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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
| By: | Mauro Lombardi (Università degli Studi di Firenze,); Filippo Randelli |
| Abstract: | Clusters that emerged in the past have changed during the latest decades, so that today the research challenge in economic geography is on their evolution over time. The aim of this paper is to update on the evolutionary path of SMEs Italian clusters, which faced with the economic crisis are undergoing a process of decline in the number of firms. Furthermore changes in the techno-economic landscape and in the competitive environment have generated new challenges. In this context, some leading firm, able to connect local resources (and firms) to global networks, have emerged over time. We argue that within SMEs clusters, the leading firms act as a gatekeeper, linking local networks to global markets. The focus will be on local networks interacting with leading firms and particular attention will be devoted to the pattern of co-evolution and to the geographical dimension of this co-evolutionary process. To empirically verify if others firms in the cluster may co-evolve with the leading firm over time, a deep analysis of the Gucci network in the leather products cluster in Florence will be carried out. |
| Keywords: | cluster evolution, Italian SMEs clusters, network of firms, coevolution |
| JEL: | L22 L67 R11 R12 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2012_17.rdf&r=hme |
| By: | Lisa Warth (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe); Malinka Koparanova (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) |
| Abstract: | Sustainable development cannot be achieved without a more equitable distribution of resources today and tomorrow. This paper highlights that prevailing inequalities are deeply gendered. Understanding this and making policy decisions towards reducing these inequalities is a key condition in meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The paper focuses on women’s empowerment as a key process to reach gender equality and, through that, sustainable development. It looks first at the concept of women’s empowerment and sustainable development and reveals how both are inter-linked through the lens of intra and inter-generational justice. Second, evidence-based analysis is done to show what needs to be done and is being done for women’s empowerment, both through building an enabling environment and through enhancing women’s capacity as active agents of change for sustainable development in the ECE region. |
| Keywords: | gender equality, economic development |
| JEL: | I38 J21 J24 J48 J78 O15 |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ece:dispap:2012_1&r=hme |
| By: | Daria Ciriaci (JRC-IPTS); Daniela Palma (ENEA) |
| Abstract: | The rise of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) may be considered as one of the decisive trends of economic evolution of industrialised countries in recent decades. This paper uses the concept of vertical integrated sectors and the subsystem approach to input-output matrix analysis to study the vertical integration of knowledge-based business services into manufacturing sectors. To date, companies increasingly rely on outside innovation for new products and processes and have become more active in licensing and selling results of their innovation to third parties. At the same time, they may rely on the marketing and financial consulting offered by third parties. As a consequence, considering manufacturing and KIBS as vertically inter-related sectors, the hypothesis of a virtuous circle can be expressed in the following way: the higher the degree of integration between KIBS and manufacturing sectors along what we could define as a ‘knowledge-based value chain’, the easier the knowledge diffusion and the competitiveness of the economic system as a whole. The study covers Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom over the period 1995-2005. Results decisively support both the existence of structural differences among the countries considered, and a significant heterogeneity to the extent to which manufacturing outsources to knowledge-intensive business services. |
| Keywords: | Knowledge-intensive business services; subsystem approach; input-output analysis; knowledge diffusion |
| JEL: | L60 L84 O33 O32 P00 |
| Date: | 2012–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:wpaper:201202&r=hme |
| By: | Marta Rey García |
| Abstract: | This paper focuses on institutional philanthropy by retail firms, utilizing foundations connected to the top 50 global retailers as a case study. The purpose of this research is threefold: 1) To explore the philanthropic propensity of global retailers; 2) To define a typology of foundations connected to them; and 3) To explore the role played by those foundations in the context of the CSR strategies of their connected firms. Results confirm, on the one hand, the high philanthropic propensity of top global retailers and, on the other hand, that potential benefits of connected instrumental foundations go beyond those attributed to conventional CSR and traditional corporate giving by previous literature. |
| Keywords: | Filantropía corporativa; Responsabilidad social corporativa (RSC); Fundaciones; Empresas de distribución; Empresas familiares. |
| JEL: | M14 L81 M30 L22 |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ovr:docfra:1206&r=hme |
| By: | Addison, John T. (University of South Carolina); Ozturk, Orgul Demet (University of South Carolina); Wang, Si (University of South Carolina) |
| Abstract: | This paper considers the role of gender in the promotion process and the impact of promotion on wages and wage growth, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79). Its focus is upon mid-career promotion and wages, thereby complementing extant studies of the NLSY that relate to differences between men and women at an earlier stage in their careers. The paper is further differentiated from these studies and the wider promotions literature in paying especial attention to the role of unionism and the public sector. It is reported that mid-career females are more likely than males to be promoted in the private sector (and no less likely in the public sector); that wages are increasing in promotion, and the effect is generally higher for females; and that female wage growth from contemporaneous promotion is almost as high as that for males the private sector and much higher in the public sector. These rather positive results for females represent in most cases an improvement over the early-career findings but in mid-career the mediating influence of unionism is more negative, and not just for females. |
| Keywords: | mid-career, early career, promotion, wages, wage growth, gender, unionism, public sector |
| JEL: | J16 J31 J51 J62 |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6873&r=hme |
| By: | Johansson , Börje (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology); Lööf , Hans (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology); Nabavi, Pardis (CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies, Royal Institute of Technology) |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically examines how systematic differences in firm productivity can be explained by a firm’s cumulated internal knowledge and access to external knowledge in its environment. To capture this conjunction of internal and external knowledge we use information about 5,000 Swedish firms in 290 municipalities and 72 functional regions and we use detailed information about individual firms’ accessibility to knowledge-intensive producer services. In addition, we observe the long-run frequency of R&D and innovation engagement for all these firms through 74.000 patent applications and three Community Innovation Surveys. Our panel data estimates for the period 1997-2008, suggest that only firms which commit themselves to accumulation of internal knowledge benefit from being located in places with a large mass of external knowledge. We also find strong evidence that innovators are more productive than other firms across all locations. |
| Keywords: | Innovation; Spillovers; Accessibility; Productivity; Patent; Community Innovation Survey |
| JEL: | C23 O31 O32 |
| Date: | 2012–09–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0283&r=hme |
| By: | Daria Ciriaci (JRC-IPTS); Pietro Moncada-Paternò-Castello (JRC-IPTS); Peter Voigt (Institut d'Economia de Barcelona, IEB) |
| Abstract: | This study examines serial correlation in employment, sales and innovative sales growth rates in a balanced panel of 3,300 Spanish firms over the years 2002-2009, obtained by matching different waves of the Spanish Encuesta sobre Innovacion en las Empresas, the Spanish innovation survey conducted annually by the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE). The main objective is to verify whether the changes (increase/decrease) in these figures are persistent over time, whether such persistence (if any) differs between SMEs and larger firms, and if it is affected by a firm's age. To do so, we adopted a semi-parametric quantile regression approach. This methodology is well suited to cases where outliers (high-growth firms) are the subject of investigation and/or when they have to be assumed as being very heterogeneous. Empirical results indicate that among those innovative firms experiencing high employment growth, the smaller and younger grow faster than larger firms, but the jobs they create are not persistent over time. However, while being smaller and younger helps growing more in terms of employment and sales, it is not an advantage when innovative sales growth is considered: in this case larger firms experience faster growth. |
| Keywords: | Serial correlation; quantile regression model; Spanish firms; firm size, firm age; job creation; fast growing firms |
| JEL: | L11 L25 |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:wpaper:201203&r=hme |
| By: | Yoshiro Miwa (Osaka Gakuin University, The University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | Research on Japanese corporate finance typically starts from the premise that banks decisively affect corporate behavior. Crucial to this premise in the Japanese context are two laims: that the strength of a firm’s relationship with a specific bank (and the funds that the bank makes available to it) determines its financing constraints, and that those constraints decisively condition the way it behaves. Using firm-level data from the Corporate Enterprise Annual Statistics, I ask whether financing constraints significantly affected corporate investment in land and other fixed assets. I take firms in the real-estate-related industries and for comparison the manufacturing industry, and examine their investments during 1983-2009. The data suggest two conclusions. First, financial constraints did not significantly affect medium- and long-term investment in equipment. Second, most firms have not faced serious financial constraints during the decades since 1983. Many scholars argue that such constraints contributed both to the "Bubble" during the second half of 1980s and the following recession since the 1990s, the "Lost Two Decades". The data, however, show no evidence that financing constraints prevented firms from investing in real estate or other tangible fixed assets. These conclusions are consistent with those in other papers by Miwa, including Miwa [2011a]. They raise serious questions about the premises relating to Japanese financial markets that many scholars bring to their study of the Japanese economy. Investigating empirically the effectiveness of "financing constraints", they also have important implications for current research into macro-economic fluctuations. |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfi:fseres:cf291&r=hme |
| By: | Chad P. Bown (The World Bank); Rachel McCulloch (Department of Economics, Brandeis University) |
| Abstract: | While the original justification of the antidumping laws in the industrial economies was to protect domestic consumers against predation by foreign suppliers, by the early 1990s the laws and their use had evolved so much that the opposite concern arose. Rather than attacking anti-competitive behavior, dumping complaints by domestic firms were being used to facilitate collusion among suppliers and enforce cartel arrangements. This paper examines the predation and anti-competitiveness issues from the perspective of the “new users” of antidumping—the major emerging economies for which antidumping is now a major tool in the trade policy arsenal. We examine these concerns in light of important ways in which the world economy and international trading system have been changing since the early 1990s, including more firms and more countries participating in international trade, but also more extensive links among suppliers and consumers through multinational firm activity and vertical specialization. |
| Keywords: | Antidumping, Temporary trade barriers, Competition, Antitrust, WTO |
| JEL: | F13 |
| Date: | 2012–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:brd:wpaper:50&r=hme |
| By: | Metaxas, Theodore; Tsavdaridou, Maria |
| Abstract: | The case of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become one of the most widespread business topics among the academic community. Various issues like environmental pollution, economic crisis, corruption, poverty are of major importance these days and besides governments and politicians’ responsibility it is obvious that corporations are also part of these problems. The appliance of CSR is becoming apparent from the corporations, the consumers and the governments in order to face some of the above problems. In Europe the last 15 years, governments, NGOs, small and large enterprises are making an effort to establish in their business CSR strategies so as to become more competitive and innovative in the global market. The research presents the way 46 Greek companies publish CSR activities and which dimensions of CSR are more common among Greek companies. The selection of these companies came from an in depth research on the websites of the companies. The findings reveal that Greek companies over the years become more active especially on environmental issues, human resources and local communities. |
| Keywords: | CSR; CSR activities; Greek companies; Greece; situation analysis |
| JEL: | M14 M10 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:41518&r=hme |