Human capital composition, growth and development: an R&D growth model versus data

The effect of human capital composition on growth and development has been somewhat neglected in economic literature. However, evidence has suggested the importance of engineering and technical (high-tech) skills to economic growth, and international organizations have suggested their shortage in developed countries. Using a standard increasing variety growth model, we propose various measures of human capital composition that are related with economic growth and development. When compared to data, the model does well in explaining the rate of growth and the level of development as a function of these measures. “the British colonies had a better educated population (...). Education was secular with emphasis on pragmatic skills and yankee ingenuity (...). The 13 British colonies had nine universities in 1776 for 2.5 million people. New Spain, with 5 million, had only two universities (...) which concentrated on theology and law.” –(Maddison, 2001)     

The relevance of commuting zones for regional spending efficiency

We use data envelopment analysis (DEA) efficiency scores to show that clustering municipalities into encompassing regional clusters improves spending efficiency of single stand-alone municipalities. We propose a new geographic aggregation based on municipalities-to-municipalities commuting flows, defined using hierarchical cluster analysis. Our example for Portugal shows that from an output-oriented perspective between 83% and 98% of municipalities would increase their efficiency scores, while from an input-oriented perspective between 86% and 98% of municipalities would also be better off in terms of efficiency. Then using a linear regression model, we find that population increases positively affects the efficient scores (via scale economies). Also, increases in the share of high-educated and poorer residents leads to higher efficiency scores.     

Organising migrant workers: the living wage campaign at the University of East London

This critical case study looks at the campaign led by Citizens UK and Unison to get the University of East London (UEL) to sign up to the London living wage (LLW). UEL agreed to pay the LLW after a brief campaign in November 2010 and it was subsequently implemented in August 2011. The study charts the course of the campaign and draws on mobilisation theory and new primary research to account for its success. What our findings suggest is that community organisers and union activists were able to organise and mobilise a largely apolitical group of migrant workers. This, we suggest, can be explained by the successful mobilisation of the community and augurs well for future broad‐based campaigns.     

R&D Partnerships and Innovation Performance: Can There Be too Much of a Good Thing?

R&D collaboration facilitates the pooling of complementary skills, learning from the partner as well as the sharing of risks and costs. Research therefore stresses the positive relationship between collaborative R&D and innovation performance. Fewer studies address the potential drawbacks of collaborative R&D. Collaborative R&D comes at the cost of coordination and monitoring, requires knowledge disclosure, and involves the risk of opportunistic behavior by the partners. Thus, while for lower collaboration intensities the net gains can be high, costs may start to outweigh benefits if firms perform a higher share of their innovation projects collaboratively. For a sample of 2735 firms located in Germany and active in a broad range of manufacturing and service sectors, this study finds that increasing the share of collaborative R&D projects in total R&D projects is associated with a higher probability of product innovation and with a higher market success of new products. While this confirms previous findings on the gains for innovation performance, the results also show that collaboration has decreasing and even negative returns on product innovation if its intensity increases above a certain threshold. Thus, the relationship between collaboration intensity and innovation follows an inverted‐U shape and, on average, costs start to outweigh benefits if a firm pursues more than about two‐thirds of its R&D projects in collaboration. This result is robust to conditioning market success to the introduction of new products and to accounting for the selection into collaborating. This threshold is, however, contingent on firm characteristics. Smaller and younger as well as resource‐constrained firms benefit from relatively higher collaboration intensities. For firms with higher collaboration complexities in terms of different partners and different stages of the R&D process at which collaboration takes place, returns start to decrease already at lower collaboration intensities.     

Innovation Economy,Productive Public Expenditure and Economic Growth

Multidisciplinary innovation is the main engine of growth for an increasing number of economies. Innovation requires the participation of and interaction between all economic agents. It also requires public spending on education, research and infrastructures. Our main goal is to emphasize the government's role in a growing innovation economy. Developing a non‐scale, idea‐based, one‐sector growth model with complementarities and productive public expenditure, we analyse theoretically the growth effects of an increase in productive public expenditure, which we find positive in the short, medium and long run.     

Behaviour‐Based and Outcome‐Based Control Systems: A Meta‐Analytic Study

Sales control systems are instruments used by firms to improve performance and other organizational outcomes. To understand their antecedents and consequences, this paper conducts a meta‐analysis based on 104 studies. The results showed significant relationships between behaviour‐ and outcome‐based control systems and the complexity of the products, bonuses, financial performance, sales innovation, organizational support and satisfaction with supervisors. The outcomes revealed that behaviour‐based control systems were the most effective mechanism in turbulent markets and for determining financial performance. However, outcome‐based control systems were the most efficient instrument for complex products.     

Commodity Price Volatility and the Sources of Growth

This paper studies the impact of the growth and volatility of commodity terms of trade (CToT) on economic growth, total factor productivity, physical capital accumulation and human capital acquisition. We use the standard system generalized methods of moments (GMM) approach as well as the dynamic common correlated effects pooled mean group (CCEPMG) methodology for estimation to account for cross‐country heterogeneity, cross‐sectional dependence and feedback effects. Using both annual data for 1970–2007 and 5‐year non‐overlapping observations, we find that while CToT growth enhances real output per capita, CToT volatility exerts a negative impact on economic growth operating mainly through lower accumulation of physical and human capital. Productivity, however, is not affected by either the growth or the volatility of CToT. Our results also indicate that the negative growth effects of CToT volatility offset the positive impact of commodity booms. Therefore, we argue that volatility, rather than abundance per se, drives the ‘resource curse’ paradox. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Valuation of forward start options under affine jump-diffusion models

Under the general affine jump-diffusion framework of Duffie et al. [Econometrica, 2000, 68, 1343–1376], this paper proposes an alternative pricing methodology for European-style forward start options that does not require any parallel optimization routine to ensure square integrability. Therefore, the proposed methodology is shown to possess a better accuracy–efficiency trade-off than the usual and more general approach initiated by Hong [Forward Smile and Derivative Pricing. Working paper, UBS, 2004] that is based on the knowledge of the forward characteristic function. Explicit pricing solutions are also offered under the nested jump-diffusion setting proposed by Bakshi et al. [J. Finance, 1997, 52, 2003–2049], which accommodates stochastic volatility and stochastic interest rates, and different integration schemes are numerically tested.     

El desempeño económico financiero y responsabilidad social corporativa Petrobrás versus Repsol

Alterations in the institutional environment, as a result of the markets integration process and the consequent alterations in stakeholders’ conduct are one of the important vectors of changes in companies’ behavior. In that context, in addition to their yields those companies happen to worry about their attitudes in relation to social and environmental factors. Thus, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) is seen as one more strategy to maintain or increase their income and to harness the enterprise development. The main purpose of this study is the verification of the existing relation between Social Responsibility and the economic and financial performance of two companies in the business of Petroleum, Gas and Bio-combustibles. The investigation was based on a comparison of social-environmental practices developed by Petrobras S/A (Brazil) and Repsol S/A (Spain). For the purpose of verification of the relation between social-environmental performance and the economic-financial one, a linear regression analysis was carried out.     

The niponic management of human resources in the performance of the enterprises in the Iberian Peninsula

This article had an objective of studying the niponic management of human resources in the performance of the enterprises that work in the Iberian Peninsula. The search was to evaluate the competition in these enterprises when the niponic management of human resources was used. There were two used data base： one with an economic nature treating the performance of productivity in an enterprise economic view, of salary and technologic, and the other about the niponic management of human resources adopted by the enterprises using an list of questions. Through statistic evaluations it was verified that the competition between enterprises with niponic capital, it＇s not induced by the economic competition, and the same enterprises used competitive strategies based on the qualification of the human resources and technological process.