firm strategies and path dependencies an emerging economic geography of industrial data this paper analyses how firms engaged in industrial data production in the power generation industry operating within the us energy sector produce collect store aggregate analyse and ultimatel

efficient and durable decision rules with incomplete information we compare six concepts of efficiency for economies with incomplete information depending on the stage at which individuals welfare is evaluated and on whether incentive constraints are recognized an example is shown in which an incentive efficient decision rule may be unanimously rejected by the individuals in the economy we define durable decision rules which can resist such unanimous rejection and show that efficient durable decision rules exist

globalization and competitive strategy in europe s vulnerable regions firm industry and country effects in labour intensive industries clark g l palaskas t tracey p and tsampra m 2004 globalization and competitive strategy in europe s vulnerable regions firm industry and country effects in labour intensive industries regional studies38 1077 1092 european integration has prompted great interest in the adjustment capacities of small and medium enterprises in regions characterized by high levels of unemployment and lower than average incomes at issue in these circumstances is the extent to which economic competitiveness can be enhanced by technological change and the resources of european and national governments relying upon the results of a detailed survey of small and medium sized firm competitive strategies in selected vulnerable regions across europe the paper focuses upon firm adjustment strategies in four labour intensive industries vulnerable to international competition it draws together the results of these surveys providing econometric and statistical analyses that demonstrate the commonalities and difference

human capital formation and local economic performance bradley s and taylor j 1996 human capital formation and local economic performance reg studies 30 1 14 this paper is concerned with the interaction between the vocational education and training system vet and local economic performance in britain after briefly discussing the shortcomings of britain s vet system the paper examines the way in which the education and training system and the local economy interact in particular it is argued that the outputs from the local education and training system determine and are determined by the locality s stock of high skill workers these high skill workers in turn help to determine the competitiveness and hence the economic performance of the local economy this has feedback effects on the stock of high skill workers through its effect on the occupational mix of in migrants some empirical tests of the model are provided based on data relating to 107 local education authority areas in england bradley s et taylor j 1996 la formation du capi

collective learning tacit knowledge and regional innovative capacity lawson c and lorenz e 1999 collective learning tacit knowledge and regional innovative capacity reg studies 33 305 317 the paper reviews key ideas in the firm capabilities literature and shows how they can be usefully extended to develop a conception of collective learning among regionally clustered enterprises the paper also explores the relationship between codifiable and tacit knowledge in the innovation process and investigates the claim that tacit knowledge because it is difficult to transfer in the absence of labour mobility may constitute a basis for sustained regional competitive advantage the closing section uses case study material based on minneapolis and cambridge to illustrate the importance for innovation of a regional capability for combining and integrating diverse knowledge and of the sources of such capabilities as pre conditions for successful high technology regions lawson c et lorenz e 1999 l apprentissage collectif la connaissance implicite et la capacite regio

conceptual framework for regional competitiveness budd l and hirmis a k 2004 conceptual framework for regional competitiveness regional studies38 1007 1020 the concept of territorial competitiveness has gained ground in academic policy and practitioner circles in particular urban competitiveness has generated a large literature however there is a danger that competitiveness at a territorial level becomes a conceptual chimera the essential problem is that territorially based actors and agencies seek to position and maintain the utility of their regions and subregions by reference to a set of measures and indicators that are conceptually suspect and often empirically weak the degree to which regions compete depends on a manifold set of factors the paper proposes a conceptual framework for regional competitiveness based on combining the competitive advantage of firms and the comparative advantage of a regional economy the conceptual transmission mechanism to regional competitiveness combines liebenstein s theory of x inefficiency and aggl

equilibrium in auctions with entry the authors model entry incentives in auctions with risk neutral bidders and characterize a symmetric equilibrium in which the number of entrants is stochastic the presence of too many potential bidders raises coordination costs that detract from welfare the authors show that the seller and society can benefit from policies that reduce market thickness i e the relative abundance of buyers their analysis extends well known revenue equivalence and ranking theorems but also demonstrates that variations in the auction environment affect optimal policies e g reservation prices in ways not anticipated by models that ignore entry copyright 1994 by american economic association

upgrading in global value chains lessons from latin american clusters it has been shown that clustering helps local enterprises in industrial districts overcome growth constraints and compete in distant markets in advanced and less developed countries nevertheless recent contributions have stressed that more attention needs to be paid to external linkages and to the role played by global buyers to foster upgrading at cluster levels in this study we contribute to this debate focusing on the analysis of the relationships existing between clustering global value chains upgrading and sectoral patterns of innovation in latin america we find that sectoral specificities matter and influence the mode and the extent of upgrading in clusters integrated in global value chains

learning theory and the logic of critical mass the oliver marwell theory of critical mass is a prominent solution to the free rider problem that plagues collective action in large groups i reformulate the theory as a stochastic learning model in which cooperative responses are shaped by the social sanctions and cues generated by the responses of others this relaxes four assumptions in the original formulation that the actors are rational decisions are isolated events outcomes are deterministic and public goods have pure jointness of supply and collective profit computer simulations then show how adaptive actors become trapped in a suboptimal equilibrium and how they escape through attainment of critical mass start up problems arise from accommodation to social costs and not from low returns to early contributors as previously believed simulations also identify a new dilemma of group size and show why solidarity tends to emerge in response to crisis finally normative solidarity appears to be a consequence rather than cause of critical mass but may promote recovery from random deviance

the impact of globalisation on different social groups competitiveness social cohesion and spatial segregation in istanbul the main objective of this paper is to explore relations between competitiveness and social cohesion in istanbul it mainly questions whether it is possible to expect a positive change in socio spatial inequalities if increasing competitiveness generates not only international business and high level services but also traditional low cost production activities the findings show that competition in different types of activities has generated large numbers of jobs but has not been able to overcome existing income disparities the increasing income differences however do not mean an increase in socio spatial segmentation since the non market processes and policies related to education gender and the urban land and housing markets have played important roles in the redistribution of different social groups within urban space in addition to the endogenous dynamics of labour markets

making sense of the competitiveness debate the debate over national competitiveness is marked by some basic misperceptions with few exceptions those who use the term have a crude essentially mercantilist view of world trade in which competition among nations is just like competition between corporations not only do the authors and readers of reports on national competitiveness usually not understand comparative advantage they are unaware of the most basic adding up constraints economists however find it hard to believe that seemingly well informed people can really be this naive and assume that there must be more sophisticated ideas lying behind what they say the rationales offered by economists in turn offer false comfort to the would be sophisticates who like the term competitiveness they believe that they have transcended conventional economic theory when the fact is that they have failed to comprehend it in short the actual level of discussion is lower than any of the participants imagines copyright 1996 by oxford university press

cities regions and competitiveness turok i 2004 cities regions and competitiveness regional studies38 1061 1075 competitiveness is a complex concept used in a variety of ways and contexts the paper reviews some of the main ideas particularly as they apply to cities and regions its definition should include the relative position of a region s firms in external markets the productivity of local resources and the extent to which they are used competition takes both an institutionalized form local public agencies competing overtly for investment and other resources and more importantly a less organized form involving firms trading in wider markets there are two contrasting perspectives on the competitive advantages of city regions one emphasizes the benefits of scale and diversity that flow from concentrations of economic activity the other stresses the quality of the interactions between firms and supporting institutions recent studies suggest that the significance of localized business networks or clusters might be exagge

ranking auctions with risk averse bidders this paper ranks first and second price independent value auctions with risk averse bidders when entry is endogenous unless bidders exhibit decreasing absolute risk aversion dara the fixed n ranking of first price over second price is sustained however when bidders exhibit dara we show that the effect of entry sometimes reverses the ranking we discuss how elements of the auction environment such as the relative magnitude of entry costs the number of potential bidders and the degree of risk aversion affect the ranking journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d44 d82 c72

a new solution to the collective action problem the paradox of voter turnout macy s work offers a potential solution to the paradox of voter turnout the stochastic learning theory of voter turnout kanazawa 1998 posits that citizens perceive a correlation between their behavior voting versus abstention and the outcome of collective action win versus loss for their candidate and that they interpret the outcome as a reinforcer or a punisher the theory can solve the paradox of voter turnout because now p the probability that one s vote is or appears decisive equals approximately 500 in the calculus of voting model instead of p 0 i use general social survey data to test the theory the empirical results indicate that citizens make their turnout decisions according to the win stay lose shift pattern predicted by the stochastic learning theory especially if there are no strong third party candidates

english auctions and the stolper samuelson theorem we prove that the english auction with bidders that need not be ex ante identical and may have interdependent valuations has an efficient ex post equilibrium we establish this result for environments where it has not been previously obtained we also prove two versions of the stolper samuelson theorem one for economies with n goods and n factors and one for non square economies similar assumptions and methods underlie these seemingly unrelated results

jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete malecki e j 2004 jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete regional studies38 1093 1112 the realization that places compete for investment has expanded in recent years to encompass competition among places for the attention of migrants tourists and media glow as well as investment the most competitive places have been multidimensional in their attractions and have made the transition to the knowledge based economy the latest priority is being placed on attracting mobile workers and mobile investment creative workers are the core of the knowledge economy and of its geographies such as intelligent places and learning regions knowledge metrics innovation indices and report cards are increasingly common each seemingly developed to sort the list of places in a different order lists or league tables of the best places for business to live retire and visit are key features of economies and societies whose factors of success

competitiveness indices and developing countries an economic evaluation of the global competitiveness report developing countries policy makers worry about national competitiveness and closely watch indices ranking international competitive performance this paper analyzes from a development economics perspective if competitiveness is a legitimate concern and if the leading indices deserve the attention they get it assesses the best known index the global competitiveness report of the world economic forum and finds deficiencies at several levels its definitions are too broad the approach biased and the methodology flawed many qualitative measures are vague redundant or wrong these weak theoretical and empirical foundations reduce the value of the indices for analytical or policy purposes

how risk sharing may enhance efficiency of english auctions we investigate the possibility of enhancing efficiency by awarding premiums to a set of highest bidders in an english auction in a setting that extends maskin and riley 1984 econometrica 52 1473 1518 in three aspects i the seller can be risk averse ii the bidders can have heterogeneous risk preferences and iii the auction can have a binding reserve price our analysis reveals that the premium has an intricate joint effect on risk sharing and expected revenue which in general benefits risk averse bidders when the seller is more risk averse than the pivotal bidder a condition often verifiable by deduction prior to the auction the premium also benefis the seller and therefore leads to a pareto improvement of the english auction the advantage of such premium tactics is directly related to a the seller s degree of risk aversion b the reserve price c the riskiness of the object for sale d the degree of heterogeneity in risk preferences among the bidders and e the number of the potential bidders

on the concept of territorial competitiveness sound or misleading in an era of globalisation the issue of territorial competitiveness is of increasingly central importance for regional development policies this paper aims to deal directly with the issue from a theoretical viewpoint in particular examining two related questions more thoroughly the question of the soundness of the concept of territorial competitiveness itself in terms of economic theory and the question of the new foundations on which this competitiveness is based using a cognitive evolutionary type approach

globalization and competitive strategies in european vulnerable regions affuso a capello r and fratesi u globalization and competitive strategies in european vulnerable regions regional studies this paper highlights the role played by structural economic features and industrial competitive strategies in the performance of a group of european regions defined as vulnerable because of their specialization in industries particularly exposed to international trade different growth patterns emerge among them the most successful regions are those with a strong presence of high value added functions of best performing vulnerable sectors but also with high structural funds expenditure on human resources moreover among the industrial strategies analysed it is found that the only winning strategy explaining higher productivity gains is industrial reconversion at the expense of employment growth affuso a capello r et fratesi u la mondialisation et les strategies competitives des regions europeennes vulnerables regional studies cet article cherche a souligner le rol

competitiveness of regions from an evolutionary perspective boschma r a 2004 competitiveness of regions from an evolutionary perspective regional studies38 993 1006 do regions compete as firms do how does one deal with the fact that regions unlike organizations are entities that do not act does it make sense to talk about the ability of regions to generate new variety this paper aims to address these questions from an evolutionary perspective it is meaningful to talk about regional competitiveness when the region affects the performances of local firms to a considerable degree this is especially true when the competitiveness of a region depends on intangible non tradable assets based on a knowledge and competence base embedded in a particular institutional setting that are reproduced and modified through the actions and repeated interactions of actors although regions are increasingly becoming collective players actively responding to an increasing exposure to extra regional competition the paper explains why there are serious limits in enhancin

risk aversion and optimal reserve prices in first and second price auctions abstract we analyze the effects of buyer and seller risk aversion in first and second price auctions in the classic setting of symmetric and independent private values we show that the seller s optimal reserve price decreases in his own risk aversion and more so in the first price auction the reserve price also decreases in the buyers risk aversion in the first price auction thus greater risk aversion increases ex post efficiency in both auctions especially that of the first price auction at the interim stage the first price auction is preferred by all buyer types in a lower interval as well as by the seller

a theory of the critical mass i interdependence group heterogeneity and the production of collective action collective action usually depends on a critical mass that behaves differently from typical group members sometimes the critical mass provides some level of the good for others who do nothing wh

auction form preferences of risk averse bid takers we analyze the preferences of a risk averse seller over the class of standard auctions with symmetric and risk neutral bidders assuming that buyers private signals are independently distributed we find that a sealed bid first price auction with an appropriately set reserve price is preferred by all risk averse sellers to any other standard auction in first and second price auctions the more risk averse a seller the lower the seller s optimal reserve price given two first price auctions with reserve prices and entry fees such that both have the same screening level all risk averse sellers prefer the auction with the lower entry fee

backward looking social control rational choice theorists stress the need for social control to overcome the free rider problem in collective action critics counter that mechanisms for monitoring and enforcement are themselves public goods that presume collective action rather than explain it in response heckathorn 1989 proposed an analytic solution based on hypocritical cooperation in which rational actors calculate the optimal allocation of resources between compliance with collective obligations and their enforcement i relax these forward looking behavioral assumptions and show how social control might evolve among backward looking pragmatists computers simulations test the ability of various sanctioning regimes to generate cooperation as well as resist stampedes that risk overcooperation and needless sacrifice external moral sanctions produce too little cooperation while internalized sanctions produce too much

why do sellers usually prefer auctions we compare the most common methods for selling a company or other asset when participation is costly a simple simultaneous auction and a sequential process in which potential buyers decide in turn whether to enter the bidding the sequential process is always more efficient but preemptive bids transfer surplus from the seller to buyers because the auction is more conducive to entry precisely because of its inefficiency it usually generates higher expected revenue we also discuss the effects of lock ups matching rights break up fees as in takeover battles entry subsidies etc

benchmarking urban energy efficiency in the uk this study asks what is the best way to measure urban energy efficiency there has been recent interest in identifying efficient cities so that best practices can be shared a process known as benchmarking previous studies have used relatively simple metrics that provide limited insight on the complexity of urban energy efficiency and arguably fail to provide a fair measure of urban performance using a data set of 198 urban uk local administrative units three methods are compared ratio measures regression residuals and data envelopment analysis the results show that each method has its own strengths and weaknesses regarding the ease of interpretation ability to identify outliers and provide consistent rankings efficient areas are diverse but are notably found in low income areas of large conurbations such as london whereas industrial areas are consistently ranked as inefficient the results highlight the shortcomings of the underlying production based energy accounts ideally urban energy efficiency benchmarks would be built on consumption based accounts but interim recommendations are made regarding the use of efficiency measures that improve upon current practice and facilitate wider conversations about what it means for a specific city to be energy efficient within an interconnected economy

the emergence of generalized exchange the existence of generalized exchange characterized by unilateral resource giving has been a puzzle when we assume rational actors because free riding can occur this article first identifies pure generalized exchange in which each actor gives resources to the recipient s of his choice then it proposes the fairness based selective giving strategy an actor adopting this strategy selects a recipient whose behaviors satisfy her criterion of fairness provided perfect information is given the results of evolutionary simulation show that pure generalized exchange can emerge among egoists without collective norms even in societies in which individuals have information only about their immediate neighbors

institutional barriers to associative city region governance the politics of institution building and economic governance in canada s technology triangle it has been argued that collaborative and associative forms of governance can enhance the economic competitiveness of cities and regions institutionalist approaches to urban and regional economic

asymmetric english auctions abstract this paper studies equilibria of the n bidder single object english or open ascending price auction in a setting with interdependent values and asymmetric bidders maskin in h siebert ed privatization institut fur weltwirtschaften der universitat kiel kiel 1992 pp 115 136 showed that if the values satisfy a single crossing condition then the two bidder english auction has an efficient equilibrium in this paper two extensions of the single crossing condition the average crossing condition and the cyclical crossing condition are introduced the main result is that under either of these conditions the n bidder english auction has an efficient equilibrium

hard and soft networks for urban competitiveness the concept of competitiveness has grown significantly and it is now common for cities regions and nations to assess improve and publicise their competitive standing vis a vis other places yet it remains rather unclear just what competitiveness is when applied to places which have objectives distinct from those of private sector organisations for whom share price and profitability serve as common metrics the blurring of the responsibilities of the public and private sectors also complicates matters with the former making increasing use of the terminology and priorities of business this paper takes the view that both public and private sectors and their interactions are sustained by networks to be effective these networks must operate at the global national regional and local scales gathering knowledge via social interaction that is through soft networks to a growing degree competitive networking also demands technological capability whether in high tech sectors smokestack industries

measuring the national competitiveness of southeast asian countries national competitiveness is a measure of the relative ability of a nation to create and maintain an environment in which enterprises can compete so that the level of prosperity can be improved this paper proposes a methodology for measuring the national competitiveness and uses the 10 southeast asian countries for illustration the basic idea is to deconstruct the complicated concept of national competitiveness to measurable criteria the observations data on the criteria are then aggregated according to their importance to obtain an index of national competitiveness for data collected from questionnaire surveys a calibration technique has been devised to alleviate bias due to personal prejudice in data aggregation the importance is expressed by both a priori weights and a posteriori weights these two types of weights consistently show that singapore malaysia and thailand have the highest national competitiveness while myanmar cambodia and laos are the least competitive countries the performance of each country in every criteria measured also provides directions for these countries to make improvements and for investors to allocate resources

an analysis of the principal agent problem most analyses of the principal agent problem assume that the principal chooses an incentive scheme to maximize expected utility subject to the agent s utility being at a stationary point an important paper of mirrlees has shown that this approach is generally invalid we present an alternative procedure if the agent s preferences over income lotteries are independent of action we show that the optimal way of implementing an action by the agent can be found by solving a convex programming problem we use this to characterize the optimal incentive scheme and to analyze the determinants of the seriousness of an incentive problem

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

comments on arrow and on lucas such a number of interesting and provocative things are put forward in lucas and in arrow in this issue that i would like to be able to dissect them in detail for example lucas states that the problem of controlling inflation has been successfully solved in a scientific sense p s405 i am tempted to explore the limits of the set of problems that might be said to be scientifically solved in the lucas sense but i fear that this would take up a good deal of space arrow deplores the use of homogeneity assumptions as a device for adding content to otherwise inconclusive economic theories but presumably he does not believe that the sonnenschien mantel debreu theorem is the ultimate conclusion regarding the useful content of the propositions of general equilibrium theory some restrictions of intermediate strength are presumably called for and i would like to make the case that strong empirical generalizations about the nature of human actors such as those describing the biological requirements for survival are available and relevant in this connection this too would take some space to develop in detail though not as much as the first subject given the constraints i must choose a focus i will focus on what i take to be the main message that lucas has put forward regarding the relationship between adaptive behavior and the rationality assumptions employed in standard economic theory this message is recognizable as the intellectual descendant of similar discussions by friedman and machlup in the 1940s and 1950s and the ideas involved remain extremely influential in the discipline today i will present and comment on my own statement of this position which i following blaug 1980 will call the classic defense of the rationality as

integrating finance into global production networks coe n m lai k p y and wojcik d integrating finance into global production networks regional studies while successful in its aim of globalizing regional development the global production network gpn approach has thus far paid less attention to the role of finance in the dynamics of the global economy and regional development this lacuna is significant as finance is arguably even more globalized and networked than production to address this gap the paper distils the concept of the global financial network gfn from financial geography and related scholarship with advanced business services world cities and offshore jurisdictions at the core interactions between the gpn and the gfn are discussed focusing on the financing and financializing of gpns and the co evolution of globalization and financialization integrating finance into gpn research entails more than a simple extension of the approach it would also enrich it conceptually and enable it methodologically and empirically

constructing regional advantage platform policies based on related variety and differentiated knowledge bases asheim b t boschma r and cooke p constructing regional advantage platform policies based on related variety and differentiated knowledge bases regional studies this paper presents a regional innovation policy model based on the idea of constructing regional advantage this policy model brings together concepts like related variety knowledge bases and policy platforms related variety attaches importance to knowledge spillovers across complementary sectors the paper categorizes knowledge into analytical science based synthetic engineering based and symbolic arts based in nature with different requirements of virtual and real proximity mixes the implications of this are traced for evolving platform policies that facilitate economic development within and between regions in action lines appropriate to incorporate the basic principles behind related variety and differentiated knowledge bases asheim b t boschma r and cooke p

learning to cooperate stochastic and tacit collusion in social exchange the prisoner s dilemma formalizes the social trap that arises when individually rational choices aggregate with mutually undesirable consequences the game theoretic solution centers on the opportunity for tacit collusion in repeated play however not all actors grasp the strategic implications of future interaction accordingly this study reformulates the game as a stochastic learning model in which the behavior of interdependent actors is constinually shaped by sanctions and cues generated by their interaction computer simulations of a two person game show that adaptive actors are led into a social trap more readily than are fully rational actors but they are also better at finding their way out prosocial norms appear to be a consequence rather than cause of cooperation but useful in promoting forgiveness of random deviance the model is then elaborated as an n way prisoner s dilemma simulations show how the effects of network size density mobility and anonymity derive from a fundamental princi

exit voice dynamics in collective action an analysis of emigration and protest in the east german revolution1 what triggers protest in a highly repressive regime do opportunities to exit an unfavorable regime through flight spur collective action aimed to reform or replace it drawing on hirschman s microeconomic theory of exit and voice as responses to organizational decline this article offers a sociological theory of exit voice dynamics that considers the implications of social embeddedness for collective action a unique data set on migration and protest in the east german revolution of 1989 90 is used to analyze county level variations in exit and voice alongside indicators of political loyalty social movement organization and social and economic conditions the analysis finds strong support for the reformulated exit voice model and its prediction of an inverted documentclass aastex usepackage amsbsy usepackage amsfonts usepackage amssymb usepackage bm usepackage mathrsfs usepackage pifont usepackage stmaryrd usepackage textcomp usepackage portland xspace usepackage amsmath amsxtra

transnational firms and the changing organisation of innovative activities it is suggested that a transition is taking place towards new modes of organising transnational corporations innovative activities first different units of multinational firms including foreign based subsidiaries are increasingly involved in the generation use and transmission of knowledge secondly multinationals are developing external networks of relationships with local counterparts through which foreign affiliates gain access to external knowledge sources and application abilities as a result of this evolutionary process multinationals organisation is subject to both centripetal and centrifugal forces considerable efforts are then necessary to innovate coordination procedures and mechanisms in order to enhance the generation circulation and use of knowledge a number of empirical works are reviewed providing some evidence of the evolutionary process discussed in the paper 1 transnational companies as networks of innovators economists have long viewed innovation as being primarily generated by firms in their home countries classic contributions in the economics of multinational corporations have consolidated this view referring mainly to the us based multinationals vernon 1966 kindleberger 1969 and stopford and wells 1972 theorised a quasi colonial relationship between the parent company and foreign subsidiaries wherein the latter are in charge of replicating the former s activities abroad with strategic decisions including r d and innovation strategies being rigidly centralised particularly vernon emphasised that coordinating international innovative activities would be too costly owing to the difficulties of collecting and controlling relevant information across national borders host countries and foreign subsidiaries would then play a role almost exclusively in the adoption and diffusion of centrally created technology this view was supported mainly by us economists and based on us evidence from the early post world war ii period but it was very influential for the development of studies on the economics of transnational companies tncs and the internationalisation of

auctions with contingent payments an overview i survey a literature on auctions with contingent payments that is auctions in which payments are allowed to depend on an ex post verifiable variable such as revenues in oil lease auctions based on demarzo et al 2005 i describe a partial ranking of auction revenues for auctions that differ in terms of contract forms pricing rules and seller commitment and why the revenue equivalence theorem does not apply even in an independent private values setup i discuss models that incorporate adverse selection moral hazard competition between auctioneers common values and the sale of multiple units

chains of cooperation threshold effects in collective action granovetter s threshold model of collective action shows how each new participant triggers others until the chain reaction reaches a gap in the distribution of thresholds hence outcomes depend on the network of social ties that channel the chain reactions however structural analysis is encumbered by the assumption that thresholds derive from changing marginal returns on investments in public goods a learning theoretic specification imposes less stringent assumptions about the rationality of the actors and is much better suited to a structural analysis computer simulations suggest that threshold effects may be the key to solving the coordination problem when individual choices are contingent on participation by others this interdependence facilitates the coordination of contributions needed to shift the bistable system from a noncooperative equilibrium to a cooperative one further simulations with low density networks show that these chain reactions require bridges that link socially distant actors supporting granovetter s case for the strength of weak ties

absorptive capacity and social capital in regional innovation systems the case of the lahti region in finland the recent theories of innovation suggest that there is great potential for innovation in the structural holes and weak links of the innovation system higher absorptive capacity enables an easier

knowledge innovation and institutions global and local dimensions of the ict cluster in waterloo canada bramwell a nelles j and wolfe d a knowledge innovation and institutions global and local dimensions of the ict cluster in waterloo canada regional studies this paper presents research findings on the information and communication technology ict cluster in waterloo ontario cluster dynamics in canada do not conform to some of the key assumptions in the literature on clusters that emphasize the importance of local intra cluster dynamics based on inter firm linkages at the local level the results of this case study indicate that many inter firm linkages in the waterloo ict cluster are non local and that extra firm institutional supports such as the local university and industry association are critical in sustaining and strengthening the cluster knowledge based cluster theories that emphasize the role of local and global knowledge flows and learning processes and the interaction effect of civic capital and local institutions in supporting the development of a local learning economy prov

network governance for competitiveness the role of policy networks in the economic performance of settlements in the izmir region some cities and regions grow faster than others and they increase their relative shares in the global economy the literature offers a wide list of factors of competitiveness most of which define individual capacities of cities recently however there has been an increasing focus on the importance of network governance and the policy networks formed between different cities this paper examines the importance of policy networks compared with other widely recognised factors of competitiveness to the economic performance of settlements in the izmir region and investigates the importance of classical competitiveness indicators and network relations on their economic performance with the use of econometric methods in conclusion it discusses the importance of policy networks in administrative reform processes and economic development policies

the paradox of group size in collective action a theory of the critical mass ii many sociologists incorrectly believe that larger groups are less likely to support collective action than smaller ones the effect of group size infact depends on costs if the costs of collective goods rise with the number who share in them larger groups act less frequently than smaller ones if the costs vary little with group size larger groups should exhibit more collective action than smaller ones because larger groups have more resources and are more likely to have a critical mass of highly interested and resourceful actors the positive effects of group size increase with group heterogeneity and nonrandom social ties paradoxically when groups are hetero geneous fewer contributors may be needed to provide a good to larger groups making collective action less complex and less expensive

monopolistic competition and the effects of aggregate demand how important is monopolistic competition to an understanding of the effects of aggregate demand on output we ask the question at three levels can monopolistic competition by itself explain why aggregate demand movements affect output can it together with other imperfections generate effects of aggregate demand in a way that perfect competition cannot if so can it give an accurate account of the response of the economy to aggregate demand movements the answers are no yes and yes

labor market adjustments and the persistence of unemployment persistent unemployment like that plaguing europe since the early 1980 s has been a persistent problem for economic theory competitive equilibrium theory assumes that all markets clear including the labor market all theories of unemployment thus must reflect significant departures from that paradigm the last 20 years have generated a plethora of such theories the challenge is to construct models that generate unemployment and are broadly consistent with a host of other labor and macroeconomic phenomena including patterns of real wages and hours the traditional approach is to focus on a simple static equilibrium in which wages are kept above their market clearing level for a variety of reasons in the older versions of this story minimum wages union power and normative traditions in its more recent incarnations efficiency wage considerations within the united states the older variants of these models have received decreasing credence as union power has eroded the real value of the minimum wage has declined and empirical evidence has buttressed a broader set of theoretical arguments based on imperfect competition within the labor market and efficiency wage considerations suggesting at most negligible effects from these government interventions efficiency wage variants are more broadly consistent with observed labormarket behavior and help explain both natural rates of unemployment and certain cyclical phenomena e g the use of layoffs rather than job sharing see carl shapiro and stiglitz 1984 lawrence summers 1990 moreover to the extent that unemployment compensation and protection against separations for cause have improved recently in europe these models can explain the secular rise in european unemployment see edmund phelps 1994 2 on the other hand as conventionally formulated they leave many aspects of the labor market unexplained 3 more recent theories analyze unemployment as the result of imbalances between flows into and out of the job market 4 in these models in steady state on average the flow supply into unemployment must balance the flow out the equilibrium level of unemployment is thus determined through relations between these flows and the level of unemployment most noted within this genre are the labor turnover theories in which labor costs are affected by wages and the unemployment rate and the job search models in which unemployment arises from the need for job matches which by assumption can only occur among the

changing competitive advantage in a local economy the case of coventry 1971 90 this paper examines the application of porter s analysis of the competitive advantage of nations to understanding why one british local economy coventry changed from a position of relative competitive disadvantage during the 1970s and early 1980s to one of advantage during the remainder of the 1980s each of porter s four determinants of competitive advantage supply conditions demand conditions firms and clusters of activities was found to have had some influence on explaining the change in coventry s competitive advantage with the qualification that analyses focus on processes of change and account is taken of the alterations in emphasis needed by changing the scale of analysis from national to local economies porter s ideas deserve a wider application and critical examination than they have hitherto received in local and regional economic studies

avoiding complexity catastrophe in coevolutionary pockets strategies for rugged landscapes can firms and coevolutionary groups suffer from too much interdependent complexity is complexity theory an alternative explanation to competitive selection for the emergent order apparent in coevolutionary industry groups the biologist stewart kauffman suggests a theory of complexity catastrophe offering universal principles explaining phenomena normally attributed to darwinian natural selection theory kauffman s complexity theory seems to apply equally well to firms in coevolutionary pockets based on complexity theory four kinds of complexity are identified kauffman s nk c model is positioned at the edge of chaos between complexity driven by newtonian simple rules and rule driven deterministic chaos kauffman s insight which is the basis of the findings in this paper is that complexity is both a consequence and a cause multicoevolutionary complexity in firms is defined by moving natural selection processes inside firms and down to a parts level of analysis in this instance porter s value chain level to focus on microstate activities by agents the assumptions of stochastically idiosyncratic microstates and coevolution in firms are analyzed competitive advantage as a dependent variable is defined in terms of nash equilibrium fitness levels this allows a translation of kauffman s theory to firms paying particular attention to 1 how value chain landscapes might be modeled 2 assumptions underlying kauffman s models making them amenable to firms and 3 a delineation of seven of kauffman s computational experiments as part of the translation possible parallels between the application of complexity catastrophe theory to coevolutionary pockets and studies by institutional theorists and social network analysts are discussed the models derive from spin glass microstate models resulting in boolean games kauffman s boolean statistical mechanics is introduced in developing the logic underlying the somewhat simplified nkm c model the model allows the use of computational experiments to better understand how the dependent variable value chain fitness is affected by changes in the number of internal interdependencies k the number of coevolutionary links with opponents c the size of the coevolutionary pocket s and the number of simultaneous adaptive changes among other things various computational experiments are presented that suggest strategic organizing approaches most likely to foster competitive advantage high or low nash equilibrium fitness levels are shown to result from internal and external coevolutionary densities as a function of links among value chain competencies within a firm and between a firm and an opponent complexity phenomena appear to suggest a number of expected and thus validating and surprising strategies with respect to complex organizational interdependencies for example moderate complexity fares best and external coevolutionary complexity sets an upper bound to advantages likely to be gained from internal complexity various complexity lessons are discussed models such as the nk c could offer insights into strategic organizing

how do flexible labour markets really work the role of profitability in influencing unemployment this paper assesses the theoretical justifications available for policies of flexible labour markets flms in reducing the level of unemployment in developed economies it empirically assesses the oecd s rationalisation of policy linking profitability to investment and job creation in four country cases new capital investment is found to be significant for unemployment in all cases but it is not found to be a consequence of the mechanistic achievement of normal profits without an empirically supported mechanism for how flms reduce unemployment the policy is open to the accusation of being no more than a political tool for altering distribution without concern for the wider socio economic consequences copyright the author 2008 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

rationality of self and others in an economic system in this paper i want to disentangle some of the senses in which the hypothesis of rationality is used in economic theory in particular i want to stress that rationality is not a property of the individual alone although it is usually presented that way rather it gathers not only its force but also its very meaning from the social context in which it is embedded it is most plausible under very ideal conditions when these conditions cease to hold the rationality assumptions become strained and possibly even self contradictory they certainly imply an ability at information processing and calculation that is far beyond the feasible and that cannot well be justified as the result of learning and adaptation let me dismiss a point of view that is perhaps not always articulated but seems implicit in many writings it seems to be asserted that a theory of the economy must be based on rationality as a matter of principle otherwise there can be no theory this position has even been maintained by some who accept that economic behavior is not completely rational john stuart mill 1909 bk 2 ch 4 argued that custom not competition governs much of the economic world but he adds that the only possible theory is that standard economic doctrine makes assumptions of rationality that have very strong implications for the complexity of individuals decision processes the most complete assumptions of competitive general equilibrium theory require that all future and contingent prices exist and be known in fact of course not all these markets exist the incompleteness of markets has several side consequences for rationality for one thing each decision maker has to have a model that predicts the future spot prices this is an informational burden of an entirely different magnitude than simply optimizing at known prices it involves all the complexity of rational analysis of data and contradicts the much praised informational economy of the price system it is also the case that equilibria become much less well defined similar problems occur with imperfect competition this research was supported by the office of naval research grant onr n00014 79 c 0685 at the center for research in organizational efficiency institute for mathematical studies in the social sciences stanford university stanford california

higher growth through the blue ocean strategy implications for economic policy a b s t r a c t higher growth is a key goal of companies governments and societies economic policies often attempt to attain this goal by targeting companies of certain sizes that operate in specific industries and focus on a specific business activity this approach to policy making has considerable shortcomings and seems to be less than fully effective in increasing economic growth we suggest a new approach to policy making that stems directly from the entrepreneurial perspective this approach examines a successful business strategy framework the blue ocean strategy to discover conditions for high growth we test the propositions on empirical data for two cases of successful high growth business namely slovenian gazelles and amazon com the results reveal a gap between the macro level of economic policy making to achieve higher growth and the micro level of business growth the findings call for a change in the focus of economic policies on specific size companies industries and business activities to intraindus try cooperation collaboration between companies of different sizes value innovation and creation of uncontested markets

social networks and collective action a theory of the critical mass iii most analyses of collective action agree that overcoming the freerider problem requires organizing potential contributors thus making their decisions interdependent the potential for organizing depends on the social ties in the group particularly on the overall density or frequency of ties on the extent to which they are centralized in a few individuals and on the costs of communicating and coordinating actions through these ties mathematical analysis and computer simulations extend a formal microsocial theory of interdependent collective action to treat social networks and organization costs as expected the overall density of social ties in a group improves its prospects for collective action more significant because less expected are the findings that show that the centralization of network ties always has a positive effect on collective action and that the negative effect of costs on collective action declines as the group s resource or interest heterogeneity increases these nonobvious resu

how bidder s number affects optimal reserve price in first price auctions under risk aversion this paper shows that in the classic symmetric and independent private value environments the seller s optimal reserve price is a decreasing function of the number of bidders in the first price auctions when the seller and or buyers are risk averse

risk aversion and the choice between risky prospects the preservation of comparative statics results most results in what can be termed the comparative statics of risk aversion are obtained when there is only one source of uncertainty the primary example which originally motivated the definition of risk aversion is that more risk averse people are willing to pay a higher premium for insuring against risk it is known that the results do not generally carry over when there is another source of uncertainty the paper develops conditions under which comparative statics results are robust against the introduction of additional sources of uncertainty

globalization of production and innovation how outsourcing is reshaping an advanced manufacturing area cusmano l mancusi m l and morrison a globalization of production and innovation how outsourcing is reshaping an advanced manufacturing area regional studies this paper investigates the determinants and the spatial and functional dimensions of firms outsourcing based on a large survey of manufacturing firms in lombardy italy the analysis shows that outsourcing is remarkably wide across sectors and has a clear regional dimension concerning highly skilled firms at most offshoring is still a minor fraction of the deverticalization process largely related to wider strategies of internationalization by foreign group subsidiaries at intermediate stages of the value chain the evidence suggests the regional system is inserting onto global knowledge networks but also points at the risk of branch plant effects in high technology segments cusmano l mancusi m l et morrison a la mondialisation de la production et de l innovation comment l approvisionnement a l exterieur reorganise une zone ind

premium auctions and risk preferences abstract in a premium auction the seller offers some payback called premium to a set of high bidders at the end of the auction this paper investigates how the performance of such premium tactics is related to the bidders risk preferences we analyze a two stage english premium auction model with symmetric interdependent values in which the bidders may be risk averse or risk preferring upon establishing the existence and uniqueness of a symmetric equilibrium we show that the premium causes the expected revenue to increase in the bidders risk tolerance a net premium effect is key to this result

a model of imperfect competition with keynesian features the recent literature on the reappraisal of keynes has viewed keynesian equilibria as arising when prices are fixed and effective demands and supplies are equilibrated through the adjustment of quantities one problem with this approach is that it lacks a theory of price determination in particular of why prices are fixed in the present paper we show that a number of keynesian features arise in a model in which prices are fully flexible but where agents have some monopoly power one advantage of this approach is that it provides a theory of the determination of both prices and quantities

towards a competence theory of the region this paper argues the case for extending the competence theory of the firm or more generally the competence perspective to analysis of the region the relevance of the perspective follows from the characterisation of productive systems such as firms and regions as ensembles of competences that emerge from but are not reducible to social interaction attention is drawn to an identifiable although unacknowledged convergence of ideas in the recent regional literature arguing that these ideas are best re conceptualised in terms of regional competences the cluster of hightechnology firms in the cambridge region of the uk is briefly referred to in order to illustrate the main ideas of the paper

impacts of climate policy on the competitiveness of canadian industry how big and how to mitigate competitiveness concerns have been at the forefront of climate policy debates in canada particularly as a result of its high energy intensity and significant exposure to international markets this paper uses a dynamic computable general equilibrium model to assess the likely impacts on sectoral competitiveness that would accompany efforts to meet greenhouse gas mitigation targets that have been set by the canadian government additionally it evaluates several design mechanisms that could be used to reduce the negative competiveness impacts associated with adoption of domestic climate policies the analysis suggests that several sectors would likely face significant competiveness challenges under a reference scenario in which permits are given to emitters in lump sum however it finds that competiveness impacts can be minimized by using output based recycling of permits or by using border tax adjustments

competitiveness and industrial policy from rationalities of failure towards the ability to evolve this article elaborates a dynamic rationale of industrial policy focusing on how to strengthen the socio economic system s ability to evolve i e how to achieve high real income together with qualitative change it highlights that the ubiquitous rationalities of failure be it of markets governments or systems are rooted in a peculiar habit of accepting hypothetical perfect states as normative benchmarks in contrast a dynamic logic of intervention should start from the question what the system aims to accomplish combining the structuralist ontology of micro meso and macro with the functional principles of evolutionary change the paper proposes a general typology of economic policies based on their respective contributions to the system s ability to evolve

the industrial policy of competitiveness a review of recent developments in the uk the article reviews the recent developments in uk competitiveness policy and explores its relationship with industrial policy including regional industrial policy it argues that competitiveness is virtually synonymous with productivity growth but that while four competitiveness white papers of the 1990s potentially broadened the scope of uk industrial policy the shift from sectoral to horizontal measures has in fact helped much reduce the content of this policy the article reviews current industrial policy and expenditure distinguishing between the areas of science and technology small firms and regional policy it argues that industrial policy is now a part of competitiveness policy being closely aligned to the efficiency role of government it finds that while policy has converged on a narrower set of measures the traditional boundaries between the science and technology small firm and regional policy components have become much less clear cut

a behavioral model of turnout the so called paradox of voting is a major anomaly for rational choice theories of elections if voting is costly and citizens are rational then in large electrorates the expected turnout would be small for if many people voted the chance of anyone being pivotal would be too small to make the act worthwhile yet many people do vote even in large national elections to address this puzzle we construct a model of adaptive rationality citizens learn by simple trial and error repeating satisfactory actions and avoiding unsatisfactory ones their aspiration levels which code current payoffs as satisfactory or unsatisfactory are also endogenous themselves adjusting to experience our main result is that agents who adapt in this manner turn out in substantial numbers even in large electorates and even if voting is costly for everyone standard conceptions of rational behavior do not explain why anyone bothers to vote in a mass election turnout is the paradox that ate rational choice theory fiorina 1990 334 we would like to thank stephen ansolabehere sorin antohi glenn ellison dedre gentner sunil kumar david laitin tze lai arthur lupia elijah millgram lincoln moses scott page tom palfrey john patty paul pfleiderer adam simon joel sobel carole uhlaner three anonymous referees and the participants in the political economics seminar at the gsb the stanford caltech workshop the unc american politics research group the ucla conference on cognition emotion and rational choice panels at the annual meetings of the mpsa and the apsa the agent 2000 workshop the seventh annual wallis conference the cmu pitt colloquium series and the center for advanced study in the behavioral sciences seminar series for their helpful comments this paper was written while ting was at the university of north carolina at chapel hill and he thanks unc s department of political science for its support it was revised while bendor was a fellow at the casbs and he is grateful for the center s financial and intellectual support

embryonic knowledge based clusters and cities the case of biotechnology in scotland the cluster concept has been promoted in recent years as a panacea for economic development both locally and nationally one source of theoretical and empirical ambiguity in the concept is related to the spatial processes underpinning cluster development and to the relationship between cities and clusters in particular this paper examines the case of the biotechnology cluster in scottish cities with particular reference to glasgow and edinburgh the promotion of a biotechnology cluster has become a priority for scotland s economic development strategy because of its potential role in the knowledge driven economy the paper examines the major locational dynamics affecting biotechnology in scotland and interrogates the balance between the major forces driving the development of biotechnology firms in their urban location it concludes that the importance of cities to cluster growth lies mainly in the size and diversity of their labour markets in the presence of key research institutions and public sect

interactive learning informal networks and innovation evidence from electronics firm survey in the pearl river delta china learning by interacting defines the endogenous path of economic development in modern innovation studies in this paper we aim to investigate the way that firms undertake interactive learning in the chinese context by introducing the role of informal guanxi network in this way this paper tries to bridge the gap between studies on firm innovation activities and those on the role of informal network for business performance based on an electronics firm survey in the pearl river delta china this article demonstrates that firms undertaking the highest intensity of interactive learning with the widest scope of business partners such as foreign customers domestic customers parent companies universities and sales agents tend to achieve better innovation outcomes it also verifies a more important role of interactive learning in incremental product innovation than in discontinuous innovation as electronics firms operate in highly modularized value chains furthermore the intensive interactive learning firms have a much higher tendency to apply informal guanxi networks with long term business partners as a complement to deficient formal institutions in interactive learning than other firms overall this paper contributes to the understanding of the form and effect of interactive learning in the chinese context finally the paper addresses the possible lock in issue and points out further research questions on the changing pattern of interactive learning within a maturing institutional framework

local economic policies as determinants of the local business climate empirical results from a cross section analysis among east german municipalities blume l 2006 local economic policies as determinants of the local business climate empirical results from a cross section analysis among east german municipalities regional studies 40 321 333 for the period after 1995 there is empirical evidence that differences in east german local economic policies explain a significant part of the variation in the local business climate a cross section analysis among 92 municipalities shows that successful economic policies consisted of a balanced mix of traditional instruments consulting real estate management investment in infrastructure and modern competition oriented activities city marketing new public management regional cooperation and public private partnerships at the current level of intergovernmental competition among east german municipalities there are no signs of a ruinous race in subsidies discriminating subsidies even have a negative effect on the business climate in cities that have implemented these blume l 2006 les politiques

monotone comparative statics under uncertainty this paper analyzes monotone comparative statics predictions in several classes of stochastic optimization problems the main results characterize necessary and sufficient conditions for comparative statics predictions to hold based on properties of primitive functions that is utility functions and probability distributions the results apply when the primitives satisfy one of the following two properties i a single crossing property which arises in applications such as portfolio investment problems and auctions or ii log supermodularity which arises in the analysis of demand functions affiliated random variables stochastic orders and orders over risk aversion

when does one bad apple spoil the barrel an evolutionary analysis of collective action this paper studies collective action games in which the production of a public good requires teamwork a leading example is a threshold game in which provision requires the voluntary participation of m out of n players quantal response strategy revisions allow play to move between equilibria in which a team successfully provides and an equilibrium in which the collective action fails a full characterization of long run play reveals the determinants of success these include the correlation between players costs of provision and their valuations for the good the addition of an extra bad apple player can spoil the barrel by destabilizing successful teams and so offers a rationale for limiting the pool of possible contributors copyright 2008 wiley blackwell

auctions versus negotiations which is the more profitable way to sell a company an auction with no reserve price or an optimally structured negotiation with one less bidder we show under reasonable assumptions that the auction is always preferable when bidders signals are independent for affiliated signals the result holds under certain restrictions on the seller s choice of negotiating mechanism the result suggests that the value of negotiating skill is small relative to the value of additional competition the paper also shows how the analogies between monopoly theory and auction theory can help derive new results in auction theory jel d44 g34 there are close analogies between standard price theory and the theory of auctions in an absolute english auction in which the price rises continuously until only one bidder remains and the seller is required to accept the final bid the sale price equals the lowest competitive price at which supply equals demand in the theory of optimal auctions the seller is treated as a monopolist who can choose any

notes and comments the amsterdam auction the amsterdam auction has been used to sell real estate in the dutch capital for centuries by awarding a premium to the highest losing bidder the amsterdam auction favors weak bidders without having the implementation difficulties of myerson s 1981 optimal auction in a series of experiments we compare the standard first price and english auctions the optimal auction and two variants of the amsterdam auction with strongly asymmetric bidders the second price amsterdam auction raises substantially more revenues than standard formats and only slightly less than the optimal auction

regional worlds from related variety in regional diversification to strategic coupling in global production networks this annual lecture paper bridges two influential but parallel literature strands on evolutionary economic geography eeg and global production networks gpn it argues that both strands are prem

precautionary bidding in auctions we analyze bidding behavior in auctions when risk averse buyers bid for a good whose value is risky we show that when the risk in the valuations increases dara bidders will reduce their bids by more than the appropriate increase in the risk premium ceteris paribus buyers will be better off bidding for a more risky object in first price second price and english auctions with affiliated common interdependent values this precautionary bidding effect arises because the expected marginal utility of income increases with risk so buyers are reluctant to bid so highly we also show that precautionary bidding behavior can make dara bidders prefer bidding in a common values setting to bidding in a private values one when risk neutral or cara bidders would be indifferent thus the potential for a winner s curse can be a blessing for rational dara bidders

the economics of technical change this paper reviews the recent rapidly growing literature on technical change in the economy it concentrates on innovations and their diffusion at firm and industry level since this was the area designated as relatively weak in earlier literature surveys the review argues that the extensive empirical evidence and theoretical analysis now available presents a basic challenge to neoclassical theory after indicating some weaknesses in the neo schumpeterian literature the paper concludes by advocating an experiment with a new form of assessment by neighboring disciplines to economics itself which would take full account of the fundamental issues at stake in this modern methodenstreit c 1994 academic press inc copyright 1994 by oxford university press

fighting collusion in auctions an experimental investigation the danger of collusion presents a serious challenge for auctioneers in this paper we compare the collusive properties of two standard auctions the english auction and the first price sealed bid auction and a lesser known format the amsterdam second price auction in the amsterdam auction the highest losing bidder earns a premium for stirring up the price we study two settings in one all bidders can collude and in another only a subset is eligible the experiments show that the amsterdam auction triggers less collusion than the standard auctions we compare experimental results to theoretical predictions and provide an explanation where they differ