Trade and product innovations as sources for productivity increases: an empirical analysis

Increases in total factor productivity (TFP) are commonly associated with technological innovations measured by the stock of R&D. Empirical evidence seems to corroborate this relationship. However, in trading countries like The Netherlands, productivity increases, even in industry, can also be the result of innovations in the way transactions are managed. These innovations reduce transaction costs and exploit the welfare gains from (further) international division of labour. Such innovations are only partly included in R&D data. Consequently there is not much attention for these ‘trade innovations’—as we label them—in policy. In an empirical analysis this paper compares the influence of trade innovations with the influence of the stock of R&D on TFP in The Netherlands. The regression results show that in this country trade innovations are as important for TFP as technological innovations which directly affect the efficiency of production, which we label ‘product innovations’.      

Launching professional services automation: Institutional entrepreneurship for information technology innovations

Why do some information technology innovations come to be adopted widely while others do not? One promising research stream has begun to investigate how institutional factors shape the diffusion of IT innovations. Here we examine how these institutional factors themselves are shaped. Specifically, we explore how interested actors termed institutional entrepreneurs develop institutional arrangements to launch an IT innovation toward widespread adoption. Undertaking a contemporary case study of a new class of enterprise software, professional services automation (PSA), we found that to launch PSA, institutional entrepreneurs sought to mobilize an organizational community by developing and recognizing leaders and facilitating members’ focus on PSA. They further struggled to legitimate PSA by developing a coherent organizing vision that incorporated compelling success stories. We tie these findings together in a model that usefully shifts the focus of IT innovation research from assessing institutional effects to understanding institution-building. This new focus suggests an alternative IT diffusion theory with several practical implications.     

The effect of environmental innovations on employment changes: an econometric analysis

This paper examines the determinants of employment changes due to an environmental innovation of an establishment. The data stem from telephone surveys in five European countries. 1594 interviews have been realized with environmentally innovative establishments representing the European industry and service sector. Based on results of discrete choice models, we show that if the most important environmental innovation is a product or service innovation it has a significantly positive effect on the probability of an increase in employment compared with the probability of no noticeable change. In contrast, if the most important environmental innovation is an end‐of‐pipe innovation it has a significantly positive influence on employment decrease. Methodologically, we consider the multinomial logit model and several multinomial probit models. We find that the estimates of the parameters of the explanatory variables are very similar in the different approaches. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The Speculative Demand for Money: An Alternative Approach

Abstract . The speculative demand for money has occupied an important role in Keynes’ General Theory. Since then it has received only sporadic attention. The lack of sustained interest among specialists in monetary theory is largely due to the fact that the theory, in its original form, has usually failed to survive the empirical tests. In this paper, an attempt is made to estimate the speculative demand for money using the general framework of the “Efficient Markets Theory.” The study uses the United States seasonally adjusted monthly data for the period 1952-72. The results strongly indicate the existence of the speculative demand for money.     

An Alternative Tale of Two Tax Jurisdictions: A Comment

ABSTRACT In a recent issue of this journal, Galles and Sexton (1998) evaluated California's Proposition 13 and Massachusetts' Proposition 2-1/2. Galles and Sexton (1998, p. 123) conclude that
Both initially succeeded. However, following a brief lag… governments made up lost revenues primarily through increased non-tax fees and charges; within a decade, real per capita revenues and expenditures exceeded their pre-revolt peaks.
The present Note offers an alternative view of Propositions 13 and 2-1/2 which, using data from Galles and Sexton (1998, Tables 1, 2), concludes that these Propositions not only yielded short-term success for several years in terms of reduced real per capita revenues and expenditures but also may have yielded longer-term success in terms of reducing the growth rate of real per capita revenues and expenditures. This Note also raises questions about the way in which Galles and Sexton (1998) performed their computations.     

An Alternative Approach to Poverty Analysis

A model of the household in which production and consumption activities are not separable is developed in order to provide micro-economic foundations for an alternative to the standard approach to poverty analysis. The alternative suggests that socio-economic groups and their respective livelihoods should be the basic building blocks for analysing poverty within a general equilibrium framework.     

An Alternative Tale of Two Tax Jurisdictions

ABSTRACT Cebula (1999) suggests that the success of California's Proposition 13 and Massachusetts'Proposition 2-1/2 is better judged by their effects on the growth rates of real per capita revenues and expenditures rather than on the levels of those variables, which Galles and Sexton (1998) used to evaluate those measures. However, the data shows that virtually all of their effects, relative to the United States as a whole, arose during their implementation periods, and that there is no clear evidence of the longer term success in terms of reducing the growth rate of real per capita revenues and expenditures that Cebula cites.     

Stochastic volatility models with ARMA innovations: An application to G7 inflation forecasts

We introduce a new class of stochastic volatility models with autoregressive moving average (ARMA) innovations. The conditional mean process has a flexible form that can accommodate both a state space representation and a conventional dynamic regression. The ARMA component introduces serial dependence, which results in standard Kalman filter techniques not being directly applicable. To overcome this hurdle, we develop an efficient posterior simulator that builds on recently developed precision-based algorithms. We assess the usefulness of these new models in an inflation forecasting exercise across all G7 economies. We find that the new models generally provide competitive point and density forecasts compared to standard benchmarks, and are especially useful for Canada, France, Italy, and the U.S.     

Supply chain collaboration and eco‐innovations: An institutional perspective from China

This study explores the impact of supply chain collaboration on eco‐innovations in the context of 220 Chinese manufacturing supplier firms involved in global supply chain networks. It investigates how supplier and customer collaborations help firms to enhance product eco‐innovations, and/or process eco‐innovations, and how the institutional context (i.e., regulatory, market, and community pressures) influences these relationships. The structural equation modeling approach is used to analyze the data captured from medium and large manufacturing enterprises in three major sectors: automotive, electronics, and textiles. The results show that community pressure has a positive effect on supplier collaboration, which further leads to enhanced process eco‐innovation. On the other hand, the findings indicate that while market pressure enhances customer collaboration, this does not reinforce product eco‐innovation. Contrary to our expectation, regulatory pressures do not impact supplier or customer collaboration for innovation. Overall, different institutional factors indicate divergent effects on supply chain collaboration and product/process eco‐innovation. The importance of normative pressures, such as those applied through the local community and interest groups, for eco‐innovations in production processes is further discussed as a typical feature of the institutional environment of Chinese supplier firms.     

Edith Penrose's Contributions to the Resource-based View: An Alternative Perspective

ABSTRACT Edith Penrose's work has been widely acknowledged to have played a central role in providing the intellectual foundations of the resource‐based view. This position, however, was recently challenged in a paper by Rugman and Verbeke (2002 ). In this paper we address the three main arguments of Rugman and Verbeke and, by drawing on her writings, demonstrate that their arguments are materially incorrect. While readily conceding that Penrose's primary goal was to explain the growth of firms, we show that her analysis of path‐dependent firm evolution anticipated many key propositions of the resource‐based view.     

Autocorrelation and Bias in Short Time Series: An Alternative Estimator

The conventional first-order autocorrelationcoefficient r₁ generates an empiricalbias when it is applied to short time series.The properties of this estimator have beenexamined with a Monte Carlo simulation studyusing the MATLAB program (version5.2). This study also analyzes the functionof the empirical bias with the polynomicregression and derives a polynomic fittingmodel for different sample sizes. In thisway, a new estimator that has been correctedby the absolute value of the fitting model(r_1') is proposed. Having analyzed thestatistical properties of the estimator r_1',it is shown that the empirical bias generatedby r_1' is less in relationship to r₁ andr₁₊. The results of the study make itpossible to verify that the mean squared errorassociated to the estimator r₁ isless than that of r₁. Thus, the coefficient r_1'is recommended to estimate the lag-oneautocorrelation coefficient in samples under 50observations.     

各种指数基金模型的实证比较分析

在指数基金管理方面,存在着多种优化的指数投资组合的构建方法和绩效评估方法,本文以实证研究的形式,比较分析了由5种“选股”方法和5种“资金配置”方法所构成的25种投资组合在各种绩效评估方法下的表现。最终得出结论认为,在遗传算法下利用DMinMax模型配置资产权重将具有较好的投资绩效。     

国企技术创新误区探析

文章描述并分析了人们对技术创新的普遍误解及技术发展的常见障碍，以帮助大家掌握技术创新动态，促进国有企业革新。     

国企技术创新误区探析

文章描述并分析了人们对技术创新的普遍误解及技术发展的常见障碍,以帮助大家掌握技术创新动态,促进国有企业革新。     

Task,technology, and tailoring in communicative action: An in-depth analysis of group communication

Communication is fundamental to team work and it occurs increasingly often in a technology-mediated environment. Understanding how communication evolves in such environments is essential to ensuring that the right technology is provided for whatever task a group needs to accomplish, even if it is not precisely known how the technology is going to be used. With the growing body of research on different tools for supporting computer-mediated groups, we still have much to learn about how communication evolves, where potential breakdowns occur, and how groups tailor technology during the communication process. This paper addresses these important issues by providing an in-depth analysis of two-person dyads that communicated over a web-based set of collaboration tools during a 6-week project. We analyze communication through the lens of communicative action theory, showing how social action unfolds during communication and how groups challenge and resolve validity claims in different task-technology environments. This study contributes by exploring group processes, developing and applying group communication analysis tools, and enhancing theorizing on technology tailoring.     

The Division of Labour,Capitalism and Socialism: An Alternative to Sayer

Sayer (1995) has argued that the division of labour has a structure that is distinct from capitalist relations of production, and, following Hayek, that it is determined most strongly by the use of knowledge by enterprises. Conscious coordination or alteration of the division of labour therefore usually result in reduced efficiency and in an authoritarian suppression of difference. In this article we argue that the division of labour in capitalism is strongly determined by conflict within and between classes, and that in the short term socialist policy can and should aim to alter it. A model of socialist economic coordination is presented which is feasible and ameliorates many of the problems of the capitalist division of labour. This model would enable the development rather than suppression of positive differences.     

替代性纠纷解决机制在我国的适用

替代性纠纷解决机制在司法审判实践与民事诉讼法学理论研究中越来越引起学者关注,它在解决民事纠纷的过程中具有独特的价值。但是与此同时,替代性纠纷解决方式的适用过程中存在若干冲突性问题。从完善立法、构建有效的多元化纠纷解决的法律体系、对民事案件进行分流以及加强法院的监督职能等多方面入手去解决这些问题就显得十分必要。     

On forecasting of innovations

The forecasting of basic technological innovations is focused. Clarification of the involved key concepts and an analytical framework are given. The forest industry serves as a background and illustration to the discussion. Considerable uncertainty prevails with respect to strategic investments in production in this industry. Industries, technological products, etc. have empirically been shown to pass similar phases of development over time. This life cycle starts with a basic innovation following on a previous invention. Due to competetion from more recent basic innovations the final phase is one of decline. Basic innovations are suggested to be exogenously determined and to cause structural change. The choice of forecasting strategy is suggested to be made dependent on the type of innovation, knowledge base, and life cycle position.     

Towards a microscopic analysis of industrial innovations: From diffusion curves to technological integration through participative management

This paper traces the development of ever more microscopic analyses of the industrial innovation process and presents these as progressive stages in a gradual coming to terms with the real-life complexities of this process. Begining with the macroscopic, diffusion perspective inherited from rural sociology, it reveals how more user-centred models have emerged. The changing image of the user is traced from “passive adopter” to “managerial problem solver” and finally, to “innovative designer”. The paper then turns to the difficulties involved in understanding the nature of the firm's infrastructure and the implications it has for innovation management and industrial relations problems. Research in this area is identified as a crucial source of the new management tachniques that are required to solve the growing problems of resistance to technology implementation. A socio-psychological analysis drawing upon the concepts of the ethogenic approach is proposed and seen to recommend a participative management style similar to that used so successfully by the Japanese.     

Alternative Methods of School Finance: An Empirical Analysis of Cities in San Diego County

. Two alternatives to the local school property tax are explored using a simulation model: a power equalizing property tax and a state-wide property tax. The effects on residents’tax burdens and service levels are estimated and compared for residents of 13 cities in San Diego County. Under each of the available options shifts in tax burdens would occur. One high income city is a major beneficiary. Three others which would be required to contribute more to education are otherwise dissimilar; one is already taxing itself heavily. When tax effort is considered, cities intended to be prime beneficiaries do benefit but not greatly. The principal gainer is a city with high income and high property values. This analysis does not indicate that these alternative programs are more equitable than the present property tax.