Resource scarcity and economic growth in poor developing countries: Missing links in Simon's cornucopian philosophy

Underlying Julian Simon's cornucopian philosophy is a model of economic—demographic interaction which derives normative views in favour of moderate population growth. This article criticizes Simon's unsatisfactory treatment of discounting in this procedure, and, more significantly, his denial of mankind—ecosystems interactions. Analysis of the complex interactive effects of population change on economic growth and of the broad system of factors driving resource depletion in developing countries, serves to undermine Simon's ‘false optimism’.     

Rethinking development : A role for innovation networking in the ‘other two-thirds’

As global competition intensified and the rate of technological innovation and diffusion accelerated over the 1970s and 1980s, the sustainability of comparative advantage based solely on the existence of location-specific raw materials or cheap labour began to erode and innovation emerged as the key to competitiveness. For those few Third World countries that successfully passed through the window of opportunity for effective catchup strategies that opened in the 1970s, a base was laid for innovation in products, processes or organizational technologies. The ‘other two-thirds’, however, were singularly unprepared to meet the challenges of a changing technological and competitive environment. In large part this resulted from the contradictions generated by the mass production, import reproduction model to which they had remained wedded for several decades. During the 1980s, a number of changes took place, in the strategies of multinational corporations with respect to the internationalization of R&D and the role of overseas subsidiaries more generally, and in government policies with respect to the role of innovation in international competitiveness. A slow process of technological accumulation in both public and private sector enterprises and universities in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean also got underway. These changes provide the foundation upon which well crafted policies to promote networks for innovation can be developed. In Latin America a number of such networks are already in place, and the article discusses the new role that both states and international donors are playing in stimulating and supporting them. A brief look at how such approaches might be adapted and generalized to Africa is also offered.     

A note on work-related values, budget emphasis and managers’ organisational commitment

Managers’ work-related values (WRVs) have important implications for designing appropriate management accounting systems (MAS) in organisations. This paper examines the effect of the interaction between managers’ WRV for innovation and budget emphasis (an integral part of MAS) on their organisational commitment. The sample consisted of 109 managers from production, marketing and support departments within Australian manufacturing firms. Hypotheses were tested using both quantitative and qualitative data collected by a questionnaire survey and post-survey interviews. The results indicate that the adoption of low budget emphasis led to high organisational commitment when managers’ WRV for innovation was high, but not when managers’ WRV for innovation was low. The results also indicate that marketing managers held higher WRV for innovation than production managers. The post-survey interviews provide further insight into how a more customer- and competitor-focused subculture of marketing managers and a more technical- and efficiency-focused subculture of production managers may promote the difference in their WRV for innovation, and affect their attitudes towards budget emphasis. The findings of the study have implications for design of performance evaluation systems for managers in functionally differentiated organisations.     

Innovación tecnológica como mecanismo para impulsar el crecimiento económico Evidencia regional para México

The aim of this paper is to analyze the role of technological innovation in the dynamics of regional economic growth in Mexico. For this purpose, a model which involves a function of innovation and a production function to set the level of interaction between the variables of innovation and economic growth is used. For the econometric analysis statistical information by state is used, for the 1994-2008 period. A model is estimated with panel data, with results that show a positive and differentiated effect between variables that incorporate some degree of technological innovation such as patents, R & D expense, among others, as well as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth.     

Sustainable economic growth in the European Union: The role of ICT,venture capital,and innovation

Over the past 30 years, the economies in Europe have undergone major transformations that have been powered by diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT), intensification of innovation, and reforms in the financial sector to support innovative endeavors. The primary objective of this study was to examine the causal relationships among ICT diffusion, innovation diffusion, venture capital investment, and economic growth for 25 countries in Europe for the period from 1989 to 2016. Using a vector error‐correction model, the study examines the underlying short‐run and long‐run relationships for the above variables. The empirical analysis shows that in the long run, venture capital investment, ICT diffusion, and innovation diffusion have significant impacts on economic growth in Europe. However, in the short run, the direction of the causality varies depending on the specific measures of ICT diffusion and innovation diffusion that are utilized. Results from this study provide valuable insights into the types of policies that will contribute to sustainable economic growth in Europe.     

Activity-based costing diffusion across organizations: an exploratory empirical analysis of Finnish firms

This study aims to explain what drives innovation diffusion in management accounting during its various phases. Based on Abrahamson [Abrahamson, E. (1991). Managerial fads and fashions: the diffusion and rejection of innovations. Academy of Management Review, 16, 586–612], four perspectives with potential to explain the diffusion of accounting innovations are identified: the efficient-choice, forced selection, fad and fashion perspectives. The diffusion of activity-based costing (ABC) in Finland provides an empirical context to study how these four perspectives apply to management accounting innovation. Data comes from a set of four surveys (total n=490, response rate 39.5%, 114 ABC cases), from interviews of consultants, academics and software industry employees, and from archival sources. The study proposes that the driving forces behind innovation diffusion in management accounting change over the course of diffusion. Efficient choice may explain the earliest adoptions, whereas fashion-setting organizations exert considerable influence in the take-off stage. Later on, the influence of fashion setting organizations diminishes. Further diffusion is explained both by mimetic behaviour and efficient-choice.     

The demand for and supply of deposits by credit unions: The Caisses populaires' case

The aim of the study is to explain Quebec major credit union's deposit market by way of intergrating its public demand function with the institution's rate-setting operation. The demand for Caisses' deposits is specified as a dynamic stock adjustment model. On the other hand, the intermediary's rate-setting reduced form is derived from a risk-return portfolio balance model which the managers maximize the expected utility of reserves. The two models are integrated by means of a liability composite rate. Econometric estimates of the integrated model provide us with interesting policy insights. For instance, the Quebecois public views chartered banks' deposits as a weak substitute for Caisses' deposits; it is also more responsive to non-rate arguments, such as loan eligibility or the institution's ethnic appeal. On the supply side, competitive liability rates are more important than returns on assets when the Caisses set its deposit rate. Finally, the impact growth imbalance between loans and deposits is well captured by a flow variable, without infringing on the steady-state determination based on rates.     

Scenario development for corporate planning

The term “scenario” is familiar to those involved in forecasting, but too few people are aware of what exactly a scenario is, or how it can best be developed and applied. The author describes a method developed over several years in response to a need which most forecasting efforts have left unfulfilled. The method enables quantitative and qualitative forecasts to be combined in a manner which can be directly related to an organisation's planning and decision-making processes, and which permits the evaluation of a company's objectives and performance in the light of those forecasts. The analysis of an organisation's likely performance in given scenarios can, in turn, provide a basis for contingency planning.     

Attributions,cognitive processes and control systems

This paper reports two experiments which are designed to provide insights into how superiors and subordinates make perceptual or cognitive mappings from accounting signals to causal agents. The experiments focus on superiors' and subordinates' information seeking and causal attribution utilization to explain the subordinate's reported performance. Particular attention is given to (1) asymmetric causal attribution utilization by the superior and the subordinate and (2) the attribution mappings the two actors make when they receive ambiguous signals about the subordinate's reported performance.     

Search for information and portfolio selection

The paper examines the problem of how to allocate scarce resources between increasing the investor's knowledge, that is reducing his uncertainty, and the actual investment—that is a kind of an ex ante decision before the final parameters of the securities are known. Our model provides answers to questions of how the search for knowledge affects portfolio selection, to what extent additional information can improve estimates of securities' statistical parameters and how the benefits and costs of additional search alter the investor's efficient mean-variance portfolio set.     

The costs of complying with a government data collection program: the FTC's Line of Business Report

The Federal Trade Commission's Line of Business Report Program requires some 440 of the largest U.S. corporations to gather and report detailed data. The program's compliance costs were and are a major issue between the reluctant respondents and the FTC. Analysis of the estimates made by the parties reveals why and how a government agency tends to underestimate costs severely. Principally, the agency does not recognize that a company must prepare data that can withstand hostile scrutiny: inexpensively prepared estimates will not do. The analysis reveals that the estimates used by the FTC are based on very questionable procedures and evidence. A procedure is suggested to avoid or resolve differences in cost estimates claimed by the parties.     

Contraste de la ley de Gibrat en la banca comercial brasileña

In recent years Brazil has been one of the countries with major changes in the banking sector. The deregulation process that has taken place since 2002 has brought an increased presence of foreign banks and higher competition, among other aspects. In this context, the objective of this study is to analyze Gibrat's law on Brazilian commercial banks over the period 2002-2013 with the aim of providing evidence for the construction of a banking growth model which guide the country's financial policy. To that end, we employ a methodology based on quartile regressions as a contribution to previous literature. Our overall results reveal the existence of a non-lineal relationship between growth and banks size with an inverted U-shape. These findings allow us to affirm that the relative dispersion of banks size, as well as the sector's concentration, will be reduce in the future years.     

Politics and Fed policymaking: The more things change the more they remain the same

This paper seeks to explain why the Fed's professed monetarist control strategy tends to break down at politically critical moments. It identifies strong political forces that constrain the Fed to dampen the size of short-run increases in nominal interest rates. Because interest increases impose heavy burdens on economically vulnerable but politically powerful sectors, Fed officials are compelled to give increasing weight to interest-rate targets whenever accelerating inflation or other forces threaten sharp cumulative movements in the level of nominal interest rates. The paper argues further that the Fed's ultimate political function is to be a policy scapegoat for incumbent politicians, showing how well this hypothesis can explain the perennial incompleteness of Fed control strategies and the Fed's principal bureaucratic features.     

Post-Industrial Society: The myth of the service economy

There is a popular view of the current pattern of change in developed societies, a view typified by Daniel Bell's The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, that recent economic growth has been increasingly concentrated in the collective provision of services rather than in individual consumption of material goods, and that this change of economic focus from goods to services is a trend which will continue into the future. The author argues, using UK data, that the trend is in fact away from the expenditure on services and towards expenditure on goods. The growing employment in the tertiary sector, previously used as an indicator of the growth of the service economy, emerges here as a manifestation of the division of labour—a process which increases the efficiency of production of material goods—while the final production of services, using automatic machinery and “direct labour”, will increasingly take place in the home.     

Adjustment with IMF lending

Adjustment programs supported by the IMF are frequently criticized by creditor countries as involving conditions which are too lax or, once violated, too easily modified or pushed aside. At least as frequently, these same conditions are criticized by international debtors, or those adopting their interests, for being too harsh and rigid. Neither side has explained very well (1) how exactly the Fund impinges on the path of adjustment a country would choose unaided and what that path is, (2) why the Fund must be expected to accelerate adjustment to safeguard its objectives, and (3) what limits the Fund's ability to do so. This paper attempts a theoretical deduction showing how this two-sided conflict arises from the Fund's obligation to adjudicate benefits and costs in negotiating programs acceptable not only to its debtor, but also to its creditor countries.     

中国绿色金融政策、融资成本与企业绿色转型——基于央行担保品政策视角

近年来,中国绿色金融政策陆续出台且支持力度不断强化,政策效果受到广泛关注。本文首先将绿色金融政策和绿色转型纳入可持续投资(ESG)资产定价模型,分析绿色金融政策对风险资产均衡收益和企业绿色转型的作用机理。其次基于绿色债券纳入央行合格担保品这一准自然实验,分别从企业融资成本和绿色创新两个角度实证检验绿色转型的政策效果。研究发现:(1)央行担保品类绿色金融政策通过降低绿色债券的信用利差为绿色企业提供融资激励,同时通过提高棕色债券的信用利差给棕色企业的绿色转型带来倒逼促进作用。(2)这一影响在绿色金融改革创新试验区内作用更为显著,但随时间推移逐渐弱化。(3)央行担保品类绿色金融政策通过融资途径显著提升了棕色企业的绿色创新,倒逼棕色企业绿色转型。     

金融资源配置、技术进步与经济高质量发展

随着我国发展阶段及内外部条件的变化,科技创新已成为新时代引领我国经济高质量发展的核心驱动力。本文以金融驱动技术进步的视角,构建内生增长DSGE模型,分析金融资源配置、技术进步和经济增长之间的关系。研究佐证了我国技术创新的逆周期性,并发现金融资源在企业生产性投资与创新投资之间的分配,可以通过改变生产要素投入规模和技术进步率两种途径影响经济增长,且这两种影响之间存在“跷跷板”关系,但后者更具主导性。在此基础上,诠释了金融、技术与经济的动态传导机制:经济扩张期,企业生产规模扩张,金融资源对生产性投资的支持增加,对创新的投入相对减少,技术进步率放缓;经济收缩期,企业缩减生产规模,金融资源对生产性投资的支持减少,对创新的投入相对增加,技术进步率提升。本研究的政策启示为,面对当前发展新矛盾、新挑战,应把握发展新格局、新机遇,进一步深化金融改革,优化金融资源配置机制,鼓励创新投资,充分发挥股权市场对企业研发创新的支持作用,并辅以稳健适度的宏观调控政策,为企业创新提供良性的宏观环境,激活企业创新需求,促进技术进步,推动经济高质量发展。     

Style investing and firm innovation

We document that transient, dedicated and quasi-indexed institutional investors exhibit a high degree of within-group heterogeneity with respect to their investment styles (i.e., growth, value, and balanced). We find that growth institutional investors enhance firm innovation in terms of R&D expenditures, R&D intensity, quantity and quality of patents and patent radicalness while value institutional investors impede innovation. Balanced investors have no significant association with innovation. Findings are consistent with style investing literature that growth and value styles are substitutes. Using investment styles, we present evidence that reconcile literature’s mixed findings on how transient and dedicated investors affect R&D and innovation, and why quasi-indexed investors, the largest group among all investors, have an insignificant effect. We also show that the effect of institutional investors depends on the firm’s relative level of innovativeness.