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on Economics of Strategic Management |
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Issue of 2013‒08‒16
six papers chosen by Joao Jose de Matos Ferreira University of the Beira Interior |
| By: | Bartelsman, Eric (VU University Amsterdam); Dobbelaere, Sabien (VU University Amsterdam); Peters, Bettina (ZEW Mannheim) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how productivity effects of human capital and innovation vary at different points of the conditional productivity distribution. Our analysis draws upon two large unbalanced panels of 6,634 enterprises in Germany and 14,586 enterprises in the Netherlands over the period 2000-2008, considering 5 manufacturing and services industries that differ in the level of technological intensity. Industries in the Netherlands are characterized by a larger average proportion of high-skilled employees and industries in Germany by a more unequal distribution of human capital intensity. Except for low-technology manufacturing, average innovation performance is higher in all industries in Germany and the innovation performance distributions are more dispersed in the Netherlands. In both countries, we observe non-linearities in the productivity effects of investing in product innovation in the majority of industries. Frontier firms enjoy the highest returns to product innovation whereas the most negative returns to process innovation are observed in the best-performing enterprises of most industries. In both countries, we find that the returns to human capital increase with proximity to the technological frontier in industries with a low level of technological intensity. Strikingly, a negative complementarity effect between human capital and proximity to the technological frontier is observed in knowledge-intensive services, which is most pronounced for the Netherlands. Suggestive evidence for the latter points to a winner-takes-all interpretation of this finding. |
| Keywords: | human capital, innovation, productivity, quantile regression |
| JEL: | C10 I20 O14 O30 |
| Date: | 2013–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7540&r=cse |
| By: | Dan Breznitz; Amos Zehavi |
| Abstract: | Despite the fact that the distributional impact of innovation has been recognized in the social science literature, hardly any work has been done on the distributional politics of innovation policy. This study offers a first step in this direction as well as asking whether a government’s ideology affects innovation policy from a distributional viewpoint. The paper uses both qualitative case study method and a statistical analysis of government R&D outlays for social purposes in twenty-six countries. In terms of innovation policy, neo-corporatist interest group representation is linked to relatively equitable public R&D investment and left-oriented governments are more likely to invest in social innovation than their rightist counterparts. Nevertheless, governments rarely consider innovation policy in distributive terms. Despite the significant distributional implications of innovation, it remains depoliticized in policy making. |
| JEL: | O38 D63 P50 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cca:wpaper:303&r=cse |
| By: | Irina Melo (Lusa, Portuguese News Agency and Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE - IUL)); Alexandra Ferreira-Lopes (Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE - IUL)) |
| Abstract: | Despite the very few studies regarding FDI in Portuguese regions - especially regarding its effects - FDI can be an important catalyst for regional economic development and growth. This work studies the existing FDI in the Portuguese regions, analysing its distribution by NUTS III, the sectors in which FDI has more weight in each region, as well as it evolution between 1986 and 2009. Over the years analysed, the results show an increase in the number of firms with FDI in Portugal, although their relative weight remained constant. At the same time, these firms spread to all regions of the country, besides the main economic and services agglomerations (Lisboa and Porto). The regions attracted not only FDI for the sectors in which they have already been specialized, but also for other activities, diversifying the regional productive structure. The increase and diversification of FDI coincided with the tertiarisation of the economy, approaching the totality of the productive specialization of the country, while continuing to focus on manufacturing. |
| Keywords: | Keywords: Regional FDI, Regional Distribution of the Economic Activity of Multinationals, Productive Specialization of the Regions, Cluster Analysis, Shift-Share Analysis, Portugal |
| JEL: | F21 F23 R12 |
| Date: | 2013–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mde:wpaper:0049&r=cse |
| By: | Fabling, Richard (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust); Maré, David C. (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust) |
| Abstract: | We examine the correlates of reported hiring difficulties at the firm level using linked employer-employee and panel survey data over 2005-2011, focussing on the relative influence of firm-level characteristics, persistence, the business cycle and local labour market liquidity. At both the aggregate and the firm-level, hiring difficulties eased after the onset of the Global Financial Crisis. Even in the presence of large cyclical changes in demand and labour market conditions, firm-level persistence is a dominant feature of the data, with one- and two-year lags of reported hiring difficulties both positively related to current difficulties. Firms paying higher wages are more likely to report difficulties when trying to hire skilled workers, while firms with more long tenure workers are less likely to report any difficulty hiring. Local labour market conditions appear unrelated to reported hiring difficulties. |
| Keywords: | hiring difficulties, hard-to-fill vacancies, local labour market, Global Financial Crisis |
| JEL: | E24 J23 J63 M51 |
| Date: | 2013–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7534&r=cse |
| By: | Rider, Christopher I. (Goizueta Business School); Thompson, Peter (Goizueta Business School); Kacperczyk, Aleksandra (Sloan School of Management); Tåg, Joacim (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)) |
| Abstract: | We document in two very different datasets an inverted U-shaped relationship between work experience and entrepreneurship among movers. The first dataset consists of 1,248, U.S. lawyers who were forced to seek alternative employment after the sudden dissolutions of their employers. The second consists of over 7.5 million observations on Swedish workers, where job separation is predominantly unrelated to job destruction. Our empirical results are consistent with a model of stochastic accumulation of employer-specific and transferable skills, where the mix between the two is not fully observable to outside parties. |
| Keywords: | Entrepreneurship; Employee mobility; Experience |
| JEL: | D20 J20 L26 M50 |
| Date: | 2013–08–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0970&r=cse |
| By: | Joseph P. Hughes; Loretta J. Mester |
| Abstract: | The unique capital structure of commercial banking – funding production with demandable debt that participates in the economy’s payments system – affects various aspects of banking. It shapes banks’ comparative advantage in providing financial products and services to informationally opaque customers, their ability to diversify credit and liquidity risk, and how they are regulated, including the need to obtain a charter to operate and explicit and implicit federal guarantees of bank liabilities to reduce the probability of bank runs. These aspects of banking affect a bank’s choice of risk vs. expected return, which, in turn, affects bank performance. Banks have an incentive to reduce risk to protect the valuable charter from episodes of financial distress and they also have an incentive to increase risk to exploit the cost-of-funds subsidy of mispriced deposit insurance. These are contrasting incentives tied to bank size. Measuring the performance of banks and its relationship to size requires untangling cost and profit from decisions about risk versus expected-return because both cost and profit are functions of endogenous risktaking. ; This chapter gives an overview of two general empirical approaches to measuring bank performance and discusses some of the applications of these approaches found in the literature. One application explains how better diversification available at a larger scale of operations generates scale economies that are obscured by higher levels of risk-taking. Studies of banking cost that ignore endogenous risk-taking find little evidence of scale economies at the largest banks while those that control for this risk-taking find large scale economies at the largest banks – evidence with important implications for regulation. ; Prepared for the Oxford Handbook of Banking, 2nd edition |
| Keywords: | Banks and banking ; Risk ; Profit ; Economies of scale |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedpwp:13-31&r=cse |