conformity and the demand for environmental goods the existing literature on eco labeling and green consumerism has been framed within a classical market context where price and quality are the drivers of consumer choice however it seems possible that consumers are also concerned about the choices made by other consumers in fact it is unclear that people s consumption decisions are made independently of social context for instance under the desire to conform to certain social norms or in the presence of status concerns some individuals may be willing to pay a higher price premium for green products the more widespread green consumerism is in society we test this hypothesis using a choice experiment where the respondents were asked to choose among coffee products varying with respect to their share of ecological beans share of fair trade beans and price three treatments were used differing only in the information given about the choices made by other consumers we find different responses to the treatments across individuals and we can only confirm our hypothesis of conformity for women although men appear to have stronger preferences for ecological coffee than women have

how much does water consumption drop when each household takes charge of its own consumption the case of the city of seville making individuals take charge of their own domestic water consumption is one of the measures used to reduce the growing demand for this resource and to achieve sustainable consumption compatible with the goal of equity the use of individual meters instead of communal meters and fixing tariffs by inhabitant rather than by household are two measures aimed at achieving these objectives this article assesses the measures put in place in the seville metropolitan area during the last 20 years with an unobserved component model set up in a state space framework estimated using maximum likelihood water consumption elasticity to individual meters has changed from 0 307 to 1 317 with the introduction of per inhabitant tariffs which demonstrates that there are water saving synergies when the two measures are implemented together the reductions in water consumption achieved with these measures are also longer lasting than the changes in consumption habits during the frequent droughts in seville

a note on price perception in water demand models a household s decision to acquire price knowledge is endogenous in the demand for utility services and may affect elasticities and consumption levels a simultaneous equation model with endogenous switching is developed to evaluate the effects of price

on the specification of price in studies of consumer demand under block price scheduling using a new model formulation and data from a sample of colorado utilities we investigated the price specification controversy marginal price versus average revenue when estimating residential water demand the improved statistical fit using average

privately operated water utilities municipal price negotiation and estimation of residential water demand the case of france this paper addresses the issue of price negotiation between a municipality and a private water utility operator and its implications for residential water demand estimation we use appropriate econometric procedures to estimate a water demand equation on a panel of french municipalities we find evidence that negotiated water price depends on municipality s characteristics causing endogeneity of price in the demand equation the impact of average household income housing and system features such as metering is investigated both on municipal consumption and price estimated price and income elasticities are significant and close to previous household level studies

do droughts have long term effects on water consumption evidence from the urban area of barcelona this article examines the long term effects of droughts on water consumption using data of municipalities of the urban area of barcelona two important characteristics of the sample of municipalities are the relatively low water consumption in the pre drought period and the fact that indoor uses are clearly predominant controlling for prices income and various socio demographic factors we find a reduction in water consumption not only during the drought episode but also in subsequent periods these permanent reductions in water use may be explained by household behavioural changes technological changes or structural water policy changes

incentives to water conservation under scarcity comparing price and reward effects through stated preferences abstract focusing on two different european institutional contexts a stated preference approach is adopted to elicit the willingness to save water under three alternative incentive policies a water price increase monetary reward and symbolic prize in addition two water scarcity scenarios a critical and a regular scenario are devised to analyze how information on water scarcity moderates the effect of incentives empirical results show that users become sensitive to monetary incentives while they remain insensitive to non monetary ones when water is scarce batteries of pre tests on the sample and robustness checks on the results strengthen the reliability of our findings and partially circumvent concerns related to the use of a stated preference approach the study adds to the literature on the efficacy of economic incentives in the water sector and the role of local factors in explaining water users response

a welfare analysis of global patent protection in a model with endogenous innovation and foreign direct investment abstract this paper constructs a north south quality ladder model in which foreign direct investment fdi is determined by the endogenous location choice of firms and examines analytically how strengthening patent protection in the south affects welfare in the south strengthening patent protection increases the south s welfare by enhancing innovation and fdi but it also allows the firms with patents to charge higher prices for their goods which decreases welfare however the model shows that the former positive welfare effect outweighs the latter negative effect moreover introducing the strictest form of patent protection in the south that is harmonizing patent protection in the south with that in the north may maximize welfare in the south as well as in the north further a similar result can also be obtained in a nonscale effect model

globalization r d and the ipod cycle abstract this paper constructs a dynamic scale free north south model of trade with endogenous innovation in the north a local sourcing targeted race and an outsourcing targeted r d race take place simultaneously within each industry the former results in the winner firm manufacturing in the north while the latter culminates in the winner firm s immediate outsourcing to the south generating the ipod cycle we study three aspects of globalization reductions in the resource requirement in outsourcing targeted r d increased subsidies to outsourced production and reduced southern imitation due to trips each event boosts outsourcing targeted r d and increases the frequency of ipod cycles the aggregate innovation rate rises despite a possible fall in local sourcing targeted r d and the north south relative wage decreases

patent protection innovation and technology transfer in a schumpeterian economy abstract this paper analyzes the cross country effects of intellectual property rights ipr protection on the relative wage innovation and technology transfer in a north south quality ladder model with innovative northern r d and adaptive southern r d the degree of ipr protection in two countries differs in terms of patent breadth which determines the markups of northern firms and their southern affiliates respectively in this model stronger ipr protection in the south leads to a permanent decrease in the north south wage gap a temporary increase in the northern innovation rate and a permanent increase in technology transfer by contrast stronger ipr protection in the north leads to a permanent increase in the north south wage gap ambiguous effects on the northern innovation rate and a permanent decrease in technology transfer finally we perform a quantitative analysis by calibrating the model to the us china data and the numerical results support these policy implications in addition to a welfare implication such that strengthening patent protection in one country leads to sizable welfare improvements in both countries

demand specification for municipal water management evaluation of the stone geary form to specify demand in most water allocation problems researchers face a tradeoff between flexibility and parsimony flexible forms are less constraining on elasticity estimates but require large parameter sets that tend to cause poor out of sample forecasts and computational difficulties using a five year panel of texas municipalities the parsimonious stone geary form yields estimated demand functions that are comparable to flexible form results the stone geary specification also provides an estimate of the portion of water use that may not be responsive to price and is useful in analysing price structures and designing conservation policies

local recycled water in sydney a policy and regulatory tug of war abstract local recycled water lrw can potentially contribute to resilient and sustainable urban water services critical to liveable cities investment in these systems has increased rapidly in australia in the past 10 years yet public and private investment in these systems can still be difficult complex costly and risky an in depth case study analysis of sydney revealed that while the local policy institutional and regulatory environment is on the surface conducive to the uptake of local recycled water actual practice has surprisingly mitigated against further and broader investment in these systems these instruments are often counteracted by multiple opposing levers that in some instances were developed for entirely different purposes the generalizable insight is that a systematic systemic detailed review of these instruments and levers can reveal unexpected contradictions and provide a strong and defensible base from which to develop strategies to address unintended consequences and remove barriers to future investment

reaping what you sow an empirical analysis of international patent harmonization abstract this paper extends analysis of the gatt uruguay round by quantifying the impact of international patent harmonization as implied by the trips agreement patent harmonization has the capacity to generate large transfers of income between countries the us being the major beneficiary developing countries are major contributors to these transfers but canada the uk and japan also make sizable contributions

general equilibrium with imperfect competition the objective of a firm is not well defined if firms have market power we present an example of cournot walras competition in order to shed light on this problem and to motivate the concept of real wealth maximization that b grodal and e dierker have proposed as the firm s objective authors abstract

how to activate moral norm to adopt electric vehicles in china an empirical study based on extended norm activation theory abstract mass adoption of electric vehicles evs environmentally friendly and sustainable innovations is critical to reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and the emission of greenhouse gases however research investigating the effect of altruism on ev adoption from a pro environmental behavior perspective is limited to fill this gap we propose an extended norm activation model to study the relationship between personal norms and consumers intention to adopt evs and to explore how such relationship is influenced by external costs and the antecedents of personal norms the model is empirically tested with data collected from 396 participants in china results show that personal norms have a positive influence on ev adoption intention and such influence is moderated by external costs including perceived price and perceived complexity the former negatively moderates it while the latter has a nonlinear moderation effect on it moreover awareness of consequences ascription of responsibility and perceived consumer effectiveness are positive predictors to personal norms the findings help to understand consumers adoption behavior of ev better and contribute to promoting ev development

alternate price specifications for estimating residential water demand with fixed fees using a new model formulation and data from a sample of colorado utilities we investigated the price specification controversy marginal price versus average revenue when estimating residential water demand the improved statistical fit using average revenue as the price variable was shown to be an artifact of the unitary elastic identity created when monthly rate schedules contain a fixed fee when the fixed fee was purged from the data average price was not significant but marginal price remained significant in the preferred double log marginal price model estimated price elasticity was 0 3 and conservation programs had no significant effect on water use

an empirical survey of residential water demand modelling abstract the increased reliance on demand side management policies as an urban water consumption management tool has stimulated considerable debate among economists water utility managers regulators consumer interest groups and policymakers in turn this has fostered an increasing volume of literature aimed at providing best practice estimates of price and income elasticities quantifying the impact of non price water restrictions and gauging the impact of non discretionary environmental factors affecting residential water demand this paper provides a synoptic survey of empirical residential water demand analyses conducted in the last 25 years both model specification and estimation and the outcomes of the analyses are discussed

the boundaries of multinational enterprises and the theory of international trade this paper begins with a review of empirical evidence on multinational firms conceptual underpinnings of a theory are developed relying in particular on the notion of knowledge capital as a mobile joint input into geographically separated production facilities this idea is embedded in a simple two country general equilibrium model that supports multinational production in equilibrium under conditions consistent with the empirical evidence the final section examines internalization and shows why certain properties of knowledge capital also imply a preference for transferring technologies internally within the firm rather than through arm s length markets

bidding for brains intellectual property rights and the international migration of knowledge workers we introduce international mobility of knowledge workers into a model of nash equilibrium ipr policy choice among countries we show that governments have incentives to use iprs in a bidding war for global talent resulting in nash equilibrium iprs that can be too high rather than too low from a global welfare perspective these incentives become stronger as developing countries grow in size and wealth thus allowing them to prevent the poaching of their brains by larger wealthier markets

intellectual property rights and foreign direct investment abstract this paper develops a product cycle model with endogenous innovation imitation and foreign direct investment fdi we use this model to determine how stronger intellectual property rights ipr protection in the south affects innovation imitation and fdi we find that stronger ipr protection keeps multinationals safer from imitation but no more so than northern firms instead the increased difficulty of imitation generates resource wasting and imitation disincentive effects that reduce both fdi and innovation the greater resources absorbed in imitation crowd out fdi reduced fdi then transmits resource scarcity in the south back to the north and consequently contracts innovation

intellectual property rights licensing and innovation in an endogenous product cycle model abstract we develop a dynamic general equilibrium model of the product cycle to study the effects of stronger intellectual property rights iprs in the south on the incentives of firms in the north to innovate and to license advanced technologies innovation and licensing are random processes requiring resources stronger iprs increase the licensor s share of rents and reduce the costs of licensing contracts thus the returns to both licensing and innovation would rise while additional resources would be available for r d in consequence innovation and technology transfer would rise however the effect of stronger iprs on relative wages between regions is ambiguous

intellectual property rights foreign direct investment and industrial development this paper develops a north south product cycle model in which innovation imitation and the ow of fdi are all endogenously determined in the model a strengthening of ipr protection in the south reduces the rate of imitation and it increases the ow of fdi indeed

addressing barriers in the water recycling innovation system to reach water security in arid countries abstract as arid regions face increasing pressures on their water resources the challenge of securing an adequate supply of good quality water to meet growing demands calls for innovative approaches that involve a diversification of water supply options and improved management of wastewater water recycling is a disruptive innovation that can help to achieve this goal in arid countries if the appropriate technical and institutional barriers are broken down within the water innovation literature key questions remain as to the nature of the process and of the temporal dynamics of a shift towards decentralized wastewater infrastructure this study offers insights into these mechanics using the framework for analyzing a multi level innovation system famis a cross sectoral model that draws on the theories of technological innovation systems system dynamics transitions of socio technical regimes and evolutionary theories of technology cases from three water scarce countries with distinct political economies australia the united arab emirates u a e and jordan were used to document the dynamics of innovation in the water recycling system and identify policy solutions despite important contextual differences in the three cases examined actors and institutions have dynamically interacted to create a small niche where water recycling has emerged as a viable technology yet the application of the famis model revealed that the dominant regime of water management has not been fundamentally altered due to blockages mainly at two stages of the famis innovation lifecycle the selection and adoption stages we identified cross geographical socio technical and environmental characteristics and common mechanisms that strongly influence the evolution of water recycling technology through the innovation system we find that the water recycling technology evolves into the later stages of the innovation system in australia with the chokepoint occurring most importantly within the sophisticated but fragmented institutions that regulate water recycling in the u a e while agricultural reuse is widespread to a larger extent than in australia major barriers occur earlier in the system leaving mainly the water recycling technologies in the early stages of the system where policy induced path dependency block most selection mechanisms with a wider infrastructural and institutional gap jordan may actually face less stringent barriers to water recycling developments throughout all stages of the innovation system namely influenced by international donors policy recommendations derived from this work to address barriers at the selection and adoption stages include favoring a coordinated institutional long term vision and planning to overcome path dependence enhancing social acceptance and adequate implementation of laws and regulations and supporting data acquisition and model developments to build a stronger business case for water recycling

learning from the behavior of others conformity fads and informational cascades learning by observing the past decisions of others can help explain some otherwise puzzling phenomena about human behavior for example why do people tend to converge on similar behavior why is mass behavior prone to error and fads the authors argue that the theory of observational learning and particularly of informational cascades has much to offer economics business strategy political science and the study of criminal behavior

trips trade and growth a two country model of endogenous growth is employed to assess the importance of intellectual property rights to trade growth and technology transfer the paper provides theoretical results linking the intellectual property rights regime to trade patterns aggregate r d worldwide growth and aggregate welfare measures failure to provide patent protection for foreign made innovations forces innovators to employ less than the best practice research technologies reduces aggregate r d activities worldwide effectively eliminates technology transfer across countries and reduces worldwide growth copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

determinants of residential water demand in germany abstract we econometrically analyze the impact of several economic environmental and social determinants for the per capita demand for water in about 600 water supply areas in germany besides prices income and household size we consider the effects of population age the share of wells housing patterns precipitation and temperature we also explore why current per capita residential water consumption in the new federal states is about 30 lower than in the old federal states since average cost pricing may cause an endogeneity problem we apply instrumental variable procedures in addition to single equation ordinary least squares but find no evidence that prices are endogenous our estimation results suggest that the price elasticity of water demand in germany is around 0 24 the income elasticity is positive decreases with higher income levels and is at least three times higher in the new federal states than in the old federal states current differences in prices and income levels explain about one third of the gap in residential water use between the two regions household size and the share of wells have a negative impact on per capita water demand and water use increases with age finally the findings provide some evidence that rainfall patterns rather than total rainfall affect water consumption while temperature appears to have no impact at all all outcomes are robust to a log log and two types of semi log specifications for the water demand function

a north south model of intellectual property rights protection and skill accumulation this paper examines how stronger intellectual property rights ipr protection in the south affects the processes of r d investment technology transfer and skill accumulation it finds that stronger ipr protection has only a temporary impact on the innovation rate while it has a negative impact on the long run imitation rate in the north the impact on the process of skill accumulation is negative and increases the within country wage inequality in the south the impact is ambiguous and depends on the externality that skill accumulation generates on the process of education in addition the paper shows that skills play a crucial role in attracting fdi inflows and strengthening ipr protection may be ineffective in attracting technological knowledge when the level of local skill is low

is all domestic water consumption sensitive to price control this paper presents a model of residential water demand based on the stone geary utility function which explicitly considers a threshold of water that is insensitive to price and a quantity that can adapt instantaneously to price changes first the threshold is assumed constant being then allowed to vary according to past levels of consumption a proxy for households water using equipment and habits a measure of the depreciation rate of habits is derived and the effectiveness of price and non price conservation measures are compared the results provide useful policy recommendations for the studied case of seville spain

intellectual property rights and quality improvement this paper explores why theories about the effects of intellectual property rights ipr protection on foreign direct investment fdi and innovation have reached mixed conclusions in our model northern firms innovate to improve the quality of existing products and may later shift production to the south through fdi southern firms may then imitate the products of multinationals we find that imitation can increase fdi and innovation for quality improvements whereas the opposite occurs when innovators develop new varieties hence stronger ipr protection by reducing imitation may shift innovation away from improvements in existing products toward development of new products

multiplicity of cournot equilibria and involuntary unemployment abstract in an overlapping generations model with cournot competition on the goods market it is shown that a continuum of stationary states and perfect foresight trajectories exists with unemployment at arbitrary low wages decisive for this is the influence that different forecast functions have on the objective demand curve even though they are consistent with perfect foresight with an example it is shown that simple adaptive and constant memory forecast rules generate such unemployment equilibria the corresponding temporary equilibrium dynamics may display stable unemployment and unstable full employment equilibria journal of economic literatureclassification numbers d43 d51 e24

estimation of the demand for electricity the residential consumer of electricity is often faced with a price schedule where the price per kwh differs according to the amountof electricity consumed 1 instead of a single price per kwh a price schedule exists from which electricity is purchased in blocks at a decreasing marginal price in a econometric demand analysis of household electricity consumption one of the main questions is concerned with the price varible to be chosen should it be the marginal price the average price or perhaps both price varibles in this study residential demand functions for electricity are estimated employing different price variables in demand functions employing both average price and marginal price the coefficients on average price are right the negative signs reflect the expected inverse relationships between the quality of electricity demanded and the average price on the other hand nonsignificant but positive signs on marginal price are obtained this result contradicts the findings of roth 1981

water demand under alternative price structures we estimate the price elasticity of water demand with household level data structurally modeling the piecewise linear budget constraints imposed by increasing block pricing we develop a mathematical expression for the unconditional price elasticity of demand under increasing block prices and compare conditional and unconditional elasticities analytically and empirically we test the hypothesis that price elasticity may depend on price structure beyond technical differences in elasticity concepts due to the possibility of endogenous utility price structure choice observed differences in elasticity across price structures may be due either to a behavioral response to price structure or to underlying heterogeneity among water utility service areas

the foundation of the theory of monopolistic competition revisited it is shown why different price normalization rules influence oligopolistic equilibria in general equilibrium models this is done for the roberts and sonnenschein duopoly and for a price duopoly in an exchange economy journal of economic literature classification numbers d43 d51

can conformity overcome the yuck factor explaining the choice for recycled drinking water abstract of the 17 sdgs the united nations has recently revealed that countries are not on track to receive the water and sanitation goals by the deadline as climatic events decrease the reliability of traditional drinking sources especially in cities recycled drinking water rdw is becoming an increasingly important policy option yet the implementation of rdw remains mired in difficulties with the psychological yuck factor as a key obstacle studies of successful cases of rdw implementation show that trust information and social norms are important however no studies of rdw have directly compared the relative importance of information to the power of social norms this paper explores the role of conformity as a social norm in increasing public acceptance of recycled water for drinking using a simple choice experiment we find that conformity per se appears to provide sufficient reason for behavioural change relating to recycled water rather than information or economic incentives this study is one of the first to present empirical evidence from a choice experiment on rdw and has practical implications on the use of conformity as motivation to taking difficult decisions

quality ladders and product cycles we develop a two country model of endogenous innovation and imitation in order to study the interactions between these two processes firms in the north race to bring out the next generation of a set of technology intensive products each product potentially can be improved a countably infinite number of times but quality improvements require the investment of resources and entail uncertain prospects of success in the south entrepreneurs invest resources in order to learn the production processes that have been developed in the north all r d investment decisions are made by forward looking profit maximizing entrepreneurs the steady state equilibrium is characterized by constant aggregate rates of innovation and imitation we study how these rates respond to changes in the sizes of the two regions and to policies in each region to promote learning

intellectual property rights and foreign direct investment a welfare analysis abstract this paper examines how intellectual property rights ipr protection affects innovation and foreign direct investment fdi using a north south quality ladder model incorporating the exogenous and costless imitation of technology and subsidy policies for both r d and fdi we show that for the interior steady state to be stable either r d or fdi subsidy rates must be positive our findings also indicate that strengthening ipr protection promotes both innovation and fdi moreover a strengthening of ipr protection can also improve welfare if the initial ipr protection in the south is weak and the r d subsidy rate is not too high

estimating water demand under increasing block tariffs using aggregate data and proportions of users per block forming a strategy for the management of a water resource requires reasonable knowledge of the effects that alterations in the control variables bring on water use such knowledge of the determinants influencing domestic water demand constitutes an essential ingredient of a pricing policy for domestic water supply special attention should be paid to the effects of the level shape and frequency of the tariff since these are the variables that can be altered by the policy maker

perception of price when price information is costly evidence from residential electricity demand a bstract residential electricity consumption is an example of a good for which it is costly to determine marginal price since price changes with the quantity purchased according to multistep block rate schedules this paper investigates the effect of the price information problem on consumers price perceptions an alternative hypothesis of average price perception is tested against the marginal price postulate which assumes wellinformed consumers the model which includes a price perception variable allows the estimation of the price to which consumers actually respond the empirical results support the hypothesis that consumers respond to average price perceived from the electricity bill

the impact of public policies on innovation and imitation the role of r d technology in growth models it has been shown under the assumption of linear r d technology that a government subsidy to imitative innovative r d decreases increases imitative effort but increases decreases innovative effort and that strengthening the enforcement of patent laws leads to a decrease in innovative r d but to an increase in imitative r d by replacing the linear r d technology with a sufficiently convex r d technology we have shown that the counter intuitive results are reversed in the case of linear r d technology the socially optimal r d policies and activities are indeterminate but with convex r d technology optimal innovation and imitation subsidies would induce the market to generate socially balanced innovative and imitative activities

on the trade growth and welfare effects of intellectual property rights protection to examine how intellectual property rights protection affects trade growth and welfare i develop a two country r d based growth model in which final goods firms in both countries determine the range of imported varieties in the overall use of intermediate inputs i show that strengthening patent protection in either country increases the range of imported varieties of intermediate goods and stimulates economic growth in the country that strengthened patent protection moreover i also show that the nash equilibrium level of patent protection is stronger than the globally optimal level of patent protection i

modelling policy issues in a world of imperfect competition general equilibrium theory constitutes a sound basis for the discussion of policy issues if firms do not have market power however if firms influence prices strategically the concept of profits loses its meaning due to the price normalization problem hence it is unclear how to model the behavior of oligopolistic firms in order to provide a conceptual foundation for the analysis of policy issues in the case of imperfect competition we discuss ways to formulate the objective of a strategic firm in particular we investigate the concept of real wealth maximization that is based on profits as well as on shareholders aggregate demand

effect of price information on residential water demand microeconomic theory predicts that people decrease consumption when price increases the magnitude of the effect depending on price elasticity the law of demand however implicitly assumes that consumers know prices an assumption that is not always satisfied in markets with ex post billing when prices are not transparent elasticity estimates are potentially lower than their full information potential evidence of low price elasticity abounds in residential water demand studies limiting the effectiveness and desirability of using price signals as a conservation tool it is hypothesized that resident s sluggish response to price is partly due to the absence of price information on water bills differences in the informational content of bills are documented for the first time on the basis of sample bills collected from 383 utilities across the usa a standard aggregate water demand model is augmented with qualitative variables describing differences in billing information allowing such variables to a

entry reputation and intellectual property rights enforcement we examine how reputation concerns induce a multinational to partly withhold its entry into a developing country under weak intellectual property rights ipr enforcement equilibrium ipr violations are shown to arise only in the presence of such concerns holding constant a multinational s incentive to innovate better ipr enforcement encourages entry but reduces social welfare the multinational s incentive to innovate may be inversely u shaped in the strength of ipr enforcement if timed properly however stronger ipr enforcement can foster innovation without compromising social welfare testable implications concerning observable ipr violations are derived

residential water demand responds asymmetrically to rising and falling prices this paper econometrically estimates residential water consumption in germany between 2007 and 2013 based on a panel of almost 3000 supply areas in particular the analysis distinguishes periods o

are price strategies effective in managing demand of high residential water users abstractencouraging water use efficiency and water conservation is one of the primary goals of water utility companies nationwide this study estimates price elasticity of residential water demand to measure the responsiveness of water use to price changes particularly for high water users household level water use data for high residential water users from central florida were analysed using 3 stage least square 3sls estimated price elasticity ranges between 0 07 and 0 14 this price elasticity estimate is below most of the estimates reported in the literature in absolute value the results imply that for price strategies to be effective in managing water demand of high residential water users a significant price increase would be needed overall this study highlights the importance of designing water conservation policies tailored to specific groups of customers and the importance of using these strategies effectively and fairly for different customer groups

endogenous product cycles we construct a model of the product cycle featuring endogenous innovation and endogenous technology transfer competitive entrepreneurs in the north expend resources to bring out new products whenever expected present discounted value of future oligopoly profits exceeds current product development costs each northern oligopolist continuously faces the risk that its product will be copied by a southern imitator at which time its profit stream will come to an end in the south competitive entrepreneurs may devote resources to learning the production processes that have been developed in the north there too costs of reverse engineering must be covered by a stream of operating profits we study the determinants of the long run rate of growth of the world economy and the long run rate of technological diffusion we also provide an analysis of the effects of exogenous events and of public policy on relative wage rates in the two regions

intellectual property rights multinational firms and economic growth abstract this paper develops a model of north south trade with multinational firms and economic growth in order to analyze formally the effects of stronger intellectual property rights ipr protection in developing countries in the model northern firms invent new higher quality products multinational firms transfer manufacturing operations to the south and the southern firms imitate products produced by multinational firms it is shown that stronger ipr protection in the south i e the adoption and implementation of the trips agreement leads to a permanent increase in the rate of technology transfer to the south within multinational firms a permanent increase in r d employment by southern affiliates of northern multinationals a permanent decrease in the north south wage gap and a temporary increase in the northern innovation rate

urban water demand with periodic error correction monthly demand for publicly supplied water to u s residences and businesses is estimated from a 10 year panel of 167 cities a periodic error correction model integrates monthly annual and long run time scales statistical consistency is validated by unit root tests adapted to the monthly frequency water and wastewater price elasticity of demand is estimated by sector calendar month and time horizon

stage dependent intellectual property rights inspired by the chinese experience we develop a schumpeterian growth model of distance to frontier in which economic growth in the developing country is driven by domestic innovation as well as imitation and transfer of foreign technologies through foreign direct investment we show that optimal intellectual property rights ipr protection is stage dependent at an early stage of development the country implements weak ipr protection to facilitate imitation at a later stage of development the country implements strong ipr protection to encourage domestic innovation therefore the growth maximizing and welfare maximizing levels of patent strength increase as the country evolves towards the world technology frontier and this dynamic pattern is consistent with the actual evolution of patent strength in china

patent protection southern innovation and welfare in a north south trade model in a north south trade model we analyse the implications of southern patent protection on southern innovation profits and welfare southern patent protection may make the northern firm worse off and the southern firm better off by increasing the southern firm s incentive for innovation and affecting the nature of competition in the world market the impact of southern patent protection on a country s welfare and on world welfare depends on the cost of southern innovation and the degree of product substitutability we provide important insights into the outcomes of international negotiations regarding patent enforcement in the southern countries