Effect of type 1 diabetes on school performance in a dynamic world: new analysis exploring Swedish register data

This paper investigates if the effect of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) on school performance, documented in prior research, has changed in more recent birth cohorts of children using national Swedish population register data. The issue is of interest because management and treatment of the disease have improved over the last decades and, furthermore, because of changes in the educational grading system. Despite these changes, data indicate a persistent negative effect of T1DM on compulsory and upper secondary school grades with a standardized effect size of ?0.109 and ?0.070, respectively, and the results appear only marginally smaller compared to earlier findings in cohorts completing school under the previous grading system. Moreover, the results are consistent for alternative model specifications and econometric estimation strategies. Whereas access to new treatment technologies and improved diabetes management strategies has reduced the burden of diabetes in daily life, the results from this study indicate that continued efforts are needed to improve the situation in school for children with T1DM to prevent potential long-term socio-economic consequences.     

Steven Klepper: Recipient of the 2011 <Emphasis Type="Italic">Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research</Emphasis>

This article reviews the academic contributions of the 2011 receiver of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research, Professor Steven Klepper, Carnegie Mellon University. The Global Award consists of 100,000 Euro and a statuette of the internationally renowned Swedish sculpture Carl Milles. Klepper has made breakthrough analyses in the realm of industrial dynamics, emphasizing the regularities in the time paths of entry of new producers, exit of incumbent firms, spin-offs and innovation. His work is predominantly empirical but he has also played an essential role in developing more rigorous theoretical models of phenomena such as spin-offs. Of particular importance is how Klepper has managed to link traditional neoclassical models with evolutionary theory as well as entrepreneurship research with mainstream economics.     

Interdependence between consumption in the North and sustainable communities in the South

The issues we want to address and discuss in this article are related to the interdependence between consumption in households in high‐income countries and life in the low‐income countries, seen in a sustainable perspective. In the consumer society the underlying premise is that ever‐escalating consumption is accepted, even desirable. During the past decade, an increasing critique of consumer lifestyle has come from environmentalists, who argue that the resource use to maintain a consumer lifestyle is putting too hard a burden on the ecosystems. We give examples of the abundant evidence of interdependence between North and South at global levels, such as climate change and appropriation of ecosystem capacities, and related to specific types of consumption such as clothing, flowers, food and cosmetics. We argue that the loss of feedback to individual households in the North is a serious barrier for change towards more sustainable consumption habits, and raise a question about how impacts of production and consumption can be communicated to consumers. On the basis of previous and ongoing research, we highlight some impacts of positive and negative labelling schemes as well as extended environmental information.     

Technological capabilities and international competitiveness in the engineering industries

While it has often been argued that the machine tool industry is a ‘nodal’ industry as supplier of technology to other industries, this relationship has never been tested empirically. In this paper we analyze and find empirical support for the following two hypotheses: 1) The U.S. engineering industries have been negatively affected by the relative decline in the technological capabilities of the U.S. machine tool industry in the last decade. 2) The use of flexible manufacturing technologies has become one of the most influential factors for competitiveness in the last decade as a result of recent changes in the world economy.     

The effect of ambiguous risk, and coordination on farmers' adaptation to climate change — A framed field experiment

The risk of losses of income and productive means due to adverse weather can differ significantly among farmers sharing a productive landscape, and is of course hard to estimate, or even “guesstimate” empirically. Moreover, the costs associated with investments in reduced vulnerability to climatic events are likely to exhibit economies of scope. We explore the implications of these characteristics on farmer's decisions to adapt to climate change using a framed field experiment applied to coffee farmers in Costa Rica. As expected, we find high levels of risk aversion, but even using that as a baseline, we further find that farmers behave even more cautiously when the setting is characterized by unknown or ambiguous risk (i.e. poor or non-reliable risk information). Secondly, we find that farmers, to a large extent, coordinated their decisions to secure a lower adaptation cost, and that communication among farmers strongly facilitated coordination.     

The evolution of a technological system: the case of CNC machine tools in Korea

Focusing on a product, this paper reconstructs the concept of technological systems first introduced by Carlsson and Stankiewicz (1991) in this Journal. Based on the model, we analyze the evolution process and performance of Korea's technological system for computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools as a catching-up case. The study shows that the length of 'learning period' for the system was substantial, even in a catching-up case. Especially, in the Korean case, the government played a 'macro-entrepreneurial' role in the molding of the technological system by giving legitimacy to the system, by mobilizing a nation-specific industrial organization of Chaebol system, and by enhancing the academia-industry-research institution links.JEL Classification: L52, L61, O30We thank two anonymous referees for very helpful comments and suggestions.Correspondence to: B. Carlsson     

Decision Support in Virtual Organizations: The Case for Multi-Agent Support

The new economy, which is being formed by the Internet-based e-commerce and the now emerging mobile commerce, may become what Martin calls a cyber economy. This will combine traditional business with the new e- and mobile business, and will be driven by a new breed of online customers, who operate both wired and wireless networks, who will expect fast delivery, easier transactions and more fact-based information. The cyber economy requires that business is operated with virtual organisations and that decision making in this context – virtual organisations and the cyber economy – will require new and advanced forms of decision support. We have found that a useful decision platform can be built around hyperknowledge and the use of multiple software agents, if the core of these agents is built on fuzzy logic and approximate reasoning.     

Flexible manufacturing and U.S. trade performance

Zusammenfassung Flexible Produktionsweise und die amerikanische Exportleistung. — Der Autor benutzt ein Modell, das die Produktionstechnologie in 37 Zweigen des Maschinenbaus der USA im Jahre 1983 beschreibt, und kommt zu dem Schlu\, da\ flexible Technologien durchweg einen positiven Beitrag leisten, wenn es darum geht, die Nettoexporte zu erkl?ren, w?hrend die Technologie der Massenproduktion weder einen positiven noch einen negativen Beitrag leistet. Industrien, die durch gro\e Betriebe mit flexibler Produktion, einen hohen Automatisierungsgrad, eine gro\e Zahl neuer Produkte und schnelles Wachstum gekennzeichnet sind, erzielen die beste Exportleistung. Es zeigt sich au\erdem, da\ ein Modell des intra-industriellen Handels bei Verwendung derselben Daten die beobachteten Ver?nderungen der Exportentwicklung weit schlechter erkl?rt als das Faktorproportionen-Modell.

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Résumé Flexibilité dans la production et la performance des exportateurs américains. — En utilisant un modèle qui décrit la technologie de production dans 37 industries mécaniques aux Etats Unis en 1983, l’auteur découvre que la technologie flexible contribue beaucoup à expliquer les exportations nettes tandis que la technologie de la production en masse donne l’impression de n’avoir pas une influence ni positive ni négative. Les industries qui sont caractérisées par de grands établissements avec une production flexible, d’un haut niveau d’automatisation, d’un grand nombre de nouveaux produits et d’un accroissement rapide ont le plus grand succès sur les marchés mondiaux. L’auteur trouve aussi qu’un modèle de commerce intra-industriel qui est appliqué aux mêmes dates explique beaucoup moins de la variation observée des exportations que le modèle de la dotation en facteurs.

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Resurnen Producción manufacturera flexible y el comercio de los EE UU. — Utilizando un modelo que describe la tecnología de producción en 37 industrias de ingenieria de los EE UU en 1983 se encuentra que la tecnologia flexible contribuye consistente y positivamente a explicar las exportaciones netas, mientras que la tecnologia de producción masiva parece no haber contribuido ni positiva ni negativamente a dicha explicación. Las industrias caracterizadas por plantas grandes con production flexible, un alto grado de automatization, un gran número de productos nuevos y un crecimiento rápido han sido las de mayor éxito en cuanto a las exportaciones. También se encuentra que un modelo de comercio intraindustrial aplicado a los mismos datos explica aún mucho menos de la variación del comercio observada que el modelo de la proportion de factores.