Waste of money or growth opportunity: The causal effect of EU subsidies on Hungarian SMEs

Although EU subsidies aiming at economic development play a pivotal role not only for Hungary but for the entire European Union as well, there is a debate regarding their effectiveness in the literature. This paper investigates the impact of direct economic development subsidies extended in the context of Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund as part of the 2007–2013 programming period of the European Union on Hungarian micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. Based on a micro database, we evaluate the impact of corporates’ first subsidies on various performance indicators, using a combination of propensity score matching and fixed effects panel regression. According to our results, economic development funds had a significant positive effect on the number of employees, sales revenue, gross value added and, in some cases, operating profit. However, the labour productivity of enterprises was not significantly affected by any of the support schemes. Furthermore, by explicitly comparing non-refundable subsidies (grants) and refundable assistance (financial instruments), we find that there is no significant difference in the effectiveness of the two types of subsidy.     

R&D strategy and Australian manufacturing industry: an empirical investigation of emphasis and effectivness

This research investigates the degree of emphasis placed by the Australian manufacturing industry on Research and Development (R&D) strategy as well as on other organisational strategies such as marketing, HRs (HR), technology, and operations at the functional level. The research extends further to investigate whether the emphasis on R&D strategy differs with contextual factors such as firm size, firm’s generic strategy, type of market, firm’s life cycle stage, etc. A mail survey was carried out to collect information from manufacturing firms across Australia. This was followed by an on-site interview of some of the senior managers of manufacturing firms from three Australian states: South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.The study found that although the emphasis on R&D strategy has received a high priority in the past few years, it has not been as effective as the operations strategy and the technology strategy. The operations strategy has been accorded the highest importance in the past few years and this will continue in the future. The study also indicated that firms, which adopt a differentiation generic strategy, put more emphasis on R&D than the firms, which adopt cost leadership and focus generic strategies. The results did not indicate any evidence of a relationship between firm size and the R&D strategy although large firms are found to put more emphasis on operations and marketing strategies. Relatively higher emphasis was placed on the R&D strategy by businesses: at the growth stage; involved in the manufacture of consumer goods as opposed to industrial goods; involved in exports with a higher sales growth in export markets; and having a higher growth rate relative to their industry.     

Are serial Condorcet rules strategy-proof?

Abstract. This paper explores the extent to which majority rule is invulnerable to manipulation by individuals and coalitions, even when majority rule is used to select more than one alternative. The resulting rule may or may not be strategy-proof, depending on the size of the coalitions that can form, and on the nature of the individual preferences over sets of alternatives. No individual can manipulate with respect to a wide family of preferences over sets. The only restriction on the domain of true and revealed individual preferences is that the selection rule is always well defined. Received: 1 November 1999 / Accepted: 7 May 2001 We thank two anonymous referees for suggestions that have significantly improved the paper. We are also grateful to l'Université de Caen for sponsoring a Workshop on Social Choice Theory, where a first draft of this paper was presented in May, 1999, and to the workshop participants for helpful observations. Work on the final version of the paper was done while one of the authors was a guest of the Project on Intergenerational Equity supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology of Japan. We are grateful to the Ministry and to the project leader, Professor Kotaro Suzumura, for their support.     

生态女性主义视角下苔丝的命运及女性意识的觉醒

从生态女性主义的视角来看,在托马斯·哈代作品《德伯家的苔丝》中的主人公苔丝的悲剧命运是由当时父权制社会的政治、经济、文化等方面因素所致,作品中苔丝的反抗则表现出了其女性主义意识的觉醒。     

政府R&D补助方式如何影响企业R&D投入?——来自A股医药制造业上市公司的证据

政府RD补助是否一定促进企业RD投入?针对这一问题,本文以区分政府RD补助方式作为切入点,从理论角度分析事前一次性RD补助、补贴率方式RD补助及事后奖励方式RD补助对企业RD投入的不同影响;并使用A股医药制造业上市公司2007~2013年面板数据进行实证分析。本文研究发现,只有补贴率方式和事后奖励方式RD补助显著促进了企业RD投入,其余补助方式对企业RD不存在显著促进作用。对样本按产权特征进行分组后,我们发现对于非国有样本,补贴率方式和事后奖励方式RD补助都显著促进RD投入;而对于国有样本,所有类型补助对公司RD投入皆无显著影响。本文的结论表明,政府应更多使用补贴率方式和事后奖励方式RD补助;企业产权特征是政府补助时值得考虑的因素。     

政府研发补贴方式对战略性新兴产业创新的影响机制研究

本文研究了政府研发补贴的不同发放方式对战略性新兴产业创新产生的不同影响机制。动态博弈模型分析指出,定额补贴由于不影响战略性新兴产业先行厂商的产品质量决策,所以在促进原始创新方面,它不如比率补贴有效。本文使用系统GMM方法估计了2009~2013年我国战略性新兴产业上市公司的动态面板数据,发现上市公司接受的定额研发补贴对其创新产出,即技术进步没有显著影响;这些上市公司上期的技术进步和当期研发投入会正向显著增加其创新产出。我国各级政府需要改变普遍使用的定额研发补贴方式,以比率研发补贴来代替定额研发补贴,从而提高战略性新兴产业的创新产出。     

城市商圈布局的三维动态模型构建与述评

商贸产业是维系一个城市经济运转的原动力之一,城市商圈是这个经济发展动力的重要载体.本文在吸收西方经典商圈理论模型的基础上,结合我国城市商圈发展现状,从外部环境、内部成长和时间三个维度分析其影响因素,构建了城市商圈布局的三维动态模型,以期对城市商圈布局和城市经营提供一定的现实参考价值.     

Innovation in R&D service firms: evidence from the UK

Research and Development (R&D) service firms make significant contributions to innovation in other businesses. The extant literature considers these firms a homogenous sub-group of Knowledge Intensive Business Service firms (KIBS). The objective of this study is to investigate how R&D service firms innovate and the variety of innovation practices within these firms. Employing data from semi-structured interviews with senior managers from 32 UK-based R&D service firms, we suggest that there are two different modes of innovation: in the first mode, R&D service firms innovate similarly to KIBS whose innovation is ad-hoc in nature and driven by customers’ requests; another group of R&D service firms innovate like New Technology-based Firms (NTBFs) relying more on structured in-house R&D activities.     

REGIONAL ANTI‐CORRUPTION EFFORT,POLITICAL CONNECTIONS AND FIRM INNOVATION EFFORT: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA

This paper examines how firm characteristics and local anti‐corruption effort moderate the influence of political connections on enterprises’ private R&D investment using data from 2,587 Chinese A‐share listed enterprises. Our results show that the local anti‐corruption institutional environment significantly moderates the strong relationship between political connections and enterprises’ private R&D investment. Firm characteristics (i.e., firm size and firm age) also show a moderating effect on the relationship between political connection and enterprises’ private R&D investment; larger and older enterprises are more likely to have innovative resources and business cooperation partners, and thus are able to reduce their degree of reliance on political connections and government funding. The results of our study suggest the importance of having a transparent and fair institutional environment for enterprise innovation activities.     

ECONOMIC POLICY UNCERTAINTY EFFECTS ON CREDIT AND STABILITY OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

We examine policy‐related economic uncertainty effects on the availability of credit, non‐performing loans and loan loss provisions using a panel of 18 countries. We provide significant evidence that uncertainty reduces the availability of credit while leading to increases in banks' non‐performing loans and loan loss provisions, distorting sectoral stability. Our findings are economically meaningful.