Schumpeterian cycles with pro-cyclical R&D

Recent empirical work finds that R&D expenditures are quite pro-cyclical even for firms that are not credit-constrained during downturns. This has been taken as strong evidence against Schumpeterian-style theories of business cycles that emphasize the idea that downturns in production may be good times to allocate labor towards innovative activities. Here we argue that the pro-cyclicality of R&D investment is in fact quite consistent with at least one of these theories. In our analysis we emphasize three key features of R&D investment relative to other types of innovative activity: (1) it uses knowledge intensively, (2) it is a long-term investment with uncertain applications, and (3) it suffers from diminishing returns over time.     

Brand capital and firm value

We study the role of brand capital – a primary form of intangible capital – for firm valuation and risk in the cross section of publicly traded firms. Using an empirical measure of brand capital stock constructed from advertising expenditures accounting data, we show that: (i) firms with low brand capital investment rates have higher average stock returns than firms with high brand capital investment rates, a difference of 5.2% per annum; (ii) more brand capital intensive firms have higher average stock returns than less brand capital intensive firms, a difference of 5.1% per annum; and (iii) investment in both brand capital and physical capital is volatile and procyclical. A neoclassical investment-based model in which brand capital is a factor of production subject to adjustment costs matches the data well. The model also provides a novel explanation for the empirical links between advertising expenditures and stock returns around seasoned equity offerings (SEO) documented in previous studies.     

城市合理规模的理论探讨和实证——以长沙市区为例

基于人口迁移理论、门槛理论以及集聚经济理论,构建了城市规模动态演进模型,实证分析表明长沙市区目前已处于城市规模净收益递减阶段,鉴于未来人口仍呈不断增长趋势,必须通过突破城市规模门槛约束,选择城市规模收益持续增长模式,实现城市规模净收益持续增长。     

Quality Assurance and the Home Market Effect

The home market effect is considered as a distinguishing feature of models of trade with increasing returns to scale in production and imperfect competition. However, some empirical studies found the existence of home market effect even in constant returns to scale industries. This paper builds a model of intra‐industry trade based upon quality assurance and shows the existence of the home market effect without increasing returns in the production technology. This throws into question the rationale of empirical studies attempting to validate the increasing returns model of trade based upon testing the existence of the home market effect.     

Non-scale Models of Economic Growth

Growth models that incorporate non-rivalry and/or externalities imply that the size of an economy may influence its long-run growth rate. Such implied scale effects run counter to empirical evidence. This paper develops a general growth model to examine conditions under which balanced growth is void of scale effects. The model is general enough to replicate well known exogenous, as well as endogenous, (non-) scale models. We derive a series of propositions that show that these conditions for non-scale balanced growth can be grouped into three categories that pertain to (i) functional forms, (ii) the production structure, and (iii) returns to scale.     

Returns to scale in DEA models for performance evaluations

The technology industry is a major driving force in Taiwan's economic development. The Taiwan government employed technology development programs (TDPs) to stimulate industrial technology research and development to enhance industry competitiveness. This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a nonparametric approach, to evaluate the relative efficiency of decision-making units (DMUs) that use multiple inputs to produce multiple outputs, to evaluate the relative managerial efficiency of TDPs. The inputs are human resources and expenditures. The outputs are patents and technology outcomes. We investigated TDP performance over the period from 1999 to 2003. This study uses CCR and BCC models, which are DEA model variants, to calculate efficiency indexes. CCR is adopted under the assumption of constant returns to scale. BCC is used to understand the variable returns to scale, including the constant, decreasing and increasing. We found that TDPs in the material and chemical engineering fields in 1999 and 2001, machinery and aerospace fields in 1999, and communication and optoelectronics fields in 2002 had better performance than the other TDPs. We provide potential improvements for inefficient DMUs.     

Environmental regulation and the productivity of Japanese manufacturing industries

This paper attempts to provide empirical evidence on issues concerning: (a) the effect of the stringency of environmental regulations (as measured by pollution control expenditures) on innovative activity (as measured by R&D expenditures) and on the average age of capital stock and (b) the productivity enhancement effect of environmental regulations in Japanese manufacturing industries. The empirical findings in the paper show that the pollution control expenditures have a positive relationship with the R&D expenditures and have a negative relationship with the average age of capital stock. It is also shown that increases in R&D investment stimulated by the regulatory stringency have a significant positive effect on the growth rate of total factor productivity.     

Economies of scale in the Australian tourism industry

The measurement of economies of scale in the tourism industry has not been done to this point, as tourism is not a specific industry according to international statistical standards. Among many industries related to tourism, four sectors (accommodation, transport, retail trade and recreational services) across six states and two territories from 1997 to 2007 are studied as they contribute nearly 70% of tourism output in Australia. By comparing regression results from the Cobb–Douglas (C–D) production function and the translog production function, we find that there is evidence of increasing returns in transport, retail trade and recreational services at the industry level. However, accommodation is characterized by constant returns to scale at the industry level. As accommodation is responsible for the biggest share of tourism output, this suggests that overall the tourism sector is not characterized by increasing returns. We also find that the degrees of returns to scale from the C–D and translog production functions are different and that the imposition of input share also influences the empirical results. Both of these factors stress the importance of model specification to the measurement of economies of scale.     

Which drives abnormal returns,over- or under-reaction? Studies applying longitudinal analysis

This article combined both cross-sectional and time-series longitudinal analysis to identify that factor anomalies are driven by either over-reaction or under-reaction. The basic principle is, first, use a factor to form 10 portfolios in the t quarter, then observe the average prices and returns of the 10 portfolios for the previous four quarters and for the following four quarters as well. Samples in this study contain all stocks listed in the US from 1990 to 2010. The empirical evidence shows that the reason for the abnormal returns of value (book-to-price ratios, earnings-to-price ratios, sales-to-price ratios), scale and liquidity factors is over-reaction. Meanwhile, the reason for the abnormal returns of growth factors (return on equity, return on assets and revenue growth rate) is under-reaction. The results provide significant policy implications. The anomaly returns of the value, scale and liquidity factors last longer and are more appropriate to be employed for long-run investment while the growth factors are better suited for short-run investment. Furthermore, a more profitable stock-selection strategy can be formed by simultaneously considering the above two types of factors to capture both of these two sources of anomaly returns.     

Another look at the linear q model: an empirical analysis of aggregate business capital spending with maintenance expenditures

Abstract .  The paper revisits the empirical investment literature, which has established that aggregate business fixed investment is not found to be related linearly to marginal or average Tobin's q . The theoretical background is extended here by developing a supply-side model where the depreciation rate of private capital is determined endogenously. The firm can either invest in 'new' capital, which adds directly to the existing capital stock at the presence of convex adjustment costs, or extend the durability of installed capital through maintenance expenditure, which affects its depreciation rate. The model shows that Tobin's q is then a positively related sufficient statistic for both components of aggregate capital expenditures. This central implication is tested empirically using aggregate time-series survey data from Canada on 'new' investment and maintenance expenditures covering the period 1956–93. The estimated relationships produce significant and plausible parameter estimates for the structural parameters of the q model.     

中国居民消费与资产收益:基于收入群体的分析

The equity premium puzzle is found during the test of the Consumption-based Capital Asset Pricing Model (CCAPM) with aggregate consumption data. Because of income disparity, many consumers lack financial assets to intertemporally allocate their consumptions under income constraints. Thus, it is likely to lead to a specification error by employing aggregate consumption data to test the CCAPM. This paper examines the impacts of the economically constrained (low-income) consumers and unconstrained (high-income) consumers on the CCAPM using urban consumption expenditures in China delineated by consumer income, and tests the income constraint hypothesis. The empirical results show that the CCAPM is not more consistent with the consumption pattern of the higher-income consumers. Including the income constraint into the analyses of the consumption and asset returns does not unravel the equity premium puzzle.      

Economies of scale in the US computer industry: An empirical investigation using data envelopment analysis

Up to recently, economists have had no good tools to measure the returns to scale of individual corporations in an industry. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a linear programming technique for determining the efficiency frontier (the envelope) to the inputs and outputs of a collection of individual corporations or other productive units. While DEA offers an avenue for calculating the returns to scale of individual corporations, the approach has been riddled by mathematical complications arising from the possibility of alternate optima. The present paper develops theory for calculating the entire range of these alternate optima. Furthermore, in a quite ambitions empirical application, DEA is employed to determine the time path of returns to scale of all publicly held U.S. computer companies over the time period 1980–1991. For the great majority of companies, a unique time path is obtained; only in less than 4 percent of the linear programming calculations is an entire range of alternate optima obtained. The results indicate that the computer industry was polarized into two camps: large aging corporations with decreasing returns to scale, and swarms of small upstart companies with advanced technology exhibiting increasing returns to scale.     

On the Limits to the Long-Period Method in Classical Economics: A note

On a first reading of Theory of Production, Kurz & Salvadori (1995) appear to confine the empirical domain of the long-period models of the classical theory of value and distribution to stationary economies with non-constant returns to scale and to growing economies with constant returns to scale. Such a reading is shown to be untenable since it merges the two levels of exploring the extension of a model and of testing a theoretical hypothesis. Conversely, the way Kurz & Salvadori tackle the problems of price dynamics and returns to scale in growing economies is shown to be compatible with what appears to be Sraffa's (implicit) strategy of research.     

R&D productivity: A global multi-industry comparison

This study considers the productivity of R&D expenditures on an international and multi-industry basis. Using 1992 data reported by Business Week on 117 companies in the United States, Europe, and Japan, we examined two measures of innovative output, patents and impact-adjusted patents, in relationship to R&D spending. Our results clearly show a decreasing returns to scale of R&D expenditure. Although this pattern holds true regardless of industry or global region, the level of return and rate of decreasing returns vary by both industry and international region.     

Estimating global returns to scale with a cone-homogeneous production function: some cross-section results

This paper employs a cone-homogeneous production function to approximate, as closely as desired, a ray-homogeneous production function. Points in input space are projected by an output scaling function on to a fixed ray and a Cobb-Douglas cone function is used to obtain an estimate of global returns to scale. The empirical results indicate that we get a good approximation to a ray-homogeneous production function from the estimated cone-homogeneous function.     

No news is costly news: The link between the diffusion of the press and public spending

This paper studies the link between the diffusion of news and spending decisions. We exploit a dataset of Italian Regions from 1984 to 2008, approximate the spread of information with the diffusion of newspapers, and estimate the effect of the news before and after 1995. In fact, in the mid-90s two reforms introduced the direct election of the governor, autonomous taxing powers and incentives for fiscal discipline at the regional level in Italy. We test the following hypotheses, derived from the theoretical literature: 1) the diffusion of newspapers affects public expenditures close to elections; 2) the more newspapers are diffused, the larger is the reduction of the electoral cycle; 3) before the reform were implemented, the diffusion of newspapers constrained the increased size of expenditures by reducing the positive variation of capital expenditures; 4) after the reform were implemented, the diffusion of newspapers leaves unaffected the size of expenditures by reducing both the positive variation of capital expenditures and the negative variation of current expenditures. The empirical analysis confirms the expectations; the results, moreover, are robust to alternative categorizations of the press and indicate a larger effectiveness of the diffusion of local press.     

中国封闭式基金价格报酬过度波动的经验分析

本文研究了中国封闭式基金价格报酬与净资产报酬的数据特征及其影响关系 ,主要的结果是 :( 1 )中国封闭式基金的价格报酬相对于基金的净资产报酬一方面存在过度波动 ,另一方面又存在反映不足 ;( 2 )通过检验表明 ,投资者情绪风险对价格报酬过度波动具有显著的影响 ,而Fama的三因素风险因子对价格报酬的过度波动几乎没有解释力 ;( 3 )封闭基金价格报酬的过度波动表明 :由于投资者行为使基金股票价格相对于基金净值存在额外的系统风险 ,封闭式基金折价正是对这种系统风险的一种补偿。     

CONSTITUENCY PREFERENCE AND POLICE CONSOLIDATION: THE CASE OF WEST HOLLYWOOD

This study estimates the determinants of voter behavior in a local referendum on contracting for municipal police services. Recent empirical research has found that police services are produced under decreasing returns to scale. The electorate in West Hollywood, California decided in 1992 to maintain its police contractual agreement with the larger county police department. This paper finds that economic costs/benefits were significant determinants of the voters' decisions, suggesting that the electorate's expectations on the relative costs of the alternative police regimes contradict the efficiency implications of recent empirical research. ( JEL H31, H77)     

Comment on ‘Competition Tests with a Non‐Structural Model: The Panzar–Rosse Method Applied to Germany's Savings Banks’

Abstract. In a recent issue of this journal Gischer and Stiele (2009) applied the ‘Test for “Monopoly” Equilibrium’ advanced by Panzar and Rosse (1987) to German savings banks and came up with the claim that savings banks maximize profits under conditions of monopolistic competition in the meaning of Edward Chamberlin. Their proposition is not conclusive since it would require free entry and for savings banks to operate under increasing returns to scale. Available evidence, however, shows them being subject to constant or decreasing returns to scale. The empirical findings of Gischer and Stiele can more convincingly be explained by assuming savings banks abide by their legal goals to pursue the public interest.     

R&D税收激励、知识产权保护与企业的专利产出

文章以中国上市公司微观数据为样本,运用能克服样本自选择性的计量方法估计R&D税收激励的专利效应,并以知识生产函数分析其作用机制.结果表明,与没有获得R&D税收激励的厂商相比,获得R&D税收激励的厂商并不具有更高的专利产出.从作用机制上看,尽管R&D税收激励产生了显著的额外研发支出效应,但该效应并未直接增加企业的专利产出,中国的R&D税收激励面临类似"欧洲悖论"的困境.仅在知识产权保护的调节下,R&D税收激励引致的额外研发支出能间接增加专利产出,知识产权保护缓解了R&D税收激励政策失灵的风险.前述结论通过了稳健性检验.未来,为改善我国R&D税收激励的创新效应,走出"欧洲悖论"困境,需要优化R&D税收激励政策设计和强化知识产权保护的激励功效.