international scientist mobility and the locus of knowledge and technology transfer abstract despite the growing interest of scholars and policymakers to better understand the determinants for researchers in public science to transfer knowledge and technology to firms little is known how temporary international mobility of scientists affects both their propensity to engage in knowledge and technology transfer ktt as well as the locus of such transfer based on a sample of more than 950 german academics from science and engineering faculties we investigate how the duration and the frequency of scientists visits at research institutions outside their home country affect ktt activities we find that most mobile scientists engage in ktt to firms both in the host and in their home country suggesting that ktt activities to firms abroad do not substitute or crowd out but complement ktt to firms in the home country we further find that the longer research visits abroad are the higher the likelihood that scientists engage in ktt to firms again both in the host and the home country however the more frequently scientists visit institutions abroad the more likely they are to engage in ktt to firms only in their home country our results therefore provide evidence for the benefits of brain circulation the article contributes to the growing strand of the literature on scientist mobility and on the determinants of industry science linkages at the individual level

can we have growth when population is stagnant testing linear growth rate formulas of non scale endogenous growth models abstractwe sub divide scale invariant fully or semi endogenous growth models into six sub categories for formulas relating steady state growth rates of income per capita and the growth rate of the

what makes basic research economically useful abstract economic analysis has helped us understand the strong economic dimension in the explosive growth of science and more recently the reasons for continuing public subsidies however the growing domination of the market failure approach has led to the analytical neglect of two major questions for policy makers how does science contribute to technology are the technological benefits from science increasingly becoming international on the former too much attention has been devoted to the relatively narrow range of scientific fields producing knowledge with direct technological applications and too little to the much broader range of fields the skills of which contribute to most technologies on the latter national systems of science and of technology remain closely coupled in most major countries in spite of the technological activities of large multinational firms empirical research is needed on concentration scale and efficiency in the performance of basic research where techniques and insights from the applied economics of industrial r d are of considerable relevance there is no convincing evidence so far of unexploited economies of scale in basic research this evidence shows that many policies for greater selectivity and concentration in basic research have been misconceived economists and other social scientists could help by formulating more persuasive justifications for public subsidy for basic research and by making more realistic assumptions about the nature of science and technology

why democracies produce efficient results by applying the standard tools of microeconomic analysis i argue that democratic markets work as well as economic markets in particular i show that previous work has greatly exaggerated the existence of principal agent and informational problems in electoral markets and has drawn incorrect conclusions

the illusion of fiscal illusion unsticking the flypaper effect recognizing that it is difficult to prove a negative this paper marshals evidence in support of the hypothesis that the widely documented flypaper effect of federal grants to state and local governments is purely a statistical artifact a review of previous studies and a monte carlo investigation suggest that the use of an inappropriate functional form may generate an illusory flypaper effect a local expenditure equation is then estimated in alternative specifications with ten years of state level data empirical results confirm the sensitivity of the flypaper effect to specification and tests of fit unambiguously favor one functional form that specification yields no statistical evidence of a flypaper effect

from malthusian stagnation to modern growth this paper investigates the historical evolution of the relationship among population growth technological change and standard of living the analysis focuses on two most important differences among the malthusian regime post malthusian regime and modern growth regime these were the behavior of income per capita and the relationship between the level of income per capita and the population growth rate the modern growth regime is characterized by steady growth in both income per capita and the level of technology in the malthusian regime technological progress and population growth was glacial by modern standards and income per capita was fairly constant in contrast to the modern growth regime the relationship between per capita income and population growth in the malthusian regime was positive post malthusian regime shared one characteristic with each of the two regimes in addition this paper developed and described an endogenous growth model consistent with the above mentioned transition process

policy orientation effects on performance with licensing to start ups and small companies abstract this study empirically tests a model of a university s selectivity and support policy orientation for technology licensing and its interaction with the external environment for entrepreneurship using a sample of 134 us research universities we investigate main two way and three way interaction effects for two measures of technology transfer performance licenses with companies that subsequently go public and product royalties results indicate both main and moderating effects for both measures of performance implications for practice and policy are offered with special attention to public universities

alternative regulatory methods and firm efficiency stochastic frontier evidence from the u s electricity industry the use of incentive regulation and other alternative regulatory programs in u s electricity markets has grown during the past two decades within a stochastic frontier framework i investigate the effect of individual programs on the technical efficiency of a large set of coal and natural gas generation units i find that those programs tied directly to generator performance and those that modify traditional fuel cost pass through programs to provide a greater incentive to reduce fuel costs are associated with greater efficiency levels other programs have no statistical association with efficiency levels

examining the cost efficiency of chinese hydroelectric companies using a finite mixture model this paper evaluates the operational activities of chinese hydroelectric power companies over the period 2000 2010 using a finite mixture model that controls for unobserved heterogeneity in so doing a stochastic frontier latent class model which allows for the existence of different technologies is adopted to estimate cost frontiers this procedure not only enables us to identify different groups among the hydro power companies analysed but also permits the analysis of their cost efficiency the main result is that three groups are identified in the sample each equipped with different technologies suggesting that distinct business strategies need to be adapted to the characteristics of china s hydro power companies some managerial implications are developed

the limits of capital transcending the public financer private producer split in industrial r d abstract a near consensus has emerged supporting the public funding of industrial r d as a solution to a host of market failures however the common policy prescription urges government to go no further than minimal market enhancing intervention largely keeping the state to the role of financer of privately conducted r d by focusing on three general issues in the context of industrial r d trust coordination and motivation this article develops an argument for a more expansive government role two models of state intervention are at the center of the analysis public production of r d and state sponsorship of inter firm and inter organizational networks it is argued that both these models have distinct advantages as well as weaknesses in addressing common challenges to industrial r d production informed by the positive experiences of different states that have moved in recent years from high technology industries periphery to the center this article explains how the two models of state intervention address the various problems associated with pure private production it is concluded that while even advanced countries with well developed markets might find it advantageous to actively intervene in industrial r d the two models should especially be considered in cases of economies that suffer from weak market signals low retention of value added functions limited professional capacities and limited institutional thickness and networks

endogenous federal grants and crowd out of state government spending theory and evidence from the federal highway aid program contrary to simple theoretical predictions existing evidence suggests that federal grants do not crowd out state government spending a legislative bargaining model with endogenous grants documents a positive correlation between grant receipts and preferences for public goods this correlation has likely biased existing work against measuring crowd out to correct for such endogeneity the model motivates instruments based on the political power of state congressional delegations exploiting this exogenous variation in grants the instrumental variables estimator reports crowd out that is statistically and economically significant this endogeneity may explain the flypaper effect a nonequivalence between grant receipts and private income jel d70 h40 h77

impacts of grants and contracts on academic researchers interactions with industry abstract based on a representative national sample of 1564 academic researchers we investigate the impacts of research grants and contracts on the nature and extent of faculty research and technology activities with industry a particular focus is on understanding the independent contributions of industry and government grant sources on levels of industrial involvement in addition to examining the source of grants the study controls for a number of independent factors including scientific field research center affiliation tenure status and gender results suggest independent effects of grants and contracts on industrial activities grants and contracts from industry have a significant effect on academic researchers propensity to work with industry as measured by an industrial involvement scale federally sponsored grants also have an impact in increasing work with industry but a more moderate one further those with more grants and contracts of each type have a greater propensity for industrial involvement than those who have such contracts but fewer this holds even when proxies for productivity and career stage are introduced in regression equations the analysis also considers whether provision of grants and contracts is best viewed as a predictor of industrial involvement or just another type of industrial involvement using factor analysis and nested multivariate modeling to compare effects

technical efficiency and impacts of deregulation an analysis of three functions in u s electric power utilities during the period from 1992 through 2000 the main purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of deregulation on technical efficiency and its changes over time for large scale u s electric power utilities during the period from 1992 through 2000 we analyze the efficiency of three individual functions i e generation transmission distribution and general administration and the deregulatory impacts on each of them in order to implement the analysis we estimate an input distance function by using a stochastic frontier analysis the results indicate that there is a significant impact of deregulation on efficiency in the generation and general administration functions while no effects are observed in the transmission distribution function

technical efficiency of french nuclear energy plants this article analyses the efficiency of french nuclear energy plants belonging to edf electricity of france from 2004 to 2008 with a dea data envelopment analysis model the convexity model is used to investigate the technical efficiency of a representative sample of nuclear plants the results indicated that some plants have undergone an improvement in technical efficiency while others have regressed in terms of technical efficiency policy implications related to the results are discussed

power in firm networks what it means for regional innovation systems christopherson s clark j 2007 power in firm networks what it means for regional innovation systems regional studies 41 1223 1236 the role of power within regional firm networks is noted in empirical studies but insufficiently theorized it is suggested that network functioning is conflictual and that more powerful network members particularly transnational corporations tncs leverage regional resources to advance their sustainable competitive advantage the agendas and power exercised by tncs within regionalized firm networks have significant implications for regional policy and the uneven allocation of resources and capacities within and among regions the findings indicate that transnational firm access to resources that are critical to innovation including university research and skilled labour negatively affects the potential for innovation by small and medium size firms christopherson s et clark j 2007 le pouvoir au sein des reseaux d entreprise son importance pour les systemes d

international technology transfer in services this study examines the nature of technology and the process of its transfer in five service industries from parent companies to foreign affiliates three principal research questions are posed what is the key technology in each industry what are the main methods for transferring this technology how and why do technology and transfer methods differ across firms industries and countries the empirical analysis shows that key technologies were generally knowledge of experience in the industry and methodology for producing the service transfer of the technology was mainly done through the training and transfer of experts and organizational forms were wholly owned subsidiaries and international partnerships more technology transfer occurred when firms were more international when affiliates were more recently established and when parent ownership was lower in the affiliate some evidence exists that more firm specific jointly produced technology leads to higher ownership percentage and greater transfer to affiliates

the flypaper effect and the deadweight loss from taxation abstract the difference in the effects on public expenditure by local governments of consumer s incomes and intergovernmental grants is shown to be consistent with the maximization of a representative consumer s utility by a local government increasing marginal deadweight loss of taxation accounts for the result explanations of the flypaper effect do not therefore require models of strategic bureaucratic behavior or voter misperceptions

the drivers of efficient knowledge transfer performance evidence from british universities using data from the united kingdom this study explores the institutional and environmental factors that influence universities efficiency in knowledge transfer while studies of universities knowledge transfer performance have so far focused on patent commercialisation and research contracting with industry it is increasingly acknowledged that universities engage in a broader range of knowledge transfer activities including consulting public engagement and provision of knowledge intensive services when these are taken into account less research intensive universities and those with a greater share of staff in the arts and humanities improve their relative efficiency more specialised older and larger institutions are more efficient performers while research intensity is no longer a strong predictor of efficiency

socially excessive dissemination of patent licences compared with the social optimum a monopolist usually sells too little this result seemingly includes the case of a lab that licences its patented cost innovation katz and shapiro 1986 find conditions under which the lab will issue fewer than the socially optimal number of licences however i find instead that its incentives can be socially too high the monopoly seller may sell too much for example it can be profit maximizing to sell several licences while it is socially optimal that none is sold en comparaison avec l optimum social un monopoleur habituellement vend trop peu voila qui semble tenir pour le cas d un laboratoire qui vend des licences pour une innovation brevetee qui reduit les couts katz shapiro 1986 ont montre dans quelles conditions le laboratoire va emettre moins que le nombre optimal de licences cependant l auteur decouvre que les incitations peuvent plutot l amener a en emettre trop plus que l optimum social par exemple il se peut que la maximisation du profit amene a vendre plusieurs licences alors qu il serait socialement optimal de n en vendre aucune

the flypaper effect what happens to a state s spending when it receives an unconditional grant from the federal government the standard theoretical analysis predicts that the increase in spending will be the same as that generated by an equivalent increase in local incomes or roughly 5 10 percent for most states in contrast numerous empirical analyses have found that spending increases by much more with some estimates near 100 percent this result is known as the flypaper effect since the money appears to stick where it hits the authors review this evidence as well as other studies that find similar behavior in firms

efficiency analysis of hydroelectric generating plants a case study for portugal abstract this paper estimates changes in total productivity breaking this down into technically efficient change and technological change by means of data envelopment analysis dea applied to the hydroelectric energy generating plants of edp the portugal electricity company the aim of this procedure is to seek out those best practices that will lead to improved performance in the energy market we rank the plants according to their change in total productivity for the period 2001 2004 concluding that some plants experienced productivity growth while others experienced a decrease in productivity the implications arising from the study are that edp should adopt an internal benchmark management procedure in order to evaluate the relative position of each hydroelectric generating plant and to adopt managerial strategies designed to catch up with the frontier of best practices as the frontier is shifting along the time constant efforts are needed in this respect along the time

the effects of electricity reforms on productivity and efficiency of china s fossil fired power plants an empirical analysis abstract this paper investigates the effects of electricity reforms on productivity and efficiency of china s generation plants based on the third industrial census data and the first economic census data partial factor productivity pfp analysis indicates that the productivity improvements in labor and capital inputs associated with the reforms are approximately 26 and 45 respectively the effect of the reforms on fuel expense is weakly significant but there is evidence of significant productivity improvement in fuel usage further total factor productivity tfp analysis shows that the efficiency gain from the reforms is still significant when the substitution effect of labor and capital inputs are considered though the magnitude is much lower than that of the pfp analysis the effect of the reforms on technical efficiency becomes weakly significant when fuel expense is further included in tfp analysis but a significant positive effect is expected if fuel input is measured in physical quantity

mapping the university technology transfer process abstract transfer of technologies from the universities to the private sector is increasingly regarded as playing a significant role in new business starts growth of existing businesses and new job creation further there are monerous models describing the process of technology transfer some of the existing models represent this process as a linear progression of steps from idea generation and technology development at the university to patenting the technology and then establishing a university private firm link through a formal search process the process culminates in patent rights transfer other models describe technology transfer in terms of networking arrangements and emphasize not so much formal search as the role of long term relationships between the two parties still other studies indicate that it is possible to combine the two approaches formal search and informal networking arrangements to ensure successful transfer business firms involved in transfer also may be classified into several groups transfer could occur between the university and an established firm between the university and a recently created new venture or transfer could result in the creation of a new company technology for example could be transferred to a large company that uses the transferred technology as a basis for just one of many product lines or to a small firm that makes the transferred technology a cornerstone of its product strategy are there any differences among the transfer processes used when large or small firms are involved or when technology is transferred to an existing company or results in the creation of a new firm to address these questions we mapped the technology transfer processes of 23 different technologies developed at the university of minnesota from 1983 to 1993 more than half of the technologies studied went to large companies and were used either to upgrade existing products or to extend existing product lines in eight cases technologies were transferred to small firms in three cases technologies were transferred to venture capital firms or intermediaries and had not been commercialized at the time the study was completed in the rest of the cases new firms were created by the inventors university scientists themselves and served as vehicles for marketing their inventions none of the firms of the latter group have grown beyond a part time employment opportunity for the inventors and only one firm provided evidence that additional hiring would be necessary in the near future only four cases involved transfers of technologies that have been developed and patented by the university to firms that did not have any relationships with the university prior to the transfer in these four cases the firms used some form of search strategy to find a needed technology however there is no evidence that any of the firms had a well developed formal search procedure in the overwhelming majority of cases some form of relationship existed between the university or individual inventors and the private firm prior to the transfer these relationships ranged from long term friendships and or cooperation to such less involved forms as interaction at research seminars and university sponsored events further in four cases the technologies were initially developed by private companies whereas the university s role was to assist in refinement or testing of the technology the research yielded a number of additional findings that deserve further investigation and discussion specifically the study did not provide any evidence that the successfully completed technology transfers made any substantial contribution to either new business creation or the generation of new jobs this finding suggests that scholars and policy makers should proceed with caution before accepting a notion that new or high technology firms will have any direct economic impact the study findings hold specific implications for entrepreneurial behavior and public policy the formal search and shopping for a technology model suggests that both business and academic government laboratories publicize respectively their requirements and offerings and that opportunities for creative brokerage ought to exist we found that in the majority of cases technology was transferred not through formal search but through some prior relationships among individuals this observation suggests that the ability to build extended networks of relationships not only within the business world but also with the university community is an important skill that owners and managers of the technology based businesses need to possess entrepreneurs seeking to start businesses based on new technologies may need to reevaluate how much of their limited time to allocate to build and maintain networks and cooperative relationships and how much time to shop for new technologies through formal channels further public policy and the efforts of the university transfer agencies intended to facilitate transfer may need to shift their emphasis from facilitating shopping by organizing and or paying for publicity which is currently the major emphasis to providing assistance in network building and relationship marketing efforts

the evolving state of the art in technology transfer research revisiting the contingent effectiveness model the purpose of our study is to review and synthesize the rapidly evolving literature on technology transfer effectiveness our paper provides a lens into relatively recent work focusing particularly on empirical studies of us technology transfer conducted within the last 15 years in doing so we update and extend the contingent effectiveness model of technology transfer developed by bozeman 2000 specifically we include the growing interest in social and public value oriented technology transfer and thus the contingent effectiveness model is expanded to consider this literature we categorize studies according their approaches to measuring effectiveness draw conclusions regarding the current state of technology transfer evaluation and offer recommendations for future studies

evaluating the regulator winners and losers in the regulation of spanish electricity distribution abstract the principal aim of this study is to evaluate the regulation of electricity distribution in spain to this end we begin by analyzing whether the changes introduced by the regulator led distribution companies to improve their efficiency we then address whether the reimbursements paid to the distribution companies are linked to efficiency lastly we examine whether consumers benefited from the efficiency improvements we focus on spain because the electricity regulator in that country is a longstanding pioneer in the implementation of incentive based regulatory models our analysis was implemented using the regulatory model proposed by bogetoft 1997 as a benchmark the results show that the spanish electricity regulator did not establish a link between efficiency and the reimbursements paid to electricity companies in addition the electricity companies benefited to the detriment of consumers

unemployment wage bargaining and capital labour substitution many economists believe that capital accumulation technical progress and labour force expansion have no lasting effect on unemployment this view rests on the empirically doubtful assumption that the elasticity of substitution between labour and capital is equal to unity i e production is cobb douglas using a simple model based on the work of layard nickell and jackman this paper demonstrates that with a lower elasticity of substitution the equilibrium unemployment rate is affected by all of the above factors it considers briefly how capital accumulation may be endogenised and what long run implications this has for unemployment copyright 1999 by oxford university press

capital grants and regional public investment in spain fungibility of aid or crowding in effect the aim of capital grants to subcentral governments is to increase their investment however recipients may try to allocate additional resources to cut saving or deficit generating a crowding out effect on self financed investment using data from the spanish autonomous communities during the period 1984 to 1999 the effect of capital transfers on regional public investment saving and deficit are estimated econometric results demonstrate that capital grants have no relevance when explaining the dynamics of saving however in deficit regressions they are shown to be both significant and negative both results lead us to a partial long run crowding out effect of grants on self financed investment

the politics of public good provision evidence from indian local governments this paper uses village and household survey data from south india to examine how political geography and politician identity impacts on public good provision we provide evidence that the nature of this relationship varies by type of public good for high spillover public goods residential proximity to elected representative matters in contrast for low spillover public goods sharing the politician s group identity is what matters jel d78 h40

reviving manufacturing with a federal cogeneration policy abstract improving the energy economics of manufacturing is essential to revitalizing the industrial base of advanced economies this paper evaluates ex ante a federal policy option aimed at promoting industrial cogeneration the production of heat and electricity in a single energy efficient process detailed analysis using the national energy modeling system nems and spreadsheet calculations suggest that industrial cogeneration could meet 18 of u s electricity requirements by 2035 compared with its current 8 9 market share substituting less efficient utility scale power plants with cogeneration systems would produce numerous economic and environmental benefits but would also create an assortment of losers and winners multiple perspectives to benefit cost analysis are therefore valuable our results indicate that the federal cogeneration policy would be highly favorable to manufacturers and the public sector cutting energy bills generating billions of dollars in electricity sales making producers more competitive and reducing pollution most traditional utilities on the other hand would lose revenues unless their rate recovery procedures are adjusted to prevent the loss of profits due to customer owned generation and the erosion of utility sales from a public policy perspective deadweight losses would be introduced by market distorting federal incentives ranging annually from 30 to 150 million but these losses are much smaller than the estimated net social benefits of the federal cogeneration policy

a technological communications costs model of r d consortia as public policy abstract for complex technologies the process of innovation and diffusion often requires close cooperation among people for learning what one another know the social and political context of those links among researchers is an important determinant of their efficiency where there are social and political barriers to those links free market structures are not well suited to minimizing the costs of the communication of technological information the paper develops a technological communications costs market failure model of r d results as impure public goods it shows how the design of the european r d consortia promoting public policies esprit and eureka helps firms overcome the market failures described by the model the analysis expands the traditional market failure justifications for a government role in industrial r d governments can play a positive economic role by helping firms overcome social and political barriers to negotiations and technological communications yet market failure arguments are not alone sufficient for policymaking so the paper considers the esprit and eureka policy designs in a political context as model policy tools for organizing public support for industrial r d

university start up formation and technology licensing with firms that go public a resource based view of academic entrepreneurship abstract although academic entrepreneurship is a topic receiving some attention in the literature higher education s appetite for expanding technology transfer activities suggests that more research is needed to inform practice this study investigates the effects of particular resource sets on two university commercialization activities the number of start up companies formed and the number of initial public offering ipo firms to which a university had previously licensed a technology utilizing multisource data on 120 universities and a resource based view of the firm framework a set of university financial human capital and organizational resources were found to be significant predictors of one or both outcomes

faculty support for the objectives of university industry relations versus degree of r d cooperation the importance of regional absorptive capacity abstract the growing importance of regions in the analysis of innovation and the pressure on european universities to interact with their environment justify this article it argues that faculty support for the objectives of university industry relations uir does not vary across disciplines and does not respond to university encouragement in a region with low absorptive capacity these results are in contrast with those obtained in studies of technology leading countries like the usa furthermore incentives for uir may generate unpredicted dynamics while instruments to cooperate are not significant finally support for the objectives of uir should not be confused with the degree of r d cooperation the former is sensitive to university age while the latter is sensitive to gender discipline commitment to r d and university encouragement empirical evidence is obtained from a sample of faculty from the valencian community spain and analysed through a set of models for discrete choice

knowledge interactions between universities and industry in austria sectoral patterns and determinants the relationship between university and industry is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon and an important topic of the recent debate on innovation systems this chapter explores the role of knowledge flows between universities and firms in the austrian national innovation system and provides valuable insights into several dimensions of knowledge flows that are not typically explored in research on this topic the patterns of interaction between 46 different fields of science and 49 economic sectors represent an important and interesting outcome of the analysis left censored tobit models are used to evaluate the effect of sector specific and science field specific characteristics upon the probability of knowledge interaction disaggregated by type of interaction

the effect of regulatory governance on efficiency of thermal power generation in india a stochastic frontier analysis abstract this paper investigates the impact of institutional quality typified as regulatory governance on the performance of thermal power plants in india the indian power sector was reformed in the early 1990s however reforms are effective only as much as the regulators are committed in ensuring that they are implemented we hypothesize that higher the quality of regulation in a federal indian state higher is the efficiency of electric generation utilities a translog stochastic frontier model is estimated using index of state level independent regulation as one of the determinants of inefficiency the dataset comprises a panel of 77 coal based thermal power plants during the reform period covering over 70 of installed electricity generation capacity the mean technical efficiency of 76 7 indicates there is wide scope for efficiency improvement in the sector results are robust to various model specifications and show that state level regulators have positively impacted plant performance technical efficiency is sensitive to both unbundling of state utilities and regulatory experience the policy implication is that further reforms which empower independent regulators will have far reaching impacts on power sector performance

the industrial organization of congress or why legislatures like firms are not organized as markets this paper provides a theory of legislative institutions that parallels the theory of the firm and the theory of contractual institutions like market institutions legislative institutions reflect two key components the goals or preferences of individuals here representatives seeking reelection and the relevant transactions costs we present three conclusions first we show how the legislative institutions enforce bargains among legislators second we explain why given the peculiar form of bargaining problems found in legislatures specific forms of nonmarket exchange prove superior to market exchange third our approach shows how the committee system limits the types of coalitions that may form on a particular issue

how large is the swedish academic sector really a critical analysis of the use of science and technology indicators sweden is perceived to be top ranking and a role model in terms of its volume of academic r d this perception is based on analyses using two standard indicators we assess the validity of these and argue that institutional features skew the result in favour of a high ranking swedish academic r d is more appropriately characterised as average or below average in terms of input and above average in terms of output science policy makers need to acknowledge this and devise policies that strengthen rather than threaten the functioning of an efficient system c 2004 published by elsevier b v

the economics of split ticket voting in representative democracies in u s elections voters often vote for candidates from different parties for president and congress voters also express dissatisfaction with the performance of congress as a whole and satisfaction with their own representative the authors develop a model of split ticket voting in which government spending is financed by uniform taxes the benefits from this spending are concentrated while the model generates split ticket voting overall spending is too high only if the president s powers are limited overall spending is too high in a parliamentary system the authors model can be used as the basis of an argument for term limits copyright 1997 by american economic association

behavior of the firm under regulatory constraint a recent article by akira takayama discusses an earlier paper by harvey averch and leland l johnson on fair rate of return regulation of public utilities although takayama p 255 agrees with averch and johnson s general conclusions that a firm will tend to increase its investment with the introduction of an active constraint on its rate of return he criticizes the a j argument as being confusing ambiguous and in error takayama then attempts a clarification and presents a new formulation which leads to the a j result quoted above this comment will discuss several of takayama s criticisms in addition to showing that the so called a j effect cannot be derived from the basic assumptions made by both averch and johnson and takayama 1 we will show that the very assumptions used to prove the a j effect by defining the region of x require an assumption that the a j effect exists in the first place

a further inquiry into ftr properties abstract william hogan introduced financial transmission rights as a tool to hedge the locational risk inherent in locational marginal prices ftrs are claimed to serve four main purposes 1 provide a hedge for nodal price differences 2 provide revenue sufficiency for contracts for differences 3 distribute the merchandizing surplus an rto accrues in market operations and 4 provide a price signal for transmission and generation developers this paper examines the hedging and redistributional properties of ftrs it argues that ftr allocation has important distributional impacts and related implications for retail rates this observation adds an additional explanation for rate increases in light of decreased production costs due to restructuring this paper also shows that rto practices have important implications for the hedging characteristics of ftrs it further shows via counterexample that even in theory ftrs may not serve as a perfect hedge against congestion charges the paper concludes with a series of recommendations for ftr allocation and the functions that ftrs should serve

efficiency in new zealand sheep and beef farming the impacts of regulatory reform in this study we consider the impacts of dramatic regulatory reform during the 1980s on the efficiency of farms in new zealand using unbalanced panel data a translog distance function representing the multiple output and input technology and incorporating nonneutral regulatory impacts is used for the analysis determinants of technical inefficiency including a regulatory variable a time term and a debt equity ratio are also incorporated in a one step model estimated by maximum likelihood stochastic production frontier methods we find evidence of regulatory induced changes in output composition toward beef and deer and away from wool and especially lamb but little associated technical inefficiency these patterns motivated investment in complementary capital land and beef deer livestock inputs firms that were more flexible in their adaptation toward these new mixes adjusted to regulatory changes with less upheaval so any existing inefficiency appears linked to debt equity levels

emissions trading electricity restructuring and investment in pollution abatement this paper analyzes an emissions trading program that was introduced to reduce smog causing pollution from large stationary sources using variation in state level electricity industry restructuring activity i identify the effect of economic regulation on pollution permit market outcomes there are two main findings first deregulated plants in restructured electricity markets were less likely to adopt more capital intensive environmental compliance options as compared to regulated or publicly owned plants second as a consequence of heterogeneity in electricity market regulations a larger share of the permitted pollution is being emitted in states where air quality problems tend to be more severe jel l51 l94 l98 q53 q58 when the us federal government first began regulating major sources of air pollution in the 1960s the conventional approach to meeting air quality standards involved establishing maxi mum emissions rates or technology based standards for regulated stationary sources however economists have long maintained that an emissions permit market could more efficiently coor dinate pollution abatement activities provided a series of assumptions are met over the past few decades market based cap and trade cat approaches to regulating emissions from industrial point sources have become a centerpiece of environmental regulation in the united states in the theoretical first best permit market equilibrium the total social cost of meeting an emis sions cap is minimized each firm chooses a level of pollution abatement such that its marginal cost of reducing pollution is set equal to the social marginal benefit from emissions reduction in practice preexisting distortions in product markets that are subject to cat regulation may interfere with the emissions permit market s ability to operate efficiently this paper studies the effects of electricity market regulation on permit market outcomes in the context of a major us emissions trading program the nox budget program the recent wave of electricity industry restructuring in the united states has resulted in significant interstate variation in economic regulation consequently facilities in the same cat program face very different economic regu lation and investment incentives in their respective electricity markets whereas rate base regu lated plants are guaranteed to earn a rate of return on prudent investments in pollution abatement equipment deregulated plants operating in restructured electricity markets are offered no such

efficiency assessment of hydroelectric power plants in canada a multi criteria decision making approach abstract hydropower plays a major role in the canadian electricity generation industry few attempts have been made however to assess the efficiency of hydropower generation in canada this paper analyzes the overall efficiency of hydropower generation in canada from comprehensive viewpoints of electricity generating capability its profitability as well as environmental benefits and social responsibility using the topsis the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution method the factors that influence the efficiency of the hydropower generation are also presented to help to the sustainable hydropower production in canada the most important results of this study concern 1 the pivotal roles of energy saving and of the social responsibility in the overall efficiency of hydropower corporates and 2 the lower hydropower generation efficiency of some of the most important economic regions in canada other results reveal that the overall efficiency of hydropower generation in canada experienced an improvement in 2012 following a downtrend from 2005 to 2011 amidst these influencing factors energy saving and social responsibility are key factors in the overall efficiency scores while management defined herein by the number of employees and hydropower stations of a corporation has only a slightly negative impact on the overall efficiency score

universities as engines of r d based economic growth they think they can two issues raised by increased participation of universities in equity arrangements designed to commercialize faculty research are addressed a the effects that an increased emphasis on patenting faculty research and on enhancing the commercial value of these patents has on the characteristics of academic research net revenue streams and existing channels through which academic research enters the market and b processes of institutional change and imitation whereby changes in the policies of elite research universities exert competitive and emulative pressures on other institutions increased efforts by universities to foster the commercialization of technological innovations erodes the singular position of institutions of higher learning in the united states based on past performance there is little reason to expect that a substantial reallocation of faculty effort towards commercially oriented r d will generate appreciable net revenues for other than a select number of universities these ventures also serve to shift academic researchers from the social roles in which they are most efficient as suppliers of a collective goodscientific and technological knowledge just as very few men are both capable business managers and ingenious inventors so few are at the same time ingenious inventors and exalted altruists some twenty years ago a university professor devised a method for measuring with accuracy the content of butterfat in milk the device if patented would doubtless have yielded him a very handsome income the inventor gave it freely to the public saying modestly that to do so was but part of his duty as a servant of the people and it has come into use the world over we call his conduct noble but our very recognition of its nobility is an admission of its rarity f w taussig inventors and money makers 1915 58

a theory of yardstick competition in the typical regulatory scheme a franchised monopoly has little incentive to reduce costs this article proposes a mechanism in which the price the regulatedfirm receives depends on the costs of identical firms in equilibrium each firm chooses a socially efficient level of cost reduction the mechanism generalizes to cover heterogeneous firms with observable differences medicare s prospective reimbursement of hospitals by using diagnostically related groups is a scheme very similar to the one outlined here

the political economy of benefits and costs a neoclassical approach to distributive politics this essay offers a rational political explanation for the notorious inefficiency of pork barrel projects with an optimization model of legislative behavior and legislative institutions the model emphasizes the economically arbitrary from a welfare point of view importance of the geographic incidence of benefits and costs owing to the geographic basis for political representation we explore the implications of a legislator s objective function and derive conditions under which a representative legislature will select an omnibus of projects each of which exceeds the efficient scale

local property and state income taxes the role of interjurisdictional competition and collusion this paper addresses two long standing positive questions in public finance i why is the property tax despite widespread popular complaints against its fairness the almost exclusive tax instrument used by local governments and ii why do we consistently observe higher levels of governments states undermining local property tax systems through income tax funded grants and state imposed caps on local property tax rates a new intuitive argument to explain question is presented and tested in simulations using a computable general equilibrium model with parameters set to be consistent with new jersey data both the intuitive argument and the simulation results indicate that setting local income tax rates to zero is a dominant strategy for community planners when faced with popular sentiment against the property tax community planners can collude and introduce local income taxes simultaneously to prevent adverse general equilibrium migration and price changes since zero income tax rates are dominan

asymmetric information and agenda control the bases of monopoly power in public spending abstract a pervasive empirical finding widely known as the flypaper effect is that lump sum intergovernmental grants generate considerably greater public spending by the recipient jurisdiction than would be predicted by equivalent shifts in personal income in that jurisdiction moreover such observations are inconsistent with standard median voter models of the political process we posit a model in which it is in the interest of suppliers of a collectively provided good not to generate full information to voters about outside aid the empirical results are consistent with flypaper and suggest that voters are very poorly informed about outside grants

the role of economic theory in modelling the long run this argues for a closer link between the modelling of the long run relations in applied economics and the intertemporal equilibrium notion from economic theory this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the flypaper effect identifying areas for further research the flypaper effect literature dates back three decades it is overwhelmingly neo classical in approach attempting to improve the median voter demand model and or temper it with public choice supply side perspectives whilst this approach provided valuable early substantial analytical insights more recent papers seem to have contributed only marginally to an understanding of the flypaper effect if indeed it exists at all hence as well as providing a long overdue comprehensive review of the literature on the flypaper effect this paper identifies more productive avenues for further research

measuring productivity growth under factor non substitution an application to us steam electric power generation utilities a theoretical framework is developed for decomposing partial factor productivity and measuring technical inefficiency when the underlying technology is characterized by factor non substitution with farrell s 1957 radial index of technical inefficiency being inappropriate in this case russell non radial indices are adapted to measure technical inefficiency in a leontief type model a system of factor demand equations with a regime specific technical inefficiency term is proposed and estimated allowing for dependence across inputs using a copula approach then the paper presents a complete decomposition of partial factor productivity changes using a dataset of us steam power electric generation utilities

public selection and financing of r d cooperative projects credit versus subsidy funding abstract in this article we develop an analytical model of the selection process for r d cooperative projects to study the factors that motivate public project selection and corresponding funding using two different financial instruments subsidies and credits for this purpose we propose a three stage empirical strategy to analyse the differential individual effects of several factors on the decisions taken by the public agency this analysis is based on project level data from cooperative r d project calls under the spanish profit initiative for the period 2000 2003 the main results show that the public agency uses the two financial instruments to address different objectives first some projects close to the market are well supported through credits while basic research projects receive only selective support in the form of subsidies second there is significant diversity in the selection and funding of technological areas third regarding the explicit goal of fostering cooperation the public agency selectively favours partnerships with universities and technology institutes through the award of subsidies however there seems to be less incentive for large consortia fourth there are significant regional differences among financed projects and also our data show sharp yearly fluctuations

objectives and incentives evidence from the privatisation of great britain s power plants abstract does privatization increase plant productivity because the private owner s objective is different or because they are better able to control management and is privatization sufficient to improve productivity or is it only effective in combination with competition we answer these questions using the quasi experiment of great britain s electricity industry privatization to separate the effect of a change in objectives from a change in incentives we assume that the former only affects labor but not fuel productivity and assuming that effective competition was only introduced after privatization we are able to separately identify the effects of privatization and competition we find that privatization increased labor but not fuel productivity evidence for the importance of objectives there is no evidence that the introduction of effective competition after privatization increased labor or fuel productivity evidence that privatization increases productivity by itself

regulation and contract design the impact of relationship specific investment a primary explanation for variation in contract structure is the extent to which contracting parties make investments specific to their transaction investment decisions are typically endogenous in contract choice however frustrating attempts at causal verification i analyze the impact of a major environmental regulation the clean air act amendment of 1990 on coal procurement strategies of u s utilities i exploit a key feature of the amendment s design to define a difference in difference model that is arguably less susceptible to endogeneity concerns i find wide support for the theoretical prediction reduced specificity leads to shorter length fixed price contracts

a generalized production frontier approach for estimating determinants of inefficiency in u s dairy farms this article investigates farm level efficiency of u s dairy farmers by estimating their technical and allocative efficiency technical inefficiency is assumed to be composed of a deterministic component that is a function of some farm specific characteristics and a random component by doing this we extend the stochastic frontier methodology in which determinants of technicial inefficiency are explicitly introduced in the model given the inputs variations in efficiency of farms are then explained by both deterministic and random components of technical inefficiency the empirical results indicate that a levels of education of the farmer are important factors determining technical inefficiency and b large farms are more efficient technically than small and medium sized farms both technical and allocative inefficiency are found to decrease with increase in the level of education of the farmer

the flypaper effect and other anomalies abstract i develop a model in which income both in its own right and as a proxy for other socioeconomic characteristics is an input in the production function for local public services the most obvious example is education though there are other applications as well the comparative statics results from this model yield the following results 1 the observed flypaper effect the tendency for local government to spend a higher fraction of unrestricted grants than income of residents may be due at least in part to the fact that own income but not grants is a substitute for purchased inputs in the technology hence the propensity to spend on purchased inputs out of own income is lower than out of grants 2 the income elasticity of demand for public sector output may be higher than the observed income elasticity of demand for purchased inputs 3 equalization of educational opportunity via wealth neutrality as suggested by feldstein requires major changes in education finance once we recognice the distinction between purchased inputs and output

university support and the creation of technology and non technology academic spin offs the literature on academic entrepreneurship typically assumes that creating a supportive environment in a university can result in a higher rate of establishment of academic spin offs in a relatively straightforward manner in contrast we argue that at times academics choose to launch an independent company vis a vis pursuing alternative business engagement activities when their university provides inadequate support drawing from hybrid entrepreneurship and necessity entrepreneurship we model the individual decision to spin off as a reaction to the organizational characteristics of the parent university rather than to its outcome through a longitudinal study of 559 spin offs from 85 italian universities from 1999 to 2013 we find that although stronger administrative support from the parent university leads academics to create more technology spin offs a u shaped relationship instead exists between the number of administrative staff within a university and the rate of establishment of non technology spin offs when the level of administrative staff is too low or too high relative to the fitted amount estimated using several university level factors academic staff reacts by establishing firms to achieve improved cash and human resource management

myths and facts about electricity in the u s south this paper identifies six myths about clean electricity in the southern u s these myths are either propagated by the public at large shared within the environmental advocacy culture or spread imperceptibly between policymakers using a widely accepted energy economic modeling tool we expose these myths as half truths and the kind of conventional wisdom that constrains productive debate in so doing we identify new starting points for energy policy development climate change activists may be surprised to learn that it will take more than a national renewable electricity standard or supportive energy efficiency policies to retire coal plants low cost fossil generation enthusiasts may be surprised to learn that clean generation can save consumers money even while meeting most demand growth over the next 20 years this work surfaces the myths concealed in public perceptions and illustrates the positions of various stakeholders in this large u s region

returns to scale in electricity generation replicated and revisited abstract we replicate the findings of two influential studies on returns to scale in the united states electricity generation market the main results are contrasted using both local linear nonparametric regression a technique robust to parametric functional form assumptions as well as an updated data set while the quantitative findings across all of the estimators deployed differ somewhat regarding the magnitude of returns to scale we document a decrease in returns to scale within the electricity generation market from 1955 to 1996

congressional committees and the political economy of federal outlays the literature on the organization of the united states congress has been dominated by distributive and informational theory one important source of disagreement between these two theories is their characterization of whether individual legislators can engage in pork barrel activities here we provide evidence which indicates that the pork barrel is alive and well in the contemporary united states congress we focus on whether members of power and constituency committees can direct disproportionate federal expenditures to their districts finding strong and systematic evidence of pork barrel activities by committee members provides empirical support for distributive theories of legislative organization

corruption and inefficiency theory and evidence from electric utilities we investigate the determinants of the efficiency of firms with a focus on the role of corruption we construct a simple theoretical model where corruption increases factor requirements of firms because it diverts managerial effort away from factor coordination we then exploit a unique dataset comprising firm level information on 80 electricity distribution firms from 13 latin american countries for the years 1994 to 2001 as predicted by the model we find that more corruption in the country is strongly associated with more inefficient firms in the sense that they employ more inputs to produce a given level of output the economic magnitude of the effects is large the results hold both in models with country and firm fixed effects the results survive several robustness checks including different measures of output and efficiency and instrumenting for corruption other elements associated with inefficiency are public ownership inflation and lack of law and order but corruption appears to play a separate and more robust role

robust endogenous growth abstract this paper studies a generalization of the schumpeterian models with endogenous market structure that allows the overall production structure to be more than linear in the growth driving factor and yet generates endogenous growth defined as steady state constant exponential growth of income per capita this version of modern growth theory therefore is robust in the sense that its key result obtains for a thick set of parameter values instead of as often claimed for a set of measure zero the paper moreover pays close attention to transitional dynamics showing not only the existence but also the global stability of the endogenous growth steady state

the effects of grants in aid on state and local expenditures abstract this paper develops econometric methods to estimate the effect of the piecewise linear budget constraints created by grant formulas in which the subsidy rate is not constant over expenditures e g closed end grants the methods are applied to the afdc program the results show that because of the kinked nature of the grant formula 1 the present federal formula actually increases cross state inequality in afdc benefits 2 several subsidy rates in the formula actually reduce benefits and 3 the so called flypaper effect disappears

science technology and regional economic development review and prospects abstract this paper reviews the literature on the location and regional effects of science and technology st these pools of mobile workers are most attracted to large urban areas in only some of these areas however does the spin off process result in the generation of new technology based firms the availability of local venture capital appears to be the principal influence on this variation government policy regarding science and technology has impacts on regions by contributing to the agglomeration of r d government policy also often fails to recognize that s t policy and industrial policy have regional effects that may be long term in nature and most detrimental to those regions whose economies are least competitive finally some priorities for future research on innovation in a regional setting are identified

technology transfer and public policy a review of research and theory abstract my purpose is to review synthesize and criticize the voluminous multidisciplinary literature on technology transfer to reduce the literature to manageable proportions i focus chiefly not exclusively on recent literature on domestic technology transfer from universities and government laboratories i begin by examining a set of fundamental conceptual issues especially the ways in which the analytical ambiguities surrounding technology transfer concepts affect research and theory my literature review follows and i emphasize technology transfer s impact and effectiveness i employ a contingent effectiveness model of technology transfer to organize the literature as the model s name implies it assumes that technology effectiveness can take a variety of forms in addition to examining the more traditional effectiveness criteria those rooted in market impacts the model considers a number of alternative effectiveness criteria including political effectiveness capacity building

factor substitution and factor augmenting technical progress in the united states a normalized supply side system approach abstract using a normalized ces function with factor augmenting technical progress we estimate a supply side system of the u s economy from 1953 to 1998 avoiding potential estimation biases that

efficiency assessment and benchmarking of thermal power plants in india abstract per capita consumption 1 of electricity in india is many folds lesser than canada usa australia japan chaina and world average even though total energy shortage 2 and peaking shortage 3 were recorded as 11 2 and 11 85 respectively in 2008 09 reflecting non availability of sufficient supply of electricity performance improvement of very small amount can lead to large contribution in financial terms which can be utilized for capacity addition to reduce demand supply gap coal fired thermal power plants are main sources of electricity in india in this paper relative technical efficiency of 60 coal fired power plants has been evaluated and compared using ccr and bcc models of data envelopment analysis target benchmark of input variables has also been evaluated performance comparison includes small versus medium versus large power plants and also state owned versus central owned versus private owned result indicates poor performance of few power plants due to over use of input resources finding reveals that efficiency of small power plants is lower in comparison to medium and large category and also performance of state owned power plants is comparatively lower than central and privately owned study also suggests different measures to improve technical efficiency of the plants

biosecurity bioterrorism and the governance of science the increasing convergence of science and security policy science and security policy are increasingly overlapping because of concerns that legitimate research might be misapplied to develop biological weapons this has led to an expansion of security policy to cover broad areas of research and scientific practice including funding publishing peer review employment materials transfer post graduate teaching and academics ability to design and perform experiments and disseminate research such changes raise policy concerns because many of the technologies used to produce biological weapons are dual use and have legitimate peaceful applications as a result attempts to control their generation diffusion or application can have unintended impacts on socially beneficial applications this paper explores recent changes in the governance of science and technology and contributes to future policy making by assessing the relative merits of understanding the development of dual use policy in terms of either technology transfer or technology convergence 2007 elsevier b v all rights reserved

the job generation impacts of expanding industrial cogeneration sustainable economic development requires the efficient production and use of energy combined heat and power chp offers a promising technological approach to achieving both goals while a recent u s executive order set a national goal of 40 gw of new industrial chp by 2020 the deployment of chp is challenged by financial regulatory and workforce barriers discrepancies between private and public interests can be minimized by policies promoting energy based economic development in this context a great deal of rhetoric has addressed the ambiguous goal of growing green jobs our research provides a systematic evaluation of the job impacts of an investment tax credit that would subsidize industrial chp deployment we introduce a hybrid analysis approach combining simulations using the national energy modeling system with input output modeling nems simulates general equilibrium effects including supply and demand side resources we identify first order employment impacts by creating bill of goods expenditures for the installation and operation of industrial chp systems second order impacts are then estimated based on the redirection of energy bill savings accruing to consumers these include jobs across the economy created by the lower electricity prices that would result from increased reliance on energy efficient chp systems on a jobs per gwh basis we find that the second order impacts are approximately twice as large as the first order impacts

low powered vs high powered incentives evidence from german electricity networks abstract we propose a difference in differences approach to estimating the impact of incentives on cost reduction in the context of german electricity networks when subject to a lower powered regulation mechanism relatively more efficient operators pile up more costs in the year used to determine future prices this pattern is consistent with the idea that incentives matter higher powered incentives lead to cost reduction the results are also consistent with an equilibrium where more efficient firms pool with less efficient ones under the threat of ratcheting

elasticity of substitution and technical efficiency evidence from the us electricity generation abstractthe implications of national or regional energy policies for technical efficiency and environmental outcomes in electricity generation depend on fossil fuel input substitution this study u