On nonparametric estimation of the Schumpeterian link between innovation and firm size: Evidence from Belgium,France, and Germany

This paper analyses the Schumpeterian link between innovative activity and firm size by means of the nonparametric Nadaraya-Watson estimator and of the partially linear approach by Speckman. Four data sets referring to the manufacturing industries of three European countries are available for the analysis. We demonstrate how nonparametric methods can produce more reliable conclusions than conventional methods. For this purpose, the roles of bandwidth choice, wild bootstrap, density estimation and trimming are studied. For the German data set of 1984 and for the French data set we find that small firms and large firms are more innovative than firms of intermediate size while the relation is rather hump-shaped for Germany 1989 and decreasing for Belgium. Including an additional parametric component into the estimations based on the French data contributes considerably to the explanation of innovative activity without affecting the U-shaped link between innovation and firm size.     

Agrarpolitik in der EG

Zusammenfassung In der Wirkungsanalyse der EG-Agrarpolitik wird zwar auf eine Reihe von M?ngeln und Fehlentwicklungen hingewiesen, im ganzen aber die gemeinsame Agrarpolitik verh?ltnism?\ig günstig beurteilt. M?ngel der gemeinsamen Agrarpolitik werden weniger der Natur des Systems als dessen Handhabung zugeschrieben. Das Urteil über die EG-Agrarpolitik w?re vermutlich negativer ausgefallen, h?tte der Analyse ein st?rker am Freihandelsideal orientiertes Referenzsystem zugrunde gelegen. Als Ergebnis der Diskussion alternativer agrarpolitischer Systeme wird ein Mischsystem aus preispolitischen Ma\nahmen und sogenannten produktionsneutralen Beihilfen, die ihrem Wesen nach aber Faktorsubventionen darstellen, vorgeschlagen. Ein System personengebundener Transfers, das tats?chlich produktionsneutral w?re, wird hingegen abgelehnt. Auch hier w?re man vermutlich zu etwas anderen Ergebnissen gekommen, h?tte man der Analyse den Freihandelszustand als das relevante Referenzsystem zugrunde gelegt. Der Beitrag über Agrarpolitik und W?hrungsentwicklung enth?lt im wesentlichen überlegungen, die im Kern darauf hinauslaufen, reale Auswirkungen einer Wechselkurs?nderung von der Landwirtschaft fernzuhalten. Gesamtwirtschaftliche Argumente für die Berechtigung eines dauerhaften Grenzausgleichs enth?lt dieser Beitrag nicht.      

Rezensionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

A new mandate for human resources

Should we do away with HR? In recent years, a number of people who study and write about business--along with many who run businesses--have been debating that question. The debate arises out of serious and widespread doubts about HR's contribution to organizational performance. Dave Ulrich acknowledges that HR, as it is configured today in many companies, is indeed ineffective, incompetent, and costly. But he contends that it has never been more necessary. The solution, he believes, is to create an entirely new role for the field that focuses it not on traditional HR activities, such as staffing and compensation, but on business results that enrich the company's value to customers, investors, and employees. Ulrich elaborates on four broad tasks for HR that would allow it to help deliver organizational excellence. First, HR should become a partner in strategy execution. Second, it should become an expert in the way work is organized and executed. Third, it should become a champion for employees. And fourth, it should become an agent of continual change. Fulfilling this agenda would mean that every one of HR's activities would in some concrete way help a company better serve its customers or otherwise increase shareholder value. Can HR transform itself on its own? Certainly not--in fact, the primary responsibility for transforming the role of HR, Ulrich says, belongs to the CEO and to every line manager who works with the HR staff. Competitive success is a function of organizational excellence, and senior managers must hold HR accountable for delivering it.     

Risk management strategies - before Hominization and after

Selected examples, ranging from birds to pastoralistic nomads and subsisting peasants, indicate that the higher animals adopt foraging strategies similar to individual decision makers in economies without market (subsistence economies): in contrast to actors in (ideal neoclassical) market economies, maximizing expected utility, they operate in such way as to optimize long-term survival of genetically related groups. This can be seen as a strategy of (maximum) ruin avoidance, played by 'selfish genes'. In the sense of conjectural history the parallelism between risk behaviour of animals and early men may be regarded as the continued existence of principles of natural evolution beyond hominization up to the historical emergence of complex societies where pursuit of surplus production replaced ruin avoidance as the primary orientation in the older subsistence economies.     

Das Stoma richtig versorgen

Stomaformen und Versorgungssysteme — In Deutschland leben circa 100.000 Menschen mit einem Stoma. Entscheidend für die Lebensqualit?t dieser Patienten ist eine optimale Versorgung des künstlichen Darmausgangs – auch durch die professionelle Pflege.     

Total factor productivity, the east Asian miracle, and the world production frontier

Total Factor Productivity, the East Asian Miracle, and the World Production Frontier. — The post WWII growth of the East Asian Tiger states has stimulated the discussion about its determinants. Young and Krugman hold that high capital accumulation rather than gains in efficiency or technological progress has spurred growth. Nelson and Pack, however, have recently criticized the methods of measuring technological progress. Applying the nonparametric approach to frontier production function determination and the Malmquist index of total factor productivity change, the authors take up this criticism. They calculate productivity indicators for a sample of 18 American, Asian, and European countries. For the Tiger states, their results confirm that capital accumulation was the main source of growth in 1960-1973, whereas they find evidence for an increasing importance of efficiency improvements for the growth in 1973-1990.