A Resource-based View of Innovativeness in Small Firms

The resource-based view is presented here as the theoretical framework for empirical research on the determinants of technological innovativeness in small firms. These determinants include the characteristics of the owner/manager (O/M) and the firm and some technological assets (resources and capabilities). Evidence based on case studies is used for the evaluation of their effect on innovativeness and their interaction. The study highlights the key role of the O/M and the importance of some of his/her characteristics. It also shows the impact of certain resources and capabilities. The O/M emerges as the orchestrator of resource accumulation and capability development in the innovative firms.     

The Euro Area Crisis: Politics over Economics

This paper explores the dominant role of politics in decisions made by euro area governments during the crisis. Decisions that appear to have been driven by local political considerations to the detriment of the euro area as a whole are discussed. The domination of politics over economics has led to crisis mismanagement. The underlying cause of tension is identified as a misalignment of political incentives. Member state governments tend to defend their own interests in a noncooperative manner. This has magnified the costs of the crisis and has resulted in an unbalanced and divisive incidence of the costs across the euro area. The example of Cyprus is discussed, where political decisions resulted in a transfer of about half of 2013 GDP from the island to cover losses elsewhere. In the absence of a federal government, no institution can adequately defend the interests of the euro area as a whole. European institutions appear weak and incapable of defending European principles and the proper functioning of the euro. Political reform is needed to sustain the euro but this is unlikely to pass the political feasibility test with the current governments of Europe.     

Improvement of a Bio-Economic Mathematical Programming Model in the Case of On-Farm Source Inputs and Outputs

We present a two-step process for solving nonlinear farm activity models inside a linear framework under the assumption that market prices approximate the shadow prices of the model’s constraints. In the event of market imperfections or missing prices (for example non-marketed outputs), the previous assumption is not justified and the derived solution is not optimal. To circumvent this problem and to avoid nonlinear algorithms that may prove unwieldy for large models, we propose an iterative computation method, based on the re-estimation of shadow prices in each step until a converging solution is found. The method is applied to the bio-economic model AROPAj, which consists of a number of linear programming (LP) farm sub-models representing different farming systems across the European Union. For most of LPs producing non-marketed outputs a converging solution is obtained in two iterations, while the remaining LPs lead to periodic solutions of very low amplitude.

     

Optimal Discretion

We investigate the desirability of adopting a rule in favor of discretionary monetary policy in a model exhibiting Kydland and Prescott's dynamic inconsistency problem but no fundamental incompatibility between the policymaker's price stability and full employment objectives. We show that if discretion provides a policy flexibility benefit, then a rule is optimal only when inflation exceeds an endogenously determined threshold. This gives rise to a discretionary policy zone for inflation with the central bank taking more drastic action towards stabilizing inflation when inflation veers outside the zone. Imperfect credibility narrows the scope for discretion and enhances the benefits of adopting a rule.
JEL classification : E 58; D 82; C 72     

Urban guerrilla activities in Greece

Logistic fits are made to the populations of attacks by urban guerrilla groups in Greece under the assumption that these organizations grow like species. The analysis is mainly based on data that cover the attacks of the two major urban guerrilla groups, Revolutionary Organization November 17 (17N) and Revolutionary Popular Struggle (ELA). We conclude that urban guerrilla activities in Greece may have been triggered into existence by the military junta but probably had their roots deeper into the earlier political system in Greece that repressed leftist movements. Our analysis shows that the life cycle of political violence in Greece had already been completed when the police finally began cracking down on the 17N, which takes away same of the shine from the police's achievement.     

Impacts of FFW on nutrition in rural Kenya

Assessing the impacts of Food-for-Work (FFW) on human capital formation depends on understanding the specific nutritional contributions of FFW to the overall diet of FFW participant households. However, empirical studies in this area are very scant. This paper is an attempt to fill such gap. The primary objectives are to measure the magnitude of the FFW contribution to participants' nutritional status. Primary data collected from a random sample of 300 farm-households in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya are used. A linear programming model is used to estimate the shadow prices of nutrients. These prices are then entered into an econometric model of consumer demand for nutrients in order to estimate own and cross-price elasticities for each nutrient component. The results indicate that FFW significantly improves the nutritional status of FFW participant households. More specifically, participants experienced an implicit income gain, which resulted in a significant nutritional improvement. The poorest FFW participant households exhibited even higher nutritional gains (32.46%) than those participants from relatively higher income groups. FFW participant households showed a 90% higher propensity to spend on nutrients than the non-FFW participants. The findings of this study are expected to assist in the design of future ‘targeted’ food aid projects.     

Monetary policy and efficiency in over‐the‐counter financial trade

We develop a monetary model that incorporates over‐the‐counter (OTC) asset trade. After agents have made their money holding decisions, they receive an idiosyncratic shock that affects their valuation for consumption and, hence, for the unique liquid asset, namely money. Subsequently, agents can choose whether they want to enter the OTC market in order to sell assets and thus boost their liquidity or to buy assets and thus provide liquidity to other agents. In our model, inflation affects not only the money holding decisions of agents, as is standard in monetary theory, but also the entry decision of these agents in the financial market. We use our framework to study the effect of inflation on welfare, asset prices and OTC trade volume. In contrast to most monetary models, which predict a negative relationship between inflation and welfare, we find that inflation can be welfare improving within a certain range, because it mitigates a search externality that agents impose on one another when they make their OTC market entry decision. Also, an increase in the holding cost of money will lead to a decrease in asset prices, a regularity that is well documented in the data and often considered anomalous.