Sašo Polanec

From Innovation to Exporting or Vice Versa

Firm productivity and export decisions are closely related to innovation activity. Innovation may play a more important role in the decision to start exporting, and successful exporting may drive process innovation. This suggests that the causality between innovation and exporting may run in both directions. Using detailed microdata from innovation surveys, industrial production surveys, and trade information for Slovenian firms in 1996–2002, we investigate the bidirectional causal relationship between firm innovation and export activity. We find no evidence for the hypothesis that either product or process innovations increase the probability of becoming a first-time exporter, but we do find evidence in both the innovation survey and the industrial production survey that exporting leads to productivity improvements. These, however, are likely to be related to process rather than product innovations, and are observed only in a sample of medium and large first-time exporters. This finding makes a case in favour of the learning-by-exporting hypothesis by demonstrating that these learning effects from exporting occur through the mechanism of process innovation enhancing firm technical efficiency.

Retirement decisions in transition: microeconometric evidence from Slovenia

In this article we analyse old-age retirement decisions of Slovenian men and women eligible to retire in the period 1997–2003. In comparison with established market economies we find relatively high probabilities of retirement that decline with age. This unusual pattern can partly be attributed to weak incentives to work, inherent in the design of the pension system and reflected in predominantly negative values of accruals, and to transition-specific increase in wage inequality in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is reflected in low wages and relatively high pensions of less productive (skilled) workers and vice versa. We find that the probability of retirement decreases with option value of work and net wages, although the response to the former, when controlling for the latter, is rather weak. Our results also imply that less educated individuals and individuals with greater personal wealth are more likely to retire.

Convergence at last? Evidence from Transition Countries

This article reexamines the hypotheses of absolute and conditional convergence for a sample of twenty-five transition countries over the period from 1990 to 2002. After splitting the sample into three four-year periods, the hypotheses are confirmed only for the latest period of transition. For the early transition stage, we find a negative relation between productivity growth, on one hand, and the pace of price liberalization and initial conditions, measured by initial market distortions, on the other hand. In addition, past/ lagged institutional reforms are found to enhance productivity growth in the intermediate and advanced stages of transition. The confirmation of convergence for the latest stage of transition, however, should not yet be considered as a sign of a permanent return to convergence in these countries as it could be the result of differences in the transition cycles.

Innovativeness and intangibles in transition: the case of Slovenia

The article presents the micro data on intangibles for Slovenia during the period 1994–2005 using an augmented method by Corrado et al. and analyses the role of intangibles in the Slovenian economy during the transition. By examining the organisational, information and communication technologies (ICT) and research and development (R&D) component of intangibles, we observe a decrease in the value of R&D capital that was to some extent offset by an increase in the value of ICT capital. We find that organisational workers had higher productivity than the average worker. The dynamic of change was gradual during the transition. The capitalisation of intangibles implied an average 4.5% increase of gross domestic product (GDP) for the new member states. Nonetheless, a worrying convergence can be observed between the tangible and the intangible capital. One can thus expect the intangibles have an important role in the future growth in Slovenia and across the European countries, but only if proper attention is devoted to them in terms of policy measures and regulation.

Quantile approximations in auto-regressive portfolio models

This paper develops an analytical approximation for the distribution function of a terminal value of a periodic series of buy-and-hold investments placed over a fixed time horizon for the case when log-returns of assets follow a p-th order vector auto-regressive process. The derivation is based on a first order Taylor conditioned approximation with a suitably chosen conditioning variable. The results indicate a remarkably good fit between the approximating procedure and simulations based on realistic parameters.