Monopoly with resale

We examine the intricacies associated with the design of revenue‐maximizing mechanisms for a monopolist who expects her buyers to resell. We consider two cases: resale to a third party who does not participate in the primary market and interbidder resale, where the winner resells to the losers. To influence the resale outcome, the monopolist must design an allocation rule and a disclosure policy that optimally fashion the beliefs of the participants in the secondary market. Our results show that the revenue‐maximizing mechanism may require a stochastic selling procedure and a disclosure policy richer than the simple announcement of the decision to sell to a particular buyer.     

Strategic Certification and Provision of Quality

We study the effect of the presence of a certification intermediary in an environment where information asymmetries are particularly severe. The intermediary improves the information that buyers have about quality. This in turn increases the incentives that the seller has to provide high-quality goods. Efficiency is increased by the presence of the intermediary, but quality is underprovided in equilibrium relative to full information. The intermediary can implement the optimal policy in many ways. The amount of information revealed ranges from full disclosure to partial, noisy disclosure.     

New firm formation in Italian industry: 1985–89

This paper deals with the process of new firm formation in Italian manufacturing industry during the second half of the 1980s. For this purpose we use the data base made available by the National Institute of Social Security, which provides information on both newly and already established firms with at least one employee. Two birth rates are computed and analysed for the relevant industries: the first one is the ratio between new enterprises and already established firms and the second is the share of new enterprises on industry employees. We show that Italian industries are characterized by marked differences in terms of birth rates but also that the ranking of industries is different by using the first or the second index of new firm formation. Looking at the determinants of this process, we found that industry growth affects positively both birth rates; small firm presence is effective only when the second index of new firm formation is used while inter-industry differences in profitability are always not significant. These results seem peculiar to the Italian case in which the size of newly established firms is very small in comparison with the size of previously existing firms.     

Remote control and maintenance outsourcing networks and its applications in supply chain management

The paper analyzes the impact of e-business technologies on maintenance management and supply chain operations. The aim of this work is to investigate the network organization level of supply chains in case of remote maintenance application and to understand how maintenance policies are coupled with information technology (IT) solutions. To this purpose two literature reviews are presented: firstly, on the supply chain and network integration, and then on the evolution of maintenance using information technology. Following this, the paper present four specific industrial case-studies of eMRO network organisation. They have been chosen as reference models from a set of practical applications and pilot tests performed by the authors in different production sectors in the last 5 years. Technology complexity environments, maintenance outsourcing level, and supply chain integration context are discussed for each case-studies with particular regards to the profitable forms of collaboration provided by the introduction of IT and the Web. This analysis work toward the development of a framework useful to: (1) classify different e-maintenance systems and understand the relationships between the different members of the network, and (2) identify the variables which can influence the introduction and development of the systems.     

Short-memory equilibrium in stochastic overlapping generations economies

In stochastic OLG exchange economies, we show that short-memory equilibria—the natural extension from deterministic economies of steady states, low-order cycles, or finite state-space stationary sunspots equilibria—fail to exist generically in utilities. As a result, even with independent and identically distributed exogenous shocks there is serial correlation in endogenous economic variables in equilibrium. This arises even if utilities are time-separable, some goods inferior, and there are no technological lags. Hence, the origins of economic fluctuations can be traced only to the demographic structure of a heterogeneous agent, multiple-good economy.     

Embodied technological change in supplier dominated firms

This paper identifies the role of new capital goods as the main external source of innovation for supplier dominated firms belonging to traditional consumer good industries. After a brief survey on the role of inter-industry technology flows, the results of a field study are presented concerning the amount of technological change embodied in the new machinery acquired during the 1980s by a sample of Italian manufacturing firms producing traditional consumer goods. We show that industries and firms differ in the quality of technological change embodied in (or allowed by) new capital goods, and that such differences depend on industry-specific and firm-specific factors. The former primarily refer to product characteristics, the latter mainly to the age and the affiliation of the firm with an industrial group. The final section contains some policy suggestions for fostering the diffusion of new machinery (embodying technological change) among small firms and traditional industries.     

Taxation and parental time allocation under different assumptions on altruism

This paper examines the effects of labor income taxation on parental time allocation in an OLG model in which child care arrangements, that is the combination of parental and non-parental time, matter for human capital accumulation. We show that the sign of the impact of labor income taxation on parental time with children and on growth critically depends on the assumption on the altruistic motives behind the choice of devoting time to children.     

Complementary currencies: what role should they be playing in local and regional government?

The current climate of fiscal austerity has seen a resurgence in ‘complementary currencies’ as local and regional governments look for ways to use under-utilized assets, maintain employment and avoid local economic decline. The authors explore how local and regional governments can facilitate complementary currencies to reduce the impact of external economic shocks and enable their economies to continue to function in the face of austerity. They recommend that localities consider participating in existing complementary currency ‘circles’.     

The effect of the dynamics of knowledge base complexity on Schumpeterian patterns of innovation: the upstream petroleum industry

This article analyzes important changes in technological innovation in the upstream petroleum industry. It provides evidence that shifts in sectoral patterns of innovation over the petroleum industry's lifecycle from the 1970s up to 2005 were dependent on the dynamics of knowledge base complexity (KBC), a key dimension of an industry's technological regime. Accordingly, observed shifts in innovation patterns are understood to be the aggregated strategic response of industry innovators to changes in the technological regime. The article proposes a quantitative method for exploring KBC and Schumpeterian patterns of innovation, and interactions between the two at the industry level. As the industry evolved, its knowledge base moved to higher orders of complexity creating a shift in the Schumpeterian pattern of innovation. Increased KBC was found to alter Schumpeterian patterns from Mark I toward a ‘modified’ Mark II. Instead of coming predominantly from ‘traditional’ established oil operators, technological innovation was increasingly triggered by a new class of emergent integrated service companies – ‘second tier’ systems integrators of the upstream sector able to cope with increased KBC.     

Determinants of TFP growth: A close look at industries driving the EU–US TFP gap

This paper explores the determinants of the EU–US TFP growth gap using EU KLEMS. As found in previous analyses, TFP growth appears to be driven by catching-up phenomena associated with the gradual adoption of new technologies. TFP growth is also significantly driven by developments at the “technological frontier”, especially since the mid-1990s. Industries with higher R&D expenditures and higher adoption rates for ICT-intensive technologies appear to exhibit higher TFP growth rates, whilst human capital has mostly a significant effect across countries. Regarding determinants in industries relevant for the different TFP performance of the EU versus the US, ICT-producing industries appear to benefit from R&D in terms of stronger spillovers from TFP gains at the frontier, network utilities are strongly affected by product market regulations, whilst the retail and wholesale trade industry is significantly influenced by consumption dynamics which permit a better exploitation of scale economies.