Discussion on assessing quality of administrative data

The paper discusses the role, challenges and methods available to National statistical organisations to document and assess the quality of their administrative data.     

Economic modeling approaches for wildlife and species conservation

This paper presents modeling approaches for wildlife and species conservation with a special emphasis on large mammals in a developing country setting. In such countries there are frequently conflicts over land use and species conservation, and institutions for managing conflicts are often weak or even lacking. In addition, most of the world species and biodiversity are found in developing countries. Two main issues are discussed. First, we study a situation where the wildlife is valuable, but is considered a pest by the local people living close to the wildlife. Second, we consider models with a discrepancy between management geography and biological geography, and where the species flows between a conservation area with no harvesting and a neighboring area with harvesting and possible habitat degradation.     

Expectations and regime robustness in price formation: evidence from vector autoregressive models and recursive methods

The forward-looking linear quadratic adjustment cost (LQAC) model has received attention when modelling prices. Empirical evidence supporting the model seems, however, ambiguous. We find that the LQAC-model is severely at odds with price data for Norwegian machinery exports also when the pure forward-looking rule is augmented by additional lags of the targeted variable. A conditional equilibrium correction (EqCM) model explains the export price behaviour more accurately. Our findings may rule out a large class of expectations based models and not just the particular LQAC-model in the formation of export prices. We also demonstrate that the EqCM-model performs well post-sample despite that monetary policy in Norway has changed from a fixed to a floating exchange rate regime following a recent introduction of inflation targeting. This regime robustness shows that the Lucas critique lacks force empirically in our case.     

Property Rights and Natural Resource Conservation. A Bio-Economic Model with Numerical Illustrations from the Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem

This study develops a model for wildlifemigrating seasonally between a conservationarea and a neighbouring area. When beingoutside the conservation area, harvesting takesplace by a group of small-scale farmers. Thelocal people have two motives for harvesting;to get rid of ``problem' animals as roamingwildlife destroys crops and agriculturalproducts, and hunting for meat and trophies.Depending on the specification of the propertyrights, the harvesting is legal or illegal. Itis demonstrated that it is far from clear whichof the two property rights regimes that givesthe highest wildlife abundance. Hence, contraryto what is argued for in the literature,handing the property rights over to the localpeople means not automatically more wildlifeand a more ``sustainable' resource utilization.The reason lies in the nuisance motive forharvesting. The exploitation under the twodifferent property rights regimes areillustrated by numerical calculations with datathat fits reasonable well with the exploitationof the wildebeest population in theSerengeti-Mara ecosystem.     

A taxonomy of ecopreneurship in small manufacturing firms: A multidimensional cluster analysis

This study presents a multidimensional taxonomy of “ecopreneurship” for small manufacturing firms. Based on a cluster analysis of 312 Swedish firms, four distinct clusters are identified: pioneers, green dumpers, overlookers, and recyclers. These clusters are compared regarding their level of entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance. Based on the results, and because of the resource constraints associated with small firms, managers of such companies are advised to examine the economic consequences of specific environmental business practices and to adopt a less aggregated approach to ecopreneurship. This study illustrates the usefulness of a multidimensional scale when researching environmental behaviors and is a response to the lack of an empirically based classification of ecopreneurship configurations.     

Standards as Barriers Versus Standards as Catalysts: Assessing the Impact of HACCP Implementation on U.S. Seafood Imports

The United States mandated a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) food safety standard for seafood in 1997. Panel model results for 1990 to 2004 suggest that HACCP introduction had a negative and significant impact on overall imports from the top thirty-three suppliers. While the effect for developed countries was positive, the negative effect for developing countries supports the view of "standards as barriers" versus "standards as catalysts." A different perspective emerges from individual country-level analysis. Regardless of development status, leading seafood exporters generally experienced a positive HACCP effect, while most other smaller trading partners faced a negative effect.     

Technological Diffusion and Growth among Nations: the Two Stages of Catching Up

The international diffusion of technology is fundamental to an understanding of the nature of technical progress and why growth differs among advanced industrialised countries. In the present technological gap model, innovation is supposed to take place in the leading country. In countries following behind, knowledge growth depends on the spill-over of technology from the leading country. The diffusion mechanism is first studied in a growth accounting framework. In a second step, a complete growth model is constructed in which there are two stages of catching up (falling behind). One involves closing (widening) the technological gap, the other one involves convergence (divergence) in the capital-labour ratio.     

Technology management view of conversion from defence to civil production: experiences from southern california

This paper examines from a technology management perspective the prospects for conversion within the US military industrial complex from defence to civil production. After the introduction, the second section establishes a theoretical framework for the analysis, and the concept of conversion is critically examined. This section concludes, among other things, that firms can be perceived as a function of their core skills and their strategic alliances. In the next section, US defence production is discussed from a technology management perspective. Then there is an examination of three firms strategies to develop a competitive advantage in civil commercial markets: edploitation of the defence technological base; organizational and institutional changes; initiatives to affect the socio-economic framework. The success criteria for coping with reduced defence spending are established at frim, individual, local and national levels, and the firms performance with respect to these success criteria are evaluated. A major conclusion is that elements of industrial restructuring constitute an essential—although not sufficient—part of a successful transition to an economy less devoted to defence.     

Productivity Measurement in Manufacturing and the Expenditure Approach

This paper studies conversion factors based on the expenditure approach and evaluates the appropriateness for international comparisons of output levels in manufacturing. We apply a consistency check based on the insight that relative productivity levels should be invariant to the choice of base year. Consequently, convergence parameters and dispersion of productivity across countries should also be unaffected by this choice. The results are disappointing: relative measures of productivity depend heavily of the choice of base year and change systematically as the base years roll forward. The conclusion is insensitive to the applied method for developing conversion factors. The implication is that we cannot measure relative productivity levels in manufacturing across countries using the expenditure approach.