measuring heterogeneous reservation prices for product bundles this paper develops a model for capturing continuous heterogeneity in the joint distribution of reservation prices for products and bundles our model is derived from utility theory and captures both within and among subject variability furthermore it provides dollarmetric reservation prices and individual level estimates that allow the firm to target customers and develop customized and nonlinear pricing policies our experiments show that regardless of whether the products are durables or nondurables the model captures heterogeneity and predicts well models that assume homogeneity perform poorly especially in predicting choice of the bundle furthermore the methodology is robust even when respondents evaluate few profiles self stated reservation prices do not have any informational content beyond that contained in the basic model the direct elicitation method appears to understate overstate the variation in reservation prices across consumers for low priced high priced products and bundles hence this method yields biased demand estimates and leads to suboptimal product line pricing policy the optimization results show that the product line pricing policy depends on the degree of heterogeneity in the reservation prices of the individual products and the bundle a uniformly high price strategy for all products and bundles is optimal when heterogeneity is high otherwise a hybrid strategy is optimal

kaldor s laws and spatial dependence evidence for the european regions pons novell j and viladecans marsal e 1999 kaldor s laws and spatial dependence evidence for the european regions reg studies 33 443 451 in this paper we provide an outline of kaldor s growth model and test its relevance to the economic experience of european regions during the period 1984 92 kaldor s first law asserts that manufacturing is the engine of economic growth his second proposition also known as verdoorn s law states that there is a strong positive relation between manufacturing productivity growth and manufacturing output growth kaldor s third law holds that overall productivity growth is positively related to manufacturing output growth and negatively related to employment in non manufacturing sectors the empirical results corrected for the presence of spatial autocorrelation indicate that kaldor s second and third laws are compatible with the economic growth of european regions during the period 1984 92 pons novell j et viladecans marsal e 1999 les lois de kaldor et la

analysis of an industrial component commonality problem we discuss a case study of an industrial production marketing coordination problem involving component commonality for the product line considered the strategic goal of the company is to move from the current low volume market to a high volume market the marketing department believes that this can be achieved by substantially lowering the end products prices however this requires a product redesign to lower production costs in order to maintain profit margins the redesign decision involves grouping end products into families all products within one family use the same version of some components this paper fits in the stream of recent literature on component commonality where the focus has shifted from inventory cost savings to production and development cost savings further we consider both costs and revenues leading to a profit maximization approach the price elasticity of demand determines the relationship between the price level and number of units sold consequently we integrate information from different functional areas such as production marketing and accounting we formulate the problem as a net present value investment decision we propose a mixed integer nonlinear optimization model to find the optimal commonality decision the recommendation based on our analysis has been implemented in the company in addition the application allows us to experimentally validate some claims made in the literature and obtain managerial insights into the trade offs

centralized pricing versus delegating pricing to the salesforce under information asymmetry the issue of delegating pricing responsibility to the salesforce is of interest to marketing academics and practitioners it has been shown by lal 1986 that under certain situations with information asymmetry it is more profitable for the firm to delegate pricing authority to the salesforce than to have centralized pricing in this paper we re examine situations where information asymmetry exists and analyze its effect on the decision of the firm to set a price or delegate pricing responsibility to the salesforce using contract theory we find that when the salesperson s private information can be revealed to the firm through contracting centralized pricing performs at least as well as price delegation we derive the optimal centralized pricing contract under a set of standard assumptions used in the economics and business literature

a review of residential tiered electricity pricing in china abstract at present the unformed market oriented pricing mechanism has become a great challenge faced by china s electricity pricing and the unreasonable electricity pricing caused by cross subsidization has become increasingly serious with the economic development and energy shortage tiered electricity price tep which was developed and used since 1970s was introduced into china as a new electricity pricing method for residential electricity consumption the tep can also improve the tariffs the behaviors and the efficiency of residential electricity consumption in this study we use the fundamental theory of the electricity economics to analyze the pricing methods and the forms of china s power market with the reform of electric power industry we also point out the characteristics of residential tiered electricity pricing in china which is also compared with other countries such as the united states and japan the main factors influencing the residential tiered electricity pricing design are discussed in this paper from the perspectives of users the electric power enterprise and government regulation then we point out the main problems of china s existing tiered electricity pricing including inadequate level of public awareness and acceptance unreasonable tiered and electricity price standard insufficient reflection in regional differences less combination with other electricity pricing forms and low level of smart meter application

dollar vs percentage markup pricing schemes under a dominant retailer abstract we investigate two very common pricing schemes for a stackelberg dominant retailer percentage markup and dollar markup we show that when a dominant retailer switches from dollar to percentage markup the channel s overall pie and the retailer s pie piece are both enlarged in contrast the manufacturer will be forced to levy a lower wholesale price thus receiving a smaller pie piece despite the larger pie the preceding statements hold regardless of whether the demand is deterministic or stochastic however the effects of switching to percentage markup on the retail price and sales volume will depend not only on whether the demand is stochastic but also on the assumed demand curve shape and on whether demand stochasticity is additive or multiplicative besides presenting a comprehensive set of answers on the comparative performance of dollar and percentagemarkups our results also highlight the often overlooked importance of choosing between i dollar and percentage markup and ii the formats of the assumed stochasticity and demand curves

price and income distortions under separate spending and taxing decisions abstract this paper analyzes the extent to which intergovernmental grants create a discrepancy between the local voter s actual and perceived budget constraints the model is innovative in that it introduces grant illusion due to income misperceptions theoretically distinguishes illusion caused by income distortions from illusion caused by price distortions and separately tests for the magnitude of each empirical analysis identifies both price and income misperceptions as significant determinants of voter behavior these unbiased estimates reveal that previous research has misspecified the budget constraint resulting in overestimation of the stimulative effects of intergovernmental grants on local expenditure

trade liberalisation in developing economies modest benefits but problems with productivity growth macro prices and income distribution microeconomically the case for liberalisation is dubious under increasing returns to scale and when firms can invest directly in productivity enhancement distributional effects of commercial policy changes can be regressive and large but the rents they generate can serve as a basis for effective policy intervention contingent on firms performance macroeconomically the case of liberalisation rests on say s law which is not always enforced recent combined current and capital market liberalisations have been associated with strong exchange rates and high interest rates and output and productivity growth have positive mutual feedbacks which liberalisation may well suppress

economic incentives and political institutions spending and voting in school budget referenda abstract allocation of resources in the local public sector involves economic and political forces in many u s states the bulk of spending on public education is subject to referendum we link spending proposals to referendum outcomes our model makes use of voting data to shed light on the extent to which referenda constrain spending we use data from school budget referenda in 544 new york school districts for the 1975 1976 school year our econometric results and simulations based on them reveal considerable sensitivity of spending to the form of the state grants in aid structure as well as to the referendum requirement in addition large school districts appear to behave more like budget maximizers than do small districts where proposals appear more in line with median voter demands

productivity and growth verdoorn s law revisited abstract this paper presents causality tests on manufacturing output and labour productivity to examine the so called verdoorn law the conclusion is that a modified granger test supports verdoorn s law

learning more from tobit coefficients extending a comparative analysis of political protest tobit analysis is the appropriate strategy for many sociological problems unfortunately clear procedures for interpreting its coefficients are not available using walton and ragin s 1991 tobit analysis of austerity protests in debtor nations i show that tobit coefficients can be decomposed into two effects 1 an effect representing an increase in the severity of protests in countries that have experienced protests and 2 an effect representing a change in the probability of experiencing an austerity protest in countries that recorded no protests finally an analogue to afully standardized regression coefficient is defined for tobit coefficients decomposing tobit coefficients reveals important additional findings that could not be discernedfrom the ordinary tobit coefficients

estimating school district expenditure functions under conditions of closed end matching aid abstract several studies have used ordinary least squares ols to estimate school district expenditure functions for states with closed end matching aid the present paper demonstrates that the estimates of these studies may be inconsistent a two stage technique which guarantees consistent estimates is described and is used to estimate the price elasticity of expenditure for pennsylvania school districts the two stage estimates indicate expenditure to be substantially more price elastic than do the ols estimates the two stage technique is appropriate for estimating any input demand or expenditure function when closed end matching aid is involved

the prospects for smart energy prices observations from 50 years of residential pricing for fixed line telecoms and electricity this study focuses on how energy and communications have evolved over the last 50 years and what we can learn from history in order to examine the prospects for smart energy pricing by 2050 we begin by discussing the nature of energy and telecoms products and why price discrimination should be expected we then review various business and pricing strategies that have evolved in the two industries we find that business models for both the telecoms and energy sectors have changed from the traditional services business model i e offering of calls and messages for telecoms and utility supply services for energy to more dynamic integrated and complex business models these new business models include the managed services provider model the bundled services model and the prosumer business model among others similarly several changes in pricing structure have evolved there has been a reduction in the number of distanced based and increasing time based price differentiation in fixed line telecoms and the abolition of residential floor area based differentiation in electricity pricing we conclude with a discussion on how the rollout of the next generation of electricity meters smart and advanced meters may further shape electricity pricing in the future

wealth neutrality revisited guaranteed tax base formulas and local choice in public education urrent research interest in school finance stems from reforms aimed at narrowing the range of expenditure variations among school districts these reforms have attempted to compensate for tax base differences by providing state matching aid inversely proportional to tax base while expressed in different forms in different states and variously termed percentage equalization district power equalization dpe or guaranteed tax base gtb these formulas in their basic form amount to the state guaranteeing all districts the same tax base per pupil call it v districts taxing themselves at a tax rate r adjusted at the state level to compensate for assessment variations so that r reflects the rate on true market value are guaranteed revenue equal to rv the difference between what is raised locally in a district rv and the guarantee at that tax rate is provided through the state aid formula 2 in practice legislative limitations on aid formulas in most states have led to richer districts maintaining a tax base advantage for example districts with a tax base above v can raise more revenue at the same tax rate than districts at vor below also placing limits on reimbursable expenses e g not to exceed e r v means that beyond a certain point even in districts with tax bases below v raising tax rates will not engender any additional state matching aid as would be required under a strict guarantee hence while the introduction of gtb formulas provided a theoretical improvement these limits made them equivalent to the foundation aid formulas they were intended to replace effective improvement coming only when the limits were made more generous 3 in studying these reforms research has concentrated on models relating current operating expenditures to the following tax base some price term reflecting the local share in the matching formula block grants and demographic variables the most popular form has been the single equation log linear model4 where coefficients are elasticities which allows for easy comparability of the effects of the independent variables however the assumption of constant elasticities and the lack of interaction terms can be misleading in capturing behavioral responses and in making projections this may be especially true when one is using data from less than equalized systems where districts are operating in a tax and expenditure range different from what would occur under a fully tax base equalized system and when there are different responses to the state aid formula depending upon relative tax burden and educational need for example the expenditure response to state aid in poorer districts may be high for small increments in state aid but as district expenditures move beyond minimal requirements increases in state aid may go increasingly into tax relief depending upon the tax burden the richer districts in terms of property generally face a price of one i e no matching aid at the margin however most legislation guarantees some minimal funding for these districts in order to make aid formulas fully effective either poorer disreceived for publication october 1 1981 revision accepted for publication april 16 1982 the american university this work was supported by national science foundation grant number ses 8013080 i am indebted to anthony boardman for getting me interested in the topic to robert summers anita summers janet pack and ralph ginsberg for moral and intellectual support to numerous people in the michigan state government especially bob witte and bob bosscher for their expertise and cooperation and to the school of public and urban policy university of pennsylvania for its encouragement of this research i usually property per pupil which we denote by v 2 i e state aid per pupil is r v v the local share or net price that the district pays per dollar of educational expenditure denoted a is a v p under gtb districts control expenditure levels through their choice of tax rate 3for a detailed analysis of aid formulas see reilly 1982 4 initially postulated by feldstein 1975 park and carroll of rand 1979 black et al 1979 1980 and johnson and collins 1978 1979 also use the same model other models of local expenditures have been used by akin and auten 1976 barro 1972 gatti and tashman 1976 1978 grubb and michelson 1974 inman 1971 1978 ladd 1975 lovell 1978 slack 1980 stem 1973 welch 1981 and wentzler 1980

the role of the business model in capturing value from innovation evidence from xerox corporation s technology spin off companies this paper explores the role of the business model in capturing value from early stage technology a successful business model creates a heuristic logic that connects technical potential with the realization of economic value the business model unlocks latent value from a technology but its logic constrains the subsequent search for new alternative models for other technologies later on an implicit cognitive dimension overlooked in most discourse on the topic we explore the intellectual roots of the concept offer a working definition and show how the xerox corporation arose by employing an effective business model to commercialize a technology rejected by other leading companies of the day we then show the long shadow that this model cast upon xerox s later management of selected spin off companies from xerox parc xerox evaluated the technical potential of these spin offs through its own business model while those spin offs that became successful did so through evolving business models that came to differ substantially from that of xerox the search and learning for an effective business model in failed ventures by contrast were quite limited

a two stage supply chain coordination mechanism considering price sensitive demand and quantity discounts abstract this paper explores the coordination between a supplier and a buyer within a decentralized supply chain through the use of quantity discounts in a game theoretic model within this model the players face inventory and pricing decisions we propose both cooperative and non cooperative approaches considering that the product traded experiences a price sensitive demand in the first case we study the dynamics of the game from the supplier s side as the leader in the negotiation obtaining a stackelberg equilibrium and then show how the payoff of this player could still improve from this point in the second case a cooperative model is formulated where decisions are taken simultaneously emulating a centralized firm showing the benefits of the cooperation between the players we further formulate a pricing game where the buyer is allowed to set different prices to the final customer as a reaction to the supplier s discount decisions for the latter we investigate the difference between feasibility of implementing a retail discount given a current coordination mechanism and without it finally the implications of transportation costs are analyzed in the quantity discount schedule our findings are illustrated with a numerical example showing the difference in the players payoff in each case and the optimal strategies comparing in each case our results with existing work

estimating demand under block rates electricity and water many empirical studies of the demand for electricity under declining block tariffs have been conducted but few have produced results consistent with traditional demand theory nordin bell j economics 7 719 21 1976 explains this in part by pointing out that most of those studies failed to take into account the income effects caused by intramarginal price differences the authors show here that nordin s suggestion involves the inappropriate use of ordinal level statistics ols they propose a method by which consistent estimates of the demand parameters can be obtained when a household s rule for selecting a block can be estimated 19 references 1 figure

growth and productivity a model of cumulative growth and catching up individually neither the cumulative growth approach of the post keynesian tradition nor the catching up theory of neoclassical derivation are able to account for the chief stylized facts of comparative economic growth a pooled cross section econometric model that integrates these two approaches is developed and tested by the authors over the period 1950 88 for a group of nine oecd countries for a group of nine latin american countries and for a group of seven east asian countries purchasing power parities for 1985 are employed to measure productivity levels the growth record of the oecd countries is satisfactorily assessed by the model the catching up effect is found to be relevant in explaining productivity growth in the oecd area and in east asia but not in latin america this differential outcome finds explanation in terms of the relative strength of dynamic increasing returns copyright 1997 by oxford university press

industrial pricing theory and managerial practice we organize the existing theoretical pricing research into a new two level framework for industrial goods pricing the first level consists of four pricing situations new product competitive product line and cost based the second level consists of the pricing strategies appropriate for a given situation for example within the new product pricing situation there are three alternative pricing strategies skim penetration and experience curve pricing there are a total of ten pricing strategies included in the framework we then identified a set of cost product market and information conditions which determine what pricing situation s a firm is facing as well as which strategies are appropriate within a given situation some of these determinant conditions are common to many pricing strategies e g highly elastic demand while others are unique to a given strategy within a particular pricing situation for example within the product line situation the profitability of supplementary sales is a unique determinant of the complementary product pricing strategy razor and blade pricing using this framework as a basis for an empirical study we examined how well current industrial pricing practice matches the prescriptions from the existing research our sample consisted of 270 respondents 27 response rate of these more than 50 indicated that they used more than one pricing strategy in formulating their most recent pricing decision for a high value industrial product sold in the united states as in previous research cost plus pricing was the most often cited pricing strategy 56 of the respondents since the respondents were able to indicate their use of more than one pricing strategy the data are of the pick k from n variety in order to model the managers pricing strategy choices we constructed a stacked binary logit with a separate observation for each strategy within a given pricing situation the signs of the determinant variables were estimated as interaction terms the new product pricing strategies skim penetration experience curve were used for new models in the market skim pricing was used in markets with high levels of product differentiation by firms at a cost disadvantage due to scale penetration pricing was used by firms with a cost advantage due to scale in markets with high level of overall elasticity but low brand elasticity experience curve pricing was used for minor innovations by firms with low capacity utilization in markets with a high level of differentiation the competitive pricing strategies leader parity and low price supplier were used in mature markets parity pricing was used by firms in a poor competitive situation i e high costs low market share low product differentiation these firms were also unable to take advantage of high levels of elasticity since their capacity utilization was high in contrast the low price supplier strategy was used by firmswith low costs due to scale advantages since they have low utilization these firms can take advantage of elastic brand demand none of the determinants were significantly related to the choice of leader pricing product line pricing strategies bundling complementary product and customer value pricing were more likely to be used by firms which sell substitute or complementary products bundle pricing was used for per sale contract pricing in markets with high levels of brand elasticity complementary product pricing razor and blade was used by firms that enjoyed high profitability on its supplementary sales using customer value pricing a firm offers a stripped down version of its current products to appeal to more price sensitive segments or to leverage new distribution channels this strategy was used to target a narrow segment in high growth markets where price changes are difficult to detect cost based pricing was more likely to be used in marketswhere demand is very difficult to estimate in such a situation cost based pricing makes a great deal of sense in general the results show that the managers pricing strategy choices are consistent with normative pricing research however questions about how managers combine their strategies to arrive at a final price as well as the organizational influences on pricing strategies remain important areas for future research

supplier initiated outsourcing a methodology to exploit synergy in transportation over the last decades transportation has been evolving from a necessary though low priority function to an important part of business that can enable companies to attain a competitive edge over their competitors to cut down transportation costs shippers often outsource their transportation activities to a logistics service provider of their choice this paper proposes a new procedure that puts the initiative with the service provider instead supplier initiated outsourcing this procedure is based on both operations research and game theoretical insights to stress the contrast between the traditional push approach of outsourcing and the here proposed pull approach where the service provider is the initiator of the shift of logistics activities from the shipper to the logistics service provider we will refer to this phenomenon as insinking insinking has the advantage that the logistics service provider can proactively select a group of shippers with a strong synergy potential moreover these synergies can be allocated to the participating shippers in a fair and sustainable way by means of a so called shapley monotonic path of customized tariffs insinking is illustrated by means of a practical example based on data from the dutch grocery transportation sector

sectoral regularities of productivity growth in developing countries a kaldorian interpretation this paper provides a kaldorian interpretation for empirical regularities of product ivity growth at the sectoral level of the economy the statistical evidence is based on a dataset drawn from internationally compatible time series for employment and value added in 30 developing countries based on novel non linear statistical techniques the findings show i a regular pattern of positive sectoral employment elasticities with respect to output growth ii robust differences across sectors in the magnitude of the employment elasticities and iii employment elasticities for all sectors that are signifi cantly less than unity suggesting strong evidence for increasing returns at the sector level of the economy

accumulation innovation and catching up an extended cumulative growth model this paper presents an extended model of cumulative growth in which the effects of innovation and catching up are considered innovation adds another source of cumulative growth to that of traditional models and allows a consideration of the importance of non price determinants of international competitiveness catching up is the major force leading to convergence in productivity owing to the effect of the diffusion of technology the model allows one to analyse whether cumulative forces may lead to stable growth and whether this solution generates convergence in productivity levels the structural model is tested for a set of oecd countries over the period 1965 94

dynamic lot sizing models with pricing for new products while previous dynamic lot sizing dls models mainly consider mature products this study analyzes production planning decisions for new products the demand dynamics caused by new product diffusion complicate production decisions for new products we integrate dls and discrete bass models to provide optimal decisions for pricing and production planning problems moreover we study the joint influence of product diffusion and pricing parameters on the dls decisions this leads to the following insights first coordinated production pricing and dynamic pricing improve profitability second the optimal pricing strategy is affected by market conditions the penetration pricing strategy outperforms the skimming pricing strategy when consumers are less sensitive to relative price changes than to the introductory price when the product diffuses slowly or when the consumer initiative level is low otherwise the latter outperforms the former finally pricing strategies and product diffusion patterns reshape the cost structure of a firm coordinated decisions and dynamic pricing strategy substantially reduce the cost revenue ratio whereas an increase in the consumer initiative level or product diffusion speed can improve cost efficiency

critical survey the new geographical turn in economics some critical reflections over the past few years a new geographical economics has emerged focused on the spatial agglomeration of industry and the long run convergence of regional incomes several leading names are associated with this geographical turn including paul krugman michael porter robert barro and w brian arthur this new economic geography it is argued here is neither that new nor is it geography instead it is a reworking or re invention using recent developments in formal mathematical mainstream economics of traditional location theory and regional science as such it is quite opposed to and difficult to reconcile with the work on regional development and industrial agglomeration being carried out in economic geography proper

optimal bundle formation and pricing of two products with limited stock abstract in this study we consider the stochastic modeling of a retail firm that sells two types of perishable products in a single period not only as independent items but also as a bundle our emphasis is on understanding the bundling practices on the inventory and pricing decisions of the firm one of the issues we address is to decide on the number of bundles to be formed from the initial product inventory levels and the price of the bundle to maximize the expected profit product demands follow a poisson process with a price dependent rate customer reservation prices are assumed to have a joint distribution we study the impact of reservation price distributions initial inventory levels product prices demand arrival rates and cost of bundling we observe that the expected profit decreases as the correlation between the reservation prices of two products increases with negative correlation bundling cost has a significant impact on the number of bundles formed when the product prices are low the retailer sells individual products as well as the bundle mixed bundling when they are high the retailer sells only bundles pure bundling the expected profit and the number of bundles offered decrease as the variance of the reservation price distribution increases for high starting inventory levels the retailer reduces bundle price and offers more bundles the number of bundle sales decreases and the number of individual product sales increases when the arrival rate increases since the need for bundling decreases impacts of substitutability and complementarity of products are also investigated the retailer forms more bundles or charges higher prices for the bundle or both as the products become more complementary and less substitutable

history versus equilibrium and the theory of economic growth a model of cumulative causation is developed and the limits of this model as a characterization of historical rather than equilibrium long run growth outcomes are discussed an extension of the model which postulates that cumulative causation occurs in the context of technological and institutional regimes is proposed outcomes in the extended model are shown to be more influenced by history than those in the original model the extended model also addresses a number of recent criticisms of cumulative causation copyright 1997 by oxford university press

a synoptic view of regional growth and unemployment ii the post keynesian theory this paper discusses the post keynesian explanation of the causes of disparities in regional growth and unemployment rates it begins by examining the relationship between the real wage rate the level of demand and regional unemployment next it shows how regional growth is primarily determined by the rate of growth of exports a two region model is outlined which demonstrates how regional growth rates are interrelated through interregional trade flows and the regional balance of payments constraint the paper concludes with a discussion of the cumulative causation theory of regional growth

optimal pricing for information goods with piracy and saturation effect we analyze the pricing decision of a firm selling a product for which there is a significant and continuous saturation effect over time and that can be pirated assuming that the firm uses a skimming strategy we solve three profit maximization models given demand that is linearly decreasing in price few prices can be used over the life of the product the effects of both piracy and saturation are combined in the first model in the second model the firm can invest in technology or copyright enforcement to reduce piracy the third model describes the case in which piracy leads to increased awareness of the product and increased demand numerical sensitivity analysis and examples are used to illustrate the results the results indicate that under strong piracy and saturation effects a skimming strategy is suboptimal

the effects of grants in aid on state and local expenditures abstract this paper develops econometric methods to estimate the effect of the piecewise linear budget constraints created by grant formulas in which the subsidy rate is not constant over expenditures e g closed end grants the methods are applied to the afdc program the results show that because of the kinked nature of the grant formula 1 the present federal formula actually increases cross state inequality in afdc benefits 2 several subsidy rates in the formula actually reduce benefits and 3 the so called flypaper effect disappears

pension spiking free riding and the effects of pension reform on teachers earnings in many states local school districts are responsible for setting the earnings that determines the size of pensions but are not required to make contributions to cover the resulting state pension fund liabilities in this paper i document evidence that this intergovernmental incentive inherent in public sector defined benefit pension systems distorts the amount and timing of income for public school teachers i use the introduction of a policy that required experience rating on earnings increases above a certain limit in a differences in differences framework to identify whether districts are willing to pay the full costs of their earnings promises because of the design of the policy overall earnings of teachers near retirement did not change instead districts that previously provided one time pay increases shifted to smaller increments spread out over several years in addition some districts that did not practice pension spiking prior to the reform appear to begin providing payments up to the new lower limit perhaps due to increased salience of the fiscal incentive therefore the policy was ineffective at decreasing pension costs

is cumulative growth in manufacturing productivity slowing down in the eu12 regions the cumulative causation in the relation between labour productivity and output growth known as verdoorn s law is empirically tested using data from 109 eu12 regions during the period 1977 2005 several specifications of verdoorn s law are put forward in this paper which attribute the process of cumulative causation to a series of factors including manufacturing agglomeration spatial interaction and responses to the problems of growth the findings suggest that although cumulative causation holds over this period the slowdown of its pace is nonetheless apparent post 1992 revisions in responses e g policy along with further research are thus recommended the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved

do we really understand the development of china s new energy industry abstract countries all over the world have realized that the key to resolving the dilemma between accelerated energy consumption and reduction in carbon dioxide emission is to actively develop new energy industry many scholars have conducted in depth investigation into the main driving forces of the new energy industry however they often adhere to an assumption that the effect of the driving forces on new energy industry is constant across areas ignoring the spatial heterogeneity in economic phenomena geographically weighted regression gwr model and the use of local sample data to implement parameter estimation can make up for the inadequacies of existing research therefore this paper uses the gwr model to carefully investigate the new energy industry the results show that the impact of economic growth on the new energy industry in the eastern region is higher than in the central and western regions owing to the differences in economic structure and fixed asset investment the impact of foreign energy dependence continuously declines from the eastern region to the central and western regions this is attributable to the differences in natural gas and oil imports technological progress has a similar effect on account of the differences in r d funding and r d personnel investments however the impact of the agriculture industry in the central region is higher than in the eastern and western regions due to the differences in crop acreage and agricultural output this study improves our understanding of the new energy industry and would help local authorities to formulate targeted policies for promoting the growth of new energy industry