Methodological Procedure for Estimating Brazilian Quarterly GDP Series

This paper presents a methodology for estimating the Brazilian GDP quarterly series in the period between 1960–1996. Firstly, an Engle–Granger’s static equation is estimated using GDP yearly data and GDP-related variables. The estimated coefficients from this regression are then used to obtain a first estimation of the quarterly GDP, with unavoidable measurement errors. The subsequent step is entirely based on benchmarking models estimated within a state space framework and consists in improving the preliminary GDP estimation in order to both eliminate as much as possible the measurement error and that the sum of the quarterly values matches the annual GDP.

Developing a transformative business strategy through the combination of design thinking and futures literacy

The paper describes a systematic methodology that combines futures literacy and design thinking to enable the collective discovery of new and disruptive business niches. It is a participatory approach centred on design know-how, which promotes innovative forms of engagement and articulation. The proposed methodology balances experience in designing and applying foresight approaches and futures literacy knowledge labs together with a multidisciplinary understanding of institutional context.

The methodology fosters decision making processes that embrace complexity and treat uncertainty as a resource, thus improving an organisations’ capacity to use the future to expand its understanding of the present. It has been applied at the Center for Strategic Studies and Management (CGEE), an organisation where institutionalised foresight and technology assessment takes place in Brazil, especially in support of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy design and implementation, as well as evaluation. However, its clients also include different ministries within government and industries alike.

The article outlines the ways in which the organisation involved all its collaborators in jointly rethinking its future, building upon collective intelligence, narrative building, sense making, framing and reframing. The design principles called for these experiments to follow a collective learning curve that enable a renewed focus on systemic and transformative innovation. The crafting of new strategic questions was inspired by jointly expanding the understanding of the imaginary futures of the interrelated systems in which the organisation might play a role. As a consequence, new and disruptive possible roles for the institution were identified. These insights then informed the assessment and choices for the redesign of the business strategy.

This paper presents the methodology for combining design thinking and futures literacy, the application of this methodology to CGEE, and the major findings of the overall exercise. Readers will find out about the impact of this exercise on the organisation’s approach to both its own strategic positioning and to the design and implementation of foresight and strategic studies. The paper concludes by outlining the implications of the proposed methodology for foresight practice.     

What Sparks Ethical Decision Making? The Interplay Between Moral Intuition and Moral Reasoning: Lessons from the Scholastic Doctrine

There has been limited coverage of the corporate responsibility (CR) practices of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the mainstream CR literature. Furthermore, there has been no systematic analysis of the responsibilities of the high value jewellery industry and jewellery SMEs in particular. This study explores the potential for harm and value creation by individual stakeholders in fine jewellery production. Using the harm chain and institutional theory to frame our investigation, we seek to understand how small businesses within the fine jewellery industry respond to the economic, social and environmental challenges associated with responsible jewellery production, and to investigate how they perceive and negotiate the tensions between responsibility and the resistance derived from the operational norms of secrecy and autonomy within the industry. Our exploratory research provides illustrative examples of how complex harm networks operate within and across the fine jewellery industry, and demonstrates the inter-relationships that exist across the different stages of the fine jewellery harm chain. Findings suggest that institutional forces are coalescing towards a more responsible agenda for the fine jewellery industry. Moreover, while CR is a tool to disrupt harmful institutional norms and practices within such an industry, it requires the co-creation of new transformative business models and multi-stakeholder involvement including firms (SMEs and MNEs), trade associations, non-governmental organisations and consumers. Solutions include national and international legislation, price adjusted certification routes for small firms, harmonisation of industry CR standards to reduce overlap in certification and regulation and gem and precious metal “track and trace” schemes.     

Exploring networks of proximity for partner selection,firms' collaboration and knowledge exchange. The case of clean‐tech industry

Nowadays scholars widely recognize that know‐how, capabilities and knowledge needed to generate innovations often reside outside the firm, start‐ups are a valuable source, and collaborative networks are a fundamental strategy for innovation. This is true especially for the clean‐tech sector, which is characterized by the continuous search for innovative solutions and technological advancements. The purpose of the paper is to provide a methodological support for the screening of potential partners based on network analysis and, then, help firms to select them for collaboration and knowledge exchange. The methodology can be easily adopted by managers and executives to identify firms to monitor with greater attention for future investments. The analysis is on a dataset of 4,782 clean‐tech companies operating worldwide. Results highlight that energy companies looking for external sources could investigate their network of business proximity if they intend to specialize in a defined field and/or collaborate with similar partners, while they could explore their network of strategic proximity if they intend to diversify their businesses, that is cooperating and exchanging knowledge with firms with distant but complementary capabilities and resources.     

Alternative Monetary Targets,Instruments and Future Monetary Policy Frameworks

ABSTRACT

This article expands on the debate of whether merely controlling inflation can be considered a good outcome in terms of monetary policy, discussing proposals for adopting alternative monetary targets (e.g., price level, nominal GDP), alternative instruments (e.g., monetary finance, central bank digital currencies), for enlarging central banks' mandates (e.g., incorporating employment, wages, inequality, environmental objectives) and for the design of future monetary policy frameworks.

We argue that in the coming years, central banks should not simply maintain their pre-2008 standards by de-implementing unconventional monetary policies. Instead, they must take advantage of their past and recent experiences in order to improve, under an evolutionary perspective, future monetary policy and financial stability frameworks. Based on this, measures implemented since the 2008 crisis would have three possible treatments in new frameworks: i) be discarded, due to their predominantly adverse effects; ii) not be regularly implemented, but be used as backstop mechanisms if needed; iii) be incorporated as regular measures of monetary policy/financial stability frameworks. Accordingly, monetary and financial stability authorities will increasingly need to evolve and engage in a continuously adaptive and innovative process in order to face challenges posed by financial markets that are becoming more dynamic, innovative, complex, interconnected and globalised.     

The creative response and the endogenous dynamics of pecuniary knowledge externalities: an agent based simulation model

The paper elaborates an agent based simulation model (ABM) to explore the endogenous long-term dynamics of knowledge externalities. ABMs, as a form of artificial cliometrics, allow the analysis of the effects of the reactivity of firms caught in out-of-equilibrium conditions conditional on the levels of endogenous knowledge externalities stemming from the levels of knowledge connectivity of the system. The simulation results confirm the powerful effects of endogenous knowledge externalities. At the micro-level, the reactions of firms caught in out-of-equilibrium conditions yield successful effects in the form of productivity enhancing innovations, only in the presence of high levels of knowledge connectivity and strong pecuniary knowledge externalities. At the meso-level, the introduction of innovations changes the structural characteristics of the system in terms of knowledge connectivity that affect the availability of knowledge externalities. Endogenous centrifugal and centripetal forces continually reshape the structure of the system and its knowledge connectivity. At the macro system level, an out-of-equilibrium process leads to a step-wise increase in productivity combined with non-linear patterns of output growth characterized by significant oscillations typical of the long waves in Schumpeterian business cycles.     

Technological change and multinational growth in international telecommunications services

Revolutionary technological and institutional changes, introduced since mid-seventies, are drastically altering the quiet functioning of international telecommunications markets, traditionally characterized by a strong multilateral oligopoly. In such multilateral oligopoly firms had little scope and opportunity for any form of international growth. Since the early eighties the scope for international growth of telecommunications carriers is emerging as a critical issue in international telecommunications. The economics of multinational firms and international trade make it possible to assess the role of technology gaps in the modernization process, international telecommunications tariff asymmetries and global outsourcing as the determinants of multinational growth of telecommunications carriers and their international strategies.     

The economics of path-dependence in industrial organization

Path-dependence defines the set of dynamic processes where small events have long-lasting consequences that economic action at each moment can modify yet only to a limited extent. Path-dependence is analytically generated by the overlapping of irreversibility, indivisibility and structural actions of agents. It makes it possible to allow both for the effects of past behaviour of agents on the structure of the environment and the Lamarckian survival of agents by learning and adaptation to the character of the environment; hence it provides a framework to understand and to model the effects of historic time on the behaviour of agents which are able at each point in time to modify their evolution.