Constructing Success in the Electric Power Industry: Flexibility and the Gas Turbine

This paper explains the success and failure of two technologies that generate electricity from fossil fuels. Both the Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) and fluidised bed boiler burn fossil fuels more cleanly than more traditional technologies. Whereas the CCGT has been used for an increasing number of new power plants during the past fifteen years, the latter has struggled to attract attention outside a small-scale niche. The paper draws on economic and social constructivist approaches to technical change. It shows how a combination of economic, institutional and political factors can be used to explain success and failure. It also demonstrates the importance of technological flexibility for the long term development of the CCGT and its acceptance as the power industry's current technology of choice.technical change, flexibility, CCGT, fluidised bed boiler,

Explaining Success and Failure in Development

Since 1950, there has been considerable diversity in developing country experiences. Some countries and some regions have experienced rapid growth and catch up, others have fallen behind. At a global level there is an increasing inequality of per capita incomes. However, within the framework of increasing inequality, some countries have experienced accelerated catch up. The speed of catch up in the successful countries is more rapid than in previous historical periods. This paper analyses the sources of success and failure in economic development in the post-war period. It applies a framework of proximate, intermediate and ultimate causality. Proximate factors refer to the directly quantifiable economic sources of growth, intermediate factors refer to demand and policies, ultimate sources refer to the deeper historical, cultural, geographic and institutional sources of development. Monocausal explanations of success and failure are rejected. However, amongst the various sources of growth, the paper places special emphasis on developing countries' ability to tap into global knowledge flows. There is not a single example of successful catch up since 1868 which did not involve tapping into international technology. The extent to which countries can profit from international technology flows depends on their absorptive capacities, technological capabilities and systems of innovation.Catch Up, Economic Development, Economic Growth, Advantages of Backwardness, Absorptive Capacity

Public Interventions Supporting Innovation in Small and Medium-Size Firms. Successes or Failures? A Probit Analysis

WP 11/2008; The aim of this work is to investigate the probability of success or failure of public interventions, made to support the development of some Italian firms. The great number of small and medium-size enterprises, placed in the Canavese area, north of Turin, Italy, has suffered, in the nineties, of a gap in technological innovation in their production. The Consortium for the Canavese Technological District (CCTD), a public local association established in 1993 specifically to support the firms of the area, has supplied them with some technological, innovative services, sustaining their growth. More exactly, some research centres, named Centres of Competence, were created, with the pre-existing structures of the Polytechnic of Turin and of the firm RTM (placed in Vico Canavese, Province of Turin): their targets were to supply innovative services to the local firms and to place technical machineries at the disposal of the local units, to support their innovation and competitiveness. The present research analyzes a central point: which has been the impact of these services? Which is the probability that a public o private intervention to innovate has success and brings economic growth to the involved firms? This objective is achieved with a Probit Model, built on a panel of 103 firms, that covers a 6-year range (from 1999 to 2004) and contains their balance-sheets data and the technical information regarding their collaborations with the Centres; the results highlight the role of a solid patrimonial stability, of the choice of the right innovations to apply to the production processes as well as the importance of a high previous technological status of the involved enterprises

Rising Scholar: A Tale of Two Countries: SEZ-led Growth in India and China

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) played an instrumental role in China’s transformation from a closed, impoverished nation to a liberalized economic powerhouse in just forty years. This paper analyzes how developing countries can use SEZs for economic growth by comparing SEZ policies in China and India, as India also used their zones for investment attraction and technological innovation. The paper concludes that SEZ policies are most successful when used strategically to experiment reform measures for economic liberalization. Other factors important for SEZ success include setting up the right incentives for zone managers to achieve economic goals, granting autonomy for local governments to adapt policies, and taking measures to avoid corruption, especially during the land acquisition process. It is imperative for countries seeking to implement SEZs to understand the underlying causes of success or failure and adopt policies to maximize their benefits for economic growth

Public Interventions Supporting Innovation in Small and Medium-Size Firms. Successes or Failures? A Probit Analysis

The aim of this work is to investigate the probability of success or failure of public interventions, made to support the development of some Italian firms. The great number of small and medium-size enterprises, placed in the Canavese area, north of Turin, Italy, has suffered, in the nineties, of a gap in technological innovation in their production. The Consortium for the Canavese Technological District (CCTD), a public local association established in 1993 specifically to support the firms of the area, has supplied them with some technological, innovative services, sustaining their growth. More exactly, some research centres, named Centres of Competence, were created, with the pre-existing structures of the Polytechnic of Turin and of the firm RTM (placed in Vico Canavese, Province of Turin): their targets were to supply innovative services to the local firms and to place technical machineries at the disposal of the local units, to support their innovation and competitiveness. The present research analyzes a central point: which has been the impact of these services? Which is the probability that a public o private intervention to innovate has success and brings economic growth to the involved firms? This objective is achieved with a Probit Model, built on a panel of 103 firms, that covers a 6-year range (from 1999 to 2004) and contains their balance-sheets data and the technical information regarding their collaborations with the Centres; the results highlight the role of a solid patrimonial stability, of the choice of the right innovations to apply to the production processes as well as the importance of a high previous technological status of the involved enterprises.Innovation probability, Public interventions, Firms growth, Qualitative choice models

Catching up and lagging behind in a balance-of-payments-constrained dual economy

The success of nations in the path towards economic development hinges heavily on the emergence and dynamism of a modern sector capable of simultaneously absorbing an increasing share of the labour force while reducing the technological gap with the world's frontier. Failure to do so would eventually lead the economy to low- or middle- income traps, in which only a small fraction of the population would benefit from the gains of economic growth and technological progress. Building on previous contributions from Post-Keynesian, Neo-Schumpeterian and Latin-American Structuralism literature, this paper sets up a theoretical model of catching-up among nations aimed at formalizing this idea by exploring the dynamic interactions between structural change and technological upgrading in the process of economic development. The focus of the model is on a "representative" nation of the South that is characterized by having: i) a dual structure (i.e., a large share of labour force working on low-productive-traditional activities that coexists with a small fraction of workers employed in modern activities); ii) a high degree of technological backwardness in the modern activities; and iii) a binding restriction on the external accounts. Under these circumstances, the dynamic behaviour of two key variables will determine the success or failure of this economy over time: the share of labour in the modern sector and the relative stock of technological knowledge of the modern sector compared to that of the world technological leader. Depending on initial conditions and underlying parameters, the southern economy would be attracted towards four different equilibrium points, each of them entailing extremely different implications in terms of long-run development. After analysing the dynamic properties of the model, simple simulations are implemented in order to illustrate a number of structural trajectories that might shed new light on the complex forces acting behind the success or failure of economic development

Optimal regime switching under risk aversion and uncertainty

echnology adoption is key for corporate strategy, often determining the success or failure of a company as a whole. However, risk aversion often raises the reluctance to make a timely technology switch, particularly when this entails the abandonment of an existing market regime and entry in a new one. Consequently, which strategy is most suitable and the optimal timing of regime switch depends not only on market factors, such as the definition of the market regimes, as well as economic and technological uncertainty, but also on attitudes towards risk. Therefore, we develop a utility-based, regime-switching framework for evaluating different technology-adoption strategies under price and technological uncertainty. We assume that a decisionmaker may invest in each technology that becomes available (compulsive) or delay investment until a new technology arrives and then invest in either the older (laggard) or the newer technology (leapfrog). Our results indicate that, if market regimes are asymmetric, then greater risk aversion and price uncertainty in a new regime may accelerate regime switching. In addition, the feasibility of a laggard strategy decreases (increases) as price uncertainty in an existing (new) regime increases. Finally, although risk aversion typically favours a compulsive and a laggard strategy, a leapfrog strategy may be feasible under risk aversion provided that the output price and the rate of innovation are sufficiently high

Economic risk on the performance of sports organizations

In the economic activity of any organization may appear times difficult to avoid and overcome, which may lead to the insolvency and ultimately bankruptcy. The many factors that generate business risk determines its manifestation in various forms such as market risk, economic risk, financial risk, risk of technological change, currency risk or bankruptcy risk. The purpose of risk analysis in organizations is revealing the factors acting on these types of risks, the size of their influence on the variability of results under the organization structure, reserves and measures to reduce and thus eliminate the risk. Proper financial planning is the key to success of any business presenting risks, and its absence is a key element in the failure of many economic organizations

Attributing scientific and technical progress: the case of holography

Holography, the three-dimensional imaging technology, was portrayed widely as a paradigm of progress during its decade of explosive expansion 1964–73, and during its subsequent consolidation for commercial and artistic uses up to the mid 1980s. An unusually seductive and prolific subject, holography successively spawned scientific insights, putative applications and new constituencies of practitioners and consumers. Waves of forecasts, associated with different sponsors and user communities, cast holography as a field on the verge of success—but with the dimensions of success repeatedly refashioned. This retargeting of the subject represented a degree of cynical marketeering, but was underpinned by implicit confidence in philosophical positivism and faith in technological progressivism. Each of its communities defined success in terms of expansion, and anticipated continual progressive increase. This paper discusses the contrasting definitions of progress in holography, and how they were fashioned in changing contexts. Focusing equally on reputed ‘failures’ of some aspects of the subject, it explores the varied attributes by which success and failure were linked with progress by different technical communities. This important case illuminates the peculiar post-World War II environment that melded the military, commercial and popular engagement with scientific and technological subjects, and the competing criteria by which they assessed the products of science