Book Reviews

The relevance of innovation as an engine of economic growth has never been denied, but the main emphasis has typically been placed on the manufacturing sector. A key step in this direction is the carrying out of innovation surveys that include the tertiary sector. Along these lines, the aim of this article is to provide evidence about the innovative character of services in Spain. Drawing on the Third Community Innovation Survey (CIS 3) for Spain, we use factor and cluster analyses to demonstrate that services do innovate, and to locate these activities in the production system.     

Factor Endowments and Production in European Regions

This paper analyses patterns of production across 14 industries in 45 regions from 7 European countries since 1975. We estimate an equation from neoclassical trade theory that relates an industry’s share of a region’s GDP to factor endowments, relative prices and technology. The strict version of the Heckscher–Ohlin model that assumes identical relative prices and technology is rejected against more general alternatives. However, factor endowments play a statistically significant and quantitatively important role in explaining production patterns. Factor endowments are more successful at explaining patterns of production in aggregate industries (Agriculture, Manufacturing and Services) than in disaggregated industries within manufacturing. JEL no. F11, F14, R13     

Graded eco-labels: A demand-oriented approach to reduce pollution

Supplied oriented environmental policies are generally used in order to limit production related pollution. This fact is based on the hypothesis that consumers are not willing to sacrifice personal utility for a wider social gain. We suggest that widespread environmental concerns of consumers can be exploited to push producers along cleaner technological patterns. Our core assumption is that consumers would be ready to purchase cleaner products if the products' characteristics are not ‘too dissimilar’ to those of more polluting alternatives. However, due to a lack of information about non-observable product characteristics, this assumption on its own is not sufficient for ‘environmental friendly’ producers to become competitive. We show - by means of a simulation model - that only if consumers are provided with appropriate information on the greenness of products through adequate eco-labels (graded eco-labels), then producers will be pressed to implement innovations aimed at reducing the environmental impact of their products. Under two test settings - one without any certification and another with binary eco-labels - the model shows markets characterised by highly polluting technological patterns. Only in the presence of graded eco-labels, competition drives the market toward cleaner technological patterns.     

Verifying a demand system by simulation

An intriguingly small value of the asymptotic standard error of the estimate of the income flexibility inspired us to simulate the demand system. The procedure used should have more general applicability.     

When giving some away makes sense to jump-start the diffusion process

This paper uses an analytical model to examine when it makes sense to provide incentives to innovators to adopt a new product. The model allows for separate segments of innovators and imitators, each of which follows a Bass-type diffusion process. Interestingly “seeding” the market is optimal for a limited range of situations and these do not appear to include those where there is a downturn in sales (chasm) as sales move from the first to the second segment.     

Effects of socially responsible human resource management (SR-HRM) on innovation and reputation in entrepreneurial SMEs

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - This work focuses on the importance of responsible human resource management, and its link to innovation and reputation, which are deemed to...     

The impact of human,social, and psychological capital on academic spin-off internationalization

Journal of International Entrepreneurship - Academic spin-offs (ASOs) are companies with a strong international vocation for two main reasons: first, they market their products and services in...