9/11/2009 8:07:14 AM By
E.J. Reedy
The Cross-country Historical Adoption of Technology (CHAT) dataset covers the diffusion of 104 technologies in 161 countries during the last 200 years. It is an aggregation of some earlier technology diffusion datasets and has most recent year of coverage as 2003. The data is available for
download. Interested potential users should review a
new overview paper published through the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The authors summarize their definition of technologies as follows:
"They [technologies] are either: (i) the number of capital goods specifically related to accomplishing particular tasks, (ii) the amounts of particular tasks that have been accomplished, (iii) the number of users of a particular manner to accomplish a task. These three types of measures are best illustrated with three examples. (i) The number of sail ships (measured in tonnage) in use in a country; (ii) Metric tons of steel produced using blast‐oxygen steel furnaces; (iii) the number of households that subscribe to cable tv services."
9/10/2009 8:33:16 AM By
E.J. Reedy
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is hosting a one-day workshop in Washington, DC on "Accelerating Energy Innovation: Lessons from Multiple Sectors". The presentations will be held on October 23, 2009 the National Press Club, 529 14th Street, NW, Washington, DC.
The program can be found at
http://www.nber.org/~confer/2009/EIf09/program.html. If you would like to attend, please
email Rob Shannon by October 9, 2009.
9/10/2009 8:13:46 AM By
E.J. Reedy
Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Business & Society
The task of this Business & Society special issue is to discuss the consequences of a political mandate of the business firm and to examine the implications for the theory of the firm. We specifically invite papers which take a critical perspective on the political role of the firm. Authors should aim to develop strong theoretical and/or empirical insights that increase our understanding of the political behavior of global business firms and their contribution to society. We would like to see the contributions advance the discussion in two main directions that address the philosophical, theoretical, and practical domains of Business & Society:
1. Theoretical concepts of a political theory of the business firm.
Papers here might address questions such as the following:
- Do companies have a political responsibility, and, if so, how can it be defined?
- What does “political behavior” mean in a globalizing world?
- How can we find a balance between corporate power and the public interest?
- How can the link between organizational creativity and social innovation be conceptualized and explored?
- How can the activities of companies be democratically controlled?
- What are the problems caused by corporate political strategies and political lobbying?
- What are the consequences of a political conception of corporate social responsibility for corporate governance and the economic theory of the firm?
2. Implications for management theory building.
Possible topics might include (but are not restricted to) the following:
- What role do organizational creativity and resources play for social innovations?
- What are the consequences of the political role for organizational legitimacy?
- What can be learned from the emerging forms of cooperation between business firms, NGOs, and civil society groups (e.g., with respect to private–public-partnerships)?
- How can responsible leadership contribute to social innovations?
- Which organizational structures or incentive systems support social innovations?
- How do business firms try to deal with their enlarged political role (best practices)?
Deadline March 1, 2010
9/9/2009 2:02:22 PM By
E.J. Reedy
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Technology Innovation Program (TIP) has posted a
call for papers to inform future programs. The
Advanced Technology Program of NIST was featured in our 2007 Kauffman Data Symposium for some of the data it had available to researchers. While this current call is pretty high-level, I wanted to highlight that NIST has a history of being open to collecting high-quality research data which also can be informative to their programs.
The call highlights the following areas of particular interest to TIP:
- An area of critical national need means an area that justifies government attention because the magnitude of the problem is large and the associated societal challenges that need to be overcome are not being addressed, but could be addressed through high-risk, high-reward research.
- A societal challenge is a problem or issue confronted by society that when not addressed could negatively affect the overall function and quality of life of the Nation, and as such, justifies government action. A societal challenge is associated with barriers preventing the successful development of solutions to the area of critical national need. TIP’s mission is to tackle the technical issues that can be addressed through high-risk, high-reward research. The results of the high-risk, high-reward research should have the potential for transformational results.
- A transformational result is a potential project outcome that enables disruptive changes over and above current methods and strategies. Transformational results have the potential to radically improve our understanding of systems and technologies, challenging the status quo of research approaches and applications.
Papers are being accepted from November 9, 2009 through September 30, 2010.
9/9/2009 5:58:39 AM By
E.J. Reedy
9/8/2009 8:03:14 AM By
E.J. Reedy
IZA, an independent labor think tank, has posted two new calls for papers with entrepreneurship themes.
Organizers: Marco Caliendo (IZA), Alexander S. Kritikos (DIW Berlin and IZA)
Place: IZA, Bonn
Date: February 25 - February 26, 2010
Submission Deadline: October 31, 2009
Notification of Acceptance: December 01, 2009
Keynote Speaker: David Audretsch (Indiana University)
About the Workshop
The aim of the workshop is to bring together leading scholars and young researchers working on topics related to entrepreneurship research at the intersection of economics and psychology. Acknowledging the increasing importance of understanding the determinants of entrepreneurial development, we invite contributions from various methodological backgrounds: theoretical contributions as well as empirical research using survey evidence, laboratory experiments, neuroeconomic methods, and field experiments.
Organizers: Markus Frölich (University of Mannheim and IZA), Robert Holzmann (World Bank and IZA), Alpaslan Akay (IZA), Stefano Scarpetta (OECD and IZA)
Place: Cape Town, South Africa
Date: May 03 - May 04, 2010
Submission Deadline: November 15, 2009
About the conference
While most research in labor economics focuses on the US and Western Europe, the majority of the world’s population and particularly of the poor and the youth live in countries where labor markets often work quite differently. To stimulate and promote research on employment and labor economics in developing countries, the World Bank and IZA initiated in 2006 a work program on “Employment and Development”. Since 2006, the annual conference on Employment and Development provides a platform for researchers and policy experts to discuss new research findings and identify areas where further work is needed. IZA and the World Bank will organize the 5th annual conference in Cape Town, South Africa on May 3-4, 2010.
The current global economic downturn has revealed again the key importance of well functioning labor markets for helping workers and their families to weather through the storm of job losses and declines in incomes. Many workers have lost their job around the world and many others have seen their incomes dropping substantially. While in industrialized countries income support schemes and effective re-employment policies help job losers and their families, in most developing countries such policies and institutions are under-developed or non-existent, though, leaving workers and their families fully exposed to the hardship of unemployment or working poverty. Further efforts at improving the coverage and support of labor market and social policies are needed in many developing countries. In addition, improvements in the functioning of the labor market can also go a long way in ensuring a quicker and better pathway out of the downturns and into sustainable growth by contributing to an environment where new firms are created and private agents find the proper incentives to invest and innovate.
9/7/2009 3:01:24 PM By
E.J. Reedy
2010 Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC)
Co-sponsored by The International Institute for Management Development (IMD), and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Lausanne, Switzerland
June 9-12, 2010
Abstract Submission Deadline: October 14, 2009
Read the call for papers.
9/5/2009 1:13:41 PM By
E.J. Reedy
The Office of Advocacy at the U.S. Small Business Administration puts out a nice publication which tries to answer some of their most
frequently asked questions. This document was just updated so you can find interesting things such as:
- small businesses accounting for half of nonfarm, private real GDP,
- firms with fewer than 500 employees accounted for 64 percent (or 14.5 million) of the 22.5 million net new jobs (gains minus losses) between 1993 and the third quarter of 2008,
- an estimated 627,200 new employer firms began operation in 2008, and
- seven out of ten new employer firms last at least two years, and about half survive five years.