The Optimal Timing of Adoption of a Green Technology

We study the optimal timing of adoption of a cleaner technology and its effects on the rate of growth of an economy in the context of an AK endogenous growth model. We show that the results depend upon the behavior of the marginal utility of environmental quality with respect to consumption. When it is increasing, we derive the capital level at the optimal timing of adoption. We show that this capital threshold is independent of the initial conditions on the stock of capital, implying that capital-poor countries tend to take longer to adopt. Also, country-specific characteristics, as the existence of high barriers to adoption, may lead to different capital thresholds for different countries. If the marginal utility of environmental quality decreases with consumption, a country should never delay adoption; the optimal policy is either to adopt immediately or, if adoption costs are “too high”, to never adopt. The policy implications of these results are discussed in the context of the international debate surrounding the environmental political agenda.      

Taxation without commitment

This paper considers a Ramsey model of linear capital and labor income taxation in which a benevolent government cannot commit ex-ante to a sequence of policies for the future. In this setup, if the government is forced to keep budget balance in every period, then it may not be able to sustain zero capital taxes in the long run, as shown in Benhabib and Rustichini (J Econ Theory 77:231–259, 1997) and Phelan and Stachetti (Econometrica 69:1491–1518, 2001). However, (Dominguez in J Econ Theory 135:159–170, 2007) shows that if the government is allowed to borrow and lend to households, the optimal capital income tax still converges to zero in the long run, as long as the value of defaulting is independent of the level of government debt. This paper provides a game theoretic setup with government debt where the value of the worst equilibrium only depends on the initial level of capital and can be determined in advance. This implies that under our assumptions the best sustainable equilibrium has zero capital taxes in the long run, even in the absence of government commitment.     

Collective entrepreneurship at Qualcomm: combining collective and entrepreneurial practices to turn employee ideas into action

Successful new products are essential to every company for survival in the marketplace. Especially discontinuous innovations are attractive because they can contribute to revenue growth by creating new businesses or addressing new market segments. Employees and their entrepreneurial spirit are often not fully utilized in a company's innovation activity. This paper presents a coherent methodology to promote corporate entrepreneurship and transform the creative thinking of many employees into valuable products. The application of this methodology at Qualcomm has resulted in more than 1,100 participants submitting almost 730 new business ideas, resulting in over $60 million in funding for several incubation and joint‐venture projects over the past four years, some of which have already produced innovations that the company values at over $300 million. Further, the paper discusses the limitations of this approach, its transferability to other companies as well as implications for future research.     

The legal theory of finance and the financial instability hypothesis: Convergences and possible integration

This article presents the legal theory of finance (LTF) and compares it with the financial instability hypothesis (FIH), identifying points of convergence and divergence. The study aims to contribute to the literature by connecting these theories and provides the following main conclusions. First, the LTF incorporates aspects of the FIH, as the theories share several key elements, particularly the presence of fundamental uncertainty, the constraint of liquidity, and the necessity for governments to act as lenders of last resort. Second, the liquidity concept used in the LTF can be better comprehended with the use of Keynesian and post Keynesian literature on the topic. Third, the LTF aims to advance and update certain aspects of Minsky’s theory, particularly with regard to the globalization of markets, power relations, and the interdependencies of the political economy of finance. The study concludes that the theories are more complementary than divergent and future studies should create an analytical framework that integrates the theories’ most insightful aspects.     

Management Information System – A Tool for Corporate Sustainability

This paper represents the attempt to define a methodology that can evaluate the degree to which companies' information systems correspond to needs determined by the objectives of sustainability the firm imposes on itself. The result is the creation of a general model which define the correct approach to evaluating information systems – a model which should be adapted to the specificity of each single company which intends to adopt it. In the chart indicated, we obviously have not considered activities connected to the implementation of the survey system, which are particular to each company's situation. The first part of the paper consists of an overall introduction to the approach that has been used to assess the (MIS) of Granarolo, one of the Italian companies involved. The case study contains a profile of the company, the analysis of its MIS referred to the three dimensions of sustainability, and an evaluation of the strong points and issues to be developed. This approach to evaluate the gap between desired requirements of an information system for sustainability and current data available in a firm, has proved its consistency and usefulness. It helps to understand where data are, which dimensions, spheres, stakeholders account for and what is the level of integration between different information systems existing in the firm.