Growth and poverty in India: emerging dimensions of the tertiary sector

The economic reforms of the 1990s have accelerated the tertiarisation of the Indian economy. New activities both in the manufacturing and tertiary sectors have emerged and also seem to have generated employment opportunities that did not exist earlier. Though many such opportunities are available only to the highly skilled and/or educated workforce, the indirect effects are of considerable significance in that they manifest the percolation effects of growth. In this context, the present study aims at examining the nature and composition of the tertiary sector's growth across the major states in India and relates such growth patterns to changes in poverty. On the whole, results are indicative that a large tertiary sector is not as superfluous as is often said to be. It has the potential to enhance economic growth and therefore contribute to poverty reduction.     

Re-scaling risk governance using local appraisal and community involvement

This paper describes a risk governance model applied on a local scale, showing the advantages and constraints found during its application. The risk governance model, built on a municipal scale, results from the application of the International Risk Governance Council framework. The model is characterised by the cyclicity between the assessment and management spheres, assuming communication to be essential in all stages. Its application in central Portugal is rooted in a specific knowledge of hazards and their impacts, the human and financial constraints, and the expectations of citizens and stakeholders. The results show that preformatted management solutions derived from national civil protection stakeholders can be adapted to a local physical, social and institutional context. It was found that this depends significantly on the stakeholders’ concerns assessment, as this allows the subsequent risk management options to be adapted and legitimised. As a result, more appropriate land-use regulations and mitigation strategies are being designed, which are related to urban planning, road design, risk sensitisation and communication tools. However, two features are likely to lead to an overlapping of competences and conflicts concerning responsibility for decision-making in the actual civil protection structure: the current constraints on resources on an operational level and the potentially inadequate representation of stakeholders on a strategic level.     

Contractual implications of international trade in tacit knowledge

This article searches for evidence on the additional difficulty the parties have in contracting for the transfer of know-how relative to the transfer of patented technology. A sample of contracts for the acquisition of technology Spanish firms in 1991 is analysed to find a positive relationship between contract duration and the likelihood of transferring know-how in unaffiliated transfers. It is also found that technical assistance is bundled together with the transfer of know-how, suggesting that the parties try to mitigate opportunistic behaviour on the licensor's side.     

Mergers,coordinated effects and efficiency in the Portuguese non-life insurance industry

We evaluate the impact on market power and efficiency of a series of mergers on three Portuguese non-life insurance markets. We specify and estimate, with a panel of firm-level data, a structural model which includes: preferences, technology, and a market equilibrium condition. Firms' demand curves are not very elastic. Firms' technologies exhibit scale and scope economies and high cost efficiency scores. We find that, for the period following the mergers, there is no evidence of: (i) an increase in market power through coordinated behavior, or (ii) changes in cost efficiency levels. In addition, social welfare increased.     

Nowcasting unemployment rate and new car sales in south-western Europe with Google Trends

This work presents a study describing the use of Internet search information to achieve an improved nowcasting ability with simple autoregressive models, using data from four countries and two different application domains with social and economic significance: unemployment rate and car sales. The results we obtained differ by country/language and application area. In the case of unemployment, we find that Google Trends data lead to the improvement of nowcasts in three out of the four considered countries: Portugal, France and Italy. However, there are sometimes important differences in the predictive ability of these data when we consider different out-of-sample periods. For car sales, we find that, in some cases, the volume of search queries helps explaining the variance of the car sales data. However, we find little support for the hypothesis that search query data may improve predictions, and we present several possible reasons for these results. Taking all results into account, we conclude that, when Google Trends variables are significantly different from zero in-sample, they tend to lead to improvements in out-of-sample predictive ability. The results can have implications for nowcasting, by providing some indications regarding the advantage or not of the use of search data to improve simple models and indirectly by highlighting the sensitivity of the approach to the actual country-specific base, nowcasting period and search data.     

PDO Beef Recognition: How Can We Improve It?

There is agreement that product origin affects its quality evaluations. Though existing legislation makes use of this fact, recognition of such terms and symbols is quite low and taking advantage of origin as a differentiation source is often lost. Using a sample of Portuguese consumers and Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) beef, results confirm low level of PDO label recognition. It is not enough to communicate that a PDO label is linked to a particular region, but other aspects should be highlighted, namely, products' experience attributes. Efforts should be made to improve communication to the consumer of what a PDO label exactly stands for.     

Mergers in the food retailing sector: An empirical investigation

We address the problem of merger evaluation, for competition policy purposes, in the retailing sector. The likely effects of a possible merger are analysed ex ante. The novelty of the paper lies in the inclusion of downstream and upstream market power effects on the retailers. Also, it provides an empirical application to the Portuguese food retailing market. The effects of additional concentration on prices are estimated, as well as the price reduction insiders are likely to obtain via an improved bargaining position. The final effect on prices depends on how these cost reductions are reflected in insiders’ prices, i.e., on the pass-through rate. For realistic values of this rate we find that the merger in question will most likely increase consumer prices and, therefore, should not be allowed on an antitrust legislation basis.     

Knowledge interaction towards inclusive learning: Promoting systems of innovation and competence building

This paper draws on recent conceptual approaches to economic growth, in which the accumulation of knowledge is the fundamental driving force behind growth. This fact is reflected in the trend in developed economies towards an increasing investment in advanced technology, R&D, education, and culture. Concepts such as learning ability, creativity, and sustained flexibility gain greater importance as guiding principles for the conduct of individuals, institutions, nations, and regions. It is thus legitimate to question the traditional way of viewing the role that contemporary institutions play in the process of economic development and to argue for the need to promote systems of innovation and competence building based on learning and knowledge networks. This broad concept has motivated the work behind the present work, which reviews the strongest themes of the 4th International Conference on Technology Policy and Innovation (ICTPI), which was held in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, in August of 2000. Under the broad designation of “learning and knowledge networks,” the conference brought together a range of experts to discuss technology, policy, and management in a context much influenced by a dynamics of change and a necessary balance between the creation and diffusion of knowledge. While the idea of inclusive development developed in previous conferences entails a process of shared prosperity across the globe following local specific conditions, it is crucial to understand the dynamics of the process of knowledge accumulation, which drives a learning society. Thus, this special issue includes a set of extended contributions to the Curitiba conference that are largely grounded on empirical experiences of different regional and national contexts. The aim of this introductory paper is to set the stage for these contributions, with an original contribution on possible views for the learning society.     

Getting Institutions "Right" for Whom? Credit Constraints and the Impact of Property Rights on the Quantity and Composition of Investment

Property rights reform is typically hypothesized to boost investment through investment demand and credit supply effects. Yet when the credit supply effect is muted, property rights reform would be expected to induce liquidity-constrained farms to reduce investment in movable capital even as they increase investment in attached capital. This expectation is corroborated by econometric analysis of panel data from Paraguay. While all farmers experience a positive investment demand effect, liquidity-constrained producers correspondingly reduce their demand for movable capital. Given an estimated pattern of wealth-biased liquidity constraints, property rights reform will get institutions "right" for only wealthier producers.     

Endogenous capacity utilization and macroeconomic persistence

This paper presents a monetary dynamic general equilibrium model featuring a strong internal propagation mechanism. Limited short-run factor substitutability and idiosyncratic demand uncertainty play a prominent role in the results. Firms are ex post heterogeneous and a well defined distribution of capacity utilization rates characterizes the equilibrium of the model. The economy responds gradually to aggregate shocks since firms with excess capacity can raise production without experiencing large increases in their marginal costs. The modeling framework presented in this paper offers a plausible microeconomic interpretation for reduced form mark-up shocks typically considered in the “new Keynesian” literature.