The Structure of Networks in Industrial Districts

In research on industrial districts, network relations among firms and organizations are considered critical for the development and diffusion of new knowledge, with implications for innovation and regional development. A review of this literature, however, suggests that many investigators are surprisingly silent, conceptually and empirically, about the structure of innovative networks, although they often couch their arguments implicitly in structural language. The survey of a sample of 64 empirical industrial district studies shows that few researchers have measured and analysed network structures, and none have studied performance outcomes of variations in network structure. An evolutionary perspective is used to propose a research agenda for a better understanding of the relationship between network structure and innovation. Dans les recherches sur les districts industriels, les réseaux relationnels entre entreprises et organisations sont jugés essentiels pour le développement et la diffusion de nouvelles connaissances, d'où des implications pour l'innovation et l'expansion régionale. A la lumière de ces documents, on constate néanmoins que de nombreux enquèteurs sont étonnamment silencieux, à la fois au plan conceptuel et empirique, sur la structure des réseaux innovants, m? me s'ils formulent souvent leurs arguments implicitement dans un langage structural. L'examen d'un échantillon de 64 études empiriques sur les districts industriels montre que peu de chercheurs ont mesuré et analysé les structures en réseau, et qu'aucun n'a étudié les performances à la suite des variations dans ce type de structure. Appliquant une perspective évolutionniste, l'article propose un programme de recherches pour une meilleure compréhension de la relation entre structure en réseau et innovation.     

Ramsey Pricing and Environmental Regulation

The optimal pricing rule for public enterprises maximizing welfare under a profit constraint is well known. The paper extends the analysis to the case of production externalities and considers price regulation under various forms of environmental regulation which is assumed to be performed by a separate environmental agency. The modified Ramsey prices depend on the institutional setting. If the enterprise is liable for the damages it causes the externality is fully internalized. If an environmental tax is imposed the way its revenue is spent turns out to be crucial. The connection to Pigouvian taxes under imperfect competition is illuminated.     

Finanzkrise: Schwierige Zeiten für Konjunkturprognosen!

Ohne Zusammenfassung Udo Ludwig ist Leiter der Abteilung „Makro?konomik“ des Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle (IWH)     

Entscheidungsbedingte Kaufkraftverluste: Formen,Umfang und verbraucherpolitische Relevanz

Zusammenfassung Entscheidungsbedingte Kaufkraftverluste treten dann auf, wenn Verbraucher wegen beschränkter Markttransparenz Kaufentscheidungen treffen, die zu finanziellen Einbußen fürhren. Am Beispiel von drei verbraucherinformationspolitischen Maßnahmen werden Formen und Umfang entscheidungsbedingter Kaufkraftverluste herausgearbeitet. Vielleicht gelingt es, mit Hilfe dieser Kaufkraftverluste erste Auswahlkriterien und erste Ansätze einer Erfolgskontrolle im Rahmen der Verbraucherpolitik aufzuzeigen. Vielleicht gelingt es aber auch, dem Verbraucher den potentiellen finanziellen Schaden uninformierten Kaufentscheidungsverhaltens vor Augen zu führen, in der Hoffnung, daß er nun eher dazu motiviert ist, sich nicht nur bei extensiven Kaufentscheidungsprozessen informationsaktiver zu verhalten.

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Monetary losses caused by uninformed purchase decisions: About their implications for consumer policy and various ways of calculating them

Frequently, the uninformed consumer makes buying decisions which differ from the decisions of the information seeker. Often, this takes the form of products with a higher price but not corresponding improvement of quality being chosen, or products with a lower quality but no corresponding reduction in price. In both cases, the uninformed consumer suffers a monetary loss (a loss in money income, Morris & Bronson, 1970).In this paper, three ways of calculating such a monetary loss are presented. Two of these are taken from the literature (Granger & Billson, 1972; Russo, 1977) and concern the calculation of real losses which result from the choice of unnecessarily expensive products, owing to difficulties in calculating and comparing unit prices, when stores do not make these extremely manifest. The third calculation concerns a more hypothetical entity, the potential loss that can be incurred by choosing the most expensive brand in a product class rather than the cheapest of those brands which have been rated as very good by the German product-testing agency Stiftung Warentest. In turns out that these potential losses are oftentimes very large. The author is of the opinion that the relative size of these losses can be used for selecting those classes of products where the need for consumer actions, above all for information about prices and qualities, is particulary urgent. Furthermore, the efficiency of such actions can be measured in terms of changes in the size of the losses. The consumers themselves might also be induced towards more extensive pre-purchase search, were they made aware of the size of these potential losses.

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Udo Beier ist Professor für Wirtschaftslehre des Haushalts und Verbraucherpolitik an der Universität Hamburg, Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft, Von-Melle-Park 8, D-2000 Hamburg 13.     

The UMVUE ofP(X<Y) based on type-II censored samples from Weinman multivariate exponential distributions

Based on two independent samples from Weinman multivariate exponential distributions with unknown scale parameters, uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimators ofP(X<Y) are obtained for both, unknown and known common location parameter. The samples are permitted to be Type-II censored with possibly different numbers of observations. Since sampling from two-parameter exponential distributions is contained in the model as a particular case, known results for complete and censored samples are generalized. In the case of an unknown common location parameter with a certain restriction of the model, the UMVUE is shown to have a Gauss hypergeometric distribution, which is further examined. Moreover, explicit expressions for the variances of the estimators are derived and used to calculate the relative efficiency.     

Cross-Hedging of Exchange-Rate Risk

For currencies with highly developed forward markets a well-known separation theorem holds which implies that international firms fully hedge the exchange rate risk if the forward markets are unbiased. In this paper we present a model of a risk-averse firm when perfect hedging instruments are not available. Instead the firm can cross-hedge the exchange-rate risk by using the forward markets of a third country's currency. We demonstrate that the unbiasedness of all forward markets does not imply full hedge, although the firm has the option to hedge all the risks.     

Measures of distance between income distributions

This paper presents a class of measures of distance between two income distributions. The measures are based on distribution functions and evaluate the degree of inequality of income between two populations. This class of measures is derived by an axiomatic approach and it is completely characterized by the properties normally associated with a distance function and a set of axioms.