Into the Doll’s House: Understanding Presumed Female Housekeeping in Children’s Literature

This essay analyzes Edith and Milly’s Housekeeping (1866), written anonymously by Laura Valentine, a general editor for Frederick Warne & Company Publishing. The essay considers the book in the context of gender roles and class in Victorian England. Part of the “Aunt Louisa’s London Toy Books” collection, Edith and Milly’s Housekeeping reflects common nineteenth-century lessons for young girls in regards to housekeeping, morals, maturity, and class consciousness. The essay also suggests that the reason for the book’s failure to remain popular over centuries is that the notion of the doll’s house has been transformed in westernized countries from a tool to help young girls learn how to keep a house into a play toy with which girls are encouraged to use their strong imaginations and not restrict themselves to traditional notions of gender roles, including housekeeping

Determinants of regional variations in the rate ofl profit. An empirical analysis for Austrian manufacturing 1972-1992

The rate of profit represents a central concept in economics and is commonly seen as one of the most accurate indicators for economic vitality of firms, industries, and regions. The level of profit rates is supposed to guide investment shifts between sectors and over space, the speed and direction of technological change, and the development of economic activity in the long run. Differentiales in regional profit rates may therefore be a major source for differences in regional economic development and regional competitiveness. While neoclassical regional economic theory postulates a tendency towards an equalisation in regional rates of profit, empirical studies show considerable and persistent regional differences in profitability. The aim of the paper is to analyse the pattern of profitability over time and space for Austrian manufacturing on a highly disaggregated regional level for the time period 1972-1992. An eclectic model is employed in order to analyse major sources for regional variations in profit rates. The model distinguishes four groups of determinants: production technology, capital-labour-relations, market competition, and spatial variables such as transport costs and agglomeration economies.

Increasing Energy and Resource Efficiency through Innovation: An Explorative Analysis Using Innovation Survey Data

Energy and resource efficiency innovations (EREIs) are often seen as win-win opportunities for both the economic and the environmental performance of firms. It is thus worth asking how the innovation activities and performance of firms with regard to energy and resource efficiency look like: Do EREI firms follow distinct innovation strategies? Do EREIs spur or limit innovation success? And what are the particular features of EREI firms compared to conventional innovators? Using German innovation data, the authors find that EREIs are determined by a larger set of technology-push and market-pull factors. On the supply side, R&D budgets, research infrastructure and networking with other firms are important factors of influence, while on the demand side increased productivity and cost reductions are decisive, as well as improved product quality. On the other hand, EREIs are complex activities which also need regulatory incentives. Although EREIs are not more successful compared to conventional innovations, they contribute substantially to the economic success of firms.resource efficiency, energy efficiency, environmental innovations, innovation surveys

Financing of innovations – thresholds and options

The paper investigates thresholds and options for financing innovation activities in manufacturing and services using data from the German Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2007. We analyze the significance of financing restrictions, especially the role of internal financing, external capital, and public funding, and discuss applicable management options to cope with challenges in markets and technology. We find that most firms rely mainly on selffinancing means to start an innovation project. As a consequence of information asymmetries, private investors, e.g. banks, are uneager to invest in risky innovative ventures. Public funding might complement internal financing in order to balance shortcomings in private capital provision, but these sources have to be identified and convinced. In sum, the empirical work states that financing innovation is an entrepreneurial task, and the management of innovation needs strategic thinking as well as a well defined capital portfolio policy.Financial management, innovation and entrepreneurship, business policies and strategies.

Local User-Producer Interaction in Innovation and Export Performance of Firms

There is ample evidence that user-producer interaction is an important factor for successful innovations. It is often claimed that user-producer interaction is most effcient in close proximity. On the other hand, innovations are a major determinant for the export performance of firms. Does this mean that intense local user-producer interaction always leads to exports? In contrast to this reasoning international marketing studies stress the problem of responsiveness to local preferences. In order to generate global innovation, an international firm should look for the global common denominator of national preferences. This paper investigates the question to what extend local demand is able to induce innovations that are export effective. We investigate data from the ZEW Innovation survey of 4,786 firms in the manufacturing and service industries. These firms were asked about the sources of their innovation and their exporting activities. We find evidence that the export orientation of the domestic market of innovators such as and the degree of competition stimulate export success. For multinational firms these results are important as well, because they can assess country markets in terms of the leverage effect of domestic demand and market conditions to generate global innovations. --Export Performance,Innovation Activities,User Producer Interaction

Unmasking the Porter hypothesis: Environmental innovations and firm-profitability

We examine impacts of different types of environmental innovations on firm profits. Following Porter's (1991) hypothesis that environmental regulation can improve firms' competitiveness we distinguish regulation induced and voluntary environmental innovations. We find that innovations which reduce environmental externalities reduce firms' profits, as long as they are induced by regulations. However, innovation that increases a firm's material or energy efficiency in terms of material or energy consumption has a positive impact on profitability. This positive result holds both for regulation induced and voluntary innovations, although the effect is significantly larger for regulation-driven innovation.We conclude that the Porter hypothesis does not hold in general for its 'strong' version but has to be qualified by the type of environmental innovation. Our finding rest on firm level data from the German part of the Community Innovation Survey in 2009. --Environmental innovation,environmental regulation,Porter hypothesis,competitiveness

Drivers and Effects of Internationalising Innovation by SMEs

This paper investigates the drivers and effects of the internationalisation of innovation activities in SMEs based on a large data set of German firms covering the period 2002-2007. We look at different stages of the innovation process (R&D, design, production and sales of new products, and implementation of new processes) and explore the role of internal resources, home market competition and innovationrelated location advantages for an SME's decision to engage in innovation activities abroad. By linking international innovation activities to firm growth in the home market we try to identify likely internationalisation effects at the firm level. The results show that export experience and experience in knowledge protection are highly important for international innovation activities of SMEs. Fierce home market competition turns out to be rather an obstacle than a driver. High innovation costs stimulate internationalisation of non-R&D innovation activities, and shortage of qualified labour expels production of new products. R&D activities abroad and exports of new products spur firm growth in the home market while there are no negative effects on home market growth from shifting production of new products abroad. --Internationalisation of Innovation,Globalisation,SMEs,Effects of Innovation,Absorptive Capacities,Market Structure

Technology transfer and the Internet: a chance for outsiders at public science to get into the business?

The Internet is receiving increasing attention as a medium for technology transfer between public research and the enterprise sector. Based on a survey of public research units in natural sciences and engineering in Germany, we analyse the determinants of firm contacts established via the Internet. Special attention is paid to the effect of experiences in firm interaction in the past. Econometric estimation results suggest that Internet contact to firms is more likely to be established by public research units which are already well established in the transfer market. Research units which orientate their homepage design towards the business sector are more likely to build Internet-based contact with firms. There is no evidence that public research units which were market outsiders in the past use the Internet more intensively to get into the transfer business. --Technology transfer,Industry-science interaction,Internet use,Simultaneous equation Probit

Increasing energy and resource efficiency through innovation: an explorative analysis using innovation survey data

Energy and resource efficiency innovations (EREIs) are often seen as win-win opportunities for both the economic and the environmental performance of firms. It is thus worth asking how the innovation activities and performance of firms with regard to energy and resource efficiency look like: Do EREI firms follow distinct innovation strategies? Do EREIs spur or limit innovation success? And what are the particular features of EREI firms compared to conventional innovators? Using German innovation data, we find that EREIs are determined by a larger set of technology-push and market-pull factors. On the supply side, R&D budgets, research infrastructure and networking with other firms are important factors of influence, while on the demand side increased productivity and cost reductions are decisive, as well as improved product quality. On the other hand, EREIs are complex activities which also need regulatory incentives. Although EREIs are not more successful compared to conventional innovations, they contribute substantially to the economic success of firms. --Resource efficiency,energy efficiency,environmental innovations,innovation surveys