knowledge spillovers and patent citations evidence from a survey of inventors it is well understood that the non rival nature of knowledge as a productive asset creates the possibility of knowledge spillovers whereby investments in knowledge creation by one party produce external benefits by facilitating innovation by other parties at least since zvi griliches s 1979 seminal paper on measuring the contributions of r d to economic growth economists have been attempting to quantify the extent and impact of knowledge spillovers one line of research of this type has utilized patent citations to identify a paper trail that may be associated with knowledge flows between firms very little of this research has attempted to determine the modes or mechanisms of communication that actually permit knowledge to flow further most of the work has simply assumed that citations or other proxies are sufficiently correlated with knowledge flows to allow statistical analysis of the proxies to be informative regarding the underlying phenomenon of interest this paper reports on a preliminary attempt to improve this situation the idea for this survey came from r d managers whom we were interviewing to test whether the picture of knowledge flows produced by patent citations was consistent with the managers impressions one of these managers commented that he could not let us talk to the scientists who worked for him but that he could not stop uls from contacting them via the postal address that appears on their issued patents the survey results suggest that communication between inventors is reasonably irnportant and that patent citations do provide an indication of communication albeit one that also carries a fair amount of noise

you can t save alone commitment in rotating savings and credit associations in kenya abstract this article examines one reason why individuals develop and maintain local level financial savings organizations known as rotating savings and credit organizations or roscas economic theories suggest that individuals form roscas to finance the purchase of a lumpy durable good in response to intrahousehold conflict over savings or to provide themselves with insurance the article proposes an additional hypothesis for rosca participation saving requires discipline and some roscas may be formed to provide a collective mechanism for commitment in the presence of time inconsistent preferences data from 70 roscas located in western kenya indicate that the commitment hypothesis is plausible and broadly consistent with the design and patterns of participation in these roscas as many rosca participants put it you can t save alone

are there diminishing returns to r d abstract semi endogenous models and to some extent also schumpeterian models are based on the assumption of diminishing returns to r d this paper shows that the null hypothesis of constant returns to r d cannot be rejected for the oecd countries

information technology effects on firm performance as measured by tobin s q despite increasing anecdotal evidence that information technology it assets contribute to firm performance and future growth potential of firms the empirical results relating it investments to firm performance measures have been equivocal however the bulk of the studies have relied exclusively on accounting based measures of firm performance which largely tend to ignore it s contribution to performance dimensions such as strategic flexibility and intangible value in this paper we use tobin s q a financial market based measure of firm performance and examine the association between it investments and firm q values after controlling for a variety of industry factors and firm specific variables the results based on data from 1988 1993 indicate that in all of the five years the inclusion of the it expenditure variable in the model increased the variance explained in q significantly the results also showed that for all five years it investments had a significantly positive association with tobin s q value our results are consistent with the notion that it contributes to a firm s future performance potential which a forward looking measure such as the q is better able to capture

capacity investment and market power in the economic value of energy firms regulation of energy firms faces the complex problem of balancing private earning a fair rate of return on investment and public assure safe and reliable supply of energy at the lowest possible costs goals tobin s q is a forward looking indicator on investment opportunities and on market power of firms that energy regulators can use for more effective regulation this paper presents the empirical evidence on the determinants of differences in observed values of tobin s q for a sample of large listed energy firms from 10 different countries in the period 2000 2006 we find that adjustment costs represent around sixty percent of the difference between economic and book value of the assets for the representative firm while rents from market power represent the other forty percent therefore across countries there is room for regulatory actions aiming at reducing energy prices but less than what may be inferred from the observed average q values

impact of information technology capital on firm scope and performance the role of asset characteristics this research draws on transaction cost and resource based theory to examine how information technology it capital moderates the relationship between different types of assets and firm scope both vertical integration and diversification the analysis suggests that it capital enables firms with narrowly valuable assets to be less vertically integrated and less diversified and enables firms with broadly valuable assets to be more vertically integrated and more diversified the moderating influence of it capital on the relationship between different types of assets and firms vertical and product market scope is consistent with transaction cost as well as resource based traditions abstract from author

total factor productivity and the measurement of technological change tfp is interpreted in the literature in different mutually contradictory ways changes in tfp are shown to measure not technological change only the super normal returns to investing in such change returns that exceed the full opportunity cost of the activity thus in the limit technological change can proceed with unchanged tfp measuring the effects of technological change instead requires counterfactual estimates reasons why changes in tfp are imperfect measures of super normal returns are also studied reasons connected with the timing of output responses the treatment of r d in the national accounts the omission of resource inputs and two types of aggregation la productivite totale des facteurs et la mesure du changement technologique la productivite totale des facteurs ptf est interpretee dans la litterature de manieres differentes et mutuellement contradictoires on montre que les changements dans la ptf ne mesurent pas le changement technologique mais seulement les rendements supra normaux sur les investissements dans de tels changements des rendements qui depassent le plein cout d opportunite de cette activite donc a la limite le changement technologique peut proceder sans que la ptf change mesurer les effets du changement technique reclame des evaluations d hypotheses de rechange les raisons pour lesquelles les changements dans la ptf sont des mesures imparfaites des rendements supra normaux sont aussi etudiees raisons connectees avec la reponse des niveaux de production le traitement de la r d dans les comptes nationaux l omission des intrants de ressources et deux types d agregation

patent quality and research productivity measuring innovation with multiple indicators we analyse the determinants of the decline in research productivity using panel data on manufacturing firms in the us for the period 1980 93 we focus on three factors the level of demand the quality of patents and technological exhaustion we develop an index of patent quality using detailed patent information and show that using multiple indicators substantially reduces the measured variance in quality research productivity at the firm level is inversely related to patent quality and the level of demand as predicted by theory and patent quality is positively associated with the stock market value of firms

the impact of high tech capital on productivity evidence from australia i introduction the bulk of the empirical research on the relationship between high tech capital investment and productivity has been based on data for the united states given the relatively large size of the high tech capital sector in the u s economy it is likely that the united states is a special case most economies resemble australia s in being net importers of high tech capital not producing high tech capital was often cited as a weakness in these economies relative to the united states however since the end of the late 1990s tech boom there has been a reappraisal of whether the production or the use of high tech capital is most beneficial hence to shed light on this debate the main purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between high tech capital use and the multifactor productivity mfp of 10 industries in the australian market sector using annual data for 1966 2002 alternative specifications of production functions are considered and estimated alternative measures of high tech capital are included with combinations of computers software and electronics capital in the first production function high tech capital is allowed to be more or less productive than other capital to determine whether there is a relationship between high tech capital and mfp it is also possible to test whether there are excess returns to high tech capital for robustness testing purposes a second production function is specified with high tech capital as a separate input into production other potential sources of mfp growth such as public capital research and development stocks and microeconomic reform are also included in the production functions we find evidence of a positive relationship between high tech capital and mfp in the market sector there is less evidence however of excess returns to high tech capital which suggests that current investment levels are not inadequate the results by industry suggest that the benefits of investing in high tech capital are not distributed evenly across the economy with only some industries experiencing a positive relationship between high tech capital and mfp the structure of this article is as follows in section ii the theoretical contribution of high tech capital to mfp and the evidence to date is reviewed in section iii the methodology is outlined in section iv data sources and trends are described in section v the results are presented and interpreted and section vi concludes ii the impact of high tech capital on output and productivity the theory and evidence the impact of investment in high tech capital has been the subject of debate between new economy sceptics and optimists for several years it is widely accepted that mfp has increased substantially in u s high tech producing industries in which the rate of technological change has been phenomenal over the past 40 years several publications have found a quantifiable contribution by computer producing industries to u s output growth 1 however australia is not generally regarded as a producer of computers data from the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd 1998 indicate that the high tech share of australian manufacturing value added was 4 5 in 1995 compared to 15 8 in the united states therefore the substantial u s economy wide mfp improvements specifically associated with its computer producing industry are unlikely to be replicated in the australian economy over the past 30 years there has been rapid accumulation of high tech capital in many countries australia was the third most intensive user of high tech capital in the oecd in 1995 behind the united states and new zealand simon and wardrop 2002 find that this rapid accumulation of high tech capital may have substantially contributed to australia s economic growth during the 1990s this accumulation has been driven by technological change in high tech producing industries lowering the price of high tech capital

publicly funded r d programs and survival of patents i apply a survival model to a detailed data set of swedish patents to estimate how different financing factors affect the likelihood of patent renewal since the owners know more about the patents than potential external financiers there is a problem of asymmetric information to overcome this sweden has for a long time relied on government support rather than private venture capital pvc in the empirical analysis two kinds of government loans are unbundled the empirical results show that patents which have received soft government loans in the r d phase have a higher probability of expiring than patents without such financing but patents that have received more market oriented government loans during the commercialization phase are renewed for as long as other commercialized patents this finding suggests that rather than bad choices of projects it is the nature of the contract terms that explains the low renewal of some patents with government financing

gender norms and intrahousehold allocation of labor in mozambique a cge application to household and agricultural economics we model intrahousehold dynamics in two rural provinces of mozambique through the lens of computable general equilibrium cge methods the main features of our modeling framework are as follows a a household social accounting matrix that captures allocation of labor and resources and transfers among household members b the explicit use of social norms in labor allocation across gender c a mechanism that links agricultural production to time poverty d identification of leisure as a commodity that is being produced simulation results and sensitivity analyses show how social norms interact with the allocation of labor and resources at the household level to impact farm production or limit the gains from technological improvements

methods for including income distribution in global cge models for long term climate change research abstract the consequences of climate policy and the impacts of climate change vary among different types of households depending on their income level expenditure pattern and other socioeconomic characteristics global economy environment models that are used to assess climate change issues traditionally do not distinguish households by income or other attributes to facilitate progress in this area we review and assess literature on methods to include household heterogeneity in global long term computable general equilibrium cge models we distinguish among three categories of approaches 1 the explicit modeling of multiple household types within the cge framework 2 micro simulation modeling and 3 direct modeling of income distribution for each of these approaches we describe the method key assumptions limitations and several prominent examples from the literature moreover we discuss data needs including the contents of household survey data their availability and processing we conclude with an overview of what each method could provide for global long term climate related research

credit constraints credit unions and small scale producers in guatemala abstract efficient and equitable development outcomes may depend in part on whether formal financial institutions leave low wealth producers tightly constrained in their access to credit if so can cooperative institutions efficiently relax these constraints these issues are explored using survey data gathered from 950 small scale producer households in areas of guatemala with market oriented credit unions that mobilize savings and make unsubsidized loans nonprice rationing by banks is found to be common among lower wealth households while credit unions relax credit constraints for a significant portion of those rationed by banks but not the poorest of the study households

the value of control in emerging markets when a developed country multinational firm acquires majority control of a firm in an emerging market there is an economically large and statistically significant increase in the acquiring firm s stock price in 1986 2006 developed market acquirers experienced positive and significant abnormal returns of 1 16 on average over a three day event window positive acquirer returns and dollar value gains appear unique to emerging market mergers and acquisitions and are not replicated when the same developed market acquirers take over firms in developed markets the size of the stock price increase is more pronounced a the weaker the contracting environment in the emerging market and b for industries with high asset intangibility the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

agricultural technology risk and gender a cge analysis of mozambique abstract interactions between agricultural technology improvements risk reducing behavior and gender roles in agricultural production in mozambique are examined the analysis employs a computable general equilibrium cge model that explicitly incorporates key features of the economy these include detailed accounting of marketing margins home consumption risk and gender roles in agricultural production our results show that agricultural technology improvements benefit both male and female occupants of rural households due to economic interactions agricultural technology improvements are particularly compelling when combined with marketing system improvements moreover technological change in cassava appears to be a particularly strong lever for increasing female and overall household welfare especially when risk is considered

gender implications of biofuels expansion in africa the case of mozambique summary we use a gendered dynamic cge model to assess the implications of biofuels expansion in a low income land abundant setting mozambique is chosen as a representative case we compare scenarios with different gender employment intensities in producing jatropha feedstock for biodiesel under all scenarios biofuels investments accelerate gdp growth and reduce poverty however a stronger trade off between biofuels and food availability emerges when female labor is used intensively as women are drawn away from food production a skills shortage among female workers also limits poverty reduction policy simulations indicate that only modest improvements in women s education and food crop yields are needed to address food security concerns and ensure broader based benefits from biofuels investments

cost structure and technical change in rural banking abstract using the multi product translog cost function this paper examines the cost structure and technical change occurring within the novel ghanaian rural banks the results of the seemingly unrelated error components model indicate substantial unexploited economies of scale in individual products as well as in overall intermediation there is presence of pairwise complementarity between loans and government securities and between deposits and government securities but absence of pairwise complementarity between loans and deposits overall capital using and labour saving technical change has occurred but efficiency loss in deposit mobilization outweighs the efficiency gains in government securities and lending activities operation of agencies reinforces the overall efficiency loss the rural banks must not be hindered from expanding but in any growth strategy deposit mobilization should take a central position and the cost of operating agencies watched closely

persistent heterogeneity of r d intensities within sectors evidence and policy implications abstract do firms in the same sector converge towards the same r d intensities previous research has often assumed this to be true a closer examination using microdata from the eu industrial r d investment scoreboard for the years 2000 2015 shows considerable heterogeneity in r d intensities among firms in the same sector and that this heterogeneity persists over time statistical tests of convergence show that the variation in r d intensities does not decrease over time i e no convergence although firms with an r d intensity below the industry average do seem to catch up with the leaders i e evidence of convergence overall firms in the same industry do not converge to a common r d intensity policy implications are discussed

determinants of cross national knowledge transfer and its effect on firm innovation this study examines the determinants of international knowledge flow from a resource based perspective it evaluates the impact of cross national knowledge transfer on firm innovative performance based on 56 027 us patents owned by 53 selected firms in the us based pharmaceutical industry the results suggest that innovative performance is a curvilinear function of the international knowledge content used by a firm to innovate as hypothesized it was found that at 1 low and moderate levels of international knowledge content a firm s strategy to transfer international knowledge improves its innovative performance and at 2 higher levels of international knowledge content there are diminishing marginal returns to transferring knowledge from overseas

biofuels and the poor global impact pathways of biofuels on agricultural markets this study seeks to assess the future impacts of biofuel production on regional agricultural and related sectors over the next decade with a specific focus on the vulnerable regions of developing nations using a modification of the gtap modeling platform to account for the global interactions of regional biofuel and food markets the analysis shows that biofuel production levels depend on the assumption about the future price of energy and the nature of the substitutability between biofuels and petroleum based transport fuels low energy prices reduce the demand for biofuels and thus require greater government support to meet the desired production targets at the other extreme when prices are high and there is scope for substituting biofuels for petroleum based fuels the volume of biofuels produced will exceed the mandates even when biofuels are being mainly produced in developed countries our results indicate that there are impact pathways that extend far beyond the borders of the us brazil and the eu prices of feedstock and non feedstock commodities rise in developing countries there is also a rise in value added from the agricultural sector a gain that is enjoyed by the owners of land and labor including unskilled hence to the extent that agriculture is a key sector in getting growth started and addressing poverty needs the emergence of biofuels can in this way at least be a positive force

the impact of formal finance on the rural economy of india india has systematically pursued a supply led approach to increasing agricultural credit its objectives have been to replace moneylenders to relieve farmers of indebtedness and to achieve higher levels of agricultural credit investment and output india s success in replacing moneylenders has been outstanding between 1951 and 1971 their share of rural credit appears to have dropped from more than 80 percent to 36 percent it may have dropped to as low as 16 percent by 1981 but that estimate is disputed still institutional credit is far from reaching all farmers only about a quarter of cultivators borrow and no more than 2 percent take out long term loans most small farmers have little access to credit and long term credit goes mostly to large farmers overall farm debt has probably not increased sharply in real terms as formal credit has primarily substituted for credit from other sources moreover with the rapid growth of commercial banks in the 1970s the system mobilized more deposits than it lent in rural areas in 1981 of course enhanced deposit services are a useful service of the rural population but one must ask what has been the impact of heavy rural credit and better financial services on agricultural investment production and rural incomes the authors econometric results suggest that the rapid expansion of commercial banks in rural areas has had a substantially positive effect on rural nonfarm employment and output the availability of better banking facilities appears to have overcome one of the obstacles to locating nonfarm activities in rural areas expanded rural finance has had less of an effect on output and employment in agriculture than in the nonfarm sector the effect on crop output has not been great despite the fact that credit to agricluture has greatly increased the use of fertilizer and private investment in machines and livestock there has been more impact on inputs than on output so the additional capital investment has been more important in substituting for agriclutural labor than in increasing crop output but overall rural credit and expansion of the rural financial system have had a positive effect on rural wages creating nonfarm jobs has apparently added more to total employment than the substitution of capital for labor has subtracted it in agriculture so wages have risen even for agricultural workers albeit modestly the supply led approach to agricultural credit that has been pursued for three decades has clearly benefited current borrowers and farm households formerly indebted to moneylenders it has also spurred fertilizer use and investment in agriculture it has been less successful in generating viable institutions and has failed to generate agricultural employment the policy s costs to india s government have been high as portfolio losses associated with poor repayment ultimately have to be borne by the government or one of its institutions under optimistic assumptions the benefits of the agricultural income are at best no more than 13 percent higher than the cost to the government of the extra agricultural credit if assumptions about the cost of supplying the credit and about repayment rates are less optimistic the social costs and the costs to the government of providing the credit would have exceeded the benefits in agricultural income the expansion of commercial banks to rural areas paid off in nonfarm growth employment and rural wages the question is could these benefits have been achieved without imposing agricultural credit targets on the commercial banks and credit cooperatives or did the commercial banks expand only because they were forced to lend to agriculture the authors could not answer these questions with the data at hand

household sectoral choice and effective demand for rural credit in india an analysis of the icrisat data from three indian villages raises concern about the extent of rationing mechanism inhibiting the spread of formal credit in rural india where a significant proportion of households do not have any outstanding loan or borrow from the informal sector only a limited dependent econometric analysis of the factors jointly determining household sectoral choice and effective demand for informal loan conditional on whether a formal loan is available suggests that compared to formal loan easy and adequate access and prompt recovery are significant determinants of the popularity and viability of informal rural credit among sample households also some households substitute labour income to ease the extent of credit thus rationing of the formal credit is not the only factor inhibiting the spread of formal credit in the study villages

soil quality and fertilizer use rates among smallholder farmers in western kenya studies of fertilizer use in sub saharan africa have been dominated by analyses of economic and market factors having to do with infrastructure institutions and incentives that prevent or foster increased fertilizer demand largely ignoring how soil fertility status conditions farmer demand for fertilizer we apply a switching regression model to data from 260 farm households in western kenya in order to allow for the possibility of discontinuities in fertilizer demand based on a soil carbon content scc threshold we find that the usual factors reflecting liquidity and quasi fixed inputs are important on high scc plots but not on those with poorer soils external inputs become less effective on soils with low scc hence the discernible shift in behaviors across soil quality regimes for many farmers improved fertilizer market conditions alone may be insufficient to stimulate increased fertilizer use without complementary improvements in the biophysical conditions that affect conditional factor demand

tobin s q and the importance of focus in firm performance using tobin s q as a measure of performance we seek to estimate the relative importance of industry focus and share effects in determining firm performance our methods are analogous to those of richard schmalensee and like him we find that industry effects account for the majority of the explained variance however we also find that firm effects exist in the form of focus effects that is narrowly diversified firms do better than widely diversified firms we interpret this finding as consistent with profit maximization by firms with different factor endowments

entry and patenting in the software industry to what extent are firms kept out of a market by patents covering related technologies do patents held by potential entrants make it easier to enter markets we estimate the empirical relationship between market entry and patents for 27 narrowly defined categories of software products during the period 1990 2004 controlling for demand market structure average patent quality and other factors we find that a 10 increase in the number of patents relevant to market reduces the rate of entry by 3 8 and this relationship intensified following expansions in the patentability of software in the mid 1990s however potential entrants with patent applications relevant to a market are more likely to enter it finally patents appear to substitute for complementary assets in the entry process because patents have both greater entry deterring and entry promoting effects for firms without prior experience in other markets this paper was accepted by bruno cassiman business strategy

intellectual capital in a q theory of ag biotech mergers tobin s q theory of investment has been linked to firm merger activity by jovanovic and rousseau jr they showed that firms with higher q values that is the ratio of market to book values tend to be the ones buying other firms and not the ones being acquired market values should theoretically equal book values a firm s assets as they appear on the balance sheet equal to their cost less accumulated depreciation in reality book value often differs from market value especially in knowledge intensive industries indicating the premium above measurable assets that shareholders are willing to pay for a company s unique combination of market position tangible and intangible capital goodwill and other favorable characteristics firms with greater q values are in a position to acquire more capital possibly through mergers and acquisitions to make further use of their advantages this article extends the jr analysis to consider the role of intellectual capital in merger activity we analyze the connection between intangible capital and the q theory of mergers in the agricultural biotechnology ag biotech industry this industry underwent significant technological change beginning in the late 1980s as new biotechnology techniques were integrated with plant breeding and other agricultural practices the number of patent applications in the field grew from less than a 100 a year in the late 1980s to more than 500 applications per year by the mid 1990s bennett et al along with this technological change

biofuels in sub sahara africa drivers impacts and priority policy areas there has been a growing interest in jatropha and sugarcane based biofuels across sub sahara africa biofuel expansion in the region reflects policy concerns related to energy security poverty alleviation and economic development however biofuels have also been linked to numerous environmental and socioeconomic impacts such as ghg emissions water availability pollution deforestation biodiversity loss poverty alleviation energy security loss of access to land and food security to name just a few yet there is a an insufficient understanding of these impacts and their synergies in sub sahara africa and b a lack of policies that could regulate the biofuel sector and ensure its viability while at the same time preventing its negative impact the aim of this literature review is to synthesize the current knowledge about biofuel impacts in africa and to identify priority policy areas that should be targeted for enhancing biofuel sustainability in the continent the findings of this review indicate that biofuel impacts can be positive or negative depending on several factors such as the feedstock the environmental socio economic context of biofuel production and the policy instruments in place during biofuel production use and trade in most cases there are significant trade offs but at least part of the negative impacts can be mitigated through careful planning the incomplete and piecemeal understanding of these trade offs combined with agronomic institutional and market failures are currently the most important barriers for the viability and sustainability of biofuel investments in the continent

value implications of investments in information technology the year 2000 y2k countdown provided a uniquely visible instance of spending on information technology it by u s companies with public attention riveted on potential y2k malfunctions managers were forced to evaluate their it and make decisions about whether to modify or replace existing systems in the aftermath of y2k critics charged that the problem was overblown and that companies overspent on it in contrast we posit in this paper that efforts companies made to renew and upgrade their it may have positioned them to take advantage of new e business applications as y2k approached managers could invest opportunistically in it which would enable them to connect with customers and suppliers in new ways contrary to the alleged overspending we find that firm value increased on average with y2k spending by fortune 1000 companies in particular higher firm value and subsequent earnings were associated with y2k spending for firms in industries where it was considered to have a transforming influence altering traditional ways of doing business by redefining business processes and relationships we also test whether the positive association between firm value and y2k spending diminished with y2k spending by industry peer firms but we do not find support for this relative investment hypothesis

rural financial markets in developing countries their use and abuse until recently the use of agricultural credit as a developmental tool seemed clear and straightforward most concerned people believed that increases in the volume of cheap credit were necessary to boost agricultural production and that the rural poor could be brought into the mainstream of development through supervised credit programs it seemed that certain ideal types of rural credit institutions offered the promise of meeting farmers credit needs and that experience in the industrialized countries with cooperatives and specialized agricultural finance institutions could be effectively transplanted to low income countries this collection of readings highlights facets of rural financial markets that have often been neglected in discussions of agricultural credit in developing countries it moves beyond a narrow concern with the simple provision of credit to a broad consideration of the performance of rural financial markets and of ways to improve the quality and range of financial services for low income farmers it reflects new thinking on the design administration evaluation and policy framework of rural finance and credit programs in developing countries

what percentage of innovations are patented empirical estimates for european firms abstract a 1993 survey on the innovative activities of europe s largest industrial firms obtained useable results on patenting activities for 604 respondents the data are used to calculate the sales weighted propensity rates for 19 industries the propensity rates equal the percentage of innovations for which a patent application is made the propensity rates for product innovations average 35 9 varying between 8 1 in textiles and 79 2 in pharmaceuticals the average for process innovations is 24 8 varying from 8 1 in textiles to 46 8 for precision instruments only four sectors have patent propensity rates for both product and process innovations combined that exceed 50 pharmaceuticals chemicals machinery and precision instruments regression results that control for the effect of industry sector show that patent propensity rates increase with firm size and are higher among firms that find patents to be an important method for preventing competitors from copying both product and process innovations the effect of secrecy is not so straightforward firms that find secrecy to be an important protection method for product innovations are less likely to patent as expected but secrecy has little effect on the propensity to patent process innovations the r d intensity of the firm has no effect on patent propensity rates for both product and process innovations the sector of activity has a strong influence on product patent propensities but very little effect on process patent propensities after controlling for the effect of other factors

industry effects and appropriability measures in the stock market s valuation of r d and patents this paper examines the stock market s valuation of a firm s innovative activity we estimate the market s relative valuation of firms tangible and intangible assets focusing on knowledge capital in the form of accumulated stocks of r d and patents we tried to improve upon our estimates of the stock market s valuation of knowledge capital embodied in such stocks by bringing in measures of the appropriability environment facing a firm from the yale survey on industrial research and development the responses to survey questions about the effectiveness of patents as a mechanism for protecting the returns from innovation turn out to be of some use there is evidence of an interaction between industry level measures of the effectiveness of patents and the market s valuation of a firm s past r d and patenting performance as well as its current r d moves we find no evidence however that other appropriability mechanisms differ enough across industries to leave measurable traces in our data the structure of the yale survey makes it possible to estimate the sampling error in the appropriability measures derived from it this information was used by us in an errors in variables context but with little success in the absence of r d variables our estimates imply that a two standard deviation increase in our index of patent effectiveness would raise the value of a patent held by our average firm from 0 4 million to 1 0 million when r d variables are introduced into the equations the patents variables become insignificant r d expenditures are a better measure of input to the innovative function of firms than patents are of its output but we estimate that the same experiment would induce changes in q of between 10 and 27 percent for the average firm approximately doubling the market s valuation of this kind of capital this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

what is behind the recent surge in patenting abstract we investigate the cause of an unprecedented surge of us patenting over the past decade conventional wisdom points to the establishment of the court of appeals of the federal circuit by congress in 1982 we examine whether this institutional change which has benefited patent holders explains the burst in us patenting using both international and domestic data on patent applications and awards we conclude that the evidence is not favorable to the conventional view instead it appears that the jump in patenting reflects an increase in us innovation spurred by changes in the management of research

the problem of transaction costs in group based microlending an institutional perspective abstract to be financially viable group based microlending needs to economize on transaction costs for both lenders and borrowers group lending programs vary in their transaction cost characteristics depending on their specific credit delivery arrangements and social contexts this article illustrates these arguments by examining the challenges faced by various group lending programs worldwide it also examines how social capital or the lack of it affects the transaction costs and operations of three typical group lending arrangements group loan with joint liability individual loan with joint liability and individual loan with individual liability

companies learning to innovate in recessions abstract innovating in downturns can affect corporate success by improving a firm s position relative to competitors during the recovery period however increased uncertainty and more binding financial constraints complicate such innovation activity i find that past experience with innovation during recessions improves a firm s ability to invest in r d when a new downturn hits this result holds controlling for traditional drivers of innovation as cumulated innovations and financial constraints as well as mitigating endogeneity and selection concerns moreover i find that past experience with innovation during recessions is beneficial to patent outcomes after a new recession overall the paper provides novel evidence on how business cycles shape innovative capabilities

dynamics of r d and investment uk evidence abstract the dynamic relationship between r d investment and stock market value for 185 uk firms over 1984 1992 is analyzed investment granger causes r d but not vice versa r d has an idiosyncratic shock and past r d and investment explain only 1 of excess returns

does it matter who your buyer is the role of nonprofit mission in the market for corporate control of hospitals abstract the hospital industry is one of this country s largest mixed industries with for profit nonprofit and government hospitals operating in the same local markets but how do ownership types differ previous studies have compared costs among different hospitals however these studies have not been entirely successful because costs cannot be meaningfully compared without controlling for hard to measure quality of service in this study we look to the market for corporate control or takeovers for evidence of ownership related differences we find that nonprofit and for profit firms pay different prices and that these differences relate to the nonprofit s mission specifically nonprofits and for profits pay the same price when buying for profits but nonprofits pay less when buying a like minded nonprofit so religious nonprofits pay less for other religious nonprofits for example the resulting dual price equilibrium suggests that nonprofits have a different objective than do for profits but

human development in poor countries on the role of private incomes and public services development is often taken to mean rising incomes discussions of the goals of development now often emphasize the reduction of poverty rather than raising average incomes per se the role of social services particularly basic health and education has also received greater emphasis in the 1980s viewed mainly as instruments for raising the incomes of the poor but in all these approaches income growth of one sort or another is what development is all about a rather different view of the meaning of development has recently found expression in the 1990 human development report hrd produced by the united nations development programme a conceptual underpinning for this approach can be found in the work of amartya sen the essence of this view is that human development what people can actually do and be is the overriding purpose of economic development underdevelopment is viewed as the lack of certain basic capabilities rather than lack of income per se we do not aim here to advocate one of these approaches over the other but rather to explore their implications for development policy for instance what does the human development approach imply about the role of economic growth and in particular about reducing income poverty should development priorities shift toward the provision of public services in poor countries even if such a shift is at the expense of income growth

does the new economy measure up to the great inventions of the past abstract during the four years 1995 99 u s productivity growth experienced a strong revival and achieved growth rates exceeding that of the golden age of 1913 72 accordingly many observers have declared the new economy to be an industrial revolution even more important than the second industrial revolution of 1860 1900 which made the golden age of productivity growth possible this paper dissects the recent productivity revival subtracts out a cyclical component and concludes that there is no revival of the productivity growth trend in the 88 percent of the private economy lying outside of the durables manufacturing sector the paper explains this surprising finding by pointing to limitations in computers and the internet in comparison with the great inventions of the past

the patent paradox revisited an empirical study of patenting in the u s semiconductor industry 1979 1995 we examine the patenting behavior of firms in an industry characterized by rapid technological change and cumulative innovation recent survey evidence suggests that semiconductor firms do not rely heavily on patents to appropriate returns to r d yet the propensity of semiconductor firms to patent has risen dramatically since the mid1980s we explore this apparent paradox by conducting interviews with industry representatives and analyzing the patenting behavior of 95 u s semiconductor firms during 1979 1995 the results suggest that the 1980s strengthening of u s patent rights spawned patent portfolio races among capital intensive firms but it also facilitated entry by specialized design firms

the thai rural credit system public subsidies private information and segmented markets thailand has sought to increase farmers access to credit by government intervention in 1966 it created a government agricultural bank to lend solely to farm households and beginning in the late 1970s it required commercial banks to lend heavily in the rural sector either directly or by making deposits in the agricultural bank the result was an enormous expansion of credit in the rural sector but because formal lenders were either unable or unwilling to solve the information problems involved in the broad range of rural credit transactions the informal credit sector wbich charged interest rates many times higher than the formal sector continued to thrive using household surveys and surveys of moneylenders this article provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which lenders in the informal sector have solved the information problems of providing credit the authors argue that the informal sector is competitive and that high interest rates reflect high information costs not the scarcity of funds this article reports on a set of investigations of the impact of thai government policies to expand bank lending in the rural sector their purpose was to increase farmers access to capital and reduce their dependence on informal lenders fifteen years after the principal government measures were introduced we hope to be able to answer several questions how has the expansion of formal sector lending affected the informal sector did the increase in the supply of formal credit reduce the business of informal lenders and lower interest rates in the informal market what has been the performance of the formal credit system in terms of coverage efficiency and incidence lacking time series data on the informal sector we cannot give a direct answer to these questions but we can with confidence say that the informal lenders are still very much alive by examining the behavior of the rural credit market at the present time we can throw an indirect light on what transpired over the last fifteen years our main findings are the following on the basis of our 1984 85 survey of households and moneylenders

the impact of r d cooperations and mergers in pharmaceuticals on research activities and drugs offered on the market in the last 10 years the pharmaceutical industry has experienced steep unprecedented price increases which are frequently attributed to increasing drug development costs to cope with rocketing development costs companies engage in research and development r d cooperations we study the impact of r d cooperations on firms research activities and drugs offered on the market using a comprehensive dataset we find that r d cooperations formed at the early stage of the drug development process increase the number of r d projects and the number of drugs offered on the market late stage r d cooperations formed among larger firms in technology and product markets increase firms research activities but reduce the number of drugs launched on the product market results suggest that large firms cooperating in the late research stage re optimize their r d pipelines and eliminate similarly aligned research projects

modeling the effects of trade on women at work and at home abstract foreign trade affects women s wages and jobs their household work and their leisure this paper develops a model which covers not only all the sectors of the market economy but also social reproduction and leisure activities for women and men separately the model which in other respects is a standard cge computable general equilibrium model is applied to a simplified set of data for bangladesh its use is illustrated by simulating the gendered effects of changes in trade policies and capital flows

the q theory of investment with many capital goods the q theory of investment which relates investment to the ratio of market to replacement value of capital has attracted considerable attention in a recent series of papers for instance a q variable has been used as an independent variable in empirical investment equations estimated by george von furstenberg 1977 von furstenberg et al 1980 burton malkiel et al 1979 and others these papers however leave somewhat unclear the theoretical rationale for using q as an investment determinant this has motivated work by hiroshi yoshikawa 1980 lawrence summers 1981 michael salinger and summers 1981 and fumio hayashi 1982 who show that under certain conditions the rate of investment of a sharevalue maximizing firm is indeed a function of q this is an important result because it shows that investment equations with q an independent variable are not ad hoc constructions rather they are grounded in a theory of the firm with an appealing behavioral hypothesis viz value maximization an important assumption underlying this research is that capital can be treated as a homogeneous good of course this is an extremely common assumption in the analysis of investment and is not particularly more bothersome in the q theory context than elsewhere nonetheless there are certain situations where it may be desirable or even essential to be able to study investment disaggregated by type of capital good thus the purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how the q theory can be extended to this more general case 1 intuitively one would expect some difficulty with the q theory in the many capitalgood context as already noted by james tobin and william brainard 1977 p 243 and by salinger and summers p 12 one way to see why is to recall the tobin brainard distinction between marginal and average q as hayashi writes

a penny for your quotes patent citations and the value of innovations the use ofpatents in economic research has been seriously hindered by the fact that patents vary enormously in their importance or value and hence simple patent counts cannot be informative about innovative output the purpose of this article is to put forward patent counts weighted by citations as indicators of the value of innovations thereby overcoming the limitations of simple counts the empirical analysis of a particular innovation computed tomography scanners indeed shows a close association between citation based patent indices and independent measures of the social value of innovations in that field moreover the weighting scheme appears to be nonlinear increasing in the number of citations implying that the informational content of citations rises at the margin as in previous studies simple patent counts are found to be highly correlated with contemporaneous rd however here the association is within afield over time rather than cross sectional

poverty human development and growth an emerging consensus this paper considers several issues relevant to the debate on the extent to which poverty or development progress in general should be measured by income or by a broader set of objectives issues covered here are practical implications of the two approaches for poverty reduction efforts the impact of growth on basic social indicators and how national achievement on social indicators is best measured sri lanka and pakistan countries often cited in this debate are used as examples

an empirical analysis of strategic competition and firm values the case of r d competition abstract we operationalize a firm s competitive strategy through a new empirical measure and develop a framework for empirical analysis of the market value of strategic behavior using this framework we study announcement effects of r d spending the announcing firm s stock prices are positively influenced by a change in spending and negatively by our competitive strategy measure csm competitors stock prices are positively influenced by the interaction between the market s reaction to the announcing firm and the csm our results are consistent with positive effects of accommodating competition with strategic substitutes and nonpositive effects of tough competition with strategic complements

innovation in rural finance indonesia s badan kredit kecamatan program abstract donor agencies and governments are committing increasing resources to microenterprise credit programs much as they earlier funded rural credit yet few programs embody the lessons from this earlier experience central java s badan kredit kecamatan program shows considerable promise in providing the access convenience and flexibility desired by poor borrowers while assuring the financial viability of the credit institution by minimizing administrative costs and imposing interest rates sufficient to cover costs and prevent capital erosion recent progress has also been made in mobilizing voluntary savings strong political support from the government has been crucial to the program s success

what determines success examining the human financial and social capital of jamaican microentrepreneurs abstract this research examines the performance of 215 informal microenterprises in jamaica studying the influence of human capital social capital and financial capital of the owners on their business profitability understanding the importance of particular relationships that result in successful micro businesses is important for a number of reasons first among many developing countries the growth of microenterprise provides the most visibly vibrant and growing economic activity although considerable effort and resources are being directed toward microenterprise promotion schemes empirical research on the subject is quite limited second economies in developing countries mirror many of the social and institutional problems existent in urban economically disadvantaged areas of the united states and other developed countries for these areas microenterprise may be an essential component of urban renewal and community development this study helps in identifying important characteristics of social and individual attributes that may be relevant to those attempting to strengthen this subsector finally this study seeks to provide insight into a dimension of microbusiness research for which there are limited data specifically the role that social capital plays among practicing entrepreneurs and owners this research found that different structural environments even within a singular and small economy may considerably alter the rates of return to human social and financial capital as a result the analysis of enterprises includes segmentation according to both the usage or not of employees and the sophistication of the technologies used several factors were determined to enhance the profitability of the businesses in all categories vocational training for example demonstrated consistently strong and positive effects mother s high occupational status a proxy for socioeconomic status and years of experience in the business were also consistently positive and strongly associated with increasing profits although additional starting capital played an important role for both the businesses with and without employees increasing amounts failed to differentiate the success of those firms that were already operating in the higher technological tier obtaining a small business loan acted in a similar manner enhancing the profitability of all firms except those segmented into a high technological tier one interpretation of this finding is that the role of technological choice is extremely important and appears to dwarf that of varying amounts of starting capital social capital as operationalized by frequent church attendance and marital status of the owner was found generally to increase the profitability of the business the data demonstrate that social networks play an important role in the success of these businesses and that conditions in the highest tier utilize social capital in a somewhat unique manner

performance in living standards abstract our ultimate objective is to enhance the standard of living of our societies but the standard of living has different meanings for different people a thorough investigation of the concept of the standard of living has been made only recently by sen who defines it in terms of functioning and capabilities functioning is an achievement whereas capability is the ability to achieve the main objective of the present paper is to compare achievements levels and improvement changes in the standard of living across countries using an axiomatic approach an achievement index is derived which accomodates the view that a further increase in the standard of living of a country when it is already at a higher level signifies an achievement greater than that of another with an equal increase but from a lower base the paper also tests for the statistical relationship between indicators of the countries standards of living so derived in their capita gdp the question posed is whether the aggregate income which provides people with the means to achieve a better life can be used as proxy measure of the standard living and extent to which the country s improvement in the standard of living can be explained by the levels and changes in the per capita income the analysis presented in the paper is based on the data from 80 developing countries

collective agricultural production a solution for transition economies abstract the paper examines theoretical reasons and provides examples for productivity differences between agricultural service cooperatives and collectives service cooperatives can utilize economies of scale enhance competitiveness and provide technical information advantages that often outweighed problems of free riding low investment and excessive political intervention agricultural collectives while not adding substantial advantages are in addition associated with problems of supervision and effort supply tendencies to substitute casual workers or mechanization for regular members and low investment incentives while collective forms of organization in transition economies respond to high risk and market imperfections they do so inefficiently policies that create conditions for service cooperatives to compete may lead to large productivity gains

swedish business research productivity sweden experienced an increase in the ratio of granted patents to research and development spending r d between 1989 and 1998 a period when r d spending grew rapidly the ratio of patents granted to r d spending research productivity increased by 40 over the period and the ratio of quality adjusted patents to r d exhibited an even more impressive increase of 60 sectors with especially high research productivity and quality adjusted research productivity include low and medium technology manufacturing chemicals and transportation however the growth in quality adjusted research productivity was primarily generated by the high tech pharmaceuticals and electronics industries the service based sectors experienced a significant increase in r d spending over the period but the research productivity decreased less

quantifying spillover effects from large land based investment the case of mozambique summary almost a decade after a spike in land demand following the 2007 08 commodity boom evidence on impacts of this phenomenon remains limited and mostly case study based we show that information on location and start data of large farms combined with existing smallholder farm surveys allows to complement this with a difference in difference approach to systematically assess spillovers from large farm establishment illustrative application to mozambique suggests positive short term effects from newly established large farms on adoption of agricultural practices and input use by small farms less than 50 km from newly established large operations robustness checks for crop farms only also suggest job creation in the proximity of newly established crop but not livestock farms yet large farm establishment decreased perceived well being within a 25 km band and in the time horizon considered here did not lead to better access to output markets cultivation of larger areas or once other factors are controlled for higher yields this allows us to reject the notion of negative spillovers from large farm establishment but casts doubt on the wisdom of large unconditional subsidies to attract investors in addition to drawing policy conclusions for mozambique we highlight the methodology s wider applicability and scope for expansion

computing productivity firm level evidence we explore the effect of computerization on productivity and output growth using data from 527 large us firms over 1987 1994 we find that computerization makes a contribution to measured productivity and output growth in the short term using one year differences that is consistent with normal returns to computer investments however the productivity and output contributions associated with computerization are up to five times greater over long periods using five to seven year differences the results suggest that the observed contribution of computerization is accompanied by relatively large and time consuming investments in complementary inputs such as organizational capital that may be omitted in conventional calculations of productivity the large long run contribution of computers and their associated complements that we uncover may partially explain the subsequent investment surge in computers in the late 1990s