Estimation of Several Political Action Effects of Energy Prices

One important effect of price shocks in the United States has been increased political attention paid to the structure and performance of oil and natural gas markets, along with some governmental support for energy conservation. This paper describes how price changes helped lead the emergence of a political agenda accompanied by several interventions, as revealed through Granger causality tests on change in the legislative agenda.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figures, 2 table

Industrial districts in a globalizing world: A model to change or a model of change?

Industrial districts – and especially industrial districts in Italy – have been put forth as a model of economic development premised on the deep rooting of firms in a local socio-economic system that is both rich in skills and tied into international flows of goods and knowledge. But there is also a sense today that those districts are in transformation, that globalization has put them “on the move.” This has led some to question whether a model that is becoming many models can still in fact be a model. In this paper, we use a study of the Modenese mechanical district – an archetypical industrial district – to examine this “movement.” We argue that when properly understood the Italian districts do still offer lessons that are generalizable to other regional economies. We show that the district in question is changing, and show in particular that there has been a rise to prominence in the district of relatively small multinational firms. These are changes that are not atypical of industrial districts in Italy. We argue that a deeper look at just how the districts are changing makes clear that this rise to prominence has not severed these firms’ ties to smaller firms in the district. Rather, they have drawn upon those relations for essential support both on production and innovation. We also show also that there is a cognizance of this fact in the district, evidenced in efforts to recreate private regional institutions consistent with a district structure “on the move.” Drawing on our these findings, and on a theoretical approach that holds that productive systems in industrial districts are constituted by the multiplicity of interactions between firms, we conclude that changes in the district in question require also changes in the institutions that sustain those interactions, including especially the emergence of “new public spaces” and new “scaffolding structures.” Using the concrete example of a company created to foster collaborative technology transfer among its owner-members, we discuss the nature of the public spaces and scaffolding structures attuned to the needs of a more vertical and fragmented open district structure. We finally consider implications for public policies supporting innovation.Innovation policy; local development policies; regional development policies; evaluation management

Resource allocation in a university environment : a test of the Ruefli, Freeland, and Davis goal programming decomposition algorithms / BEBR No. 735

Bibliography: p. 20-22

Pollution Incidence and Political Jurisdiction: Evidence from the TRI

Few issues are more contentious for local communities than industrial pollution. When local industries pollute, lawmakers and regulators must balance two primary concerns: economic prosperity and the environment. The role of political pressure is well-documented in environmental policy. What is less clear is the role jurisdictional or boundary considerations play in determining the implementation of environmental laws. Anecdotal evidence suggests that local regulators are more lenient in their treatment of polluters when the incidence of pollution falls partially on those outside the state. One explanation for such behavior is that regulators take actions to maximize political support. This paper tests this jurisdictional model using Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data from 1987 to 1996. We find that facilities’ emissions into the air and water are systematically higher in counties that border other states. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that jurisdictional considerations are an important determinant of pollution incidence.

Innovation, generative relationships and scaffolding structures: implications of a complexity perspective to innovation for public and private interventions

The linear model of innovation has been superseded by a variety of theoretical models that view the innovation process as systemic, complex, multi-level, multi-temporal, involving a plurality of heterogeneous economic agents. Accordingly, the emphasis of the policy discourse has changed over time. The focus has shifted from the direct public funding of basic research as an engine of innovation, to the creation of markets for knowledge goods, to, eventually, the acknowledgement that knowledge transfer very often requires direct interactions among innovating actors. In most cases, policy interventions attempt to facilitate the match between “demand” and “supply” of the knowledge needed to innovate. A complexity perspective calls for a different framing, one focused on the fostering of processes characterized by multiple agency levels, multiple temporal scales, ontological uncertainty and emergent outcomes. This contribution explores what it means to design interventions in support of innovation processes inspired by a complex systems perspective. It does so by analyzing two examples of coordinated interventions: a public policy funding innovating networks (with SMEs, research centers and university), and a private initiative, promoted by a network of medium-sized mechanical engineering firms, that supports innovation by means of technology brokerage. Relying on two unique datasets recording the interactions of the organizations involved in these interventions, social network analysis and qualitative research are combined in order to investigate network dynamics and the roles of specific actors in fostering innovation processes. Then, some general implications for the design of coordinated interventions supporting innovation in a complexity perspective are drawn

Gaseous diffusion in molecular sieves

Imperial Users onl