Social and organisational implications of CAD usage: a grounded theory in a fashion company

This paper focuses on the process of Computer Aided Design (CAD) diffusion into a group engaged in the development of innovative products. Adopting an ethnographic approach, we build a grounded theory for interpreting CAD usage in terms of the interplay between variables such as management orientation, training, actors' specialisation and deskilling, availability of shared archives, technological discontinuities between organisational areas.     

Trends in Disaggregated Import and Export Prices in Europe: Implications for the Trade and Wages Debate

We consider carefully the evidence from traded prices (as proxied by unit values) concerning the transmission of the effects of globalisation to domestic labour markets. Using standard index number techniques we decompose changes in sectoral import and export unit values into movements due to changes in pure prices of the initial bundle of goods imported or exported and changes due to upgrading of that bundle. Looking at the imports of selected European countries of textiles, clothing and footwear relative to engineering products we find evidence of strongly falling pure prices of the unskilled intensive products relative to the skilled products in the 1980s. This reinforces the view that import prices can capture the impact of globalisation in terms of falling relative prices for products produced with the intensive use of unskilled labour. However, the trends are not common across all the unskilled sectors; footwear is clearly an exception. In the absence of detailed domestic data, we look for reactions by domestic firms to increased import competition in movements in the price and composition of exports. We find evidence of stiff price competition from imports being associated with similar movements in export prices and no support for the view that import competition from low–wage countries has led to upgrading of the quality of exports.     

Do Changes in Democracy Affect the Political Budget Cycle? Evidence from Mexico

The previous empirical literature in opportunistic election cycles attempts to identify whether there is a significant impact of the election calendar on economic policy. The econometric analysis implemented in this paper goes a step further, seeking to test whether a country's time-varying degree of democracy affects the way in which economic policy is chosen as elections approach. A simple econometric model is estimated for the case of Mexico's fiscal policy between 1957 and 1997. The estimation reveals the government's strong systematic use of public spending in infrastructure and current transfers as a means to earn votes. Most importantly, we show that the magnitude of the election cycle has been exacerbated during the country's most democratic episodes.     

Finding Closest Targets in Non-Oriented DEA Models: The Case of Convex and Non-Convex Technologies

This paper draws attention for the fact that traditional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models do not provide the closest possible targets (or peers) to inefficient units, and presents a procedure to obtain such targets.It focuses on non-oriented efficiency measures (which assume that production units are able to control, and thus change, inputs and outputs simultaneously) both measured in relation to a Free Disposal Hull (FDH) technology and in relation to a convex technology. The approaches developed for finding close targets are applied to a sample of Portuguese bank branches.     

The impact of product diversification strategy on the corporate performance of large Spanish firms

We analyze the impact of product diversification on performance. This topic has been discussed in the literature, and there is no consensus so far as to the significance or the direction of the impact. Performance is measured using Tobin's q for a sample of 103 large, non-financial Spanish firms (1992–1995). Diversification is measured by means of a categorical variable, as suggested by Varadarajan. The principal results indicate that the firms with intermediate levels of product diversification have the highest performance, while the firms with low and high levels of diversification show significantly lower performance, which performance is not significantly different between them.     

Why are some people (and countries) more protectionist than others?

We analyze two cross-country data sets that contain information on attitudes toward trade as well as a broad range of socio-demographic and other indicators. We find that pro-trade preferences are significantly and robustly correlated with an individual's level of human capital, in the manner predicted by the factor endowments model. Preferences over trade are also correlated with the trade exposure of the sector in which an individual is employed: individuals in non-traded sectors tend to be the most pro-trade, while individuals in sectors with a revealed comparative disadvantage are the most protectionist. Third, an individual's relative economic status has a very strong positive association with pro-trade attitudes. Finally, non-economic determinants, in the form of values, identities, and attachments, play an important role in explaining the variation in preferences over trade. High degrees of neighborhood attachment and nationalism/patriotism are associated with protectionist tendencies.