OVERVALUED: SWEDISH MONETARY POLICY IN THE 1930s

The article discusses Sweden's monetary policy in the 1930s, which has been hailed as the first and only example of successful price‐level targeting. Our contribution is twofold. First, we argue that the crucial measure that immediately ended deflationary expectations and enabled a swift recovery was a strong and involuntary devaluation of the currency, not the adoption of a new monetary policy framework. Second, starting from the recent literature on monetary policy at the zero‐lower bound, we conclude that Sweden's exchange rate policy is more relevant for the current discussion than its tentative experience with price‐level targeting.     

Space–time economies under free mobility:: Competitive Equilibria and efficiency

In this paper, a space–time sequence economy with money, storage and transaction /transportation costs of mobile commodities will be considered. Conditions on technologies and households′ characteristics will be derived to establish the existence of competitive equilibria under locational choice. The notion of Pareto efficiency under costly trading will be discussed and the question of (in-)efficiency of equilibria examined using a separation theorem. The model extends earlier work of the author [Karmann (1981), Karmann (1982)] and others [see Schweizer et al. (1976), Castello-Ruiz (1978)] to include time and extends also the model in Kurz (1974) to include space.     

R&D management through network mapping: using the Internet to identify strategic network actors in cooperative research networks

Most R&D management techniques to date have emphasized the immediate organizational context or the internal structure and process of the R&D project. Recently however attempts have been made at situating R&D management in a wider context of inter‐organizational R&D activities. This paper presents the technique of R&D network mapping as a means of providing strategic intelligence to the R&D manager. The paper backgrounds this technique with a discussion of the general issue and significance of R&D networks. A methodology for R&D network mapping is then exemplified by outlining how a network database of cooperating projects and institutes in the telecom research sector was built by utilizing the World Wide Web. Finally a number of suggestions are made as to how and when network mapping should be applied in strategic R&D management.     

New developments in east-west economic relations

The past four years have witnessed a marked increase in the economic activity between East and West. The volume of foreign trade rose strongly; but as Eastern exports showed only slight increases while their imports from the West went up by leaps and bounds, the deficits of the Comecon countries became ever greater — an imbalance which has given rise to a number of problems.     

Diversification and market performance

Review of Industrial Organization - Recent theoretical research indicates that diversification may affect industry profitability for reasons (e.g., improved efficiency and increased entry) other...     

Judicial Reform

A review of the evidence on judicial reform across countriesshows that those seeking to improve economic performance shouldnot focus on judicial efficiency alone but on independence aswell. It also shows that the level of resources poured intothe judicial system and the accessibility of the system havelittle impact on judicial performance. Most of the problem ofjudicial stagnation stems from inadequate incentives and overlycomplicated procedures. Incentive-oriented reforms that seekto increase accountability, competition, and choice seem tobe the most effective in tackling the problem. But incentivesalone do not correct systematic judicial failure. Chronic judicialstagnation calls for simplifying procedures and increasing theirflexibility.