Intangible assets as drivers of innovation: Empirical evidence on multinational enterprises in German and UK regional systems of innovation

The sources of value creation are increasingly relying on intangible assets (IAs). IAs are the lifeblood of knowledge-intensive industries where the new value added is disproportionally based on specialized, non-repetitious activities. However, while the role of IAs is recognised as central to sustain the competitiveness of firms and innovation systems, the understanding of the mechanisms through which IAs display their effects has not yet been fully grasped.By focussing on the processes through which investments in IAs occur, this paper aims to explore the key dimensions through which two specific IAs - organisational and network capital - are enhanced and contribute to the innovativeness and embeddedness of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in regional innovation systems. On the basis of over forty in-depth interviews to leading staff of German and UK flagship MNEs operating in the automotive, life science and ICT sectors, the paper shows that MNEs adopt rather distinctive strategies to develop IAs; that MNE degree of local embeddedness is strictly related to both the kind of IA strategy and the local environment; and that causation mechanisms are at work between MNE embeddedness and regional creation of IAs.     

On the ‘Disclosure Initiative – Principles of Disclosure’: The EAA Financial Reporting Standards Committee’s View

Abstract

This paper summarises the contents of a comment letter produced by a working group of 12 academics in response to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Discussion Paper on principles of disclosure. The comment letter was submitted by the Financial Reporting Standards Committee (FRSC) of the European Accounting Association (EAA). The work includes reviews of relevant academic literature of areas related to the various questions posed by the IASB in the Discussion Paper, including the ‘disclosure problem’ and the objective of the project, the suggested principles of effective communication, the roles of the primary financial statements and notes, the location of information and the use of performance measures. The paper also discusses the disclosure of accounting policies, the objectives of centralised disclosure, and the New Zealand Accounting Standards Board staff’s approach to disclosure.     

Designing flexible work practices for job satisfaction: the relation between job characteristics and work disaggregation in different types of work arrangements

The literature on flexible work practices has not yet evaluated in detail how the characteristics of a job affect job satisfaction. This study makes a distinction between two types of flexible work practices according to their aims: the accommodation of employees’ personal lives (employment practice) and the operational reasons of a firm (work practice). Based on this distinction, we studied how the characteristics of a job, which reflect the use of ICT to support the spatial disaggregation of business processes, influence the relationship between the two types of flexible work practices and job satisfaction. We show, through a survey conducted on 987 workers, that the characteristics of a job that favour work disaggregation positively moderate the influence of flexible work as a work practice on job satisfaction, but they do not moderate the influence of flexible work as an employment practice. The implications for managers, workers and scholars are discussed.     

Price Caps and Output Floors: A Comparison of Simple Regulatory Rules

We study in this paper a simple alternative to price cap regulation. The mechanism, which we label 'output floor' regulation, requires the regulated firm to supply a given level of output. This rule is as simple as price cap regulation, and performs identically when the regulated firm is a natural monopoly; however, we show that, in the presence of a competitive fringe, output floor regulation yields lower prices and stronger incentives for cost reduction. Its introduction, however, is likely to be resisted by the industry, since it lowers managerial utility and shareholders' profits.     

HOUSEHOLDS' NON-SNA PRODUCTION: LABOUR TIME, VALUE OF LABOUR AND OF PRODUCT, AND CONTRIBUTION TO EXTENDED PRIVATE CONSUMPTION

This paper first shows, with data from fourteen countries, the potential of time-use studies for measuring, in comparable physical quantities, labour inputs in SNA and in non-SNA production. It then presents the monetary valuations of unpaid household labour and of households' non-market product achieved on the basis of time-use data in a few of these countries. Further elaboration of these valuations illustrates the contribution of households' non-SNA production to extended private consumption. The conclusion suggests desirable future developments.     

Can unbiased be tighter? Assessment of methods to reduce the bias-variance trade-off in WTP estimation

This paper aims at verifying the claim, appeared in recent literature, that it is possible to control for response bias associated to the double bound elicitation method, while keeping gains in efficiency of the WTP estimates. Results from a Monte Carlo analysis lead, in general, to reject the claim; but when initial bids are not correctly chosen, the gains in efficiency are confirmed. An empirical application dealing with WTP estimation for drinking water quality improvements illustrates a case where a flexible modeling approach based on Copula distributions allows relevant gains with respect to the Single Bound estimator.     

Sulla stima della media e del secondo momento di una popolazione tramite campioni con risposta casualizzata

Il campionamento con risposta casualizzata, introdotto da S. L. Warner per la stima di proporzioni ed in seguito applicato dallo stesso autore e da altri alla stima di quantità, è stato oggetto di un recente studio di D. Olivieri che, proposto un semplice metodo di casualizzazione, perviene ad una stima non distorta della media della popolazione oggetto d'indagine.Nel presente lavoro si sviluppa lo studio di Olivieri fornendo una stima non distorta del secondo momento della popolazione e si propone un'altra stima della media e della varianza della popolazione ottenuta tramite un metodo di casualizzazione di più semplice applicazione.

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The randomized response technique of sampling was proposed for the first time by S. L. Warner for the estimation of proportions and then applied, by Warner himself and other authors, to the estimation of quantities.This technique has been recently the object of an approach by D. Olivieri who suggests an easy randomization method and obtains an unbiased estimate of the population mean.In this paper the approach of D. Olivieri is implemented, reaching an unbiased estimate of the second moment of the population; moreover, an other estimate of the mean and of the variance of the population, obtained by an easier-to apply method of randomization, is proposed.

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Versione definitiva pervenuta il 12-1-81     

Assessment of storm surge damage to coastal settlements in Southeast Florida

Coastal cities are growing at a very rapid pace, in terms of both population and physical assets, and great uncertainty surrounds the future evolution of hurricane intensity and sea-level rise. The combination of these trends will contribute to large financial losses due to property damage in the absence of specific protections. Southeast Florida represents a clear hot spot of coastal flood exposure: more than 5?million inhabitants live in the counties of Miami Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, and the population is still growing. It is also a low-lying area where tropical hurricanes hit frequently. This article illustrates a methodology to assess coastal flood damage in urban settlements and it aims to determine more general lessons useful for all coastal cities. We consider the impact of different storm surges predicted by the SLOSH model and investigate flood risk considering different types of hurricanes. For each event, we apply a specific damage function and determine whether the considered storm surges potentially lead to an asset loss, considering both properties and their contents. The results show that, in the absence of protections, losses will be very high for large storm surges, reaching up to tens of billions of US dollars. In the second part of the analysis, we demonstrate how economic impact changes when protections are built up, considering different heights of protections. These results could be used as inputs into a robust decision-making process to determine the future of coastal protection in southern Florida.     

Consumption and income smoothing

This article presents a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model in which income smoothing takes place within the households (intra-temporally), and consumption smoothing takes place among the households (inter-temporally). Idiosyncratic risk-sharing within the family is based on an income smoothing contract. There are two-sectors in the model, the regular sector and the underground sector, and the smoothing comes from the underground sector, which is countercyclical with respect to aggregate GDP. The article shows that the simulated disaggregated consumption and income series (that are the regular and underground consumption flows) are more sensitive to exogenous changes in sector-specific productivity and tax rates than regular and underground income flows, and that this picture is reversed when the aggregate series are considered.     

Optimal choice of prevention and cure under uncertainty on disease effect and cure effectiveness

This paper studies optimal prevention and cure when an agent copes with two different sources of uncertainty: uncertainty on disease effect and uncertainty on cure effectiveness. We first analyze how optimal choices are affected by uncertainty when prevention and cure do not interact. Under both types of uncertainty, we obtain that the optimal level of prevention rises. Furthermore, we characterize for each source of uncertainty the conditions for the optimal level of cure to increase. We show that these conditions are related to different measures of prudence in health and cross-prudence in wealth. Lastly, we generalize our results to the case where prevention and cure interact and characterize for each source of uncertainty the conditions for the optimal level of prevention and cure to jointly increase. These conditions are similar to those obtained in the case without uncertainty but, in this context, Edgeworth–Pareto complementarity is also required.