Firm heterogeneity explains the productivity driven selection mechanism that determines aggregate productivity growth within industries. This paper empirically demonstrates that ICT has a robust impact on firm heterogeneity only when ICT is used intensively and jointly with specific ICT...

Customer satisfaction incentive schemes are increasingly common in a variety of industries. We offer explanations as to how and when incenting employees on customer satisfaction is profitable and offer several recommendations for improving upon current practice. Faced with employee groups...

A survey of over 1,000 companies conducted in 1990 indicated that two‐thirds will be giving merit‐only increases in 1991, which was a 60 per cent increase over two years ago. However, a current question: Is pay for performance used effectively? This article examines both individual and group...

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Building Competitiveness: A Roadmap and Policy Guide -- 2 Foreign Direct Investment and Competitiveness -- 3 Corporate Governance, Corporate Performance, and Investor Confidence in East Asia -- 4 Competition Policy, Economic Adjustment, and Competitiveness -- 5...

What is the appropriate degree of centralization in the context of industrial policy? The basic advantage of centralization results from internalization of external effects. While most of the literature stresses the superior information of regional authorities as a countervailing force, the...

The literature on tax competition generally concludes that international coordination of capital taxes among symmetric countries increases tax rates. This paper investigates whether this conclusion also holds in a political economy framework where taxes are set by elected policy makers. It shows...

We present a non-technical account of ambiguity in strategic games and show how it may be applied to economics and social sciences. Optimistic and pessimistic responses to ambiguity are formally modelled. We show that pessimism has the effect of increasing (decreasing) equilibrium prices under...

In this paper we examine a class of local crimes that involve perfectly mobile criminals, and perfectly immobile criminal opportunities. We focus on local non-rival crime deterrence that is more efficient against criminals pursuing domestic crimes than criminals pursuing crimes elsewhere. In a...

We provide an explanation why centralisation of political decision makingresults in overspending in some policy domains, whereas too low spending persists in others.We study a model in which delegates from jurisdictions bargain over local public goods provision.If all of the costs of public...