy instruments curing these market failures our framework reveals the requirements for an assessment of the relevant options for real world decision makers in the field of re policies this review makes it clear that there are remaining white areas on the knowledge map concerning consistent and socially optimal re policies

aggregate return on investment for investments under uncertainty abstract this paper deals with capital budgeting decisions under uncertainty we present an aggregate return on investment aroi obtained as the ratio of total undiscounted cash flow to total invested capital and show that it is a genuine rate of return which compared with the risk adjusted cost of capital correctly signals wealth creation for choosing between two mutually exclusive projects we derive an incremental aroi and an incremental risk adjusted cost of capital by means of which two unequal risk projects can be correctly compared iterating the incremental procedure we show that the aroi approach correctly ranks any bundle of different risk competing projects relations with other criteria such as modified internal rate of return average irr cash multiple and profitability index are provided theoretically the aroi approach constitutes a link between arbitrage choice theory and corporate investment theory and shows that explicit discounting is not necessary for measuring economic profitability practically the aroi is a user friendly easy to compute rate of return derived from the same set of data required by the net present value npv also it does not incur the difficulties met by the internal rate of return irr in particular it is unique and it is based on economically significant capital values i e market driven values as such the aroi significantly expresses the efficiency of the project s invested capital

inventories as factors of production and economic fluctuations this paper presents a theory of inventory investment by stage of processing and uses it to examine the role of inventory investment in economic fluctuations the model in which inventories are treated as factors of production is estimated for four durable goods industries three conclusions emerge from the estimation first the estimates generally satisfy the theoretical restrictions second the elasticity of inventory demand with respect to output is high indicating an important accelerator effect finally the estimates suggest that shifts in the demand for inventories are an important source of economic fluctuations copyright 1989 by american economic association

the impact of foreign direct investment on new firm survival in the uk evidence for static versus dynamic industries the paper examines the impact of foreign direct investment fdi on the survival of business start ups fdi has potential for both negative displacement competition effects as well as positive knowledge spillover and linkage effects on new ventures we find a net positive effect for the whole dataset however a major contribution of the paper is to outline and test an argument that this effect is likely to be comprised of a net negative effect in dynamic industries high churn firm entry plus exit relative to the stock of firms alongside a net positive effect in static low churn industries we find evidence to support this view the results identify new effects of globalisation on enterprise development with associated challenges for industrial policy

factor hoarding and the propagation of business cycles shocks this paper analyzes the role of variable capital utilization rates in propagating shocks over the business cycle to this end we formulate and estimate an equilibrium business cycle model in which cyclical capital utilization rates are viewed as a form of factor hoarding we find that variable capital utilization rates substantially magnify and propagate the impact of shocks to agents environments the strength of these propagation effects is evident in the dynamic response functions of various economy wide aggregates to shocks in agents environments in the statistics that we construct to summarize the strength of the propagation mechanisms in the model and in the volatility of exogenous technology shocks needed to explain the observed variability in aggregate u s output other authors have argued that standard real business cycle rbc models fail to account for certain features of the data because they do not embody quantitatively important propagation mechanisms these features include the observed positive serial correlation in the growth rate of output the shape of the spectrum of the growth rate of real output and the correlation between the forecastable component of real output and various other economic aggregates allowing for variable capital utilization rates substantially improves the ability of the model to account for these features of the data

internalization an event study test abstract the internalization theory of multinational firms proposes that direct international investment occurs when a firm has information related intangible assets with public good properties we find that firms with characteristics suggesting the presence of information based assets experience a significantly positive stock price reaction upon announcing a foreign acquisition on the other hand firms apparently lacking such assets experience at best zero abnormal returns upon announcing overseas acquisitions

a new pragmatic approach to capital investment appraisal the financial appraisal profile fap model abstract evidence is produced to support the claim that management have not fully accepted the advice of academics in the use of sophisticated capital investment appraisal methods with managers continuing to use the non dcf methods alongside the irr and npv the concern that some managers may even abandon formal financial and project risk assessment altogether has lead to the development of a new profile approach the financial appraisal profile fap model is described in detail and illustrated through the use of an illustrative case study

new firm survival new results using a hazard function a limitation of audretsch s 1991 study of new firm survival was the level of aggregation to industries this precluded linking establishment specific characteristics such as organizational structure and size to post entry performance the purpose of this paper is to relate the post entry performance of individual establishments not only to their technological and market structure environments but also to establishment specific characteristics we do this by estimating a hazard duration function for more than 12 000 individual establishments in u s manufacturing started in 1976 by tracking their subsequent performance over a ten year period we conclude that establishment specific characteristics which audretsch was not able to capture in his earlier study play an important role in shaping the exposure to risk confronting new establishments copyright 1995 by mit press

a quantile approach to identify factors promoting renewable energy in european countries this paper analyses the impact of several factors on the use of renewable energy sources in a set of european union countries by applying a quantile regression approach we find that different factors are effective for different levels of renewable energy commitment and the magnitudes of some effects evolve in accordance with the level of renewable energy sources used consequently some policies that do not take into account the different stages could carry different effects the results suggest that the lobbying effect of the established industries hampers the development of renewable sources and that this effect is greater for lower initial level of renewable energy use the results reveal that environmental concerns have not yet achieved enough pressure to stimulate major developments on renewables we include two new drivers geographic area and european union directive 2001 77 ec that directive was effective in signaling the commitment to renewables namely for countries with lower renewables use

the relation between price and marginal cost in u s industry an examination of data on output and labor input reveals that some u s industries have marginal cost well below price the conclusion rests on the finding that cyclical variations in labor input are small compared with variations in output in booms firms produce substantially more output and sell it for a price that exceeds the costs of the added inputs the paper documents the disparity between price and marginal cost where marginal cost is estimated from annual variations in cost it considers a variety of explanations of the findings that are consistent with competition but none is found to be completely plausible

the payback method of investment appraisal a review and synthesis abstract the payback pb method of investment appraisal has been the subject of considerable comment and criticism in the literature this paper draws together some of those important literature contributions and the results from published uk and usa survey reports over the past twenty five years while many of the surveys have reported an increasing use of the discounted cash flow financial appraisal methods this has not totally been at the expense of the pb which continues to be a popular method used in industry pb has been shown to be a traditional popular primary and important method in both the uk and usa the use of pb has been shown to be positively related to capital budget size however the importance of pb was seen to be inversely related to capital budget size the use of pb has been shown by some researchers to be positively related to firm size while other researchers have reported that its use is inversely related to firm size however it has also been concluded that the use of pb was not significantly influenced by firm size pb has been shown to be less used for strategically important projects than routine replacement projects in moderately sized usa firms while on the other hand it has been shown to be an important method used in the appraisal of advanced manufacturing technology amt projects in both the uk and usa this paper reviews the pb method of investment appraisal as used in industry first as a technique identifying two of its main disadvantages and then commenting on the discounted payback method evidence showing that the pb acts in a supportive role to the sophisticted dcf methods is presented and the following topics are discussed in detail pb and owner manager conflict as a constraint in its communication role as a reciprocal of the internal rate of return as a proxy for a projects duration and pb and amt projects following the conclusions recommendations for further research are proposed

political cycles and cyclical policies we test how government revenue and expenditure depend on ideology elections and economic activity we show how fiscal forecasts can be used to identify the determinants of government revenue and expenditure the approach is illustrated using a unique unpublished swedish data set of fiscal forecasts and forecasts of economic activity we find partisan effects but no election effects revenue and expenditure but also the fiscal surplus are lower with right wing governments fiscal policy has been countercyclical revenue varies positively with nominal earnings expenditure varies negatively with real gdp

assessing the strength and effectiveness of renewable electricity feed in tariffs in european union countries in the last two decades feed in tariffs fit have emerged as one of the most popular policies for supporting renewable electricity res e generation a few studies have assessed the effectiveness of res e policies but most ignore policy design features and market characteristics e g electricity price and production cost that influence policy strength we employ 1992 2008 panel data to conduct the first econometric analysis of the effectiveness of fit policies in promoting solar photovoltaic pv and onshore wind power development in 26 european union countries we develop a new indicator for fit strength that captures variability in tariff size contract duration digression rate and electricity price and production cost to estimate the resulting return on investment we regress this indicator on added res e capacity using a fixed effects specification and find that fit policies have driven solar pv development in the eu however this effect is overstated without controlling for country characteristics and is concealed without accounting for policy design we do not find robust evidence that fit policies have driven wind power development overall we show that the interaction of policy design electricity price and electricity production cost is a more important determinant of res e development than policy enactment alone

the cyclical behavior of marginal cost and price the author examines the cyclical behavior of price marginal cost margins for u s manufac turing after 1956 short run marginal cost is markedly procyclical this is primarily due to procyclical overtime payments incurred beca use employment is not perfectly flexible in most industries output price fails to respond to the cyclical movement in marginal cost so price marginal cost margins are markedly countercyclical the res ults contradict business cycle theories that explain low production i n a recession by a high real cost of producing they support theories that explain low production in a recession by the inability of firms to sell their output copyright 1987 by american economic association

labor hoarding and the business cycle this paper investigates the sensitivity of solow residual based measures of technology shocks to labor hoarding behavior using a structural model of labor hoarding and the identifying restriction that innovations to technology shocks are orthogonal to innovations in government consumption we estimate the fraction of the variability of the solow residual that is due to technology shocks our results support the view that a significant proportion of movements in the solow residual are artifacts of labor hoarding behavior specifically we estimate that the variance of innovations to technology is roughly 50 percent less than that implied by standard real business cycle models in addition our results suggest that existing real business cycle studies substantially overstate the extent to which technology shocks account for the variability of postwar aggregate u s output

feed in tariff vs renewable portfolio standard an empirical test of their relative effectiveness in promoting wind capacity development abstract this paper examines the relative effectiveness of feed in tariff fit and renewable portfolio standard rps in promoting wind capacity development using panel data conservative estimates suggest that on average across countries fit increases total wind capacity more than rps by a magnitude of about 1800 mw when using time variant policy indicators the difference between the two policies increases to nearly 2000 mw roughly 8 of 2009 cumulative capacity in germany as for annual wind capacity since 2005 this paper has found no significant difference between fit and rps it is also found that wind energy development responds to high electricity demand and high oil dependence

small firms business dynamics and differential development of economic well being in recent years a growing stream of research has examined the relationships between structural characteristics of regions and their levels of new firm formation this empirical study aims at supplementing such findings with analyses that include other forms of business dynamics and also the possible well being effects of such dynamics from a unique and comprehensive data set that tracks all births deaths expansions and contractions of commercial business establishments in sweden 1985 89 six groups of regions with different patterns of dynamics are extracted by means of cluster analysis the clusters structural characteristics and their development of economic well being are also compared the results suggesta that the patterns of business dynamics are contingent on the structural characteristics of regions b that high formation and turnover of establishments are associated with a relative increase in economic well being andc that small autonomous firms have a vital role in this process

technology transfer and spillovers does local participation with multinationals matter this paper examines the effects on technology transfer and spillovers deriving from ownership sharing of foreign multinational affiliates more specifically we try to answer two questions using unpublished indonesian micro data firstly do establishments with minority and majority ownership differ in terms of productivity levels secondly does the degree of spillover differ with the degree of ownership in the fdi our results show that foreign establishments have comparable high levels of labor productivity and that domestic establishments benefit from spillovers however the degree of foreign ownership does neither affect the level of labor productivity in foreign establishments nor the degree of spillovers

determinants and effects of new business creation using global entrepreneurship monitor data this paper is an introduction to the present special issue dedicated to scientific research using data collected as part of the global entrepreneurship monitor gem and considering new venture creation as the hallmark of entrepreneurship after a short description of gem s theoretical and methodological background this introduction highlights the main results of seven papers which were presented at the first gem research conference in berlin from 1 to 3 april 2004 first there is empirical evidence that the role of entrepreneurial activity differs across the stages of economic development in that there appears to be a u shaped relationship between the level of development and the rate of entrepreneurship consequently a positive effect of entrepreneurial activity on economic growth is found for highly developed countries but a negative effect for developing nations second it is shown that different types of entrepreneurship may have a different impact on a nation s innovativeness and economic growth rate in particular potentially high growth business start ups and so called opportunity entrepreneurship enhance knowledge spillovers and economic growth third entrepreneurship is again shown to be a regional event that can only be understood if regional framework conditions including networks and regional policies are taken into consideration

determinants of renewable energy growth a global sample analysis abstract we investigate factors influencing country level renewable energy growth by applying fevd and pcse estimation methods in a unique sample analysis with a longer time series 1990 2010 and a broader sample size of countries including brazil russia india china and south africa than previous studies our results reveal new insights the results suggest that certain government backed energy policies impede renewable energy investments thus implying significant failures in policy design these policies may be failing mainly because of uncertainty and the likelihood of discontinuity weak voluntary approaches are introduced in order to satisfy public demand for more sustainable investments and programmes we find that these may have negative influences on the growth of renewables as well the insight gained is consistent over the estimation methods employed

adoption of solar and wind energy the roles of carbon pricing and aggregate policy support abstract this paper analyzes the roles of policies and preferences in national adoption of solar and wind energy technologies we use cross sectional and panel regressions for both the european union and a broader international sample we find that countries that price carbon emissions have gone on to adopt more solar and wind energy the aggregate level of policy support measured in euros per megawatt hour appears to have been important for solar energy adoption we also find that solar energy adoption has been larger in countries with higher proportions of people concerned about climate change in addition we assess the effects of other key explanators including financial system size and income levels

the survival of new plants start up conditions and post entry evolution abstract this paper examines the longevity of entrants we find size to be an important determinant of the chances of survival this being particularly relevant to de novo entrants as compared with entry by established firms current size is also found to be a better predictor of failure than initial size moreover our findings indicate that after controlling for size differences past growth matters for survival suggesting a partial adjustment process for firm size in the post entry period finally new plants are more likely to live longer if they enter growing industries or industries with little entry activity

state renewable energy electricity policies an empirical evaluation of effectiveness over the past decade state governments have emerged as us energy policy leaders across the country states are adopting policy instruments aimed at carbon mitigation and renewable energy deployment one of the most prevalent and innovative policy instruments is a renewable portfolio standard rps which seeks to increase the share of renewable energy electrification in the electricity market this analysis evaluates the effectiveness of state energy programs with an empirical investigation of the linkage between state rps policy implementation and the percentage of renewable energy electricity generation across states we use a variant of a standard fixed effects model referred to as a fixed effects vector decomposition with state level data from 1998 to 2006 results indicate that rps implementation is not a significant predictor of the percentage of renewable energy generation out of the total generation mix yet for each additional year that a state has an rps policy they are found to increase the total amount of renewable energy generation these findings reveal a potentially significant shortcoming of rps policies political institutions natural resource endowments deregulation gross state product per capita electricity use per person electricity price and the presence of regional rps policies are also found to be significantly related to renewable energy deployment

mnes and industrial structure in host countries a portfolio analysis of irish manufacturing ireland has been very successful in attracting foreign mnes in high technology sectors although these sectors exhibit faster growth than the traditional low technology sectors populated primarily by indigenous firms the high technology sectors are also more volatile we use portfolio theory to show that ireland s fdi strategy has led to a more diversified manufacturing sector that exhibits higher growth without a commensurate increase in volatility and risk

multinational companies technology spillovers and plant survival how does the presence of multinational companies affect plant survival in the host country we postulate that multinational companies can impact positively on plant survival through technology spillovers we examine the nature of the effect of multinationals using a cox proportional hazard model which we estimate using plant level data for irish manufacturing industries our results show that the presence of multinationals has a life enhancing effect only on indigenous plants in high tech industries suggesting the presence of technology spillovers in contrast multinationals compete with each other in low tech sectors in the host country

housing wealth business creation and dissolution in the u k regions a number of recent studies have suggested that access to collateral in the form of housing assets may be an important factor in the process of new firm formation in particular it has been suggested that variations in housing wealth may be able to account for a substantial proportion of the variation in rates of business creation within and between the u k regions re examining this issue the paper finds that once appropriate allowance is made for the presence of dynamics in the formation process the evidence for a positive relationship between housing wealth and regional rates of new business creation disappears however there is evidence in favour of the proposition that access to external collateral in this form may help established firms to stay in business

technology shocks and the labor input response evidence from firm level data we study the relationship between technology shocks and labor input on swedish firm level data using a production function approach to identify technology shocks taking standard steps yields a contractionary contemporaneous labor input response in tine with previous studies this finding may however be driven by measurement errors in the labor input variable relying on a unique feature of our data set which contains two independently measured firm specific labor input measures we can evaluate the potential bias we do not find that this bias conceals any true positive contemporaneous effect the results thus point away from standard flexible price models and toward models emphasizing firm level rigidities

time series properties of the renewable energy diffusion process implications for energy policy design and assessment confronted by increasingly tight budgets and a broad range of alternative options policy makers need empirical methods to evaluate the effectiveness of policies aimed at supporting the diffusion of renewable energy sources res rigorous empirical studies of renewable energy policy effectiveness have typically relied on panel data models to identify the most effective mechanisms a common characteristic of some of these studies which has important econometric implications is that they assume that the contribution of res to total electricity generation will be stationary around a mean this paper reviews such assumptions and rigorously tests the time series properties of the contribution of res in the energy mix for the presence of a unit root to that end we use both individual and panel unit root tests to determine whether the series exhibit non stationary behavior at the country level as well as for the panel as a whole the analysis applied to a panel of 19 oecd countries over the period 1990 2012 provides strong evidence that the time series of the renewable share of electricity output are not stationary in 17 of the 19 countries examined this finding has important implications for energy policy assessment and energy policy making which are discussed in the paper