Geroski's Stylized Facts and Mobility of Large German Manufacturing Firms

Paul Geroski has established two stylized facts with respect to theprevalence of differential changes (mobility) of indicators ofeconomic and technological performance: technologicalindicators show a larger amount of mobility than do economic indicators.We assess the two stylized facts for a sample of 392 large Germanfirms observed over the period 1981–1993 and assigned to elevenmanufacturing industries. We analyze these data with two novelmethods, Salter curves and mobility indices based on fractileMarkov chains. Our analysis supports Geroski's two stylized factsin the case of large German manufacturing firms taking account ofsectoral differences.     

Firm survival in the German automobile industry

In this paper, methods of duration analysis are applied to investigate determinants of firm survival in the German automobile industry during the period 1886–1939. A new comprehensive data set has been assembled in order to secure data comparable to that for the US automobile industry. Our results show that the forces shaping the survival pattern of firms over the life cycle are quite similar in both countries, i.e. early entry in the life cycle and prior experience are associated with a lower risk of exit. This finding holds equally when parametric, semiparametric and nonparametric methods are applied.We thank the participants of the 10th conference of the International Schumpeter Society in Milan, June 2004, and the 31st EARIE conference in Berlin, September 2004, for helpful discussion. We also thank two anonymous referees for their comments. All remaining errors are in our responsibility.     

The Bioeconomics of the Spatial Distribution of an Endangered Species: The Case of the Swedish Wolf Population

Conservation of endangered species often entails significant costs, and, from a social perspective, many species can be characterized as both environmental bads and goods. This paper concerns the management of one such species, the Swedish wolf (Canis lupus). The fact that the wolf tends to disperse over a wide area causes specific management problems. The goal is to choose a harvesting strategy, such that the discounted stream of net benefits from the wolf populations in different geographical regions is maximized. The spatial dimension is involved through emigration and immigration. The solution to the management problem is shown to be a modification of the classical rule of renewable resource exploitation, caused by the migration of wolves between regions. Empirically, this problem is solved by dividing Sweden into 13 geographical regions, and accounting for the existence values, harvesting benefits, and predation costs of the wolf population in each region. The results show that the geographical distribution of wolves, in absolute numbers, is very sensitive to the abundance of prey and to different assumptions regarding the economic parameters of the model. However, the relative distribution of wolves across the country is less sensitive to these assumptions. The highest densities of wolves were found in regions with low marginal costs, due to the abundance of prey in relation to the comparatively low number of human hunters utilizing the same prey as the wolves. The lowest population densities were found in regions with a low carrying capacity for the wolf or with high costs of depredation on reindeer.     

Distance to default,subordinated debt,and distress indicators in the banking industry*

The recent financial crisis has highlighted the inadequacy of present supervisory arrangements to identify reliable ex‐ante indicators of banking distress. For a sample of US bank holding companies, we analyse the extent to which distance to default based on market data can be explained using accounting‐based indicators of risk. We show that a larger number of bank fundamentals help predict default for institutions that issue subordinated debt. For banks that issue sub‐debt, we find that higher charter values and low bank capitalizations further increase the power of bank fundamentals to predict default risk.     

PRODUCTIVITY AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Abstract.  This paper is a survey of the existing research on structural change at various levels of aggregation with a special focus on the relation to productivity and technological change. The exposition covers the research concerning the development of the three main sectors of the private economy, multisector growth models and recent evolutionary theories of structural change. Empirical studies of the reallocation of market or sector shares as a result of differential productivity developments are also discussed. The synthesis emphasizes the crucial interaction of supply- and demand-side forces in shaping structural change.