Growth, income distribution and well-being in transition countries

We apply several well-being measures that combine average income with a measure of inequality to international and intertemporal comparisons of well-being in transition countries. Our well-being measures drastically change the impression of levels and changes in well-being compared to a traditional reliance on income measures. Due to low inequality and moderate income levels, socialist countries enjoyed relatively high levels of economic well-being. In the transition process, rising inequality and falling incomes have led to a dramatic absolute decline in well-being and a considerable drop in relative well-being vis-à-vis non-transition countries. We also find a close correlation between income losses and inequality increases. While the transition has been successful in expanding political and civil rights, our indicators suggest that most transition countries are still below the level of economic well-being of the late 1980s.
JEL classification: D6, O15, P27.     

Knowledge spillovers in biotechnology: sources and incentives

This paper sheds light on the questions, Why does knowledge spill over? and How does knowledge spill over? The answer to these questions we suggest lies in the incentives confronting scientists to appropriate the expected value of their knowledge considered in the context of their path-dependent career trajectories. In particular, we focus on the ability of scientists to appropriate the value of knowledge embedded in their human capital along with the incentive structure influencing if and how scientists choose to commercialize their knowledge. We conclude that the spillover of knowledge from the source creating it, such as a university, research institute, or industrial corporation, to a new-firm startup facilitates the appropriation of knowledge for the individual scientist(s) but not necessarily for the organization creating that new knowledge in the first place.     

INNOVATION MANAGEMENT IN THE GERMAN TRANSPORTATION INDUSTRY

This article develops a conceptual framework for innovation management in logistics service providers, taking both a macro‐sectoral and a micro‐firm level perspective. Empirical data pertaining to the German transportation industry is applied in order to illustrate the current situation. In the analysis, the author distinguishes between various types of innovation: (1) product/service and process innovation, (2) market novelties, product‐range novelties and product imitations, and (3) ad hoc and planned innovation. The results indicate that despite the importance of innovation for the competitiveness of logistics service providers, innovation activities of firms in this industry and the share of innovators are at a low level compared to other industries. Only 30% of the LSP's are innovators. LSP innovation rests less on structured innovation, new product development and new product commercialization processes, instead, becomes often visible in form of technological advanced infrastructure and equipment investments. It is recommended that in the future LSP's should make more use of one or all forms of innovation activity discussed in this article.     

Levels,trends and consistency of employment and unemployment figures in South Africa

This article appraises the similarities and dissimilarities between the major sources of information on the South African labour force, ie the CSS Employment Series, the Standardised Employment Series and recent household surveys. It concludes that the generally bleak picture of very high unemployment rates presented in the household surveys is broadly accurate. Further, race, gender and location are major determinants of labour‐force participation and employment. Finally, the article highlights the lack of work experience among the unemployed.     

Subliminal influence on generosity

We experimentally subliminally prime subjects prior to charity donation decisions by showing words that have connotations of pro-social values for a very brief time (17 ms). Our main finding is that, compared to a baseline condition, the pro-social prime increases donations by approximately 10–17 % among subjects with strong pro-social preferences (universalism values). We find a similar effect when interacting the prime with the Big 5 personality characteristic of agreeableness. We furthermore introduce a novel method for testing for priming, “subliminity”. This method reveals that some subjects are capable of recognizing prime words, and the overall results are weaker when we control for this capacity.     

Vertical specialization in the EU and the causality of trade

We use a novel classification scheme to identify three stages of production in the manufacturing sector: parts, components and final goods. In particular, we offer evidence on the revealed comparative advantage of the EU-27 countries concerning the three vertically separated stages of production. Moreover, we investigate whether, and if so how, imports of parts, and components can work as a predictor for the exports of final goods. We find that countries specialize at different stages of production, and that components are Granger causal for the export of final goods in many countries with a lag of 3 months.     

Sanctions for repeat offenders: a question of wealth?

In a two‐period standard law‐enforcement model, individuals observe or break the law. In addition, individuals may offend accidentally. When sanctions are limited by individual wealth constraints, the government chooses appropriate sanctions for first and repeat offenders and the level of monitoring. We assume a welfare‐oriented government and derive subgame‐perfect equilibria for constant, increasing and decreasing sanctions depending on the individual wealth level.     

Distance Decay in the Willingness to Pay for Wine: Disentangling Local and Organic Attributes

This paper investigates how the residents of a French wine-producing region value the attributes of wine. We elicit the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for organic/non-organic and local/non-local wines with increasing levels of information on the impact of agricultural practices at both global and local scales. The analysis shows that there is a significant organic premium associated with both local and non-local wines. This organic premium significantly increases with information and significantly decreases with the distance between the consumer’s home and the vineyard. Based on the econometric predictions of the WTP, we show that a per-unit tax on non-organic wines or a standard imposing organic practices increases welfare through the internalization of the attributes revealed by the experiment.