Effects of Collaborative Communication on NPD Collaboration Results: Two Routes of Influence

Although NPD collaboration with external partners has become the next generation in NPD practice, the discussion concerning how to organize collaboration so as to obtain better results is far from over. Since communication is the most important element in successful interfirm exchange, this study focuses on the impact of collaborative communication and its facets—frequency, formality, reciprocal feedback, and rationality—on NPD collaboration results. In order to explain how collaborative communication can best be managed to enhance NPD collaboration results, this research combines the relational and resource‐based views, proposing the existence of two routes of influence: the direct resource‐based route and the indirect relational route mediated by trust. Using a sample of 207 NPD collaboration projects of innovative firms, empirical findings indicate that reciprocal feedback–rationality and frequency play an important role in product quality and adherence to budget and schedule, respectively, even without trust. Moreover, the trust between partners substantially reinforces the positive influence of reciprocal feedback–rationality on NPD collaboration results and makes the effect of formality significant. Therefore, the two alternative routes are confirmed as important paths to new product success, which provides relevant managerial implications.     

R&D Subsidies,Spillovers, and Privatization in Mixed Markets

We examine the use of subsidies to research and development (R&D) in a mixed and a private duopoly market. We show that the socially optimal R&D subsidy is increasing in the degree of spillovers, but it is lower in the private duopoly. The optimal R&D subsidy leads to an increase in total R&D and production; however, it does not lead to the equalization of per firm output and therefore to an efficient distribution of production costs. We also find that privatization of the public firm reduces R&D activity and welfare in the duopoly market. This result stands even when optimal R&D subsidies are provided.     

International Rent Sharing and Domestic Labour Markets: A Macroeconomic Analysis

Compared to international trade relations relatively little is known about the role foreign direct investment linkages play in the transmission of disturbances from one country to the next. Inspired by the microevidence on profit sharing within multinational corporations and within industries, we investigate for six countries whether a cross-border rent-sharing phenomenon can be identified at the macroeconomic level. The rent-sharing hypothesis implies that an increase in foreign profitability should boost wages and/or employment in the domestic economy. We find corroborative evidence for Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. US labour market conditions, by contrast, are not affected by changes in profitability in other countries. JEL no. E32, F23, F40, J23, J31     

Do global CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel consumption exhibit long memory? a fractional-integration analysis

In this article we use an autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average approach to measure the degree of fractional integration of aggregate world CO₂ emissions and its five components – coal, oil, gas, cement, and gas flaring. We find that all variables are stationary and mean reverting, but exhibit long-term memory. Our results suggest that both coal and oil combustion emissions have the weakest degree of long-range dependence, while emissions from gas and gas flaring have the strongest. With evidence of long memory, we conclude that transitory policy shocks are likely to have long-lasting effects, but not permanent effects. Accordingly, permanent effects on CO₂ emissions require a more permanent policy stance. In this context, if one were to rely only on testing for stationarity and non-stationarity, one would likely conclude in favour of non-stationarity, and therefore that even transitory policy shocks have permanent effects. Our fractional-integration analysis highlights that this is not the case.     

Modeling Cyclical Asymmetries in GDP: International Evidence

This paper models asymmetric behavior in GDP growth in the USA, Germany, France, and Japan. It develops smooth transition autoregressive models and interprets nonlinear dynamics in terms of cyclical asymmetries. A procedure for defining data-based, qualitative cyclical regimes from the estimated models is proposed, and generalized impulse response functions are computed to assess to what extent the response to a shock changes over different phases of the cycle.     

Sector-specific capital, “Bang-bang” investment,and the Filippov solution

Bang-bang investment in a two-sector growth model with immobile capital is rational and leads to a unique and globally stable long-run equilibrium along a sliding trajectory. This steady state coincides with the stationary equilibrium in the traditional model with non-sector-specific capital.This article was written while the authors were visiting scholars at Cornell University. We gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the Erasmus University Trust Fund and the Netherlands Scientific Organization. We would like to thank, without implicating, two anonymous referees, Martijn Herrmann, Jean-Marie Viaene, Claus Weddepohl, and the participants of seminars at the University of Maryland, the University of Montreal, and Erasmus University Rotterdam for perceptive remarks and useful comments. Jeroen Hinloopen and Rien Wagenvoort provided able graphical assistance. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the World Bank.     

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.     

Evolving splines and seasonal unit roots in weekly agricultural prices

The univariate statistical properties of agricultural price series need to be examined as a first step in the analysis of price transmission mechanisms. However, in the case of weekly price series, increasingly available, the testing procedures usually applied in this step are not suitable to deal with evolving seasonal effects. In this study, a method of testing for seasonal unit roots in weekly series of agricultural prices is described. When the deterministic seasonal component does not remain constant over time, the restricted evolving spline model (RESM) is shown to be a useful parametric formulation to capture the deterministic seasonal pattern. Therefore, the RESM model should be included as a deterministic component in auxiliary regression for unit root tests at seasonal frequencies. This proposal is applied to three weekly series of Canary Islands banana prices. From the standard seasonal unit root tests, the null hypothesis is failed to be rejected at the 5% or 10% significance level at some seasonal frequencies for each one of the series. Once critical values are obtained by simulation exercises when the RESM model is included, the hypotheses of unit root are rejected at each one of the seasonal frequencies for all of the three series.     

Is there a slowdown in agricultural productivity growth in South America?

This article estimates agricultural productivity growth in 10 South American countries in 1969–2009 with the objective of investigating if the slowdown being measured in other countries is present in the region. Results show that productivity growth accounts for half of the three‐fold increase in agricultural output during this period and that performance is sensitive to R&D investments in the sector. The slowdown found for the 1990s to 2000s in the U.S. and some European economies does not seem to be present yet in South America. The region's total factor productivity (TFP) growth rate increased steadily from 1.07% during the 1970s to 2.29% during the 2000s. Given lags in adoption and the adaptive nature of innovations in these economies, we have yet to see the potential effects in South American agriculture of decreases in R&D in advanced economies.