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.     

Die Anforderungen an die interne Unternehmenskommunikation in neuen Organisationskonzepten

This article mainly concentrates on two questions: 1. What functions does an internal corporate communication perform in a learning organization, and in relation to knowledge management? 2. Under which conditions or circumstances can internal corporate communication fulfill these functions? In the concepts of organizational learning and knowledge management, internal communication gains an important productive function in generating, processing and saving knowledge. Instruments and tools such as face-to-face communication, internal magazines, information boards and the use of an intranet are discussed. As far as the generation, production and saving of knowledge are concerned, the instrument of face-to-face communication and the intranet are gaining special importance. In order to cope with these functional challenges, the internal corporate communication has to institutionalize selective incentives and motivating factors. For generating and saving knowledge, the actors’ reception of these media of communication seems of great importance also: Only a unified «community of practice» is able to transform information into knowledge.     

Liberalisation of the capital markets in developing countries

Intereconomics - The domestic capital markets of developing countries are typically subject to serious inefficiencies. This article shows how these inefficiencies can be eliminated without...     

私人部门在满足医疗需求方面的作用（上）

本文就私人部门在满足医疗需求方面的作用进行分析,认为如果私人部门能够得到有效监管,并按照社会道德认同的方式进行运转,一国医疗体系就能够受益于私人部门。本部分探讨了医疗体系的基本功能及其目标,介绍了绝对平均主义、两阶层医疗体系和多阶层医疗体系三种分配医疗服务的观点,指出当前用货币价值衡量医疗产出价值是次优选择;而衡量医疗服务分配效率也存在争议。     

Abschaffung der Abgeltungsteuer — gerechter und steuersystematisch einheitlicher?

There is a rising political discussion in Germany around abolishing the final withholding tax on capital income. The German tax reforms that introduced this tax lowered tax rates, in particular on interest income. According to some authors, the growing inequality of income and property is a strong argument for the higher taxation of capital income. However, other authors argue that the neutrality aspects concerning private investment are inadequate. An abolishment of the final withholding tax would not solve these problems and, moreover, would turn back the achieved improvements. Therefore, the German Council of Economic Experts suggests complementing the previous reforms by introducing an allowance for corporate equity.     

Soziale Lage — Was sind die drängendsten Probleme?

Democracy seems to be at risk. People elect populists and autocrats, who offer simple solutions to social problems. Often, these problems are not even real ones but are only perceived as such. Economists have measures to determine which problems are fact-based, but they cannot draw a clear distinction between academic analysis and normative demand. If politics pursues a correction of a market outcome, any normative criteria other than efficiency have to be outlined explicitly. Nevertheless, some authors consider inequality one of the central contemporary social and economic challenges. Marcel Fratzscher emphasises that the solution is not found in more redistribution via taxes and transfers, but rather through greater equality of opportunity and social and educational mobility. Bert Rürup thinks that to stabilise the acceptance of the compulsory pension scheme, the dominance of the equivalence principle should be reduced. Further, the existence of different federal subsidy schemes should be replaced by a fixed federal contribution rate in alignment with the pension expenditures. In an international comparison, the fiscal burden for households with small and mid-level earned incomes is exceptionally high in Germany. In order to reduce this burden, Rürup suggests a contribution-free allowance for the social insurance contributions.     

Fostering entrepreneurship in distressed urban neighbourhoods

During the last decade entrepreneurship research has focused increasingly on spatial aspects of entrepreneurship. Many systematic studies have been conducted on the national or regional scale, although other geographical scales—cities and their single districts and neighbourhoods—have drawn less attention. In this context, the paper aims, firstly, at identifying spatial success factors of entrepreneurial activities and their promotion at the local scale. Secondly, the paper aims at contributing to the development of a conceptual frame at the interface of entrepreneurship research, urban and economic geography, and regional economics. Empirically, the paper draws on results from explorative case studies in two distressed urban areas.     

Do Spillovers Stimulate Incremental or Drastic Product Innovations? Evidence from German Establishment Data*

Despite the generally recognized importance of knowledge spillovers, the empirical literature is essentially silent on the type of innovation stimulated by spillovers. We estimate the determinants of product innovations differing in their degree of newness to the adopting firm. Knowledge spillovers from rivals have a positive impact on incremental innovations. This impact is largely independent of participation in R&D cooperation. Spillovers exert no such independent influence on drastic innovation activities. The results support the hypothesis that establishments face difficulties in using knowledge that comes from areas they are not familiar with. Establishments exploit spillovers for incremental innovations rather than for drastic innovations. To some degree R&D cooperation can help to overcome the difficulties in using spillovers for drastic innovations. Furthermore, our estimates provide evidence that the firm's own R&D effort and the use of outside information are substitutes.     

How well do conservation auctions perform in achieving landscape‐level outcomes? A comparison of auction formats and bid selection criteria

This paper studies the performance of auction design features regarding pricing mechanisms and bid selection criteria for securing wildlife zones across different holdings. We compare two pricing mechanisms: a discriminatory‐price auction and a uniform‐price ascending auction, and four bid selection criteria on the basis of: total bid, bid‐per‐value ratio, bid‐per‐area ratio and a mixed criterion where bids are formed on the basis of cost but they are selected based on the bid‐per‐value ratio. We develop a best‐response group‐bidding model for a discriminatory‐price auction where bidders form optimal group bids for individual wildlife zones. In the uniform‐price ascending auction, individual landholders respond to prices, which are successively raised by the auctioneer and whenever all the landholders from a single zone agree to participate (i.e. the first zone is formed), the auction stops. Based on numerical simulations using a bio‐economic model of malleefowl conservation, we observe that the discriminatory‐price auction is more cost‐effective than the uniform‐price ascending auction. However, the budgetary cost‐effectiveness of a discriminatory‐price auction is sensitive to bidder uncertainty about the number of competing bidder groups and the highest cost of establishing a wildlife zone among these groups. In terms of bid selection, the mixed bid selection criterion performs best. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.