ASSESSING THE EFFECT OF PUBLIC SUBSIDIES ON FIRM R&D INVESTMENT: A SURVEY

This survey examines the empirical literature on the relationship between public R&D subsidies and private R&D investment over the past five decades. The survey reveals a considerable heterogeneity of empirical results that cannot be explained fully by methodological issues. We aim to provide further explanations of the possible causes of that heterogeneity. In particular, we emphasise a set of issues that, in our view, are critical to understanding the potential effect of public R&D subsidies on private R&D spending. Special attention is paid to the dynamic aspects and composition of firm R&D, the constraints faced by the firm (such as financial constraints), and the amount and source of public subsidies. None of these issues have been investigated in depth. We formulate a set of research assumptions to guide future empirical research in this field.     

Lost in intervention. The Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson effect on the peseta/dollar real exchange rate (1870–1998)

We have decomposed the peseta/dollar real exchange rate (1870–1998) into its trend and cyclical components and used the former to proxy its time-varying equilibrium. Then, we have compared changes in the equilibrium with changes in the Spanish and the USA productivity differentials to identify years that do not fit with the Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson (HBS) hypothesis. The greatest maladjustment is found in the 1940s and 1950s, decades of strong exchange rate intervention in Spain. Conversely, the link between equilibrium and differentials adjusts to the hypothesis when using the non-intervened peseta/dollar exchange rate on the Tangier black market. These contrasting results back up the idea that exchange rate intervention, so common in developing countries, might explain their scanter evidence in favour of the HBS effect.     

Fractional integration and cointegration in merger and acquisitions in the US petroleum industry

This article employs methodologies based on fractional integration and cointegration to analyse the time-series properties of merger and acquisitions (M&A) activity and crude oil prices in the US from 1980 to 2012. Our results indicate that an increase in the crude oil price produces a significant increase in the M&A data between 2 and 3 months after the initial shock.     

Using templates and linguistic patterns to define process performance indicators

Process performance management (PPM) aims at measuring, monitoring and analysing the performance of business processes (BPs), in order to check the achievement of strategic and operational goals and to support decision-making for their optimisation. PPM is based on process performance indicators (PPIs), so having an appropriate definition of them is crucial. One of the main problems of PPIs definition is to express them in an unambiguous, complete, understandable, traceable and verifiable manner. In practice, PPIs are defined informally – usually in ad hoc, natural language, with its well-known problems – or they are defined from an implementation perspective, hardly understandable to non-technical people. In order to solve this problem, in this article we propose a novel approach to improve the definition of PPIs using templates and linguistic patterns. This approach promotes reuse, reduces both ambiguities and missing information, is understandable to all stakeholders and maintains traceability with the process model. Furthermore, it enables the automated processing of PPI definitions by its straightforward translation into the PPINOT metamodel, allowing the gathering of the required information for their computation as well as the analysis of the relationships between them and with BP elements.     

Corporate smart phones: professionals' conscious engagement in escalating work connectivity

This article explores how the adoption of company sponsored smart phones inflicts upon the lives of professionals. Drawing upon qualitative interviews at a law firm in Brazil, the experiences of new smart phone users are reported upon in detail. Increased accessibility, accuracy and speed in exchanges gave the users a sense of autonomy and flexibility. However, the technology also helped to intensify the organisation's hold on employees outside of regular working hours, reaching into new settings, time slots and social contexts. Employees expressed concerns regarding demands from superiors that negatively affected their private spheres, yet many of them paradoxically requested more efficient smart phone connectivity. The article focuses on the justifications, the different narrative strategies, employed by professionals for their conscious engagement in escalating work connectivity. It is suggested that these justifications display users' attempt to ‘dis‐identify’ with the role and practice they perform.     

Regime shifts in stock–flow I(2)–I(1) systems: the case of US fiscal sustainability

In the last two decades, fiscal sustainability has been tested through the use of non‐stationary time series analysis. Two different approximations can be found in the literature: first, a univariate approach that has focused on the stochastic properties of the stock of debt and, second, a multivariate one that has focused on the long‐run properties of the flows of expenditures and revenues, i.e., in the stochastic properties of the deficit. In this paper we unify these approaches considering the stock–flow system that fiscal variables configure. Our approach involves working in an I(2) stochastic processes framework. Given the possibility of the existence of regime shifts in the sustainability of US deficit that the literature has pointed out, we develop a new statistic that can be applied to test several types of I(2) cointegration and multicointegration relationships allowing for regime shifts. To test for these kinds of changing long‐run relationships we propose the use of a residual‐based Dickey–Fuller class of statistic that accounts for one structural break. We show that consistent estimates of the break fraction can be obtained through the minimization of the sum of squared residuals when there is I(2) cointegration. The finite sample performance of the proposed statistic is investigated by Monte Carlo simulations. The econometric methodology is applied to assess whether the US fiscal deficit and debt are sustainable. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Money,Prices and the Silver Industry during the Price Revolution

The discovery of American silver has been commonly viewed in the literature as the moving force behind the sustained rise of prices experienced by Western Europe from the early 16th to the mid-17th century. However, the mechanical connection between the money supply and the general price level implied by the Quantity Theory oversimplifies the analysis of a period characterized by different trends, some of which cannot be easily explained by the monetarist story: (i) Central Europe silver mining boomed between 1451 and 1540 following a phase of scarcity of money that was especially severe between the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century; (ii) European prices started to rise before American silver was significantly imported to the Continent; (iii) the rapid expansion of American mining coincided with the decline of the European silver industry (1540–1618); and finally (iv) Mexican and Peruvian bullion production evidenced a downward course during the period 1628–1697, but no alteration in the rising trend of European prices occurred in response. It is argued instead that the classical theory of value and distribution, emphasizing costs of production as determinants of the ‘natural’ value of commodities including precious metals, can accommodate the facts in a more consistent manner than the monetarist view.     

The relationship between high performance work systems and employee proactive behaviour: role breadth self‐efficacy and flexible role orientation as mediating mechanisms

Drawing on the contextual perspective, this study provides novel empirical evidence on how the organisational context (specifically, the firm's human resource strategy) has an effect on employee proactivity. We use matched data from managers and employees in 102 Spanish professional service firms to examine how high performance work systems contribute to enhance employee proactive behaviours through two motivational variables: role breadth self‐efficacy and flexible role orientation. Results of a multilevel study demonstrate that role breadth self‐efficacy mediates between HPWS and employee proactivity, but flexible role orientation does not mediate this relationship.