Fostering new product success through learning competences

Drawing on the resource-based view and the dynamic capability approach, the present paper analyses the effect of learning competences and innovation strategy on new product success (NPS). The study uses a sample of Spanish manufacturing firms. Results highlight that the new product innovation strategy is positively related to NPS and both exploration and exploitation competences. The study also finds that technological dynamism plays a moderator role in these relationships that weakens the effect of innovation strategy on both NPS and exploitation. Finally, it was also concluded that both exploitation and exploration competences not only have a positive and curvilinear effect on NPS, but also compete for scarce resources. This suggests that a balance between exploitation and exploration is needed.     

创业资源整合的战略选择和实现手段——基于租金创造机制视角

大部分创业者在创业之初都受到资源环境的约束,但成功的创业者往往能突破约束创办企业。本文基于租金创造机制视角指出,创业者资源整合有两种不同战略:一种是能力构建机制导向下的现有资源开发战略,另一种是资源攫取机制导向下的潜在资源探索战略。并进一步分析了不同资源整合战略可能采用的实现手段,即开发现有资源可以考虑创造性拼凑,而探索潜在资源可以考虑利用杠杆资源的杠杆作用。     

Social dilemmas,time preferences and technology adoption in a commons problem

Agents interacting on a body of water choose between technologies to catch fish. One is harmless to the resource, as it allows full recovery; the other yields high immediate catches, but low(er) future catches. Strategic interaction in one ‘objective’ resource game may induce several ‘subjective’ games in the class of social dilemmas. Which unique ‘subjective’ game is actually played depends crucially on how the agents discount their future payoffs. We examine equilibrium behavior and its consequences on sustainability of the common-pool resource system under exponential and hyperbolic discounting. A sufficient degree of patience on behalf of the agents may lead to equilibrium behavior averting exhaustion of the resource, though full restraint (both agents choosing the ecologically or environmentally sound technology) is not necessarily achieved. Furthermore, if the degree of patience between agents is sufficiently dissimilar, the more patient is exploited by the less patient one in equilibrium. We demonstrate the generalizability of our approach developed throughout the paper. We provide recommendations to reduce the enormous complexity surrounding the general cases.     

Markov-perfect Nash equilibria in a class of resource games

Summary. A general model of non-cooperating agents exploiting a renewable resource is considered. Assuming that the resource is sufficiently productive we prove that there exists a continuum of Markov-perfect Nash equilibria (MPNE). Although these equilibria lead to over-exploitation one can approximate the efficient solution by MPNE both in the state space and the payoff space. Furthermore, we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for maximal exploitation of the resource to qualify as a MPNE. This condition is satisfied if there are sufficiently many players, or if the players are sufficiently impatient, or if the capacity of each player is sufficiently high.Received: November 1, 1996This revised version was published online in February 2005 with corrections to the cover date.     

中国西部地区的能源开发与经济增长——基于"资源诅咒"假说的实证分析

Based on resource curse hypothesis, this paper carries out an econometric analysis on the relationship and its transmission mechanism between energy exploitation and economic growth with cross-province panel data over 1991–2006. Results reveal that there is the significantly negative correlation between energy exploitation and economic growth, which indicates since the 1990s, the resource curse effect from energy exploitation has appeared evidently; though, before the implementation of the Western development strategy, energy exploitation acted negatively on opening degree, S&T innovation and human capital input, the effect was yet uncreated. However, after the implementation of the strategy, the effect emerged evidently as a result of the enhanced negative effect of energy exploitation on S&T innovation and human capital input. Moreover, further tests indicate that energy exploitation impeded economic growth mainly through three indirect transmission channels: The crowding-out effect towards human capital input and S&T innovation, and the weakening of institution aroused by rent-seeking and corruption. And among them, human capital input is the strongest transmission factor. __________ Translated from Jingji yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2008, (4): 147–160     

Uncertainty and Amenity Values in Renewable Resource Economics

In this paper, we study the effects of amenities and uncertainty on the optimal exploitation of a renewable resource. First, if society displays a protection motive (in the presence of amenities), its optimal harvesting strategy will be more conservative. Second, we show that ecological uncertainty leads society to develop the opposite behavior, thus reducing its exposition towards risk. A stationary analysis is undertaken to analytically quantify and compare these two effects. With a Gompertz natural regeneration function and a proportional risk, the amenity effect is proved to prevail if and only if stochastic fluctuations on the resource stock are not too large.     

Cooperative and Non-Cooperative Exploitation of the Arcto-Norwegian Cod Stock

A two-agent model for the exploitation of the Arcto-Norwegian cod stock is developed to investigate the economic benefits that can be realized from the resource, and the effect of exploitation on stock sustainability under cooperation and non-cooperation. The two agents are identified in this study as a trawl fishery versus a coastal fishery. Unlike in Munro (1979), where conflicts in the management strategies of agents arise from differences in the perceptions of the discount factor, fishing effort costs, and consumer preferences, here conflicts arise mainly from the differences in fishing gear and grounds, and the age group of cod targeted by the two agents. Using a game theoretic framework, we show that given available data, the optimum optimorum is obtained under cooperation with side payments and no predetermined harvest shares, in which case the coastal fishery buys out the trawl fishery. However, sensitivity analysis shows that if the price premium assumed for mature cod is taken away, the trawl fishery takes over as the producer of the optimum optimorum.     

资源市场化与西部城镇化道路

资源市场化是市场经济的起点，也是市场经济发展的必然要求，城市是生产要素集中的市场，在充分发掘资源的基础上，以资源利用产业化的形式完成资源市场化，促使生产要素按照不同地区的资源状况集中，形成梯次资源市场网络的过程就是城市（镇）化，资源市场化的严重不足，极大地阻碍了西部城镇化道路的进程，通过资源市场化，围绕资源开发建特区，促进生产要素向西部集中，优先发展中小城镇，在建设小城镇群的基础上促进西部城镇化的实现，即关系到中国经济发展的新的增长点，也是西部城镇化道路的必然选择。     

Fishing Technology and Optimal Distribution of Harvest Rates

This paper examines the problem of the optimal management of a joint-ownership fishing exploitation, where agents use different fishing gears. We consider a model in which the fishing activity may affect resource growth, not only through the harvest function but also through the natural growth rate of the resource. This allows us to capture the fact that some fishing gears alter the natural growth rate of the resource. We find that when the natural growth of the resource is altered by the fishing technology, the optimal stock is not independent of how harvest quotas are distribute among the agents. As a result, a fishing policy that firstly determines the optimum stock and, secondly, decides how to distribute the harvest among the different agents, will not be efficient. We also analyze the joint determination of optimal stock and harvest quotas and show that positive harvest quotas will only be optimal when countries are characterized by certain asymmetries.     

Tradeoffs between costly capacity investment and risk of regime shift

There is mounting evidence that increasing natural resource exploitation (e.g., fossil fuel extraction and consumption) could trigger irreversible dramatic ecological events like global warming. While capacity investment costs and the possibility to produce at full capacity are two factors that critically affect the exploitation rate, little is known about their effect on management. I generalize standard models of pollution control under the threat of dramatic regime shifts to investigate how optimal management changes with both factors. My analysis reveals that accounting for such factors gives rise to investment and emissions policies that challenge conventional wisdom. For instance, I find that under reasonable conditions, an exogenous threat of a doomsday event induces a cautious management strategy. Using parameters estimated from climatic data, my analysis shows that raising the discount rate can induce lower emissions, highlighting the complex interplay between the threat and both factors.     

The sustainability of the commons: giving and receiving

This paper analyzes the use of a cost-free reward mechanism in the exploitation of a common property resource. We implement an experimental study involving a two-stages game where agents first decide resource appropriation and then have the opportunity to distribute cost-free bestowals. We observe that subjects link the two activities in such a way that appropriation determines the distribution of bestowals which in turn contributes maintaining low appropriation levels, thus avoiding the destruction of the common resource. Not all the potential bestowals are distributed, however.     

我国山岳型森林公园的资源类型、特征与开发——以广东省为例

我国山岳型森林公园的类型可以按山体海拔高度、组成山体的岩性特征和地貌类型划分。以广东省为例,省内山岳型森林公园的特征主要表现在风景资源多姿多彩,以森林景观为主体,地文、天象、水文和人文等景观资源组合度好,自然景观引入入胜,区域环境质量优越、旅游开发潜力较强。在开发过程中,应注意合理规划,挖掘特色,遵循人与自然和谐以及可持续发展的原则,处理好资源开发与资源环境保护的关系。     

Spatial Evolution of Social Norms in a Common-Pool Resource Game

We study the conditions for the emergence of cooperation in a spatial common-pool resource (CPR) game. We consider three types of agents: cooperators, defectors and enforcers. The role of enforcers is to punish defectors for overharvesting the resource. Agents are located on a circle and they only observe the actions of their two nearest neighbors. Their payoffs are determined by both local and global interactions and they modify their actions by imitating the strategy in their neighborhood with the highest average payoffs on average. Using theoretical and numerical analysis, we find a large diversity of equilibria to be the outcome of the game. In particular, we find conditions for the occurrence of equilibria in which the three strategies coexist. We also derive the stability of these equilibria. Finally, we show that introducing resource dynamics in the system favors the occurrence of cooperative equilibria.      

Sustainable management of renewable resources: an experimental investigation in continuous time

This study addresses one of the most basic questions in renewable resource management: the ability of economic agents to exploit a renewable resource in an efficient and sustainable manner. In a laboratory experiment, subjects are presented with renewable resource extraction problems, where optimal management will lead to a stable steady state. A test of sustainability of the extraction practices shows that extraction behaviour results in steady states only 56% of the time. The mode of the steady state distribution coincides with the optimal steady state extraction. The trade-off between accruing a higher payoff in the present and sustaining the resource for future exploitation leads to suboptimal behaviours such as initial overextraction of the resource compared to the optimal extraction policy, costly downward adjustment of the extraction later in time, and settling down for lower long-run resource and extraction. The suboptimal behaviours lead to 17% loss in efficiency on average in terms of the accumulated payoff. We further look at extraction behaviour in terms of the degree of impatience it projects and find, based on their extraction decisions, that most of our subjects seem more impatient in managing their resource than is justified by the decision-making problem presented to them.     

Defining viable recovery paths toward sustainable fisheries

This paper develops a formal analysis of the recovery process for a fishery, from crisis situations to desired levels of sustainable exploitation, using the theoretical framework of viable control. We define sustainability as a combination of biological, economic and social constraints which need to be met for a viable fishery to exist. Biological constraints are based on the definition of a minimum resource stock to be preserved. Economic constraints relate to the existence of a guaranteed profit per vessel. Social constraints refer to the maintenance of a minimum size of the fleet, and to the maximum speed at which fleet adjustment can take place. Using fleet size adjustment and fishing effort per vessel as control variables, we first identify the states of this bioeconomic system for which sustainable exploitation is possible, i.e. for which all constraints can be dynamically met. Such favorable states are called viable states. We then examine possible transition phases, from non-viable to viable states. We characterize recovery paths with respect to the time of crisis of the trajectory, which is the number of periods during which the constraints are not respected. The approach is applied to the single stock of the bay of Biscay Nephrops fishery. The transition path identified through the viability approach is compared to the historical recovery process, and to both open-access and optimal harvesting scenarios.     

Networks of common property resources

A tragedy of commons appears when the users of a common resource have incentives to exploit it more than the socially efficient level. We analyze the situation when the tragedy of commons is embedded in a network of users and sources. Users play a game of extractions, where they decide how much resource to draw from each source they are connected to. We show that the network structure matters. The exploitation at each source depends on the centrality of the links connecting the source to the users. The equilibrium is unique and we provide a formula which expresses the quantities at an equilibrium as a function of a network centrality measure. Next we characterize the efficient levels of extractions by users and outflows from sources. We provide a graph decomposition which divides the network into regions according to the availability of sources. Then the efficiency problem can be solved region by region.     

Norms as emergent properties of adaptive learning: The case of economic routines

Interaction among autonomous decision-makers is usually modelled in economics in game-theoretic terms or within the framework of General Equilibrium. Game-theoretic and General Equilibrium models deal almost exclusively with the existence of equilibria and do not analyse the processes which might lead to them. Even when existence proofs can be given, two questions are still open. The first concerns the possibility of multiple equilibria, which game theory has shown to be the case even in very simple models and which makes the outcome of interaction unpredictable. The second relates to the computability and complexity of the decision procedures which agents should adopt and questions the possibility of reaching an equilibrium by means of an algorithmically implementable strategy. Some theorems have recently proved that in many economically relevant problems equilibria are not computable. A different approach to the problem of strategic interaction is a “constructivist” one. Such a perspective, instead of being based upon an axiomatic view of human behaviour grounded on the principle of optimisation, focuses on algorithmically implementable “satisfycing” decision procedures. Once the axiomatic approach has been abandoned, decision procedures cannot be deduced from rationality assumptions, but must be the evolving outcome of a process of learning and adaptation to the particular environment in which the decision must be made. This paper considers one of the most recently proposed adaptive learning models: Genetic Programming and applies it to one the mostly studied and still controversial economic interaction environment, that of oligopolistic markets. Genetic Programming evolves decision procedures, represented by elements in the space of functions, balancing the exploitation of knowledge previously obtained with the search of more productive procedures. The results obtained are consistent with the evidence from the observation of the behaviour of real economic agents.     

论我国西部油气资源地经济发展战略的选择

西部地区是我国重要的油气资源地,发展资源导向型产业既符合比较优势原则要求,又能够充分利用油气资源产业强有力的产业关联效应。但我国西部各省经济发展在不同程度上存在“资源诅咒”的现象。文章认为,造成这种现象的原因在于目前我国油气资源开发没有承担起资源地经济发展的责任,而不在于资源导向型发展战略,我国西部地区应该坚持资源导向型发展战略。     

Federal tax policies,congressional voting and natural resources

Can abundance of natural resources affect legislators' voting behaviour over federal tax policies? We construct a political economy model of a federalized economy with district heterogeneity in natural resource abundance. The model shows that representatives of natural resource‐rich districts are more (less) willing to vote in favour of federal tax increases (decreases). This occurs because resource‐rich districts are less responsive to federal tax changes due to the immobile nature of their natural resources. We test the model's predictions using data on roll‐call votes in the US House of Representatives over the major federal tax bills initiated during the period of 1945–2003, in conjunction with the presence of active giant oil fields in US congressional districts. Our identification strategy rests on plausibly exogenous giant oil field discoveries and exploitation and narrative‐based aggregate federal tax shocks that are exogenous to individual congressional districts and legislators. We find that: (i) resource‐rich congressional districts are less responsive to changes in federal taxes and (ii) representatives of resource‐rich congressional districts are more (less) supportive of federal tax increases (decreases), controlling for legislator, congressional district and state indicators. Our results indicate that resource richness is approximately half as dominant as the main determinant, namely party affiliation, in driving legislators' voting behaviour over federal tax policies.     

培养青年人才提升国有企业竞争力

加入WTO以后，要提高国有企业的竞争力，必须注意培养青年人才，建立健全人才的培养和激励机制，强化青年人才资源的开发利用，各级政府要为国有企业青年人才资源的开发和利用创造良好的条件。