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on Business, Economic and Financial History |
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Issue of 2015‒10‒17
twenty-one papers chosen by |
| By: | Waldenström, Daniel (Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses new data on Swedish national wealth over a period of two hundred years to study whether the patterns in wealth-income ratios previously found by Piketty and Zucman (2014) for some very rich and large Western economies extend to smaller countries that were historically backward and developed a different set of political and economic institutions during the twentieth century. The findings point to both similarities and differences. In the pre-industrial era, Sweden had much lower wealth levels than the rest of Europe, and the main explanation is that the Swedes were too poor to save their income. Over the twentieth century, Swedish aggregate trends and levels are much more similar to those of the rest of Europe, but the structure of national wealth differs. In Sweden, government wealth grew much faster and became more important, not least through its relatively large public pension system. This suggests an explicit role of historical economic and political institutions for the long-run evolution of wealth-income ratios. |
| Keywords: | Wealth-income ratios; National wealth; Household portfolios; Pension wealth; Welfare state; Institutions; Economic history |
| JEL: | D30 E01 E02 N30 |
| Date: | 2015–10–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:uufswp:2015_006&r=all |
| By: | Wuepper, David; Sauer, Johannes |
| Abstract: | We investigate whether colonial experiences in the Gold Coast still affect the performance of agribusiness in Ghana today. To this end, we surveyed 400 pineapple farmers in Ghana and connected this new dataset to data on the locations of Christian missionary schools and the performance of colonial cocoa cooperatives, from the first half of the 20th century. We find an effect of both historical variables on the performance of contract farming. The causal channel is a persistent change in culture: the performance of the colonial cocoa cooperatives changed peoples’ belief in their own capabilities to achieve business success (self-efficacy). The Christian missionary schools, in contrast, are found to have reduced village social capital. |
| Keywords: | Contract-Farming, Rural Development, Cultural Evolution, Self-Efficacy, Social Capital, Agribusiness, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:gewi15:209199&r=all |
| By: | Waldenström, Daniel (Department of Economics, Uppsala University) |
| Abstract: | This study presents a new database, the Swedish National Wealth Database (SNWD), which contains annual data on private, public and national wealth and sectoral saving rates in Sweden over the past two centuries. The paper reviews previous investigations of national wealth, compares their estimates with the new ones and discusses method approaches and measurement problems. Then the main data series are presented for assets and liabilities and their subcomponents, for the private and public domestic and foreign sectors. Complementing the traditional focus on economic flow variables in the past literature on long-run economic developments, this new database offers potentially new perspectives of a number of important issues in the modern economic history of Sweden. |
| Keywords: | National wealth; Household portfolios; Saving; Pension wealth; Economic history |
| JEL: | E21 H31 N33 N34 |
| Date: | 2015–10–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1088&r=all |
| By: | Chavaz, Matthieu (Bank of England); Flandreau, Marc (Bank of England) |
| Abstract: | We gather the most comprehensive database of government bonds for the first globalisation era to date to conduct the first historically informed study of the importance of liquidity for colonial and sovereign yield spreads. Considering both liquidity and credit shows that the two markets were segmented: credit was the most important factor in the pricing of sovereign debt, but liquidity predominated in the colonial market, explaining 10% to 39% of colonial yield spreads. This reflected both different market microstructures and bond clienteles, themselves influenced by heterogeneous political, institutional and financial arrangements. The flows from the colonies to British ‘ordinary’ investors in the form of illiquidity premia should be taken into account in future studies of the political economy of empire. |
| Keywords: | Government bonds; British Empire; liquidity; credit risk; colonial finance |
| JEL: | G12 N23 N43 |
| Date: | 2015–10–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boe:boeewp:0555&r=all |
| By: | Tobias A. Jopp (History Department, Tsinghua University); Martin Uebele (University of Regensburg) |
| Abstract: | Over the later 1920s and up to the mid-1930s, German coal-mining saw an exceptional surge in labour productivity led primarily by the Ruhr coalminesÕ performance. It is a commonly accepted view that the economy-wide Ôrationalization boomÕ between currency stabilization and the depression years explains that pattern. We test the related hypothesis that Ônegative rationalizationÕ in the form of a massive wave of mine closures over 1924-29 played a significant role in pushing aggregate labour productivity in the Ruhr coal district up to new levels. Based on an original dataset on the population of Ruhr coalmines, the sources of productivity change over the extended period 1913-38 are identified using the decomposition method of Foster, Haltiwanger and Krizan (2001). Results suggest that labour productivity in Ruhr coal-mining was driven to a large extent by improvements at individual mines attributable to the intensified mechanization of underground operations. Closures regularly raised aggregate productivity in the year after the closure had been conducted; closures also pushed productivity by way of ceding resources to high(er) productivity surviving mines over gradual shut-down. However, on the whole, turnover-effects were marginal compared to the effects stemming from the producer dynamics among surviving mines. Thus, the practical productivity implications of mine closures over the rationalization boom are negligible and still overrated in the relevant literature. These findings call for testing more rigorously the relative importance of Ônegative rationalizationÕ in the form of plant closures in other branches of the Weimar economy. |
| Keywords: | closures, coal-mining, Germany, labour productivity, productivity decomposition, rationalization |
| JEL: | L11 N14 N54 |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0085&r=all |
| By: | Francesco Sergi (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of the article is to analyze and criticize the way how DSGE macroeconomists working in policy-making institutions think about the history of their own modeling practice. Our contribution is, first of all, historiographical: it investigates an original literature, emphasizing in the history of DSGE as it is told by its own practitioners. The results of this analysis is what we will call a “naïve history” of DSGE modeling. Modellers working from this perspective present their models as the achievement of a “scientific progress”, which is linear and cumulative both in macroeconomic theorizing and in the application of formalized methods and econometric techniques to the theory. This article also proposes a critical perspective about the naïve history of the DSGE models, which drawns, by contrast, the main lines of an alternative, “non-naïve” history. of the DSGE models is incomplete and imprecise. It mainly ignores controversies, failures and blind alleys in previous research; as a consequence, the major theoretical and empirical turning points are made invisible. The naïve history also provides an ahistorical account of assessment criteria for modeling (especially for evaluating empirical consistency), which hides the underlying methodological and epistemological debates. Finally, we will claim that the naïve history plays an active and rhetoric role in legitimizing the DSGE models as a dominant tool for policy expertise |
| Keywords: | DSGE; new neoclassical synthesis, history of macroeconomics, modelling methodology, central banks, rhetoric of economics |
| JEL: | B22 B41 E60 |
| Date: | 2015–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:15066&r=all |
| By: | Agnès Festré (GREDEG CNRS; University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France); Pierre Garrouste (GREDEG CNRS; University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France) |
| Abstract: | In this contribution, we provide an interpretation of Friedrich von Wieser’s contribution to economics, which pays tribute to the originality of his work, and particularly his view of how institutions interfere with individual behavior. This interaction takes place within a disequilibrium framework where social influences such as power or social class, and psychological factors such as force of habit or herd behavior, are the product of human action but also constitute constraints on further action. The section 1 stresses the institutionalist background of Wieser’s economics. We concentrate on Wieser’s general method – which we assimilate to an example of Joseph Agassi’s (1975) institutional individualism – and his analysis of the emergence and evolution of institutions via the dynamics of leaders and masses. In the section 2, we reinforce and illustrate the ‘institutionalist’ stamp of Wieser’s economics by focusing on his work on monetary economics (Wieser 1904, 1909a, 1909b, 1927b) and his analysis of the emergence of money, based on our reading of Wieser’s Social Economics (Wieser [1927a] 1967) and The Law of Power (Wieser [1926] 1983). |
| Keywords: | Wieser, emergence and evolution of institutions, money, economic sociology |
| JEL: | B15 B31 |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2015-37&r=all |
| By: | Matthias Morys (Department of Economics, University of York) |
| Abstract: | We add a historical and regional dimension to the debate on the Greek debt crisis. Analysing the 1841-1939 exchange-rate experience of Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia/Yugoslavia, we find surprising parallels to the present: repeated cycles of entry to and exit from gold, government debt build-up and default, and financial supervision by West European countries. Periods of stable exchange-rates were more short-lived than in any other part of Europe as a result of “fiscal dominance”, i.e., a monetary policy subjugated to the treasury’s needs. Granger causality tests show that patterns of fiscal dominance were only broken under financial supervision, when strict conditionality scaled back the influence of treasury; only then were central banks able to pursue a rule-bound monetary policy and, in turn, stabilize their exchange-rates. Fiscal institutions have remained weak in the case of Greece and are at the heart of the current crisis. A lesson for today might be that the EU-IMF programmes – with their focus on improving fiscal capacity and made effective by conditionality similar to the earlier South-East European experience – remain the best guarantor of continued Greek EMU membership. Understandable public resentment against “foreign intrusion” needs to be weighed against their potential to secure the long-term political and economic objective of exchange-rate stabilisation. |
| Keywords: | fiscal dominance, gold standard, financial supervision, South-East Europe |
| JEL: | N13 N14 N23 N24 E63 F34 |
| Date: | 2015–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hes:wpaper:0084&r=all |
| By: | Behrens, Peter |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the impact of ordoliberal thinking on the drafting of the prohibition of "abuse" of a dominant position in the market that was included in the competition rules of the Rome Treaty establishing the European Economic Community as well as on its interpretation by the Commission and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Firstly, it is shown that the ordoliberal school must not be regarded as a set of ideas frozen in its formative period of 1933 to 1950 or 1957 when the "Freiburg School" was established but rather as an approach that has been dynamically developed and refined over the last 75 years (i.e. over four generations of ordoliberals) up to the present day by integrating important new insights without, however, giving up its core tenets and convictions. Secondly, it is shown on the basis of the preparatory work which lead in the 1950ies to the Rome Treaty that the adoption of the concept of "abuse" for the control of dominant undertakings was due to the strong influence of the German negotiating team that consisted of (in the meantime second generation) ordoliberals. Thirdly, it is explained how ordoliberal thinking about the "system of undistorted competition" and the protection of "residual competition against exclusionary practices" has influenced the application of the "abuse" concept in the jurisprudence of the Commission and the CJEU from the Continental Can case to the recent Intel case. This approach has come under attack from welfare-economic approaches which emphasize efficiency instead of competition and which have accused the ordoliberal approach of formalism, lack of sufficient economic analysis, preoccupation with fairness, protection of competitors instead of competition, obsession with interventionist regulation etc. This paper demonstrates that all of these characterizations are based on fundamental misunderstandings of what ordoliberal thinking originally meant and what it stands for today. |
| Keywords: | EU competition law,Rome Treaty,preparatory work,travaux préparatoires,monopoly problem,competition rules,abuse of a dominant position,ordoliberalism,Freiburg School,system of undistorted competition,protection of residual competition,exclusionary practices,predatory pricing,refusal to deal,essential facility,exploitation,efficiency,fairness,effects on competition |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ekhdps:715&r=all |
| By: | Roger D. Congleton (West Virginia University, Department of Economics); Dongwoo Yoo (West Virginia University, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | According to the incremental reform hypothesis, constitutions are rarely adopted whole cloth; thus the starting point, scope for bargaining, and number of reforms, jointly determine the trajectory of constitutional history. We test the relevance of this theory for Africa by analyzing the formation and reform of the independence constitutions negotiated and adopted during the 1950s and early 1960s. We find historical evidence that independence occurred incrementally and that the African countries that experienced the fewest constitutional moments and narrowest domain of bargaining after independence have better contemporary institutions than states that began with less restrictive constitutional rules and experienced more constitutional moments. |
| Keywords: | Decolonization, Independence, Constitutional Negotiations, Constitutional Bargaining, Post-Colonial Reform, Eminent Domain, Takings, Institutions, Africa |
| JEL: | O43 O55 K11 N47 |
| Date: | 2015–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wvu:wpaper:15-27&r=all |
| By: | Goldstein,Markus P.; Houngbedji,Kenneth; Kondylis,Florence; O'Sullivan,Michael B.; Selod,Harris |
| Abstract: | This paper presents early evidence from the first large-scale randomized-controlled trial of a land formalization program. The study examines the links between land demarcation and investment in rural Benin in light of a model of agricultural production under insecure tenure. The demarcation process involved communities in the mapping and attribution of land rights; cornerstones marked parcel boundaries and offered lasting landmarks. Consistent with the model, improved tenure security under demarcation induces a shift toward long-term investment on treated parcels. This investment does not yet coincide with gains in agricultural productivity. The analysis also identifies significant gender-specific effects. Female-managed landholdings in treated villages are more likely to be left fallow?an important soil fertility investment. Women further respond to an exogenous tenure security change by moving production away from relatively secure, demarcated land and toward less secure land outside the village to guard those parcels. |
| Keywords: | Municipal Housing and Land,Common Property Resource Development,Urban Housing,Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems,Political Economy |
| Date: | 2015–10–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7435&r=all |
| By: | J.R. Clark (The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga); Joshua C. Hall (West Virginia University, Department of Economics); Ashley Harrison (The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga) |
| Abstract: | John “Jack†Soper passed away on August 9, 2013. A prolific researcher who retired as the John J. Kahl Sr. Chair in Entrepreneurship at John Carroll University, Soper was a leading light in the field of economic education. His scholarship in the 1970s and 1980splayed a very important role in establishing the field. In this educational note, we summarize and highlight his contributions to the measurement of economic literacy and the modelling of student learning in the collegiate and precollege classrooms. |
| Keywords: | economic education; private enterprise; education production |
| JEL: | A20 A21 A22 |
| Date: | 2015–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wvu:wpaper:15-31&r=all |
| By: | Agnès Festré (GREDEG CNRS; University of Nice Sophia Antipolis); Pierre Garrouste (GREDEG CNRS; University of Nice Sophia Antipolis) |
| Keywords: | Michael Polanyi, Hayek, Keynes, spontaneous order, State intervention, liberalism, evolutionism |
| JEL: | B25 B31 B41 |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2015-36&r=all |
| By: | Clay, Karen (Carnegie Mellon University); Lewis, Joshua (University of Montreal); Severnini, Edson R. (Carnegie Mellon University) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses the 1918 influenza pandemic as a natural experiment to examine whether air pollution affects susceptibility to infectious disease. The empirical analysis combines the sharp timing of the pandemic with large cross-city differences in baseline pollution measures based on coal-fired electricity generating capacity for a sample 183 American cities. The findings suggest that air pollution exacerbated the impact of the pandemic. Proximity to World War I military bases and baseline city health conditions also contributed to pandemic severity. The effects of air pollution are quantitatively important. Had coal-fired capacity in above-median cities been reduced to the median level, 3,400-5,860 pandemic-related infant deaths and 15,575-23,686 pandemic-related all-age deaths would have been averted. These results highlight the complementarity between air pollution and infectious disease on health, and suggest that there may be large co-benefits associated with pollution abatement policies. |
| Keywords: | pollution, infectious disease, mortality, 1918 influenza pandemic |
| JEL: | N32 N52 I15 I18 Q53 Q56 Q58 |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9399&r=all |
| By: | Ignacio Zubizarreta |
| Abstract: | En el presente trabajo nos introduciremos en un día de la vida de tres unitarios. El telón que cubre el fondo del presente trabajo es aquel de la guerra civil entre unitarios y federales (1826-1852). Nos centraremos primero en Juan Cruz Varela y la acción transcurre en Buenos Aires durante 1827. Luego exploraremos la agitada jornada experimentada por el pintor y navegante Antonio Somellera en 1839. Por último, avanzaremos temporalmente hasta el 24 de septiembre de 1841 para introducirnos en la piel del célebre general Gregorio Aráoz de Lamadrid. El escenario de este último caso lo constituye una batalla librada en Mendoza. La intención de relatar un día de la vida de tres unitarios radica en presentar el pasado desde perspectivas diferentes a las habituales. Las tres pequeñas historias son diferentes entre sí, pero se entrelazan por cuestiones temáticas y mantienen grandes afinidades. Sus divergencias nos permitirán descubrir cómo vivían, qué hacían, cómo actuaban los protagonistas de ese momento, pero también cómo se relacionaban y cómo experimentaban la traumática situación que padecían. Es de recalcar cómo la violencia in crescendo se erigía en el actor principal de una sociedad que no podía o ya no sabía convivir pacíficamente. |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:571&r=all |
| By: | Horton, Joshua; Parker, Andrew Richard; Keith, David |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hrv:hksfac:23017251&r=all |
| By: | Jorge M. Streb |
| Abstract: | Nash recibió el premio Nobel de economía por dos aportes fundamentales: la distinción entre juegos cooperativos y no cooperativos, y el concepto de solución básico para juegos no cooperativos. Myerson indica que este equilibrio es el concepto de solución básico de teoría de juegos dado que, como señala Nash, los juegos cooperativos se pueden reducir a un juego no cooperativo más amplio agregando la negociación previa. El equilibrio de Nash puede verse también como equilibrio de Cournot-Nash porque fue originalmente formulado por Cournot en un modelo de oligopolio, aunque al ser una aplicación específica esto es discutido. El problema fundamental, sin embargo, fue que el análisis de Cournot llevó a polémicas interminables sobre cómo se llega al equilibrio. Otro aporte fundamental de Nash, en mi opinión, es resolver esto con su interpretación racionalista, donde los jugadores conocen la estructura del juego y usan la solución para predecir el equilibrio. Nash introduce así las expectativas racionales. Alternativamente, ofrece una interpretación adaptativa cuando los jugadores no conocen la estructura de juego pero ajustan sus estrategias para maximizar sus pagos, algo anticipado por Cournot al analizar la elasticidad de demanda. La teoría de juegos evolutiva desarrolla esta segunda interpretación. En suma, Nash no solo fue extraordinario como matemático sino como economista. |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cem:doctra:572&r=all |
| By: | Claude Didry (IDHE - Institutions et Dynamiques Historiques de l'Economie - CNRS - Université Paris VIII - Vincennes Saint-Denis - UP10 - Université Paris 10, Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense - ENS Cachan - École normale supérieure - Cachan - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne); Frédéric Marty (GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - CNRS - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis) |
| Abstract: | The Establishment of the cartels technical committee in 1953, which prefigured the contemporary French competition authority, seems to participate in the same movement than the German competition law and the Treaty of Rome four years later. However some differences have to be put into relief. First, it didn’t deal with individual abuses of dominance. Second, the collusive practices targeted mainly concerned bid-rigging in public procurement in the reconstruction and modernisation plan. Thus, if this competition policy experience contrasts with war experiences and the interwar period arguments for a regulated competition, it cannot be assimilated with West German one, inspired by the Ordoliberal School. Sanctioning horizontal collusion makes sense within an industrial policy model based on a close co-operation between Government and some national champions. In that sense, the French competition law beginnings may be analysed as a tool for ensuring the implementation of a vertically conceived industrial policy. |
| Abstract: | La création en 1953 du Comité Technique des Ententes, lointain prédécesseur de notre actuelle Autorité de la Concurrence, inscrit la politique de concurrence française dans un rapport de contemporanéité avec la loi sur la concurrence allemande et le Traité de Rome. Cependant, comme la dénomination même du Comité l’indique, le premier domaine d’intervention résidait en la répression des comportements collusifs horizontaux, il n’était pas alors question des abus de position dominante individuelle. Qui plus est, les pratiques collusives qui étaient particulièrement visées se nouaient autour de marchés publics liés aux plans de reconstruction, équipement et modernisation. Ainsi, si cette activation des règles de concurrence contrastait avec les traditions dirigistes héritées des expériences des économies de guerre ou l’influence des approches planistes qui étaient favorables aux ententes entre firmes au nom de l’efficience productive, elle ne saurait pour autant participer d’une logique comparable à celle alors à l’œuvre en Allemagne de l’Ouest sous l’influence des ordolibéraux. Cette lutte contre les cartels peut s’expliquer en regard d’une conception d’une politique industrielle fondée sur une étroite coopération entre les administrations et les grandes entreprises françaises considérées comme des champions nationaux. L’activation du levier concurrentiel a pu participer d’une politique industrielle de nature verticale passant par l’élimination des pratiques collusives entre firmes. |
| Keywords: | competition policy, cartel agreements, neoliberalism, utilities.,politiques de concurrence,cartels,néo-libéralisme,services publics |
| Date: | 2015–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01208103&r=all |
| By: | Ivan Kitov; Oleg Kitov |
| Abstract: | We analyze and develop a quantitative model describing the evolution of personal income distribution, PID, for males and females in the U.S. between 1930 and 2014. The overall microeconomic model, which we introduced ten years ago, accurately predicts the change in mean income as a function of age as well as the dependence on age of the portion of people distributed according to the Pareto law. As a result, we have precisely described the change in Gini ratio since the start of income measurements in 1947. The overall population consists of two genders, however, which have different income distributions. The difference between incomes earned by male and female population has been experiencing dramatic changes over time. Here, we model the internal dynamics of men and women PIDs separately and then describe their relative contribution to the overall PID. Our original model is refined to match all principal gender-dependent observations. We found that women in the U.S. are deprived of higher job positions. This is the cause of the long term income inequality between males and females in the U.S. It is unjust to women and has a negative effect on real economic growth. Women have been catching up since the 1960s and that improves the performance of the U.S. economy. It will take decades, however, to full income equality between genders. There are no new defining parameters included in the model except the critical age, when people start to lose their incomes, was split into two critical ages for low-middle incomes and the highest incomes, which obey a power law distribution. Such an extension becomes necessary in order to match the observation that the female population in the earlier 1960s was practically not represented in the highest incomes. |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1510.02752&r=all |
| By: | Komendrovskaya, Irina; Bobojonov, Ihtiyor; Glauben, Thomas |
| Abstract: | Russia’s agrifood industry, including processing, wholesale, and retail underwent tremendous changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this transition from the planned to a market economy, supermarkets emerged as important players in Russia, affecting agrifood system via organizational and institutional changes including centralization of procurement from farmers and demanding private standards on product quality and safety.This study examines the penetration of supermarket chains and factors contributing to development of modern retailing in Russia. The panel data at regional level is used in order to investigate the factors influencing on modernization of retail sector in Russia. |
| Keywords: | Agrifood system, food supply chain, food security, sanctions, import, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:gewi15:209253&r=all |
| By: | Akcomak S.; Garcia A.; Santiago-Rodriguez F. (UNU-MERIT) |
| Abstract: | This paper contributes to literature on the emergence of innovation studies as a scientific field. This area of research documents the mechanisms, interactions and meeting spaces that innovation scholars have developed to give substance and legitimacy to their work. What role is there for the training of young scholars in the development of this scientific field Based on a web survey of UNU-MERITs PhD alumni, we explore the ways in which doctoral training at a major research institute has contributed to the formation of young scholars in the broad field of innovation studies. In line with literature on the creation of science and technology human capital, we find that doctoral training grants PhD holders the technical knowledge and skills, together with the relational skills that sustain their membership and scholarly contributions to innovation studies. The evidence likewise suggests that the contribution of UNU-MERITs PhD programme on the building of innovation research capacities in developing countries is constrained by postgraduate decisions to stay in the developed world. Young scholars follow a career development strategy of linking to mentors and key senior researchers, while scientific interactions with fellow students are more limited. Social interactions tend to be more prominent for maintaining relations with the research community. |
| Keywords: | Network Formation and Analysis: Theory; Higher Education and Research Institutions; Technological Change; Research and Development; Intellectual Property Rights: General; |
| JEL: | D85 I23 O30 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2015036&r=all |