The inert firm; why old firms show a stickiness to their location

This paper investigates the tendency of older firms to show stickiness to their home-region or fixed location, with the increase of age (in years since founding), as found in earlier research. Empirical evidence supporting this argument is found from a telephone survey under the population of old firms in the Netherlands. In the current paper an analysis is done to determine which other firm characteristics -next to age in years-, influence this stickiness to place; such as innovative behaviour, network relationships, market, size (in number of employees), region and location type. This analysis is done on written questionnaires of 179 firms in the Netherlands, 37 of these firms are specifically labelled as ‘old firms’ (founded before 1851). Tested is whether inert behaviour, which according to the theory of structural inertia increases with age, also has an influence on the location of firms. Furthermore, the relationship between the spatial environment and other firm characteristics is investigated.

An empirical study on the relationship between the spatial environment and the survival of old firms in the Netherlands

This is an empirical research on old firms in the Netherlands where old firms are defined als those firms that were founded before 1851 and still exist today. The study is divided in two main parts. The first part is descriptive and provides information on the firm population at stake. The regional differences concerning age, size, sector and percentage of the total firm population are shown. In the second part, an analysis on the outcome of a survey conducted at the research population is presented. The analysis focuses on the relation between firm characteristics and the spatial environment and whether or not similarities can be identified in these old firms. Overall, economic theory suggests that forces external to the firm such as strong competition, lagging demand, or technological drawbacks are the dominant determinants of firm closure. In this line of reasoning it may be claimed that low competition, growing demand and innovative behaviour might stimulate survival chances of firms on the long run. There are few sources on firm's activities during the life course of individual firm and on the influence of the spatial environment on these firm activities. This study might shed some light on the relationship between the spatial environment, specific firm characteristics and long term survival of firms in the Netherlands. Insight in the background of 'long-term' survival of firms can be of importance to industrial organization research and firm demography and also to the economic and regional policymaking in understanding and stimulating regional dynamics. Furthermore it might help to identify indicators of more successful firm strategies.

The invariants of the binary decimic

We consider the algebra of invariants of binary forms of degree 10 with complex coefficients, construct a system of parameters with degrees 2, 4, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14 and find the 106 basic invariants

The invariants of the binary nonic

We consider the algebra of invariants of binary forms of degree 9 with complex coefficients, find the 92 basic invariants, give an explicit system of parameters and show the existence of four more systems of parameters with different sets of degrees

Two distance-regular graphs

We construct two families of distance-regular graphs, namely the subgraph of the dual polar graph of type B_3(q) induced on the vertices far from a fixed point, and the subgraph of the dual polar graph of type D_4(q) induced on the vertices far from a fixed edge. The latter is the extended bipartite double of the former

Competition Law, Antitrust Immunity and Profits: A Dynamic Panel Analysis

This paper tests whether the transition from the old Economic Competition Act, which was based on the so-called “abuse system”, to the new Competition Act, which was based on “prohibition system”, in the Netherlands had an impact on the price-cost margins in manufacturing industries during the period 1993-2007. The paper further investigates if the price-cost margins were higher in industries where temporary antitrust immunity was granted for subset of firms that engaged in concerted practices. The results indicate that the change in the competition law in the Netherlands had a very small and negative, yet statistically insignificant deterrent effect on the price-cost margins. Elsewhere, markups were higher in industries in which temporary antitrust immunity was granted for some class of coordinated actions.Price-cost margins;Competition law;Antitrust immunity;Antitrust enforcement;Dynamic panel data model;the Netherlands

The Elementary Divisors of the Incidence Matrix of Skew Lines in PG(3,q)

The elementary divisors of the incidence matrix of lines in PG(3,q) are computed, where two lines are incident if and only if they are skew.Comment: 13 pages. The results of this paper supersede those in the paper arXiv:math/1001.2551 V2. Minor correction

Tight bounds for break minimization

We consider round-robin sports tournaments with n teams and n − 1 rounds. We construct an infinite family of opponent schedules for which every home-away assignment induces at least 1/4 n(n−2) breaks. This construction establishes a matching lower bound for a corresponding upper bound from the literature