how do diffusion entrepreneurs spread policies insights from performance based financing in sub saharan africa abstract there has been growing interest in the diffusion of policy innovations across countries research on policy diffusion is characterised by coherent explanatory models that assess the importance of diffusion mechanisms this study takes a different perspective on diffusion studies and advances public policy literature by introducing the concept of diffusion entrepreneurs these entrepreneurs represent groups of individuals networks and organisations promoting a certain policy innovation with a view to gain influence first drawing from the diffusion literature and linking it to studies investigating policy diffusion in polycentric contexts we introduce analytical categories to study diffusion entrepreneurs key features and actions second to illustrate the analytical value of the concept we conduct an in depth analysis of the literature on the diffusion entrepreneurs of health performance based financing pbf in sub saharan africa we show how and why this recently diffused policy innovation provides a unique case for demonstrating our conceptual notion in pbf a nexus of strongly dedicated diffusion entrepreneurs have strived to induce policy diffusion specifically we explore how the features of pbf diffusion entrepreneurs and their actions affect the outcomes of diffusion processes lastly we reflect on the relevance of our conceptual propositions and offer practical insights to guide future investigations

investment and market dominance we analyze a model of oligopolistic competition with ongoing investment special cases include incremental investment patent races learning by doing and network externalities we investigate circumstances under which a firm with low costs or high quality will extend its initial lead through investments to this end we derive a new comparative statics result for general games with strategic substitutes which applies to our investment game finally we highlight plausible countervailing effects that arise when investments of leaders are less effective than those of laggards or in dynamic games when firms are sufficiently patient

dynamic economies of scope in the pharmaceutical industry pharmaceutical industry estimates are used to simulate the innovative performance over time of firms with different capabilities competitive advantage due to dynamic scope economies is small during the initial exploration of technological trajectories but subsequently grows firms exploring older trajectories have an advantage in product introductions if scope economies are large products based on older trajectories retain a cost advantage these results suggest that incumbents can have a competitive advantage over technological pioneers because of the existence of complementary assets copyright 1998 by oxford university press

kick starting diffusion explaining the varying frequency of preferential trade agreements environmental provisions by their initial conditions most recent preferential trade agreements ptas include environmental provisions while a number of these environmental provisions remain rare and are incorporated in just a few ptas others are widely popular and are duplicated in more than 100 ptas we still lack a convincing explanation for this varying frequency while the diffusion literature typically tries to explain how diffusion occurs we investigate why certain provisions diffuse more often than others we hypothesise that the initial conditions under which provisions first emerge determine the scope of their diffusion our results support this hypothesis and indicate that provisions originating from intercontinental agreements diffuse more often than others at the same time provisions first designed by economically powerful or environmentally credible countries are not related to more frequent occurrences of diffusion these findings are of interest for the literatures on international institutions design interaction and diffusion

world bank directives domestic interests and the politics of human capital investment in latin america recent studies underscore the importance of international organizations in transmitting norms ideas and values to developing countries but has this diffusion influenced government policy in less developed countries during the past two decades the world bank has emphasized the need for third world governments to increase the stock of human capital by investing in education and health specifically it has encouraged developing countries to shift an increasing share of their resources toward primary education the authors examine 13 latin american countries between 1980 and 1992 to establish the relationship between world bank project lending and government investment in human capital they combine time series cross sectional analysis with field research to evaluate the world bank s influence on government spending on education and health although the world bank may be successful in convincing developing country technocrats to invest in people this research suggests that it is less successful in co

strategic group formation and performance the case of the u s pharmaceutical industry 1963 1982 the focus of this paper is on three major questions 1 what is the theoretical rationale for the strategic group concept 2 does strategic group membership have performance implications and 3 are strategic groups and membership in strategic groups stable characteristics of industries a statistical procedure is proposed to longitudinally identify strategic groups the empirical setting is the u s pharmaceutical industry over the period 1963 82 while performance differences are found in terms of market share profitability differences between groups are not observed neither are differences found in terms of risk and risk adjusted performance these results are attributed to the existence of performance variation within each strategic group a dynamic model of competitive repositioning is proposed which helps integrate the findings from the study

inspiration coalition and substitution external influences on postcommunist transformations there has been a recent explosion of interest in the external influences on the political and economic transformations of postcommunist states this article consolidates several analytical advances in this literature and distills three main functions of external actors namely to lengthen the time horizons of postcommunist politicians to expand the circle of interested reformers and to deter opponents of reform the article argues that a focus on external influences is a growth area for good conceptual work only if it addresses the union of foreign and domestic influences rather than treating them as stylized alternative explanations the central point is that outside actors should be considered as striving to influence the choices of existing domestic actors with whom they can be seen to form a kind of informal coalition at bottom outsiders do best through a combination of strategies strengthening domestic actors already committed to their approach winning over new domestic actors to their priorities and preventing the unconvinced from obstructing reforms

coal restructuring in spain continuity and uncertainty abstract the policies of coal energy are currently undergoing a significant change at the european community level energy concerns are dominated by environmental commitments that seem to demand coal s disappearance the countries that for years have supplied the european energy market with this resource have confronted their future challenges in differing ways the history of the energy sector in spain has been marked by important changes and coal has been a key factor in this process membership in the european union has constituted a clear transition for a historically subsidized and protected sector that now faces an uncertain role in the national energy market the aim of this paper is to offer an overview and analysis of the mechanisms that have been implemented in the energy sector the first part analyzes the rationalization policies that preceded spanish entry into the eu giving a detailed description of the complex programs designed by the government to help mining companies the second part analyzes later systems aimed at helping the coal industry that were implemented after the eu imposed new criteria and objectives these systems led to the so called mixed model of rationalization this model which is completely different from that implemented in other member states is based on maintaining a system of subsidies that discriminate between public and private companies the third part examines the objectives of the current system and the plans projected for the future in the context of the eu s adoption of an energy strategy that seeks to reconcile a self sufficient energy supply with adherence to environmental commitments

theories of policy diffusion lessons from latin american pension reform what accounts for the waves of policy diffusion that increasingly sweep across regions of the world why do many diverse countries adopt similar changes focusing on the spread of chilean style pension privatization in latin america this article assesses the relative merit of four theoretical explanations that scholars of diffusion have proposed as the principal mechanism driving innovations spread these approaches emphasize external pressures emanating especially from international financial institutions the quest for symbolic or normative legitimacy rational learning and cost benefit calculation and cognitive heuristics respectively the article assesses which one of these frameworks can best account for the three distinctive features of diffusion namely its wavelike temporal pattern its geographical clustering and the spread of similarity amid diversity while several approaches contribute to understanding policy diffusion the analysis suggests that the cognitive psychological framework offers a particularly persuasive account of the spread of pension reform

innovation and strategic divergence an empirical study of the u s pharmaceutical industry from 1920 to 1960 today firms employing two distinct survival strategies 1 innovation and 2 imitation coexist in the u s pharmaceutical industry history indicates that this intraindustry heterogeneity did not exist prior to 1940 this study empirically investigates the origin of this strategic divergence by focusing on changes in firms r d inputs and outputs it finds that some u s pharmaceutical firms responded to the opportunity presented by the discovery of antibiotics in the 1940s by investing more in r d while many others did not over time the innovators dominated in developing new drugs and the gap between innovators and imitators steadily increased these findings also shed light on the genesis of strategic groups a phenomenon that is not yet well understood

ideas versus resources explaining the flat tax and pension privatization revolutions in eastern europe and the former soviet union this article examines the rapid spread of pension privatization and the flat tax in former communist countries to understand why new policy ideas take hold and to elucidate the role played by mater

social protection and economic integration the politics of pension reform in an era of capital mobility in the past two decades of the 20th century governments around the world began to apportion greater responsibility for old age income provision to individuals and market forces through the privati

who learns from what in policy diffusion processes the idea that policy makers in different states or countries may learn from one another has fascinated scholars for a long time but little systematic evidence has been produced so far this article improves our understanding of this elusive argument by distinguishing between the policy and political consequences of reforms and by emphasizing the conditional nature of learning processes using a directed dyadic approach and multilevel methods the analysis of unemployment benefits retrenchment in oecd countries demonstrates that policy makers learn selectively from the experience of others right governments tend to be more sensitive to information on the electoral consequences of reforms while left governments are more likely to be influenced by their policy effects

the red queen in action the longitudinal effects of capital investments in the mobile telecommunications sector organizations undertake capital investments in technology to generate revenues or decrease costs and thereby enhance profitability however red queen type responses by competing organizations in the form of rapid imitation and escalating of technology investments erode the ability of the investing organizations to sustain gains in profitability productivity gains from these investments may persist but they may not translate into sustained profitability gains owing to declining prices brought about by a hypercompetitive environment the emergence and erosion of benefits attributable to capital investments is examined by decomposing profitability into productivity price recovery product mix and capacity utilization and by regressing each performance measure on past technology investments a polynomial distributed lag model is estimated with quarterly data for 30 firms in the mobile telecommunications services sector from 1996 to 2005 the results indicate that capital investments are positively associated with productivity of current and future periods and their association with profitability is only positive in the future after six quarters these results highlight a unique outcome of the red queen hypothesis simply by imitating learning and investing in technology due to competition is beneficial to all firms in the industry

sustainability in mining minerals and energy new processes pathways and human interactions for a cautiously optimistic future the supply of minerals and energy is critical to global society however this supply is associated with social and environmental impacts leading to concerns of generational and intergenerational equity in light of these concerns a call for papers for a special volume on the mining industry was issued with the view that such academic work could assist in reducing the negative impacts associated with this industry this paper introduces the special volume the sustainability agenda of the minerals and energy supply and demand network an integrative analysis of ecological ethical economic and technological dimensions the special volume contains 84 articles divided into several themes sustainability accounting and reporting corporate social responsibility future mining challenges integrative frameworks for sustainability management aspects mining in a developing context and new frontiers in the oil and gas industry the special volume also includes two letters on contemporary issues with commentaries on these from experts in the fields viz community conflict and land rehabilitation insights obtained across these themes are summarized and recommendations are made of what is needed to build upon the findings of this special volume a research agenda is proposed for the future from the gaps and synergies identified the overall contribution of this special volume is that it renews the debate on the sustainability challenges for the mining industry and provides transdisciplinary insights into resolving some of these challenges

assessing the influence of manufacturing sectors on electricity demand a cross country input output approach abstract the production and consumption of electricity is a major source of co2 emissions in europe and elsewhere in turn the manufacturing sectors are significant end users of electricity in contrast to most papers in the literature which focus on the supply side this study tackles the demand side of electricity an input output approach combined with a sensitivity analysis has been developed to analyse the direct and indirect consumptions of electricity by eighteen manufacturing sectors in fifteen european countries with indirect electricity demand related to the purchase of industrial products from other sectors which in turn require the consumption of electricity in their manufacturing processes we identify the industrial transactions and sectors which account for a greater share of electricity demand in addition the impact of an electricity price increase on the costs and prices of manufacturing products is simulated through a price model allowing us to identify those sectors whose manufacturing costs are most sensitive to an increase in the electricity price

individual team incentives and managing competitive balance in sports leagues an empirical analysis of major league baseball abstract major league baseball and other professional sports leagues have long been concerned with competitive imbalances caused by differences in local revenues the fear is that in the absence of salary caps or other regulatory mechanisms smaller market teams will be unable to remain competitive this research uses a structural dynamic programming model to analyze ownership s payroll investment decisions this model estimates the relationship between optimal payrolls and local market populations and the influence of long term customer equity dynamics on payroll investments in addition the author analyzes the impact of a recent policy intervention that implemented revenue transfers from high local revenue markets to low local revenue markets the statistical results indicate that market population has a significant impact on the value of a team s payroll investments for example optimal payrolls double as the population increases from 2 5 million to 7 5 million furthermore rather than improving com

promoting policy reforms the twilight of conditionality abstract for the past 15 years the world bank often in cooperation with the international monetary fund and sometimes also with bilateral donors has tried to encourage policy reforms through conditions attached to structural or sector adjustment loans in the 1990s however such loans are a rapidly dwindling portion of the bank s disbursements this article examines major reasons for this shift including increased flows of private capital democratization the changing nature of the reform agenda itself and growing bank emphasis on ownership reduced direct conditionality is likely to be replaced in part by growing selectivity the results may well be constructive but will not ease tensions in the aid relationship

drivers of institutional change around the world the case of ifrs today more than ever it is crucial to understand the dynamic and intricate institutional landscape that mnes operate in however the drivers of institutional change are still little understood we focus on a recent fundamental institutional change the worldwide switch to international financial reporting standards ifrs the switch to ifrs was unexpected and not particularly welcomed by mnes given that most national accounting systems in the pre ifrs period were considered to be well aligned to the local cultural and environmental characteristics of each country we test the drivers of this institutional change in a sample of 168 countries between 2002 and 2012 using empirical constructs from policy diffusion theory our findings show that the country level decisions to adopt ifrs are not driven by local determinants but instead by adoption decisions by other neighbouring countries and influential organizations we find evidence for competition learning and emulation as driving forces for the international spread of ifrs we conclude that the switch to ifrs was not driven by an economic rationale only and diffused beyond the influence and interest of mnes understanding these drivers is essential because it enables management to anticipate and respond to institutional changes and consequently enhance performance and create competitive advantage

what exactly are technological regimes intra industry heterogeneity in the organization of innovation activities this empirical study analyzes the patterns of innovation within and across industries using firm level survey data from finland and denmark the theoretical starting point is evolutionary theory with its premise that firms in different technological regimes pursue different paths to innovation similar modes of behaviour are found in the two datasets and they closely correspond to those found in earlier studies contrary to prevailing assumptions however the results show that industries are not at all uniform in terms of how firms innovate in almost all four or five digit nace industries three or more different modes of innovation can be identified this suggests that firms strategic differentiation or local search activities overcome pressures in the technological environment towards homogenous behaviour at least in the short term

the mining industry under the thumb of politicians the environmental consequences of the spanish coal decree abstract the so called coal decree royal decree 143 2010 and subsequent royal decree 1221 2010 have modified the historical use of coal trends in the spanish economy since 2010 the use of domestic coal in spain s electricity sector will be promoted by the royal decree until 2014 this energy strategy on the one hand and political decision on the other were advanced under the flag of energy security and the fulfillment of the 9th principle of the international council of mining and metals icmm which specified that sustainable development in mining areas should maintain among other things employment the mutual understanding between the government and the local mining industry is confronted with vast criticism at the institutional firm and social levels regarding a the disparities generated between electricity generation technologies b the increase of electricity market prices the national competition commission reported the royal decree and c subsequent environmental harm the coal decree has changed the gradual decrease of coal in the spanish energy mix since the end of the 1990s the environmental efficiency gains accumulated over the past several years would be lost as a result of this change of direction in policy in the last fifteen years the coal industry in spain has been under pressure from political decisions that have forced the dismantling of the industry a labor reconversion of mining areas and the conversion of coal fired power plants into combined cycle gas power plants this situation considerably reduced co2 emissions from coal combustion in spain improving the environmental efficiency of the entire economy for many years nevertheless the implementation of the royal decree has changed these trends this paper will examine the environmental consequences of the coal decree from 2010 to 2014 based on actual economic and energy demand requirements and actual electricity mix composition a post keynesian energy age model to forecast energy demand and the derived co2 emissions will be applied to evaluate the change in the reduction of emissions observed in the electricity sector since 2005 and in the spanish economy since 2010 the results will be compared to other alternative scenarios of co2 emissions evolution

fortune favors the prepared firm a critical factor in industrial competitiveness is the ability of firms to exploit new technological developments we term this ability a firm s absorptive capacity and argue that such a capability not only enables a firm to exploit new extramural knowledge but to predict more accurately the nature of future technological advances we develop a stylized model in which we focus exclusively on firms decisions to invest in their absorptive capacities we first examine a monopolist s investment decision analyzing the path dependence of its investment and the effect of uncertainty we then consider the effect of competition by modeling the impact of entry on an incumbent s investment behavior implications for management and public policy are then discussed

coordination economies advertising and search behavior in retail markets we introduce a model of the retail firm in which consumers and active firms benefit collectively from coordination of sales at fewer firms using this model we show that ostensibly uninformative advertising plays a key role in bringing about coordination economies by directing consumer search toward firms that offer the best deals optimal consumer search takes the form of a simple rule of thumb that uses observed advertising information to guide search both industry concentration and social surplus are higher in the presence of advertising relative to a no advertising benchmark jel d83 l15 many observed advertisements seem to be at odds with rational behavior in a variety of ads mostly on tv and radio multiproduct sellers provide little hard information choosing instead to impart only vague slogans that are suggestive of good deals examples are plentiful a hardware store

ideology and voter preferences as determinants of financial globalization we propose that the global spread of ideas affects international economic openness policies and that to omit ideology as an explanatory variable for economic globalization is to risk omitted variable bias using voting data we create measures of global ideology regarding economic openness and propose that changes in both global and domestic ideology influence how open or closed to international finance an economy is we also test other influences on liberalization including proposed state centered diffusion mechanisms using pcsts and system gmm models we estimate the determinants of change in international capital account regulation for 82 countries 1955 to 1999 we thereby examine diffusion of both liberalizations 1950s and 1990s and closures 1960s and 1970s changes in both global and domestic ideology robustly influence liberalization and closure the capital account policies of neighboring countries positively and of the leading economies negatively also influenced a country s capital account liberalization

how does income redistribution affect households material footprint abstract this paper presents a study of the evolution of spanish households material footprint for the period 2006 to 2013 the method proposed combines the multiregional input output model with spanish national data on household consumption according to social group material footprint has been affected by the 2008 economic crisis in relative terms the share of spanish households material footprint with respect to total material footprint decreased drastically from 70 7 in 2006 to 50 8 in 2011 this reduction can be mainly attributed to the construction sector crash 34 4 of the reduction is due to construction materials followed by biomass 29 metals 27 1 and fossil fuels 26 1 by type of household the material footprint exhibits a scale effect while consumption and income levels grow and this is accompanied by a global teleconnection effect which varies from 62 for biomass to 64 for metals to 82 for construction materials to 95 for fossil fuels given the context of increasing income inequality we perform one redistribution simulation from high to middle and low income households finding a material footprint increase in all cases the most materialized consumer basket is that corresponding to households with incomes between 1500 and 1999 euros above that income level the growing weight of expenditures on services reduces the use of materials importantly social income redistribution and environmental material footprint sustainability will become incompatible if responsibility is transferred only to households

spatial effects in dyadic data political units often spatially depend in their policy choices on other units this also holds in dyadic settings where as in much of international relations research analysis focuses on the interaction or relation between a pair or dyad of two political units yet with few exceptions social scientists have analyzed contagion in monadic datasets only consisting of individual political units this article catego rizes all possible forms of spatial effect modeling in both undirected and directed dyadic data where it is possible to distinguish the source and the target of interaction for example exporter0importer aggressor0victim and so on this approach enables scholars to formulate and test novel mechanisms of contagion thus ideally paving the way for studies analyzing spatial dependence between dyads of political units to illus trate the modeling flexibility gained from an understanding of the full set of specifi cation options for spatial effects in dyadic data we examine the diffusion of bilateral investment treaties between developed and developing countries building and extend ing on elkins guzman and simmons s 2006 study however we come to different conclusions about the channels through which bilateral investment treaties diffuse rather than a capital importing country being influenced by the total number of bits signed by other capital importers as modeled in their original article we find that a capital importing country is more likely to sign a bit with a capital exporter only if other competing capital importers have signed bits with this very same capital exporter similarly other capital exporters bits with a specific capital importer influ ence an exporter s incentive to agree on a bit with the very same capital importer

an empirical examination of the pollution haven hypothesis for india towards a green leontief paradox using input output analysis we examine whether india can be regarded as a pollution haven we calculate the extra co2 so2 and nox emissions induced by 1 billion rupees of additional exports this is compared with the reduction of indian pollution caused by an import increase of equal size in contrast to what the pollution haven hypothesis states for developing countries we find that india considerably gains from extra trade comparing 1996 1997 with 1991 1992 the gains have only increased indicating that india has moved further away from being a pollution haven the outcome is robust to changes in the underlying assumptions

governance institutions and adaptation costs evidence from the fall of the berlin wall this paper investigates how institutions governing the employment relationship influence firms adaptation to environmental changes after the berlin wall fell migration from east germany accounted for an abrupt increase in the supply of a key resource labor in the west i study responses to this disruption among firms in the economically important machinery and equipment industry i find that western firms adapted to migration by increasing employment unless they were affiliated with a works council an institution that limits the firm s autonomy in managing its workforce i also find evidence of institution contingent responses to migration in two areas of firm strategy vertical boundaries and the focus on exploration versus exploitation the results suggest that hybrid i e less hierarchical governance institutions increase adaptation costs the results also indicate that such adaptation costs have implications for multiple aspects of firm decision making that are nominally beyond the scope of those governance institutions this paper was accepted by bruno cassiman business strategy

the transition of germany s energy production green economy low carbon economy socio environmental conflicts and equitable society low carbon transitions have been predominantly analysed using quantitative methods mostly building on present and forecasted data of social metabolism this paper addresses both the economic and social dimensions of low carbon emissions by analysing the presence of socio environmental conflicts in germany these conflicts appear to be a consequence of unsustainable policies targeting firms planning and behaviour mainly based on neoclassical economic thinking and various stakeholder groups that oppose carbon intensive businesses by applying a delphi method with 18 experts the authors analyse 117 socio environmental conflicts e g derived from extractive activity energy production and infrastructure projects in germany most of these conflicts include the struggle of various society groups to achieve a low carbon economy but also a more equitable society the analyses presented in this paper shows that germany provides both the best and the worse of achieving low carbon paths a significant investment into renewable energy but also a strong dependency on lignite which supplies the most polluting power stations of europe by addressing the problem from a historical perspective the authors demonstrate how carbon intensive extractive activity has been one of the major causes for environmental activism and protest in both socialist and capitalist societies

getting to know you a theory of strategic group identity this paper develops a theory of strategic group identity that explains how strategic groups emerge in an industry and how they can affect firm behaviors and outcomes in so doing it provides a theoretical basis for the existence of strategic groups we argue that managers cognitively partition their industry environment to reduce uncertainty and to cope with bounded rationality social learning theory and social identification theory are used to describe how cognitive groups coalesce into meaningful substructures and how a group level identity emerges we describe the ways in which macro level factors condition the development of groups and their identities we introduce the notion of a strong identity which characterizes any group sufficiently recognized and attended to by members to affect individual action groups with weak identities are no more than transient agglomerations of firms and do not exist in any meaningful sense these ideas are developed into propositions that describe the conditions under which groups with strong identities are likely to emerge a second set of propositions describes their transformation over time identity strength is linked to both positive and negative outcomes in a final set of propositions we show how strategic groups with strong identities can affect firm performance resolving a longstanding problem which has plagued strategic groups research and conclude by suggesting some approaches for measurement and future research 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

anniversary article the strategy field from the perspective of management science divergent strands and possible integration we reflect on the evolution of the strategy field as seen through the window ofmanagement science reflecting the diverse disciplinary roots of strategy research we identify a broad ranging body of work that varies with respect to the assumptions made regarding individual rationality and the level of analysis at which the research is carried out we argue that recent developments begin to delineate a potentially unifying conceptual framework for treating the field s defining questions the conceptual apparatus of evolutionary economics we conclude by laying out important challenges for evolutionary economics if it is to serve as a foundation for both the positive and the normative research agendas of the strategy field

the globalization of liberalization policy diffusion in the international political economy one of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal economic ideas and policies throughout the world these policies have affected the lives of millions of people yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture influences on these policy choices evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially we hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion we think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces one in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting we develop arguments within these broad classes of mechanisms construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts and test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account the capital account and the exchange rate regime our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making are insufficient the evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic competition as well as the policies of a country s sociocultural peers we interpret the latter influence as a form of channeled learning reflecting governments search for appropriate models for economic policy

fulfilling the kyoto protocol in spain a matter of economic crisis or environmental policies abstract in 2008 spain exceeded by 20 9 the co2 emissions allowed by the kyoto protocol for 2012 the financial and economic crisis has transformed these figures as production fell so did energy demand and with it co2 emissions will the spanish economic crisis allow spain to fulfill its commitments with this in mind we have developed an extended input output model able to forecast energy demand and compute co2 emissions linked to the consumption of energy goods petroleum products gas and coal the results show that the crisis and in particularly the stagnation of the construction industry is only one of the pillars which help to contain these emissions at 6 81 the possibility of incorporating environmental policies new technologies and increases in the price of crude oil in these simulations means an even greater reduction of emissions than the impact of the crisis 9 76 the final result of our most pessimistic realistic scenario is that in 2012 spain will exceed its co2 emissions linked to the combustion of energy goods by only 0 9

the international politics of harmonization the case of capital market regulation the internationalization and globalization of capital markets greatly complicates the tasks of national financial regulators it is becoming increasingly difficult if not impossible to regulate the activities of banking and securities firms and the broad range of transactions in which they engage on a national level in this article i explore the process of international regulatory harmonization in capital markets focusing especially on the mechanisms political pressure market pressure and institutional arrangements that facilitate this process i argue that the united states and the united kingdom are dominant players in the capital market and that the factors most relevant for understanding harmonization processes are 1 whether other jurisdictions have incentives to emulate the regulatory innovations of the dominant financial centers and 2 whether the dominant centers experience negative externalities in the process these two factors shed considerable light on whether harmonization will be spurred primarily by market forces or by politics they also suggest the likely role of international institutions in the process of regulatory harmonization the argument is illustrated using four issue areas capital adequacy requirements for banks anti money laundering rules accounting standards and information sharing among securities regulators

innovation in pharmaceuticals industrial r d in the early twentieth century an historical approach is used to describe and assess both the character of innovation in drug companies and the impact of new pharmaceuticals upon an industry increasingly important to medicine british german and american firms are described and the themes of regulation corporate structure and competition as well as technical development are analysed industrial r d was used for a variety of purposes by different firms and in contrasting ways among the three nations studied this historical diversity calls into question suppositions about the narrowly conceived utility of r d british firms are shown to have lagged behind in establishing research facilities more because of the lack of legal and competitive stimuli than on account of poor technical capabilities german manufacturers were significantly aided by their ability to coordinate long term development and production goals with the government while in the u s laboratories were most effectively used as competitive tools

the mechanisms of policy diffusion local policy adoptions provide an excellent opportunity to test among potential mechanisms of policy diffusion by examining three types of antismoking policy choices by the 675 largest u s cities between 1975 and 2000 we uncover robust patterns of policy diffusion yielding three key findings first we distinguish among and find evidence for four mechanisms of policy diffusion learning from earlier adopters economic competition among proximate cities imitation of larger cities and coercion by state governments second we find a temporal component to these effects with imitation being a more short lived diffusion process than the others third we show that these mechanisms are conditional with larger cities being better able to learn from others less fearful of economic spillovers and less likely to rely on imitation

do strategic groups exist an economic framework for analysis this paper offers a framework and methodology for resolving the question regarding the existence of strategic groups we say that a strategic group exists if characteristics of the group affect firm performance independently of firm level and industry level effects we argue that group level effects are a byproduct of strategic interactions among members and develop an empirical testing model based on the new economics of industrial organization to distinguish true group effects from spurious effects from this model we derive a series of logically consistent propositions suggesting that while strategic interactions are critical for a group level effect on profits mobility barriers are necessary to preserve both groups and their effects over time a review of prior empirical studies of strategic groups suggests that the inconclusive nature of prior research has been due more to the lack of a theoretical foundation for empirical analysis than to the nonexistence of groups to the extent that our methods have been employed there is limited evidence that a rigorous search for strategic groups may prove fruitful 1998 john wiley sons ltd

economic analysis and the quest for competitive advantage curred in the past decade between applied microeconomists and those who study business strategy business strategists have cast up a series of questions for industrial economists who have responded with numerous applications of economic theory and quantitative research methods this interchange has been fruitful and indeed more fruit remains for the picking i shall argue for centering the collaborative effort on what may be called committed competition rivalrous moves among incumbent producers that involve resource commitments that are irrevocable for nontrivial periods of time most concerns of business strategy are with policy choices that

modelling demand for crude oil products in spain this paper develops an econometric model for the five most important crude oil products demand in spain the aim is the estimation of a range of elasticities of such demands that would serve as the basis for an applied general equilibrium model used for forecasting energy demand in a broader framework the main distinctive features of the system with respect to previous literature are i it takes advantage of monthly information coming from very different information sources and ii multivariate unobserved components uc models are implemented allowing for a separate analysis of long and short run relations uc models decompose time series into a number of unobserved though economic meaningful components mainly trend seasonal and irregular a module is added to such structure to take into account the influence of exogenous variables necessary to compute price cross and income elasticities since all models implemented are multivariate in nature the demand components are allowed to interact among them through the system noises similar to a seemingly unrelated equations model the results show unambiguously that the main factor driving demand is real income with prices having little impact on energy consumption

economics of ccs for coal plants impact of investment costs and efficiency on market diffusion in europe abstract in this paper we analyze how the development of the carbon capture and storage ccs technology used in coal fired power plants affects its market diffusion specifically we 1 show the significant variance in expectations about the economics of commercial grade ccs hard coal power plants observed in the literature 2 analyze the impact of ccs economics on electricity generation costs and 3 investigate the expected deployment of ccs in the european power sector depending on the variance of two main factors efficiency and investment cost using the bottom up electricity sector model hector simulation results show that investment costs strongly influence the market deployment of coal fired ccs power plants leading to a share of 16 in european generation capacity by 2025 with the lowest observed investment costs of 1400 kw but only 2 with the highest of 3000 kw a variation of conversion efficiency between 37 and 44 the minimum and maximum observed values only leads to a 13 15 share variation of ccs equipped power plants these findings are robust for the base case with a co 2 price of 43 t and also for sensitivities with 30 and 20 t co 2 but with a lower effect as the overall share of ccs is significantly reduced at these prices

social welfare reform in the context of economic political liberalization latin american cases abstract in the 1980s most of latin america suffered a fiscal crisis resulting from the heavy debt burden and the halting of external credit and a deep recession induced by the implementation of structural adjustment policies both phenomena provoked social costs with divergent degrees of severity the existing social welfare system in particular social security was incapable of coping with the ensuing social costs due to structural and conjunctural causes the crisis of social security has worsened and most countries in the region have either reformed their systems mainly pensions but also health case or are considering laws or engaged in studies of reform this paper is divided into three sections 1 a a brief assessment of the social costs of economic reform and the inability of social security to cope with them 2 b an analysis of the divergent models of social security reform in pensions and health care and their relationship with underlying political and economic models in eight countries argentina chile colombia costa rica cuba mexico peru and uruguay and 3 c a discussion on future viable types of reform in the region

do markets differ much this essay reports the results of a crosssection study of differences in accounting profitability that sheds light on some basic controversies in industrial economics most previous cross section studies in this field have been concerned with testing hypotheses about structural coefficients in models meant to apply to essentially all markets as we have learned more about the difficulties of constructing such general models and of performing tests on their structural parameters properly structural cross section analysis has fallen out of fashion in contrast to most of the cross section literature the analysis reported here is fundamentally descriptive it does not attempt directly to estimate or to test hypotheses about structural parameters i hope to show by example that one can perform illuminating analysis of cross section data without a host of controversial maintained hypotheses cross section data can yield interesting stylized facts to guide both general theorizing and empirical analysis of specific industries even if they cannot easily support full blown structural estimation one can view the sort of search for stylized facts conducted here as either a replacement for or an input to interindustry structural estimation depending on one s feeling about the long run potential of that research approach this study also departs from much of the cross section literature by being fundamentally concerned with the importance of various effects not just with coefficient signs and t statistics in particular this essay provides estimates of the relative importance of firm market and market share differences in the determination of business unit divisional profitability in u s manufacturing using 1975 data from the line of business program of the u s federal trade commission ftc i find support neither for the existence of firm effects nor for the importance of market share effects moreover while industry effects apparently exist and are important they appear to be negatively correlated with seller concentration in these data section i relates firm market and share effects to current issues and controversies in industrial economics and thus supplies the motivation for our empirical analysis the remainder of the essay treats the data and

globalization and the empowerment of women an analysis of spatial dependence via trade and foreign direct investment summary this article tests the hypothesis that higher women s economic and social rights in foreign countries with which a country is connected via trade and foreign direct investment fdi spill over into higher rights among the laggards a phenomenon known as spatial dependence analyzing women s rights over the period 1981 2007 in a global sample and samples of countries at different stages of economic development we find consistent evidence for spill over effects via trade links with the exception of a sample of low income countries we also find some evidence for similar effects via fdi but only for economic rights and only in middle income countries

strategic group dynamics a longitudinal study was conducted of strategic group dynamics over periods of economic stability growth and decline in international offshore oil drilling some changes in group strategy were ob

is pension reform conducive to higher saving declining fertility mortality and productivity rates in developed countries and the popularity of the social security privatization in chile as a pathway to financial development have sparked a global interest in social security reform this paper analyzes the effect of social security on saving using a panel of countries over 25 years variation in the characteristics of social security systems is used to determine whether less reliance on a pay as you go unfunded system is associated with higher national saving there is little evidence that countries that implement defined contribution reforms have higher trends in saving rates after the reform cross sectionally countries with pay as you go systems tend to have lower saving rates and this effect increases with the coverage rate on the system

a typology of political conditionality beyond aid conceptual horizons based on lessons from the european union summary this paper asks how political conditionality needs to be conceptualized and researched to reflect global changes it argues that a diversification of political conditionality beyond aid is now taking place political conditionality reaches across different external policy fields and includes cooperative and punitive measures it has also moved from political rights toward social and environmental rights to capture this diversification conceptually the article presents an ideal typical typology that is then refined based on the example of the european union eu a review of the literature on eu political conditionality reveals a gap in studying the interaction of different political conditionality instruments