Over the past several years, substantial research effort has gone into measuring the efficiency of financial institutions. Many studies have found that inefficiencies are quite large, on the order of 20% or more of total banking industry costs and about half of the industry's potential profits....

This paper shows how one can infer the nature of local returns to scale at the input- or output-oriented efficient projection of a technically inefficient input-output bundle, when the input- and output-oriented measures of efficiency differ.

Hierarchical firms are enterprises with rigid internal job ladders. We examine the state enterprise as the prototypical hierarchical firm. In the state enterprise, promotion of employees through the internal hierarchy is determined by the workers’ allocation of time between rent seeking and...

We address the notion of 'corporate coherence', recently made prominent by Teece, Rumelt, Dosi and Winter (1994). We argue that the literature is confused on the meaning of the notion (and similar notions) in a number of dimensions. Drawing on insights from market-process theories, we put...

In this paper we empirically estimate the contribution of the communications infrastructure to the growth of output and productivity at the dis-aggregate industry and at the aggregate economy levels. The estimated value of the marginal benefits or the shadow price of the communications...

National policy makers have shown a growing interest in the regional dimension of innovation processes, and regional policy makers are seeking to promote their own competitiveness by supporting innovation. To advance the OECD quantitative research on regions and innovation, a categorisation of...

The fixed effects (FE) estimator of "conditional convergence" in income based dynamic panel models could be biased downward when capital adjustment cost is present. Such a capital adjustment cost means a rising marginal cost of investment which could slow down the convergence. The standard FE...

Without imposing restrictions on the utility function and the probability distributions, we show the impact of multiple uncertainty (and each single uncertainty) and change in risk aversion on each input demand. In so doing, we emphasize the importance of the relationship between the inputs in...

This study considers the choice of ownership as a continuous variable, thereby adapting the Grossman-Hart-Moore (GHM) theory of the firm. To do so, it is assumed that parties sign a contract that enables them to divide and use assets even after the negotiation over gains of trade fails. I show...

This paper empirically assesses whether the deployment and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure at the national level affects trade flows within the European Union (EU) and between the EU and its main trading partners. The analysis tests the hypothesis that...