Parent universities and the location of academic startups

Academic startups are thought to locate in their parent university’s home region because being in the vicinity of a university provides cost advantages in accessing academic knowledge and resources. In this paper we analyze the importance of a different mechanism, namely, social ties between academic entrepreneurs and university researchers, for enabling and facilitating the access to academic knowledge and resources, and therefore for the location of academic startups. We employ unique data on academic startups from regions with more than one university and find that only the parent university influences academic entrepreneurs’ decisions to stay in the region while other universities in the same region play no role. Our findings suggest that the mere local availability of a university may not per se guarantee access to knowledge and resources; social ties are additionally required. The importance of social ties implies that academic knowledge and resources are not necessarily local public good. This holds implications for universities’ role in stimulating regional development.     

Managerial form,ownership and efficiency: a case-study of Argentine agriculture

In agriculture, studies dealing with the separation of ownership from control have focused on sharecropping, paying little attention to the impact of management and ownership on efficiency. Using Argentine data, this study tests the hypothesis that efficiency is a function of type of management, concentration of ownership, and mechanisms for monitoring managers. Results show that management, ownership and monitoring have a greater impact on marketing efficiency than either on technical or cost efficiency.     

A structural model of human capital and manufacturing sector change

The relationship between manufacturing job losses per capita, changes in manufacturing earnings per worker, and human capital investment is examined empirically at the level of nearly 3,000 U.S. counties over the period 1980–90. Hypotheses tested address the questions of whether the sectoral composition of the local economy (in this case with an emphasis on manufacturing) affects per worker earnings growth and investment in human capital, and whether investment in human capital in turn affects the economy's sectoral composition and earnings growth. The simultaneous equations estimation reveals direct and indirect effects of initial levels of the endogenous variables on their change during the 1980s. These effects are compared with comprehensive effects obtained using a reduced form regression.Research underlying this paper was funded in part under the National Research Initiative, Competitive Grants Program of USDA/ERS (Grant no. 93-37401-9367). Neither this agency nor the University of Kentucky is responsible for views expressed here.     

Social incidence and economic costs of carbon limits

This paper discusses both distributional and allocational effects of limiting carbon dioxide emissions in a small and open economy. It starts from the assumption that Switzerland attempts to stabilize its greenhouse gas emissions over the next 25 years, and evaluates costs and benefits of the respective reduction program. From a methodological viewpoint, this paper illustrates, how a computable general equilibrium approach can be adopted for identifying economic effects of cutting greenhouse gas emissions on the national level. From a political economy point of view it considers the social incidence of a greenhouse policy. It shows in particular that public acceptance can be increased and economic costs of greenhouse policies can be reduced, if carbon taxes are accompanied by revenue redistribution.     

What Can Africa Learn from Asian Development Successes and Failures?

Book reviewed in this article:
Peter Lawrence and Colin Thirtle (eds.), Africa and Asia in Comparative Economic Perspective     

Cognitive Styles Of Experienced Auditors In The Netherlands

Cognitive styles of decision makers have been studied by a number of researchers over a period of years. Previous research has investigated cognitive styles in relation to information systems design and decision-making variables generally. Studies of cognitive styles in relation to auditor specific decision-making variables have been less common.This paper investigates cognitive styles of practicing auditors in The Netherlands using two well-known psychometric instruments: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the MacDonald AT-20 Tolerance for Ambiguity instrument (AT-20). The AT-20 has been used previously to investigate auditor individual differences in cognitive styles in relation to audit decision-making tasks (Pincus 1990). The MBTI has not been previously used to investigate auditor cognitive styles. The study described in this paper involved subjects from three auditing firms in The Netherlands. Subjects were presented with an audit case and asked to come to a decision about materiality. Information in the form of financial statements and other financial information was presented to the subjects via a computer program. The subjects selected the information they wanted to view by choosing an item on a menu. The sequence in which they selected information and the amount of time expended in viewing each page of information were recorded by the computer program. After the subjects finished the case, they were asked to complete the two cognitive style instruments (i.e. MBTI and AT-20).Results indicate that there is a preference for Sensing among subjects as measured by the MBTI. This finding is consistent with previous research using the MBTI which indicates that accountants and auditors generally have a preference for the Sensing type of information acquisition. Some differences between auditing firms were observed in regard to cognitive styles and information search variables.     

Zur Problematik empirischer Grundlagen der Investitionspolitik

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