exchange rate adjustment and oligopoly pricing behaviour this paper sets out a general theoretical structure for analyzing price adjustments to cost changes within asymmetric oligopolistic markets the theory implies that contrary to the usual assumption exchange rate changes may leave prices unaltered this is explored by an empirical examination of the european car market intracountry changes in car prices and the huge differences in u k and european car prices are both examined the empirical results are in line with the theoretical implications changes in relative supply costs are more likely to be converted into changes in price cost margins than prices within a national oligopolistic market copyright 1989 by oxford university press

exchange rate volatility and irish uk trade 1979 1992 this study examines how exchange rate volatility affected ireland s exports to its most important trading partner the united kingdom from 1979 to 1992 to ensure reliable inferences regarding income and price elasticities and the impact of exchange rate volatility on exports the time series properties of the series used are investigated the analysis here is conducted at both aggregate and 2 digit sitc division levels since exchange rate volatility can reasonably be presumed to affect sectors differently since expectations matter for exchange rate determination real volatility was generated according to a first order garch process both real and nominal volatility were important determinants for over 35 of irish uk trade with positive effects predominating this may be due to the nature of irish firms operating in a small open economy where they have little option in dealing with increased exchange rate risk except to weather the storm for fear of losing market share or facing costs of either exit

role of industrial district externalities in export and value added performance evidence from the population of italian firms becchetti l de panizza a and oropallo f 2007 role of industrial district externalities in export and value added performance evidence from the population of italian firms regional studies 41 601 621 the paper tries to shed light on the export and value added performance of industrial districts by integrating information on the population of italian firms from the asia database of the italian statistical institute with balance sheet data for all limited liability companies in selected manufacturing industries the findings show that firms located in industrial districts specialized or not in the leading manufacturing activity of the district export more and have higher added value than firms located elsewhere net of the impact of relevant controls the robustness check undertaken on the agglomeration performance nexus detects as expected a significant relationship between dichotomous district indicators and global and industry specific continuous measures of agglomeration and specializat

the role of information revelation in elimination contests in this article we investigate how information revelation rules affect the existence and the efficiency of equilibria in two round elimination contests we establish that no symmetric separating equilib rium exists under the full revelation rule and find that the non existence result is very robust we then characterise a partially efficient separating equilibrium under the partial revelation rule when players valuations are uniformly distributed we finally investigate the no revelation rule and find that it is both most efficient and optimal in maximising the total efforts from the contestants within our framework more information revelation leads to less efficient outcomes contests are widely used by various organisations wishing to select the best person or the best team sports for example are undoubtedly always in the form of contests science contests in schools are another example we can consider a contest as an auction in which players compete for prizes by submitting bids these bids once submitted have to be paid regardless of winning or losing rd 2 in political competition e g for the us presidency candidates first spend resources to secure their party s nomi nation and later if they are nominated spend more resources to get elected and 3 science contests among university or high school students e g the mathematics olympiad

exchange rate pass through in developing and emerging markets a survey of conceptual methodological and policy issues and selected empirical findings abstractglobal integration has increased the international linkages of financial markets for emerging market countries a key channel for the international transmission of inflation and economic cycles is from exchange rate movements to domestic prices known as exchange rate pass through erpt this article reviews the conceptual methodological and policy issues connected with erpt in emerging market and developing countries and critically surveys selected empirical studies a key contribution is to categorise and compare the heterogeneous methodologies used to extract erpt measures in the empirical literature single equation models and systems methods are contrasted frequent misspecifications that produce unreliable erpt estimates are highlighted the discerning policy maker needs to ascertain by which methods erpt measures were calculated the controls and restrictions applied and the time frame and stability of the estimates

the interaction of foreign exchange and market power effects on german domestic prices this paper illustrates the importance of international influences on domestic markets a model is presented in which changes in a country s terms of trade pass through to industrial prices in varying degrees depending on import penetration and seller concentration empirical results suggest that the 8 4 percent decline in the real external value of the deutsche mark from 1977 to 1983 allowed upward movement of about 2 percent in domestic producer prices of traded goods relative to the gnp price deflator increased market concentration led to a reduced effect while increased import penetration led to some increase in the exchange rate passthrough standard industrial organization models stress the impact of market power and entry conditions on economic performance with particular interest in price effects at the industry level greater concentration is expected to lead to higher prices ceteris paribus while greater ease in entry or a larger competitive fringe implies lower prices the international economics literature indicates that in the absence of trade barriers transactions and transportation costs and market power foreign exchange rate changes will be fully passed through to import and export prices implying that domestic prices of traded goods for an appreciating currency will be adjusted downward by the full amount of the exchange rate change the dramatic changes in exchange rates since the early 1970s provided exporters with new opportunities to enter markets of nations that had a strong currency west germany has been regarded as one such country this paper investigates the effect of exchange rate movements on particular german industrial prices i test to see whether the prominence of imports

social capital and interlocal service collaboration in us counties abstractsocial capital and interlocal service collaboration in us counties regional studies local governments are increasingly faced with public policy problems that span across their individual jurisdictional boundaries interlocal service collaboration has been suggested as a preferable alternative to address these issues this study examines the association between collective social capital especially focusing on putnam type organizations and interlocal service collaboration by investigating the interlocal revenues at the county level for the fiscal year 2002 in the united states an instrumental variables estimator to address a potential endogeneity problem of social capital was adopted the results show that social capital is positively associated with interlocal service collaboration further analysis revealed that 15 8 of counties variation in interlocal service collaboration was attributed to the state level

a noncooperative analysis of hotelling s location game abstract we study the location equilibrium in hotelling s model of spatial competition as d aspremont et al have shown with quadratic consumer transportation cost the two sellers will seek to move as far away from each other as possible we show that the location game possesses an infinity of mixed strategy nash equilibria in these equilibria coordination failure invalidates the principle of maximum differentiation and firms may even locate at the same point journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d43 l11

symmetric pass through of tariffs and exchange rates under imperfect competition an empirical test abstract this paper examines the effect of tariffs and exchange rates on u s prices of japanese cars trucks and motorcycles in particular we test whether the long run pass through of tariffs and exchange rates are identical the symmetry hypothesis we find that this hypothesis is easily accepted in our sample we also find that the pass through relation varies across products ranging from about 0 6 for trucks to unity for motorcycles these coefficients have very different implications for trade policy we explain the results based on demand cost and institutional conditions in each industry

external adjustments and exchange rate flexibility some evidence from u s data this paper examines the role of the exchange rate in u s external adjustments the results show that the exchange rate is an important transmission channel of influence on prices and with longer lags on income and the trade balance the effects of the exchange rate and relative prices on the trade balance are not symmetric even in the long run exchange rate feedback is insignificant and makes little difference in trade balance adjustment there are also indications that the response of relative prices to the exchange rate shifted in recent years such changes seem to help explain the persistence of the u s trade deficit in recent years for multilateral trade but not bilateral trade with japan or germany copyright 1991 by mit press

wal mart and social capital economists increasingly recognize that markets exist within social and cultural contexts and that these contexts affect how resources are allocated to competing ends the social economics literature views individuals as both affected by and affecting the environment in which they live e g barrett 2005 durlauf and young 2001 contributors to this literature recognize that utility and happiness are relative concepts that depend on levels achieved by peers layard 2005 and acknowledge that both utility and happiness can increase with levels of social interaction kahneman and krueger 2006 further because social organization is typically characterized by multiple equilibria small changes in economic conditions can lead to dramatic changes in the behavior of and membership in social groups and networks barrett 2005 p 10 a far reaching economic change is the recent rise of big box retailing led by wal mart corp fishman 2006 while the chain s adverse impact on mom and pop type retail outlets has been well documented stone 1997 irvin and clark 2006 the second round effects of such store closings on local social capital or civic capacity have not been studied for example economic developers lament the fact that community civic capacity declines when locally owned banks go out of business or are taken over by national corporations yet systematic evaluation of this phenomenon has remained elusive because of the difficulty of measuring local social capital advances in the consistent measurement of county level social capital rupasingha goetz and freshwater 2006 now make it possible to examine rigorously the impact of

industrial districts old wine in new bottles harrison b 1992 industrial districts old wine in new bottles reg studies 26 469 483 according to the theory of industrial districts a new wave of economic growth is being led in a number of regions in europe north america and east asia by spatially concentrated networks of mostly small and medium sized enterprises often using flexible production technology and characterized by extensive local interfirm linkages does this amount to a re emergence of the dominance of what urban and regional economists call agglomeration economies over the well known pressures on business to spatially disperse its operations neoclassical economic theorizing from marshall to perroux provides one perspective on the contemporary industrial district phenomenon another is afforded by granovetter s more recent elaboration of the ideas of embedding under and over socialization confronting each of these theoretical approaches with the other leads me to conclude that the industrial district prototypes involv

endogenous growth decline in social capital and expansion of market activities abstract we model in an endogenous growth set up the hypotheses that the expansion of market activities weakens social capital formation and that firms can invest in formal mechanisms of control and enforcement to substitute for social capital trust work ethics honesty the model shows that the economy tends to grow faster when it is relatively poorer in social capital and that perpetual growth can be consistent with the progressive erosion of social capital these results may help to reconcile putnam s claim that social capital has declined in the u s with the satisfactory growth performance of the u s over the same period

the effects of foreign exchange movements on u s domestic prices this paper draws on the fields of international economics and industrial organization to model and empirically examine the relationship between currency value fluctuations and domestic producer prices the major focus is the issue of whether and why domestic industries differ systematically in their response to exchange rate changes the major findings are that changes in the external value of the u s dollar between 1974 and 1987 passed most fully into domestic prices of industries heavily reliant on imported inports and producing goods highly substitutable for imports highly capital intensive and concentrated industries and those protected by extensive barriers to entry both from domestic and foreign sources have exhibited less domestic price change from the exchange rate movements copyright 1989 by mit press

price discrimination by u s and german exporters the insensitivity of the u s trade balance to the sharp depreciation of the dollar in the past three years has revived interest in the relationship between exchange rates and the trade balance a central issue in most analyses of the relation between the current account and the exchange rate concerns the price adjustment process the simple integrated competitive market model predicts that local currency prices should change in proportion to the nominal exchange rate for a country too small to influence world prices the relationship between local currency import prices and exchange rates has been referred to as the pass through relationship in the empirical literature in international economics if the proportional relationship between import prices and exchange rates holds pass through is said to be complete accounts of recent u s experience cite the failure of dollar prices of imported goods to rise in proportion to exchange rates i e incomplete pass through as an important factor in explaining the persistence of the trade deficit unfortunately observations on pass through alone provide limited insight into the behavior of markets since incomplete pass through is consistent with at least two fundamentally different paradigms one is the standard competitive model of trade in which the law of one price holds but exchange rate fluctuations are associated with large changes in import demand due to other factors for example if dollar appreciation is correlated with increases in world demand and industry marginal cost is increasing then pass through will be less than complete the other is an imperfectly competitive model in which exporters are capable of price discriminating across destination markets a phenomenon paul krugman 1987 has labeled pricing to market in this model incomplete pass through is typically associated with fluctuations in the markup of price over marginal cost on exports 2 these fluctuations in markups are believed to be countryspecific they do not reflect the behavior of prices to other export destinations both models are plausible explanations of recent u s experience unfortunately it is impossible to distinguish between these competing models using only information on import prices and exchange rates for a single country in order to distinguish between the competing models an empirical analysis of goods prices and exchange rates must be capable of measuring either marginal cost or the markup over marginal cost either of these tasks poses formidable empirical problems much of the empirical literature in industrial organization has been concerned with precisely these issues since markups are an important measure of the competitiveness of industries

the long run relationship between the real exchange rate and terms of trade in oecd countries using the null hypothesis of cointegration it is shown that the real exchange rate and the terms of trade of the seven major oecd countries are cointegrated in the long run our results also confirm the granger proposition that there is granger causality in at least one direction when two variables are i 1 and cointegrated we find that exchange rate changes granger cause changes in the terms of trade for five out of the seven oecd countries while the causation runs in the opposite direction for the remaining two countries

assessing social capital small and medium sized enterprises in germany and the u k social capital can be considered to be the product of co operationbetween various institutions networks and business partners it haspotential as a useful tool for business ethics in this article weidentify categories pertinent to the measurement of social capital insmall and medium sized enterprises smes by drawing on three differentsectors one business to business service one business to customerservice and one manufacturing we have enabled the consideration ofsectoral differences we find sector to play an important part inrelation to business practices and social capital our inclusion of smesfrom germany and the united kingdom has called attention to cultural institutional and economic aspects of two regions of europe and how theycan influence sme social capital social capital is found to beinfluenced by context and in particular institutional arrangements inanalysing the data we note particular areas of interest from the pointof view of smes and social capital as being formal engagement networking within sectors networking across sectors volunteerism andgiving to charity and finally a focus on why people engage we concludethat there is a considerable amount of further research needed on socialcapital sme s and business ethics

the relevance of the invoicing currency in intra firm trade transactions abstract this paper extends the invoicing currency literature to the theory of multinational firms even with strong tax credit provisions net payments and receipts associated with intra firm trade usually do not consolidate to zero the statistical behavior of the resulting transactional value is affected by the decision on the invoicing currency thus a carefully chosen invoicing currency can create foreign exchange exposure which offsets some other risks of the firm the paper examines how and under what conditions this insight is relevant to a risk averse multinational enterprise a preliminary empirical study generates evidence which supports our ideas

social capital and localised learning proximity and place in technological and institutional dynamics this conceptual paper analyses why social capital is important for learning and economic development how it is created and its geography it argues that with the rise of globalisation and learning based competition social capital is becoming valuable because it organises markets lowering business firms costs of co ordinating and allowing them flexibly to connect and reconnect the paper defines social capital as a matrix of various social relations combined with particular normative and cognitive social institutions that facilitate co operation and reciprocity and suggests that social capital is formed at spatial scales lower than the national or international because the density of matrices of social relations increases with proximity the paper also offers a discussion of how national and regional policies may be suited for promoting social capital

the effects of macroeconomic stability on foreign trade an analysis for spain 1986 2000 two main factors underlie the rebirth of interest in the study of the influence of the real exchange rate on trade the reduction of its volatility and the current trend towards price stability the objective of this study is to analyse the effects of the process of nominal convergence required of the european member states for the fulfilment of monetary integration on foreign trade flows the case of spain which is especially interesting in this context is studied for the period 1986 to 2000 the results of estimating the aggregate functions of the export and import of goods shows how macroeconomic stability has altered the behaviour of trade with respect to the two basic determinants income and prices how it has caused a significant structural change in the real exchange rate and finally how it has laid the explanatory bases for transactions in the twenty first century with the single currency the euro

collective learning and relational capital in local innovation processes capello r and faggian a 2005 collective learning and relational capital in local innovation processes regional studies39 75 87 innovative capacity of firms has traditionally been explained through intra firm characteristics in the more recent literature much emphasis has been put on determinants that are external to the firm these external factors called knowledge spillovers refer to the positive externalities that firms receive in terms of knowledge from the environment in which they operate geographers and industrial economists underline the importance of knowledge spillovers as the paper underlines an important difference exists between the approach of knowledge spillover and that of socialized processes of local knowledge creation developed by regional economists while in the former the mere probability of contacts explains local knowledge transfer in the latter the channels through which knowledge spills over a local area are clearly identified in the relational capital of the area

the competitive effects of price floors using hotelling s model of locational competition we show that a moderate price floor destroys the maximal differentiation equilibrium resulting in minimum differentiation equilibrium prices are lower than prices in the absence of a floor a low price floor can lead to multiple equilibria with both minimum and maximum differentiation as possible outcomes

mixed strategy equilibria in a quality differentiation model abstract this paper shows that the standard quality differentiation duopoly model has in addition to the two well known pure strategy equilibria of maximum quality differentiation an infinity of mixed strategy equilibria in which firms choose mixed strategies in the first stage quality game in these equilibria maximum quality differentiation does not occur due to coordination failure total expected consumer surplus is the same at all mixed strategy equilibria and is higher than that under either pure strategy equilibrium total expected industry profit is the same at all mixed strategy equilibria and is lower than that under either pure strategy equilibrium

the dynamics of uncertainty or the uncertainty of dynamics stochastic j curves that the u s trade account will improve in response to a depreciation is not generally in doubt the key questions are by how much and by when addressing these questions involves studying the distribution of trade account responses to a depreciation given a depreciation of the dollar the paper generates this distribution by simulating a trade model with random drawings of both innovations and elasticity estimates unlike previous studies this analysis explains trade on a bilateral basis and uses the full information maximum likelihood estimator for parameter estimation according to the findings the dispersion of trade account responses grows over time and is directly related to the magnitude of the depreciation furthermore the probability of a slow adjustment of the trade account is relatively high and the 95 percent confidence intervals are too wide to be useful for policies that target a given trade account path copyright 1991 by mit press

the third sector and the regional development of social capital birch k and whittam g the third sector and the regional development of social capital regional studies there is a growing academic and policy interest in the third sector and its potential impact on regional development a key aspect of the third sector is its role in regional development through the promotion of social capital however there is considerable debate around the definition of the third sector that limits one s understanding of its impact the paper first disentangles a number of ambiguities to clarify the distinctions between the concepts before then exploring the relationship between the regional development of social capital and the various aspects of the third sector finally uk policy agendas and initiatives are considered in light of the earlier discussion birch k et whittam g le secteur tertiaire et le developpement regional du capital social regional studies le monde universitaire et la politique s interessent de plus en plus au secteur tertiaire et a son impact potentiel s

an economic approach to social capital a standard optimal investment model can be used to analyse an individual s decision to accumulate social capital we analyse six facts that support the predictions of this individual based approach 1 social capital first rises and then falls with age 2 social capital declines with expected mobility 3 social capital rises in occupations with greater returns to social skills 4 social capital is higher among homeowners 5 social connections fall sharply with physical distance 6 people who invest in human capital also invest in social capital we fail to find robust evidence that social capital investments fall with the value of time or that geographic religious groups generate social capital complementarities

regional social capital why it matters malecki e j regional social capital why it matters regional studies social capital refers to a culture of interaction among people with productive economic outcomes social capital promotes regional learning both within a region and beyond as it reinforces openness to the ideas of others regional cultures vary in the degree to which people individually and within their organizations trust and interact with one another which is why regional outcomes vary innovation learning and entrepreneurship key processes of regional development take place largely within and among people as members of companies and territorial organizations innovative milieus industrial districts and knowledge economies are among the regions with extraordinary pools of social capital malecki e j

the choice of exchange rate index and domestic price passthrough this paper finds that the extent of real appreciation and real depreciation in the external value of the dollar since the late 70s has been overstated for most industries by the federal reserve board s 10 country index and is better proxied by the dallas fed s 101 country index earlier findings seem robust to the choice of index namely changes in the real external value of the dollar have passed most fully into domestic prices of industries heavily reliant on imported inputs and producing import substitutes and least fully into capital intensive and concentrated industries and those protected by entry barriers copyright 1991 by blackwell publishing ltd

a model of exchange rate pass through abstract exchange rate pass through is the phenomenon whereby changes in the value of foreign exchange are reflected in changes in import prices this paper presents a partial equilibrium model in which firms are price setters who anticipate exchange rate changes in equilibrium firms strategies incorporate expectations about the exchange rate consistently and are best responses to the strategies of all others in the world market it is shown that exchange rate changes give rise to import price changes but the degree of exchange rate pass through depends upon domestic and foreign market structures and the exchange rate regime in general exchange rate pass through is higher if the home market is monopolistic or if the foreign market is competitive

local social capital and entrepreneurship we aim to contribute to the analysis of the role that spacebound social capital plays in local regional entrepreneurship we compare social capital with other forms of capital the conclusion is that in the main social capital can be analyzed in the same way as other capital but it has some important special attributes with these attributes as starting point we sketch an outline model of how the spatially defined producer surplus and consumer surplus form a place surplus and of the role played by social capital in the creation of the producer surplus a rereading of schumpeter shows that he was aware of several aspects of what we denominate entrepreneurship inhibiting and facilitating aspects of social capital finally we discuss some formal economic modeling approaches to the theoretical relationship between social capital and entrepreneurship

hyteresis in import prices the beachhead effect this paper shows that temporary real exchange rate fluctuations can have persistent hysteretic effects on trade specifically when market entry costs are sunk sufficiently large exchange rate shocks alter domestic market structure and thereby induce hysteresis this simple result has strong implications for exchange rate theory t rade policy and estimation of trade equations empirical evidence su ggests that the recent dollar overvaluation induced hysteresis in u s import prices namely the aggregate pass through equation of exchange rates to import prices shifted in the 1980s the shift s nature and timing is broadly consistent with the hysteresis hypothesis copyright 1988 by american economic association

alternating monopoly and tacit collusion this paper considers the use of the alternating monopoly strategy ams as a tacit collusion device we show that firms may choose this strategy in particular environments when other collusive strategies are also feasible in particular we stress how the presence of an observable move entry distinct from the competitive stage price setting can serve as a coordination device reducing monitoring costs in incomplete information environments the paper thus shows that ams may be preferable to the classic market sharing strategy mss and in some cases it is the only collusive equilibrium

exchange rate pass through and international pricing strategy a conceptual framework and research propositions the extent to which exchange rate fluctuations affect international prices is called exchange rate pass through this paper develops a conceptual model in explaining how exchange rate fluctuations are channeled into international pricing strategy and offers research propositions our model posits that the extent of exchange rate pass through in international pricing is affected by the firm s pricing orientation performance orientation distribution policy and brand equity as well as by exchange rate uncertainty and competitive symmetry

declining exchange rate pass through to u s import prices the potential role of global factors this paper documents a robust and sustained decline in exchange rate pass through to u s import prices from well above 0 5 during the 1970s and 1980s to around 0 2 over the last decade we attribute this decline to the rising prominence of competition from china a shift in import pricing behavior since the asian financial crisis and the reduced share of material intensive goods in u s imports we also find evidence that foreign exporters are increasingly setting their prices with an eye on u s prices these results in turn suggest a new and more general hypothesis linking the decline in pass through to the evolving nature of competition in global markets and structural changes in international production patterns

exchange rates and import prices in the united states a varying parameter estimation of exchange rate pass through this article estimates the import price function in the united states using a varying parameter model the results show that the short run nonoil import price changes have become relatively less responsive to exchange rate changes than to foreign cost changes since the generalized floating began in the early 1970s concomitantly the markup has varied significantly falling when the dollar fell and rising when it rose thus pricing to market is confirmed even for overall u s imports

microeconomic implications of exchange rate variations this paper investigates the effect of exchange rate variations on the equilibrium of an industry in which domestic firms are competing with foreign suppliers the paper is designed as an expository survey it discusses the perfectly competitive industry exchange rate pass through under imperfect competition entry exit and hysteresis with fixed costs and exchange rate uncertainty copyright 1990 by oxford university press

development and social capital abstract this paper examines social capital and its relation with economic development we focus on the role that interpersonal relationships play in social exchange whether through the market or through the provision of public goods by facilitating search and trust social capital can increase the efficiency of social exchange where formal institutions are weak but the benefits from social capital are likely to be unequally distributed given these features documenting empirically the benefits of social capital is complicated by the presence of negative and positive externalities and by the existence of leadership and group effects lessons for development policy are drawn at the end

cost pass through in the u s automobile market we study cost pass through in the u s automobile market using a framework that incorporates the effects of cost changes on input decisions we find that accounting for firms factor market decisions significantly increases measured cost pass through although we reject the hypothesis of full cost pass through and constant markups in addition our evidence suggests that cost shocks common to all manufacturers have a greater effect on prices than do model specific cost shocks finally we examine how pass through varies with manufacturer nationality finding that u s firm cost pass through exceeds that of european and asian firms

learning and protection of proprietary assets in strategic alliances building relational capital one of the main reasons that firms participate in alliances is to learn know how and capabilities from their alliance partners at the same time firms want to protect themselves from the opportunistic behavior of their partner to retain their own core proprietary assets most research has generally viewed the achievement of these objectives as mutually exclusive in contrast we provide empirical evidence using large sample survey data to show that when firms build relational capital in conjunction with an integrative approach to managing conflict they are able to achieve both objectives simultaneously relational capital based on mutual trust and interaction at the individual level between alliance partners creates a basis for learning and know how transfer across the exchange interface at the same time it curbs opportunistic behavior of alliance partners thus preventing the leakage of critical know how between them copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

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

industrial clusters knowledge integration and performance abstract scholars examining the phenomenon of industrial clusters have begun to regard them as social communities specializing in efficient knowledge creation and transfer in addition to neo classical arguments focusing on the advantages of localization we seek to contribute to this body of work by developing the argument that both the degree of knowledge integration between an industrial cluster s agents and the scope of their economic activities are key dimensions behind their economic performance we present a model that incorporates a hypothesized relationship between these three dimensions and argue that a formal test of this hypothesis constitutes a promising area of future empirical research in this field

cointegration and unit roots this paper provides an updated survey of a burgeoning literature on testing estimation and model specification in the presence of integrated variables integrated variables are a specific class of non stationary variables which seem to characterise faithfully the properties of many macroeconomic time series the analysis of cointegration develops out of the existence of unit roots and offers a generic route to test the validity of the equilibrium predictions of economic theories special emphasis is put on the empirical researcher s point of view

a matter of location the role of regional social capital in overcoming the liability of newness in r d acquisition activities laursen k masciarelli f and reichstein t a matter of location the role of regional social capital in overcoming the liability of newness in r d acquisition activities regional studies external knowledge acquisition is a precondition for firms competitive advantage however young firms exhibit a lower propensity to acquire external research and development r d than their older counterparts the paper explores the role of regional social capital in moderating this aspect of the liability of newness the results show that young firms operating in regions with low levels of social capital are less likely to acquire r d externally however this is not the case in regions with high levels of social capital suggesting that the liability of newness in terms of acquisition of external r d does not play a role in these regions

the theory of the knowledge creating firm subjectivity objectivity and synthesis the theory of the knowledge creating firm explains the differences among firms not as a result of market failure but as a result of the firm s visions of the future and strategy this paper proposes a framework to capture the dynamic process of knowledge creation in which knowledge is created through the dynamic interaction between subjectivity and objectivity knowledge is created through the synthesis of thinking and actions of individuals who interact with each other within and beyond the organizational boundaries

measuring enterprises investments in social capital a pilot study westlund h and nilsson e 2005 measuring enterprises investments in social capital a pilot study regional studies 39 1079 1094 research into the impact of social capital on economic growth has focused mainly on the social capital related to the civic society social capital related to business enterprises has received little attention this pilot study aims to develop a method of measuring investment by enterprises in social capital and to study possible connections between the enterprises investments in social capital and their economic growth based on a network approach the paper makes a distinction between the networks links and the norms values etc that are created and sustained by the nodes i e the enterprises and other actors and distributed via the links the study has been limited to measurement of the links three types of link are analysed 1 direct investment in social links 2 investment in economic links forming the basis of social links and 3 investment in social li

social capital economic growth and regional development iyer s kitson m and toh b 2005 social capital economic growth and regional development regional studies 39 1015 1040 this paper examines the relationships between social capital economic performance and regional development and it stresses the complexity and variability across space of such relationships in contrast to the conventional macroeconomic approach of using indicators of social capital in formal growth models what is required is a more nuanced analysis that evaluates the impact of social capital by region to support this argument the paper examines social capital data from the social capital community benchmark survey 2000 which provides social capital data for more than 24 000 individuals living in 40 communities grouped into nine regions in the usa these data show remarkable diversity of social capital by region multivariate analysis is used to examine the impact of economic and social determinants of social capital and shows that education is important for nearly all ind

terms of trade and the exchange rates of new zealand and australia effects of the terms of trade on the bilateral exchange rate of new zealand and australia and of each of these countries with the usa are evaluated there is strong evidence of cointegration of the exchange rates and a ration of the respective national price levels when the relative terms of trade of the countries are included in dynamic models while evidence that the long run equilibrium relationships satisfy purchasing power parity is mixed relative improvement of a country s terms of trade results in real appreciation of its currency in all cases the terms of trade are also found to be exogenous for the parameters of the long run new zealand australia exchange rate equilibrium

game theoretic models of mixed oligopoly abstract in this paper we review various models that have been proposed for the study of mixed oligopoly that is markets in which private and public firm compete on equal basis using only market instruments

exchange rate pass through abstract the resilience of trade balances of the major industrialized economies to changes in their exchange rates has evoked interest in the exchange rate pass through relationship so far there has not been a comprehensive survey of this literature the paper aims to fill this gap in two ways first it pieces together the theoretical literature on exchange rate pass through second it provides a critical survey of the empirical literature on exchange rate pass through emphasis is placed on the data and methodology employed in previous work this is done in order to guide future work in this growing area of research

on the nature of equilibria in a downsian model with candidate valence abstract i analyze mixed strategy equilibria in a downsian model with two office motivated candidates in which one candidate is endowed with a sufficiently large valence advantage that a voter might prefer this candidate even if the voter strictly prefers the other candidate s policies there is a discrete one dimensional policy space and the preferences of the median voter are uncertain i show that there is a range of moderate policies with no gaps that are optimal for the advantaged candidate there is also a range of liberal policies with no gaps and a corresponding range of conservative policies with no gaps that are optimal actions for the disadvantaged candidate the upper and lower bounds on these ranges of policies vary in predictable ways with the size of the advantaged candidate s advantage

observational equivalence regional studies and regional science mccann p 2007 observational equivalence regional studies and regional science regional studies 41 1209 1221 this paper considers the methodological and empirical issues raised by the adoption of stylized constructs in the development of regional policy public policies invariably require funding and the greater levels of public data availability and press scrutiny nowadays have led to increasing requirements for policy transparency driven by evidence based policy design implementation monitoring and evaluation at the same time however many current urban and regional policy frameworks are increasingly being based on constructs that do not lend themselves to empirical evaluation therefore there appears to be something of a mismatch this paper discusses these problems and argues that instead of being seen as contradictory one can regard certain aspects of regional analysis as raising topical questions and issues to be examined while other methodological approaches are always required in ord

exchange rate pass through abstract the pass through relationship between exchange rate and prices of manufactured exports is examined for korea it is found that exporters take competitors prices at the prime mover of price setting and let profits bear the brunt of adjustment to the exchange rate changes

pricing to market behaviour and exchange rate pass through in japanese exports this paper examines the relationship between exchange rate changes and japanese export pricing behavior employing a methodology which permits the separate measurement of pricing to market behavior and the cost impact of exchange rate changes the results suggest that incomplete pass through of exchange rate changes is a pervasive phenomenon but rejects the widely held view that japanese export firms have relied more heavily on pricing to market strategies during the period of yen appreciation in order to maintain market shares there is also evidence that estimates which capture only pricing to market behavior may over emphasise the degree of pass through to the extent that cost of production is sensitive to exchange rate changes copyright 1994 by royal economic society

product differentiation decisions under ambiguous consumer demand and pessimistic expectations abstract this paper studies product differentiation decisions in a spatial duopoly with limited information on consumer demand in particular a situation is discussed in which the firms do not know the exact distribution of the random location of consumer demand and its responsiveness to price changes measured by the scale of transport costs but resolve the resulting ambiguity using the maxmin or minimax regret criteria when the firms are sufficiently pessimistic is high enough results are in contrast with the existing literature in particular an increase of demand location uncertainty decreases the equilibrium product differentiation intensifying the second stage competition in prices although the effect is dampened by uncertainty about transport costs endogenizing the choice of objective function leads to the dominance of an extreme form of pessimism which turns out to be socially optimal

social capital one or many definition and measurement three families of social capital concepts are discussed fa1 trust fa2 ease of cooperation and fa3 network in the language of game theory social capital is the excess propensity to play cooperative solutions in prisoners dilemma games the three families lead to different definitions and thus to different measurement methods some measures are theory near while others are easy to use proxies it is shown that all definitions and measures are related the social capital dream is that all definitions try to catch aspects of the same phenomenon so that all measures tap the same latent variable it is discussed whether this dream is likely to come true

exchange rates and prices the adjustment of relative prices to exchange rate movements is explained in an industrial organization approach given labor costs in the respective currencies exchange rate movements change costs for firms selling in the home market and thus disturb the industry equilibrium the extent of absolute and relative price adjustment is shown to depend on market integration product substitutability the relative number of domestic and foreign firms and the market structure the impact of exchange rates on prices is illustrated in a variety of approaches including the cournot a dixit and j stiglitz 1977 and s salop 1979 models some empirical evidence is offered in support of the theory copyright 1987 by american economic association