The impact of new goods and service products on firm growth: evidence from Austrian-linked firm-level data

Using a matched innovation survey and structural business statistics, we investigate the impact of the introduction of new service products and other types of technological innovations on firm growth measured as subsequent two-year employment growth. Results, based on median and robust regression methods for manufacturing firms, show that, on average, both the introduction of new goods and process innovations have a significant and positive impact on subsequent firm growth. In contrast, the introduction of new services does not, on average, have a significant impact on firm growth for both manufacturing and service firms. However, quantile regressions show that the introduction of new service products has a significant and positive impact on firm growth for high-growth service firms. Finally, in manufacturing, the introduction of product innovations has a positive impact on firm growth at both the lower and higher ends of distribution (i.e. for both high-growth and shrinking firms).     

Social economy and employment – the case of Sweden

Recent research has shown growing shares of employment in the social economy (or non-profit sector) both in the European Union and in the United States. In the EU, there seems to be growing hopes that the social economy will be capable of contributing to local progress on the unemployment issue in crisis regions. This paper analyses employment in certain entrepreneurial forms, usually considered belonging to the social economy, in Sweden during the 1990s. The results show considerable regional differences of employment in the social economy, but also that its share of the labor market is very limited. The effect of social-economic organizations on employment, therefore, is probably mainly indirect in as much as they function as platforms for cooperation between firms or else as embryos for enterprises by strengthening local entrepreneurship and helping to nurture a deposit of social capital which has visible effects on private business and jobs. However, these effects need more detailed examinations.     

Competition and Public Policy in the Nursing Home Industry

A theory of property needs to give an account of the whole lifecycle of a property right: How it is initiated, transferred, and terminated. Economics has focused on the transfers in the market and almost completely neglected the question of initiation and termination of property in normal production and consumption (not in some original state or in the transition from common to private property). The institutional mechanism for the normal initiation and termination of property is an invisible hand function of the market — the market mechanism of appropriation. Does this mechanism satisfy an appropriate normative principle? The standard normative juridical principle is to assign or impute legal responsibility according to de facto responsibility. It is given a historical tag of being "Lockean," but the basis is contemporary jurisprudence, not historical exegesis. Then, the fundamental theorem of the property mechanism is proven, which shows that if "Hume's conditions" (no transfers without consent and all contracts fulfilled) are satisfied, then the market automatically satisfies the Lockean responsibility principle — i.e., "Hume implies Locke." As a major application, the results in their contrapositive form, "Not Locke implies Not Hume," are applied to a market economy based on the employment contract. I show that the production based on the employment contract violates the Lockean principle (all who work in an employment enterprise are de facto responsible for the positive and negative results), and thus Hume's conditions must also be violated in the marketplace (de facto responsible human action cannot be transferred from one person to another — as is readily recognized when an employer and employee together commit a crime).¹     

Consumption in Contemporary Capitalism: The Backward Art of Living

Western economies have undergone a significant transformation over the last half a century as they have moved away from a commitment to full employment, going from activist fiscal policy to its abandonment with the adoption of budgetary austerity. This is not because of any technical or physical incapacity to achieve full employment. Analyzing the broad macroeconomic experience of Canada and the United States in the post-WWII era, the article finds that this growing unemployment has essentially resulted from a deliberate policy choice not to stimulate sufficiently demand via fiscal measures. Learning from the experience of the Great Depression, Michal Kalecki had offered an explanation for this type of policy response in favor of rising long-term unemployment. This article recognizes the relevance and appropriateness of Kalecki's analysis and seeks to determine whether the Minskian institutional proposal for achieving effective full employment (via government as the employer of last resort) would withstand an original Kaleckian critique.     

A Reconsideration of the Protectionism Debate: Keynes and Import Controls

One of the most important elements of financial crises is the credit restriction that follows and the immediate consequences it has on investment and employment. In the post-Keynesian vision, an exit from economic crises frequently requires increased demand, specifically through public expenditure and employment. Furthermore, it requires the exploration of various policies and institutional reforms that could counteract the credit rationing emerging from the first moments of the financial crisis, particularly in regard to the financing of small business. This is one of the principal lessons this paper explores when studying a sample of Mexican immigrant entrepreneurs in three cities in the United States, and their conditions of survival amid the financial crisis.     

How to estimate market concentration given grouped data

A novel method is proposed of estimating market concentration for the census case in which firms are grouped into size classes and all that is known about the firms in each category is their number and aggregate size. The formula arises as a way of applying an alternative expression for the concentration ratio based upon the original and first moment size distributions of firms. The semi-parametric technique, which includes a method of interval as well as point estimation, is derived, applied and validated using actual and simulated data. It is anticipated that the estimator will be of use in competition analysis as well as in academic research.     

新型工业化过程中就业问题研究综述

研究如何在新型工业化过程中扩大就业以缓解我国日益严重的就业压力具有重大现实意义。在阐明新型工业化的内涵和特点的基础上,结合对新型工业化过程中就业现状与趋势的分析,逐步展开对新型工业化与就业的关系和相互影响,就业扩大机理,反失业和促进就业等问题进行相关研究回顾,并提出解决就业难问题的对策,以期为后续研究提供参考。     

China’s value-added tax reform,firm behavior and performance

China reformed value-added tax (VAT) by removing investment from the tax base in northeastern provinces in 2004, which is a “natural experiment” of its tax system. Using difference-in-differences method, this paper for the first time investigates the impact of VAT reform on China firms’ fixed asset investment, employment behavior, innovative activities, and productivity, and furthermore discusses the impact of firm behavior on industrial structural upgrade and employment with a firm-level panel data of large and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in China. We find that VAT reform significantly promotes firms’ fixed asset investment, and increases firms’ capital-labor ratio and productivity; while enhancement of firms’ productivity is mainly achieved by means of substituting labor with capital, rather than independent technology innovation; meanwhile, VAT reform distinctly decreases employment. Our findings have essential policy implications on the extension of VAT reform in the entire China.     

贫困大学生就业焦虑问题浅析

在当前激烈的就业竞争中,由于多种因素的叠加作用,使得不少贫困大学生呈现出了愈益明显的就业焦虑问题。客观把握贫困大学生就业焦虑的基本现状,深入分析贫困大学生就业焦虑的基本原因,积极探究应对贫困大学生就业焦虑的基本对策,具有重要的理论价值和现实意义。     

基于产业发展背景下的农村就业现状调查——以新疆伊宁县为例

产业集聚和农村就业是产业发展和人口集聚的双载体,是加快工业化、城乡一体化最基础、最核心的环节,是经济快速发展的新的增长极。在产业集聚的成长和发展过程中,集聚企业会有大量用工需求,这不仅给城镇人口提供了就业机会,加快了城镇化的步伐,同时也吸纳了大量农村人口,促进了农村劳动力有效转移。通过实际调研,在产业发展的背景下,分析伊宁县农村劳动力转移的现状及特点,并对该县农村劳动力转移的经验和做法进行了研究,使其能为其他县域农村劳动力转移提供借鉴。