The output and profit contribution of information technology and advertising investments in banks

This paper examines the contribution of investments in Information Technology (IT) and in advertising to the output and profits of Spanish banks, in the period 1983–2003. We find that the growth in the stock of IT capital explains one third of output growth of banks, and that an additional investment in IT of one million euros may be substituted for twenty-five workers. The paper also finds that advertising investments increase the demand for bank services with an elasticity of 0.22 for deposits and 0.11 for loans. For all the assets considered, the null hypothesis that banks use the profit-maximizing amount of services per period cannot be rejected with the data.     

Devaluation and The Balance of Trade: A Synthesis of Monetary and Elasticity Approaches

The elasticities and monetary approaches to balance of trade and balance of payments give different predictions about the effects of changes in exchange rates on the trade balance and balance of payments. This paper, using a theoretical model, supports the arguments that elasticities and monetary approaches to balance of payments are complementary theories since each is merely a fragment of a larger system. It was shown that the short run effects of devaluation are those produced by the elasticities approach and the long run effects are those implies by the monetary approach. [431]     

Biofuels as Sustainable Technologies: Perspectives for Less Developed Countries

The future outlook of biofuels is beset by uncertainty. Key factors for the adoption of biofuels as alternative technologies are policy decisions by governments in terms of regulations, such as government procurement schemes and fuel specifications, along with financial and economic instruments, such as subsidies and preferential taxation. In this framework, the present analysis is a prospective as to the future development of a biofuel program in the European Union and the hypothetical role of developing countries as suppliers in this new market. The focus of this article is, exclusively, on liquid fuels.     

Export Growth and Economic Development in Colonial British America

This paper analyzes the dynamic relationship between tobacco and the rest of the economy in the colonial Chesapeake to test the staple theory version of the export-led growth hypothesis. The paper adopts a multivariate time-series approach which accommodates the presence of cointegration and contemporaneous correlations among innovations. The empirical evidence strongly supports the staple theory. British demand for tobacco is statistically exogenous and found to induce cyclical fluctuations in the colonial price of tobacco as well as temporary over- or underproduction, as measured by a long-term cointegration relationship between the British demand for tobacco and the colonial price of land.     

Some considerations about “Forecasting aggregates and disaggregates with common features”

Espasa and Mayo provide consistent forecasts for an aggregate economic indicator and its basic components as well as for useful sub-aggregates. To do so, they develop a procedure based on single-equation models that includes the restrictions arisen from the fact that some components share common features. The classification by common features provides a disaggregation map useful in several applications. We discuss their classification procedure and suggest some issues that should be taken into account when designing an algorithm to identify subsets of series that share one common trend.     

The Role of Early Adopters in the Diffusion of New Products: Differences between Platform and Nonplatform Innovations

This paper takes a contingency view to investigate how the role of early adopters (EAs) in the diffusion process changes between platform and nonplatform innovations, what launch decisions firms take to leverage the role of EAs, and how these decisions change between platform and nonplatform innovations. Relying on an exploratory multiple case study of eight industrial product innovations launched in Italy in the 2000s, the paper suggests that the EAs of these innovations play two distinct roles in the diffusion process. The first role, called dissemination, sees EAs triggering and bolstering the propagation of information regarding their opinion about the value for money, properties, advantages, and disadvantages of the new product after they have bought and applied it in their operations. The second role, labeled imitation, consists of EAs inadvertently communicating to later buyers the fact that they have bought the new product, which propels imitative behavior and thus subsequent adoption. A key finding of the paper, which supports a contingency view of innovation diffusion, is that the dissemination role played by EAs has an impact on the adoption of platform innovations, whereas the imitation one is the mechanism through which EAs stimulate subsequent adoption in the case of nonplatform new products. Furthermore, the paper's results point to a constructive view of the process of launching an innovation, whereby firms target at launch different segments of EAs, whose identity is shaped depending on the platform versus nonplatform nature of the innovation and thus on the role they are expected to play in the diffusion process. Concerning managerial implications, this study provides a first tentative understanding of the launch decisions that product and marketing managers may use to target the most appropriate segments of EAs, to leverage their roles and ultimately to favor diffusion. As regards platform innovations, targeting decisions should be driven by the goal to improve the chances that EAs will be willing to disseminate their experience and opinion regarding the new product. As regards instead nonplatform innovations, firms should target EAs whose specific characteristics increase the likelihood of an imitative reaction by later buyers that fear to suffer a competitive disadvantage if they do not conform to EAs' behavior.     

The Great Forgotten Issue: Vindicating Ethics in the European Qualifications Framework (EQF)

Various international authorities have insisted on the importance of ethical learning in higher education for would-be professionals, including students of Business Administration. As the process of creating the European Higher Education Area gathers pace, first steps have been taken to explicitly incorporate ethics in the common European Qualifications Framework (EQF). However, the authors of this study show how in the course of the EQF development process, the consideration given to ethical qualifications has been curtailed and subjected to serious limitations. In this article, the authors review the historical development and the main elements of the EQF. Then, they analyze the gradual elimination of ethics within the EQF. Finally, they highlight the implications of this gradual elimination and propose avenues for further research. Manuel Guillén is Senior Lecturer in Management, at the University of Valencia (Spain). Prof. Guillén earned his PhD in Management with a specialization in ethics and strategic management integration. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota (USA), at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA, and guest Visiting Student at IESE Business School doctoral program, in Barcelona. He has presented some of his research at the top conferences in the field and has published in business ethics and management journals. Since 1997 he has taught Business Ethics courses in different business schools, institutions, and companies. Joan Fontrodona is an Associate Professor of Business Ethics and Academic Director of the Center for Business in Society at IESE Business School. He is member of the Academic Board of EABIS, Chairman of EBEN-Spain, and Member of the Executive Committee of ASEPAM, the Spanish Local Network of the Global Compact. He has published several books and papers on business ethics, corporate social responsibility, philosophy, and management. Alfredo Rodríguez-Sedano holds a PhD in Philosophy and a PhD in Business Administration. He is Professor of Sociology at the Education Department of the University of Navarre (Spain). He is also Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of the West (El Salvador). He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Andes (Chile) and Regular Professor at the Catholic University of Sacred Conception (Chile). He has published 16 books, 12 book chapters, and 15 articles on different subjects in the fields of management, philosophy, and education.     

Regulatory design and incentives for renewable energy

Increasing electric power production from renewable energy sources is currently one of the major objectives of energy policy. The intermittent nature of renewables, such as wind and solar, necessarily imposes complex trade-offs for regulatory objectives, such as resource adequacy (and system reliability) versus reductions in green house gas emissions. We develop a highly stylized model of investments in order to derive insights regarding the workings of regulatory incentives for increased renewable energy. We first show that incentives are indeed needed when there are significant economies of scale in the form of “learning by doing” or alternatively, when there is excess capacity in conventional technology due to legacy investments. We analyze two different regulatory schemes (feed-in tariffs and renewable portafolio standards) aimed at increasing investment in renewable capacity. We show that neither scheme is capable of inducing the socially optimal level of investment in renewable capacity. A single feed-in tariff fails to induce optimal investment as a feed-in tariff exceeding marginal costs of conventional technology incentivizes over-development of the most attractive sites which preempts investment in less attractive, yet socially valuable sites. A renewable portfolio standard that promotes increased investment in renewable technology induces under-investment in the conventional technology. These results suggest that a “clinical” regulatory design, that is, one that promotes the right amount of renewable capacity without affecting conventional capacity is a challenging proposition.