on sharks trolls and their patent prey unrealistic damage awards and firms strategies of being infringed abstract patent trolls or sharks are patent holding individuals or often small firms who trap r d intensive manufacturers in patent infringement situations in order to receive damage awards for the illegitimate use of their technology while of great concern to management their existence and impact for both corporate decision makers and policy makers remains to be fully analyzed from an academic standpoint in this paper we show why patent sharks can operate profitably why they are of growing concern how manufacturers can forearm themselves against them and which issues policy makers need to address to do so we map international indemnification rules with strategic rationales of small patent holding firms and large manufacturers within a theoretical model our central finding is that the courts unrealistic consideration of the trade offs faced by inadvertent infringers is a central condition for sharks to operate profitably

you can t manage right what you can t measure well technological innovation efficiency abstract this paper proposes a new approach to tackle the innovation performance relationship it addresses the so far mixed and inconclusive results of studies analyzing this relationship we argue that the undifferentiated use of innovation inputs and outputs to measure firm innovativeness is not without problems and that from a productive perspective they should be simultaneously analyzed this study follows a two stage empirical analysis using a sample of spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1992 2005 by examining two inputs and two outputs of the innovation process in the first stage we estimate technological innovation efficiency by means of an intertemporal data envelopment analysis dea bootstrap and also observe the yearly efficiency changes based on a global malmquist index in the second stage we analyze the effect of technological innovation efficiency on firm performance through a generalized method of moments gmm system the results support our arguments that the best measurement of outcomes of technological innovations is through the efficiency with which they are developed in addition we test the moderating effect of technological intensity level and firm size on the efficiency performance relationship

mergers acquisitions and innovation performance in the telecommunications equipment industry the worldwide telecommunications equipment industry has experienced an enormous number of mergers and acquisitions m a this article examines the innovation determinants of m a activity a

trends and volatilities in foreign patents registered in the usa this study analyses the patent trends and volatilities for the top 12 foreign patenting countries in the us market from 1975 to 1997 japan is ranked first in terms of foreign patents registered in the usa followed by germany patent registrations from each of these countries have increased steadily over time but at different rates using monthly time series data for 1975 1997 the time varying volatility of australian japanese and german patents registered in the usa is examined in detail the asymmetric ar 1 gjr 1 1 model is found to be suitable for australia and japan while the best fitting model for germany is the symmetric ar 1 garch 1 1 model

patenting in the shadow of competitors this article empirically examines the patenting behavior of new biotechnology firms that have different litigation costs i show that firms with high litigation costs are less likely to patent in subclasses with many other awards particularly those of firms with low litigation costs this pattern is consistent with the literature on costly litigation which suggests that firms that have high litigation costs will take greater precautions to avoid litigation these results are robust to a variety of control variables and modifications that seek to test alternative explanations

innovation and firm value an investigation of the changing role of patents 1985 2007 abstract this paper examines how the relationship between firm value and patent based indicators of inventive activity has changed over time we use data from more than 33 000 mergers and acquisitions deals between 1985 and 2007 and distinguish between american uspto and european epo patents our results indicate that over time epo patents have become the dominant indicator of innovative activity while uspto patents have no effect on firm value near the end of the sample period the results are robust to controlling for citations and are especially strong for small firms for firms operating in the drug and chemical industries and when target and acquiring firms operate in different industries or countries

the changing technology of technological change general and abstract knowledge and the division of innovative labour abstract in the past most innovations have resulted from empiricist procedures the outcome of each trial yielding knowledge that could not be readily extended to other contexts while trial and error may remain the primary engine of innovation developments in many scientific disciplines along with progress in computational capabilities and instrumentation are encouraging a new approach to industrial research instead of relying purely on trial and error the attempt is also to understand the principles governing the behaviour of objects and structures the result is that relevant information whatever its source can now be cast in frameworks and categories that are more universal the greater universality makes it possible for the innovation process to be organised in new ways firms can specialise and focus upon producing new knowledge and the locus of innovation may be spread across both users and producers more generally the use of general and abstract knowledge in innovation opens up the possibility for a division of labour in inventive activity the division of innovative labour the implications for public policy especially that on intellectual property rights are discussed

welfare impacts of intellectual property protection in the seed industry we examine the welfare impact of different intellectual property protection ipp regimes in private sector seed research and development r d we take into account the period after expiration of legal ipp and require simultaneous equilibrium in markets for r d seeds and final product optimal ipp is remarkably insensitive to alternative parameterizations except for r d productivity results suggest that optimal ipp is greater than ipp in the u s seed corn market but lower than the ipp that could be attained with genetic use restriction technologies optimal ipp is much higher than ipp achieved under open pollinated crops or where legal ipp is limited

stock returns over the fomc cycle we document that since 1994 the equity premium is earned entirely in weeks 0 2 4 and 6 in federal open market committee fomc cycle time that is even weeks starting from the last fomc meeting we causally tie this fact to the fed by studying intermeeting target changes fed funds futures and internal board of governors meetings the fed has affected the stock market via unexpectedly accommodating policy leading to large reductions in the equity premium evidence suggests systematic informal communication of fed officials with the media and financial sector as a channel through which news about monetary policy has reached the market

antitrust and technological innovation in the us ideas institutions decisions and impacts 1890 2000 abstract the history of antitrust policy in the us as it relates to technological innovation exhibits major swings every few decades between favoring concentration and favoring deconcentration this paper sketches for each period the contending ideas that frame antitrust technology policy debates the salience of these ideas in the larger antitrust policy process the institutions for agenda setting and decision making in this area the policy decisions themselves and more speculatively the impacts of these decisions on technological innovation and industrial development the paper concludes with a preliminary attempt to identify the cyclical secular and static processes that have shaped the history of this policy area and to use this analysis to inform future policy makers

the dissent voting behaviour of central bankers what do we really know we examine the determinants of the dissent in central bank boards voting records about monetary policy rates in the czech republic hungary sweden the uk and the us in contrast to previous studies we consider 25 different macroeconomic financial institutional psychological or preference related factors jointly and use bayesian model averaging bma to formally assess the attendant model uncertainty we find that the rate of dissent is between 5 and 20 for the examined central banks our results suggest that most of the examined regressors including factors that capture the effects of inflation and output are not robust determinants of voting dissent this result suggests that unobserved characteristics of central bankers and different communication strategies drive the dissent rather than the level of macroeconomic uncertainty

patents versus ex post rewards a new look abstract economic studies that aim at comparing the patent system social efficiency versus an ex post reward system rest on an outdated view of patents they assume that firms use the patent system only in order to be granted a short term commercial monopoly rent this assumption is convenient because it allows straightforward comparisons between patents and rewards but it is not confirmed by empirical studies which stress that in many industries most firms use patents as strategic devices to trade technologies and to ease r d collaborations this change leads to rethinking the framework of the patent reward debate

corporate science in the patent system an analysis of the semiconductor technology corporate scientific publications are often presented as a strategic means for firms to create prior art with the objective to prevent others from patenting related inventions this presumes that corporate publications enter the pool of prior art which is relevant to judge the novelty of patent applications at the patent office and that corporate science has the power to block patent applications this paper analyses for the first time whether the presumed mechanism behind corporate publications as a means to preempt patents works with focus on the semiconductor technology our results show that scientific publications by corporations challenge the novelty of patent applications at the european patent office epo significantly more than other pieces of prior art detailed information from the epo patent examination procedure allows us to show that corporate publications threaten the novelty of patent applications if combined with other pieces of prior art like patents rather than as standalone documents this supports the view that corporate scientific publishing can be an effective means for firms to protect their freedom to operate if used as a complementary part of a firms overall ip protection strategy as proposed by scholars in the field of law and management science

an investigation of the gains from commitment in monetary policy this paper proposes a simple framework for analyzing a continuum of monetary policy rules characterized by differing degrees of credibility in which commitment and discretion become special cases of what we call quasi commitment the monetary policy authority is assumed to formulate optimal commitment plans to be tempted to renege on them and to succumb to this temptation with a constant exogenous probability known to the private sector by interpreting this probability as a continuous measure of the lack of credibility of the monetary policy authority we investigate the welfare effect of a marginal increase in credibility our main finding is that in a simple model of the monetary transmission mechanism most of the gains from commitment accrue at relatively low levels of credibility in our benchmark calibration a commitment expected to last for only 6 quarters is enough to bridge 75 of the welfare gap between discretion and commitment this seems to justify the well known concern of monetary policy makers about their credibility even in a world with limited access to commitment technologies

nominal price rigidity money supply endogeneity and business cycles abstract this paper investigates the ability of nominal price rigidity to explain the co movement of inflation with the cyclical component of output observed in the post war u s data a dynamic general equilibrium model is constructed with the introduction of monopolistic competition and nominal price rigidity in a standard real business cycle model allowing for an endogenous money supply rule it is then demonstrated that sticky price models can explain the observed associations between movements in inflation and output much better than flexible price models this result depends little on whether money supply is assumed to be endogenous or not

discretionary monetary policy and the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates abstract ignoring the existence of the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates one considerably understates the value of monetary commitment in new keynesian models a stochastic forward looking model with an occasionally binding lower bound calibrated to the u s economy suggests that low values for the natural rate of interest lead to sizeable output losses and deflation under discretionary monetary policy the fall in output and deflation are much larger than in the case with policy commitment and do not show up at all if the model abstracts from the existence of the lower bound the welfare losses of discretionary policy increase even further when inflation is partly determined by lagged inflation in the phillips curve these results emerge because private sector expectations and the discretionary policy response to these expectations reinforce each other and cause the lower bound to be reached much earlier than under commitment

publicity of debate and the incentive to dissent evidence from the us federal reserve transparency in committee decision making may have clear benefits by making members more accountable to outside observers we consider one potential cost the possibility that publishing records of deliberations will make members more reluctant to offer dissenting opinions we construct a model that compares incentives for members with career concerns to voice dissent when deliberations occur in public or in private we test the model using an original dataset based on deliberations of the federal reserve s federal open market committee asking whether the fomc s 1993 decision to begin releasing transcripts of its meetings has altered incentives for dissent we find evidence that this is indeed the case there has been much recent discussion of the advantages of transparency in agency relationships both in and outside of government while research has attempted to model this issue theoretically there has been less progress with empirical tests a problem due no doubt in large part to the fact that it is difficult to make before and after comparisons of a shift in transparency often no data are available on an agent s actions prior to the establishment of transparency in this article we focus on one specific type of transparency publishing verbatim transcripts of committee meetings and one specific reason why this type of transparency might not be desirable the possibility that the quality of deliberation on a committee will suffer if the deliberations take place in public we develop a theoretical model that helps to identify the potential costs of this type of transparency and we then test the model empirically using an original dataset on deliberations of the federal reserve s federal open market committee fomc our dataset is unique in that it records views expressed by policymakers at fomc meetings and not just their official votes our empirical tests focus in particular on the observed effect of the institutional change that occurred in 1993 when the fomc decided to begin releasing transcripts of its meetings after a delay of five years transparency is a particularly relevant issue in monetary policy because it is commonly argued that when central banks take actions such as publishing macroeconomic forecasts revealing individual votes on monetary policy committees or releasing minutes of meetings this will lead to improved economic outcomes while simultaneously facilitating democratic accountability 1

encouraging private sector research for tropical agriculture summary agricultural needs in poor tropical countries differ significantly from those in temperate rich countries yet little agricultural research is performed on products for the tropics private research is particularly concentrated in rich countries this is a result of significant failures in the market for research and development r d in particular the difficulty of preventing the resale of seed in developing countries to encourage private r d in tropical agriculture traditional funding of research may be usefully supplemented by a commitment to reward developers of specific new agricultural technologies rewards tied to adoption may be especially useful in increasing up take an illustration of how a commitment to reward developers of new agricultural technologies might work is provided

behind the recent surge of chinese patenting an institutional view abstract this paper examines a number of forces that have possibly contributed to the explosive growth of chinese patenting over the past decade after a review of previous hypotheses and conventional wisdom this study proposes an additional explanation and argues that patent subsidy programs implemented by each provincial region have played an important role in the growth of chinese patenting this institutional change taking place at the province level has induced an increase in patent propensity among not only firms universities and research institutes but also individuals empirical evidence based on publicly available data provides solid support for this argument it was also found that a larger fraction of applications are granted patent rights since the implementation of such programs suggesting that reduction in patent application quality may not be a serious concern unless the criteria used for patent examination have been lowered

how important is precommitment for monetary policy we quantify the welfare differential between precommitment and discretionary monetary policy in three estimated models of the u s economy by calculating the permanent deviation of inflation from target that in welfare terms is equivalent to moving from discretion to precommitment using a range of reasonable central bank preference parameters this inflation equivalent ranges from 0 05 to 3 6 percentage points with a mid point of either 0 15 or 1 1 5 percentage points depending on the model in addition to the degree of forward looking behavior we show that the existence of transmission lags and or information lags is crucial for determining the welfare gain from precommitment

the role of central bank transparency for guiding private sector forecasts central banks have become remarkably more transparent over the last few decades in this paper we study the effects of this evolution focusing on whether enhanced central bank transparency lowers dispersion among professional forecasters of key economic variables we use a large set of proxies for central bank transparency in 12 advanced economies we find evidence for a sizeable effect e g by announcing a quantified inflation objective or by publishing inflation and output forecasts however there are decreasing marginal effects to increases in transparency and the disagreement among the expectations of the general public is not affected this suggests that there are possible limits to transparency

intellectual property protection in plant varieties a worldwide index 1961 2011 in this paper we construct a new index measuring the strength of intellectual property ip protection for plant varieties in 69 countries over the period 1961 2011 we examine the statistical properties of the index and compare it with other indicators of ip protection we conclude that the index provides a reasonable synthetic assessment of the relative strength of ip protection in plant varieties across countries in addition we study the main determinants of the evolution of the index and examine the patterns of correlation between the index and agricultural production

the contribution of genetic modification to changes in corn yield in the united states we use a large rich dataset compiled from results of university extension trials to estimate the contribution of genetic modification gm to changes in corn yield in the united states from timea to timeb through repeated experimental trials we obtain consistent estimates of the effect of these traits by using both the hausman taylor estimator and a comparison of fixed effects estimates analogous to the agronomic practice of comparing near isolines our results suggest that gm traits had a positive impact on yield but that gains associated with combining several gm traits in one hybrid are not necessarily additive

patent citations an analysis of quality differences and citing practices in hybrid corn a growing empirical literature uses patent citations as a quality adjusted measure for innovation despite concerns about the validity of this measure this paper links patents with objective measures of improvements in the quality of patented inventions measured through performance in field trials for hybrid corn to examine three potential factors that influence citations 1 improvements in performance 2 citing practices of patent attorneys and 3 citing practices of patent examiners this analysis reveals that citations are robustly correlated with performance which confirms that citations are a useful quality adjusted measure for innovation the citing practices of patent attorneys and examiners however also influence citations patent attorneys cite early patents which help establish the patentability of an invention this practice may inflate citation counts for early patents particularly for inventions that have only recently become patentable attorneys also add self citations our anal

a survey of the economics of patent systems and procedures the last several decades have seen increases in patenting activity worldwide as well as growing issues related to patent quality in response to these quality issues a recent patent literature has emerged that investigates the behavior and incentives of patent examiners applicants and third parties in this paper we provide an overview of patent procedures patent systems and a survey of the new economic literature on patent systems both theoretical and empirical papers are considered policy implications coming from this literature are presented

the effect of intellectual property rights on domestic innovation in the pharmaceutical sector summary there is little empirical evidence concerning the effect of intellectual property rights ipr protecting pharmaceutical products and processes on pharmaceutical domestic innovation indeed existing literature does not provide a punctual estimate of this effect for developing countries this paper fills this gap by exploiting a self constructed dataset which provides for a 22 year period information concerning ipr reforms involving pharmaceuticals for 74 developed and developing countries the identification strategy exploits the different timing across these countries of two sets of ipr reforms domestic innovation is measured as citation weighted domestic patent applications filed at the european patent office epo the highly skewed distribution of the dependent variable and the high number of zero observations are taken into account using count data models in particular a zero inflated negative binomial model is adopted to overcome previous literature assumption that all innovations are patented in the main markets of reference and to take into consideration the choice not to patent at the epo results show that innovation is sensitive to ipr protection but not to its degree moreover the effect is not long lasting my study also finds that developing countries profit significantly less than developed ones from the protection benefiting from an effect that is roughly half of that for developed countries consequent policy implications are examined and include the conclusions that a one size fits all approach can be inappropriate and that gradual reforms should be preferred to rare reforms that greatly alter the level of ipr protection

how markets process information news releases and volatility we examine the impact of scheduled macroeconomic news announcements on interest rate and foreign exchange futures markets we find these announcements are responsible for most of the observed time of day and day of the week volatility patterns in these markets while the bulk of the price adjustment to a major announcement occurs within the first minute volatility remains substantially higher than normal for roughly fifteen minutes and slightly elevated for several hours nonetheless these subsequent price adjustments are basically independent of the first minute s return we identify those announcements with the greatest impact on these markets we examine the impact on interest rate and foreign exchange markets of scheduled macroeconomic news releases such as the employment report the consumer price index cpi and the producer price index ppi many market participants believe that such announcements have a major impact on financial markets indeed a small industry devoted to predicting the figures to be released in upcoming releases has evolved in recent years with the exception of the weekly money supply figures however the impact of such announcements on financial markets has received scant attention 1 this is doubly surprising given the considerable research interest in market volatility since these news releases are a potential source of much of this volatility consider for instance figure 1 as shown there prices in interest rate and foreign exchange futures markets are much more volatile between 8 30 and 8 35 a m eastern time et than during any other five minute trading period including

is the mpc s voting record informative about future uk monetary policy it is shown that the voting record of the monetary policy committee of the bank of england helps predict future policy rate changes this result is robust to the inclusion of market participants expectations as measured by the slope of the term structure of money market rates and interest rate futures moreover expectations seem to adjust to the information contained in the voting record which suggests that publishing the minutes of mpc meetings increases the transparency of monetary policy

central bank communication and monetary policy a survey of theory and evidence over the last two decades communication has become an increasingly important aspect of monetary policy these real world developments have spawned a huge new scholarly literature on central bank communication mostly empirical and almost all of it written in this decade we survey this ever growing literature the evidence suggests that communication can be an important and powerful part of the central bank s toolkit since it has the ability to move financial markets to enhance the predictability of monetary policy decisions and potentially to help achieve central banks macroeconomic objectives however the large variation in communication strategies across central banks suggests that a consensus has yet to emerge on what constitutes an optimal communication strategy

plant variety protection in developing countries a report from the field the establishment of intellectual property rights iprs for plant varieties has caused considerable controversy but there is relatively little empirical evidence on performance and options in developing countries this paper summarizes the results of a recent five country study concentrating on the conduct of plant variety protection pvp regimes it examines pvp in the context of other mechanisms that provide incentives for plant breeding it discusses the principal options available to developing countries and examines the ability of pvp to offer protection from competing firms and from on farm seed saving it also looks at the administrative and management requirements of pvp regimes although the paper does not discuss patent protection for biotechnology it examines the ipr requirements for the introduction of transgenic varieties developing countries need to establish an appropriate pvp system but pvp should be seen as part of a broader strategy for seed system development

incentive to reduce crop trait durability to reduce the competition from farmers who self produce seed an inbred line seed producer can switch to nondurable hybrid seed in a two period model we investigate the impact of crop durability on self production pricing and switching decisions and we examine the impact of license fees paid by self producing farmers first in an inbred line seed monopoly model we find that the monopolist may produce technologically dominated hybrid seed in order to extract more surplus from farmers further the introduction of license fees improves efficiency second we study how the monopolist s behavior is affected by the entry of a nondurable hybrid seed producer we show that the inbred line seed producer might benefit from competing with a technologically dominated hybrid seed producer as this allows for consumers discrimination

an analysis of selectivity in the productivity evaluation of biotechnology an application to corn we investigate selectivity bias in the evaluation of biotech hybrid productivity the analysis is applied to experimental data on wisconsin corn yields from 1990 to 2010 relying on a heckman like factor that accounts for selectivity we find evidence of selection bias indicating that some of the observed yield advantage associated with gm hybrids can be attributed to their conventional genes we document how the rising market concentration of biotech firms has contributed to increasing selectivity bias in corn yield the impact however is offset by the negative effect of the rising adoption rate of gm corn on selectivity bias copyright 2013 oxford university press

intellectual property rights in mexico do they play a role summary there is little empirical evidence concerning the effects of intellectual property rights ipr in technologically advanced developing countries complete enumeration of the mexican maize breeding industry showed that contrary to the hypothesis that ipr would support innovation ipr play no role in the industry ipr theory should be revised to include characteristics of developing countries critical for the good functioning of ipr quality of the institutional environment and importance of transaction given the relatively good score of mexico on these critical aspects ipr are likely to play an even smaller role in other developing countries

optimal simple and implementable monetary and fiscal rules welfare maximizing monetary and fiscal policy rules are studied in a model with sticky prices money and distortionary taxation the ramsey optimal policy is used as a point of comparison the main findings are the size of the inflation coefficient in the interest rate rule plays a minor role for welfare it matters only insofar as it affects the determinacy of equilibrium optimal monetary policy features a muted response to output interest rate rules that feature a positive response to output can lead to significant welfare losses the welfare gains from interest rate smoothing are negligible optimal fiscal policy is passive the optimal monetary and fiscal rule combination attains virtually the same level of welfare as the ramsey optimal policy

interactions of commitment and discretion in monetary and fiscal policies we consider monetary scal interactions when the monetary authority is more conservative than the scal with both policies discretionary 1 nash equilibrium yields lower output and higher price than the ideal points of both authorities 2 of the two leadership possibilities scal leadership is generally better with scal discretion monetary commitment yields the same outcome as discretionary monetary leadership for all realizations of shocks but scal commitment is not similarly negated by monetary discretion second best outcomes require either joint commitment or identical targets for both authorities output socially optimal and price level appropriately conservative or complete separation of tasks jel e61 e63

welfare impacts of cross country spillovers in agricultural research the welfare implications of intellectual property protection ipp for private sector agricultural research are analyzed focusing on the realistic cases where countries provide different ipp levels technology spills over across countries and the public sector is involved in research a model is developed to determine who benefits from and who should pay for the associated research the article contains some interesting results on the implications of a harmonization of ipp policies through multilateral agreements or via technology that allows research firms to prevent the copying of plants and animals that express traits that have emerged from their research

strategic monetary and fiscal policy interactions an empirical investigation this paper identifies leadership regimes in monetary fiscal policy interactions in three countries the uk the us and sweden we specify a small scale structural general equilibrium model of an open economy and estimate it using bayesian methods we assume that the authorities can act strategically in a non cooperative policy game and compare different leadership regimes we find that the model of fiscal leadership gives the best fit for the uk and sweden while in the us the nash or non strategic regime dominates we assess the extent to which policy maker preferences reflect microfounded social preferences

regulation and firm size fda impacts on innovation this article estimates the highly differential impacts of fda regulations on pharmaceutical firms of various sizes where size is measured as scale of r d expenditures estimation is performed using the method of maximum quasi likelihoods using productivity trends of the united kingdom as a control to isolate fda regulatory effects in the united states it is shown that smaller u s pharmaceutical firms suffered devastating reductions in research productivity because of fda regulations in contrast the largest u s pharmaceutical firms apparently benefited from regulation as sales gains due to reduced competition more than offset their quite moderate declines in research productivity

infringement of intellectual property rights causes and consequences parallel revolutions in molecular biology and the legal framework that assigns intellectual property rights iprs to plant genetic resources have resultedin the emergence of agricultural biotechnology andthe introd uction of genetically modified gm products into the foodsystem iprs create economic incentives for research andd evelopment by making the innovator the residual claimant of the benefits associatedwith the new technology whereas iprs purport to protect intellectual property full appropriation of the benefits from the innovation is not a given when infringement of iprs i e piracy is profitable rational economic agents compliance with ipr provisions is by no means assured costly monitoring and enforcement are requiredto d eter unauthorized illegal use of the new technology experience from various countries aroundthe worldind icates that ipr enforcement is far from being perfect andmany successful innovations are

factors affecting university industry r d projects the importance of searching screening and signalling this paper presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of research cooperation between firms and public research organisations pros for a sample of innovating small and medium sized enterprises smes the econometric analysis is based on the results of the know survey carried out in seven eu countries during 2000 in contrast to earlier works that provide information about the importance of pros research we know the number of firm pro collaborative research and development r d projects this allows us to study the determinants of firm collaboration with pros in terms of both the propensity of a firm to undertake r d projects with a university do they cooperate or not and the extent of this collaboration number of r d projects two questions are addressed which firms cooperated with pros and what are the firm characteristics that might explain the number of r d projects with pros the results of our analysis point to two major phenomena first the propensity to forge an agreement with an academic partner depends on the absolute size of the industrial partner second the openness of firms to the external environment as measured by their willingness to search screen and signal significantly affects the development of r d projects with pros our findings suggest that acquiring knowledge through the screening of publications and involvement in public policies positively affects the probability of signing an agreement with a pro but not the number of r d projects developed in fact firms that outsource research and development and patent to protect innovation and to signal competencies show higher levels of collaboration

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 policy preferences of fomc members as revealed by dissenting votes comment the purposes of this comment are to present evidence that casts doubt on several of the conclusions of susan belden s recent paper in this journal 1989 and to suggest directions for future research in this area to begin there is skepticism that dissenting votes at least as belden measures them can be unbiased indicators of policy preferences in addition belden partially recognizes but does not fully specify three influences on federal open market gommittee fomc member voting that are prominently featured in the literature these influences are 1 fomc member training background and career experience 2 state of the economy measures and 3 partisanship measures each of these factors alone may help to explain one of belden s three major findings first the training backgrounds and career experiences of bank presidents may help to explain belden s affirmation of their penchant to dissent from fomc directives on the side of monetary tightness second the state of the economy may help to explain belden s finding of a decline in dissent voting when arthur burns was chairman of the federal reserve third differences between the party of the president and the partisan composition of the board of governors may help to explain belden s discovery of shifts in ease and tightness dissent voting behavior under different chairmen since this comment will indicate how these influences qualify belden s elndings it will at the same time suggest fruitful directions for the research agenda in this area

motives to patent empirical evidence from germany abstract against the background of the patent upsurge we first analyse the role of patenting and alternative instruments to protect intellectual property based on a sample of german companies active in patenting in a second step we investigate the motives to patent considering sector and company size effects we find that company size matters both for the importance of instruments and the motives to patent especially important are the new strategic motives to patent like using patents to improve a company s own position in negotiations with partners licensees and the financial sector or to use patents as incentives for r d personnel or performance indicators these correlate positively with company size we derive some possible challenges for future patent policies from these insights

the quality factor in patent systems this article develops a methodology to compare the quality of examination services in three major patent systems quality is defined as the extent to which patent systems comply with the patentability conditions in a transparent way the methodology consists of a two layer analytical framework encompassing legal standards ls and their operational design od which includes several interdependent components that affect the stringency and transparency of the filtering process the comparison of patent systems in europe japan and the united states shows that their operational designs differ substantially the european system provides higher quality and more expensive examination services than the united states one while the japanese patent system is in an intermediate position the results illustrate that different system designs lead to different outcomes in terms of backlogs patent propensity and the number of dubious patent rights in force in this respect these findings i provide an empirical validation of the conjecture of a vicious cycle linking the quality of examination and demand for patents and ii highlight the need for a multifaceted convergence of patent systems before mutual recognition is put in place the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved

the effect of intellectual property rights on agricultural productivity this article explores how the strengthening of intellectual property ip protection affects agricultural productivity in a panel of countries for the period 1961 2011 using an index of ip protection for plant varieties we study the effect of stronger intellectual property rights iprs on cereal yields and two different types of cereals open pollinated wheat and hybrid maize we found that the strengthening of iprs has a positive effect on productivity of cereals for high and low income countries however we found no significant effect for middle income countries in addition we found that becoming a member of the trade related aspects of intellectual property rights negatively affects cereal yields finally we found evidence of the existence of nonlinearities in the effect of iprs on agricultural yields which confirms a threshold effect of iprs that also varies for countries of different income level the findings support the hypothesis that country specificities are important in determining the effect of iprs and imply that there is no unique system that fits all

a great wall of patents what is behind china s recent patent explosion abstract china s patent surge documented in this paper is seemingly paradoxical given the country s weak record of protecting intellectual property rights using a firm level data set that spans the population of china s large and medium size industrial enterprises this paper explores the factors that account for china s rising patent activity while the intensification of research and development in the chinese economy tracks with patenting activity it explains only a fraction of the patent explosion the growth of foreign direct investment in china is prompting chinese firms to file for more patent applications amendments to the patent law that favor patent holders and ownership reform that has clarified the assignment of property rights also emerge as significant sources of china s patent boom these results are robust to alternative estimation strategies that account for over dispersion in the patent counts data and firm heterogeneity

monetary policy surprises and interest rates evidence from the fed funds futures market abstract this paper estimates the impact of monetary policy actions on bill note and bond yields using data from the futures market for federal funds to separate changes in the target funds rate into anticipated and unanticipated components interest rates response to anticipated target rate changes is small while their response to unanticipated changes is large and highly significant these responses are generally consistent with the expectations hypothesis of the term structure surprise target rate changes have little effect on expectations of future actions however which helps to explain the lack of empirical support for the expectations hypothesis at the short end of the yield curve

patent rights and innovative activity evidence from national and firm level data global standards of patent protection have been strengthened and harmonized in recent years despite the heated policy debates and theoretical controversies empirical studies of the consequences for innovative activity are scant this paper contributes to the debate by providing an empirical analysis of the effects of patent strength on different aspects of innovative activity namely firm level research and development r d domestic patenting and foreign patenting the analysis employs an updated index of patent rights the results show the complexity of evaluating the effects of patent reform on innovative activity since the effects vary nonlinearly depending on the initial level of patent strength and vary by a country s level of economic development overall for developing economies patent strength negatively affects domestic patent filings and insignificantly affects r d and foreign patent filings for developed economies patent strength positively affects r d and domestic patent filings and negatively affects foreign patent filings after some critical level of patent protection is reached journal of international business studies 2007 38 878 900 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400306

an option perspective on generating and maintaining plant variety rights in china notwithstanding the ambiguous research and productivity promoting effects of plant variety protections pvps even in developed countries many developing countries have adopted pvps in the past few years in part to comply with their trade related aspects of intellectual property rights trips obligations seeking and maintaining pvps reserves options to an expected revenue stream from the future sale of protected varieties the value of which varies for a host of reasons in this article we empirically examine the pattern of pvp applications in china since its pvp laws were first introduced in 1997 we place those pvp rights in the context of china s present and likely future seed markets to identify the economic incentives and institutional influences on decisions to develop and apply for varietal rights

the effect of fomc votes on financial markets this paper shows that since votes of members of the federal open market committee have been included in press statements stock prices increase after the announcement when votes are unanimous but f

pioneering inventors or thicket builders which u s firms use continuations in patenting why do firms use continuations in the prosecution of their patents motivated by the widespread use of continuations by u s firms and the prominence of this procedure in u s patent policy debates we investigate the influence of corporate and patent characteristics on the use of continuations we employ novel data on applicants and their filings of three types of continuations the continuation application cap the continuations in part cip and divisions during 1981 2000 to distinguish among the motives for continuing patents we find that cips are disproportionately filed by research and development intensive firms that patent heavily and that these continuations are more common in chemical and biological technologies patents issuing from cips cover relatively important inventions and their use appears consistent with a strategy of protecting pioneering inventions in contrast caps and divisions are associated with less important patents assigned to capital intensive firms particularly in computer and semiconductor fields and appear to be used in defensive patenting strategies we analyze the effects of the 1995 change in patent term and find that the act reduced continuations overall and shifted the output of continuations toward less important patents

derivative ideas and the value of intangible assets we build a general equilibrium model where growth is driven by two invention types fundamental ideas that cause creative destruction and derivative ideas that enhance the value of existing inventions the model provides a new mapping from microeconomic patent data to aggregate total factor productivity growth and the aggregate value of privately owned knowledge we show how to measure the frequency of derivative ideas and the rate of creative destruction we estimate that derivative ideas account for 70 80 of all patents and their presence more than doubles the value of knowledge capital relative to what the measured innovation rate might otherwise imply

design complexity vertical disintegration and knowledge organization in the semiconductor industry this article examines the advantages and drawbacks of internal knowledge integration versus collaborative outsourcing as two polar modes of governance in the design of application specific integrated circuits asics increasing technological complexity miniaturization and the generalization of markets for technology have induced higher integration constraints for designers the pace of innovation and frequent changes in design rules require a tightly controlled design process as a consequence knowledge integrators must develop expertise beyond the scope of their domain of activity if they are to ascertain the overall efficiency of systems we find that although internalization of knowledge integration reduces coordination and agency related costs the involvement of partner firms in upstream design phases facilitates knowledge sharing and improves the coordination of innovation in modules the analysis of the evolution of the asics industry shows that while large system integrators remain the dominant players specialist firms are gaining market shares and do not hesitate to embark on the design of leading edge systems this result may simply reveal the increasing value of component knowledge in a disaggregated value chain however relying on a comparative case study of two similar development processes one with each of the knowledge integration approaches we confirm the strength of decentralized modes of governance on the condition that partner firms engage in a long term relationship copyright 2007 oxford university press

preferences or private assessments on a monetary policy committee using bank of england voting data we show empirically that members votes are driven by heterogeneous individual assessments of the economy as well as their individual policy preferences estimates indicate that internal committee members form more precise assessments than externals and are also more hawkish the estimates allow the first quantification of the gain due to information aggregation on monetary policy committees the marginal gain from additional committee members tapers quickly after five members there is no evidence of gains through externals moderating internals preferences a relatively small committee of highly informed internal members emerges as a desirable committee structure

monetary policy by committee consensus chairman dominance or simple majority this paper studies the theoretical and empirical implications of monetary policy making by committee under four different voting protocols the protocols are a consensus model where a supermajority is required for a policy change an agenda setting model where the chairman controls the agenda a dictator model where the chairman has absolute power over the committee and a simple majority model where policy is determined by the median member these protocols give preeminence to different aspects of the actual decision making process and capture the observed heterogeneity in formal procedures across central banks the models are estimated by maximum likelihood using interest rate decisions by the committees of five central banks namely the bank of canada the bank of england the european central bank the swedish riksbank and the u s federal reserve for all central banks results indicate that the consensus model fits actual policy decisions better than the alternative models this suggests that despite institutional differences committees share unwritten rules and informal procedures that deliver observationally equivalent policy decisions

the value of u s patents by owner and patent characteristics abstract this paper uses renewal data to estimate the value of u s patents controlling for patent and owner characteristics estimates of u s patent value are substantially larger than estimates for european patents however the ratio of u s patent value to r d for firms is only about 3 contrary to a common assertion patents issued to small patentees are much less valuable than those issued to large corporations litigated patents are more valuable as are highly cited patents however patent citations explain little variance in value suggesting limits to their use as a measure of patent quality

fiscal policy under loose commitment due to time inconsistency or political turnover policymakers promises are not always fulfilled we analyze an optimal fiscal policy problem where the plans made by the benevolent government are periodically revised in this loose commitment setting the properties of labor and capital income taxes are significantly different than under the full commitment and no commitment assumptions because of the occasional reoptimizations the average capital income tax is positive even in the long run also the autocorrelation of taxes is lower their volatility with respect to output increases and the correlation between capital income taxes and output changes sign our method can be used to analyze the plausibility and the importance of commitment in a wide class of dynamic problems

do patent rights matter 40 years of innovation complexity and productivity abstract does the rigorous protection of patents advance or retard economic development two decades ago a new global standard of intellectual property swept across developing and industrialized nations through the implementation of the wto s trips agreement many years later the issue of patent rights remains contentious in this paper we focus on the effects of patent rights systems on total factor productivity growth using dynamic panel regression analysis for 70 countries from 1965 to 2009 we show that the effects of stronger or more rigorous patent systems are insignificant for productivity growth in both developing and industrialized countries why does the strength of patents appear to have no impact on productivity classic economic theory suggests that stronger patent systems incentive innovative output with important spill over effects for productivity and growth we offer an alternative explanation using data from the economic complexity index we find that while patents rights are increasingly irrelevant to productivity the relationship between economic complexity and productivity is highly positive and significant our results are consistent with the contributions of the absorptive capacity theory in that they suggest it is not the discovery and ownership of novel products and processes at the innovative frontier that induces productive growth but the ability to adapt replicate and diffuse along the international productive chain

do patents work thickets trolls and antibiotic resistance this paper connects ideas from recent literature on the economics of intellectual property ip to address the question did the strengthening and broadening of ip rights from important patent policy changes in the us promote greater innovation the analysis rests on the theory of cumulative innovation which shows that if ip rights on a pioneer invention extend to follow on research and impediments to contracting exist then strengthening patents can actually reduce overall innovation recent empirical studies are consistent with the theory patents can significantly deter follow on research in complex technology areas where contracting is difficult computers electronics telecommunications but not in drugs chemicals and human genes i outline remedies from court decisions and antitrust policy for addressing inefficiencies from patent trolling patent thickets and the anti commons of fragmented ownership i then apply the analysis to the antibiotics market drawing on recent research to examine how patent and competition policies can be used to improve incentives for drug development in the battle against antibiotic resistance the literature provides persuasive evidence that the policy changes overreached in broadening and strengthening ip rights and reveals important patent reforms for improving the effectiveness of patent systems in the us and canada

policy preferences of fomc members as revealed by dissenting votes the composition of the federal open market committee the ability to predict the effect of policy decisions on economic and f1nancialvariables and political influence from the white house and the congress are all potentially significant determinants of monetary policy decisions this study uses the record of dissenting votes from federal open market committee meetings to consider the relevance of these influences tests for differences between voting patterns of bank presidents versus members of the board of governors and differences during various historical periods provide insight into four questions 1 are the policy preferences of bank presidents different from those of the members of the board 2 does uncertainty about the economic and financial results of policy actions influence the level of dissent 3 is there a difference in the pattern of dissent under different chairmen and 4 is there effective political influence on monetary policymakers the legitimacy of district bank presidents serving on the fomc has been challenged in the courts and the legislature challengers fear that district bank presidents who serve without executive or legislative approval prefer policy that produces lower inflation and higher unemployment relative to the policy preferred by members of the board who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate rogoff 1985 argues that in the presence of market distortions it is better for society to have central bankers who attach a larger weight than the society s

social value of public information comment morris and shin 2002 is actually pro transparency not con the main result of morris and shin 2002 restated in papers by amato morris and shin 2002 and amato and shin 2003 and commented upon by the economist 2004 has been presented and interpreted as an anti transparency result more public information can be bad however some scrutiny of the result shows that it is actually pro transparency except in very special circumstances more public information is good furthermore for a conservative benchmark of equal precision in public and privateinformation social welfare is higher than in as ituation without public information

monetary conservatism and fiscal policy abstract does an inflation conservative central bank a la rogoff 1985 remain desirable in a setting with endogenous fiscal policy to provide an answer we study monetary and fiscal policy games without commitment in a dynamic stochastic sticky price economy with monopolistic distortions monetary policy determines nominal interest rates and fiscal policy provides public goods generating private utility we find that lack of fiscal commitment gives rise to excessive public spending the optimal inflation rate internalizing this distortion is positive but lack of monetary commitment generates too much inflation a conservative monetary authority thus remains desirable when fiscal policy is determined before monetary policy each period the monetary authority should focus exclusively on stabilizing inflation monetary conservatism then eliminates the steady state biases associated with lack of monetary and fiscal commitment and leads to stabilization policy that is close to optimal

r d determinants accounting for the differences between research and development the determinants of r d are an important topic of innovation studies the classical schumpeterian hypotheses about the influence of size and market power have been complemented with the role played by industry determinants such as demand pull technological opportunity and appropriability in determining r d investments however r d has always been considered as a whole even though research and development activities differ in many aspects we take advantage of a new panel database of innovative spanish firms pitec to distinguish between research and development efforts of firms we analyze the differentiated role played by traditional r d determinants in driving research and development results show that demand pull and appropriability have a higher effect on development while technological opportunity is more influential for research differences are statistically significant important in magnitude and robust to the use of different indicators for demand pull technological opportunity and appropriability and to several robustness checks

the effects of the us plant variety protection act on wheat genetic improvement in our model of partially appropriable invention if the us plant variety protection act pvpa of 1970 succeeded in strengthening intellectual property protection for plant breeders it should have led to increases in investment in varietal r d improved varietal quality and enhanced royalties these hypotheses are tested using data on us wheat we find that the pvpa may have stimulated public but not private sector investment in wheat varietal improvement but that the pvpa did not cause any increase in experimental or commercial wheat yields these findings indicate that the pvpa had little impact on excludability or appropriability in wheat varieties

the value of monetary policy commitment under imperfect fiscal credibility abstract a central finding of the previous monetary policy research is that commitment to a policy rule results in substantial welfare gains in this paper i reevaluate the value of monetary policy commitment in an environment where monetary and fiscal policies are conducted by separate branches of the government i find that welfare gains from monetary policy commitment can be small if the fiscal authority can exercise a certain degree of commitment on his own i also find that a moderate improvement in fiscal credibility can substantially reduce the welfare gains from full commitment in monetary policy under monetary leadership under fiscal leadership the degree of fiscal credibility does not affect the welfare gains from monetary commitment

the changing composition of innovative activity in the us a portrait based on patent analysis abstract in this paper patent bibliometrics are used to investigate shifts underway in the american innovation system patent indicators point to extraordinarily dynamic innovation in information and health technologies accompanied by a shift in the center of us innovation from the east to the west coast innovating companies are adapting to the demise of large corporate basic research laboratories by using their own research instead growth in university patenting is also striking and universities have become dominant patentees in a few large economically vibrant cities the importance of universities to local innovation has also been revealed by the growth in referencing from patents to papers which allows us to see that companies preferentially reference papers from in state public sector institutions