Employment effects of technological change

This article examines the debate about whether new technology creates or displaces jobs. It emphasises the occupational dimension, in order to assess some of the policies relating to education, training and income distribution. Finally, the role of technological change is examined in terms of the quality of the resulting job structure and the issue of income and skill polarization.     

Characteristics and diffusion of technological innovations

The paper examines fourteen post war innovations; five in the flour milling industry, four in the malting industry, and five in the dairy industry. The major work has been carried out in the flour milling industry, with supportive studies in the malting and dairy industries. Examination is made of the characteristics of the innovations as perceived by technical managers who are in a position to influence adoption or non-adoption. The research sets out to study the relationship between the perceived characteristics of the innovations and their diffusion times. It is hoped that the results will be of value to engineering designers and marketing managers in the capital equipment manufacturing industries by enabling them to develop a clearer understanding of adoptors and non-adoptors of innovations and also to study the inter-relationships between different sectors of the industries which they serve. Two forms of profiles of the characteristics of innovations are presented.     

Group purchasing, nonlinear tariffs, and oligopoly

Loyalty discounts are nonlinear tariffs that condition rebates or marginal prices on meeting aggregate purchase or market share targets. These discounts are widespread, and are often the impetus for consumers to form buying groups, or group purchase organizations (GPOs). This paper models the competitive effects of the introduction of a GPO into a market within which the preferences of the GPO's members are horizontally differentiated. While nonlinear tariffs are an effective way for a monopolist to extract consumer surplus, when two suppliers compete using such schedules, the results are far more competitive in comparison to simple Bertrand–Nash competition with linear tariffs. This result holds when the product of each of the suppliers is attractive to a substantial portion of consumers. In our model, the nonlinear schedule puts all customers “in play” to a degree that contrasts sharply with the competition at the margin characteristic of constant per unit prices. Moreover, competing in nonlinear tariffs removes allocative inefficiency that can result from single price competition.     

Pre-emptive patenting,joint ventures,and the persistence of oligopoly

Gilbert and Newbery (1982) have examined pre-emptive patenting and the persistence of monopoly. The present paper considers pre-emptive patenting when there are several incumbent firms, rather than just one. It is shown why the incumbent oligopolists, behaving non-cooperatively, might fail to deter entry. This suggests that a joint venture in R and D might be a useful entry-deterring device insofar as it pools the incumbents' incentives to prevent entry. This is indeed the case for ‘small’ innovations, but for ‘large’ innovations the formation of a joint venture weakens the incumbents' incentive to innovate by removing the competitive stimulus between them.     

The diffusion of technological innovation in the commercial banking industry

This paper examines the propensity of organizations to adopt technological innovations. Technological innovations evolve from the stock of skills which organizations have accumulated over time. Linkages with extramural sources of technology are presumed to be important as well. Hypotheses are tested on a sample of commercial banks. Findings show that prior experience in information technology, in tandem with a variety of interfirm linkages, will affect the banks' decision to adopt this innovation.     

ICT technologies in Europe: A study of technological diffusion and economic growth under network theory

The sector of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is one of the key instruments for the development of an economy. The literature emphasizes its capacity for both increasing productivity and generating new sources of income and wealth (5 and 20 among others). Traditionally studies on the ICT sector have focused on the analysis of its economic impact, but not on its capacity as a “bridge” for information and knowledge flows across the economic network. Following Burt's approach (1992) on structural holes, the organization of the economic network defines where and for whom new opportunities lie. The structural hole methodology allows to analyze the capacity of the ICT sector as an enabler of technological diffusion and innovation. The results show that the European ICT sector not only is important for its intermediary role in the flow of information across the economic network, but also for its low level of dependency on other sectors.     

An oligopoly model of ocean liner shipping

In this paper I develop a simultaneous equations oligopoly model of the regulated international ocean liner shipping industry. The firms act as a cartel to determine price jointly and then set their own quality levels to maximize individual profits. The cartel does not attain monopoly profits, because each conference member myopically determines quality without regard for overall cartel profits. The results indicate that an increase in the number of firms in the cartel will increase both cartel price and quality level. An increase in price will also lead to an increase in quality level.I would like to thank Professors Alamarin Phillips, Robert Summers, and Bruce Allen for their helpful comments on earlier research for my dissertation in the Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania on which this work is based. I am especially grateful to Professor Lawrence J. White for his encouragement and valuable suggestions at various stages of my work.     

Divisionalization and strategic managerial incentives in oligopoly under uncertainty

This paper argues that divisionalization and incentive contracting are complementary rent shifting tools in the presence of demand uncertainty. The role for divisionalization arises if managers know the state of demand prior to making output decisions and if incentive contracts are linear and non-state contingent. In this context incentive contracts achieve expected Stackelberg outcomes but have no impact on the firm's responsiveness to demand shocks. Divisionalization, on the other hand has the strategically beneficial effect of making the firm more responsive to demand shocks.     

Rational conjectures in the theory of oligopoly

The paper employs the notion of rational conjectural equilibrium to remove the arbitrary nature of conjectures about rivals' reactions which characterises the traditional non-cooperative theory of oligopoly. A general definition of these equilibria is given, and the concept is then applied to a simple duopoly model. The standard models of perfect competition, monopoly, limit-price dominant firms are shown to emerge as special cases of rational conjectural equilibria.     

The emerging oligopoly of pay-TV in the USA

The pay-television industry in the USA has been developing very rapidly in the past five years and is providing network quality alternatives to the mass taste programming of commercial television. However, the industry has been developing along lines very similar to the early history of radio in the USA with the emergence of strong distributor networks, restrictive affiliation contracts, and wide-spread vertical integration across all stages of production. History and economic efficiencies suggest that the result will be a strong oligopoly market structure. The proper public policy, then, is to insure that the unavoidable degree of concentration is not greater than that needed for efficiency reasons.     

Literacy,technology and ‘technological literacy’

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - The shortcomings of the ‘technological literacy’ metaphor are reviewed. The lack of an agreed meaning for this concept...     

Permanent Jobs,Employment Protection,and Job Content

Using Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data for twenty‐one countries, I study the impact of employment protection laws (EPL) on job content. I find that workers’ use of influence, reading, writing, planning, numeracy and information and computer technology skills, and their task discretion, were higher in permanent than in temporary jobs. Moreover, stricter EPL on permanent jobs raised the gap in job content for influence, reading, writing, and planning skills used in permanent jobs versus temporary jobs.     

Distributional assumptions in the theory of oligopoly information exchange

We analyze the profitability of information sharing among Cournot oligopolists receiving private information about random demand. In this setting, previous authors showed information exchange to be unprofitable when firms' marginal costs are constant and outputs are perfect substitutes. We introduce a measure of the increase in the accuracy of firms' demand forecasts when information is shared. We provide two examples showing when this measure is large, information exchange is profitable, even though firms' marginal costs are constant and outputs are perfect substitutes. Moreover, we show that in the linear-conditional-expectations framework, which has been standard in the literature, this measure reveals these accuracy gains to be severely limited.     

Discipline, Dismissals and Complaints to Employment Tribunals

Using the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, we investigate the rates of disciplinary sanctions and dismissals, and the incidence of unfair dismissal complaints to employment tribunals in the UK. Workplace rates of disciplinary sanctions and dismissals vary with age, gender, ethnic and occupational work‐force composition and workplace size, and, notably, are lower where trade union density is higher. Workplace practices reflecting a high-commitment management style have limited impact on all three of our dependent variables, while the existence of formal discipline and dismissal procedures exerts no influence on whether any unfair dismissal claims are brought at the workplace.     

The competition effects of industry-wide vertical price fixing in bilateral oligopoly

This paper examines the competition and welfare effects of vertical price fixing through industry-wide resale price maintenance (RPM) arrangements, such as those benefiting from exemption from a general prohibition against RPM. A bilateral oligopoly framework is employed incorporating differentiation between manufacturer products and between retailer services. Transactions between the stages involve prices being determined through bargaining. We do not find RPM to be universally undesirable. However where retailer power is strong, the social effects of RPM are likely to be adverse, since the practice can assist in coordinating final price levels and prevent socially desirable countervailing power arising.     

An assessment of science parks: Towards a better understanding of their role in the diffusion of technological knowledge

This paper examines the role of university science parks in fostering interorganizational technology transfers and technological development. We first try to contrast the development of science parks with the theoretical and empirical findings from scholarly work in the area of the management of technology. This theoretical context allows us to interpret and to discuss empirical data collected from Belgian and Dutch science park firms. The data collection mainly focused on the interactions of park-based firms with their external R&D environment. This analysis leads to two important findings: (1) the level of R&D activity at the tenants is rather moderate for most of the parks studied, and (2) the tension between 'regionalism' and 'internationalism' in contemporary R&D management.
In the wake of this second finding, arguments are presented to complement and even to change the focus from the 'miniature' R&D network which might develop on university science parks toward the 'R&D community' network holding together researchers working on a particular, interrelated set of scientific and technological problems wherever they may be located around the globe. Moreover, it is argued that a unified theory on the emergence and the development of new technologies is badly needed. Only if the dynamics underlying the development of a new technology are unravelled and better understood can technology policies, such as the ones involving the creation of science parks, be targeted more effectively.     

技术创新的特点、障碍及应对策略

科学技术的发展与进步使技术的生命周期大大缩短,企业在生产经营过程中,如果不能"早到五分钟",就可能使企业在市场竞争中处于被动地位.企业只有通过技术创新,使所生产的产品不断更新换代,满足市场不断变化的需求,才能在竞争中获胜.     

Human, technological and organizational aspects influencing the production scheduling process

This study of scheduling work in practice addresses how the production-scheduling processes in four companies are influenced by human, technological, and organizational aspects. A conclusion is that the outcome of the scheduling process is influenced by the scheduler adding human capabilities that cannot be automated, by technical constraints in the scheduled production system and by the available scheduling software tools. Furthermore, the outcome is influenced not only by how the scheduling process is formally organized, but also by the scheduler's informal authority and the role taken to interconnect activities between different organizational groups. The findings from the study support a number of previous studies done on scheduling in practice whilst giving new insights into their interpretation.