Staffan Hultén

Escaping lock-in: The case of the electric vehicle☆

The study addresses the issue of technological “lock-in” and the possibilities of escape from it. Earlier literature on technological lock-in has tended to focus on intraindustry sources of positive feedbacks that are at the core of the technological lock-in phenomena. This study draws attention to the importance of interindustry sources in contributing to technological lock-in. Several possible avenues of escape from lock-in are discussed: crisis in existing technology, regulation, technological breakthroughs, changes in taste, emergence of niche markets, and new scientific results. The study includes a brief history of the competition among automobile technologies. The analysis of the current state of the electric vehicle, its technology, and the surrounding supporting industries and infrastructures is relatively pessimistic about a rapid transition away from the internal combustion engine technological lock-in. However, regulation could create enough niche markets so that some self-reinforcing processes would become possible. In this way, the electric vehicle might emerge as a visible part of the automobile market.

A brief history of mobile communication in Europe

Since the introduction of mobile telephony in the early 1950s in Europe, US and Japan the demand for this service exploded. It seems that the latent demand for mobile telecommunication services for decades continued to be very strong. After the introduction of cellular technology the capacity of the services became able to meet the massive demand. Next and future generations of mobile telecommunication technologies bring increased transmission speed and more versatile services. This forces network operators to organise multi sourced information flows supplied by service providers to increase the network effect of the system instead of providing the network infrastructure and leave the content to the users as in pure voice telephony. The drivers and inhibitors behind the emergence and recent developments of mobile telecommunications systems in Europe, are highlighted in this paper. Liberalisation of the telecom markets in Europe drove new entrants to the market and curbed excessive pricing. However, in recent years the lack of challenging service is the main cause for the wavering development of newer generations of mobile telecommunication services.

The Swedish Railway Deregulation Path

This paper deals with railway deregulation and related reforms by means of a case study of Sweden, studying the 1988 split of railway infrastructure from operations and the subsequent steps of vertical and horizontal disintegration to a market characterized by decentralization and intra-modal competition. We also analyze the current market situation, in terms of the actors and their roles, and industrial organization measures. This assessment is used to discuss the sustainability of the current regulatory structure, concluding that although it seems more sustainable than in the past, regulators will sooner or later have to deal with some of its inconsistencies.

High and Low Bids in Tenders: Strategic Pricing and Other Bidding Behaviour in Public Tenders of Passenger Railway Services

An important component in the deregulation of the public sector in the European Union is public procurement of services and products. This article studies the bidding behaviour of firms participating in public tenders of passenger railway services in Sweden. In a theoretical part of the article we discuss the various possible reasons behind high and low bids in tenders, linked to a discussion on pricing strategies and continuous and discontinuous economies of scale regarding costs of production. Detailed data on bids and bidders in Swedish tenders of railway services are then analyzed. 37 tenders taking place between 1989 and 2005 are included. Copyright 2007 The Authors Journal compilation

Historical school and institutionalism

Purpose – The paper aims to study the relevance of the German historical school and American Institutionalism for contemporary research in social sciences. The subject scope of the paper is to trace how concepts, ideas, and frameworks trickle from the historical school into later research programs. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology of the paper is a textual analysis of articles and books that either relates the relationship between the historical school and the institutionalism or make explicit or implicit references to the most important concepts and methodologies in these schools. Findings – The paper has two main findings. The first is that Commons was heavily influenced by Webers ideal-types when he wrote his most important book Institutional Economics. The second is that concepts and methodologies used by the historical school and American institutionalism are used in nearly all areas of the social sciences. But the researchers seldom make explicit references to these schools. Research limitations/implications – A limitation of the present paper is that it draws too a very limited extent directly on the publications of the German historical school. Future research could try and reconstruct how the American instutionalists came to the conclusions they did on the historical school. It is possible that differences in political opinions and competition between two schools with partly similar messages prompted writers like Veblen and Commons to exaggerate differences of opinion. Originality/value – One important contribution of the paper is the discussion of the influences the historical school had on leading institutionalists. Another important contribution is the exploration of present and future research projects that could benefit from revisiting the theories and methodologies of the historical school and institutionalism. By making more explicit the references to these schools, new insights can be gained on how to develop research methodologies and understanding the limits and potentials of pursuing a research approach.

Entrepreneurs, innovations and market processes in the evolution of the Swedish mobile telecommunications industry

This paper analyses the entrepreneurial actions that were critically important for the development of mobile telecommunications in Sweden. Three types of theoretically determined entrepreneurial actions were identified and analysed: a) innovative in the Schumpeterian sense that create disequilibrium, b) the resolution of structural tensions or reverse salients, and c) the restoration of equilibrium by capturing possibilities already available. Our analysis shows that the Schumpeterian innovations were most important in giving Sweden the position as a first-mover in the development of the mobile telephone industry. But, on some occasions the other types of entrepreneurship gave momentous force to the expansion of the mobile telecommunication business.

Adjudication par appels d'offres des services ferrovaires régionaux et interregionaux en Suède

Du fait de la separation novatrice qu’elle a introduite entre les infrastructures et l’exploitation des services ferroviaires, la Loi sur la politique des transports de 1988 est generalement consideree comme a l’origine de la transformation du reseau ferre suedois, passe d’une situation de monopole integre verticalement et horizontalement a un marche caracterise par la decentralisation et la concurrence intramodale. Nous nous concentrerons ici sur les reformes et les experiences liees a l’introduction et au developpement des adjudications par appels d’offres pour les services ferroviaires de voyageurs en Suede. Un appel d’offres a ete lance pour la premiere fois en 1989 pour certaines lignes regionales, mais depuis lors, cette pratique est devenue beaucoup plus courante et elle est maintenant appliquee a la majorite des lignes aussi bien regionales qu’interregionales. Les differents types de marches attribues pour ces services sont decrits de facon assez detaillee dans la presente etude. Bien que, dans la plupart des cas, le nombre de soumissionnaires ait ete faible, on a vu apparaitre quelques acteurs importants, qu’il s’agisse d’entreprises nationales ou internationales. Les autorites responsables des marches publics ont ainsi pu apprendre, avec le temps, a ameliorer la procedure d’adjudication, mais l’adhesion de la Suede a l’Union europeenne en 1995 a egalement influe sur ce processus. Bien que plusieurs effets positifs meritent d’etre soulignes, par exemple l’innovation et la reduction des subventions, certains problemes appellent egalement l’attention, comme les offres non honorees, le comportement predateur de certains soumissionnaires, et parfois des problemes de correspondance pour certains voyageurs pour des trajets dependant des services de plusieurs exploitants. En outre, le monopole que conserve SJ (l’exploitant public) sur ses lignes dites rentables influe sur la concurrence et les perspectives de developpement du secteur. On trouvera egalement quelques donnees statistiques generales sur l’evolution des chemins de fer suedois au cours des dernieres annees.