A Classification of Dutch Manufacturing based on a Model of Innovation

Summary The paper studies the degree of homogeneity of innovative behavior in order to determine empirically an industry classification of Dutch manufacturing that can be used for policy purposes. Defining homogeneity in terms of an economic model distinguishes our classification from existing taxonomies such as those of the OECD, Pavitt and the various classifications based on a principal components analysis. We use a two-limit tobit model with sample selection, which explains the decisions by business enterprises to innovate and the impact these decisions have on the share of innovative sales. The model is estimated for eleven industries based on the Dutch Standard Industrial Classification (SBI 1993). A likelihood ratio (LR) test is then performed to test for equality of the parameters across industries. We find that Dutch manufacturing consists of three groups of industries in terms of innovative behavior, a high-tech group, a low-tech group and the industry of wood. The same pattern shows up in the three Dutch Community Innovation Surveys. The empirical part of this study has been carried out at the Centre for Research of Economic Microdata at Statistics Netherlands. The authors wish to thank Statistics Netherlands, and in particular Bert Diederen, for helping us in accessing and using the Micronoom data set. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors. The authors also wish to thank Fran?ois Laisney, Patrick Waelbroek and participants at presentations in Maastricht, Strasbourg, Leuven and Lille for their helpful comments. The first author acknowledges financial support from METEOR.     

Jointly Optimal Taxes and Enforcement Policies in Response to Tax Evasion

Assuming the government cannot fully observe either individual types or incomes and jointly picks optimal taxes and audit policies against evasion can significantly alter standard results from optimal income taxation and tax‐evasion models, which treat these separately. We consider this when individuals differ in their risk preferences and incomes. Given the resulting complexity, supplementing analytic results with numerical analysis helps explain the structure of the resulting policies and how they change when the distribution of income or the revenue requirements of the government change. We do this analysis with and without audit errors and with incomes exogenous or affected by occupational choice.     

On the Consequences of Behavioral Adaptations in the Cost–Benefit Analysis of Road Safety Measures

It is sometimes argued that road safety measures or automobile safety standards fail to save lives because safer highways or safer cars induce more dangerous driving. A similar but less extreme view is that ignoring the behavioral adaptation of drivers would bias the cost–benefit analysis of a traffic safety measure. This article derives cost–benefit rules for automobile safety regulation when drivers may adapt their risk‐taking behavior in response to changes in the quality of the road network. The focus is on the financial externalities induced by accidents because of the insurance system as well as on the consequences of drivers' risk aversion. We establish that road safety measures are Pareto improving if their monetary cost is lower than the difference between their (adjusted for risk aversion) direct welfare gain with unchanged behavior and the induced variation in insured losses due to drivers' behavioral adaptation. The article also shows how this rule can be extended to take other accident external costs into account.     

U-commerce: Expanding the universe of marketing

This article introduces several new concepts that lay the conceptual foundation for thinking about next-generation marketing based on ubiquitous networks. U-commerce, orüber-commerce, is predicated on the characteristics of network ubiquity, universality, uniqueness, and unison. It is proposed that the keys to managing network-driven firms are the concepts of u-space and attention analysis. The implications for next-generation marketing in the u-space are explored, with a research agenda identified for scholars and managerial implications recognized for practitioners. Richard T. Watson is the J. Rex Distinguished Chair for Internet Strategy and the director of the Center for Information Systems Leadership in the Terry College of Business, University of Georgia. He has published in leading journals in several fields as well as authored books on data management and electronic commerce and given invited seminars in nearly 20 countries. He is vice president of communications of AIS and recently finished a term as a senior editor ofMIS Quarterly. He is a visiting professor at Agder University College, Norway, and a consulting editor to John Wiley & Sons. Leyland F. Pitt is a professor of marketing in the School of Marketing, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia. He is also adjunct professor of marketing at Kingston Business School, United Kingdom; the University of Lulea, Sweden; and the Ecole Nationale Ponts et Chaussees in Paris. He has also taught marketing and electronic commerce on M. B. A. and executive programs at schools such as Warwick Business School, London Business School, the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University, and the Graham School of Continuing Studies at the University of Chicago. Dr. Pitt is the author of more than 100 papers in scholarly journals, and his work has appeared in publications such asCalifornia Management Review, Sloan Management Review, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Information Systems Research, Journal of Advertising Research, Communications of the ACM, andMIS Quarterly (for which he also served as associate editor). Pierre Berthon is an associate professor of marketing at Bentley College. He has held academic positions at Columbia University, Henley Management College, Cardiff University, and University of Bath. His teaching and research focus on electronic commerce, market information processing, organization and strategy, and management decision making. George M. Zinkhan is the Coca-Cola Company Chair of Marketing at the University of Georgia. After receiving his doctorate at the University of Michigan, he served on the faculty at both the University of Houston and the University of Pittsburgh. His main research focus is on the areas of communication, advertising, and electronic commerce. His recent coauthored books includeElectronic Commerce: A Strategic Perspective (2000) andConsumers (2002).     

Understanding B2B and the Web: the acceleration of coordination and motivation

This paper explores business-to-business (B2B) marketing on the Internet, and how the confluence of the two may transform the B2B landscape. Specifically, it discusses the notion of linkage value to demonstrate why the B2B phenomenon on the Internet is so significant. It then considers the mechanisms and enablers that have made the Web such an important B2B marketing channel. It also explores how the Web can reduce transaction costs, thereby facilitating more efficient exchanges and markets. The concepts of links and nodes are then introduced and the processes of disintermediation, reintermediation, disaggregation and reaggregation are explored. Finally, Web B2B configurations are considered by way of a model that describes four archetypal configurations, and the factors that are antecedent to these modes and how the Web may influence them.     

Optimal Monetary Policy Rules and Inflation Targets: Are Australia,Canada, and New Zealand Different from the U.S.?

Outwardly, the central banks of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S. follow somewhat different approaches to controlling inflation. The U.S. does not explicitly target inflation while the other countries do. Canada and New Zealand have target bands for inflation while Australia has a point target. Results in this paper nevertheless find broad similarities in the monetary policies of these countries. Each can be described as having pursued optimal inflation targeting (explicit or implicit), with heavy interest rate smoothing, but perhaps placing little weight on output variability. We argue that interest rate smoothing is used to introduce gradualism into the response of monetary policy to inflation. We show that given heavy interest rate smoothing, a concern for output variability is redundant.     

Hungary's entry into the euro area: Lessons for prospective members from a monetary policy perspective

This paper evaluates the conduct of monetary policy in Hungary using standard Taylor rules as well as extended rules that incorporate real exchange rate effects. Moreover, we explicitly consider the impact of future euro area entry by estimating instrument rules that permit an influence from Maastricht Treaty inflation requirements via the estimation of Markov switching models as well as by estimating a differential rule vis-à-vis the existing euro area. Lastly, the paper also considers the impact on policy rules from the large data revision that affects real exchange rate and output estimates. I find that interest rate setting behavior in Hungary does not resemble that of the euro area. Also, counterfactual experiments reveal that the potential macroeconomic costs of entry into the euro area sooner rather than later may be lower than if membership in the single currency area is delayed beyond 2008.     

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Macroeconomic Monitoring Framework

This paper presents a macroeconomic approach to monitoring progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Sub‐Saharan Africa. At the heart of our framework is a macro model which captures key linkages between foreign aid, public investment (disaggregated into education, infrastructure and health), the supply side and poverty. The model is then linked through cross‐country regressions to indicators of malnutrition, infant mortality, life expectancy and access to safe water. A composite MDG Indicator is also calculated. The functioning of our framework is illustrated by simulating the impact of an increase in foreign aid to Niger at the MDG horizon of 2015, under alternative assumptions about the degree of efficiency of public investment. Our approach can serve as the building block for Strategy Papers for Human Development (SPAHD), a more encompassing concept than the current ‘Poverty Reduction’ Strategy Papers.     

Alternative Demand for University Outreach Services from Georgia's Golf Industry

Recent technological advancements have influenced farmers' growing demand for private information suppliers, a service traditionally monopolized by public outreach programs of land grant educational institutions. This waning appeal for university extension services creates pressure for these institutions to explore other market segments to broaden their audience coverage. This study demonstrates a potential market niche in Georgia's golf industry for university outreach services. Binomial logistic regression results indicate that significant demand ( a ) is negatively influenced by golf facility size; ( b ) is directly related to the level of industry experience of the golf superintendents; and ( c ) could come from facilities that require assistance in growth-, pest-, and employment-related concerns.