Suchergebnisse

Public subsidies in support of new firm foundation are among the most frequently used instruments of industrial policy in the Euro zone. This paper analyses their effectiveness and efficiency vis-à-vis some features of the overall process of industry dynamics in Italian manufacturing. To this end, the survival and growth patterns of new small firms are investigated using a unique dataset on electrical and electronic engineering in Italy. As regards survival, our results confirm the findings of other studies, namely that the hazard rates are particularly high in the early stages of firm's life cycle. As far as growth is concerned, the study's main finding is that Gibrat's Law fails to hold in the years immediately following start-up, when smaller firms must 'rush' in order to achieve a size large enough to enhance their likelihood of survival; conversely, in later stages of firm's life cycle the Law cannot be rejected. These results radically question the use of subsidies as an optimal policy for the support of new entries, since the subsidy brings about a major bias in the process of market selection (including substitution and deadweight effects) and hampers the post-entry scale adjustment of newborn firms.

"Der Niedergang traditioneller Industrieregionen und das Aufblühen junger Hochtechnologie-Regionen wird vielfach als unausweichliche regionale Konsequenz des industriellen Strukturwandels betrachtet. Dieses Buch setzt sich mit den Chancen des Strukturwandels in traditionellen Industrieregionen auseinander. Auf der Grundlage einer regionalhistorischen Analyse und mit Hilfe von vierzig Betriebsfallstudien arbeitet der Autor die spezifischen betrieblichen und regionalen Innovationshemmnisse in traditionellen Industrieregionen heraus. Diese Innovationshemmnisse bilden den Ausgangspunkt seiner Überlegung zu einem regionalpolitischen Erneuerungskonzept für traditionelle Industrieregionen. Mit seiner Arbeit erschließt der Autor neue Einblicke in die Entwicklungsprobleme alter Industriegebiete: Er reduziert den Strukturwandel nicht auf bloße Verschiebungen in der Branchenstruktur, sondern setzt an den betrieblichen Innovationsprozessen und den Interdependenzen zwischen betrieblicher und regionaler Entwicklung an. Dadurch gelingt es ihm zu zeigen, wo und wie Chancen genutzt werden können, damit der Strukturwandel nicht zum unausweichlichen 'Aus' für traditionelle Industrieregionen führt." (Autorenreferat)

The dominant developmental approach in Africa over the last twenty years has been to advocate the role of markets and the private sector in restoring economic growth. Recent thinking has also stressed the need for 'ownership' of economic reform by the populations of developing countries, particularly the business community. This book studies the business-government interactions of four African countries: Ghana, Zambia, South Africa and Mauritius. Employing a historical institutionalist approach, Antoinette Handley considers why and how business in South Africa and Mauritius has developed the capacity to constructively contest the making of economic policy while, conversely, business in Zambia and Ghana has struggled to develop any autonomous political capacity. Paying close attention to the mutually constitutive interactions between business and the state, Handley considers the role of timing and how ethnicised and racialised identities can affect these interactions in profound and consequential ways