technological activity and survival of firms abstract the paper presents new evidence on the effect of technological activity on the post entry performance of firms by comparing firm survival across technical and non technical products and over stages of differing technological activity it attempts to resolve two seemingly contradictory hypotheses that uncertainty inherent in high technological activity reduces the probability of survival and that technological activity increases the probability of entrant survival the empirical results in the context of the product life cycle framework show that entering firms enjoy a higher probability of survival in stages of high technological activity and in products that are more technical in nature however the hazard function the probability of failure conditional on age is higher for technical products reflecting the adverse effects of technical uncertainty and obsolescence of incumbent knowledge

the effect of crises on firm exit and the moderating effect of firm size abstract the liability of smallness assumption suggests that smaller firms face higher exit risks however does it apply during crises we show that during downturns size reduces firms exit risk by less the hazard rate increases more rapidly in size

bioenergy crop production in the united states potential quantities land use changes and economic impacts on the agricultural sector the u s departments of agriculture and energyjointly analyzed the economic potential for and impacts of large scale bioenergy cropproduction in the united states anagricultural sector model polysys wasmodified to include three potential bioenergycrops switchgrass hybrid poplar and willow at farmgate prices of us 2 44 gj anestimated 17 million hectares of bioenergycrops annually yielding 171 million dry mg ofbiomass could potentially be produced at aprofit greater than existing agricultural usesfor the land the estimate assumes highproductivity management practices are permittedon conservation reserve program lands traditional crops prices are estimated toincrease 9 to 14 percent above baseline pricesand farm income increases annually by us 6 0billion above baseline at farmgate prices of us 1 83 gj anestimated 7 9 million hectares of bioenergycrops annually yielding 55 million dry mg ofbiomass could potentially be produced at aprofit greater than existing agricultural usesfor the land the estimate assumes managementpractices intended to achieve highenvironmental benefits on conservation reserveprogram lands traditional crops prices areestimated to increase 4 to 9 percent abovebaseline prices and farm income increasesannually by us 2 8 billion above baseline

too conservative to hedge how much does a corn ethanol facility lose abstract while the process of producing ethanol from corn has been well established for over a decade the process profitability still eludes the industry investors in particular uncertainties exist in both the feedstock and the product spot prices to manage the sophisticated price uncertainty current practice in industry is to negotiate long term fixed rate prices with both the suppliers of the feedstock and the purchasers of the product although this practice completely eliminates the price uncertainty and simplifies production decisions it entails the potential loss of profit stochastic programming methods provide a framework which takes into account the uncertainties and determines the decisions that are optimal under this uncertain future therefore in this study a stochastic optimization model is presented to determine the weekly production level and swap hedging portfolios over a year s planning horizon with the objective of maximizing the process profit the approach is also used in a back testing perspective to compare the profit obtained from applying the optimal decisions with the negotiated profit derived from using the current practice this comparison in turn validates the effectiveness of the proposed model framework in particular during times of high price uncertainty

ten propositions in uk housing macroeconomics an overview of the 1980s and early 1990s during the last ten years macroeconomists have increasingly come to realise that there are important interactions between housing and the wider economy in some cases this realisation has come too late to avoid the severe oscillations in the economy that have characterised the period since the mid 1980s this paper uses a macroeconometric model specifically designed to capture the interactions in order to reflect on the experience of the 1980s and early 1990s and to draw theoretical empirical and policy conclusions in terms of ten propositions

effect of credit guarantee policy on survival and performance of smes in republic of korea this study evaluates the effect of credit guarantee on smes at the firm level to estimate the effect of credit guarantee we analyze relations between credit guarantee the survival of guaranteed firms and their productive performance the result indicates that credit guarantee frequency enabled guaranteed firms to achieve good performances in general on the contrary the effect of guarantee amounts is ambiguous in that there is difference between the contemporary effect and the lagged effect therefore we conclude that credit guarantee satisfied partially its goal to alleviate smes difficulty in acquiring finance and to stabilize employment

estimating the income price and interest elasticities of housing demand abstract there are many references in the housing market literature that suggest that the housing market contains characteristics of both stock and flows however most studies focus on either the stock or the flow aspect and ignore the simultaneous nature of the stock flow concept in this paper the dual aspect of the housing market is formally incorporated using a stock flow equilibrium model the income price and interest elasticities are then estimated under the condition that both the flow excess demand and the market excess demand are zero

sovereign stress and smes access to finance evidence from the ecb s safe survey abstract we study the effect of sovereign stress on smes capital structure using restricted access data from the european central bank we find that during the sovereign debt crisis and controlling for borrowers quality firms in stressed countries became more likely to be denied credit to be credit rationed and to face higher loan rates less creditworthy firms were not more likely to become credit constrained suggesting no flight to quality in lending we also find that in order to make up for the decline in bank credit firms in stressed countries began relying considerably more on retained earnings and government subsidies

determinants of household formation in a third world setting this paper analyses the determinants of household formation in a large metropolitan city karachi in a low income developing country pakistan by comparing the sample characteristics of nuclear households with those of nuclei within joint households contrary to expectations the results indicate the lack of influence of income and education the primary impetus to the creation of new households is provided by new migrants by working women and by the number of dependants

adjustment lags economically rational expectations and price behavior source and the extent of lags in the response of prices to changes in various explanatory variables knowledge of the relevant lag patterns is of obvious importance for forecasting movements in prices and for formulating policies that are designed to reduce the rate of inflation in the recent empirical literature on prices the model most commonly used to specify price equations is the static neo classical model of price formation 1 this model presumes that the representative firm behaves as if it were a simple monopolist that faces competitive factor input markets the firm is assumed to set its price so as to maximize current profits the model yields the proposition that the firm s long run optimal price depends on expected normal factor input prices and variables e g expected real income that shift the firm s demand curve lags are introduced into the pricing process of this model in two ways some authors2 focus on expectation formation lags whereby normal factor input prices or variables that shift the firm s demand curve are related through distributed lags to past values of the variable being forecast often the distributed lag is assumed to be

interest rates income and home improvement decisions abstract the demand for additional housing is modeled demonstrating that higher interest rates make home improvements more attractive relative to moving when homeowners hold fixed rate mortgages technological constraints on home improvements make improving less attractive relative to moving when incomes have risen empirical evidence using cross sectional data is presented suggesting that the probability of making home improvements is positively related to increases in the current interest rate and negatively related to increases in income an explanation is offered for the recent rise in home improvement expenditures in the face of slower economic growth and higher mortgage interest rates

inflation risk taxes and the demand for owner occupied housing a bstract a portfolio choice model is formulated which focuses on the possibility of inflation hedging motives in housing demand in the 1970s an asset demand equation is used to estimate the capitalization of inflation expectations into house prices through tax mortgage and hedging effects the empirical results indicate that even after accounting for tax and mortgage effects the hedging motive was significant in bidding up house prices one implication is that the tax effects of inflation may have been overstated in previous research that ignored inflation risk

residential capitalization rates explaining intermetropolitan variation 1974 1979 abstract residential capitalization rates are shown to have varied substantially between metropolitan areas and to have declined over the late 1970s as asset values rose relative to market rents these variations are generally consistent with discounted cash flow models although market imperfections apparently prevent changes in the discounted net rental income from being fully and immediately capitalized into asset prices there also is evidence that speculative bubbles bid housing prices above the present value of the net rental stream for some markets at the peak of the housing boom

schumpeterian patterns of innovation using patent data for four countries germany france united kingdom and italy for the period 1968 1986 the authors find that the patterns of innovative activities differ systematically across technological classes while remarkable similarities emerge across countries in the patterns of innovative activities for each technological class this result strongly suggests that technological imperatives and technology specific factors closely linked to technological regimes play a major role in determining the patterns of innovative activities across countries schumpeter proposed two major patterns of innovative activities the first one labelled by nelson and winter 1982 and kamien and schwartz 1982 as schumpeter mark i is proposed in the theory of economic development 1934 in this work schumpeter examined the typical european industrial structure of the late nineteenth century characterised by many small firms according to this view the pattern of innovative activity is characterised by technological ease of entry in an industry and by a major role played by new firms in innovative activities new entrepreneurs come in an industry with new ideas new products or new processes launch new enterprises which challenge established firms and thus continuously disrupt the current ways of production organisation and distribution and wipe out the quasi rents associated with previous innovations the second one labelled schumpeter mark ii is proposed in capitalism socialism and democracy 1942 in this work inspired by the features of the american industry of the first half of the twentieth century schumpeter discussed the relevance of the industrial r d laboratory for technological innovation and the key role of large firms according to this view the pattern of innovative activities is characterised by the prevalence of large established firms and by relevant barriers to entry for new innovators large firms have institutionalised the innovation process with the creation of r d laboratories filled with researchers technicians and engineers with their accumulated stock of knowledge in specific technological areas their advanced competence in large scale r d projects production and distribution and their relevant financial resources they create barriers to entry to new entrepreneurs and small firms

housing tenure choice evidence from time series abstract a model of tenure choice is specified and estimated a simple expression to represent the expected rate of return on equity for a homeowner is developed also the influence of the federal housing subsidy programs is analyzed both plus permanent income and the implicit rental price of owner occupied housing are important determinants of tenure choice other influences are the financing gap with the standard mortgage instrument in an inflationary environment the number of children less than 18 per family assets and liabilities and mortgage credit terms finally the changes in housing tenure choice over the estimation period are analyzed

the allocation of capital between residential and nonresidential uses taxes inflation and capital market constraints we have constructed a simple two sector model of the demand for housing and corporate capital economic growth and an increase in the inflation rate were then simulated with a number of model variants the model and simulation experiments illustrate both the tax bias in favor of housing and the manner in which the increase in inflation between 1965 and 1978 magnified it the existence of capital market constraints offsets the bias against corporate capital but it introduces a sharp inefficient reallocation of housing from less wealthy constrained households to wealthy households who do not have gains on mortgages and are not financially constrained

uncapacitated plant location under alternative spatial price policies given a spatial system of clients demand functions this paper proposes solution methods to determine the prices the number the locations the sizes and the market areas of the plants supplying the clients in order to maximize the profit of the firm three alternative spatial price policies are considered i uniform mill pricing in which the same price is charged to the clients at the plant door ii uniform delivered pricing in which clients pay the same delivered price irrespective of their locations and iii spatial discriminatory pricing which is such that the firm sets client specific prices based on their locations computational results are reported

is the first to market the first to fail empirical evidence for industrial goods businesses abstract when entering a new market the first entrant typically faces the greatest market and technological uncertainties memorable phrases reflect the associated survival risk such as the first to market is the first to fail and the pioneer is the one with the arrows in its back although research estimates the market pioneer s survival rate the typical pioneer survival rate has not been compared with that of early followers the authors study compares survival rates for 167 first entrant market pioneers versus 267 early followers for these industrial goods businesses 66 of the pioneers versus 48 of the early followers survived at least ten years the main conclusion is that the pioneer s temporary monopoly over the early followers plus its first mover advantages typically offset the survival risks associated with market and technological uncertainties these results are consistent with previous research in the sense that first mover advantages that increase a pioneer s market share also hel

the impact of dwelling quality and neighbourhood quality on the estimation of the income elasticity of demand for rental housing in jeddah saudi arabia this study provides new evidence on the estimation of the income elasticity of demand for rental housing based on individual interviews with 405 households it looks specifically at the impact of both dwelling and neighbourhood quality aspects on the evaluation of this elasticity the study finds that the income elasticity of demand for rental housing in jeddah is 0 519 when the sample is restricted to include saudi households only the elasticity estimate is 0 465 these values are within the range of previous empirical estimates the results also indicate that for a range of various quality measures the income elasticity is estimated to be less than unity but our suggested quality aspects were found to exert sizeable differences on the magnitude of this elasticity for the full sample from 0 351 to 0 802 as well as for the saudi sample from 0 382 to 0 603 stratified income elasticity estimates for saudis were also found to be generally less than those for the whole sample

biomass feedstock contracts role of land quality and yield variability in near term feasibility abstract in the absence of an infrastructure for the harvest storage and purchase of cellulosic biomass contracting is an important mechanism through which biorefineries can ensure adequate feedstock supply we develop an optimization model to assess the economic potential of dedicated energy crops when profit maximizing farmers allocate croplands of varying quality toward biomass in response to multi year contracts we evaluate the economic competitiveness of perennial grasses with traditional commodity crops in a case study of switchgrass production in tennessee assuming short term contracts we consider the importance of payment structure land quality energy crop yield and projected commodity crop returns on a farmer s decision to accept a contract for biomass production we find that a wholesale contract in which the farmer is guaranteed a price per unit biomass is most effective on the highest quality of land while a contract in which the farmer is guaranteed a price per acre is most effective on lower quality land from the biorefinery perspective a wholesale contract is most effective for short term contracts while an acreage contract is most effective for long term contracts breakeven pricing will only secure feedstock from farmers who produce commodity crops with unfavorable price outlooks on lower quality land therefore the contract price must include a premium in order to compete for space in the crop mix the yield profile of energy crops has a significant effect on the terms at which short term contracts will be accepted and land allocated toward feedstock production the extent to which energy crop yields observed in field trials can be maintained at commercial scale also has a substantial effect on the scale at which farmers would be willing to participate in energy crop production

the indirect land use impacts of united states biofuel policies the importance of acreage yield and bilateral trade responses recent work has highlighted agricultural land conversion as a significant debit in the greenhouse gas accounting of ethanol as an alternative fuel this work has at the same time sparked considerable debate on the role of crop yield growth as a means of avoiding rapid land conversion we examine the agricultural land use impacts of mandate driven ethanol demand increases in the united states in a formal economic equilibrium framework which allows us to examine the importance of yield price relationships we find that the standard assumption of trend yield growth is likely restrictive for analysis of equilibrium response to significant demand increases for fuel feedstocks furthermore we identify both the acreage response and bilateral trade specification of a multi country model as important sources of variability in terms of parametric uncertainty in predicting global land use change from the biofuels boom

interdependencies in social and economic decision making a conditional logit model of the joint homeownership mobility decision homeownership is one of the most important financial and social decisions consumers face typically this decision is made jointly with decisions such as how much to save and whether to move although major consumption decisions most often are studied independently in consumer research modeling interdependencies can contribute to interpretation of influences on their outcomes the interdependency between decisions of homeownership and residential mobility is modeled in a conditional logit specification with household status level and cognitive factors as explanatory variables results indicate that these constructs have indirect effects on ownership through mobility that are unobserved if the decisions are considered independently

electricity market near equilibrium under locational marginal pricing and minimum profit conditions this paper provides a tool to determine the near equilibrium of an electric energy market this market works under locational marginal pricing i e generating units and demand loads are paid and pay respectively the locational marginal prices corresponding to the nodes they are connected to the near equilibrium is defined as the energy transaction levels for which generating companies maximize their respective profits and consumption companies maximize their respective utilities an independent system operator clears the market maximizing the social welfare conditions that ensure minimum profit for generating units can be included however these conditions may render a generating unit uncompetitive and expel it from the market demands are taken to be non constant and values are determined as part of the solution the near equilibrium is obtained through the solution of a mixed integer quadratic problem equivalent to a mixed linear complementarity problem that includes the minimum profit conditions it is important to note that the near equilibrium concept presented in this paper does not solve a market equilibrium when indivisibilities such as start up costs or the like are present lastly we validate the proposed model on a case study using data from the ieee reliability test system

enhanced models and improved solution for competitive biofuel supply chain design under land use constraints abstract this paper studies the effect of government regulation on farmland use to balance food and energy production in a competitive biofuel supply chain design framework we propose a stackelberg nash game model with a direct land use constraint that captures farmland food and fuel market equilibrium to provide farmers with incentives to comply with the land use regulation we implement the land use constraint through a cap and trade mechanism which we show attains equivalent land use patterns we further prove the existence of optimal solutions of the two equivalent discretely constrained mathematical program with equilibrium constraints dc mpec models two adaptive relax and tighten schemes integrality and lagrangian duality based relaxation are proposed to handle the binary variables in a mixed integer formulation of the models the proposed methodology is tested in a case study for the state of illinois the computational results demonstrate the superiority of our customized algorithms to publicly available solvers for solving problems with realistic sizes finally the efficiency of the cap and trade mechanism is demonstrated through comparisons of scenarios with and without regulation as well as a sensitivity analysis on the cap and trade level the cap and trade policy is found to effectively reduce biomass farmland use and profits of the biofuel industry it may have different impacts on social welfare depending on problem settings and market parameters cap and trade levels also affect system behavior and thus should be carefully selected

impacts of ethanol on planted acreage in market equilibrium the magnitude of land conversion caused by biofuels expansion largely determines whether biofuels reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to examine this issue we model how equilibrium changes in input use and land allocation decisions respond to market and policy induced increases in corn ethanol demand we demonstrate why total cropland area unambiguously increases with increased ethanol demand the impact of ethanol price subsidies and consumption mandates are examined in the context of technical change if ethanol demand is elastic enough an exogenous increase in corn yields leads to cropland expansion with price subsidies yield increases under consumption mandates reduce land use copyright 2010 oxford university press

an analysis of the housing market in the netherlands housing research in the netherlands has long been dominated by demographic orientated research this was quite logical because of the distinctive demographic development of the netherlands relative to other west european countries the rate of increase in population in the period 1960 1981 was among the highest in western europe economic influences on housing consumption have therefore long been neglected in the 1980s a period with declining incomes and a government policy to increase rents suddenly economic influences came into the picture housing demand tends to diminish and the traditional housing shortage since the second world war seems to disappear rising rents can even lead to rising vacancy rates because demand diminishes and supply increases because of higher rates of return the reverse of the consequences of rent control this article presents a recent econometric analysis of the housing market in the netherlands and places the results in the context of the broad and sometimes confusing

dynamic reserve selection optimal land retention with land price feedbacks urban growth compromises open space and ecosystem functions to mitigate the negative effects some agencies use reserve selection models to identify conservation sites for purchase or retention existing models assume that conservation has no impact on nearby land prices we propose a new integer program that relaxes this assumption via adaptive cost coefficients our model accounts for the two key land price feedbacks that arise in markets where conservation competes with development the amenity premium and price increases driven by shifts in market equilibriums we illustrate the mechanics of the proposed model in a real land retention context the results suggest that in competitive land markets the optimal conservation strategy during the initial phase of the retention effort might be to use available dollars to buy fewer parcels with smaller total area that are under high risk of development we show that failure to capture the land price feedbacks can lead to significant losses in biological conservation the present study is the first to create a reserve selection model that captures the economic theory of competitive land markets in a dynamic framework produces tangible parcel level conservation recommendations and works on problems with thousands of potential site selection decisions and several planning periods

inflation and housing demand a new perspective abstract the effects of inflation on the housing market are investigated in this study of new house prices in 42 u s metropolitan areas from 1971 to 1978 the results show that estimates of the elasticity of real house prices with respect to the real user cost have been biased sharply downward owing to an errors in variables problem when the error term in estimating expected inflation is recognized explicitly the negative relationship between real house prices and real user cost is found to be very strong this analysis helps to resolve the conflict in the literature between the negative cash flow effects and the positive untaxed capital gains and declining real payment effects resulting from inflation

economywide implications from us bioenergy expansion the energy independence and security act of 2007 eisa sets a goal for 36 billion gal lons of biofuels available by 2022 according to the renewable fuels standard rfs the rfs is accompanied by tax credits which are sub ject to change tax credits are used as produc tion incentives for different types of ethanol made from corn starch and cellulosic material 1 there are arguments for and against the use of tax credits generally tax credits are considered as welfare reducing instruments similar to subsi dies however tax credits could be rationalized as improving energy security and reducing green house gas emissions as they can correct for mar ket failures wallace e tyner 2007 and paul n leiby 2007 furthermore tax incentives for an infant industry such as cellulosic ethanol might be justified where there are dynamic learning costs ian sheldon and matthew roberts 2007 it is estimated that tax credits could cost taxpay ers nearly 28 7 billion annually by 2022 harry

the life cycle of a competitive industry firm numbers first rise then later fall as an industry evolves this nonmonotonicity is explained using a competitive model in which innovation opportunities fuel entry and relative failure to innovate prompts exit equilibrium time paths for price and quantity also share features of the data the model is estimated using data from the u s automobile tire industry a particularly dramatic example of the nonmonotonicity in firm numbers

real and nominal interest rates and the demand for housing abstract this paper is an empirical study of the relationship between inflation expectations and the demand for housing the major findings are that housing demand is a function of both expected inflation and the real interest rate but that demand cannot be specified as a function of the nominal rate it is also shown that expected inflation has a larger impact on those households that are likely to be constrained by capital market imperfections

dynamic games and international trade an application to the world corn market dynamic games are a conceptually useful way of analyzing imperfect markets where both buyers and sellers have potential market power previous analysis of imperfect markets was static and limited to either exporters or importers a dynamic game allows the inclusion of both importers and exporters in a multiperiod framework allowing the derivation of reaction functions a nash noncooperative difference game is applied to the international corn market to explore the plausibility of numerical results the results are reasonable and show that the game approach based on a more comprehensive econometric model has a promising future in policy analysis

key challenges and requirements for sustainable and industrialized biorefinery supply chain design and management a bibliographic analysis abstract the growing global population and its effects on world food security as well as the urgency for climate change mitigation are issues that foster technological social and political innovations to increase the efficiency of use of natural resources such as biomass among others while significant research efforts have been devoted to biomass conversion processes their associated supply chains and their implication for complete process efficiency have only been studied more recently however most of the recent investigations into the design and optimization of biomass supply chains have focused on an economic point of view sidelining other dimensions of sustainability which represents a serious drawback for this kind of work this article surveys the recent research on design and management optimization of biorefinery supply chains from a sustainability perspective 72 published research articles from 2006 to 2015 have been analyzed to highlight the sustainability dimensions considered as well as the inclusion of uncertainties a typology of decision making at three levels of analysis strategic tactical and operational and the specific set of tools used to model and optimize the biorefinery supply chain have also been studied the conclusion underlines the contributions and shortcomings of current research and suggests possible future directions

biofuel supply chain design under competitive agricultural land use and feedstock market equilibrium abstract the rapid expansion of the biofuel industry diverts a large amount of agricultural crops as energy feedstocks and in turn affects farm land allocation feedstock market equilibrium and agricultural economic development in local areas in this paper we propose game theoretic models that incorporate farmers decisions on land use and market choice into the biofuel manufacturers supply chain design problem a noncooperative bi level stackelberg leader follower game model and a cooperative game model are developed respectively to address possible business partnership scenarios between feedstock suppliers and biofuel manufacturers the models determine the optimal number and locations of biorefineries the required prices for these refineries to compete for feedstock resources as well as farmers land use choices between food and energy using corn as an example of feedstock crops spatial market equilibrium is utilized to model the relationship between corn supply and demand and the associated price variations in local grain markets with linear corn demand functions we develop a solution approach that transforms the original discrete mathematical program with equilibrium constraints dc mpec into to a solvable mixed integer quadratic programming miqp problem based on karush kuhn tucker kkt conditions the proposed methodology is illustrated using an empirical case study of the illinois state the computation results reveal interesting insights into optimal land use strategies and supply chain design for the emerging biofuel economy

the relationships between income and price elasticities in studies of housing demand tenure choice and household formation abstract three decisions pertaining to the demand for housing are 1 household formation 2 tenure choice and 3 how much housing to consume given the household formation and tenure choice decisions income and price elasticities can be estimated that include one two or all three of these decisions the relationships between these elasticities are developed