new technology adoption in us telecommunications the role of competitive pressures and firm level inducements in this study we examine the reasons for the differential adoption levels of a new technology that of electronic switching across firms in the us telecommunications industry using theoretical postulates from the market structure inducements approach to firm behavior and the behavioral theory of the firm we propose that the incentives to adopt a new technology are positively related to the competitive pressures faced by a firm in its micro market negatively related to past levels of performance and positively related to slack availability our sample consists of 40 of the largest firms in the industry we use firm level data collected for the years 1973 1978 1981 1984 and 1987 and the results indicate strong support for our proposition our findings show that in general market effects via the mechanism of competitive pressures generated are strong in explaining inter firm variations in levels of technology adoption in the period since moves to deregulate the industry began however the firm level effects are equally strong if not stronger in explaining such variations both in the period leading up to the commencement of deregulatory moves and also immediately thereafter

wars foodcost and countervailing policies a panel data approach abstract withholding food or providing it during a conflict is vital for peace missions and challenges for building sustainable peace the purpose of this paper is to introduce a new perspective in considering the impact of wars on relative wages in the food sector we define the foodcost as the share of wages paid to the food sector versus total manufacturing wages we try to estimate the effect of two types of wars namely civil and international wars on the foodcost and explore the policies that are likely to reduce that cost we use panel data for 41 countries from 1960 to 1999 to answer these questions the empirical results show that civil wars positively affect the foodcost while international wars apparently do not the policy implication of this analysis is that in the event of a civil war policy makers lack the resources to exert control on a rising foodcost a rise in the foodcost could be translated into higher food prices or lower purchasing power over food either of which may have devastating impacts on social and economic well being in the event of an international war as opposed to a civil war governments have a greater capacity to prioritize and mobilize resources therefore the impact of an international war on the foodcost is positive but weak the foreign aid remains an effective countervailing tool for reducing the increase in the foodcost

estimating level effects in diffusion of a new technology barcode scanning at the checkout counter cross country or cross industry studies of technology diffusion typically estimate how independent factors affect diffusion speed or timing often based on a two stage approach in many applications however countries industries differ most in the saturation level of diffusion in a single stage econometric approach to a standard diffusion model we therefore estimate how the saturation level covaries with independent factors in our application to diffusion of an important retail information technology we focus on the competitive effect of hypermarkets superstores we also find standard scale income and labour substitution effects

market structure uncertainty and intrafirm diffusion the case of optical scanners in grocery stores this study uses monthly data on the adoption of optical scanners by sixty three grocery chains in thirty two large u s cities to identify the determinants of the rate of intrafirm diffusion the methodology involves a two stage approach that relates market environment characteristics to the estimated rate of intrafirm diffusion the results indicate that firms with larger market shares adopt a new innovation scanners more quickly initially but diffuse the innovation through their stores more slowly than firms with smaller market shares in addition firms that lag competitors in the initial adoption of scanners tend to diffuse the innovation more quickly copyright 1992 by mit press

complementarities in organizational design and the diffusion of information technologies an empirical analysis we use a specially designed survey on french firms located in haute savoie to provide empirical evidence suggesting that information and communication technologies adoption is not only influenced by the traditional factors of technology diffusion but also by complementarity effects between strategies organization and information technologies the data collected permitted several advances firstly we could study authentic ict while the recent literature has mainly focused on computer capital stocks or automation tools secondly we constructed measures of the determinants put forward by the models of technology diffusion thirdly we studied three kinds of practices organizational and strategic practices technological choices

on the adoption of new technologies we investigate the incentives of private firms to adopt new technologies econometric investigation is performed on a pooled sample of individual us airline firms over the period 1971 to 1986 for which extensive information on available jet aircraft technology and fleet choice have been recorded given the incidence of successive commercial aircraft innovations and variation in production attributes across firms we are able to consider a wider array of time dependent and time independent adoption influences than in previous firm level studies to the extent that our study provides useful general insights into adoption decisions by firms the results have implications for us global competitiveness policy one key finding is that firms subject to increased product market competition exhibit a higher propensity to adopt technological innovations

the determinants of technology adoption the case of the banking firm using data on the adoption of automatic teller machines by firms in the banking industry this study examines the relationship between the decision to adopt new technology and its determinants since banking firms differ considerably in terms of the competitive environments in which they operate focusing on this one innovation in this industry allows a stronger test of the relationship between market structure and the adoption of new technology than has been previously conducted using a failure time estimation procedure we find that larger banks and banks operating in more concentrated local banking markets register a higher conditional probability of adopting this new technology all else equal we also find that other results are consistent with the underlying model and that the bank s regulatory environment shapes its adoption decision in plausible ways

on the hidden links between financial and trade opening abstract developing countries characterized by high costs of tax collection and enforcement opt to use financial repression as an implicit tax on savings providing the impetus for capital flight a mechanism facilitating illicit capital movements is trade misinvoicing where the effectiveness of capital controls would increase with the resources spent on monitoring and enforcement per one dollar of international trade under these circumstances greater trade openness increases the effective cost of enforcing financial repression thereby reducing the usefulness of financial repression as an implicit tax this in turn implies that financial reforms tend to be the by product of greater trade integration

impact of plant size and focus on productivity an empirical study recent popular business literature has suggested that there is a significant trend in the united states for firms to decrease the size and increase the focus of manufacturing plants they operate and that this leads to higher productivity this paper tests empirically the validity of these claims we analyze data on virtually the entire population of manufacturing plants in the united states and find that contrary to the popular business literature the average size of plants increased during the period 1972 1984 however consistent with the popular notion the rate of growth in plant size slowed considerably and even turned negative for a category of large plants plant focus did increase during this period we then investigate the relationship between productivity and plant characteristics including plant size and plant focus overall our results do not support the popular argument that reduction in plant size results in productivity gains however we do find support for this argument in some two digit sic industries also scale economies in the entire population decreased over the period 1972 1982 we also find only limited support for the popular argument that plant focus increases productivity

striving to be green the adoption of total quality environmental management many firms are undertaking environment friendly organizational change by applying the philosophy of total quality management with its emphasis on reducing waste and increasing efficiency their objective is to improve their management of pollution and increase customer satisfaction this article investigates the factors that lead to total quality environmental management tqem by large firms we find that internal considerations stemming from a firm s technical capability size absolute and relative to competing firms extent of operations and volume of past emissions are strongly associated with the tqem adoption decision the first four factors are proxies for the firm s costs and capabilities of adopting tqem while the fifth factor is related to the benefits from increasing efficiency and waste reduction and thus proxies for internally generated demand for tqem the desire to improve a firm s image with customers earning good will with regulators and the anticipation of future regulations do not a

non capital investment costs and the adoption of cad and cnc in the u s metalworking industries many studies have shown that firm size is the strongest and most consistent predictor of the adoption of technological innovations but the causes for this relationship are debated i investigate the relationships between various size measures and the adoption of computer aided design cad and computer numerically controlled cnc machine tools plant size is the dominant factor in predicting cad and cnc adoption other measures such as firm size or multiplant operations have independent effects that are not present after controlling for plant size i test four potential explanations for the results noncapital cost spreading equipment replacement risk aversion and learning there is support only for the first explanation

he came he saw and he waited an empirical analysis of inertia in technology adoption the innovation adoption literature has focused primarily on a producer s decision of whether and how much to adopt an equally pertinent question is when to adopt because in the case of new techno

industrial policy and technology diffusion evidence from paper making machinery in indonesia summary in this paper we analyze the diffusion and adoption of paper making machinery in the indonesian pulp and paper industry from 1923 till 2000 we develop a machine level index of technological sophistication mach which measures the technological distance of each paper machine to the world technological frontier the data reveal a pattern of rapid technological catch up but catch up was not an industrywide phenomenon some modern firms installed state of the art machinery while others installed older vintages the paper argues that industrial policy has played an important role in the speed and nature of diffusion of paper making machinery

a dynamic analysis of the adoption of a new technology the case of optical scanners two p roportional hazard models are used to investigate the differingeffects of marke t structure variables on the conditional probabilityof a firm initially adoptin g the new technology of optical scanners as the innovation spreads through the f ood store industry during the early stage leading firms with large average sto re size which are not members of chains and which operate in less concentrated m arkets with higher incomes and wage rates tend to adopt scanners sooner later on differences in seller concentration market share and size become less impo rtant as other firms follow prior adoptions copyright 1987 by mit press

intermarket differences in the early diffusion of an innovation the rate of technological change and the rate at which the new technology diffuses through an industry is of increasing importance in evaluating the performance of firms in an industry recent research efforts to understand the diffusion process include the work of benvignati 1 mansfield 8 mansfield et al 9 reinganum 11 and romeo 12 13 typically the empirical analyses trace the diffusion of the same innovation in different industries or several innovations as they diffuse through a particular industry in contrast to these previous efforts this paper analyzes the diffusion of a single innovation in the same industry but across different geographic markets since the focus is on a particular innovation one is able to control for variables such as the capital cost of the innovation or the potential profitability of an innovation that otherwise would vary significantly across innovations since the focus is on a particular industry it is not necessary to control for industry specific characteristics such as type of product or extent of product differentiation although intermarket differences may come into play in explaining the diffusion process across geographic markets specifically this study analyzes the early diffusion of the optical scanner through the food store industry in the largest u s metropolitan areas the early rate of diffusion of this innovation varies considerably across these markets and this research attempts to identify economic variables that can explain the observed variation

models of technology diffusion abstract the literature on new technology diffusion is vast and it spills over many conventional disciplinary boundaries this paper surveys the literature by focusing on alternative explanations of the dominant stylized fact that the usage of new technologies over time typically follows an s curve the most commonly found model which is used to account for this model is the so called epidemic model which builds on the premise that what limits the speed of usage is the lack of information available about the new technology how to use it and what it does the leading alternate model is often called the probit model which follows from the premise that different firms with different goals and abilities are likely to want to adopt the new technology at different times in this model diffusion occurs as firms of different types gradually adopt it there are actually many ways to generate an s curve and the third class of models which we examine are models of density dependence popularized by population ecologists in these models the twin forces of legitimation and competition help to establish new technologies and then ultimately limit their take up finally we look at models in which the initial choice between different variants of the new technology affect the subsequent diffusion speed of the chosen technology such models often rely on information cascades which drive herd like adoption behaviour when a particular variant is finally selected

innovation in academe the diffusion of information technologies this study investigates the diffusion of two early information technologies across 1348 institutions of higher education 1 the adoption of because it s time network bitnet a precursor to the internet as we know it today and 2 the adoption of the domain name system dns with its registration of domain names an essential feature of the modern internet we find that the time paths of adoption for both generally exhibit the typical s shape found for other innovations we identify factors likely responsible for the patterns observed and in the process extend the scope of the diffusion literature by incorporating insights from the optimization behaviour of nonprofits using a proportional hazards framework we find that faster adoption occurred among institutions focused on research and doctoral education as well as among select liberal arts colleges relative to nonselect colleges faster adoption also occurred for larger institutions suggesting that they benefited from economies of scale adoption w

timing of technology adoption and product market competition abstract this paper examines how product market competition affects firms timing of adopting a new technology as well as whether the market provides sufficient adoption incentives it demonstrates that adoption dates differ not only among symmetric firms but also among markets with different market features more specifically technology adoption can occur earlier in a market with cournot competition than in a market with bertrand competition it can also occur earlier in a market in which goods are not too close substitutes therefore this paper shows that competition toughness does not always reinforce adoption incentives when goods are sufficiently differentiated adoption occurs later than is socially optimal

isolating the determinants of innovativeness a split population tobit spot duration model of timing and volume of first and repeat purchase the authors present the split population tobit spot duration model to incorporate two conceptually distinct dimensions of innovativeness in a single framework namely the timing and volume of adoption rather than utilizing a diffusion model specification based on word of mouth and social contagion effects the present approach uses a growth model specification and delineates a general function of time to describe the distribution of adoption timing estimation and several validation exercises performed on a data set describing the diffusion of personal computers across a sample of over 3000 u s firms provide strong support for the superiority of the spot model over models derived from restricted conceptualizations of innovativeness the empirical work albeit modest tests the impact of covariates such as firm size and decision centralization on the dimensions of innovativeness and sheds light on some inconsistent findings in the innovation adoption literature the authors subsequently derive the e

the impact of advanced technology adoption on wage structures evidence from taiwan manufacturing firms we examine the impact of advanced technology adoption on wage and employment structures in taiwan using a survey of manufacturing firms that provides direct information on the use of advanced technologies we find that firms using more advanced technologies pay higher wages to both non production and production workers and employ higher fractions of non production workers controlling for the possible endogeneity of technology adoption suggests that the estimated impact of new technologies on wages is downward biased and that the effect on production workers wages may be minimal

the reaper and the scanner indivisibility led incremental innovations and the adoption of new technologies widespread adoption of a new capital embodied technology requires a continu ous flow of incremental innovations a few of them address the key problem of indivisibility by making renting the new machine a viable alternative to buying it or by dividing it up into modular elements such incremental innovations differ from the learning by doing effects usually considered by diffusion models and greatly affect the structure of the adopting industry the case for keeping them in due account is made by revisiting paul david s classic paper on the mccormick reaper by criticising the subsequent evolution of threshold models of adoption and by summarising my own findings on the diffusion of electronic pre press devices

management structure and technology diffusion in chinese state owned enterprises abstract this paper identifies factors that can explain the variation in the diffusion of continuous casting technology among chinese steel firms during the period 1985 1995 potential factors affecting firm level diffusion of continuous casting technology are tested econometrically using data from 75 chinese steel firms the results suggest that institutional factors such as management structure have had a significant influence on a firm s rate of diffusion in particular the results show that although centrally managed firms are typically the first to acquire a new technology complete integration of the technology into the production process occurs more rapidly in firms that are locally managed furthermore the results suggest that certain market factors are important in a locally managed firm s decision to convert but seem to have played a lesser role in centrally managed firms these results imply that although centrally managed firms have better access to new technologies due to their close ties to the central government locally managed firms may possess a greater incentive to improve production efficiency through the incorporation of new technology