The Change Bookshelf

This article provides in‐depth reviews of books focused on change at the individual, group, and organization levels. It identifies the critical dimensions necessary to change at each of these three levels and then selects the books that provide the best understanding of change for each level. Whether the reader wishes to understand underlying theories of change or wishes to find practical guides to essential steps in the change process, the needed resources are reviewed in this article. For the HR manager, who more often than not, is responsible for guiding those who would change, this set of eleven books constitutes a must bookshelf. Finally, other key references in the area of change are annotated if the reader wishes to enlarge his/her bookshelf. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Inflation Targeting as a Framework for Monetary Policy: A Cross-Country Analysis

This study makes use of a dynamic Taylor‐type model to examine the conduct of monetary policy by central banks that profess to engage in inflation targeting. Previous research regarding inflation targeting and Taylor‐type rules is reviewed and a dynamic Taylor‐type model is developed. Tests for regime shifts upon the adoption of inflation targeting indicate a significant change in policy in each of the nations in the study for which sufficient data were available. Next, the central bank reaction functions were estimated. Results suggest that most of the central banks conducted a policy of inflation targeting by seeking to contain inflationary pressures rather than reacting to current inflation.     

The Small Firm in a Quantity Choosing Game: Some Experimental Evidence

We demonstrate with a grim trigger strategy that the small firm should be more willing to collude tacitly as its market share declines; large firms should be less willing to cooperate. The small firm is not a maverick. The intensity of rivalry between two firms with asymmetric market shares is studied in experimental markets. Treatments give duopolists (1) 50% shares, (2) a 60 or 40% share, and (3) an 80 or 20% share. Choices for the small firm in the latter treatments are not significantly larger than the collusive choice. Irrespective of relative size, firms in all three market environments exhibit collusive behavior.     

PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH AND WORKER REALLOCATION*

Productivity dispersion across firms is large and persistent, and worker reallocation among firms is an important source of productivity growth. An equilibrium model of growth and firm evolution designed to clarify the role of worker reallocation in the growth process is studied. We show that it explains the correlations between size measures and labor productivity found in Danish firm data. Conditions under which the reallocation of workers from less to more productive firms contributes to aggregate productivity growth in the economy modeled are derived. Finally, a proof of existence of an equilibrium solution to the model is also provided.     

Computers And Growth

The purpose of this paper is to describe the impact of investment in computers on the growth of the U.S. economy. The economic literature on computers is relatively rich in information on the decline in computer prices and the growth of computer investment. Constant quality price indices for computers have been included in the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) since 1986. These indices employ state of the art methodology to capture the rapid evolution of computer technology.

While the annual inflation rate for overall investment has been 3.66 percent for the period 1958 to 1992, computer prices have declined by 19.13 percent per year! Similarly, overall investment grew at 3.82 percent, while investment in computers increased at an astounding 44.34 percent! These familiar facts describe growth in the output of computers. The objective of this paper is to complete the picture by analyzing the growth of computer services as inputs.

In a pioneering paper Bresnahan (1986) has focused on pecuniary externalities arising from the rapid decline in computer prices. Griliches (1992, 1994) has emphasized the distinction between pecuniary and nonpecuniary externalities in the impact of computer investment on growth. This paper is limited to pecuniary externalities or the impact of reductions in computer prices on the substitution of computer services for other inputs. As Griliches (1992) points out, this is an essential first step in identifying nonpecuniary externalities or ‘spill-overs’ through the impact of a decline in computer prices on productivity growth. ^{* *}Brynjolfsson (1993) has proveded a detailed survey of studies of nonpecuniary externalities or ‘spill overs’. Recent studies include those of Brynjolfsson and Hitt (1994a, 1994b) and Lichtenberg (1993).

In two important papers Stephen D. Oliner (1993, 1994) has introduced a model of computer technology that greatly facilitates the measurement of computer services as inputs. In this paper we estimate computer stocks and flows of computer services for all forms of computer investment included in NIPA. We construct estimates of computer services parallel to NIPA data on computer investment by combining these data with information on computer inventories. For example, the International Data Corporation (IDC) Census of Computer Processors includes an annual inventory of processors in the U.S.

In Section 1 we present data on investment in computers and constant quality price indices from NIPA. These data incorporate important innovations in modeling computer technology stemming from a joint study by IBM and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) completed in 1985. This study utilized a ‘hedonic’ methodology for constructing an econometric model of computer prices that accurately reflects rapid changes in computer technology. This methodology generates an index of computer prices that holds the quality of computers constant.

In Section 2 we present the model of computer services originated by Oliner (1993,1994). This differs in important respects from the model of capital services used in the previous studies of U.S. economic growth surveyed by Jorgenson (1989,1990). The model employed in previous studies is based on the decline in productive capacity with the chronological age of a capital good. Oliner assumes that computers maintain their productive capacity until they are retired. Decline in productive capacity occurs only through removal of used computers from the inventory through retirement.

In Section 3 we construct estimates of stocks of computers that incorporate IDC data on computer inventories and derive the implied flow of computer services. While output of computer investments has grown very rapidly, the input of computer services has grown even faster. The price of these services has declined at 23.22 percent per year over the period 1958 to 1992, while the input of these services has grown at 52.82 percent! This is prima facie evidence of an important role for computer price declines as a source of pecuniary externalities.

In Section 4 we combine computer services with the services of other types of capital to produce a measure of capital input into the U.S. economy. We link this with labor input to obtain the contributions of both inputs to U.S. economic growth, arriving at the growth of productivity as a residual. We find that the contribution of computer services to input into the U.S. economy is far more important than the contribution of computer investments to output. This is a significant step toward resolution of the Solow paradox: ‘We see computers everywhere except in the productivity statistics. ^{* *}Robert M. Solow, quoted by Brynjolfsson (1993). Declines in computer prices generate very sizable pecuniary externalities through the substitution of computer services for other inputs. By contrast Solow focuses on nonpecuniary externalities that would appear as productivity growth.

In Section 5 we conclude that information on inventories of computers is critical in quantifying the role of computer services as inputs. The constant quality price indices for computers incorporated into NIPA are also essential. A price index for computers that reflects only general trends in inflation would result in a highly distorted perspective on the growth of GDP and capital services, especially during the past decade. To capture the contribution of all forms of investment to U.S. economic growth, similar price indices should be included in NIPA for capital goods with rapidly evolving technologies, as proposed by Gordon (1990).

The long term goal should be a unified system of income. product, and wealth accounts, like that proposed by Laurits Christensen and Jorgenson (1973) and Jorgenson (1980). This incorporates capital stocks, capital services, and their prices. Achieving this goal will necessitate much greater elaboration of the accounting system described in Section 3. These accounts would incorporate data on prices and quantities of investment, stocks of assets, and capital services for all forms of capital employed in the U.S. economy.     

Notes on Contributors

In recent political-economic theories of ‘nature’, Mill and Marx/Engels form important reference points. Ecological economists see Mill's ‘stationary state’ as seminal, while Marxists have ‘brought capitalism back in’ to debates on growth and climate change, sparking a Marxological renaissance that has overturned our understanding of Marx/Engels' opus. This article explores aspects of Mill's and Marx/Engels' work and contemporary reception. It identifies a resemblance between their historical dialectics. Marx's communism is driven by logics of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ (including the ‘tendency of profit rates to fall’). In Mill's dialectic a ‘thesis’, material progress, calls forth its ‘antithesis’, diminishing returns. The inevitable ‘Aufhebung’ is a stationary state of wealth and population; Mill mentions countervailing tendencies but fails to consider their capacity to postpone utopia's arrival. Today, Mill's schema lives on in ecological economics, shorn of determinism but with its market advocacy intact. It appears to contrast with the ‘productive forces expansion’ espoused by Marx/Engels. They stand accused of ‘Promethean arrogance’, ignoring ‘natural limits’ and ‘gambling on abundance’. But I find these criticisms to be ill-judged, and propose an alternative reading, arguing that their work contains a critique of the ‘growth paradigm’, and that their ‘cornucopian’ ends do not sanction ‘Promethean’ means.     

Interpreting shocks to the relative price of investment with a two-sector model

Consumption and investment comove over the business cycle in response to shocks that permanently move the price of investment. The interpretation of these shocks has relied on standard one-sector models or on models with two or more sectors that can be aggregated. We show that the same interpretation can also be motivated with a model that captures key features of the US Input–Output Tables and cannot be aggregated into a standard one-sector model. Our alternative model yields a closer match to the empirical evidence of positive comovement for consumption and investment subject shocks that permanently move the price of investment.     

Transferable quotas,enforcement costs and typical firms: An empirical application to the Norwegian trawler fleet

An alternative to traditional regulations of fisheries to avoid rent dissipation is the use of individual transferable quotas (ITQ _s ) where prices in the quota market provide the necessary information to owners of harvest rights to contract with each other. However, even under such a decentralized regime, information on the underlying technology of the fishing vessels is also necessary. First, since most fisheries consist of many interrelated production processes, in order to avoid rent dissipation by discarding wrong output mix etc., the structure of production in the multispecies fishery must be known to design a proper quota system. Second, an ITQ system may create incentives for misreporting by understating the actual catch. This may especially be the case where the expected degree of self-enforcement is low. The paper proposes a way to reduce the information requirements under regulation with asymmetric information by constructing a typical firm and comparing performance for the other vessels to this firm. Based on the typical firm, and if the industry is relatively homogenous, the performance and hence catch of any other firm in the industry can be predicted within a certain range. Further, the paper applies this idea to the Norwegian trawler fleet to assess the production structure in terms of jointness, input-output separability, and the supply and demand elasticities for the fishing firms. This information characterizes the fishery and thus how the quota system may be designed and how to construct a yardstick in order to reduce the enforcement cost under a decentralized regulation of ITQs.The authors would like to thank Trond Bjørndal, Røgnvaldur Hannesson, Ola Flaaten and two referees for useful comments and suggestions.     

General Equilibrium Tragedy of the Commons

Many poor economies depend on open access resources for their livelihoods. Households in resource-based economies allocate their time and other factors between resource extraction and other activities. As a result, factors may shift from one sector to another as marginal returns change. This has two important implications. First, it implies potentially strong linkages between resource and non-resource sectors. Second, it means that unmanaged resources cause inefficient allocations of inputs across all sectors, and the effects of resource management spill into other sectors. We construct a local general equilibrium model that accounts for inputs that over-allocate to an open access resource and create a general equilibrium tragedy of the commons. This model describes resource rent dissipation more adequately in economies with mobile factors than a model with slowly dissipating rents. Perfectly mobile factors dissipate rent in every period, but endogenous wages cause labor and capital allocations to change with the resource stock. We use the model to illustrate medium-run impacts of a limit on capital in an artisanal fishery in Honduras. Simulation results reveal that fishery management has economy-wide impacts on prices and wages. Managers in developing countries thus should consider these linkages when implementing policies to conserve fish stocks.     

The influence of black markets on a queue-rationed centrally planned economy

In centrally planned economies in which prices are fixed, and the rationing mechanism is waiting line queues, we show that an equilibrium of waiting times exists. We then introduce a “black market” in which individuals can trade commodities that they have acquired through the official economy. An equilibrium of black market prices and waiting times is shown to exist; further, the economy with a black market is “queue-efficient.”. However, the introduction of black markets is not necessarily a Pareto improvement over an economy without black markets (even when we allow winners to compensate losers).