Collective vs. individual lobbying

This paper presents a menu-auction model in which firms lobby the government to make an environmental regulation less burdensome. In this lobbying game, industrial interests are opposed by an environmental interest group. We compare political outcomes under two institutional arrangements. In the first, firms must join an organization that represents the interests of the industry. In the second, firms would lobby the government individually. The two arrangements result in strikingly different equilibrium outcomes. Only a small fraction of firms join the lobby group under collective lobbying, but all firms participate in lobbying activities when there is no such group. Thus, an attempt by firms to solve the apparent collective action problem through coordination would effectively backfire. The reason is that coordination among firms would increase the leverage available to the government, to demand high political contributions. We also evaluate the desirability of the two lobbying regimes from the private perspective of individual firms, and from the perspective of society as a whole. This permits us to evaluate possible restrictions on lobbying activities.     

The Gender Gap

The author explains the “gender gap” as a Nash equilibrium of a game with incomplete information about women's work at home and in the marketplace. Expectations about women's lower wages leads to the overutilization of women in the household, and this, in turn, leads to lower productivity and lower wages for women in the marketplace. The situation is rational but generally Pareto inferior. With logistic learning by doing, at high levels of skill there is a Pareto‐superior equilibrium, where men and women share efforts equally at home and receive the same pay in the marketplace, firms enhance their profits, and there is more welfare at home. Inequity at home breeds inequity in the marketplace and, reciprocally, inequity in the marketplace leads to inequity at home, causing a persistent gender gap. Appropriate contracts may be needed to implement the superior solution, since generally governments do not intervene in family matters.     

Cooperative R&D and Strategic Trade Policy with Bertrand Competition

This paper uses a strategic trade policy model to analyze the welfare effects from allowing cooperation in R&D when firms compete in a price‐setting game in the product market. A policy game between two governments is analyzed, where each government chooses a particular cooperative R&D policy in order to maximize national welfare. At the Nash equilibrium to this game only one government allows cooperation in R&D. This equilibrium is both individually and jointly optimal. International cooperation in R&D is superior to no cooperation in R&D but is inferior to the Nash equilibrium of the government policy game.     

PUBLIC INVESTMENT,TAXATION AND TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY

A low‐wage developing economy (South) is interested in accessing and attracting superior technology from a high‐wage developed economy (North) with firms having heterogeneous quality of technology. To improve upon the initial market equilibrium, which shows that relatively inefficient technologies will move to the South, the host government invests in infrastructure financed through taxing the foreign firms. We discuss the problem of existence of such a tax‐transfer mechanism within a balanced budget framework. We argue that such a policy can increase tax revenue as well as instigate the transfer of better quality technology. It turns out that this policy is more likely to be successful when the production concerns high‐value, high‐price products in low‐wage economies. Our results improve upon the conventional strategy of a tax break.     

The effect of risk-sharing government subsidy on corporate R&D investment: Empirical evidence from Korea

Despite the wide belief that the high social rates of returns to R&D investment justify government subsidy policy in advanced countries, there are only limited studies about whether the R&D subsidy as a means of risk-sharing stimulates R&D investment of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. This paper empirically investigates the issue, using a unique data set on government subsidy for new technology development of Korean manufacturing firms, listed and non-listed, for the period from 2000 to 2007. The paper employs the DID estimation procedure and controls for simultaneity of the subsidy for new technology development using 2SLS and two step Tobit procedure. Our empirical results show that there is no solid evidence for crowding-out effects of the government subsidy. These results suggest that government subsidies could help SMEs to overcome the barriers to risky R&D projects through sharing R&D failure risk with government and by reducing capital costs to undertake new technology development projects, and thus the subsidy policy for new technology development seems to be partly successful in promoting the R&D investment of the Korean SMEs.     

Multinational Firms and Technology Transfer

We construct an oligopoly model in which a multinational firm has a superior technology compared to local firms. Workers employed by the multinational acquire knowledge of its superior technology. The multinational may pay a wage premium to prevent local firms from hiring its workers and thus gaining access to their knowledge. In this setting, the host government has an incentive to attract FDI due to technology transfer to local firms or the wage premium earned by employees of the multinational firm. However, when FDI is particularly attractive to the multinational firm, the host government has an incentive to discourage FDI.
JEL classification : F 13; F 23; J 41; L 13; O 14; O 33; O 38     

Firm productivity and importing: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms

This paper investigates various aspects of the relationship between firm productivity and importing for a large sample of Chinese firms between 2002 and 2006 making a distinction between the origin, variety, skill and technology content of imports. Employing a random effects probit model and a propensity score matching with difference‐in‐differences (PSM–DID) approach and treating imports as endogenous in our measure of total factor productivity (TFP) (De Loecker 2007), we test the self‐selection and learning‐by‐doing hypotheses. Our results show evidence of a bi‐directional causal relationship between importing and productivity. Although importing firms tend to be more productive before entering the import market, once they start importing firms experience significant productivity gains for up to two years following entry. We also find evidence of learning effects following the decision to import, which is stronger when import starters source their products from high‐income economies, import a wider variety of products and import products with a higher skill and technology content. A number of robustness checks confirm the learning effects of importing on TFP growth.     

Learning by Doing, Precommitment and Infant-Industry Promotion

We examine the implications for strategic trade policy of different assumptions about precommitment in a two-period Cournot oligopoly game with learning by doing. The inability of firms and governments to precommit to future actions encourages strategic behaviour which justifies an optimal first-period export tax relative to the profit-shifting benchmark of an export subsidy. In the linear case the optimal subsidy is increasing in the rate of learning with government precommitment but decreasing in it without, in apparent contradiction to the infant-industry argument. Extensions to active foreign policy, distortionary taxation and Bertrand competition are also considered.     

Coordinating China's economic growth strategy via its government-controlled association for private firms

Scholars in economics and political science argue that one major function of government is to overcome coordination failure in economic development, especially during times of rapid environmental changes. But, how and through what means does the state coordinate firms to follow the changing directions of its economic objectives? This paper focuses on the case of a government-controlled business association, namely the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC), and shows that the ACFIC may be serving, at least partially, as a means of avoiding the kind of coordination failures that are often associated with policy reform programs in authoritarian regimes like China when the government deems it necessary to radically and suddenly change its policy objectives. It does so by comparing the activities of firms that are members of ACFIC with non-members before and after the world financial crisis of 2008–09 which induced a significant change in government objectives. Before that crisis when priority in government objectives was “outward” (to stave off balance of payments crises that had befallen many other developing countries), ACFIC member firms were able to engage in exports and foreign investment to a greater extent than non-member firms, and even than those whose owners are members of the Congresses or Chinese Communist Party. After viewing the crises in international markets, and government objectives had turned more “inward”, ACFIC members were more likely to focus on domestic sales and investments.     

Is corruption a greater burden for registered MSEs? Evidence from Zambia

If corrupt bureaucrats target registered firms, then corruption may discourage registration. Using data from a survey of 4,801 micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in Zambia, this paper looks at whether corruption is a more or less serious problem for registered MSEs. Consistent with earlier studies, the results suggest registered MSEs are more concerned about corruption than unregistered firms are. The paper also proposes two reasons why corruption might affect registered MSEs differently than it affects unregistered firms. We first suggest that registered firms might meet with government officials more often than unregistered firms, giving corrupt officials more opportunities to demand bribes from them, but we also suggest that registered firms might be less vulnerable when officials demand bribes because they are more able to complain about bribe demands. This could offset registered firms' disadvantage because of more frequent meetings. The evidence supports the first, but not the second, hypothesis. Registered firms were more likely to meet with government officials but were not consistently less likely to pay bribes when they did meet with them.     

Dynamic Efficiency with Learning by Doing

This article focuses on the measurement of economic efficiency of firms in an industry in a dynamic framework, where R&D investments and learning experience play critical roles. Dynamic aspects of cost and production efficiency and the impact of capital through learning by doing are developed here in semiparametric forms. The production and cost frontiers estimated here for the US computer industry over the period 1987–98 are robust in the sense that no specific functional form need be assumed. The empirical estimates measure the pattern of level and growth efficiency in the computer industry, which has undergone rapid changes in recent years.     

Assessing the Effectiveness of Technology Policy--A Long-Term View

Innovation policy is increasingly concerned with mobilising a broad range of resources to support the development of firm-level technological capability. It is aimed at dealing with 'market failure', which arises when firms are confronted with technological challenges in which they lack the necessary experience or resources. Both internal agency and independent evaluation of such innovation policies are routinely undertaken but most are conducted during the lifetime of the programmes or soon after they have ended. There are few examples of such evaluations being able to take a long-term perspective. This paper explores the impacts of a UK government technology programme on the process and product application of microelectronic technologies (MAP) that ran between 1978 and 1986. Via interviews with a sample of firms who participated in scheme, the research explored their subsequent use of microelectronics, government support schemes and expert consultants. The study argues for more regular long-term reviews of technology promoting schemes as an aid to learning and capability enhancement in policy-making.     

Assessing the Effectiveness of Technology Policy--A Long-Term View

Innovation policy is increasingly concerned with mobilising a broad range of resources to support the development of firm-level technological capability. It is aimed at dealing with 'market failure', which arises when firms are confronted with technological challenges in which they lack the necessary experience or resources. Both internal agency and independent evaluation of such innovation policies are routinely undertaken but most are conducted during the lifetime of the programmes or soon after they have ended. There are few examples of such evaluations being able to take a long-term perspective. This paper explores the impacts of a UK government technology programme on the process and product application of microelectronic technologies (MAP) that ran between 1978 and 1986. Via interviews with a sample of firms who participated in scheme, the research explored their subsequent use of microelectronics, government support schemes and expert consultants. The study argues for more regular long-term reviews of technology promoting schemes as an aid to learning and capability enhancement in policy-making.     

Nationalizations,bailouts and efficiency

ABSTRACT

We develop a theoretical model in which there are public and private firms and a government. When firms become insolvent, the government can intervene with bailouts or nationalizations. The government only intervenes when the bankruptcy of a firm entails social costs. In this setting, we analyze how government interventions affect allocative and productive efficiency. Nationalizations of private firms after unprofitable investments lead to increased allocative efficiency despite private ownership. The effort level chosen by the managers and employees working for a firm is also affected by the possibility of government interventions, reducing the productive efficiency advantage of private firms.     

Cost-Reducing Investment, Competition, and Industry Dynamics

We demonstrate the possibility of shake-out of firms and emergence of interfirm heterogeneity along the (socially optimal) dynamic equilibrium path of a competitive industry with free entry and exit, even when there is no uncertainty and all firms are ex ante identical with perfect foresight. Atomistic firms with upward-sloping marginal cost curves undertake investment in firm-specific cost reduction. They earn negative net profits in early periods, compensated later by strictly positive net profits; no entry occurs after the initial time period. Some firms may exit before others even while other firms earn positive net profits.     

Pollution,public disclosure,and firm behavior

This paper looks at whether a government regulator should publicly announce the amounts of pollution emitted by individual firms and plants. Disclosure may be important if there is incomplete information about firm costs, since pollution levels may be used by the regulated firm as a signal of costs to rival firms. We compare the signaling games under public disclosure and no disclosure. Welfare is likely reduced by disclosure, but if the regulator can adjust the stringency of the relevant pollution regulations, then the loss in welfare can be smaller. The implications of these results for pollution permits markets are discussed.     

Attracting private investment: Tax reduction,investment subsidy,or both?

This paper uses a real-option model to examine the net benefit to a government from using tax cut and/or investment subsidy as incentives to induce immediate investment. Although earlier papers generally concluded that investment subsidy dominates tax cut, it is observed that many governments use a combination of subsidy and tax cut. We show that, when the government uses a different discount rate from private firms, and when it has to borrow money to provide an investment subsidy, it is possible to get an internal optimum; that is, it might be optimal for the government to provide an investment subsidy as well as charge a positive tax rate on the profits from the project. Thus, we provide an explanation for the puzzling fact that many governments provide an investment subsidy to a firm while simultaneously taxing its profits.     

Intertemporal Emission Permits Trading Under Uncertainty and Irreversibility

This paper analyzes the effect of emission permit banking on clean technology investment and abatement under conditions where the stringency of the future cap is uncertain. We examine the problem of heterogeneous firms minimizing the cost of intertemporal emission control in the presence of stochastic future pollution standards and emission permits that are tradable across firms and through time. A firm can invest in clean capital (an improved pollution abatement technology) to reduce its abatement cost. We consider two possibilities: that investment is reversible or irreversible. Uncertainty is captured within a two period model: only the current period cap is known. We show that if banking is positive and marginal abatement costs are sufficiently convex, there will be more abatement and investment in clean technology under uncertainty than there would be under certainty and no banking. These results are at odds with the common belief that uncertainty on future environmental policy is a barrier to investment in clean capital. Moreover, under uncertainty and irreversibility, we find that there are cases where banking enables firms to invest more in clean capital.     

Organisational learning capability,product innovation performance and export intensity

The hypothesis that managerial characteristics which facilitate the organisational learning process can provide firms with a basis for competitive advantage has received a great deal of attention. While there is evidence that organisational learning affects export intensity, we argue that intermediate variables, such as innovation, should be used in order to evaluate its impact in organisations. This study shows that firms with a higher organisational learning capability tend to be more innovative, and for this reason, they are more likely to export a higher share of their production. From a longitudinal perspective, we use structural equation modeling on a database from Italian and Spanish ceramic tile producers, worldwide leaders in terms of technology. The database combines primary and secondary data. The results support our theoretical conjectures. Findings improve our understanding of the antecedents of export intensity and are related to previous research.     

Climate policies and learning by doing: Impacts and timing of technology subsidies

We study the role of technology subsidies in climate policies, using a simple dynamic equilibrium model with learning by doing. The optimal subsidy rate of a carbon-free technology is high when the technology is first adopted, but falls significantly over the next decades. However, the efficiency costs of uniform instead of optimal subsidies, may be low if there are adjustment costs for a new technology. Finally, supporting existing energy technologies only, may lead to technology lock-in, and the impacts of lock-in increase with the learning potential of new technologies as well as the possibilities for early entry.