is firm specific innovation associated with greater value appropriation the roles of environmental dynamism and technological diversity abstract this paper extends the resource based theory of the firm to examine the contingencies that either intensify or reduce the relationship between firm specific innovation and value appropriation based on a large scale analysis of a sample of us manufacturing firms we found that greater innovation rents appropriation is associated with an increase in firm specificity of its innovative knowledge but the positive relationship between firm specific innovations and firm value appropriation tends to decrease when the product or technology market is highly dynamic further under high environmental dynamism firms should increase the diversity in their knowledge composition in order to mitigate the risk of value erosion associated with firm specific innovations

deregulation technology imports and in house r d efforts an analysis of the indian experience abstract this paper analyses the effects of the deregulation policy introduced in india in the mid 1980s on the relationship between technology imports and in house r d efforts using appropriate statistical techniques it examines the interactions between policy regime economic environment and the determinants of inter industry variation in technology imports in indian manufacturing in doing so it introduces r d efforts as one of the main determinants literature suggests that there is simultaneity in the relationship between technology imports and r d efforts to tackle this problem lagged r d expenditure intensity is adopted as a proxy for in house r d efforts the empirical results reveal that technology imports were only weakly related with the past in house r d efforts in the protective regime deregulation promoted complementarity between technology imports and r d efforts significantly the results also suggest that after deregulation the impact of product differentiation demand conditions and technology related factors increased significantly in determining the inter industry patterns of technology imports thus unlike in a regulated regime where technology imports are viewed important for filling gaps in domestic technological capabilities in a deregulated regime technology upgradation seems to be the major role of technology imports

convergence in oecd countries technical change efficiency and productivity the aim of this study is to analyse labour productivity convergence in the oecd countries over the period 1975 90 a nonparametric frontier approach is used to calculate the malmquist productivity index by breaking it down the contribution in the growth of labour productivity of technical progress of changes in efficiency and of the accumulation of inputs per worker are quantified unlike other studies the results obtained show that technical change has worked against labour productivity convergence since it has always been greater in the countries with higher labour productivity

equilibrium pollution taxes in open economies with imperfect competition abstract this paper argues that imperfect competition in global markets creates a strategic interaction between governments that can lead to the inefficient distortion of pollution taxes this distortion can be decomposed into a rent capture effect and a pollution shifting effect the rent capture effect lowers equilibrium taxes as each country attempts to gain a competitive advantage over its trading partner and thereby capture foreign rent through net exports the pollution shifting effect raises equilibrium taxes as each country attempts to transfer production and its associated pollution to the other country this effect vanishes if pollution is perfectly transboundary because shifted pollution causes as much damage to the domestic environment as does domestic pollution the net effect on symmetric equilibrium taxes is negative except in the special case of perfect competition with no transboundary pollution in this case the two effects are mutually offsetting and the nash equilibrium is efficient when pollution is at least partially transboundary there also arises the usual transboundary externality and this reinforces the negative net strategic effect giving rise to equilibrium taxes that are lower than what is globally efficient

information technology effects on firm performance as measured by tobin s q despite increasing anecdotal evidence that information technology it assets contribute to firm performance and future growth potential of firms the empirical results relating it investments to firm performance measures have been equivocal however the bulk of the studies have relied exclusively on accounting based measures of firm performance which largely tend to ignore it s contribution to performance dimensions such as strategic flexibility and intangible value in this paper we use tobin s q a financial market based measure of firm performance and examine the association between it investments and firm q values after controlling for a variety of industry factors and firm specific variables the results based on data from 1988 1993 indicate that in all of the five years the inclusion of the it expenditure variable in the model increased the variance explained in q significantly the results also showed that for all five years it investments had a significantly positive association with tobin s q value our results are consistent with the notion that it contributes to a firm s future performance potential which a forward looking measure such as the q is better able to capture

competition in regional environmental policies when plant locations are endogenous abstract a two region model is presented in which an imperfectly competitive firm produces a good with increasing returns at the plant level production of the good causes local pollution the firm decides whether to maintain plants in both regions serve both regions from a single plant or shut down if the disutility of pollution is high enough the two regions will compete by increasing their environmental taxes standards until the polluting firm is driven from the market alternatively if the disutility from pollution is not as great the regions will usually compete by undercutting each other s pollution tax rates

technology imports and r d efforts of korean manufacturing firms abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between technology imports and r d efforts of korean manufacturing firms by a two stage method in the first stage using a sample representing the whole population of firms the paper shows that firms importing technology tend to commit themselves to r d efforts through having formal r d institutes in the second stage it shows that among firms with formal r d institutes technology imports have non complementary relationship with r d efforts moreover when technology imports are considered interactively with international inventive activity they turn out to have rather a substitutive relationship with r d efforts

how do policies for efficient energy use in the household sector induce energy efficiency innovation an evaluation of european countries abstract research on innovation induced by climate mitigation policy has been focused predominantly on the supply side of the energy system despite considerable climate mitigation potential on the demand side less attention is given to the innovation effect of policies addressing the household sector based on a comprehensive data set including 550 policy measures over 30 years 1980 2009 and covering 21 european countries we find based on econometric estimations that policies targeting efficient energy use in the household sector significantly increase the number of patented energy efficiency inventions a comparison of the different policy types reveals a particularly strong influence from financial subsidies and energy labels the results indicate that policies supporting early market adoption of energy efficient technologies are effective in fostering innovation

the recent slowdown of productivity growth the slowdown of productivity growth in the developed countries during the seventies will in this paper be viewed as a combined effect of three closely interacting forces i a long term deterioration in the efficiency and flexibility of some basic mechanisms of the economic and political systems of these countries ii the fading away of a number of uniquely favourable circumstances for productivity growth during the fifties and sixties and iii the exposure of these economies to unusually severe macroeconomic disturbances in the seventies careful inspection of time series with attempted modifications for cyclical factors suggests that there was hardly any general slowdown of productivity growth among developed countries before approximately i972 4 1 as we know the situation is radically different since then labour productivity growth per year for the entire national economy gdp per man hour seems to have fallen between the periods i960 73 and i973 9 by about i 2 percentage points in the united states 45 by about 24 percentage points in western europe2 45 and by about 5 9 percentage points in japan 6o table i see also fig i the slowdown was of about the same size in the business and manufacturing sectors see table i to calculate the extent of the slowdown of total factor productivity growth is of course a much more hazardous matter to which i will return later if just the various system changes and the fading away of the uniquely favourable factors had been the dominating forces behind the productivity growth slowdown we would expect the slowdown to have been gradual rather than abrupt as it turned out to be this abruptness as well as its timing makes the dramatic macroeconomic disturbances around i972 4 a prime suspect when looking for the villain behind the productivity growth slowdown indeed it is a basic hypothesis of the paper that these macroeconomic disturbances were not only by themselves strongly unfavourable for productivity growth but that they also revealed and accentuated the gradual deterioration of the

family firms and r d behavior new evidence from a large scale survey abstract this paper analyzes how founders and their families influence r d intensity information on r d comes from a large scale bi annual survey among listed german firms we find that r d intensity is higher in firms that are actively managed by the family the impact of family control via voting rights is negative but mostly not significant while this negative family control effect is in line with hitherto existing literature the positive impact of family management is surprising indeed this positive effect disappears if we follow previous research and use r d information from financial statements we show that this puzzling result is related to corporate opacity opaque family managed firms report too conservative r d expenditures especially if they face financial constraints this leads to an under estimation of r d intensity in these firms if accounting figures are used

garbage recycling and illicit burning or dumping abstract with garbage and recycling as the only two disposal options we confirm prior results that the optimal curbside fee for garbage collection equals the direct resource cost plus external environment cost when illicit burning or dumping is a third disposal option that cannot be taxed directly the optimal curbside tax on garbage changes sign the optimal fee structure is a deposit refund system a tax on all output plus a rebate on proper disposal through either recycling or garbage collection the output tax helps achieve the first best allocation even though it affects the choice between consumption and untaxed leisure

foreign ownership and technology adoption evidence from indian firms abstract firms in developing countries rely on foreign technology purchases to improve their technology we use a theoretical framework developed by katz and shapiro to examine the ongoing technology adoption behavior of foreign owned and domestic firms using firm level data on indian firms from 1989 to 1993 we test this theoretical model we find that foreign ownership firm size and market structure are among the variables that impact a firm s probability of adopting new technology we also find that the 1991 liberalization of technology transfer policies in india appears to have had a larger impact on foreign owned firms than domestic firms

the relative effectiveness of patents and secrecy for appropriation abstract changes in patent law global competition and the rise of several new technologies suggest that patents could be of greater value than secrecy for many innovative firms particularly small firms that are unable to use market power or other factors to appropriate their investments in innovation data from the 1993 european community innovation survey cis for up to 2849 r d performing firms is analysed to determine the relative importance of secrecy vs patents this particular combination of appropriation methods is interesting because secrecy can act as a mutually exclusive alternative to patents the results show that a higher percentage of firms in all size classes rate secrecy as more valuable than patents however ordered logit regressions show that the probability that a firm rates secrecy as more valuable than patents declines with an increase in firm size for product innovations while there is no relationship for process innovations the firm s r d intensity has no effect on the relative value of secrecy vs patents there is weak evidence to show that participation in cooperative r d increases the value of patents over secrecy for product innovations the results are relevant to ongoing debates over changes to the patent system and the need for policies to encourage small firms to patent more

inward technology transfer and competitiveness the role of national innovation systems this paper examines the role of national innovation systems in the inward transfer of technology that has underpinned the transformation of japan and other east asian economies since 1945 the economies that have benefited most from inward technology transfer have national innovation systems that have strengthened their national absorptive capacity this capacity relies primarily on investments in scientific and technical training and on economic policies that enforce competition among domestic firms the particular channels for inward technology transfer the identity of any strategic industries targeted for public intervention and the overall level of a nation s trade restrictions are ail of secondary importance a central theme of global economic change during the postwar period has been the application in less developed countries of technologies developed within economically advanced regions this phenomenon underpinned the post 1945 transformation of japan and other east asian economies and influenced the reconstruction of western european economies after world war ii the application of externally developed technologies within latecomer economies is hardly unique to the postwar period however samuel slater s introduction of british textile manufacturing is but one example of inward technology transfer in the nineteenth century us economy and david 1992 traces the origins of patent monopolies to efforts by medieval european city states and nations to attract experts in industrial arts to practice their craft within these jurisdictions both international technology flows and government efforts to influence them for national competitive advantage thus have ample historical precedent several characteristics nevertheless distinguish the post 1945 era from earlier historical periods the influence of international technology transfer on national economic development has increased as the postwar development of such economies as taiwan and south korea has relied much less on natural resource endowments than nineteenth

new evidence on sex segregation and sex differences in wages from matched employee employer data we use new matched employer employee data to estimate the contributions of sex segregation and wage differences by sex within occupation industry establishment and occupation establishment cells to the overall sex gap in wages in contrast to earlier data used to study this question our data cover all industries and occupations across all regions of the united states we find that segregation of women into lower paying occupations industries establishments and occupations within establishments accounts for a sizable fraction of the sex gap in wages nonetheless approximately one half of the sex gap in wages remains attributable to the individual s sex

testing for complementarities in reduced form regressions a note abstract in many cases it is important to know whether choice variables for a decision maker are mutual complements but a structural model cannot be estimated a unified framework for testing for complementarity through reduced form regressions is provided

on the trade off between the future benefits and riskiness of r d a bondholders perspective abstract existing studies on the value relevance of r d tend to overstate the r d benefits and shed little light on the trade off between the r d benefits mean effect and their riskiness variance effect this study shows that the variance effect of r d is on average more significant than their mean effect in bond valuation hence for creditors the r d risk dominates their benefits furthermore this study documents that r d measures alone explain approximately 80 of cross sectional variations in bond ratings and risk premium these findings contribute to the debate over r d accounting and the bond pricing literature

determinants of cross national knowledge transfer and its effect on firm innovation this study examines the determinants of international knowledge flow from a resource based perspective it evaluates the impact of cross national knowledge transfer on firm innovative performance based on 56 027 us patents owned by 53 selected firms in the us based pharmaceutical industry the results suggest that innovative performance is a curvilinear function of the international knowledge content used by a firm to innovate as hypothesized it was found that at 1 low and moderate levels of international knowledge content a firm s strategy to transfer international knowledge improves its innovative performance and at 2 higher levels of international knowledge content there are diminishing marginal returns to transferring knowledge from overseas

technology expenditures factor intensity and efficiency in indian manufacturing the effects of expenditure on r d and purchase of technology on costs in indian manufacturing is investigated using firm level data expenditures for r d royalties and technical fees are treated as potentially inducing both hicks neutral efficiency shifts and substitution between capital and labor in an indirect cos t function framework the effects of technology expenditure are found to vary by industry by type of expenditure and by domestic or foreign origin of seller technology expenditures associated with higher levels of hicks neutral efficiency are generally also associated wit h higher capital labor ratios copyright 1992 by mit press

international spillovers and water quality in rivers do countries free ride transboundary spillovers may degrade environmental quality if countries free ride this paper examines the extent of such degradation in water quality in international rivers using data from river monitoring stations in the un s global emissions monitoring system gems it compares pollution levels in international and domestic rivers the results suggest that free riding may substantially increase pollution in international rivers but the estimates are sensitive to the inclusion of country effects this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

entry and patenting in the software industry to what extent are firms kept out of a market by patents covering related technologies do patents held by potential entrants make it easier to enter markets we estimate the empirical relationship between market entry and patents for 27 narrowly defined categories of software products during the period 1990 2004 controlling for demand market structure average patent quality and other factors we find that a 10 increase in the number of patents relevant to market reduces the rate of entry by 3 8 and this relationship intensified following expansions in the patentability of software in the mid 1990s however potential entrants with patent applications relevant to a market are more likely to enter it finally patents appear to substitute for complementary assets in the entry process because patents have both greater entry deterring and entry promoting effects for firms without prior experience in other markets this paper was accepted by bruno cassiman business strategy

who is interested in biotech r d strategies knowledge base and market sales of indian biopharmaceutical firms this paper addresses three main questions on indian pharmaceutical firms that have integrated biotechnology in their marketing production or research activities i what kind of labour stocks of the knowledge base have an impact on market sales ii which components of the r d strategy are strategic substitutes and which are strategic complements iii what are the distinguishing features of firms that have already integrated biotechnology in their research activities the paper shows that market sales are an increasing function of qualified labour stocks internal r d and foreign collaborations are strategic substitutes while patents and publications are strategic complements firms that are active in biotechnology research are likely to be younger and implementing more aggressive learning strategies

imitative innovation and international joint ventures a dynamic analysis abstract in this paper we deal with some dynamic issues of international joint venture in the context of a developing country we provide a rationale for international joint venture formation as well as its subsequent instability where instability is interpreted as payoff readjustments between the partners in the venture although the joint venture is formed in response to government restrictions on foreign equity holdings in the first period its subsequent instability is caused by both the change in government policy as well as the outcome of imitative technological innovation undertaken by the host partner it is also shown that uncertainty about the government policy in the second period plays an important role in the formation of joint venture in the first period

how do patent laws influence innovation evidence from nineteenth century world fairs studies of innovation have focused on the effects of patent laws on the number of innovations but have ignored effects on the direction of technological change this paper introduces a new dataset of close to fifteen thousand innovations at the crystal palace world s fair in 1851 and at the centennial exhibition in 1876 to examine the effects of patent laws on the direction of innovation the paper tests the following argument if innovative activity is motivated by expected profits and if the effectiveness of patent protection varies across industries then innovation in countries without patent laws should focus on industries where alternative mechanisms to protect intellectual property are effective analyses of exhibition data for 12 countries in 1851 and 10 countries in 1876 indicate that inventors in countries without patent laws focused on a small set of industries where patents were less important while innovation in countries with patent laws appears to be much more diversified these findings suggest that patents help to determine the direction of technical change and that the adoption of patent laws in countries without such laws may alter existing patterns of comparative advantage across countries jel d2 k11 l51 no 014

improving patent valuations for management purposes validating new indicators by analyzing application rationales abstract this paper analyzes the validity of so far untested indicators of patent value to enhance the quality of patent assessments using indicators at the corporate level the article expands the theory by eliciting patent attorneys filing rationales to maximize profits from protecting intellectual property to inspire the computation of new value indicators including patent full texts then based on a newly compiled data set consisting of 813 ep patents the probability of an opposition against a patent is modeled by established and new value indicators the results show that accelerated examination requests and qualified word counts enhance the quality of existing valuation methods

value implications of investments in information technology the year 2000 y2k countdown provided a uniquely visible instance of spending on information technology it by u s companies with public attention riveted on potential y2k malfunctions managers were forced to evaluate their it and make decisions about whether to modify or replace existing systems in the aftermath of y2k critics charged that the problem was overblown and that companies overspent on it in contrast we posit in this paper that efforts companies made to renew and upgrade their it may have positioned them to take advantage of new e business applications as y2k approached managers could invest opportunistically in it which would enable them to connect with customers and suppliers in new ways contrary to the alleged overspending we find that firm value increased on average with y2k spending by fortune 1000 companies in particular higher firm value and subsequent earnings were associated with y2k spending for firms in industries where it was considered to have a transforming influence altering traditional ways of doing business by redefining business processes and relationships we also test whether the positive association between firm value and y2k spending diminished with y2k spending by industry peer firms but we do not find support for this relative investment hypothesis

are mergers beneficial to consumers evidence from the market for bank deposits the general conclusion of the empirical literature is that in market consolidation generates adverse price changes harming consumers previous studies however look only at the short run pricing impact of consolidation ignoring effects that take longer to materialize using a database that includes detailed information on the deposit rates of individual banks in local markets for different categories of depositors we investigate the long run price effects of mergers we find strong evidence that although consolidation does generate adverse price changes these are temporary in the long run efficiency gains dominate over the market power effect leading to more favorable prices for consumers jel g21 g34 l1

industry effects and appropriability measures in the stock market s valuation of r d and patents this paper examines the stock market s valuation of a firm s innovative activity we estimate the market s relative valuation of firms tangible and intangible assets focusing on knowledge capital in the form of accumulated stocks of r d and patents we tried to improve upon our estimates of the stock market s valuation of knowledge capital embodied in such stocks by bringing in measures of the appropriability environment facing a firm from the yale survey on industrial research and development the responses to survey questions about the effectiveness of patents as a mechanism for protecting the returns from innovation turn out to be of some use there is evidence of an interaction between industry level measures of the effectiveness of patents and the market s valuation of a firm s past r d and patenting performance as well as its current r d moves we find no evidence however that other appropriability mechanisms differ enough across industries to leave measurable traces in our data the structure of the yale survey makes it possible to estimate the sampling error in the appropriability measures derived from it this information was used by us in an errors in variables context but with little success in the absence of r d variables our estimates imply that a two standard deviation increase in our index of patent effectiveness would raise the value of a patent held by our average firm from 0 4 million to 1 0 million when r d variables are introduced into the equations the patents variables become insignificant r d expenditures are a better measure of input to the innovative function of firms than patents are of its output but we estimate that the same experiment would induce changes in q of between 10 and 27 percent for the average firm approximately doubling the market s valuation of this kind of capital this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

greenhouse gas emissions waste and recycling policy abstract this paper examines least cost policies for waste reduction incorporating upstream greenhouse gas externalities associated with the production of consumption goods from various materials in particular we decompose the effect of deposit refund advance disposal fees and recycling subsidies on upstream greenhouse gas emissions we find that the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions are of the same order as or larger than the benefits of reducing solid waste disposal implying larger optimal total waste reduction than previous studies furthermore the least cost intervention levels will be material specific and vary substantially across materials finally despite the reductions in emissions implied by increased recycling rates direct recycling subsidies are more costly and generate less emissions reductions than a deposit refund or advance disposal fee

technological diversity uncertainty and innovation performance abstractwe analyse the impact of technological diversity on innovation performance in the discovery stage measured by r d intensity and patent applications and in the commercialization stage mea

why do industries coagglomerate how marshallian externalities differ by industry and have evolved over time abstract the fact that firms benefit from close proximity to other firms with which they can exchange inputs skilled labor or know how helps explain why many industrial clusters are so successful studying the evolution of coagglomeration patterns we show that the type of agglomeration that benefits firms has drastically changed over the course of a century and differs markedly across industries whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century industries tended to colocate with their value chain partners in more recent decades the importance of this channel has declined and colocation seems to be driven more by similarities in industries skill requirements by calculating industry specific marshallian agglomeration forces we are able to show that today skill sharing is the most salient motive behind the location choices of services whereas value chain linkages still explain much of the colocation patterns in manufacturing moreover the estimated degrees to which labor and input output linkages are reflected in an industry s coagglomeration patterns help improve predictions of city industry employment growth

companies learning to innovate in recessions abstract innovating in downturns can affect corporate success by improving a firm s position relative to competitors during the recovery period however increased uncertainty and more binding financial constraints complicate such innovation activity i find that past experience with innovation during recessions improves a firm s ability to invest in r d when a new downturn hits this result holds controlling for traditional drivers of innovation as cumulated innovations and financial constraints as well as mitigating endogeneity and selection concerns moreover i find that past experience with innovation during recessions is beneficial to patent outcomes after a new recession overall the paper provides novel evidence on how business cycles shape innovative capabilities

north south knowledge spillovers and competition convergence versus divergence abstract technology spillovers from high productivity countries in the north allow low productivity countries in the south to improve productivity in high tech sectors relatively easy however the south s share in world goods markets for high tech products is relatively low which reduces opportunities for learning by doing our simple ricardian endogenous growth model shows how the balance between toughness of competition in trade and the strength of north south spillovers determines whether productivity levels diverge partially converge or fully converge in the long run if convergence prevails the north is confronted with declining employment in high tech sectors temporary trade policy measures can turn a diverging economy into a converging one

patenting by manufacturing firms in india its production and impact this paper attempts to simultaneously study the production and impact of patenting in a less developed country using panel firm level data for the period 1975 79 for india the authors results suggest that despite the limited protection of intellectual property rights in india patenting is associated with a significant increase in total factor productivity growth at the firm level after controlling for unobserved fixed firm effects r d manpower appears to be the only input that significantly influences the probability of patenting copyright 1989 by blackwell publishing ltd

a technology gap approach to why growth rates differ abstract this paper contains a discussion and test of the technology gap approach to development and growth the basic hypotheses of the theory are tested on pooled cross sectional and time series data for 25 industrial countries for the period 1960 1983 the sample includes in addition to 19 oecd countries 6 of the most important industrial economies from the non oecd area the findings of the paper confirm that there exists a close correlation between the level of economic development measured as gdp per capita and the level of technological development measured through r d or patent statistics furthermore for the group of 25 countries as a whole technology gap models of economic growth are found to explain a large part of the actual differences in growth rates both between countries and periods as expected both the scope for imitation growth in innovative activity and efforts to narrow the gap investment appear as powerful explanatory factors of economic growth however when the non oecd countries and later usa and japan are removed from the sample the explanatory power of the technology variables especially growth in innovative activity diminishes

the value of intellectual property rights to firms and society economists view intellectual property rights iprs as policy tools for encouraging innovation but they recognize that they can also inhibit competition there are many types of iprs and institutions concerned with their administration we begin by outlining how these complex and varied rights are supposed to work and how they interact with other characteristics of firms and markets we then survey the available literature on patents trade marks and copyright to assess the value of these iprs to firms and the costs to firms of acquiring and defending their rights the paper concludes with suggestions for topics requiring further research to inform public policy better

liberalization outward orientation and in house r d activity of multinational and local firms a quantitative exploration for indian manufacturing abstract in an increasingly globalizing and knowledge based world economy the declining importance of r d activity in india is a matter of concern this paper analyzes the determinants of r d behaviour of indian enterprises over the 1990s in the context of the reforms of 1991 and their impact on the r d behaviour of mne affiliates and local enterprises the analysis suggests that although average levels of spending have fallen increased competition due to liberalization seems to have pushed local firms to rationalize their r d activity and make it more efficient also r d spending seems to rise more than proportionally with firm size after a certain threshold level has been reached the analysis brings out differences in the nature of r d activity of mne affiliates and local firms local firms direct their r d activity primarily towards the assimilation of imported technology and to providing a backup to their outward expansion via exports and fdi mne affiliates on the other hand focus on exploiting the advantages of india as an r d platform for their parents the paper is concluded with some policy implications of the findings

developing countries imports of technology in house technological capabilities and efforts an analysis of the indian experience abstract this paper examines whether enterprises decisions to import technology are influenced by their in house technological capabilities and whether the imports subsequently lead to an increase in the r d intensities it is argued that in a competitive market situation these decisions could be linked in a sequential relationship but protectionist regulatory policies may make such a relationship quite unlikely empirical tests with data of indian enterprises in the electrical and electronic industries circa 1990 found results consistent with the predictions for the protected regulatory situation

technology production and technology purchase in indian industry an econometric analysis an econometric analysis of the decisions of indian firms to invest in their own r d and to purchase technology through licensing agreements is undertaken these decisions are treated as being jointly determined by characteristics of indian industries indian prices and the supply of purchasable foreign technology the study finds that industrial structure firm size and public and private ownership influence the mix of own r d and technology purchase the pool of purchasable foreign technology indices both increased adaptive r d and technology purchase by indian firms copyright 1989 by mit press

trade unions v statistical discrimination theory and application to post apartheid south africa a simple model of statistical discrimination is analyzed which captures some stylized facts of the south african labor market it shows that this type of discrimination disappears when the wage rates are determined by efficient bargaining between a representative firm and a union with endogenous membership this may explain why the wage gap between black and white workers in post apartheid south africa is smaller among unionized workers than among non unionized ones

optimal policies for solid waste disposal taxes subsidies and standards abstract pricing trash collection and disposal services can be politically unpopular and may lead to increased illegal disposal of trash several studies have shown that deposit refund systems can act like disposal charges without the illegal disposal problem and thus can generate an optimal amount of solid waste disposal we assess the efficiency implications of an alternative policy currently in use in some states in the u s and considered at the federal level recycled content standards these are requirements that a certain fraction of total material use in production be comprised of secondary materials we find that such standards by themselves cannot generate the optimal amount of disposal but must be combined with additional taxes on both the final product and other inputs to production moreover the information requirements for setting the optimal standards and accompanying taxes are high the deposit refund approach would be preferred in most cases

rural industrialization an engine of prosperity in postreform rural china abstract the postreform period post 1978 in china has been marked by very sharp increases in both income and consumption of peasant households such sustained high growth over a period of more than a decade is impressive by any standard the fast growing rural industries acted as the engine of prosperity achieved by the peasant households of china during this period with very high rates of growth achieved by such industries the emergence and rapid growth of private enterprises and institutional changes that took place in methods of recruitment and payment of wages in collectively owned industries rural industries as a whole became an important source of income for peasant households in addition to the direct contribution these industries played an important role in fostering the growth of agriculture e g by providing funds for social investment in irrigation and by facilitating farm mechanization and the use of fertilizers and thus made a valuable indirect contribution to peasant income

efficient waste management policies and strategic behavior with open borders during the last decade waste management has been characterized by two main trends the growth of international trade of waste materials and the introduction of extended producer responsibility epr as a policy instrument in this paper a two country stylized model with imperfect competition in the recycling market is used to address two research questions first how do epr recycling targets interact with other policy instruments such as taxes on recycling residues and excise duties second how does strategic behavior of national policy makers influences the use of policy instruments the model demonstrates that a combination of epr with other instruments is needed to achieve the first best outcome when governments do not coordinate policies across borders strategic behavior may lead to a race to the bottom for taxes on recycling residues conversely strategic behavior may lead to a counter intuitive race to the top for excise duties and epr recycling targets it is shown that these instruments are not only used to stimulate waste prevention but also to extract rents from foreign recyclers

can downstream waste disposal policies encourage upstream design for environment design for environment takes place when firms explicitly incorporate environmental issues in their product design and manufacturing decisions joseph fiksel 1996 to reduce waste associated with consumer products for example firms can reduce product weight including the amount of packaging that comes with a product and make products easier and less costly to recycle the latter can be accomplished by changing the type of material used in a product avoiding mixing of materials in a single product coding and labeling when different materials are used and designing for ease of disassembly u s congress office of technology assessment 1992 fiksel 1996 an important debate centers around the question of whether design for environment dfe needs to be explicitly targeted using policy instruments focused upstream on producers or whether downstream instruments send sufficient signals back upstream one important downstream instrument is a disposal fee i e charging households a price per pound per bag or per can for their trash many observers feel that downstream instruments do not send appropriate signals back upstream some economists and others have suggested on the other hand that disposal fees can in theory send signals upstream to producers karen palmer and walls 1998 we find that disposal fees provide incentives for efficient dfe only when there is a fully functioning recycling market i e only when recyclers pay households a price for each of their recyclable items and that price varies with the degree of product recyclability in the real world transactions costs of paying households for each individual item recycled would be prohibitively high in a more realistic setting in which households may place some items in a recycling bin but are not paid for doing so a disposal fee by itself will not yield a social optimum it encourages households to place items in the bin but all items allowed in the bin are of equal value to the household i e there is no reason to prefer an easily recyclable aluminum can to a difficult to recycle plastic milk jug this means that there is no signal to producers to make products more recyclable if the government can set product taxes that vary with product recyclability the social optimum can be restored but this option is not practicable 2 we argue that the infeasibility of i paying households for recycling and ii taxing products according to their recyclability means that a first best outcome is no longer attainable instead we set up a constrained second best optimum and solve for policy instruments that achieve this outcome we find that a disposal school of economics and finance victoria university of wellington wellington new zealand walls is also a university fellow with resources for the future washington dc the helpful comments of karen palmer don fullerton and hilary sigman are greatlv appreciated 1 manufacturer take back requirements such as germany s well known packaging take back law were developed at least in part as a way to encourage dfe see www oecd org env epr index htm for updates from a series of oecd workshops held in 1997 1999 on the broader topic of extended producer responsibility in practice individual german producers do not actually take back their own products at end of life they have formed a consortium that arranges to collect members waste from households marked with a green dot and recycle it we do not address take back mandates in this paper 2 in calcott and walls 1999 we derive these taxes don fullerton and wenbo wu 1998 show that a direct subsidy to recyclability combined with other instruments can yield a social optimum this subsidy depends on production function parameters thus if firms differ the subsidy would vary across firms more i mportantly observing and measuring recyclability to determine subsidy payments would be virtually impossible

contracting for tacit knowledge the provision of technical services in technology licensing contracts abstract recent research on the economic payoff from new technology has emphasized the importance of tacit knowledge or know how this paper shows that arm s length contract can overcome the problems in contracting for know how by bundling complementary inputs with know how in a technology package and leveraging the superior enforceability of contracts over the latter in the empirical part of this paper the relationship between bundling and transfer of know how is analyzed using indian data the results imply that tied sales of inputs may increase the efficiency of contracts involving the transfer of know how a striking result in the context of the current north south debates on intellectual property rights is the packaging of patents with know how

efficiency and technical progress sources of convergence in the spanish regions the paper analyses the contribution of efficiency as a mechanism of labour productivity convergence taking as the unit of analysis the spanish regions in the period 1964 1993 using the stochastic frontier approach a translogarithmic production function is estimated for the different sectors of the spanish regional economy demonstrating on this basis the existence of substantial differences in efficiency between sectors as well as between regions with regard to convergence the results obtained indicate that at aggregate level the convergence observed in labour productivity is explained by the faster growth of the capital labour ratio of the initially poorer regions and the contribution of technical change and the efficiency hence by the convergence of tfp however the information by sectors shows different results thus on the one hand the importance of the convergence in production per employee is seen in all sectors except agriculture and on the other it is observed that technical change is a

the catch up factor in postwar economic growth the catch up factor in postwar economic growth presidential address to the western economic association june 21 1989 i this talk is about two of the central concerns of our time one is the pronounced slowdown of productivity growth that has persisted in the whole of the industrialized world since the early seventies or late sixties about two decades the other is the much slower rate or productivity advance in the united states than in other industrialized countries than has been apparent during almost the whole postwar period about four decades 1 i shall argue that these two developments are connected and that both can be better understood if we think of them as implications of a process of international productivity catch up and convergence that is in certain conditions natural and foreseeable and in a long term sense desirable i mean desirable not only for the countries that are catching up that is obvious i mean desirable also for the old leader that is for the united states as well needless to say i do not contend that a tendency to convergence is the whole story behind the two developments and the anxieties they have caused but i believe it is a large part of it 1 ii let me begin by asking why and what conditions a tendency to convergence is as i say in the nature of things consider two countries otherwise similar but one is a productivity leader the other a laggard there are at least five reasons why the laggard will have a stronger potential for productivity growth than the leader first as the leader s capital stock turns over its embodied technological progress is limited by the advance of knowledge over the lifetime of its capital instruments but a laggard can make a larger leap by substituting modern state of the art equipment for instruments that were obsolete even when originally installed the same applies to modernization in disembodied technology that is when a laggard adopts a leader s advanced practices in the organization of production and management secondly laggards typically suffer from relatively low levels of capital intensity on this account as well as because new capital means a large technological leap the inducement to invest tends to be high so there is a potential for rapid progress by capital accumulation edward f denison 1967 table 21 28 robert e lipsey and irving b kravis 1987 edward n wolff 1987 table 31 thirdly the level of schooling in laggard countries is typically relatively low and in some degree obsolete in content so there is an opportunity for relatively rapid advance by the extension and modernization of education maddison 1982 table 5 7 denison 1967 table 21 28 fourthly in laggards one usually finds a relatively large fraction of partially or wholly redundant workers attached to farming and petty trade this is an opportunity for relatively large gains from the better allocation of workers denison 1967 table 21 28 fifthly the chance for rapid productivity advance along all these channels means a chance for rapid growth in aggregate output and size of markets which brings a productivity bonus from the economies of scale this is the simple core of the tendency to convergence and if that were all there was to it we should expect to see laggards always and everywhere advance faster than a leader rates of productivity growth across countries in any period would be an inverse function of their initial levels of productivity and national levels of productivity would converge towards the leader s by the same token as the process of convergence went on the gaps separating laggards from leaders would become smaller and rates of growth would decline the catch up effect supporting growth would be self limiting weakening steadily as catch up proceeded

an economic analysis of household waste management abstract this paper provides a comprehensive model of household waste management policy incorporating the possibility of waste reduction effort by the firm and the household and of illegal waste disposal by the household when household waste reduction effort is insignificant the first best optimum can be achieved using various combinations of environmental tax on the firm and waste collection charge on the household however when household waste reduction effort is significant the first best optimum is not achievable and explicit monitoring of illegal waste disposal is needed rendering a simple pigouvian tax sub optimal this paper solves for the second best optimal policy and provides some comparative statics of the optimal policy