Integrating innovation system and management concepts: The development of electric and hybrid electric vehicles in Japan

Policymakers as well as corporate managers want to know how to gain the lead and benefit from a paradigmatic shift in technology. This paper develops and uses a combined policy and firm-level theoretical framework to derive policy implications from a case study of the development of battery, hybrid and fuel cell electric vehicles (BEVs, HEVs and FCVs) in Japan. Among the implications of the study, it is argued that Japanese national policy has so far had a limited direct role in the electrification of vehicles; this has been very largely decided and carried out in-house at the automakers. Policymakers need to consider this as well as the inherently international nature of the automotive industry. One key factor behind Toyota's and Honda's early and sustained lead in the electrification trajectory is the intense and in some aspects quite specific type of competition on the domestic market, which has nurtured firms with a strong product development capability. Finally, it is argued that the proposed theoretical framework contributes to a more balanced view of the role of policy in this potential paradigmatic shift in technology in a mature industry, compared to traditional policy or firm-level approaches.     

Middlemen and peasants in rice marketing in the Philippines

This paper reports the results of a field survey covering all links in the channel of rice marketing from farmers to consumers in Laguna Province, Philippines. The survey revealed a highly competitive nature of rice marketing in this area where the countless number of middlemen compete in the procurement of paddy from farmers for rice mills, leaving little room for monopoly/monopsony exercises. Intense competition was also found in wholesaling by mills to retailers as well as retailing to consumers.     

退耕还林政策实施后陕西北部农户消费结构实证分析——基于麟游、安塞、米脂三县205个农户的调查

文章采用描述性分析和计量分析相结合的方法对退耕还林政策实施后麟游、安塞、米脂三县退耕户的生活消费支出结构进行分析。结果显示退耕户的消费倾向低,基本消费需求占实际消费需求的比重高。表明其消费层次低、消费结构不尽合理,因此提出了优化消费结构扩大消费水平的一些对策。     

The emergence of hybrid-electric cars: Innovation path creation through co-evolution of supply and demand

Hybrid-electric vehicles have experienced a significant rate of growth in the last 10 years. This is remarkable, since the automotive sector is typically averse to the more radical technological change of engines. The internal combustion engine has been around for more than 100 years after all.In this paper we describe and explain the emergence of electric engines in the automobile market after 1990. We explicate the role of techno-economic mechanisms alongside social and regulatory mechanisms (including the social meaning of an engine). The co-evolutionary analysis is novel in the integrated conception of actor perspectives, feedback effects and competition between products. We find three sources of lock-in through path dependency: from demand, supply as well as the regulatory side. We conclude that automotive engines were significantly locked into a trajectory of internal combustion technology due to techno-economic mechanisms, which produced inertia despite social pressures. The creation of an alternative path, on the other hand, initially stalled. Various stakeholders were unsuccessful in marketing their electric or hybrid-electric vehicles in the 1990s, such as Peugeot/Citroen with various electric models, or Audi with their Duo in 1997. However, after 2000 we find that sustaining efforts of California's Air Resources Board and Toyota were triggering creation of a new innovation path of hybrid-electric engines.     

Ecology, History, and Development: A Perspective from Rural Southeast Asia

The process by which different ecological conditions and historicaltrajectories interacted to create different social and culturalsystems resulted in major differences in economic developmentperformance within Southeast Asia. In the late 19th century,Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand commonly experiencedvent-for-surplus development through exploitation of unusedlands. Nevertheless, different agrarian structures were created.Indonesia's development was mainly based on the exploitationof tropical rain forest under Dutch colonialism. It resultedin the bifurcation of the rural sector between rice-farmingpeasant proprietors and large plantations for tropical exportcrops based on hired labor. In the Philippines, exploitationof the same resource base under Spanish rule resulted in pervasivelandlessness among the rural population. Relatively homogeneouslandowning peasants continued to dominate in Thailand, wheredelta plains that were suitable only for rice production formedthe resource base for development. These different agrarianstructures associated with different social value systems haveaccounted for differential development performance across thethree economies in the recent three decades.      

Technology and labor contract: Two systems of rice harvesting in the Philippines

Major changes in agrarian institutions in the Philippines, such as landtenure and labor-contract arrangements, are analyzed in terms of theories of contractual choice and social interactions. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that introduction of a certain technology (e.g., machine threshing of rice) reduces transaction costs involved in specific contractual arrangements (e.g., sharecropping), thereby making specific forms of economic organization (e.g., the rice hacienda) viable. Land reform (and also the green revolution) in the rice-growing areas of the Philippines again causes a change in harvesting technology. Through complex social interaction this gives rise to changes in labor contracts.