Inter-industry technology flows in the US food-processing industries

The study examines the origins of technology important to improving productivity in the food-processing industries. Technology flows were measured both by patents in patent classes closely identified with six food industries, and by a sample of significant food-processing innovations. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that interindustry technology flows are the most significant determinant of productivity improvements in the food industries. These findings solve the enigma that the food-processing industries have enjoyed rapid improvements in productivity despite making very modest investments in research and development.     

Editorial

Editorial Introduction

Editorial     

What drives the effectiveness of industrial clusters? Exploring the impact of contextual,structural and functioning determinants

This study examines how contextual, structural and functioning characteristics of industrial clusters influence their effectiveness. We develop a conceptual framework that identifies potential influencing factors, validate the factors statistically, and estimate the factors’ impact on cluster effectiveness. Our results show that among the important determinants of cluster effectiveness are long-term planning security and procedural trust among the cooperating firms (contextual conditions), formalized rules and sustainable structures (structural elements), and clear goals and tasks (functioning characteristics). However, the results also reveal that some determinants assessed as important in the literature do not seem to have a positive impact on effectiveness. Our results not only modify general assumptions in cluster research concerning the drivers of cluster effectiveness, but also assist firms and policy-makers in conceptualizing successful new clusters.     

Market and technology shifts in the 1990s: Market fragmentation and mass customization

This paper highlights demographic and psychographic population shifts, which, together with a rapid increase in the flexibility and cost‐efficiency of production processes, will force marketers into more complex market segmentation and niche marketing strategies. The accelerating trends in market fragmentation and “mass‐customization” of production will challenge traditional marketing thinking and strategies during the 1990s.     

Critical resource: An institutional economics of the Internet addressing-routing space

This paper links the analysis of IP address policy to the established vocabulary and concepts of institutional economics. Internet addressing and routing are usually discussed in technical terms, yet embedded in this highly technical discourse are a number of critical economic concepts, such as scarcity, externalities, common pool resources, tragedy of the commons, and conflict over the distribution of costs. To solve these problems, governance institutions native to the Internet have evolved. Yet despite the centrality of addressing and routing to Internet governance, there is very little research literature that bridges economic, institutional and technical discussions of IP addressing and routing. This paper connects the techno-economic discussion to analysis of institutions and governance arrangements.     

Benefits of control,capital structure and company growth

This article studies the influence of the benefits of control on the capital structure and the growth of private companies for a sample of 8964 UK companies with limited liability observed for up to 5 years. It is hypothesized that companies in which existing owners would lose more control if they expanded, have smaller equity increases, are more highly levered and grow more slowly. Potential loss of control is measured as the difference in the probability of winning a vote for the largest owner before and after a hypothetical equity increase. Evidence is found that is consistent with the hypotheses.     

Constitutional quandaries in Europe

Most of the constitutional political economy literature has followed Buchanan and Tullock by remaining inherently normative, but a small literature has appeared that examines the properties of constitutions by considering the motives of the people who actually write the constitution. This literature is in the positive public choice tradition, in that it assumes that the people who write a constitution are interested in advancing their interests and not those of someone else. This note discusses the need for and nature of a constitution that would advance the interests of all citizens, and then the procedures that would be necessary to create and adopt such a constitution.