Teams,Teamwork and Absence*

We argue that firms with interdependent worker productivity, team production, have a higher cost of absence and, as a consequence, spend additional resources on monitoring absence. As a result, firms with team production should have lower absence rates. We estimate the determinants of absence for blue‐collar workers using a sample of German manufacturing establishments. Workplace teams are used as a proxy for team production. The estimates reveal that firms with teams have lower absence rates, as do smaller establishments. The size effect, however, is unique to establishments with teams, which fits prior theoretical work that has not been previously tested.     

Technological proximity and the choice of cooperation partner

This paper provides empirical tests of hypotheses of cooperative behavior provided by evolutionary approaches in the resource-based view of the firm. The influences of “technological proximity”, individual incentives to cooperate and managerial tools to the choice of research partner are analyzed. Using German patent data we can show the positive influence of those three determinants. The results of this paper confirm theories dealing with the path-dependency of research activities.      

Agent-based model generating stylized facts of fixed income markets

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - We develop an agent-based model (ABM) of a financial market with multiple assets belonging either to the fixed income or equity asset classes. The...     

Eine soziologische Systemanalyse und sozio-ökonomisches Review der Soziotechnik Energiewende

The transition of the energy supply system in Germany from fossil-nuclear energy resources to renewable energies is a policy issue and defines a society technics. Society technics takes responsibility for an essential societal need and should be based on an agreement between all actors in all involved systems. According to a society-technics there are benefits for encouraging research, good governance for political support, public understanding of science (PUSH), and academic consultation for politics.Positive implementation will results in optimal coordination as all systems will function and all actors will work for synergy-effects. But a sociological system analyses works out many “dyssynergies”, handling the transition only as technological challenges and failing in underlying this transformation as a socio-technical system. Using renewable energies will not only change the technological system architecture but also modifying social systems and individual attitudes.     

Cointegration Testing in Single Error-Correction Equations in the Presence of Linear Time Trends

Banerjee, Dolado and Mestre (J. Time Ser. Anal. 19 (1998) 267−283)introduce an error-correction test for the null hypothesis of no cointegration. The present paper supplements their work. They provide critical values forregressions with and without detrending. Here it is shown that the latter arenot appropriate if the series display linear trends. This does not mean thatdetrending is required. Correct percentiles are suggested for the case thatseries follow linear time trends but tests are based on regressions withoutdetrending. They are readily available from the literature.     

Fostering entrepreneurship in distressed urban neighbourhoods

During the last decade entrepreneurship research has focused increasingly on spatial aspects of entrepreneurship. Many systematic studies have been conducted on the national or regional scale, although other geographical scales—cities and their single districts and neighbourhoods—have drawn less attention. In this context, the paper aims, firstly, at identifying spatial success factors of entrepreneurial activities and their promotion at the local scale. Secondly, the paper aims at contributing to the development of a conceptual frame at the interface of entrepreneurship research, urban and economic geography, and regional economics. Empirically, the paper draws on results from explorative case studies in two distressed urban areas.     

Technology Strategies For Economic Development In A Fast Changing Global Economy

East Asian development experience provides the basis for understanding which are the essential elements of effective technology strategy and policy, those that are required for the efficacious development of countries that have not yet embarked on a path of sustained modernization. Globalization has had a profound impact on development, enabling countries that could exploit its propelling forces to pursue a potent strategy of export-led economic and technological development. The policies needed to sustain this strategy are those required to foster institutions that permit effective commerce among economic agents, those necessary to generate the rapid accumulation of human and physical capital, and those essential to ensure that resources are allocated in accord with the economy's dynamic comparative advantage. Of crucial importance among the latter are effectively implemented policies of selective intervention designed to develop infant industries and to foster their fast-paced achievement of international competitiveness through rapid attainment of the requisite technological capabilities.     

Dimensions of quality upgrading

The impact of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies’ trade integration with European markets on CEE trade structures has been studied extensively. These studies frequently observe a quality upgrading of CEE exports. In this paper we consider three dimensions of quality upgrading: upgrading across industries, upgrading across different quality segments within industries and, finally, product upgrading within quality segments inside industries. For the analysis we partition industries into quality segments based on EU‐15 import unit values. The results for ten CEE countries (comprising the CEE‐5, the Baltics and South East Europe) and thirteen industries suggest fundamental differences, both across country groups and across the three different notions of quality upgrading. The CEE‐5 show no evidence of entering a ‘low‐quality trap’ in all three dimensions. By contrast, while there is a general catching‐up process across industries and inside quality segments, the second notion of low‐quality specialization may be applicable within the high‐tech industries to the performance for the Baltics and South East Europe as a group.     

Organizational Design,Competition, and Financial Exchanges

We investigate the incentives for vertical and horizontal integration in the financial securities service industry. In a model with two exchanges and two central securities depositories (CSDs), we find that decentralized decisions might lead to privately and socially inferior industry equilibria with vertical integration of both CSDs with their respective exchanges. Allowing for horizontal integration of CSDs avoids privately inferior industry equilibria. However, we observe too little horizontal integration from the social perspective. We link our results to recent regulatory and institutional developments such as the emergence of multilateral trading facilities, over-the-counter regulation, and financial harmonization.