A logit analysis of telecommunication network bypass decisions

This paper is concerned with the growing trend for business and institutional users of telecommunication services to bypass public telephone networks by installing private facilities made available by recent technological advances. The factors leading to bypass decisions are determined, using discrete choice logit models estimated with data gathered in a specifically designed large survey of manufacturers and financial institutions. The results clearly show that the larger the firm in terms of numbers of employees and locations and in terms of telecommunication activity, the higher is the likelihood of that firm to engage in bypass. The forecasting applicability of the models is also outlined.     

Negishi–Solow efficiency wages, unemployment insurance and dynamic deterministic indeterminacy

This paper introduces efficiency wages designed to provide workers with incentives to make appropriate effort levels, and involuntary unemployment, along the pioneering lines of Negishi (1979) , Solow (1979) and Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984) , in a dynamic model involving heterogeneous agents and financial constraints as in Woodford (1986) and Grandmont et al. (1998) . Effort varies continuously while there is unemployment insurance funded out of taxation of labor incomes. Increasing unemployment insurance is beneficial to employment along the deterministic stationary state, and can even in some cases lead to a Pareto welfare improvement for all agents, through general equilibrium effects, by generating higher individual real labour incomes, hence larger consumptions of employed and unemployed workers, and thus higher production. In contrast, the local (in)determinacy properties of the stationary state are opposite to those obtained in the competitive specification of the model: local determinacy (indeterminacy) occurs for elasticities of capital-efficient labor substitution lower (larger) than a quite small bound. Increasing unemployment insurance is more likely to lead to local indeterminacy and, therefore, to generate dynamic inefficiencies due to the corresponding expectations coordination failures.     

Small business,innovation, and entrepreneurship

The purpose of this special issue is to examine small businesses, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and show that, although these three concepts have their own specific literature and can be dealt with independently, they are closely related. From Schumpeter to the present, a stream of literature unites the concept of entrepreneurship with its ability to make new combinations of factors and corresponding innovations in processes and products; similarly, in a broad stream of literature, the most characteristic dimension of entrepreneurship is closely linked to small businesses. Small and large companies have different advantages and drawbacks with innovation, but small businesses provide the most conducive environment for entrepreneurship and innovation that are not necessarily sustained by the know-how and resources characteristic of large-scale production, but require commitment and close cooperation between company members. In this introduction, we show how the three topics converge in four articles dealing with micro-start-ups and innovation, institutional determinants of entrepreneurship, and determining factors in entrepreneurs’ individual characteristics.     

Digital innovations,impacts on marketing,value chain and business models: An introduction

Digital innovations are changing business models and industries and, in today's world, effective mastery of digital innovations can be greatly advantageous, yet digital innovation literature suffers from major lacunae. We contribute to this literature by providing definitions and analysing specificities of this emerging research stream. We then discuss the impact of digital innovation on marketing, value chain, and business models, focusing on tensions and marketing challenges, the value chain, and the evolutions of business models. We conclude with suggestions for further research.     

Modeling the structure of gas distribution costs in urban areas

Urban-wide gas distribution cost models are developed and estimated, using capital costs, gas market, and population density data over cross-sections of communities served by two different utilities, with a particular emphasis on the multiproduct, multidimensional character of gas distribution: These models are used to clarify such policy issues as the allocation of joint costs through marginal cost pricing, the existence of ecpnomies of scale and density, and the appropriateness of natural monopoly status for gas distribution utilities.