Innovation efforts and performances of Brazilian firms

We analyze the relationship between innovation and firms' performance in Brazil using a comprehensive database that cross-references innovation information by PINTEC (Technological Innovation Research) of the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) and financial information from Serasa and Gazeta Mercantil. Results from the structural equation modeling suggest that variables associating with investments in innovation, which are connected to the innovative effort of a company, do not explain financial performance significantly.     

From organized to disorganized capitalism? Market versus nonmarket coordination in Spain's dairy chain

Conventional wisdom has it that the food economy has transitioned from organized to disorganized capitalism. An era of extensive state intervention between around 1930 and 1980 would have been followed by an era of deregulation and increasing coordination through markets after around 1980. This article uses the case of Spain's dairy chain to propose an alternative view. In the case under study, there certainly were elements of state‐coordinated capitalism between 1952 and 1986, as well as elements of deregulation and liberalization from 1986 onwards. However, the structure of economic coordination involved some combination of market and nonmarket mechanisms all the way through. The organized capitalism of the first period was not really so tightly organized, whereas much of its later “disorganization” was in fact a transition towards a different mode of “organization”: one in which the control of nonmarket coordination shifted from political to corporate hierarchies.     

Investment-specific technical progress,capital obsolescence and job creation

This paper shows that faster disembodied technological progress – if it is investment-specific – might reduce job creation because the obsolescence cost of capital increases, which reduces the net return of a job. This effect could be called the obsolescence effect. It is also shown that the increase in the rate of decline of the U.S. relative price of investment – which can be used as a proxy for the rate of investment-specific technical progress – may have increased the obsolescence costs of capital, which might account for the observed fall in U.S. vacancy–unemployment ratios and job finding rates after the mid-seventies.     

A non-parametric spatial independence test using symbolic entropy

In the present paper, we construct a new, simple, consistent and powerful test for spatial independence, called the SG test, by using the new concept of symbolic entropy as a measure of spatial dependence. The standard asymptotic distribution of the test is an affine transformation of the symbolic entropy under the null hypothesis. The test statistic, with the proposed symbolization procedure, and its standard limit distribution have appealing theoretical properties that guarantee the general applicability of the test. An important aspect is that the test does not require specification of the W matrix and is free of a priori assumptions. We include a Monte Carlo study of our test, in comparison with the well-known Moran's I, the SBDS (de Graaff et al., 2001) and τ test (Brett and Pinkse, 1997) that are two non-parametric tests, to better appreciate the properties and the behaviour of the new test. Apart from being competitive compared to other tests, results underline the outstanding power of the new test for non-linear dependent spatial processes.     

Can Agile Project Management Be Adopted by Industries Other than Software Development?

This research paper presents evidence from an exploratory survey on the use of agile project management (APM) practices and the presence of APM enablers in 19 medium‐ and large‐sized companies from different industry sectors considering innovative projects. The results show that these companies are possibly struggling to use their current management practices in the face of different project challenges. Additionally, the presence of some APM enablers indicates opportunities to adapt the APM theory for different companies other than those in software development. Future research should explore the correlation between APM practices and enablers in order to develop “hybrid” management models for different industries.     

A class of flat prior distributions for the Poisson‐gamma hierarchical model

A wide class of prior distributions for the Poisson‐gamma hierarchical model is proposed. Prior distributions in this class carry vague information in the sense that their tails exhibit slow decay. Conditions for the propriety of the resulting posterior density are determined, as well as for the existence of posterior moments of the Poisson rate of either an observed or an unobserved unit.     

Peak-load pricing and reliability under uncertainty

This paper develops the welfare foundations of peak-load pricing under uncertainty, building on Brown and Johnson (1969), Crew and Kleindorfer (1976), and Chao (1983). The context is that of a welfare-maximizing public enterprise facing uncertain and nondeferrable demand, and uncertain supply. The paper first describes various elements of outage cost, including rationing costs, disruption costs, and surplus losses due to unsatisfied demand. Exact welfare-optimal results are then derived, in contrast to the earlier approximations by Turvey and Anderson (1977) and Chao (1983). The results are generalized to take account of diverse technologies and multiple planning periods, and their implications for utility pricing and investment in an integrated resource planning context are discussed.     

Institutional determinants of downsizing

This study analyses the institutional determinants of downsizing in an economy with a highly rigid labour market: Spain. Our focus is first placed on the impact that the system of severance payment has on downsizing adoption. In particular, we analyse whether the regulatory environment can explain variations in employers' downsizing use. In addition, we analyse how organisations imitate one another in implementing downsizing, presumably in a quest for legitimacy. The evidence provided indicates that low levels of severance payments incurred by downsizers in the past promotes downsizing in the present, but too high severance payments discourages downsizing. Therefore, firms in Spain are constrained by regulatory forces stemming from labour law. Our results also reflect the importance of rational myths in downsizing because companies imitate the decisions on downsizing widely used in their industry and, particularly, those adopted by industry leaders.