The Flemish government launched its Spearhead Cluster (SHC) policy in 2017. The aim is to boost strategic sectors by setting up cluster initiatives which coordinate collaborative R&D initiatives. In this paper, we analyze whether becoming a member of such a cluster initiative has an impact on...

This paper investigates a unique policy designed to maintain employment during the privatization of East German firms after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The policy required new owners of the firms to commit to employment targets, with penalties for non-compliance. Using a dynamic model, we...

We show that productivity at both the firm and employee (i.e., analyst and inventor) level temporarily declines upon announcements of takeover rumors that do not materialize. Such speculative news may hurt productivity because uncertainty and threat of job loss cause anxiety, distraction, and...

According to mainstream thinking, efficiency is a potent tool for conservation — a way to live better while using fewer resources. Unfortunately, this simple narrative is contradicted by overwhelming evidence. Instead of spurring conservation, efficiency seems to stimulate the consumption of...

We investigate the role of factor-priced-induced innovation in mediating the employment impact of expanding production in China. Our empirical approach implements concepts developed in Acemoglu (2010) and complements the approaches summarized by Wei, Xie, and Zhang (2017) that focus on directly...

We propose a new methodology to estimate empirically the input price-induced technical change and total factor productivity (TFP) growth in China. Our primary goal is to test Hicks' induced innovation hypothesis by examining whether technical change in China has been induced by sharp increase in...

We investigate the effect of rising labor costs on induced technological change in China's secondary industry. While previous studies have focused primarily on induced technology change in agriculture and in energy production/environmental protection, there has been little evidence relating to...

The economic dimension of the agricultural farm is intensively studied both by agricultural specialists, who usually want farms as large as possible, but also by agrarian economists who measure the profitability of the factors involved in obtaining agricultural production at the scale of the...