International technological spillovers from ICT‐producing manufacturing industries: a panel data analysis

This paper examines the effect of the international diffusion of technological capacity from ICT sectors on the total factor productivity in developed countries. Special attention is paid to the construction of a more recent and homogeneous industry‐level data set using unit value ratios and a hedonic price index. A cointegration analysis is performed on this annual panel data for 10 manufacturing sectors in six OECD countries over the period 1979–2001.

On the basis of our results, we may conclude that a country receives more international technology spillovers in its manufacturing industries the closer its relations with more technologically advanced nations are and the more open it is to imports. Meanwhile, information and communication technologies developed abroad increase the total factor productivity of each of the manufacturing sectors of a country, and this effect is enhanced where ICT goods are imported from nations with advanced technology of this kind.     

The Weakness Of Symbolic Boundaries: Handling Exclusion Among Montevideo's Squatters

This article argues that material conditions limit the possibilities of symbolic boundaries becoming markers of social differentiation, especially among stigmatized groups. Using squatter settlements in Montevideo, Uruguay, as a case study, it shows that symbolic boundaries are hard to maintain when material conditions and the stigmas associated with certain places work against them. Based on participant observation and oral histories, it analyses how squatters experienced the move to a squatter settlement. It argues that, for many, it was a way to resist exclusion, a struggle to belong to the city and to protect a social position that structural changes under neoliberalism had put at risk. This required engaging in difficult symbolic boundary work to distinguish themselves from cantegriles—poor and crowded older shantytowns—and claim dignity as workers and residents of a regular city neighbourhood. Yet, there were many limits to their fight in an increasingly fragmented city. Through follow‐up visits to several settlements over almost two decades and tracking the case in the local press, through available survey data and secondary literature, this article offers a longitudinal perspective of symbolic boundaries in the making.     

FASHION AND THE GOVERNANCE OF KNOWLEDGE IN A TRADITIONAL INDUSTRY: THE CASE OF THE FOOTWEAR SECTORAL INNOVATION SYSTEM IN THE NORTHERN REGION OF PORTUGAL

Abstract

The paper deals with the footwear industry as a sectoral innovation system. It particularly focuses on the incidental role of fashion in restructuring and innovation within the footwear production. The importance taken by fashion leads towards a more complicated reading of the recent changes of this industry, regarding its organization, innovation processes, and its mode of technological knowledge governance. More especially, within the traditional footwear industry, low levels of knowledge appropriability were combined with low cumulativeness in firms with low-innovative activity. However, as fashion was incorporated in the footwear industry, technological knowledge governance evolves towards higher cumulativeness at least at the industry level. This contribution discusses in detail the pervasiveness of fashion onto the footwear industry. It especially shows how the numerous agents involved in the fashion knowledge production and their geographical concentration allow for increasing returns when they align well with knowledge cumulativeness at the industry level. It also reveals that the renewed knowledge base of fashion exhibits a higher degree of tacitness and typically develops along an external localized knowledge base.     

Productivity,technical efficiency and technological change in French agriculture during 2002-2015: a Färe-Primont index decomposition using group frontiers and meta-frontier

The objective of the article is to assess productivity change in French agriculture during 2002–2015; namely, total factor productivity (TFP) change and its components – technological change and efficiency change. For this, we use the Färe-Primont index which verifies the multiplicatively completeness property and is also transitive, allowing for multi-temporal and -lateral comparisons. We investigate the extent of heterogeneity within each type of farming sub-sample in terms of TFP change, with the help of the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI). In addition, to compare the technologies among the five types of farming considered, we extend our analysis to the meta-frontier framework. Results indicate that during 2002–2015, all farms experienced TFP progress. The smallest average increase was experienced by the dairy farms and the largest by the field crop farms and the beef farms. The latter had the strongest technological progress but a deterioration in efficiency, while the opposite was found for field crop farms. The analysis of HHI reveals that sheep or goat farms are the most homogenous in terms of the direction of TFP change experienced over the period 2002–2015. The meta-frontier analysis shows that field crop farms’ technology is the most productive of all the types of farming.     

The effects of public infrastructure on the cost structure of Spanish industries

This paper examines the impact of public infrastructures on the performance of Spanish private business at a disaggregated industry level. We use duality theory to recover the productivity effects of public capital by calculating the cost saving effects that are associated to public services. Using a translog cost function we present panel estimates for 14 Spanish industries during the period 1980–1991. Our results strongly suggest that public capital formation can be considered to be an instrument to improve competitiveness by reducing production costs. However, the results also indicate that there is a technologically induced labor saving effect through higher public investment. Furthermore, our estimates suggest that a distinction among industries is of importance because the effects of public infrastructures vary across industries considerably.     

Consumer power and market control: Exploring consumer behaviour in affluent contexts (1946–1980)

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to present and explain the emergence and decay of two unorthodox views of consumer behaviour that developed from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s: the view of the powerful consumer and the view of market control by producers. It begins by presenting their common origins in empirical studies that opposed the Keynesian-type analysis of consumption. While the first developed into the program of behavioural economics defended by George Katona of the Michigan Survey Research Center, the second nourished the contributions of authors like Galbraith (1958, 1967, 1977), Scitovsky (1954, 1962, 1976) and Mishan (1960, 1967).     

Earning functions in Portugal 1982–1994: Evidence from quantile regressions

This paper uses quantile regressions to describe the conditional wage distribution in Portugal and its evolution over the 1980s as well as the implications for increased wage inequality. We find that, although returns to schooling are positive at all quantiles, education is relatively more valued for highly paid jobs. Consequently, schooling has a positive impact on wage inequality. Moreover, this tendency has sharpened over the period. We also find that most of the estimated change in wage inequality was due to changes in the distribution of the worker's attributes, rather than to increased inequality within a particular type of worker. this version: January 2000     

Decision-making under risk: Editing procedures based on correlated similarities, and preference overdetermination

This paper studies editing procedures based on similarity relations in an expected utility maximization context. It shows that these procedures are compatible both with a family of difference-correlated similarities on the prize space and with a set of families (one for each probability) of ratio-correlated similarity relations on the probability space. In view of the properties satisfied by these families of correlated similarities, it is suggested that Rubinstein's preference overdetermination problem can be avoided. Received: 17 April 1996 / Accepted: 24 September 1998     

Error correction exchange rate modeling: Evidence for Mexico

A set of error correction models are proposed for the nominal exchange rate between the Mexican peso and the United States dollar. The basic theoretical frameworks utilize balance of payments and monetary constructs. Empirical estimation results are fairly weak for both specifications irrespective of the interest rate variable selected. Although dynamic simulation properties of the equations are acceptable, in no case do they generate levels of accuracy that exceed those associated with a random walk. Partial funding support for this research was provided by El Paso Electric Company, the Fulbright Council for International Exchange of Scholars, the Center for Inter American and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Econometric research assistance was provided by David Torres and Roberto Tinajero. Helpful comments were provided by two anonymous referees, Joachim Zietz, Luis Berrnardo Torres, and participants at the 2001 American Statistical Association meetings in Atlanta.     

Sustainable use of renewable resources: an identity approach

Despite the achievements obtained by environmental economics over recent decades, it shares the same failings as economic theory in general. In this sense, regarding preferences, very little attention has been paid to three elements; the long-term change in social preferences, the incorporation of non-economic factors in the structure of preferences, and the need to consider some kind of heterogeneity in social preferences. In this paper we deal with these three issues by developing a new framework which encloses non-economic factors as one of the driving forces to explain consumer behavior and which allows us to endogeneize preference and consider heterogeneity. After setting up our approach, we pose the question as to how far such a framework modifies the levels of use and consumption of a renewable resource. Our findings have enabled us to draw interesting conclusions regarding environmental policies in place since the 1970s.