Catching up to the technology frontier: the dichotomy between innovation and imitation

Abstract Using data for 55 developing and developed countries, this research examines the roles of technology transfer, research intensity, educational attainment, and the ability to absorb foreign technology in explaining cross‐country differences in productivity growth. The results show that innovation is an important factor for growth in OECD countries, whereas growth in developing countries is driven by imitation. Furthermore, the interaction between educational attainment and the distance to the frontier is a significant determinant of growth in the overall sample.     

The rise in UK unemployment: the search for an explanation

This paper suggests that the model used by Layard and Nickell to account for changes in unemployment is highly restrictive in that it imposes cross-equation constraints and neglects labour supply as a source of the increase in unemployment. A less restrictive model, which circumvents some of the problems encountered in the Layard-Nickell approach, is suggested as a tool to account for an unemployment path. Dynamic simulations with the model suggest that labour supply persistence, increased mark-up of prices over wages and low GDP growth have, in particular, contributed to the UK unemployment increase from 1967 to 1983.     

Innovations and manufacturing export performance in the OECD countries

This paper addresses two puzzles in international trade, namelywhy traditional estimates of income elasticities of exportsare implausibly high and why export growth varies much moremarkedly across countries than can be explained by changes inprice competitiveness and variations in income growth in exportmarkets. Using data for 18 OECD countries it is shown that marketintegration and the level of technology and competitivenesscan, to some extent, explain these two puzzles.     

Bargaining over managerial contracts in delegation games: managerial power,contract disclosure and cartel behavior

Modern corporate governance codes include clauses requiring the disclosure of managerial compensation. Such codes have been installed to protect shareholders' interests. In this paper, we explore the impact of such disclosure on consumer welfare. We consider two‐stage delegation games in which owner‐shareholders negotiate about compensation with their managers in the game's first stage. At the end of the first stage, the managerial compensation contract outcomes of the bargaining process are publicly announced. In the second stage, Cournot competition evolves. We prove that sales delegation generates equilibria radically different from relative performance delegation. Using classical Cournot as the benchmark, contractual bargaining over sales compensation gives tougher product market competition—and hence higher consumer surplus. The opposite holds true for relative performance delegation. Then, cartel behavior is promoted, reducing consumer surplus. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Has the capital accumulation in the Asian miracle economies been fuelled by growth?

The Asian growth miracle is often attributed to factor accumulation under the implicit assumption that savings, broadly defined, have been high and increasing due to exogenous forces. Using data for India, Indonesia, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan over the period 1870–2011 this article examines the causal relationship between growth and saving. The response of growth to savings is first estimated using instruments to generate exogenous variation in savings rates. The residual variation in growth that is not driven by savings is then used as an instrument to estimate the effect of growth on savings. The estimates show that the spectacular saving rates in the Asian miracle economies have been fuelled by growth, and not the other way around.     

Women in the Boardroom: How Do Female Directors of Corporate Boards Perceive Boardroom Dynamics?

This study investigated how female directors of corporate boards of directors (BoD) experience boardroom dynamics. The study represents an initial research trend that moves from a unilateral focus on financial outcomes of female representation in BoDs toward stronger attention on the social dynamics in the boardroom. Drawing on social identity theory, the study proposed that female directors often constitute an out-group within the BoD, preventing them from experiencing positive board dynamics. More specifically, the study explored the extent to which female directors do experience less justice, lower cohesion, and higher levels of conflicts within the BoD than their male counterparts do. Moreover, we assumed that female directors with nontraditional educational backgrounds would be particularly likely to experience negative boardroom dynamics whereas female chairpersons of BoDs would perceive boardroom dynamics more positively than other female directors. The sample consisted of 491 directors from 149 BoDs. Our findings revealed that there were generally few differences in the way female and male directors experienced boardroom dynamics and female chairpersons of BoDs did not perceive the dynamics differently than other female directors. Female directors with nontraditional educational backgrounds perceived the boardroom dynamics somewhat more negatively than other female directors, but the differences were not statistically significant. The conclusions from this study are that there are reasons to believe that female directors are welcomed into boardrooms, not perceived as out-groups, and BoDs are able to benefit from the female directors’ experience and skills.     

Long-run growth empirics and new challenges for unified theory

Annual estimates of productivity are reported for periods over 500 years for eight countries and for five other countries over shorter periods. One- and two-break time series models are used to investigate discontinuities in productivity growth. The results support two-break models of long-run productivity and they favour approaches to unified growth modelling with three epochs. However, the lessening of productivity gaps and the decisive shifts to higher productivity occurred in the twentieth century, chiefly in the years around the World War II. The timing of the breaks and the complexity of the historical record highlights a need for unified models to connect more closely with economic history.     

R&D,TECHNOLOGY SPILLOVERS AND STOCK PRICES†

Abstract. Theories of endogenous growth suggest that technological progress is driven by firms’ own R&D effort and knowledge spillovers. Using panel data for US firms over the period from 1990 to 1999 this paper tests the influence on stock prices of technological spillovers through firms’ purchase of intermediate products from other firms. The empirical results show that stock prices are significantly positively affected by knowledge spillovers through the input of intermediate products.