Does Gibrat's Law hold among young,small firms?

According to Gibrat's Law of Proportionate Effect, the growth rate of a given firm is independent of its size at the beginning of the examined period. Aimed at extending this line of investigation, the present paper uses quantile regression techniques to test whether Gibrat's Law holds for new entrants in a given industry: that is for new small firms in the early stage of their life cycle. The main finding is that for some selected industries in Italian manufacturing Gibrat's Law fails to hold in the years immediately following start-up, when smaller firms have to rush in order to achieve a size large enough to enhance their likelihood of survival. Conversely, in subsequent years the patterns of growth of new smaller firms do not differ significantly from those of larger entrants, and the Law therefore cannot be rejected.JEL Classification: L11, L60Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 27th Annual EARIE Conference (Lausanne, 7-10 September 2000) and at seminars held between 2000 and 2003 at the Economics Department of Harvard University, the Catholic University of Milan, the University of Ferrara, the University of Bologna, the Bank of Italy, and Athens University of Economics & Business. We would like to thank Carlo Bianchi, Giuseppe Colangelo, Giovanni Dosi, Steven Klepper (Editor), Stephen Martin, Ariel Pakes, Aman Ullah and, in particular, Helen Louri and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on earlier drafts. Financial support from MIUR (Year 2000; protocol #MM13038538_001; project leader: E. Santarelli) is gratefully acknowledged.Correspondence to: E. Santarelly     

衰退产业中企业创新战略选择

衰退产业是一种越来越普遍的产业形态。产业创新是衰退产业中企业的生存选择。衰退产业创新有三种基本战略,即进攻型创新战略、防御型创新战略和模仿与依赖型创新战略。     

中国制造业区域聚集及国际比较

本文利用Ellison and Glaeser(1997)衡量行业区域聚集和共同聚集的指标体系,考察中国制造业的区域聚集程度在1998至2003年间的发展趋势,并进行了国际比较。我们发现中国的行业区域聚集程度仍处在一个上升阶段。我们还注意到,无论就行业区域聚集程度还是行业区域共同聚集程度而言,中国目前仍低于西方发达国家近期的水平。     

地区专业化的度量

在封闭经济假设和地区间需求结构一致假设下,本文构造了地区专业化的度量指标——地区专业化系数;这一度量指标更具一般性,产业结构差异系数、空间分布差异系数、绝对利差及行业分工指数等指标只是作为它的特例而存在。在讨论地区专业化问题时,如果忽略地区的(或行业的)相对规模因素,除了犯有逻辑推理错误外,在实践中还存在着可能得出错误判断的倾向。本文发现:中国工业的地区专业化水平自20世纪80年代中后期以来有了较大程度的提高;如果忽略地区的(或行业的)相对规模因素来讨论中国工业的地区专业化问题,则会高估中国工业的地区专业化水平。     

中国产业结构变迁与经济增长的实证分析

本文对我国1978～2002年产业结构变化状况和产业结构变化趋势进行定量分析,考察产业结构变动引起各产业部门对经济增长的贡献和作用的相应变化.实证检验表明,这一时期我国产业结构变动基本符合工业化发展的演变规律,但从我国经济发展的要求看,产业结构转换仍滞后于总量增长的要求;进一步优化产业结构,需要着力解决"三农"问题、提升企业的国际竞争力、加快发展第三产业.     

略论产业集群技术标准与集聚的正负效应之相关性

产业集群是现代产业发展过程中形成的一种具有典型特征的，介于企业和行业之间的产业组织形态。产业集聚的巨大正效应是产业集群形成和发展的重要原因。同时，产业集聚也会产生负效应，这些负效应可能导致产业集群发展缓慢，甚至衰退和消亡。找到正确有效的途径强化产业集聚的正效应，预防和消除产业集聚的负效应，是保持产业集群健康、持续发展的关键。技术标准对产业和企业的命运起着越来越重要的作用，技术标准与产业集群发展、运行秩序规范、负效应的防范与消除等方面都有着紧密的相关性，是促进产业集群发展的有效工具和手段。     

Transport development and the evolution of economic geography

In this paper, based on the recent advances in the new economic geography (e.g., Fujita et al. [12]), we analyze impacts of transport costs on the spatial patterns of economic agglomeration. We first identify prototypes from the existing models, and explain the mechanism of how transport costs influence the balance between economic forces of agglomeration and dispersion. We then investigate the transformation of the agglomeration/dispersion patterns given gradually decreasing transport costs for different goods.Received: Received: July 2004 / Accepted: January 2005, Accepted: Received: July 2004 / Accepted: January 2005, JEL Classification: R12Tomoya Mori: Correspondence toThe authors are grateful to David Bernstein, Tatsuo Hatta, Komei Sasaki, Tony E. Smith, and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. This research is partly supported by The Grant in Aid for Research 08403001 of Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in Japan, the Murata Science Foundation, and WESCO Civil Engineering Technology Foundation.     

集聚效应对跨国公司在华区位选择的影响

本文以跨国公司区位选择微观理论为基础,利用条件Logit模型,对2007年《财富》世界500强中,1995年到2007年期间,457家美国子公司和537家欧洲子公司在华个体区位选择决定因素进行了实证分析。分析结果表明,集聚效应是样本公司区位选择的重要决定因素,在华投资的欧美制造业公司普遍采用"集聚"这一战略,其子公司大量集聚在东部地区,盲目吸收外资来缩小东—西部经济发展不平衡的政策并不合适,尤其是中部地区。因此,在文章末,本文对中国政府应该如何减小区域经济发展不平衡和合理引用外资提出了建议。     

安徽在长三角城市群中定位与空间发展战略的思考

安徽作为长三角的纵深腹地,在地理上与苏浙沪发达地区无缝对接,在资源开发、产业发展、市场开拓等方面具有广泛的合作空间,在长三角城市群经济社会发展中将发挥着重要作用.安徽省委、省政府审时度势,进一步明确了安徽加快发展的主攻方向,作出了推进东向发展,加速回归长三角的重大决策.论文在长三角城市群发展趋势分析的基础上,提出安徽省分层次、分时序融入长三角的模式,探讨了"东向发展"的安徽省域城镇发展总体战略,并对其在长三角城市群中的定位和空间发展战略做了一些思考.     

The knowledge management strategy and the formation of innovative networks in emerging industries

This paper presents an agent-based simulation model with local network externality to analyze strategic interactions over investment on new economic knowledge. R&D knowledge flows and spillovers are the results of non-cooperative games played between neighboring agents in the model. The model demonstrates a situation where no agents have incentives to hide their economic knowledge, a situation that is observed in open source software development projects. The likelihood of obtaining a stable situation where new economic knowledge is openly shared is increased when heterogeneity of agents is introduced.