Time‐varying yield curve dynamics and monetary policy

Monetary policy, the yield curve and the private sector behaviour of the US economy are modelled as a time‐varying structural vector autoregression. The monetary policy shocks of the early 1980s explain a large portion of the persistence of inflation and the level of the term structure. Changes in inflation expectations implied by the yield curve account for the persistence of the federal funds rate. Failures of the expectations hypothesis are rare, and coincided with the credibility building of Paul Volcker's Fed tenure at the beginning of the 1980s and the sequence of consecutive policy rate cuts around the time of the early 1990s recession. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Small firms and technological development in the food processing machinery industry: The case of pasta and other cereal derivative machines in Italy

This study about Italian producers of machines and plants for pasta, basic cereals, snacks and bread factories attempts to shed some light on the role played by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Italian industry. Even if the high diffusion of SMEs has positively affected the performance of Italian economy during the seventies and the eighties, the new trends of technological change and global competition are expected to be unfavourable to this category of enterprises in the nineties. The analyses of a significant sample of firms makes clear that the industry is in the middle of a positive restructuring process. The structure of this sector shows a division of labour based on deverticalization of production, and a process of internationalization focused on exports and not on direct investments or joint ventures abroad. Leading firms are following growth strategies by new investments and acquisitions. Finally, as far as technological change is concerned, there is a significant increase of process innovations, thanks to the use of electronic components.An earlier release of this paper was presented at 7th EARIE (European Association for Research in Industrial Economics) Annual Conference in Lisbon, September 2–4 1990. We thank all the participants for their comments and suggestions, in particular P. Dunne.     

Inferior factor in Cournot oligopoly revisited

We reconsider the recent work by Okuguchi (J Econ 101:125–131, 2010) on (possibly asymmetric) Cournotian firms with two production factors, one being inferior for each firm. It is shown there that an increase in the price of the inferior factor does raise the equilibrium industry output. In addition of providing a simpler and more rigorous proof of that result, we generalize it to the case of technologies with $s\ge 2$ factors and also allow some firms not to use the inferior one.     

Sticky cost behaviour: evidence from small and medium sized companies

This paper investigates whether cost stickiness occurs in small and medium sized companies using a sample of Italian nonlisted and listed firms during the period 1999–2008. Our findings show that cost stickiness emerges only for the total cost of labour and not for selling, general and administrative (SG&A) costs, cost of goods sold and operating costs. Stickiness of operating costs is only detected in a sample of listed companies. We further contribute to the literature on sticky cost behaviour by discussing critical issues associated with the extant approach of empirical analysis and interpretation of sticky cost behaviour.     

The influence of formal and informal sales controls on customer-directed selling behaviors and sales unit effectiveness

Adaptive selling (AS) and customer-oriented selling (COS) constitute two key customer-directed selling behaviors for the success of the modern sales force. However, knowledge regarding the organizational factors that can induce salespeople to engage in those behaviors is strikingly limited. Against this background, we develop a comprehensive model that delineates the influences of formal and informal sales controls on AS and COS and, through them, on sales unit effectiveness. Based on a sample of sales managers in a major European Union country, we present new evidence that (a) formal and informal sales controls exert differential impact on salespeople's AS and COS behaviors; (b) AS directly and positively influences sales unit effectiveness; (c) COS affects sales unit effectiveness only indirectly, i.e. by fostering AS; and (d) outcome and cultural controls directly improve sales unit effectiveness. We conclude with a discussion of our findings for academics and practitioners.     

Panel data and descriptor for energy econometrics – an efficiency,resilience and innovation analysis

Quality & Quantity - The work at hand presents a new extensive panel dataset for energy economics, econometrics and policy. The referred dataset is made of 5000 observations circa, including 6...     

Capital as a Single Magnitude and the Orthodox Theory of Distribution in Some Writings of the Early 1930s

Some writings of the early 1930s by Dennis Robertson and John Hicks present, with a clarity not easily found elsewhere, the reasons why marginalist economists, who until recent decades normally treated capital as a single magnitude, were in fact compelled to do so. This paper focuses on a first reason that emerges from these writings: namely the fact that only this treatment of capital can lend plausibility to the notion of substitutability between factors of production on which the orthodox theory of distribution is built.     

Fiscal Balance and Current Account in Professional Forecasts

This paper investigates the relationship between financial institutions' expectations of the current account and the fiscal balance. Using professional macroeconomic forecasts for the G‐7 countries, we find a positive relationship between forecasts of the cyclically adjusted fiscal balance deficit and forecasts of the current account deficit, indicating that professional forecasts embody links implied by the twin deficits hypothesis. In assessing the relationship between the forecasts of the fiscal deficit and the current account, we find that forecasters correctly make the distinction between the effect of fiscal policy and automatic stabilizers.