Estimating international technology spillovers using technology flow matrices

Estimating International Technology Spillovers Using Technology Flow Matrices. — This paper investigates the impact of international R &; D spillovers on sectoral growth patterns in OECD countries. It applies panel regression techniques to a time-series cross-section panel. It arrives at the conclusion that knowledge spillovers are an important contributor to economic growth. The estimation results are applied in the form of a ‘simulation’ of TFP growth per country, splitting (R &; D-related) TFP into a component due to domestic R &; D and one due to foreign R &; D. The results also show that the United States and Germany are the most influential countries in terms of contributions to other countries’ TFP growth.     

Active labour market policies and job tenure

In this paper, we study the effect of subsidised on-the-jobtraining, training for the unemployed and pure wage subsidieson job tenure. Correcting for selection biases, we find thateach of the labour market policies increases the length of jobtenure. Despite the sensitivity of the estimates to the parametricassumptions with respect to the unobservables, the effect ofsubsidised on-the-job training schemes is always found to besignificantly positive. Training programs for the unemployedand pure wage subsidies always have a positive, but statisticallynon-significant effect Our results provide some support forhuman capital theories as opposed to matching theories.     

Duration dependence in the exit rate out of unemployment in Belgium. Is it true or spurious?

On the basis of aggregate data for the early 1990s, we analyse the determinants of unemployment duration for laid‐off male workers in Wallonia (Belgium). Our results indicate that if ranking in recruitment occurs, the standard mixed proportional hazard specification can be too restrictive, leading to an overstatement of the extent of true negative duration dependence. We conclude that negative duration dependence is largely spurious. We also decompose the time variation of the hazard in (unobserved) compositional and direct cyclical and seasonal effects. We find counter‐cyclical variation in the quality of young workers, but none for the prime aged. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Volume and Price of Indonesian Exports, 1823 To 1940: The Long-Term Trend and its Measurement 1

This article is concerned with indices of export volume and prices in Indonesia from 1823 to 1940. It discusses the sources from which the quantitative information on exports is derived. Previous indices are shown and their shortcomings are considered. Next, Laspeyres quantity indices and Paasche unit value and price indices for agricultural and total exports are presented. These indices are based on fixed weights for eight sub-periods. The paper also discusses the features and shortcomings of the more sophisticated Divisia index, and concludes with some remarks on the long-term trend of exports from Indonesia.     

R&D and market structure: The impact of measurement and aggregation problems

Estimates on the relationship between concentration and R&D effort are shown to be sensitive to problems of aggregation and of adequate measurement of R&D in small firms. While estimates from the official R&D survey of the Netherlands show a highly significant linear relationship between concentration and R&D, comparable estimates from our R&D data base prove it to be insignificant. However, at a finer level of disaggregation and when our sample is split into sectors with low and high technological opportunities, we discover evidence of a quadratic relationship in the latter and evidence of a weak linear relationship in the former.     

Estimating the validity of administrative variables

Administrative data have become more important for both official statistics and academic research. One possible problem with such data is that they are biased and have a low validity. Although this problem is often mentioned in a qualitative respect, the validity is seldom quantitatively measured. This article presents a method to estimate the validity of administrative variables. By applying the classical test theory, the validity can be determined by using linked survey and administrative data which should measure the same concepts. This idea is elaborated with an empirical example in which the construct validity of age, gender, educational attainment and wages is determined simultaneously. A linear structural equations model with a measurement component is used to compute the construct validity. The analyses reveal that educational attainment and wages show some bias, but not higher than the bias found in the survey.     

Measuring the New Economy: An International Comparative Perspective

The advances made in the production and use of information and communication technology (ICT) during the past decades may have potentially large effects for long term economic growth. Indeed the substantial acceleration in real GDP growth in many OECD countries, but in particular in the United States, during the second half of the 1990s has led to suggestions that a "new economy" has emerged. In this new economy the old economic rules were supposed to have become invalid. For example, traditional concerns about the limits of maximum production capacity might disappear as the marginal costs of producing ICT goods and services are virtually nil. Moreover, the trade-off between inflation and unemployment could be reduced due to a more efficient inventory management.     

Bargaining power in stationary parallelogram games

A stationary variant of the repeated prisoners dilemma in which the game frontier is a parallelogram is analyzed. By using the probabilistic cheap talk concept of [3], the discount factor becomes fungible, and for a critical value of the discount factor a unique Pareto-optimal and Pareto-dominant solution can be found. The relative bargaining power of the players can be quantified in terms of the shape of the parallelogram. If the parallelogram is asymmetric, the solution results in an asymmetric allocation of payoffs. Players with more bargaining power receive a greater share of the allocation. The solution satisfies some standard bargaining axioms within the class of parallelogram games. A characterization is provided in terms of these axioms and one new axiom, weak-monotonicity, which is in the spirit of, but different from, the Kalai-Smorodinsky restricted-monotonicity axiom.Received: 15 January 2001, Accepted: 4 December 2003, We thank Wayne Shafer for interlocution and helpful comments.