Trick or Treat? Development Opportunities and Challenges in the WTO Negotiations on Industrial Tariffs

Negotiations on industrial tariffs in the current WTO work programme have turned out to be surprisingly difficult. On the one hand, developing countries, particularly in Africa, are concerned about the potential negative effect on their industrial development of developed country efforts to push them into deep cuts in applied tariffs: after the disillusion of the Uruguay Round, promises of welfare gains seem unconvincing. On the other hand, a number of the more complex formula proposals for tariff‐cutting make it difficult for participants to evaluate what they have to do compared with what they hope to receive. The developing countries may achieve greater exports and welfare gains from the more ambitious proposals, but computations show that these also imply greater imports, lower tariff revenues, some labour market adjustments and reduced output in some politically sensitive sectors. Some way of assisting the developing countries in coping with these adjustments is required to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the negotiations.     

Which Service? How Industry Conditions Shape Firms’ Service‐Type Choices

This article studies the role of industry conditions as determinants of manufacturing and software firms’ decisions to offer services. It draws on the competence perspective on industry evolution and servitization to theorize and provide empirical evidence on how industry conditions affect firms’ choice to offer two distinct types of services—product‐oriented services and customer‐oriented services. It is argued that firms are likely to offer product‐oriented services in Schumpeterian industry environments to address high technological uncertainty by leveraging and reinforcing capabilities in the existing technology. In contrast, firms are likely to offer customer‐oriented services in non‐Schumpeterian industry environments to address value generation uncertainty by building competences in new technological or market areas. Based on longitudinal data on 410 public firms from manufacturing industries and the software industry, empirical evidence suggests that firms are indeed more likely to offer product‐oriented services in Schumpeterian industry environments, such as in the early stage of the industry life cycle and under conditions of high R&D intensity and competition, whereas they are more likely to offer customer‐oriented services in non‐Schumpeterian environments, such as in the later stages of the industry life cycle and in highly cyclical industries.     

In search of lost time: the temporal construction of innovation management

This paper presents a methodology that is new to the field of innovation management research (IMR), and which is founded upon current interest in theories of time and temporality within organisation studies. We argue that although time is of central importance to innovation management, established methodologies treat time as simply the background against which organisation is done. Even when research is conceptually framed to afford greater attention to time, established methodologies only succeed in highlighting the importance of managers' mobilisation of the past, present and future of innovations. In contrast, we present a methodology that affords time (rather than innovation actors) the more prominent role in analyses and explanations of innovation management. While established research methodologies might offer accounts of the social construction of organisational innovation, we elaborate its temporal construction. The paper reviews the ways in which time and temporality have been deployed (conceptually and methodologically) within IMR. Following a detailed account of the new methodology, its value to innovation management scholarship is demonstrated with a short illustration in which new insights are presented into the emergence of novelty during the management of innovation. The paper concludes with suggestions of areas within IMR where this methodology may generate new insights.     

In Memory of Michael Watts (November 3, 1950–December 5, 2014)

In an experimental economics simulation, Ukrainian teachers of economics chose free riding responses at a rate similar to those found by Leuthold in an undergraduate class on public economics at the University of Illinois. The authors speculate that those who become academic economists may do so because they have certain insights in deductive logic.     

Parents,migrant domestic workers and children's speaking of a second language: Evidence from Hong Kong

This paper explores the effects of different language home environments provided by English‐speaking and non‐English‐speaking migrant domestic workers (MDW) on Hong Kong children's ability to speak English. Results show that English‐speaking MDW in working‐mother households increase children's likelihood of speaking English by 12% if the mother in the household does not speak English but by 25% if the mother in the household is capable of speaking English. Non‐English‐speaking MDW, however, are found to have little such effects. Age and education are two qualities of English‐speaking MDW that are significantly associated with improvements in children's English‐speaking ability and their English school subject.     

A Method for Working with Sign Restrictions in Structural Equation Modelling

The paper sets out a method for handling sign restrictions in systems of simultaneous equations which are only partially identified. These sign restrictions might apply to either structural equation parameters or functions of them such as impulse responses. Initially a range of values for the unidentified parameters are generated and then the role of sign restrictions is to narrow the range. It is simple to apply and can be handled in packages such as EViews and Stata. Examples are given of how to implement it in a number of cases where there are both parametric and sign restrictions.