WAGE‐RISE CONTRACT AND QUANTITY COMPETITION WITH PROFIT‐MAXIMIZING AND LABOUR‐MANAGED FIRMS

This paper examines the behaviours of a profit‐maximizing firm and a labour‐managed profit‐per‐worker‐maximizing firm in a two‐stage quantity‐setting model with a wage‐rise contract as a strategic commitment. The paper then shows that there exists a unique equilibrium that coincides with the Stackelberg solution where the profit‐maximizing firm is the leader and the labour‐managed firm is the follower.     

An evolutionary model of recycling and product lifetime extension

This paper presents a model-based analysis of the development and diffusion of so-called ‘green’ products, i.e. those which are easily recyclable and which have a long lifetime. We address this problem by developing an evolutionary simulation model to identify the impact of the environmental R&D strategies of business firms on the economy and the environment. The simulation results show that R&D investment both in product recyclability and in product lifetime extension can be positive for the firm. Adopting such a strategy means that the firm can then market green products, which provides it with a competitive advantage on firms investing mainly in product recyclability whatever consumers' preferences. From an environmental point of view, the diffusion of green products will reduce both waste flows in the economy and pressure on virgin resources. However, diversifying R&D investment to develop both product recyclability and lifetime can mean slowing down the flow of recycled materials and may lead to even greater quantities of unrecycled waste. Our results suggest introducing regulation policies aiming at encouraging firms to invest both in product recyclability and lifetime in order to benefit from their complementarities. Furthermore, simulations show that it should be better to direct environmental policies on firms' environmental innovation strategies than on demand attributes because significant changes in these strategies would provide much more radical environmental changes.     

Location factors of FDI and the growing services economy1

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has increasingly shifted toward the service sector. This change in the industrial composition of FDI and the non‐tradable nature of services may have altered the importance of location factors for investment decisions. To capture potential changes in FDI determinants, a contrasting sectoral analysis is performed. Based on FDI stock data from eight new EU member states for the period 1998–2004, we implement a dynamic panel approach allowing the speed of adjustment to the equilibrium investment level to vary across sectors. Results support our assumption that investment into the service sector, which is characterized by low installation costs, adjusts much faster to its desired level than manufacturing FDI. Thus, government interventions to attract FDI are likely to boost the service sector immediately while having a slower impact on manufacturing FDI. Furthermore, as services are mostly non‐tradable, FDI into this sector is largely based on market‐seeking motives while FDI in the manufacturing sector is also driven by international price competitiveness measured by real unit labour costs.     

The role of gender and its potential channels to affect self-employment in Taiwan

This research investigates the gender differences in the self-employment sector by employing a dynamic panel model with county- and city-level data from 1998 to 2016 in Taiwan. Our study is distinct from most others in this issue in that we explore not only the inter-gender difference, but also the intra-gender differences in self-employment. Following this framework, we first find that women are on average less likely to self-employ than men, and further find that older men, married men, men living in lower income regions and women living in higher income regions are more likely to become self-employed compared to their respective reference groups. We thus argue that gender influences self-employment not only directly but also through interactions with other demographic variables. Separate evaluation of different groups based on demographics should therefore result in better targeting of policies.     

知识活动视角下企业大学类型及其支撑能力体系

基于知识视角,任何组织开展的活动均可视为知识活动。企业大学所从事的知识活动不仅包括知识转移活动,还包括知识创造活动和应用孵化活动,不同企业大学开展的知识活动不同,对以上3类知识活动的主导程度也不同。借鉴扎根分析流程,通过多案例研究梳理企业大学的里程碑事件,对企业大学的知识活动类型进行理论提炼并总结相应能力支撑体系。结果发现：①企业大学模式类型并不绝对而是多元的,随着企业大学知识活动的不断丰富和延伸,逐渐演化为不同模式类型;②知识转移活动并非是企业大学唯一的知识活动路径,不宜忽视企业大学知识活动的全息性特征;③企业大学为了更好地履行职能,还应树立支撑能力组合观念,尤其应该按照企业大学知识活动特性和规律构建相应关键能力支撑体系。     

WELFARE ENHANCING COORDINATION IN CONSUMER COOPERATIVES UNDER MIXED OLIGOPOLY

The recent globalization of world economies has led the retail markets of developed countries towards increasing levels of integration and strategic interdependence. A non negligible share of retail and food markets is currently served by co‐operative societies. Consistently with this trend, the consumer cooperatives have recently experienced increasing levels of integration. The main aim of this paper is to study the welfare effects of coordination among consumer cooperatives competing in quantities in a mixed oligopoly against profit‐maximizing firms. We show that, in absence of agency problems, under increasing or constant returns to scale a higher output coordination of the consumer cooperatives does not affect the total welfare as long as a nonnegative profit constraint holds in these firms. On the other hand, under decreasing returns to scale, the consumer cooperatives contribute more to social welfare when acting on behalf of all consumers. This is because, by coordinating consumers’ preferences, these firms can reduce their market output, thus helping the market to come closer to the first best. All together these results seem to provide an argument in favour of the recent process of integration involving consumer cooperatives in many developed countries.     

The spatial sorting and matching of skills and firms

Abstract .  In this paper we make use of a matched employer-employee database for Italy to look at the spatial distribution of wages. Using this rich database we aim to open up the black box of agglomeration economies exploiting the micro dimension of interaction among economic agents, both individuals and firms. We provide evidence that firm size and, especially, skills are sorted across space and account for a large portion of the spatial wage variation. Our data also support the assortative matching hypothesis, which we show not to be driven by co-location of good workers and firms. Finally, we point out that assortative matching is negatively related to local market size.     

Do the world’s largest cities follow Zipf’s and Gibrat’s laws?

We examine whether the size distribution and the growth process of the world’s largest cities follow Zipf’s law and Gibrat’s law. The parametric results of the size distribution analysis reject Zipf’s law for all sample sizes and also show the Zipf exponent systematically declines as the sample size increases. The growth process analysis confirms Gibrat’s law and yields a local Zipf exponent of one for cities with a normalized population less than 0.53%, which includes about 95% of the total observations. The deviations from Zipf’s law occur at the extreme upper tail and are likely a result of restricted mobility of population across countries. However, given that Gibrat’s law holds, we can expect the size distribution to converge to Zipf’s law with a decline in the barriers to immigration.     

International portfolio reallocation: Diversification benefits and European monetary union

We investigate the determinants of bilateral international equity and bond portfolio reallocation across a large cross-section of countries spanning over two sample periods: 1997-2001 and 1997-2005. We find that the strongest drivers are the marginal diversification benefits arising from the pure asset component and the initial degree of underweight. This evidence suggests that global portfolio reallocations over the asset boom and bust period were determined by optimal diversification considerations. We also find that due to economic and monetary union (EMU) the weight assigned by euro area investors to investment in euro area countries increased significantly in equity and fixed income portfolios, with a trade diverting effect against the British bond market.