distributed energy infrastructure paradigm community microgrids in a new institutional economics context abstract this paper provides a theoretical framework based on new institutional economics nie concepts to guide the development of community microgrids given limited application thus far of such energy systems this paper also draws on empirical studies and experiences from the planning and development of other public community infrastructure and utility services in the development of this framework it links an efficient ownership and governance structure with transactional characteristics such as asset idiosyncrasy frequency and uncertainty defined in section 3 1 the key role of the customers and the microgrid service provider and more specifically their bilateral monopoly relationship and its effects on the choice of institutional structure is highlighted the paper examines the optimum conditions for public private or hybrid financial ownership and for unified or network governance through long term contracting this allows ex ante investment uncertainty and ex post appropriation risks to be efficiently managed the analysis suggests that long term contract completeness future demand for electricity and level of uncertainty are the determining factors in the selection of institutional structure this has significant real world implications for the communities seeking to achieve electricity self sufficiency and environmental benefits through community microgrids service providers and other private or public actors

public preferences for hydrogen buses comparing interval data ols and quantile regression approaches we use a quantile regression qr approach to analyse contingent valuation estimates of public willingness to pay wtp for the air and noise pollution reductions associated with the introduction of hydrogen buses in london qr results show that variables that were not significant in interval regression or ordinary least squares regression become significant at certain quantiles along the wtp distribution in addition the determinants of wtp at the lower tail of the distribution differ from those at the higher end of the distribution our findings illustrate the usefulness of quantile regression methods for analysing contingent valuation data enhancing our understanding of the determinants of willingness to pay

mergers acquisitions and innovation performance in the telecommunications equipment industry the worldwide telecommunications equipment industry has experienced an enormous number of mergers and acquisitions m a this article examines the innovation determinants of m a activity a

formation of inflation expectations in british manufacturing industries over the past decade increasing use has been made of direct information on price expectations in empirical studies of the expectations formation process in the united states livingston s inflation expectation series have been extensively analysed by turnovsky i970 turnovsky and wachter i972 pesando i975 mcguire i976 carlson i977 mullineaux i978 i980 jacobs and jones i980 figlewski and wachter i98i and others in the united kingdom the general public expectations of consumer prices made available in the gallup polls have been studied by carlson and parkin i975 holden and peel i977 smith i982 severn 1983 and evans and gulamani i984 similar studies have also been carried out with respect to surveys conducted in germany france and most other oecd countries however despite the apparent importance of businessmen s expectations for the understanding of the inflationary process the empirical research on inflation expectations in the united kingdom has been mainly concerned with the consumers price expectations the present paper is an attempt to rectify this shortcoming by extending the empirical analysis of the inflation expectation process to british manufacturing industries using the results of the industrial trend surveys conducted by the confederation of british industries cbi the plan of the paper is as follows section i deals with the methodological problems of deriving quantitative inflation expectations series from qualitative responses such as the ones reported in the cbi surveys the subjective probability method due to theil carlson and parkin and the regression method recently proposed by the author pesaran i984 for the conversion of categorical responses to quantitative measures are briefly discussed section ii sets out the alternative models of inflation expectations formation section iii describes the data on inflation expectations in british manufacturing industries and discusses the forecasting value of alternative measures of inflation expectations section iv focuses on the issue of measurement errors in expectations and the econometric problems involved section v reports the results of estimation of alternative models of inflation expectations and investigates the quantitative impact of government policy and general economic conditions on inflation

quantification and characteristics of household inflation expectations in switzerland inflation expectations are a key variable in conducting monetary policy however these expectations are generally unobservable and only certain proxy variables exist such as surveys on inflation expectations this article offers guidance on the appropriate quantification of household inflation expectations in the swiss consumer survey where answers are qualitative in nature we apply and evaluate different variants of the probability approach and the regression approach we demonstrate that models that include answers on perceived inflation and allow for time varying response thresholds yield the best results and we show why the originally proposed approach of fluri and sporndli 1987 has resulted in heavily biased inflation expectations since the mid 1990s furthermore we discuss some of the key features of swiss household inflation expectations i e the fact that there has been a shift in expectation formation since 2000 expectations are better anchored and less adaptive and there is lower disa

asset stock accumulation and sustainability of competitive advantage given incomplete factor markets appropriate time paths of flow variables must be chosen to build required stocks of assets that is critical resources are accumulated rather than acquired in strategic factor markets barney barney j 1986 strategic factor markets expectations luck and business strategy management sci october 1231 1241 sustainability of a firm s asset position hinges on how easily assets can be substituted or imitated imitability is linked to the characteristics of the asset accumulation process time compression diseconomies asset mass efficiencies inter connectedness asset erosion and causal ambiguity

international entrepreneurship in internet enabled markets abstract despite the increasing numbers of businesses that are already using the internet to pursue international opportunities and the latent potential for such activity from rising internet adoption levels the international entrepreneurship literature has paid limited attention to the phenomenon to address this gap we review past research in international entrepreneurship as well as the broader fields of entrepreneurship international business marketing management and management information systems to identify firm level resources that are associated with the successful pursuit of international opportunities in internet enabled markets we identify three such internet related firm level resources online reputation online technological capabilities and online brand communities we develop a propositional inventory of the expected relationships identify measures expected to be useful to future scholars in this area and present the implications of our review for future international entrepreneurship research

rejecting renewables the socio technical impediments to renewable electricity in the united states if renewable power systems deliver such impressive benefits why do they still provide only 3 percent of national electricity generation in the united states as an answer this article demonstrates that the impediments to renewable power are socio technical a term that encompasses the technological social political regulatory and cultural aspects of electricity supply and use extensive interviews of public utility commissioners utility managers system operators manufacturers researchers business owners and ordinary consumers reveal that it is these socio technical barriers that often explain why wind solar biomass geothermal and hydroelectric power sources are not embraced utility operators reject renewable resources because they are trained to think only in terms of big conventional power plants consumers practically ignore renewable power systems because they are not given accurate price signals about electricity consumption intentional market distortions such as subsidies and unintentional market distortions such as split incentives prevent consumers from becoming fully invested in their electricity choices as a result newer and cleaner technologies that may offer social and environmental benefits but are not consistent with the dominant paradigm of the electricity industry continue to face comparative rejection

green electricity market development lessons from europe and the us this study compares the development and implementation of green electricity policies in germany the netherlands sweden and the united states a set of countries applying a range of policy instruments to encourage electricity from renewable energy sources a general tendency is identified that policies shift emphasis from r d stimulation towards dissemination and market application of renewable energy technologies we argue that in light of the long term nature of policy goals on energy security mitigation of climate change and environmental protection the applied range of policy instruments may be lacking in providing incentives for the long term development of new technologies clarifying policy objectives would allow careful selection of policy instruments including support for r d improved capacity building for policy implementation is also important

are renewable energy subsidies effective evidence from europe abstract we test if policy support for renewable electricity have been effective in promoting renewables in the five largest european countries in the period 2000 2010 we collect data on the exact amount of monetary incentives and the average tariffs granted the econometric analysis reveals a positive correlation between subsidies and the production of incentivized energy as well as the installed capacity we find that a 1 1c increase in the incentive tariff leads to an increase in renewable generation of 0 4 1 18 26 feed in tariffs appear to outperform tradable green certificates overall the analysis shows that these policies have been effective in promoting renewable energy both in the short and in the long run

concentration and dispersion in global industries remote electronic access and the location of economic activities we explore how the possibility of remote electronic access to markets resources and knowledge enabled by the new information and communication technologies icts might change the motivations of firms to locate activities internationally and in turn affect worldwide dispersion and concentration in an industry preliminary results from an exploratory analysis of the spatial distribution of firms in financial services suggest that the introduction of a business to business b2b trading network increases the global market participation of firms from peripheral countries but does not appear to reduce the importance of locational clusters a set of propositions is derived that provide guidance for more detailed research on the impact of icts on the strategy and structure of global industries

renewable energy consumption and income in emerging economies abstract increased economic growth and demand for energy in emerging economies is creating an opportunity for these countries to increase their usage of renewable energy this paper presents and estimates two empirical models of renewable energy consumption and income for a panel of emerging economies panel cointegration estimates show that increases in real per capita income have a positive and statistically significant impact on per capita renewable energy consumption in the long term a 1 increase in real income per capita increases the consumption of renewable energy per capita in emerging economies by approximately 3 5 long term renewable energy per capita consumption price elasticity estimates are approximately equal to 0 70

threshold effect of the economic growth rate on the renewable energy development from a change in energy price evidence from oecd countries this paper uses a panel threshold regression ptr model to investigate the influence that energy prices have on renewable energy development under different economic growth rate regimes the empirical data are obtained from each of the oecd member countries over the period from 1997 to 2006 we show that there is one threshold in the regression relationship which is 4 13 of a one period lag in the annual gross domestic product gdp growth rate the consumer price index cpi in so far as it relates to variations in energy is significantly positively correlated with the contribution of renewables to energy supply in the regime with higher economic growth but there is no relationship in the regime with lower economic growth therefore countries characterized by high economic growth are able to respond to high energy prices with increases in renewable energy use while countries characterized by low economic growth countries tend to be unresponsive to energy price changes when they come to their level of renewable energy

offshoring and the global distribution of work implications for task interdependence theory and practice a recent offshoring research network orn global survey of offshoring shows that since 2004 management concerns about operational issues on achieving the benefits of offshoring have increased significantly in this paper we examine inter task interdependence a key operational determinant of inter site interaction and communications in offshoring we analyze existing theories of interdependence to examine the extent to which they provide guidance for understanding the interaction and communication requirements between work segments that are offshored and distributed across the globe using a series of mini cases on globally distributed work gdw we show how the traditional typology of interdependence developed in the 1960s and 1970s is no longer adequate for understanding and managing task interdependencies in gdw we propose three concepts to address this problem integration interdependence hand offs and information stickiness we then show how our revised typology of interdependence enables a better understanding of the interactions and communication requirements between sites using this revised theory we propose guidelines for work design and examine their implications for practical offshoring and work distribution decisions implications for theory and practice for mnes engaged in offshore relationships are discussed

reappraising the eclectic paradigm in an age of alliance capitalism this article discusses the implications of the advent of alliance capitalism for our theorizing about the determinants of mne activity in particular it argues that due to the increasing porosity of the boundaries of firms countries and markets the eclectic or oli paradigm of international production needs to consider more explicitly the competitive advantages arising from the way firms organize their inter firm transactions the growing interdependencies of many intermediate product markets and the widening of the portfolio of the assets of districts regions and countries to embrace the external economies of interdependent activities

explaining the internationalization of ibusiness firms information and communication technologies have given rise to a new type of firm the ibusiness firm these firms offer a platform that allows users to interact with each other and generate value through user co creation of content because of this ibusiness firms face different challenges when they internationalize compared with traditional firms even those online in this article we extend existing internationalization theory to encompass this new type of organization we theorize that because ibusiness firms produce value through the creation and coordination of a network of users these firms tend to suffer greater liabilities of outsidership when expanding abroad and therefore concentrate on network and diffusion based user adoption processes as they internationalize based on a multi case investigation of a sample of ibusiness firms we develop new theory and testable hypotheses thus we make an important contribution by expanding internationalization theory to a new set of firms

is the choice of renewable portfolio standards random this study investigated factors influencing the adoption or intention to adopt renewable portfolio standards rps by individual states in the united states u s theory of adoption of innovation was applied as a conceptual framework a logistic model was used to achieve the task gross state product gsp growth rate of population grp political party dominancy education level natural resources expenditure and share of coal in electricity generation were used as explanatory variables results indicated that the model predicts the dependent variable state s choice of adopting or not adopting rps 82 times correctly out of 100 results also suggested that education followed by political party dominancy gsp and grp are shown to have large impacts on the probability of rps adoption

the profitability of electricity generating firms and policies promoting renewable energy using a cross country firm level dataset this study empirically analyses how the implemented renewable electricity promotion systems tradable green certificates vs feed in tariffs affected the pro

the economics of organization the transaction cost approach the transaction cost approach to the study of economic organization regards the transaction as the basic unit of analysis and holds that an understanding of transaction cost economizing is central to the study of organizations applications of this approach require that transactions be dimensionalized and that alternative governance structures be described economizing is accomplished by assigning transactions to governance structures in a discriminating way the approach applies both to the determination of efficient boundaries as between firms and markets and to the organization of internal transactions including the design of employment relations the approach is compared and contrasted with selected parts of the organization theory literature

network location and learning the influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation this paper presents a dynamic firm level study of the role of network resources in determining alliance formation such resources inhere not so much within the firm but reside in the interfirm networks in which firms are placed data from extensive fieldwork show that by influencing the extent to which firms have access to information about potential partners such resources are an important catalyst for new alliances especially because alliances entail considerable hazards this study also assesses the importance of firms capabilities with alliance formation and material resources as determinants of their alliance decisions i test this dynamic framework and its hypotheses about the role of time varying network resources and firm capabilities with comprehensive longitudinal multi industry data on the formation of strategic alliances by a panel of firms between 1970 and 1989 the results confirm field observations that accumulated network resources arising from firm participation in the network of accumulated prior alliances are influential in firms decisions to enter into new alliances this study highlights the importance of network resources that firms derive from their embeddedness in networks for explaining their strategic behavior copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

a comparative study of alternative methods of quantifying qualitative survey responses using napm data this article examines the effectiveness of a subjective probability approach to quantify three category qualitative responses from expectations surveys since one cannot make a judgment on the validity of estimated expectations by comparing them with ex post outcomes we use the national association of purchasing managers survey data on materials buying prices and compare them with the producer price index for intermediate materials and components for manufacturing we experimented with normal logistic and scaled f distributions and found that the approach could explain approximately 60 of the variation in the monthly series marginal improvement in the explanatory power of the procedure was noted when the imperceptible parameter was allowed to be asymmetric and variable over time

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

policies and market factors driving wind power development in the united states abstract in the united states there has been substantial recent growth in wind energy generating capacity with growth averaging 24 percent annually during the past five years about 1700 mw of wind energy capacity was installed in 2001 while another 410 mw became operational in 2002 during 2003 development activity has remained strong with an estimated 1600 mw of capacity installed with this growth an increasing number of states are experiencing investment in wind energy projects currently about half of all states host at least one wind power project this paper explores the key factors at play in the 12 states in which a substantial amount of wind energy capacity has been developed or planned some of the factors that are examined include policy drivers such as renewable portfolio standards rps federal and state financial incentives as well as market drivers such as consumer demand for green power natural gas price volatility and wholesale market rules

are the representative agent s beliefs based on efficient econometric models abstract no they are not at least not in the uk by examining gdp dynamics we find that over a time span of two decades an easy to perform adaptive expectations model systematically outperforms other standard predictors in terms of squared forecasting errors this should reduce model uncertainty and thereby lead to increased homogeneity in expectations however data collected in surveys show that great variety in expectations persists even in this situation moreover granger tests indicate that the forecasting fitness of the best predictor can be further enhanced by the use of information provided by survey expectations these results based on real time data and robust to both several predictors and nonlinearities weaken the general validity of approaches assuming predictions based on efficient econometric models

internalization theory for the digital economy we study the internationalization of digital service multinational enterprises smncs focusing on how digitalization alters internalization theory s assumptions about the nature of firm specific assets fsas and the theory s predictions about governance choices in cross border transactions we invoke simon s proc am philos soc 106 6 467 482 1962 near decomposability concept to explain how digitalization enables two distinct types of fsas technology and human capital applying the ideas of modularity and skill complexity we further distinguish between core versus peripheral technology fsas and between generic versus advanced human capital fsas building on the transferability and appropriability of these strategic assets we theorize on the fsas internalization propensity in the digital age we propose that with rising digitalization the network plays a dual role as a governance mode and as a strategic resource integrating insights from network economics particularly increasing returns to scale we propose that network advantages on emerge as a distinct strategic resource that merits separate investigation from the traditional asset based oa and transaction based ot advantages

green energy market development in germany effective public policy and emerging customer demand this paper reviews the development of renewable energy in germany from 1973 to 2003 it investigates the relative importance of energy policy and green power marketing in shaping the renewable energy market more than a decade of consistent policy support for renewables under the feed in law streg and its successor eeg has been an important driver for increasing renewable electricity generation to date putting the country in a better position than most of its peers when it comes to achieving european union targets for renewable energy green power marketing driven by customer demand on the other hand is growing but has had limited measurable impact so far we discuss potential intangible benefits of green power marketing and scenarios for future market development the paper concludes with lessons that can be learned from the german case for policy design and market development in other countries

is renewable energy effective in promoting growth abstract this paper applies panel data techniques to analyze the role of the various energy sources in economic growth for a set of 24 european countries 1990 2007 controlling for energy consumption and energy dependency the results suggest that the negative effect of the use of renewables supplants the positive effect of creating income by exploiting a natural resource locally and thus growth does not appear to improve with the change towards renewables the high costs of promoting renewables are probably being placed excessively upon the economy namely by increasing the costs of electricity tariffs thus inducing a deceleration in economic activity fossil fuels lead to dissimilar effects on growth while natural gas does not appear to be relevant in explaining growth coal hampers the capacity for growth whereas the use of oil stimulates that growth this is in line with productive structures that are deeply grounded in fossil fuels particularly oil

renewable energy consumption co2 emissions and oil prices in the g7 countries abstract economic and societal issues related to energy security and global warming is placing greater emphasis on the consumption of renewable energy this paper presents and estimates an empirical model of renewable energy consumption for the g7 countries panel cointegration estimates show that in the long term increases in real gdp per capita and co2 per capita are found to be major drivers behind per capita renewable energy consumption these results are robust across two different panel cointegration estimators oil price increases have a smaller although negative impact on renewable energy consumption deviations from equilibrium are driven mostly by the error correction term as opposed to short term shocks short term deviations from the long term equilibrium take anywhere from between 1 3 years france and 7 3 years japan to correct

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

inflation expectations revisited this paper describes the construction and main features of a new monthly time series for the mean and standard deviation of consumer inflation expectations in the united kingdom in the years 1961 85 based on a number of consumer surveys this involves generalizing to four and five category tendency survey data the method used by j a carlson and m parkin 1975 to quantify the results of a three category tendency survey of inflation expectations the new series exhibit very different time series properties from the original carlson parkin data copyright 1988 by the london school of economics and political science

renewable generation across italian regions spillover effects and effectiveness of european regional fund abstract this paper investigates on the determinant factors that drive the italian regions toward a sustainable development path and evaluates the effectiveness of european regional development incentives in promoting investments in renewable energy sources res starting from the consideration that there are spillover effects between similar regions first we identify the factors that capture these similarities then we use them to evaluate their relevance in determining the success of the investments in res an econometric analysis based on the use of spatial panel specification model is implemented to support the hypotheses two important results emerge from the study the first is the identification of regional determinants of res production that are driven by the similarities between regions and that can be interpreted as guidelines in the policy choices in support of investments the second is the lack of effectiveness of the incentives in support of res results indicate that the capacity of some regional governments to direct the funds allocated by the central government or european commission towards efficient production of renewable energy is likely limited and these incentives have been undone

dynamic capabilities what are they this paper focuses on dynamic capabilities and more generally the resource based view of the firm we argue that dynamic capabilities are a set of specific and identifiable processes such as product development strategic decision making and alliancing they are neither vague nor tautological although dynamic capabilities are idiosyncratic in their details and path dependent in their emergence they have significant commonalities across firms popularly termed best practice this suggests that they are more homogeneous fungible equifinal and substitutable than is usually assumed in moderately dynamic markets dynamic capabilities resemble the traditional conception of routines they are detailed analytic stable processes with predictable outcomes in contrast in high velocity markets they are simple highly experiential and fragile processes with unpredictable outcomes finally well known learning mechanisms guide the evolution of dynamic capabilities in moderately dynamic markets the evolutionary emphasis is on variation in high velocity markets it is on selection at the level of rbv we conclude that traditional rbv misidentifies the locus of long term competitive advantage in dynamic markets overemphasizes the strategic logic of leverage and reaches a boundary condition in high velocity markets copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

explaining the growth of e commerce corporations eccs an extension and application of the eclectic paradigm the emergence of the internet has created a dynamic electronic marketplace where a new species of e commerce corporations are taking root however the factors affecting the growth of these e commerce corporations is a relatively unexplored area in international business this study contributes to the international business literature in two significant ways first it attempts to critically evaluate the major international business theories to identify the variables affecting the growth of e commerce corporations second the proposed framework in the study extends the explanatory power of the eclectic paradigm not only by interpreting the paradigm in the context of e business but also by including an element of network based advantages to the oli configuration

determinants of renewable energy development in the eu countries a 20 year perspective abstract the objective of the paper is to identify factors which determine energy policy in the eu countries in the middle of 1990s this objective is achieved in three stages first the changes in the distribution of res in 26 eu countries in the period between 1995 and 2014 are investigated the analysis demonstrates that over the last 20 years the eu countries diversify the res they use which results in substantial changes in their distribution second the distribution of energy sources in 1995 is described as it is assumed that the distribution might be a crucial factor influencing energy policy in each country third several other factors related to energy security environmental concerns economy and politics are considered as potential determinants of renewable energy development two statistical methods of variable selection namely the best subset regression and the lars method reveal that the present in 2014 share of res in the energy mix significantly depends on the condition of the eu countries in the middle of 1990s the distribution of energy sources in 1995 is the crucial determinant of renewable energy development countries without their own fossil fuel sources are the ones which develop renewable energy to the greatest extent other important factors boosting re development include gdp per capita concentration of energy supply swi and the costs of consumption of energy obtained from fossil fuels in relation to gdp

the effect of the feed in system policy on renewable energy investments evidence from the eu countries abstract we study the effect of the feed in system fis policy on wind and solar photovoltaic energy investments in the european union eu over the time period between 1992 and 2015 considering the heterogeneity of the policies and market conditions across the eu countries we develop a fis subsidy performance indicator that distinguishes feed in tariff fit from feed in premium fip and considers other important aspects of each of these contracts such as the duration tariff price energy spot price and production costs as well as the market conditions we conclude that the mere existence of the fis policy does not necessarily enhance renewable energy investments it depends on the type of the fis contract and its features and may vary across the different sources of renewable energy some of our findings are new to the literature and can have important implications in the development of new public investment incentives to promote renewable energy

the influence of spatial effects on wind power revenues under direct marketing rules abstract in many countries investments in renewable technologies have been accelerated by fixed feed in tariffs for electricity from renewable energy sources res while fixed tariffs accomplish this purpose they lack incentives to align the res production with price signals today the intermittency of most res increases the volatility of electricity prices and makes balancing supply and demand more complicated therefore support schemes for res have to be modified recently germany launched a scheme which gives wind power operators the monthly choice to either receive a fixed tariff or to risk a subsidized access to the wholesale electricity market this paper quantifies revenues of wind turbines under this new subsidy and analyzes whether when and where producers may profit we find that the position of the wind turbine within the country significantly influences revenues in terms of eur mwh the results are important for wind farm operators deciding whether electricity should be sold in the fixed feed in tariff or in the wholesale market however no location is persistently i e in every calendar month of the year above the average this limits the effect of the new subsidy scheme on investment locations and long term improvements in the aggregated wind feed in profile

transaction cost economics in real time this paper attempts to place the theq of the boundaries of thejirm within the context of the passage of time more precisely it resurrects and places in a modem frame some of the insights of the chsical and marshallian theories of organization the modem reinterpretation of those theories centers around the capabilities view of the jirm taken together with governance costs the capabilities ofjirm and market determine the boundaries of the jirm in the short run ovw time capabilities change as firms and markets learn which implies a kind of information or knowledge cost the cost of trandewing the firm s capability to the market w vice versa these dynamic governance costs are the costs of persuading negotiating and coordinating with and teaching others they arise in the face of change notably txchnological and organizational innovation in fit they are the costs of not having the capabilities you need when you need them dynamic transaction costs provide an explanation for vertical integration that is arguably more general than those dominant in the literature in the face of uncertainty and divwgent views ofthe future common ownership of multiple stages of production is a supwior institutional arrangement for coordinating systemic change asset specrfity is neither necessary nor suffient for this to be true dynamic governance costs may also affit internal organization it may sometimes be costly in 3 terms of persuasion negotiation and teaching to create within the firm capabilities readily available on the market indeed in cases in which systemic coordination is not 4 the issue the market may turn out to be the superior institution of coordination in e 2 genwal the capabilities view of the jirm suggests that we look atfim2 and market as alternative and sometimes overlapping institutions of learning 1 transaction costs in the long rzln and the short 9 x classical and neoclassical perspectives

e commerce readiness institutional environment and international competitiveness a systematic cross country analysis of e commerce activity reveals that although physical infrastructure explains much of the variation in basic internet use e commerce activity also depends significantly on a supportive institutional environment chief among the characteristics of such an environment are national respect for the rule of law and secondarily the availability of credible payment channels such as credit cards these results suggest that an institutional environment that facilitates the building of transactional integrity is critical to the development of e commerce

expectations output and inflation the european experience abstract this paper introduces new measures of the mean and variance of inflation and growth expectations based on tendency survey data from four major european economies the expectations measures are technically irrational but more accurate than naive alternatives expectations errors do not persist for more than a year unexpected inflation and uncertainties about inflation and growth play the roles assigned them by new classical macroeconomic theory respectively raising and lowering real activity all the expectations uncertainties and errors appear more closely correlated across countries than experience would justify suggesting that unpredictable disturbances typically have an internal rather than an international origin

the influence of hymer s dissertation on the theory of foreign derect investment the great contribution of stephen hymer s seminal dissertation 1960 was to escape from the intellectual straightjacket of neoclassical type trade and financial theory and move us towards an analysis of the multinational enterprise mne based upon industrial organization theory the magnitude of this breakthrough can be put into perspective by considering the state of the art when hymer wrote twenty five years ago in 1960 the prevailing explanation of international capital movements relied exclusively upon a neoclassical financial theory of portfolio flows in this frictionless world of perfect competition with no transaction costs capital moves in response to changes in interest rate or profit differentials see carl iversen 1936 according to this arbitrage theory capital is assumed to be transacted between independent buyers and sellers that is there is no role for the mne at the time there was no separate theory of foreign direct investment fdi the work did not even ask the question of why is there fdi despite the evidence of sectoral cross investments and the existence of large mnes with intra industry trade if anything the early work on fdi focused upon the where of investment in a particular nation or industry for example dunning 1958 was chiefly interested in explaining u s fdi in britain there was little interest in understanding the reasons for the mne or the nature of its operations the pioneering conceptual insight of hymer was to break out of the arid mold of international trade and investment theory and focus attention upon the mne per se this permits us to treat fdi as a modality by which firms extend their territorial horizons abroad the unique feature of fdi is a mechanism by which the mne maintains control over productive activities outside its national boundaries that is fdi means international production in this view fdi is more than a process by which assets or claims are exchanged internationally see robert aliber 1970 1983 hymer s great insight was in focusing attention upon the mne as the institution for international production rather than international exchange until hymer articulated the process of fdi as an international extension of industrial organization theory it was not possible to understand why the mne transfers intermediate products such as knowledge or technology among its units across different nations while still retaining property rights over such assets today it is widely recognized that the theory of fdi i e international production is primarily about the transfer of nonfinancial and ownershipspecific intangible assets by the mne which needs to appropriate and control the rate of use of its internalized advantage s see rugman 1981 david teece 1981 1982 richard caves 1982 and mark casson 1983 in this paper we first acknowledge hymer s contribution to the theory of fdi and then move on to reinterpret his dissertation in the light of the modern theory of the mne we tdiscussants raymond vernon harvard university robert z aliber university of chicago paul streeten boston university

are perceptions of inflation rational some evidence for sweden this survey paper argues that walrasian markets and monetary exchan ge are alternative not complementary arrangements for coordinating economic activity that if one realizes this many informational anomalies and price rigidities that appear irrational in a walrasia n context can be understood as the outcome of maximizing behavior in a monetary economy and that the precautionary approach to modelin g the demand for money takes on a particular importance in this way of looking at things empirical evidence on the demand for money is cite d in support of this point of view which tends to reinstate the quantity of money as an important economic variable in contrast to the new classical vision of the economy whi ch downgrades money s importance this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

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

short term projects and emergent careers evidence from hollywood the hollywood film industry is considered as a system of recurrent ties among the various major participants who usually work under short term contracts for single films this form of project based organization in seen as a response to uncertainty and risk in the film industry the paper examines the ways in which independent contractors producers directors cinematographers and actors organize and operate to reduce uncertainty and risk and to increase profits the analysis of data from 2 430 films made in the period 1965 80 establishes patterns of recurrent ties among participants who are at comparable levels of cumulative productivity with respect to earnings oscars oscar nominations and number of previous films the paper also considers the degree to which film earnings are influenced by the past productivity of the major participants

green electricity policies in the netherlands an analysis of policy decisions over the last decades fundamental changes can be observed in both market conditions and the national policy framework for green electricity in the netherlands the dutch government has regularly intervened in markets demonstrating fundamental shifts in policy and approach this study aims to analyse the developments in renewable energy policy making in the netherlands it assesses changes in the choice of policy instruments and target groups the role of stakeholders and offers explanations behind policy successes and failures dutch green electricity policy over the last decade can be characterised roughly by three phases in the early 1990s the government negotiated voluntary agreements with the energy distribution sector on targets for green electricity sales which were never met in the second half of the 1990s a regulatory energy tax was introduced from which customers of green electricity were exempt this led to a substantial increase in demand which was largely met by green electricity imports and did not lead to additional domestic renewable energy capacity finally a change in policy has taken place recently 2003 shifting the focus from promotion of demand to the promotion of supply through a system of regulated feed in tariffs despite the renewable energy policies growth of the renewable energy market in the netherlands has been small and targets have not been fully met the dutch government has not yet succeeded in substantially reducing market uncertainties and in building confidence among market parties because the policies have not been stable and policy objectives have frequently been partly ambiguous in addition the influence of stakeholders in renewable energy policy making has been small which has the early acceptance and implementation of alternative policies

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