meta paradigm change and the theory of the firm many seemingly unrelated debates on the theory of the firm are in fact part of a single deeper transformation of the social sciences as the foundational assumptions of 20th century social science have slowly been shown by science to be false new sub paradigms have emerged which cumulatively drop i theoretical assumptions about markets to explain firms ii epistemological assumptions about knowledge to explain diversity and iii metaphysical assumptions about causality to explain technical change debates occur across each of these levels

doomed from the start what is the value of selecting a future dominant design this study investigates how important it is for a firm to select what turns out to be a dominant design in a technology driven industry using the personal computer industry as a case study this research shows that firms are not doomed when their entry design choices turn out to be wrong for early entrants we found that switching to the dominant design is associated with increased chances of survival and market share contrary to our expectations we found that even later entrants that switched to the dominant design also enjoyed higher survival rates and greater market position copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

induced innovation evolutionary theory and path dependence sources of technical change the i960s to the i98os were very productive of new theory and empirical insights into the sources of technical change in the i96os and i970s major attention focused on the implications of changes in demand and relative factor prices on the rate and direction of technical change in the late i 970s and early i980s attention shifted to evolutionary models inspired by a revival of interest in schumpeter s insights into the process of economic development since the early i98os these have been complemented by the development of historically grounded path dependent models of technical change each of these models has contributed substantial insight into the sources of technical change this paper was motivated by a perception that each of the three research agendas is approaching a dead end the three models induced evolutionary and path dependent represent elements of a more general theory that has not yet been invented ruttan 1996 a in a closing comment i suggest some steps toward the development of a more general theory of the sources of technical change

the induced innovation hypothesis and energy saving technological change we develop a methodology for testing hicks s induced innovation hypothesis by estimating a product characteristics model of energy using consumer durables augmenting the hypothesis to allow for the ine uence of government regulations for the products we explored the evidence suggests that i the rate of overall innovation was independent of energy prices and regulations ii the direction of innovation was responsive to energy price changes for some products but not for others iii energy price changes induced changes in the subset of technically feasible models that were offered for sale iv this responsiveness increased substantially during the period after energy efficiency product labeling was required and v nonetheless a sizable portion of efficiency improvements were autonomous

does oil move equity prices a global view many studies indicate that oil price shocks have an adverse effect on real output and hence an adverse effect on corporate profits where oil is used as a key input the present study examines whether and to what extent the adverse effect of oil price shocks impacts stock market returns to this end we analyse 35 datastream global industry indices for the period from april 1983 to september 2005 our findings indicate that oil price rises have a negative impact on equity returns for all sectors except mining and oil and gas industries generally these results are consistent with economic theory and evidence provided by previous empirical studies little evidence of any asymmetry is detected in the oil price sensitivities in light of our findings we recommend that international portfolio investors consider hedging oil price risk

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

dosi s technological paradigms and trajectories insights for economics and management dosi 1982 has provided an eclectic framework which has for some time now been one of the core concepts in innovation studies while it has been very influential in public policy in management it remains underexploited many insights remain to be teased out of the framework which can help managers make better decisions this article reflects on the far reaching impact of dosi s ideas and his role in the founding and development of industrial and corporate change

oil prices inflation and interest rates in a structural cointegrated var model for the g 7 countries sharp increases in the price of oil are generally seen as a major contributor to business cycle asymmetries moreover the very recent highs registered in the world oil market are causing concern about possible slowdowns in the economic performance of the most developed countries in this paper a structural cointegrated var model has been considered for the g 7 countries in order to study the direct effects of oil price shocks on output and prices and the reaction of monetary variables to external shocks our results can be summarized as follows i a stationary money demand as suggested by the classic theory of money can be identified for most countries ii according to the estimated coefficients of the structural part of the model for all countries except japan and u k the null hypothesis of an influence of oil prices on the inflation rate cannot be rejected inflation rate shocks are transmitted to the real economy by increasing interest rates iii impulse response analysis suggests for most countries the existence of an instantaneous temporary effect of oil price innovations on prices iv impulse response functions indicate different monetary policy reactions to inflationary and growth shocks v the simulation exercises directed to estimate the total impact of the 1990 oil price shock indicate that for some countries u s a significant part of the effects of the oil price shock is due to the monetary policy reaction function for other countries canada france and italy however the total impact is offset at least in part by an easing of monetary conditions

oil price shocks and real gdp growth empirical evidence for some oecd countries this study assesses empirically the effects of oil price shocks on the real economic activity of the main industrialized countries multivariate var analysis is carried out using both linear and non linear models the latter category includes three approaches employed in the literature namely the asymmetric scaled and net specifications evidence of a non linear impact of oil prices on real gdp is found in particular oil price increases are found to have an impact on gdp growth of a larger magnitude than that of oil price declines with the latter being statistically insignificant in most cases among oil importing countries oil price increases are found to have a negative impact on economic activity in all cases but japan moreover the effect of oil shocks on gdp growth differs between the two oil exporting countries in the sample with the uk being negatively affected by an oil price increase and norway benefiting from it

oil and the macroeconomy since world war ii all but one of the u s recessions since world war ii have been preceded typically with a lag of around three fourths of a year by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum this does not mean that oil shocks caused these recessions evidence is presented however that even over the period 1948 72 this correlation is statistically significant and nonspurious supporting the proposition that oil shocks were a contributing factor in at least some of the u s recessions prior to 1972 by extension energy price increases may account for much of post opec macroeconomic performance

paradigm changing vs paradigm deepening innovation how firm scope influences firm technological response to shocks we examine the direction of firms research efforts as they respond to the shock of a sharp increase in the price of a key input in terms of direction firms can respond to this shock with paradigm changing investments that develop technologies to use substitute inputs or with paradigm deepening investments that develop technologies to improve the utilization efficiency of the existing input we develop a framework that suggests that firms emphasis on paradigm changing versus paradigm deepening investments depends on the degree of input relatedness across their businesses we test our hypotheses by examining the responses of large manufacturing firms in the united states to the oil shock of the early 1980s our framework predicts and our results show that the more related a firm s businesses are the larger its investments into paradigm changing technologies are and the smaller its investments into paradigm deepening technologies in response to the oil shock are we identify the implications of these findings for technological evolution and diversification literatures

a comparison of the effects of exogenous oil supply shocks on output and inflation in the g7 countries a comparison of the effects of exogenous shocks to global crude oil production on seven major industrialized economies suggests a fair degree of similarity in the real growth responses an exogenous oil supply disruption typically causes a temporary reduction in real gdp growth that is concentrated in the second year after the shock inflation responses are more varied the median cpi inflation response peaks after three to four quarters exogenous oil supply disruptions need not generate sustained inflation or stagflation typical responses include a fall in the real wage higher short term interest rates and a depreciating currency with respect to the dollar despite many qualitative similarities there is strong statistical evidence that the responses to exogenous oil supply disruptions differ across g7 countries for suitable subsets of countries homogeneity cannot be ruled out a counterfactual historical exercise suggests that the evolution of cpi inflation in the g7 countries would have been similar overall to the actual path even in the absence of exogenous shocks to oil production consistent with a monetary explanation of the inflation of the 1970s there is no evidence that the 1973 1974 and 2002 2003 oil supply shocks had a substantial impact on real growth in any g7 country whereas the 1978 1979 1980 and 1990 1991 shocks contributed to lower growth in at least some g7 countries jel e31 e32 q43

ideas for rent an overview of markets for technology this article surveys some of the recent literature on technology markets and summarizes its main issues and insights we structure our analysis in three parts the supply and demand of technology the factors that condition the formation and growth of technology markets industry structure and dynamic issues in addition we summarize some of the studies that have tried to document the size and growth of these markets we find that the literature has focused mainly on the supply of technology but several other aspects of these markets remain under studied including the demand for external technology the role of uncertainty in technology markets and the dynamic interaction between industry structure and the market for technology understanding these will illuminate whether markets for technology will continue to grow or remained confined to pockets of the economy copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

the voracity effect abstract we analyze an economy that lacks a strong legal political institutional infrastructure and is populated by multiple powerful groups powerful groups dynamically interact via a fiscal process that effectively allows open access to the aggregate capital stock in equilibrium this leads to slow economic growth and a voracity effect by which a shock such as a terms of trade windfall perversely generates a more than proportionate increase in fiscal redistribution and reduces growth we also show that a dilution in the concentration of power leads to faster growth and a less procyclical response to shocks jel f43 o10 o23 o40

related diversification and r d intensity dynamics abstract using longitudinal data of spanish manufacturing companies we study the dynamic bidirectional relationship between firm research and development r d intensity and corporate diversification in an organic growth setting our empirical approach accounts for the different sources of endogeneity although we find a positive linear effect of r d intensity on related diversification the effect of related diversification on r d intensity assumes the form of an inverted u thus the effect of related diversification on r d intensity is positive but marginally decreases for moderate levels of related diversification such an effect can become negative however for high levels of related diversification additionally as a consequence of dynamics the effects after one year are substantially lower than the overall effects that occur over several years

the structural budget balance a preliminary estimation for mexico in this article we estimate the structural budget balance for mexico from 1980 to 2003 using a variation of the methodology proposed by the international monetary fund in addition we propose a fiscal rule that limits deficits in the structural balance as a percentage of gdp such as the ones used by the european union and the chilean government amongst others we also simulate what the conventional balance would have been for mexico if such a rule would have been implemented in 1980

oil price shocks and stock markets in the u s and 13 european countries abstract oil price shocks have a statistically significant impact on real stock returns contemporaneously and or within the following month in the u s and 13 european countries over 1986 1 2005 12 norway as an oil exporter shows a statistically significantly positive response of real stock returns to an oil price increase the median result from variance decomposition analysis is that oil price shocks account for a statistically significant 6 of the volatility in real stock returns for many european countries but not for the u s increased volatility of oil prices significantly depresses real stock returns the contribution of oil price shocks to variability in real stock returns in the u s and most other countries is greater than that of interest rate an increase in real oil price is associated with a significant increase in the short term interest rate in the u s and eight out of 13 european countries within one or two months counter to findings for the u s and for norway there is little evidence of asymmetric effects on real stock returns of positive and negative oil price shocks for oil importing european countries

what happened to the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract strong evidence is found that oil prices no longer granger cause many u s macroeconomic indicator variables in data after 1973 a number of potential explanations are explored that sample stability issues are responsible that oil prices are now endogenous and that linear and symmetric specifications misrepresent the form of the oil price interaction none of these hypotheses are supported by the data the opec price increases do appear to have had significant impacts while the effects of the price declines of the 1980s are smaller and harder to characterize these results have potentially important implications for the large body of research which utilizes oil prices as an instrumental or explanatory variable

oil and the macroeconomy since the 1970s economists have long been intrigued by empirical evidence that suggests that oil price shocks may be closely related to macroeconomic performance this interest dates back to the 1970s the 1970s were a period of growing dependence on imported oil unprecedented disruptions in the global oil market and poor macroeconomic performance in the united states thus it was natural to suspect a causal relationship from oil prices to u s macroeconomic aggregates since then a large body of work has accumulated that purports to establish this link on theoretical grounds and to provide empirical evidence in its support we do not attempt a comprehensive survey of this literature but rather provide an idiosyncratic synthesis of what we view as the key issues in this debate and the insights gained over the last 30 years the timing seems right for such an account although the experience of the 1970s continues to play an important role in discussions of the link between oil and the macroeconomy there have been a number of new oil price shocks since the 1970s notably the 1986 collapse of oil prices and the 2000 boom in oil prices as well as the oil price increases associated with the 1990 1991 gulf war and the 2003 iraq war given this richer case history we are arguably in a better position than two decades ago to distinguish the idiosyncratic features of each oil crisis from the systematic effects increases in oil prices have been held responsible for recessions periods of excessive inflation reduced productivity and lower economic growth in this paper we review the arguments supporting such views first we highlight some of the conceptual difficulties in assigning a central role to oil price shocks in explaining

this is what happened to the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract many of the quarterly oil price increases observed since 1985 are corrections to even bigger oil price decreases the previous quarter when one looks at the net increase in oil prices over the year recent data are consistent with the historical correlation between oil shocks and recessions

induced innovation and energy prices this paper uses u s patent data from 1970 to 1994 to study the impact of energy prices on energy efficient innovations theories of technological change have focused both on demand side factors which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations and supply side factors such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible data on demand side factors are easily obtained but data on supply side factors that influence innovation are not readily available this paper uses patent citations as a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge citations to previous patents are used to construct productivity estimates which measure the usefulness of the existing stock of knowledge to inventors in a given energy field for any given year these estimates are then combined with data on demand side factors to estimate a model of induced innovation in energy technologies the results indicate that both energy prices and the supply of knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation the paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this work for environmental policy

crude oil and stock markets stability instability and bubbles abstract we analyze the long run relationship between the world price of crude oil and international stock markets over 1971 1 2008 3 using a cointegrated vector error correction model with additional regressors allowing for endogenously identified breaks in the cointegrating and error correction matrices we find evidence for breaks after 1980 5 1988 1 and 1999 9 there is a clear long run relationship between these series for six oecd countries for 1971 1 1980 5 and 1988 2 1999 9 suggesting that stock market indices respond negatively to increases in the oil price in the long run during 1980 6 1988 1 we find relationships that are not statistically significantly different from either zero or from the relationships of the previous period the expected negative long run relationship appears to disintegrate after 1999 9 this finding supports a conjecture of change in the relationship between real oil price and real stock prices in the last decade compared to earlier years which may suggest the presence of several stock market bubbles and or oil price bubbles since the turn of the century

exploration and exploitation in innovation systems the case of pharmaceutical biotechnology abstract this paper develops a theoretical framework for an explanation of how exploitation and exploration build on each other in a cycle of discovery developed in earlier research the framework is tested empirically in the sense of seeing whether it can help to reconstruct and understand the emergence of the pharmaceutical industry one of the conclusions is that whereas recent literature stresses the idiosyncratic nature of the biotechnological revolution our analysis seems to reveal that this does not seem to be as unique as suggested from this we conclude that the theoretical framework we propose serves its purpose of explanation but there are also some lessons for improving it

fiscal rules inertia and discretionary fiscal policy in current practice changes in the cyclically adjusted budget balance cab are interpreted as reflecting the effort of discretionary fiscal policy this paper shows that such an interpretation is not a sufficiently accurate description of the behaviour of fiscal policy as in some cases it may conceal an important deficit bias specifically as growth projections are an important building block of budgetary plans systematic optimism in forecasting growth coupled with pervasive lags and inertia in the implementation phase of the budget will result in a fiscal expansion compared to plans even in the absence of discretionary measures in order to track down this kind of passive behaviour in the light of growth surprises or sanguine growth assumptions the traditional reading of the cab needs to be adjusted this is achieved by relaxing the benchmark assumption according to which under unchanged fiscal policy the deficit to gdp ratio is invariant to growth an empirical application to public finance

exogenous oil supply shocks how big are they and how much do they matter for the u s economy abstract the paper proposes a new measure of exogenous oil supply shocks the timing the magnitude and the sign of this measure may differ greatly from current state of the art estimates it is shown that only a small fraction of the observed oil price increases during oil crisis periods can be attributed to exogenous oil production disruptions exogenous oil supply shocks cause a sharp drop of u s real gdp growth after five quarters rather than an immediate and sustained reduction in economic growth and a spike in cpi inflation after three quarters overall exogenous oil supply shocks made remarkably little difference for the evolution of the u s economy since the 1970s although they did matter for some historical episodes

oil price shocks stock market economic activity and employment in greece abstract using a multivariate vector autoregression var approach this paper attempts to shed light into the dynamic relationship among oil prices real stock prices interest rates real economic activity and employment for greece the empirical evidence suggests that oil price changes affect real economic activity and employment oil prices are important in explaining stock price movements stock returns do not lead to changes in real activity and employment

managerial incentives and investment in r d in large multiproduct firms incentives for division managers in large firms affect their risk orientation and thus their decisions to invest in r d this paper reviews theory and hypothesizes that division managers incentive compensation that is based on financial performance is negatively related to risk taking as measured by r d intensity results of a study of 184 major u s firms suggest that incentives based on short term annual division financial performance are negatively related to total firm r d intensity after controlling for industry r d intensity firm diversification size and group structure furthermore the results suggest that an emphasis on long term financial incentives may mitigate the negative relationship between these incentives and r d intensity but does not promote risk taking the results suggest the importance of emphasizing strategic controls evaluating division managers based on operational understanding of strategies proposed strategic criteria as opposed to the use of financial controls evalua

fiscal adjustments and economic performing a comparative study the empirical relationship among fiscal contractions permanent improvement in public finances and short run economic performance is examined using a sample of 14 european countries over the last three decades the actual experience of policy making has taught that only the adjustments that relied heavily on primary expenditure cuts and were implemented over a relatively long time span were able to achieve a long lasting reduction of public liabilities indeed during these consolidations tax increase amounted to a small fraction of the total adjustment furthermore though they unfolded over a longer period with respect to the unsuccessful ones the overall budget cut was not larger as regards the macroeconomic impact successful episodes tended to be associated with improved economic performance during the adjustment period and in the following two years the economies experienced strong consumption and investment growth reduced unemployment better international competitiveness and falling interest

induced innovation and marginal cost of new technology abstract lacking data on development and implementation costs for input saving technologies we develop a nonparametric procedure to estimate relative differences in marginal technology costs for technical change to be consistent with the induced innovation hypothesis we apply it to u s agriculture

testing for the cointegrating rank of a var process with structural shifts tests for the cointegrating rank of a vector autoregressive process are considered that allow for possible exogenous shifts in the mean of the data generation process the break points are assumed to be known a priori it is proposed to estimate and remove the deterministic terms such as mean linear trend term and a shift in a first step then systems cointegration tests are applied to the adjusted series the resulting tests are shown to have known limiting null distributions that are free of nuisance parameters and do not depend on the break point the tests are applied for analyzing the number of cointegrating relations in two german money demand systems

towards an economic theory of the multiproduct firm this paper outlines a theory of the multiproduct firm important building blocks include excess capacity and its creation market imperfections and the peculiarities of organizational knowledge including its fungible and taut character a framework is adopted in which profit seeking firms are seen to diversify in order to avoid the high transactions costs associated with using various markets to trade the services of various specialized assets neoclassical explanations of the multiproduct firm are shown to be seriously deficient

oil and the macroeconomy when prices go up and down an extension of hamilton s results in an important paper hamilton 1983 demonstrated a strong correlation between oil price changes and gross national product growth in u s data however his study pertained to a period in which all the large oil price movements were upward and thus it left unanswered the question whether the correlation persists in periods of price decline moreover the price variable he used was somewhat distorted by price controls in the 1970s this note investigates whether hamilton s results continue to hold when the sample is extended to include the recent oil market collapse and the oil price variable is corrected for the effects of price controls particular attention is given to the possibility of asymmetric responses to oil price increases and decreases as suggested in the structural employment literature loungani 1986 davis 1987 hamilton 1988 like hamilton i based my investigation on the gnp equation in sims s 1 980b six variable quarterly vector autoregressive model