Preparing for distant collaboration: Antecedents to potential absorptive capacity in cross-industry innovation

Cross-industry innovation entails distinctive innovation opportunities and challenges according to the knowledge heterogeneity between the collaborating firms. This heterogeneity yields increases in organizational-level cognitive distance. Whereas recent theory suggests cognitive distance is positively related to exploratory innovation, too much distance can hinder efficient knowledge absorption and results in a reduced effect on novelty value. This paper focuses on the research question of how to build potential absorptive capacity for distant collaboration beyond established industry boundaries to gain radical rather than incremental results. To address this question, we mapped a cross-industry network using survey data on 215 bilateral cross-industry collaborations between firms from a variety of industries and captured cognitive proximity (the inverse of distance) in terms of overall knowledge redundancy between firms. This approach introduces a new method to infer organizational-level cognitive distance from network analysis. Subsequently, based on results from the network analysis, we examined coordination antecedents to potential absorptive capacity for cross-industry innovation with partners at moderate and high distance applying case study analysis. Our study revealed three alternative approaches to coordination antecedents that drive a firm?s potential absorptive capacity for distant collaboration. These findings extend research on absorptive capacity to the field of cross-industry innovation.     

Payroll taxes,wages and employment: Identification through policy changes

This paper investigates the effect of changes in payroll taxes on wages and employment in Argentina. The analysis, based on administrative data, focuses on the impact of a series of major changes in payroll taxes which varied across geographical areas. This setup offers two main advantages over previous studies. First, using longitudinal data, the variation in tax rates across space and time provides a plausible source of identification of their effects on employment and wages. Second, the use of legal tax rates for each area at each point in time provides a remedy for the measurement error bias raised by the use of empirical rates constructed from observed tax and wage bills. Once this bias is accounted for, the results indicate that changes in payroll tax rates are only partially shifted onto wages, and they point to the absence of any significant effect on employment.     

How Big is the Crowding-Out Effect of User Fees in the Rural Areas of Ethiopia? Implications for Equity and Resources Mobilization

Using a nested multinomial logit model, this study investigates the demand “reduction” and “diversion” effects of user fees in rural areas of Ethiopia. The results reveal that an increase in user fees of public clinics, which are the most widely used alternative, can have a significant demand reduction effect on the poorest of the poor. This implies that despite cost recovery has been advocated as an alternative means of health care financing in most of the developing world, increasing user fees may drive the poorest segment of the population out of the health care market unless some protective measures are taken.     

(No) Limits to Anglo-American accounting? Reconstructing the history of the International Accounting Standards Committee: A review article

The development of the current International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) from the earlier International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) provides insight into many issues of international financial reporting, among them the characteristics of international accounting standards themselves. This article reviews Camfferman and Zeff’s [Camfferman, K., & Zeff, S. A. (2007). Financial reporting and global capital markets. A history of the international accounting standards committee 1973–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press] volume on the organizational development of the IASC and contextualizes it in the broader literature of cross-border standardization in accounting. While having produced a seminal piece, the authors take a clear Anglo-American perspective. The downsides are insufficiencies regarding a simplistic understanding of experts and expertise, a neglect of the role of auditing firms, and only an imbalanced integration of different stakeholders.     

A comparison of the Japanese and U.S. business cycles

This paper constructs a consistent set of quarterly Japanese data for the 1960–2002 sample period and compares properties of the Japanese and U.S. business cycles. We document some important differences in the adjustment of labor input between the two countries. In Japan most of the adjustment is in hours per worker of males and females and also in employment of females. In the U.S. most of the adjustment is in employment of both males and females. We formulate, estimate, and analyze a model that makes the distinction between the intensive and extensive margin and allows for gender differerences in labor supply. A weak empirical correlation between hours per worker and employment in Japanese data is a puzzle for our theory.     

IX. Geld und Kapital

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Egypt and the enlargement of the EEC: Impact on the agricultural sector

This article examines the impact of the second enlargement of the EEC on the agricultural sector of Egypt. The authors consider the impacts on Egypt's agricultural trade and, through the use of a linear programming model, the long term impacts of EEC enlargement. The authors conlude that, in short run, the southward expansion of the EEC will impose only a limited additional burden on the Egyptian economy. But, in the long run the burden placed on Egypt by increased protectionism in the expanded EEC could be much more severe.