what has driven oil prices since 2000 a structural change perspective abstract this paper characterizes weekly international oil price fundamentals since 2000 by analyzing the transformation of the market mechanism based on structural change perspective using endogenously determined break tests that allow for changes in both level and trend we divide the price fluctuations in the international oil market after 2000 into three stages relatively calm market period january 07 2000 to march 12 2004 the bubble accumulation period march 19 2004 to june 06 2008 and the global economic crisis period june 13 2008 to september 11 2009 the results show the existence of structural breaks refutes the utility of investigation of the full sample period as a whole and in different structural periods the main drivers of oil price changes and their way of influence and degree are significantly distinct then we demonstrate the evolving process of market mechanism since 2000 through establishing comparative models we also quantitatively measure the roles of speculation and episodic events in oil price fluctuations

nonverifiability noncontractibility and ownership determination models in foreign direct investment with an application to foreign operations in japan abstract firms intangible assets are important inputs for their foreign operations inputs of intangible assets and the resulting output are often not contractible in that neither precise use of such inputs nor potential products which can be produced by taking advantage of such inputs can be completely delineated in a contract where such incomplete contracts prevail control of residual rights becomes essential for protecting firms intangible assets ownership is often used to control residual rights in international operations in this paper we present a few interrelated models of ownership determination for firms international operations we show that a firm s ownership share in its foreign operation reflects the importance of the firm s intangible assets used in the operation and the resulting bargaining power relative to its local partners we test our theoretical implications using data on foreign firms manufacturing operations located in japan our empirical results are consistent with theoretical predictions

workers savings and the right to manage most western capitalist institutions are islands of fascism in a sea of democracy but democracy can be introduced from the political to the economic sphere by re assigning the right to manage from capital owners to workers thereby creating a sector consisting of self managed firms such firms require external finance for efficiency this can be supplied via a new form of financial asset performance bonds to be held by wage earners investment funds reforms such as these could improve productivity and the quality of working life strengthen the role of markets and help to deal with the so called pensions crisis these reforms would threaten the interests of private capital owners and would therefore require decisive political action they can thus be differentiated sharply from voluntary enterprise level schemes for introducing profit sharing employee share ownership or industrial democracy

comparing systems approaches to innovation and technological change for sustainable and competitive economies an explorative study into conceptual commonalities differences and complementarities this paper makes a distinction between three theoretical frameworks that have been highly influential in the discourse on innovation competitiveness and sustainability sectoral systems of innovation ssi technological innovation systems tis and socio technical systems st systems these frameworks share a common systems approach to innovation but are often positioned as different bodies of literature that correspond to different epistemic communities this paper is explorative and conceptual in nature it presents a systematic comparative review of ssi tis and st systems based on the following analytical dimensions 1 system boundaries 2 actors and networks 3 institutions 4 knowledge 5 dynamics and 6 policy approach in the concluding section commonalities and differences of the three approaches are presented and suggestions for complimentarily are made c 2010 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

team human capital and worker mobility we discuss the concept of team human capital and study the renegotiation of labor compensation after team members privately observe their own reservation wage as labor productivity can only be high if the number of quits does not exceed a threshold decisions concerning acceptance of individual wage demands become interdependent when a team is made up of salaried workers a peculiar case of efficiency wage results moreover inefficient team dissolution may occur we then show that inefficiency is less likely to occur when team members form a partnership

oil and gas markets in the uk evidence from a cointegrating approach the paper examines the relationship between uk wholesale gas prices and the brent oil price over the period 1996 2003 in order to investigate whether oil and gas prices decoupled during this period as orthodox gas market liberalisation theory suggests tests for unit roots and cointegration are carried out and it is discovered that a long run equilibrium relationship between uk gas and oil prices exists moreover this relationship pre dates the opening of the uk mainland europe interconnector following a recursive methodology hansen h and johansen s 1999 some tests for parameter constancy in cointegrated var models econometrics journal 2 306 333 it was found that the cointegrating relationship is present throughout the sample period however the long run solutions seem to be more volatile evidence is provided that the short run relationship is linear and impulse response functions are used to examine the effects that a shock in oil would have on gas these findings do not support the assumption that gas prices and oil prices decouple

international transmission of inflation among g 7 countries a data determined var analysis abstract we investigate the international transmission of inflation among g 7 countries using data determined vector autoregression analysis as advocated by swanson and granger swanson n granger c 1997 impulse response functions based on a causal approach to residual orthogonalization in vector autoregressions journal of the american statistical association 92 357 367 over the period 1973 2003 we find that unexpected changes in us inflation have large effects on inflation in other countries although they are not always the dominant international factor similarly shocks to some other countries also have a statistically and economically significant influence on us inflation moreover our evidence indicates that us inflation has become less vulnerable to foreign shocks since the early 1990s mainly because of the diminished influence from germany and france

internal bargaining and strategic innovation in the theory of the firm abstract the transaction cost analysis of the firm has identified asset idiosyncrasy and the risk of ex post opportunism as key determinants of organizational form simultaneously several writers have modeled the distribution of quasi rents among input suppliers as a bargaining game these complementary ideas are used to formalize the notion of strategic innovation where capital and labor attempt to redistribute firm income after specialized assets are in place through unilateral modifications in production technology because strategic behavior can enlarge the quasi rent component of fifirm income this process may persist in equilibrium asset idiosyncrasy therefore creates room for an autonomous theory of organizational dynamics partially insulated from events at the market level of analysis

the organization of work a historical dimension abstract an evaluation of the organizational efficiencies of various modes of production by o e williamson has led him to conclude that given identical technologies the factory was more efficient than the putting out system the superior organizational efficiency of the former he maintains was one reason for the transition to factory production during the nineteenth century this paper challenges that view it is argued that the way in which williamson evaluates efficiency is open to methodological and other objections and that there is limited empirical support for his hypothesis given an identical technology the evidence suggests that the putting out system was usually able to compete with the factory

the role of commodity prices in formulating monetary policy commodity prices often provide signals about the future direction of the economy especially inflation it has been argued therefore that the information in commodity prices should be used in formulating monetary policy this paper investigates whether a systematic monetary policy response to contemporaneous commodity price shocks would have helped stabilize the postwar u s economy the authors findings suggest that responding to unexpected commodity price movements would have lowered the average rate of inflation and reduced its variability while the path of real growth would be relatively unchanged copyright 1991 by mit press

conformity replication of design and business niches conformity affects the choice and design of organizations conformists replicate successful strategies play along with the rules of the game and display inert behavior conformity leads to the dominance of one mode the combined impact of conformity and inertia and the existence of employment costs switching costs and network externalities may exclude equally or superior efficient modes from replacing the incumbent mode the first mover unable to overcome these barriers to entry efficient maverick organizations are forced into niches this is illustrated with respect to niches formed by labor managed firms and ethnic businesses

inequality control rights and rent seeking sugar cooperatives in maharashtra this paper presents a theory of rent seeking within farmer cooperatives in which inequality of asset ownership affects relative control rights of different groups of members the two key assumptions are constraints on lump sum transfers from poorer members and disproportionate control rights wielded by wealthier members transfers of rents to the latter are achieved by depressing prices paid for inputs supplied by members and diverting resulting retained earnings the theory predicts that increased heterogeneity of landholdings in the local area causes increased inefficiency by inducing a lower input price and a lower level of installed crushing capacity predictions concerning the effect of the distribution of local landownership on sugarcane price capacity levels and participation rates of different classes of farmers are confirmed by data from nearly 100 sugar cooperatives in the indian state of maharashtra over the period 1971 93

why capital suppliers usually hire workers what we know and what we need to know abstract a fundamental question for economics is why large firms in market economies usually assign control rights to capital suppliers rather than labor suppliers a diverse collection of answers can be found in the literature but unfortunately little theoretical consensus has emerged and few attempts have been made to resolve this issue through systematic empirical investigation this paper reviews a number of different hypotheses clustering around work incentives the financing of firms and collective choice we identify the strengths and weaknesses of each approach filling in theoretical gaps where necessary and conclude with some suggestions for empirical research

the function of authority in transaction cost economics abstract this paper questions the transaction cost characterization of observed authority relations as efficient governance structures various inadequacies in the transaction cost account of work organization and the limits of firm size are traced to its neglect of the possibility that authority may be abused opportunistically this exemplifies a more general propensity in the transaction cost literature that of explaining economic organization in functionalist terms with little attention to the causal mechanisms through which efficient governance structures might actually arise three such mechanisms are considered but none is found to provide an adequate rationale for the imputation of efficiency to observed structures

employee ownership and internal governance abstract this paper is designed to counter oliver williamson s hypothetical peer group model of organization with a discussion of three prosperous populations of employee owned firms worked owned scavenger companies taxi cooperatives and professional partnerships such as the large law firm it will be shown here that these firms are formed endure and prevail over their competition for reasons that williamson more than anyone else has taught us to appreciate in particular this paper will argue that the metering problems and human asset considerations that are so prominently featured in williamson s work are crucial for understanding the success of these firms

the impact of the north american shale gas revolution on regional natural gas markets evidence from the regime switching model this paper investigates the impact of the north american shale gas revolution on price movement regimes in the north american and european gas markets using the markov regime switching model it then measures price spreads between oil and gas from 1998 to 2015 to identify the impact of the revolution on the relationship between oil and regional gas prices the results show that the typical movement regime of henry hub prices changes from slightly upward to sharply downward in addition the clear seasonal effect of henry hub prices has disappeared after the shale gas revolution the typical movement of national balancing point nbp prices has changed gradually from a sharply upward regime to the alternative regimes between sharply downward and slightly upward tending to follow oil prices this indicates that the shale gas revolution has had little impact on nbp price movement meanwhile henry hub prices have decoupled from wti prices while nbp and brent prices have continued to exhibit a long term equilibrium level around which they have swung in the short time frame since the shale gas revolution pertinent energy policy makers and energy market participants should pay attention to these changes and adjust their trade production and investment strategies accordingly

comparative empirical observations on worker owned and capitalist firms abstract the paper analyzes the available quantitative information on worker owned and capitalist firms in a few industrialized countries in an attempt to draw a comparative profile of their respective sectors the population of worker owned firms is found to be heterogeneous changing over time and significantly different from the population of capitalist firms worker owned firms are smaller concentrate in a few industries and since the mid 1970s have higher birth rates and lower demise rates than capitalist firms these findings are interpreted with the aid of a theoretical framework and in a broad historical context

why are capitalists the bosses this paper addresses the question why does capital typically hire labor rather than the other way around it models a situation in which a capitalist owner of money capital can choose between lending out his capital for production and using it to set up production under his own supervision it is demonstrated that the moral hazard of potential borrowers on account of limited liability provides the capitalist with the incentive to become a firm owner supervising hired labor the capitalist s choice is endogenized in terms of his opportunity cost of time it is argued that moral hazard with respect to the use of borrowed capital is an important determinant of the social hierarchy in the workplace copyright 1989 by royal economic society

modeling global and local dependence in a pair of commodity forward curves with an application to the us natural gas and heating oil markets abstract the goal of this paper is to present a model for the joint evolution of correlated commodity forward curves each forward curve is directed by two state variables namely slope and level and the model is meant to capture both the local and global dependence structures between slopes and levels our framework can be interpreted as an extension of the concept of cointegration to forward curves the model is applied to a us database of heating oil and natural gas futures prices over the period february 2000 february 2009 we find the long run slope and level relationships between natural gas and heating oil markets analyze the lead and lag properties between the two energy commodities the volatilities and correlations between their daily co movements and evaluate the robustness of these observations to the turmoil experienced by energy markets since 2003

the economics of labor coercion the majority of labor transactions throughout much of history and a significant fraction of such transactions in many developing countries today are coercive in the sense that force or the threat of force plays a central role in convincing workers to accept employment or its terms we propose a tractable principal agent model of coercion based on the idea that coercive activities by employers or guns affect the participation constraint of workers we show that coercion and effort are complements so that coercion increases effort but coercion always reduces utilitarian social welfare better outside options for workers reduce coercion because of the complementarity between coercion and effort workers with a better outside option exert lower effort in equilibrium and thus are coerced less greater demand for labor increases coercion because it increases equilibrium effort we investigate the interaction between outside options market prices and other economic variables by embedding the coercive principal agent relationship in a general equilibrium setup and studying when and how labor scarcity encourages coercion general market equilibrium interactions working through the price of output lead to a positive relationship between labor scarcity and coercion along the lines of ideas suggested by domar while interactions those working through the outside option lead to a negative relationship similar to ideas advanced in neo malthusian historical analyses of the decline of feudalism in net a decline in available labor increases coercion in general equilibrium if and only if its direct partial equilibrium effect is to increase the price of output by more than it increases outside options our model also suggests that markets in slaves make slaves worse off conditional on enslavement and that coercion is more viable in industries that do not require relationship specific investment by workers

the macroeconomics of specificity specific quasi rents arise in a variety of economic relationships and are exposed to opportunism unless fully protected by contract rent appropriation has important macroeconomic consequences resources are underutilized factor markets are segmented production suffers from technological sclerosis job creation and destruction are unbalanced recessions are excessively sharp and expansions run into bottlenecks while depending on the shock expansions may require reinforcement or stabilization recessions should typically be softened in the long run institutions may evolve to alleviate the problem by balancing appropriation technology choice will also be affected with the appropriated factor partially excluding the other from production to reduce appropriation

focal organisations and eco innovation in consumption and production systems this paper explores the role of focal organisations in stimulating eco innovation at the locus of greatest environmental impacts within a consumption and production system cps focal organisations by definition have considerable power in these systems we combine insights from the innovation studies literature with the sustainable green supply chain literature to explore how focal organisations exercise this power in pursuit of system wide sustainability through a case study of the milk cps in the uk we illustrate different strategies of the focal organisations to stimulate incremental eco innovation along existing trajectories we also show how despite focal organisation support radical eco innovation is inhibited by inherent path dependencies and other institutional dimensions of the cps by demonstrating the complementarities of positioning the case study findings within two synergistic literatures this paper contributes theoretically by extending and elaborating eco innovation studies it also has a practical utility for policy makers seeking to chart a path to more sustainable cps by relying on focal organisations

have oil and gas prices got separated abstract this paper applies vector error correction models that show that oil and natural gas prices decoupled around 2009 before 2009 us and uk gas prices had a long term equilibrium with crude prices to which gas prices always reverted after exogenous shocks both us and uk gas prices adjusted to the crude oil price individually and departure from the equilibrium gas price on one continent resulted in a similar departure on the other after an exogenous shock the adjustment between us and uk gas prices took approximately 20 weeks on average and the convergence was mediated mainly by crude oil with a necessary condition that arbitrage across the atlantic was possible after 2009 however the uk gas price has remained integrated with oil price but the us gas price decoupled from crude oil price and the european gas price as the atlantic arbitrage has halted the oversupply from shale gas production has not been mitigated by north american export as there has been no liquefying and export capacity

the nature of the agricultural firm abstract models explaining the choice between rent wage and share contracts in agriculture abstract from the large variations within the classes of rent share and owner managed forms of organization regarding the extent to which a specific form accommodates specialization between labor and management as a result modern explanations of agricultural organizations are misleadingly dependent on risk aversion or the assumption that landowners have an absolute advantage in production decisions viewing the agricultural firm as a constitution instead of as a nexus of contracts facilitates an agency explanation of alternative organizational forms and their amenability to specialization

modelling futures price volatility in energy markets is there a role for financial speculation this paper models volatility in four energy futures markets adopting garch models the variance equation is enriched with alternative measures of speculation based on cftc data the market share of non commercial traders the working s t index and the percentage of net long positions of non commercials over total open interest in future markets it also includes a control for market liquidity we consider four energy commodities light sweet crude oil heating oil gasoline and natural gas over the period 2000 2014 analysed at weekly frequency we find that speculation presents a negative and significant sign the robustness exercise shows that i results remain unchanged through different model specifications garch in mean egarch and tarch ii results are robust to different specifications of the mean and variance equation

insiders and outsiders in wage determination a firm starts with a group of insiders or seasoned workers there is also a large pool of outsiders who are initially less productive but are transformed into insiders after one period of employment the firm gains from having a large pool of insiders some of whom may be laid off in bad years insiders gain from keeping their numbers small if the insiders set their wage unilaterally they will choose a path that in this extreme case prevents employment of outsiders even if future employment prospects are good if the wage path is set by bilateral bargaining the extra advantage to the firm permits employment of some outsiders in some situations

the structure of interdependence in international stock markets abstract this study investigates the dynamic structure of nine major stock markets using an error correction model and directed acyclic graphs dag the dag representation provides a structure of causality among these markets in contemporaneous time building on this contemporaneous structure and the estimated error correction model innovation accounting techniques are applied the results show that the japanese market is among the most highly exogenous and the canadian and french markets among the least exogenous in our nine market study the us market is highly influenced by its own historical innovations but it is also influenced by market innovations from the uk switzerland hong kong france and germany the us market is the only market that has a consistently strong impact on price movements in other major stock markets in the longer run

assessing the relationship between economic and ecological performance distinguishing system levels and the role of innovation in this article we critically discuss the different perspectives that are currently in use for assessing the relationship between ecological and economic performance based on a review of the literature we propose that research up till now has made use of four distinct system boundaries the firm markets production and consumption systems and economic systems making these boundaries explicit is helpful in interpreting the mixed results that have been obtained we describe the consequences of the choice for each of these system boundaries and look at implications for innovation we also argue that the production and consumption system boundary offers potential for further advances in the field and deserves more attention in future research

investigating policy and r d effects on environmental innovation a meta analysis in the last decades a wide research effort has been devoted at the analysis of the determinants of environmental innovation ei whereas agreement seemed to emerge around a cluster of determinants mainly technology push market pull policy push pull and firm specific factors empirical analyses have failed to provide strong confirmation on the relevance of some core variables after a qualitative discussion of this literature we empirically assess it by exploiting meta regression analysis techniques to test the effectiveness of two determinants policy and r d our findings are clear as for the first we show that only certain types of policy have proven to affect ei in particular regulatory stringency as for r d we show that the use of estimation methods is not neutral to the outcome of the primary studies

union firm bargaining and the influence of product market power and production technology on systematic risk the relationship between the capm firm beta and the firm s microeconomic decisions is studied by a model under uncertainty which combines the feature of an ex ante inputs substituable production technology and the existence of a union which bargains over various economic dimensions of the firm it is shown that the earlier findings of a relationship between the firm beta the firm product market power and the labor capital ratio may be reinforced through the indirect channel of labor market bargaining but the relationship becomes more complex and heavily depends on the scope of the union firm bargaining process this yields the empirical prediction confirmed for a panel of belgian firms that any proper estimation of the determinants of firm beta must control for firms in the sample being unionized

capital labor and the firm a study of german codetermination under the german corporate governance system of codetermination employees are legally allocated control rights over corporate assets through seats on the supervisory board that is the board of nonexecutive directors the supervisory board oversees the management board the board of executive directors approves or rejects its decisions and appoints its members and sets their salaries we empirically investigate the implications of this sort of labor participation in corporate decision making we find that companies with equal representation of employees and shareholders on the supervisory board trade at a 31 stock market discount as compared with companies where employee representatives fill only one third of the supervisory board seats we show that under equal representation management board compensation provides incentives that are not conducive to furthering shareholders interests possibly because labor maximizes a different objective function than shareholders we document that under equal representation companies have longer payrolls than their one third representation peers have finally we provide evidence that shareholders respond to the allocation of control rights to labor by linking supervisory board compensation to firm performance and by leveraging up the firm jel g32 g34

market conditions trader types and price volume relation in energy futures markets we investigate the asymmetric relations between trading volume and price changes and trading volume and price volatility of energy futures contracts across maturities and under different market conditions using a relatively long sample of daily observations we examine whether the impact of trading volume on returns and volatility of futures contracts can be time varying and dependent on the market condition we differentiate the market condition based on the slope of the forward curve into backwardation and contango the results indicate that trading volume and returns are positively related when the market is in backwardation and negatively related when the market is in contango in addition the positive relation between changes in trading volume and volatility of futures contracts seem to be stronger when the market is in backwardation than when it is in contango finally the results indicate that to a certain extent trade participation and trading activities of agents in energy futures markets can be explained by the slope of the forward curve which reflects the market condition and sentiment

does the development of environmental innovation require different resources evidence from spanish manufacturing firms in recent years environmental innovations are getting increasingly at the center both of the scientific debate and of the policy maker agenda adopting the resource based view this paper provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the specific role of internal external and hybrid resources in the environmental innovation development using a dataset of 4829 spanish manufacturing firms and estimating probit models it is found that internal resources have greater importance for environmental innovations moreover green innovators seem to be characterized by more intensive external relationships for hybrid resources acquisition of equipment but not of patents is more relevant finally evidence suggest the relevance of complementing the analysis of the external factors triggering environmental innovations with those of the internal resources the firm has access to in order to fully understand and support the development of environmental innovations

bargaining power fear of disagreement and wage settlements theory and evidence from u s industry the paper develops and estimates a theoretical model of wage determination and union nonunion wage differentials in order to overcome the institutional ctiticisms of the formal bargaining literature the paper generalizes the nash zeuthen harsanyi model by linking the solution to the institutional concepts of bargaining power and fear or cost of disagreement and by making the outcome depend not only on endogenous but also on exogenous factors an operational specification of bargaining power and fear of disagreement allows the model to be estimated with data covering twelve companies and trade unions during the period from mid 1950 s to the late 1970 s while giving limited support to the nashzeuthen harsanyi solution the empirical analysis indicates that the bargaining outcome usually deviates from the nash zeuthen harsanyi point and in accordance with the institutionalist claim that it varies significantly with exogenous factors contrary to the traditional labor economics view the results do not support the general conclusion that the bargaining solution lies on the marginal revenue product curve of labor instead the relevant coefficients suggest that for many firms and unions the outcome might be better characterized by the efficient contract vertical contract curve

sustainable energy transitions in emerging economies the formation of a palm oil biomass waste to energy niche in malaysia 1990 2011 the economic development in emerging economies in southeast asia has significantly increased the use of fossil fuel based energy this has severe implications for global climate change and against this background scholars within the sustainable transition tradition have taken an interest in addressing how transitions towards more sustainable development pathways in this region may be achieved this paper contributes to the abovementioned literature by examining the conducive and limiting factors for development and proliferation of a palm oil biomass waste to energy niche in malaysia during the period 1990 2011 rising oil prices strong pressure on the palm oil industry from environmental groups and a persisting palm oil biomass waste disposal problem in malaysia appear to have been conducive to niche proliferation and on top of this national renewable energy policies and large scale donor programmes have specifically supported the utilisation of palm oil biomass waste for energy however in spite of this the niche development process has only made slow progress the paper identifies reluctant implementation of energy policy rise in biomass resource prices limited network formation and negative results at the niche level as the main factors hindering niche development

what drives natural gas prices a structural var approach abstract in this study we develop a structural vector autoregressive model var for the german natural gas market our setup allows us to analyze the determinants of the natural gas price in a comprehensive framework in particular we illustrate the usefulness of our approach by disentangling the effects of different fundamental influences on gas prices during three recent supply interruptions the russian ukrainian gas dispute of january 2009 the libyan civil war in 2011 and the withheld russian exports in february 2012 our results show that the natural gas price is affected by temperature storage and supply shortfalls in the short term while the long term development is closely tied to both crude oil and coal prices capturing the economic climate and the substitution relationship between the different energy commodities

profit sharing and the role of professional partnerships when it is hard to assess service quality firms will suboptimally hire low ability workers we show that organizing as a profit sharing partnership can alleviate these problems our theory explains the relative scarcity of partnerships outside of professional service industries such as law accounting medicine investment banking architecture advertising and consulting it also sheds light on features of partnerships such as up or out promotion systems the use of noncompete clauses and recent trends in professional service industries

reconceptualising the policy mix for innovation abstract recent years have seen the emergence take up and use of the term policy mix by innovation policy makers and by policy analysts and scholars alike imported from economic policy debates the term implies a focus on the interactions and interdependencies between different policies as they affect the extent to which intended policy outcomes are achieved however the meaning of the term remains ambiguous nonetheless we argue that the emergence of the policy mix concept into common use in the field of innovation policy studies provides us with a window of opportunity to reconsider some basic and often hidden assumptions in order to better deal with a messy and complex multi level multi actor reality we draw upon a range of literatures to re conceptualise the basic building blocks of innovation policy studies in order to arrive at a useful definition of policy mix tensions and interactions of different kinds across a series of dimensions we suggest that this reconceptualisation has important implications for the future scope and focus of prescriptive and analytical innovation policy studies

striking for a bargain between two completely informed agents this paper models the wage contract negotiation procedure between a union and a firm as a sequential bargaining process in which the union must decide in each period whether or not to strike for the duration of that period we show that there exist subgame perfect equilibria in which the union engages in several periods of strikes prior to reaching a final agreement although both parties are completely rational and fully informed this has implications for other inefficient phenomena such as tariff wars debt negotiations and wars in general we characterize the set of equilibria show that strikes can occur in real time and discuss extensions of the model such as lockouts and the possibility of multiple recontracting opportunities copyright 1991 by american economic association

redefining innovation eco innovation research and the contribution from ecological economics while innovation processes toward sustainable development eco innovations have received increasing attention during the past years theoretical and methodological approaches to analyze these processes are poorly developed against this background the term eco innovation is introduced in this paper addressing explicitly three kinds of changes towards sustainable development technological social and institutional innovation secondly the potential contribution of neoclassical and co evolutionary approaches from environmental and innovation economics to eco innovation research is discussed three peculiarities of eco innovation are identified the double externality problem the regulatory push pull effect and the increasing importance of social and institutional innovation while the first two are widely ignored in innovation economics the third is at the least not elaborated appropriately the consideration of these peculiarities may help to overcome market failure by establishing a specific eco innovation policy and to avoid a technology bias through a broader understanding of innovation finally perspectives for a specific contribution of ecological economics to eco innovation research are drawn it is argued that methodological pluralism as established in ecological economics would be very beneficial for eco innovation research a theoretical framework integrating elements from both neoclassical and evolutionary approaches should be pursued in order to consider the complexity of factors influencing innovation decisions as well as the specific role of regulatory instruments and the experience gathered in ecological economics integrating ecological social and economic aspects of sustainable development is highly useful for opening up innovation research to social and institutional changes 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

organizations firms and institutions in the generation of innovation abstract the purpose of this paper is to develop the innovation system analysis by bringing together the institutional and organizational dimensions of the process of innovation at the firm level the objective is to start elaborating a systemic theory of innovation in firms the paper summons up the contributions and limits of organizational and institutional approaches to innovation this preliminary investigation leads to a series of relevant questions in a second section an attempt is made to overcome the dichotomy and make progress towards a more exhaustive and better articulated representation of the innovation process considered at the firm level

financial markets and the political structure of the enterprise abstract this paper argues that competitive financial markets disfavor democratic enterprises even assuming such enterprises suffer no allocational deficiencies this conclusion follows from five assertions a the democratic enterprise requires access to credit markets b access to credit presupposes access to equity markets c the democratic firm s optimal risk level is lower than that desired by stockholders d the risk level assumed by the firm is costly to observe subject to inaccurate measurement and contractually unenforceable and e the incentives required to induce stockholder favorable risk behavior are more costly for democratic firms than for firms with stockholder accountable management

why capital hires labor a bargaining perspective organizational forms often serve as vehicles for the appropriation of quasi rent capitalist firms typically emerge when production requires noncontractible investments in specific physical assets because worker control would divert quasi rents away from ass et owners ex post conversely labor managed firms tend to emerge in niches requiring specialized human capital but general purpose physi cal assets a key result is that capitalist firms can persist in competitive markets even when labor managed firms would yield a larg er total surplus copyright 1993 by american economic association

sectoral systems of innovation and production the concept sectoral system of innovation and production provides a multidimensional integrated and dynamic view of sectors it is proposed that a sectoral system is a set of products and the set of agents carrying out market and non market interactions for the creation production and sale of those products a sectoral systems has a specific knowledge base technologies inputs and demand agents are individuals and organizations at various levels of aggregation they interact through processes of communication exchange co operation competition and command and these interactions are shaped by institutions a sectoral system undergoes change and transformation through the co evolution of its various elements 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

beyond asset ownership employment and assetless firms in the property rights theory of the firm abstract this paper enriches the celebrated grossman hart moore ghm property rights model with employment relationships by combining the ghm view of the firm as a bundle of asset ownerships with that of alchian and demsetz 1972 who viewed the firm as a nexus of contracts the model yields in some cases optimal asset ownership different from the implications of the ghm model we show that the nexus of contracts is a meaningful instrument to govern transactions even in the presence of asset ownership the optimal contractual network structure depends on the relationship specificity of investments unlike the ghm model where the asset ownership depends solely on the asset specificity of investments

wage employment determination and a union tax on capital can theory and evidence be reconciled if unions appropriate quasi rents from relation specific capital observed factor prices no longer reflect effective costs unionism has effects akin to a partial factor tax on capital demand curve settlements need not imply higher k l among union firms

what drives natural gas prices in the united states a directed acyclic graph approach abstract this study investigates the impacts of driving factors for natural gas prices during the period from 1999 to 2017 a data driven approach namely the directed acyclic graph dag is first employed to disclose the contemporaneous relations among natural gas crude oil and various factors the main results indicate that there is a stable contemporaneous causal flow from crude oil to natural gas unlike most of the previous research we found a long term equilibrium relationship between crude oil and natural gas returns when additional factors were taken into account however the impact of oil price returns on natural gas price volatility has decreased after the 2008 global financial crisis finally storage and seasonality factors can never be ignored when analysing natural gas prices while the impact of speculative activity on natural gas volatility is relatively weak

separated influence of crude oil prices on regional natural gas import prices this paper analyses the impact of global economic activity and international crude oil prices on natural gas import prices in three major natural gas markets using the panel cointegration model it also investigates the shock impacts of the volatility and the increase and decrease of oil prices on regional natural gas import prices the results show that both global economic activity and international crude oil prices have significant long term positive effects on regional natural gas import prices the volatility of international crude oil prices has a negative impact on regional natural gas import prices the shock impact is weak in north america lags in europe and is most significant in asia which is mainly determined by different regional policies for price formation in addition the response of natural gas import prices to increases and decreases in international crude oil prices shows an asymmetrical mechanism of which the decrease impact is relatively stronger

union effects on productivity profits and growth has the long run arrived this article interprets literature examining union effects on economic performance production function studies indicate small overall union impacts on productivity positive effects where they exist appear to result from management response to decreased profit expectations and from a natural selection process lower profitability among unionized firms is well established more interesting is the possibility that unions appropriate quasi rents deriving from long lived tangible and intangible capital the connection between unions investment behavior and productivity growth emerges as a particularly fruitful line of empirical inquiry although it does not encourage a sanguine view of unionism s long run impact

the message in north american energy prices how similar is the price behavior of north american natural gas fuel oil and power prices using current state of the art econometric methodology we explore the degree of shared trends across north american energy markets across these markets there appear to be effective arbitraging mechanisms for the price of natural gas and fuel oil but not for the price of electricity

an institutional theory perspective on sustainable practices across the dairy supply chain the need for sustainable practices in the food supply chain particularly in the area of energy reduction is becoming acute the food industry currently has to contend with multiple competing pressures alongside the new challenges of sustainable production we applied institutional theory to explore the role of supermarkets in the development of legitimate sustainable practices across the dairy supply chains the paper focuses on dairy supply chain organizations and their consumption of energy we conducted 70 semi structured telephone interviews with various stakeholders across the supply chain findings revealed that the majority of actors in the supply chain identified supermarkets as the dominant player and that the supermarkets exert pressure on other smaller organizations across the supply chain although some organizations wished to pursue a sustainable agenda through integrating new rules and legitimate practices within their own organization the dominant logic appeared to be one of cost reduction and profit maximization there was also evidence that supermarkets and other large organizations attempt to replicate publicly available information on green successes for image purposes we conclude that the dominant logic of cost reduction is so well established that challenging the dominant logic may prove difficult the challenge is therefore to complement the dominant logic with sustainable practices across the whole supply chain a role government needs to play this will require a broader more systemic approach to encouraging sustainable practices including investment and financing practices so that all members of the dairy supply chain can co operate and contribute to energy reduction

gas and lng trading hubs hub indexation and destination flexibility in east asia abstract in the east asian gas markets issues like gas trading hubs hub indexed pricing and destination flexibility are being debated this paper examines the impact of a change in east asia s pricing benchmark and contract flexibility on the regional and global gas markets the paper uses the nexant world gas model a linear program with global cost minimization as the objective to our knowledge this study on hub competition price benchmark change and contract flexibility improvement in east asia will be the first in the literature and have real policy relevance the results show that both price benchmark change and contract flexibility improvements will create an overall benefit for the world and east asia importers but the impacts are different among exporters and importers however there is no evidence of competition among different benchmark hubs and no evidence that destination restrictions cause the asia premium it implies that removal of destination clauses has higher priority than the change to hub indexation for japan korea and chinese taipei but both should be treated equally in china the study also suggests that east asian importers should cooperate among themselves and with exporters to facilitate the hub creation and contract changes in east asia

contagion around the october 1987 stock market crash abstract this study investigates financial contagion among seven international stock markets around the october 19 1987 crash building on a recent advance in vector autoregression analysis by swanson n granger c w j 1997 impulse response functions based on a causal approach to residual orthogonalization in vector autoregression journal of the american statistical association 92 357 367 data determined historical decompositions are conducted to provide a day by day picture of price fluctuation transmission which is crucial to explore the financial contagion pattern characterized by rich dynamics the results clearly show that the crash originated in the us market and that an upward movement in the japanese market after the crash helped the recovery in the us market which has not yet been empirically documented in the literature