Incentives and the structure of teams

This paper studies the relationship between moral hazard and the matching structure of teams. We show that team incentive problems may generate monotone matching predictions in the absence of complementarities in the production technology. Second, we analyze how complementarity in the underlying technology affects the matching predictions arising due to moral hazard. We find that (i) even when the production technology is strongly complementary, the incentive problem may lead to formation of negatively sorted teams; (ii) as the degree of complementarity increases, the optimal matching structure may switch from positive to negative, solely due to the need to provide incentives.     

Evidence of a modest price decline in US broadband services

In this paper, we construct a consumer price index for broadband services in the United States using over 1500 service contracts offered by DSL and cable providers from 2004 through 2009. This exercise frames a range of open questions about measuring price changes in a manner that informs policy discussions about US broadband services. We employ approaches used commonly for constructing a consumer price index by using a mix of matched-model methods and hedonic price index estimations to adjust for qualitative improvements. We find a quality-adjusted price decline, but the evidence points towards a modest decline at most. Our estimates of the price decline range from 3% to 10% in quality-adjusted terms for the 5-years period, which is faster than the BLS estimates for the last 3 years. In contrast to other innovative industries that experience rapid price declines, such as computers or integrated circuits, the modest price decline for broadband services raises many questions.     

Multi-country tests for the oscillator model with slowly varying coefficients

This paper applies Ramsey's (1992) forced oscillator model discovered with US data to Canada, Japan, UK, Belgium, France, Germany, and Italy. We also examine the aggregate production index for consumer goods in the US. Thus, the model is applied to and the results checked against data that were not involved in the discovery of the model in the original paper. The adequacy of the model is evaluated and international comparisons are made. The similarity of the estimates for all of the data sets examined suggest that the model may be widely applicable for consumer goods production indices, although France and Italy provide partial exceptions to this statement.     

ICT services and small businesses’ productivity gains: An analysis of the adoption of broadband Internet technology

We analyse the impact of the adoption of broadband Internet technology on the productivity performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We distinguish access to the broadband infrastructure from the adoption of complementary services, i.e., different types of broadband software applications. The empirical analysis considers a sample of 799 firms observed from 1998 to 2004 that are representative of the population of Italian SMEs. Our econometric estimates indicate that the impact of the adoption by SMEs of basic broadband applications is negligible (or even negative). Conversely, SMEs are found to benefit from adopting selected advanced broadband applications depending on several contingent factors: (i) their industry of operations (services vs. manufacturing); (ii) the relevance of the specific broadband software applications for SMEs’ industry of operation; and (iii) the undertaking of complementary strategic and organisational changes.     

Relationship between management ownership and firm value among the business group affiliated firms in Korea

In this paper, we revisit an old issue on the relation between management ownership and firm’s value. The Korean panel data on the business group firms, allows us to compute ownership right and control right separately for each business group affiliated firm. Our measures are different from the similar measures on the Korean firms as in Baek et al. (2004) or Joh (2003). Rather than confounding the two offsetting effects, this paper tests convergence of interest hypothesis and entrenchment hypothesis separately. Empirical findings show that, given control right, there is no clear-cut relation between firm value and the inside management ownership for most firms with the inside management ownership less than 42%, that there is a positive relation between firm value and the inside management ownership for those firms with the inside management ownership higher than 42%, and that, given ownership right, profitability decreases as control right increases.     

Understanding the effects of technology shocks

The research led by Gali (AER 1999) and Basu et al. (AER 2006) raises two important questions regarding the validity of the RBC theory: (i) How important are technology shocks in explaining the business cycle? (ii) Do impulse responses to technology shocks found in the data reject the assumption of flexible prices? Using an RBC model, this paper argues that the conditional impulse responses of the U.S. economy to technology shocks are not grounds to reject the notion that technology shocks are the main driving force of the business cycle and the assumption of flexible prices, in contrast with the conclusions reached by the literature.     

Post-privatisation ownership concentration: Determinants and influence on firm efficiency

With this study we aim to contribute to the empirical literature on privatisation processes by analysing the determinants of post-divestment private ownership concentration and its possible link to corporate efficiency. For Spanish firms, we find that the method of privatisation, the type of industry, the company’s size and its level of risk may help explain differences in private ownership concentration. We also find, after controlling for endogeneity, that ownership concentrated in the hands of private investors has a positive and significant effect on post-privatisation efficiency.     

Remittances for economic development: The investment perspective

Based on the economic theory of the family, this paper constructs a model of remittances where the migrant, besides sending money to his family, also invests in his home country. The investment is looked after by a family member in return for some monetary compensation. The model focuses on two different cases: state-contingent transfers (transfers are tied to investment outcomes) and fixed transfers (transfers are mainly of altruistic motive). As the migrant derives utilities from consumption, his consumption-investment decision is driven by preferences and future investment prospects. The transfers are to increase with both business encouraging and income compensatory effects.     

Patents and quality growth in OLG economy

This paper shows how heterogeneity in patent ownership across generations and lifecycle saving considerations qualitatively change the conventional implications of patent policy for quality growth. We study a close Overlapping Generations economy that grows through sequential quality improvements (“quality-ladder”), to show that for plausible values of the Inter-temporal Elasticity of Substitution (a) shorter patent length enhances growth (b) under exogenous innovation size loosening patent breadth protection spurs R&D investment and quality growth and (c) the effect of loosening lagging breadth protection on R&D investment and quality growth under endogenous innovation size depends on patents length. Our findings explore a new channel through which strong patents may hinder innovation and emphasize the importance of coordination in patent-policy across the different dimensions of the patents system.     

Time, knowledge and evolutionary dynamics: why connections matter

Time matters because knowledge changes. Knightian uncertainty excludes correct procedures and proven knowledge, but makes room for imagination and creativity, which drive an evolutionary process. Human cognition relies less on logic than on pattern-making; we impose connecting principles to create patterns and causal linkages between them as representations of phenomena, which are imperfect and often subject to multiple interpretations. Stable patterns provide the necessary baseline for selection. Our personal patterns are supplemented by institutional regularities, and organisations of various kinds help to shape the development of knowledge, which grows by making connections at the various margins of existing knowledge.     

Biogeographical conditions, the transition to agriculture and long-run growth

We use new data on the timing of the transition to agriculture, developed by Putterman and Trainor (2006), to test the theory of Diamond (1997) and Olsson and Hibbs (2005) that an earlier transition is reflected in higher incomes today. Our results confirm the theory, even after controlling for institutional quality and other geographical factors. The date of transition is correlated with prehistoric biogeography (the availability of wild grasses and large domesticable animal species). The factors conducive to high per capita incomes today are good institutions, an early transition to agriculture, access to the sea and a low incidence of fatal malaria. Geographical influences have been at work in all of these proximate determinants of per capita income.     

Measuring lifetime poverty

This paper presents an axiomatic framework for measuring lifetime poverty over multiple periods. For an individual, we argue that lifetime poverty is influenced by both the “snapshot” poverty of each period and the poverty level of the “permanent” lifetime consumption; it is also influenced by how poverty spells are distributed over the lifetime. We axiomatically characterize classes of lifetime poverty indices and derive dominance conditions of poverty orderings for both individual and societal lifetime poverty measurements.     

A model of fashions and status

This paper presents a model of fashion cycles based on the idea that individuals purchase fashion goods because their displayed status increases with the personal status of other consumers who buy the same good. Fashion cycles occur in the model because demand now is a rising function of future prices: if future prices are high, only rich consumers will buy it in the future and the good will have a higher status value in the future and will be more desirable now, even though demand now is a decreasing function of current price. The time inconsistency problem is solved by repeated cycles which allows for reputation building. The crucial assumption made is that there is perfect information about the price path of all firms and the average status of the purchasers of each product. This limits possible profits in fashion markets in competition as imitation of price paths is then possible.     

Entry costs, industry structure, and cross-country income and TFP differences

Entry costs vary dramatically across countries. To assess their impact on cross-country differences in output and TFP, we construct a model with endogenous entry and operation decisions by firms. We calibrate the model to match the U.S. distribution of employment and firms by size. Higher entry costs lead to greater misallocation of productive factors and lower TFP and output. In the model, countries in the lowest decile of the entry costs distribution have 1.32 to 1.45 times higher TFP and 1.52 to 1.75 times higher output per worker than countries in the highest decile. As in the data, higher entry costs are associated with lower entry rates and business density.     

Research & development and growth: A Bayesian model averaging analysis

We examine the effect of research and development (R&D) on long-term economic growth using the Bayesian model averaging (BMA) to deal rigorously with model uncertainty. Previous empirical studies, which applied BMA, investigated the effect of dozens of regressors on long-term growth, but they did not examine the effect of R&D due to data unavailability. We extend these studies by proposing to capture the investment in R&D by the number of Nobel prizes in science. Using our indicator, the estimates show that R&D exerts a positive effect on long-term growth. This result is robust to many different parameter and model prior structures as well as to alternative definitions of R&D indicator.     

Reallocation and restructuring: A generalization of the Balassa–Samuelson effect

Despite its strong theoretical position when it comes to explaining inflation in transition economies, the empirical findings of the Balassa–Samuelson (B–S) effect assign only a minor role to structural inflation – to the disappointment of analysts and policymakers. This article points to 3 theory-based contributing factors to these ‘weak’ findings and offers an alternative methodological approach. First, a short-term focus makes B–S prone to underestimating the magnitude of the productivity growth differential. Second, the conventional demand side CPI based definition of sectoral value added reduces the extent to which the productivity growth differential is passed through to inflation. Third, by ignoring the dependence between the 2 main B–S components, a further downward bias to the productivity growth pass through comes about. The key to our proposed alternative methodology centres on an endogenous relation between the productivity growth differential and sector sizes. Together with the long-run supply-side approach this allows us to capture inflation drivers that conventional B–S fails to incorporate. In our extension to the conventional B–S model a reduced productivity growth differential can be compensated by an increased productivity growth pass-through, or vice versa – with the effect of augmenting inflation pressure. Hence, the link between productivity growth differentials and the dynamics of structural inflation is shown to be more complex than previously assumed.