Книги

The American sociologist Talcott Parsons was often accused of being an overly abstract, even apolitical thinker, remote in Harvard's ivory tower. The controversial Parsons, in fact, emulated his mentor, the venerable Max Weber, in at least two respects: as a scholar he practised Wertfreiheit (scientific professionalism) and as a political activist he worked for the preservation and expansion of democracy. Uta Gerhardt traces this double commitment and links Parsons's scholarship to his politics. Utilizing rich archival material, she examines four periods in Parsons's intellectual life in the context of American history and society. From the New Deal and the rise of German fascism to the Second World War, through the McCarthy era and the Civil Rights movement, Parsons's overriding agenda was to develop both a sociological understanding and a defense of the development of modern democracy.  

In recent years the increasing international mobility of capital, firms and consumers has begun to constrain tax policies in most OECD countries, playing a major role in reforming national tax systems. Haufler uses the theory of international taxation to consider the fundamental forces underlying this process, covering both factor and commodity taxes, as well as their interaction. Topics include a variety of different international tax avoidance strategies - capital flight, profit shifting in multinational firms, and cross-border shopping by consumers. Situations in which tax competition creates conflicting interests between countries are given particular consideration. Haufler addresses the complex issue of coordination in different areas of tax policy, with special emphasis on regional tax harmonization in the European Union. Also included is a detailed introduction to recent theoretical literature.

This paper shows that tax policy toward investment, by changing the relative prices of capital varieties, can have a direct effect on the quality of capital goods that firms purchase. The empirical results indicate that this impact is economically important and readily apparent in disaggregated data on farming, mining, and construction machinery. The paper also applies a general method for aggregation using index number theory which suggests that all of the investment increase generated by tax subsidies comes from buying higher quality capital goods as opposed to buying a larger number of capital goods. It shows, further, that the supply of capital is upward sloping with an elasticity of about one. The tax induced quality changes documented in the paper imply a tax distortion whose deadweight loss is neglected in the conventional literature but whose magnitude indicates may represent a substantial efficiency cost from capital taxation (or subsidy).

This paper employs MIMIC, an applied general equilibrium model of the Dutch economy, to explore various tax cuts aimed at combating unemployment and raising labor supply. MIMIC combines modern labor-market theories, a firm empirical foundation detailed description of Dutch labor-market institutions. We develop a small aggregate model which contains the core of MIMIC, namely wage setting, job matching, labor supply demand. In addition to illustrating the main economic mechanisms in MIMIC shows the advantages of employing a larger, more disaggregated model that accounts for heterogeneity, institutional details, and more economic mechanisms. Targeting in-work benefits at the low skilled is the most effective way to cut economy-wide unemployment quality and quantity of labor supply. Cuts in social security contributions paid by employers and subsidies for hiring long-term unemployed reduce unskilled unemployment most substantially. Tax cuts in the higher tax brackets boost the quantity and quality of formal labor supply but are less effective in reducing unemployment and in raising unskilled employment and female labor supply.

Boards of directors and corporate governance debates have been highly focused in the business press and even in research, but few universities offer courses on these topics. In this paper a research and teaching model is introduced, and we will show some examples of how such courses may be designed and how they relate to research. Examples are given for executive courses, undergraduate courses and graduate courses. The paper concludes by presenting the second international doctoral course on governance in SMEs.

В книгу включены работы авторов из разных стран, которые делятся своим как теоретическим, так и практическим опытом командной работы. Затрагиваются темы по оценке и измерению эффективности команд, принципов их создания, динамики развития отношений членов команды.

In Uganda, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, poverty is concentrated in rural areas. Because agriculture accounts for a large share of incomes for these households, policies and external shocks that affect agriculture, including shifts in world prices, changes in agricultural productivity, and reductions in marketing costs, may have significant effects on rural poverty. In this paper, we use a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model of the Ugandan economy, explicitly designed to capture regional variations in agricultural production and household incomes, to examine the implications of these policy changes and shocks.

Simulation results suggest that a doubling of area planted to coffee (the government.s target) would increase rural consumption by less than 2.0 percent, because of an estimated 10 percent decline in the world price of robusta coffee and an 11.3 percent real exchange rate appreciation of the Ugandan shilling. Smaller productivity increases in food crops may have greater potential to raise rural incomes, provided that markets perform well and producer incentives are maintained. A five percent increase in agricultural productivity raises consumption by 1.3 to 2.1 percent among rural households and lowers food prices by 3.4 to 3.8 percent relative to the CPI, thus benefiting households with high food consumption shares. Reducing agricultural marketing margins by 30 percent leads to increases of 2.3 to 4.1 percent in consumption of farm households, with the largest gains in regions where consumption out of own production is lower.

The technical and scale efficiency of Polish farms is analysed, using Data Envelopment Analysis. Efficiency differences are measured according to farm specialisation, in crop or livestock, at two points in time during transition, 1996 and 2000. The statistical variability of efficiency estimates is investigated. The efficiency results are reviewed in the light of confidence intervals provided by bootstrapping and of a summary measure introduced in this study ‘the coefficient of separation’. The inference analysis suggests that farms might be less efficient than revealed by the point estimates alone, and that they might not be clearly different from each other.

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital presents a novel interpretation of the good and bad times in the economy, taking a long-term perspective and linking technology and finance in an original and convincing way.

The paper studies the relations between technological strategies and market success of firms, through an empirical analysis of the commercial aero-engine industry since 1948 to 1997 detailed at the level of competition among single firms products. It uses a multidimensional measure of technical progress through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for measuring technological performances of single products and firms and data on sales of each product over time for representing market success. The paper confirms the existence of heterogeneity of firms technological strategies and draws some main conclusions with respect to strategies of convergence and divergence from the technological frontier, first mover advantage and survival of inefficient products.

This paper was prepared as a background document for the forthcoming World Industrial Development report for UNIDO in 2001. While the link between technological knowledge and economic development is difficult to unravel, nonetheless, technological disparities play an immensely important role in explaining the diversity of development experience. Here we explore recent advances in the study of innovation processes, viewed through two different lenses, neoclassical and evolutionary theories of the firms. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for innovation policy in developing economies. We conclude that a central task of policy is to create a rich ecology of organisational and institutional support for the absorption of knowledge and the generation of innovative capabilities.

Conventional techniques for marketing technology products fail primarily because marketers do not truly understand their customers. Do you know what customers really think about your technology? Now, drawing on their award-winning research and case studies ranging from America Online to the Discovery Channel, marketing experts A. Parasuraman and Charles L. Colby demonstrate how the adoption of technology is influenced by unique beliefs that do not apply to conventional products and services. In the context of a general set of powerful techno-marketing strategies, Parasuraman and Colby introduce "Technology Readiness" (TR), a groundbreaking concept that enables you to measure and assess a customer's predisposition to adopt new technologies. Employing their TR construct - a psychological amalgam of fears, hopes, desires, and frustrations about technology - the authors identify five types of technology customers: the highly optimistic and innovative "Explorers," the innovative yet cautious "Pioneers," the uncertain "Skeptics" who need the benefits of technology proved, the insecure "Paranoids," and the resistant "Laggards." Using this typology, you can customize your technology strategies by combining insights from your context-specific assessments with general marketing strategies presented in the book. Essential reading in technology companies will be the chapter devoted to Parasuraman's Pyramid Model, which explains the critical role technology plays in a marketing organization as a link between employees, the organization, and the customer. Finally, the authors have included a self-administered quiz so you can score your own Technology Readiness and a chapter on the "Techno-Ready Marketing Audit" to provide a framework for taking immediate action based on the precepts in this book

Знаете ли Вы, что потребители в действительности думают о Вашей технологии ? В своей книге известные маркетинговые специалисты А.Parasuraman и С.Colby демонстрируют как уникальные убеждения/мнения, которые не применимы для обычных товаров и услуг, влияют на то, будет ли технология принята потребителями. Авторы вводят понятие «готовность технологии» - концепцию, которая позволяет оценивать и измерять склонность потребителей к принятию технологии. Используя эту концепцию, они выделяют пять типов потребителей, для каждого из которых должна быть разработана индивидуальная стратегия. В книгу включен перечень вопросов, который позволит менеджерам фирм высокотехнологичного сектора определить «готовность» их технологий.

Книга известного американского исследователя популярной культуры Джона Фиска представляет собой критический культурологический анализ разных аспектов телевидения. Используя методологию Ролана Барта, Михаила Бахтина и множество других теоретических подходов, Фиск рассматривает такие разные темы как семиотические характеристики телезвезд (на примере Мадонны), гендерные аспекты телесериалов, социальные функции телевикторин, роль зрителей в интерпретации и "дописывании" телепродукции. Фиск всячески подчеркивает активную роль аудитории, в частности, с помощью одного из своих ключевых понятий "производительные тексты" (producerly texts) - т.е. тексты, в создании которых прямым или косвенным образом принимает участие аудитория. Книга написана простым, увлекательным языком, доступным для студентов.

Empirical evidence suggests that agricultural futures price movements have fat-tailed distributions and exhibit sudden and unexpected price jumps. There is also evidence that the volatility of futures prices contains a term structure depending on both calendar-time and time to maturity. This paper extends Bates (1991) jump-diffusion option pricing model by including both seasonal and maturity effects in volatility. An in-sample fit to market option prices on wheat futures shows that our model outperforms previous models considered in the literature. A numerical example illustrates the economic significance of our results for option valuation.