a model of principal agency control of wastes under technological progress we analyze performance and outcome of principal agency relationships in an environment with pollution externalities and technological progress we assume that firms may not purposely violate the pollution control regulations but nonetheless generate some pollution due to negligence the models allow firms two possible actions either to increase the level of treated waste legally or pay an expected penalty if illegal pollution is detected we show that in a world with pollution externalities technological progress does not guarantee increases in the welfare level most important for policy purposes the analysis shows the trade offs between the policy instruments penalties taxes subsidies and treatment costs in a world where technological progress occurs and firms may violate the law

public research and industrial innovations in germany this paper deals with the effects of publicly funded research at universities polytechnics and federal research labs on industrial innovations in germany we discuss the characteristics of companies that benefit from the findings of public research institutions in questioning 2 300 companies we found that less than one tenth of product or process innovating firms introduced innovations between 1993 and 1995 that would not have been developed without public research these new products amount to approximately 5 percent of all new product sales regressions show that firms own r d support the ability to absorb the findings of public research and turn them into innovations contrary to the widely held opinion that proximity to public research institutions does promote collaboration between firms and public research and increase the amount of received knowledge spillovers we found no higher probability of publicly supported innovations for firms in germany that are located near universities or polytechnics

privatizing the intellectual commons universities and the commercialization of biotechnology abstract this paper analyzes universities recent attempts to adapt their policies and organizational arrangements in order to accommodate the commercialization of university biotechnology research we argue that these attempts have been severely hampered because internal and external parties have sought to enforce universities adherence to their historic commitment to create and sustain an intellectual commons for the benefit of society at large the standardized organizational arrangements universities maintain to administer this intellectual commons have also served to impede adaptive efforts we conclude that social contractual commitments and organizational standards can significantly affect the shape and outcome of negotiations over property rights and can place important limits on the scope of organizations potentially leading to the generation of new organizational forms

policies promoting innovation in small firms evidence from the u s and u k we provide background information on u s and u k policies promoting innovation in small firms and also summarize the papers that appear in this special issue these studies were presented at a recent workshop that was jointly organized by the university of nottingham institute for enterprise and innovation uniei and the board on science technology and economic policy step of the u s national academy of sciences based on a synthesis of these papers and other evidence that was presented during the workshop we conclude that 1 program evaluation is much more prevalent in the u s than in the u k 2 the u s advanced technology program atp and small business innovation research sbir program have been successful and 3 shared costs between government and industry and frequent assessment are the keys to ensuring that such programs are successful

the economics of enforcing pollution taxation abstract the efficient structure of pollution tax policy is examined when it is recognized that enforcing compliance will be costly there are two components of this cost 1 the direct cost of enforcement and 2 the cost polluters incur avoiding enforcement considering only the first cost the efficient pollution policy calls for a tax in excess of that conventionally recommended as efficient t but with little enforcement once avoidance cost is recognized the efficient policy can be substantially altered requiring a tax lower than t but with greater enforcement even when direct enforcement cost is zero it is shown that there is no unique advantage to t in the absence of avoidance cost

profits from violating controls on the use of a polluting input profits from violating the quota charge and permit market systems are compared the results indicate that for a given permit price the violation profits of the charge and permit market systems are the same and exceed the profits from violating a quota system if the optimal use of inputs in a compliant market is lower than the quota it is also shown that under a permit market system the occurrence of violation decreases the equilibrium price of permits this implies that the profits from violating a permit market are lower than violation profits of a charge system

the evolution of the industrial organisation of the production of knowledge this work elaborates the notion of localised technological knowledge based upon the distinction between information competence and knowledge and analyses the emergence of the new knowledge industry the evolution of the organisation of knowledge production is analysed through four stylised modes scientific entrepreneurship institutional variety vertical integration and technological cooperation the new trends towards the growth of knowledge intensive business service industries are detected and underlined they are considered as the outcome of the institutional formation of a market for knowledge based upon a process of increasing appropriability of localised knowledge based on the blending of generic scientific information and competence and growing scope of applicability via computercommunication systems deverticalisation of research activities from the boundaries of corporations the specification of a demand for technological competence and the specialising of independent firms in the production of technological competence and knowledge

firm incentives to promote technological change in pollution control reply abstract the process of technological change in pollution control is broken into three basic steps innovation diffusion and optimal agency response firm incentives to promote these steps are then examined under five regulatory regimes direct controls emission subsidies emission taxes free marketable permits and auctioned marketable permits on a relative basis emission taxes and auctioned permits provide the highest firm incentives to promote technological change at times free permits generate lower incentives direct controls which are common regulatory tools usually provide the lowest relative firm incentives to promote technological change

embeddedness social epistemology and breakthrough innovation the case of the development of statins abstract radical breakthrough innovations create not only great industrial possibilities but also great social uncertainties when a breakthrough medical technology is discovered the question arises as to whether to accept the possible risks involved or to defer implementing the innovation until more data is available and specifically until others have taken up the innovation and demonstrated both its efficacy its relative safety and market acceptance specifically when a firm discovers a new candidate substance for a first in its class drug how to evaluate the potential risks becomes a key predicament for management this paper focuses on the role of a firm s social networks and national innovation system context in influencing the social epistemology around potential breakthrough innovations through an examination of the processes of drug development related to the same candidate substance in a japanese firm and an american firm we suggest that in addition to organizational capabilities at the corporate level social capital specifically formed under a certain innovation system plays a key role in leading to the successful introduction of breakthrough innovations

measurement error and state dependent pollution control enforcement abstract a two group model of state dependent enforcement is applied to identical firms which minimize the expected present value of costs and fines measurement error affects the probabilities of transitions between groups and the receipt of fines it is shown that state dependent enforcement can reduce social cost below the level attainable with static enforcement and that differentiation in both monitoring probabilities and standards may be optimal however setting fines for both groups at the maximum is likely to be optimal comparisons between models and alternative model interpretations are offered

is commercialization good or bad for science individual level evidence from the max planck society abstract based on new data this paper studies the invention disclosure licensing and spin off activities of max planck institute directors over the time period 1985 2004 analyzing their effects on the scientists subsequent publication and citation records consistent with prior findings inventing does not adversely affect research output mixed results are obtained with regard to commercialization activities the analysis suggests qualifications to earlier explanations of positive relationships between inventing and publishing

academic research and industrial innovation the purpose of this study is to estimate the extent to which technological innovations in various industries have been based on recent academic research and the time lags between the investment in recent academic research projects and the industrial utilization of their findings because no attempt to my knowledge has been made to estimate the social rate of return from academic research we also make some rough and tentative estimates of this sort while the results are subject to many limitations discussed below they should be of interest to public policy makers concerned with science and technology as well as to

the role of knowledge in r d efficiency past research has recognized that both demand and capability influence the allocation of r d resources scholars have had an easier time getting a grip on demand than on capability while it has been recognized that knowledge is an important part of capability to date formalization of knowledge and its role in r d activity has been unsatisfactory this paper models the role of knowledge in r d various sources of such knowledge are considered the model throws a different light on analyses that employ a knowledge capital stock and also illuminates the dual private and public nature of technological knowledge

institutions supporting technical advance in industry elsewhere 1982 economists beliefs that modern capitalism is a fine innovation generating machine have no intellectual grounding in contemporary neoclassical theory the twin theorems take technologies as given the apparent effectiveness of capitalism in this arena must reside in characteristics and mechanisms other than those featured in the microeconomic theory textbooks in our book we attempt to analyze these it also is true that the capitalist engine is a much more complicated one than many economists seem to think i presently am

consumer behaviour theory and empirical evidence a survey this survey is designed to emphasize the relationship between empirical a nd theoretical considerations in the analysis of consumer behavior a lthough it focuses primarily on analysis at the individual or micro l evel it tries where possible to draw implications for the estimati on of aggregate relationships the importance of micro level analysis stems from the rapid expansion in available panel and survey data se ts this development has generated its own theoretical and empirical issues many of which are raised in this survey copyright 1988 by royal economic society

the simple economics of research portfolios this article identifies biases in market portfolios of parallel research projects arising from the noncongruence of social goals and private aspirations occasioned by those circumstances where the market rewards only the winner and where the winner is awarded the entire social surplus it is shown that under risk neutrality this noncongruence implies that t he market encourages the development of too many discoveries too lar ge a spread in the distribution of the quality of discoveries and an excessive occurrence of multiple discoveries copyright 1987 by royal economic society

r d internationalization r d collaboration and public knowledge institutions in small economies evidence from finland and the netherlands this paper investigates domestic and foreign innovating firms determinants of r d collaboration with domestic universities and public knowledge institutes in finland and the netherlands we put particular emphasis on the impact of incoming academic spillovers on the probability to co operate with these public r d institutes based on data from community innovation surveys we find that foreign firms in the netherlands are less likely to co operate with domestic public knowledge institutions than domestic firms while in finland no significant difference can be detected another result is that incoming knowledge spillovers are an important determinant for r d collaboration with domestic public knowledge institutions in both countries in case of foreign firms in finland incoming knowledge spillovers affect the probability to co operate with public knowledge institutions more positively as compared with domestic firms for the netherlands no substantial difference could be found in this respect further innovating firms in finland that require academic or basic knowledge do not co operate significantly more with public knowledge institutions than those that need applied knowledge at the same time they are willing to share knowledge with public r d partners in the netherlands innovating firms that require relatively more basic than applied knowledge increase the probability of co operation with dutch universities and public knowledge institutions but there is reluctance to share proprietary knowledge with public r d partners for both countries no significant difference between foreign and domestic firms with regard to academic knowledge requirements could be found this raises the issue whether finnish innovation policies with a strong focus on r d co operation provide incentives for strategic behaviour by domestic public partners to put more emphasis on applied research

stabilization dynamics and backward looking contracts abstract exchange rate based stabilizations often result in an initial output expansion one explanation for this phenomenon has been that in the presence of inflation inertia a reduction in the nominal interest rate causes the domestic real interest rate to fall thus increasing aggregate demand this paper reexamines this issue in the context of an intertemporal optimizing model in contrast to previous results the analysis shows that if the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is smaller than the elasticity of substitution between traded and home goods a permanent reduction in the rate of devaluation leads to a fall in aggregate demand

a transaction costs analysis of innovations in the organization of pharmaceutical r d abstract this paper uses transaction costs economics to analyze the increasing importance of vertical disintegration of r d by large pharmaceutical and chemical firms first it discusses three characteristics of the research based pharmaceutical industry then it shows that market failures related to long term joint venture r d contracts between firms and university laboratories are less significant than appears at first and may account for their striking increase over the past fifteen years

the influence of market demand upon innovation a critical review of some recent empirical studies abstract a number of recent empirical studies of technical change at the level of the individual firm have concluded that market demand is the dominant influence upon the innovation process calling forth innovations in market economies the pace of innovation in the private sector heavily influences the growth of national output and productivity and these studies and their conclusions have therefore received much attention having been extensively quoted in discussions of appropriate government policy for the encouragement of innovation this paper reviews a number of these studies and concludes that their findings and the interpretations of their findings in the secondary literature are seriously flawed and in many cases invalid the proposition that market demand governs the innovation process is by no means conclusively demonstrated in these studies and they are therefore inadequate and inappropriate guides for the formulation of policy most of the studies examined employ a working definition of demand factors which is so broad as to embrace a range of possible influences upon innovation which should more properly be classified elsewhere the concept of demand utilized in these studies bears little resemblance to the more restrictive and precise definition of market demand found in economics in addition the phenomena analyzed in these studies are a very heterogeneous lot the studies do not address identical empirical questions and their findings are as a result neither uniform nor unambiguous both demand and supply side influences are crucial to understanding the innovation process and it is the exclusive preoccupation with only one set of these forces which is criticized in this paper some implications of the criticism for government policy toward innovation are discussed in the conclusion

an experimental analysis of the effectiveness of an environmental assurance bonding system on player behavior in a simulated firm it has long been recognized that the present command and control methods for pollution abatement are inefficient using market mechanisms for environmental management is a promising alternative to the direct regulatory approach market mechanisms are just beginning to appear in u s environmental policy for example tradable permit schemes are being developed and implemented for some air pollutants under the amended clean air act various other forms of taxes and tradable permits have been proposed however these systems do not address the large uncertainty inherent in most environmental problems one mechanism currently being studied to address uncertainty more effectively is a flexible environmental assurance bonding system designed to incorporate environmental criteria and uncertainty into market incentives this study uses an experimental approach employing an interactive computer game simulation model with human players to examine the effectiveness of the assurance bonding system under varying degrees of uncertainty an environmental cost efficiency index ecei or profit per unit waste is used to measure player performance preliminary results indicate that players are more successful under the assurance bonding system in terms of ecei than under the simulated current system

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

pigouvian taxation with administrative costs abstract this paper examines how the optimal pigouvian tax should be adjusted to reflect adminisrative costs several cases are examined depending on whether the administrative costs are fixed per firm taxed or are a function of the amount of tax collected and on whether such costs are borne by the government or by the taxed firm in some cases the presence of administrative costs leads to an optimal tax greater than the external cost while in other cases it leads to a tax less than the external cost

the embodiment of knowledge universities as engines of growth as universities open themselves up to the marketplace for knowledge and ideas to a greater degree than in the past debates over university missions has been common how can universities match their third mission contribution to society with their main missions of education and curiosity driven basic research to achieve their full growth potential this will require a change in policy attention from targeting university patenting and faculty spin offs to taking a broader view on universities contribution to economic development including other pathways most notably collaborative modes and mobility of trained human capital from academe to industry

the role of altruism in economic interaction abstract this paper considers environments in which the population consists of a mix of altruists and egoists and asks under what situations do altruists have a disproportionately large effect on equilibrium and under what situations is it the egoists we begin by presenting a general framework for answering this question we then apply the framework to the analysis of three economic environments 1 the classic problem referred to as the prisoner s dilemma 2 a world where agents decide whether or not to pollute the environment and 3 a world where agents decide whether or not to donate blood

the long run macroeconomic impacts of fuel subsidies abstract many developing and emerging market countries have subsidies on fuel products using a small open economy model with a non traded sector i show how these subsidies impact the steady state levels of macroeconomic aggregates such as consumption labor supply and aggregate welfare these subsidies can lead to crowding out of non oil consumption inefficient inter sectoral allocations of labor and other distortions in macroeconomic variables across steady states aggregate welfare is reduced by these subsidies this result holds for a country with no oil production and for a net exporter of oil the distortions in relative prices introduced by the subsidy create most of the welfare losses how the subsidy is financed is of secondary importance aggregate welfare is significantly higher if the subsidies are replaced by lump sum transfers of equal value

aid and the dutch disease macroeconomic management when everybody loves you abstract countries that undertake serious and sustained programs of stabilization and structural adjustment should expect to attract significant new inflows of capital from donor countries and international institutions while apparently beneficial those flows can work at crosspurpose with other goals of the policy reforms in particular abundant foreign exchange loans can force an appreciation of the real exchange rate often through domestic inflation rather than a nominal appreciation in addition since the government is almost always the recipient of these loans it can crowd out the private sector if it increases its aggregate demand for domestic goods and services if the crowding out is accomplished by tight monetary policy it will fall primarily on private investment rather than consumption this paper shows that both of these problems have surfaced in ghana a country that has become a favorite of donors after demonstrating a serious commitment to policies promoted by the world bank and international monetary fund the paper also suggests modifications in macroeconomic policy that would help lower inflation and boost private investment

firms transfer strategies with universities and the relationship with firms innovation performance based on a representative sample of swiss firms we empirically investigated strategies for knowledge and technology transfer ktt activities between business firms and universities as well as other public research institutions based on a cluster analysis of 19 different forms for ktt three types of ktt strategies were identified they were significantly correlated mainly to i the absorptive capacity of a firm ii several factors hampering ktt activities and iii some characteristics of the transfer process such as the number of partners the existence of contacts to foreign universities and the utilization of the mediating services of transfer offices furthermore it was found that ktt strategies related to the core transfer activities such as r d contracts are stronger correlated with innovation performance compared to strategies related to softer transfer forms copyright 2009 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

the economic impact of licensed commercialized inventions originating in university research abstract the purpose of this article is to estimate quantitatively the contribution that university licensing makes to the national u s economy as regions and nations face increased economic problems they seek ways to augment opportunities for economic growth and to identify areas where public funding can be cut it is now well recognized that the research university can be a significant engine of economic growth and job creation university research and research related activities contribute in many important ways to modern economies notably through increased productivity of applied rd provision of highly valued human capital embodied in faculty and students development of equipment and instrumentation used by industry in production and research and creation of concepts and prototypes for new products and processes which may have some unexpected and large social and economic impacts yet clear documentation of the proportional contributions these make to economic growth remains elusive this article provides detailed estimates of the economic impact on the u s national economy of one core university activity licensing of university inventions to industry our approach combines licensing data for u s universities with national input output i o model coefficients and provides more valid and complete estimates of the national economic impacts of university licensing of intellectual property than have previously been available our results estimate national economic impact expressed as annual increases in gross domestic product gdp in total industry output and employment generated over a 15 year period summing over the entire 15 years for which we have data 1996 2010 we estimate that assuming no product substitution effects and a 2 10 royalty fee the total contribution of university licensing to gross industry output is at least 162 1 billion and as much as 686 9 billion 2005 dollars estimates based on 5 royalty rates yields an estimated impact of 293 3 billion 2005 dollars over the period assuming 2 royalty fees and no product substitution effects we estimate that over a 15 year period university licensing agreements based on product sales contributed at least 70 5 billion and as much as 277 6 billion 2005 dollars to the u s gdp with a moderately conservative estimate based on 5 royalty rates such agreements contributed more than 122 2 billion 2005 dollars the i o model also calculates the number of jobs person years of employment directly created or supported per million dollars of final purchases estimates of the total number of additional jobs created as a function of year due to university licensed products assuming no product substitution effects ranged from about 7000 jobs in 1996 to 23 000 in 2010 or more than 277 000 person years of employment over the entire 15 year period because of uncertainty we also provide estimates of the economic impact of university licensing income based on a range of product substitution rates 5 10 and 50 the magnitude of the estimated impact depends significantly on the assumptions made for example the royalty fees and substitution rates but even the most conservative yet reasonable assumptions yield estimates of very large impacts on gdp industry output and employment major discoveries emanating from academic and or publicly funded research have had enormous global economic and social impacts that are obvious but difficult to predict and quantify e g google the world wide web nanotechnologies etc although this article examines the economic impact of only a select technology transfer activity it nevertheless offers quantitative evidence that the economic impact of university research and technology transfer activities is significant

the globalization of r d results of a survey of foreign affiliated r d laboratories in the usa abstract this paper examines the globalization of innovation and the phenomenon of foreign direct investment fdi in research and development to do so it draws from a survey of foreign affiliated r d laboratories in the united states while the literature on foreign direct investment has emphasized the role of markets in driving off shore investments the main conclusion of this research is that the globalization of innovation is driven in large measure by technology factors of particular importance is the objective of firms to secure access to scientific and technical human capital

property rights and entrepreneurship in science this paper examines the evolving relationship in science between the reward structure and entrepreneurial activity we draw a distinction between two types of property rights basic science is fostered by a mechanism of reputational rights technological advances and the products and processes they produce are fostered by a mechanism of proprietary rights the two forms of property rights differ markedly in terms of the incentives they provide to share information in a timely fashion we argue that because of a host of factors university based scientists in certain fields are more likely to privatize knowledge today than in the past trading reputational rights for proprietary rights events in the life sciences serve as a case study a discussion of how privatization affects basic science follows although the evidence is far from complete we conclude that the movement towards privatization may be more beneficial to product development and the scientists engaged in the activity than to basic science

riding the wave monetary responses to aid surges in low income countries abstract we focus on the management of highly persistent shocks to aid flows in the presence of currency substitution by the domestic private sector such shocks have beneficent long run effects but when currency substitution is high they can produce dramatic macroeconomic management problems in the short run what is the appropriate mix of money and exchange rate targeting in such cases and the role of temporary sterilization we analyze these and related issues in an intertemporal optimizing model that allows a portion of aid to be devoted to reducing the government s seigniorage requirement our results show that a managed float with little or no sterilization of increases in the monetary base supports the smooth absorption of the increased aid without incurring higher inflation higher real interest rates or overshooting of the real exchange rate

the university in the metropolitan arena impacts and public policy implications this paper estimates some of the impacts associated with a metropolitan university the impact of the university in the metropolitan arena is conceptualised as a series of backward expenditure and forward knowledge related linkages these relationships can be both positive and negative and can operate in both the short and long terms their correct identification requires that the counter factual situation of the area without the university be adequately specified on the basis of a case study of the impacts associated with northwestern university on the chicago metropolitan area some of these issues are highlighted the results emphasise the magnitude of the university expenditure links with the metropolitan economy and the importance of scale when comparing these with more localised negative impacts the paper concludes with some public policy implications relating to the role of the university as a non profit organisation competing with local businesses and as an export base sector in the metropol

inflation targeting and exchange rate management in less developed countries abstract we analyze coordination of monetary and exchange rate policy in a two sector model of a small open economy featuring imperfect substitution between domestic and foreign financial assets our central finding is that tight management of the exchange rate greatly enhances the efficacy of inflation targeting in a flexible exchange rate system inflation targeting incurs a high risk of indeterminacy moreover small inflation shocks may escalate into much larger increases in inflation ex post both problems disappear when the central bank fixes the path of the nominal exchange rate or leans heavily against the wind in a managed float

product innovation product market competition and persistent profitability in the u s pharmaceutical industry increasingly strategy scholars are exploring the relationships between innovation competition and the persistence of superior profits sustained high profitability may result when a firm repeatedly introduces valuable innovations that service previously unmet consumer demands while the returns to the firm from each innovation may erode over time innovation ensures that overall the firm maintains a high performance position at the same time sustained high profitability may also accrue to firms that innovate less often but effectively avoid the competition that otherwise erodes high returns this paper elaborates these relationships before presenting an empirical analysis of the effects of differential innovative propensities and differential rates of competition on pharmaceutical firms abilities to sustain profit outcomes that are above those earned by competing firms the analysis which is situated within the u s pharmaceutical industry finds support for the expected relationship between high innovative propensity and sustained superior profitability but no support for a link between persistence and the ability to avoid competition copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

determining firm level it investments to facilitate value chain activities should spillovers accruing to value chain members be incorporated abstract in recent years the relationship between intermediaries in a value chain has undergone significant changes in which information technology it has played a critical role of importance is the formation of alliances between channel members and the effect of it investments on these evolving relationships a critical aspect of a firm s it investment is that it not only provides gains for the investing firm but also creates positive spillovers for value chain members these spillovers are attributable to the fact that firm level it investments result in the automation and or reengineering of internal processes downstream in this paper we address the issue as to how a firm should determine its investment in an it system which is primarily designed to facilitate value chain activities under the assumptions of perfect information in terms of potential gains for value chain members from this it investment and the fact that each member may need to be guaranteed some minimum gain i e a reservation utility to adopt the it we model the it investment decision under two alternative strategies the first strategy referred to as the myopic strategy is where the firm simply makes the it investment decision by maximizing its own gains and ignoring those of the value chain under an alternative strategy referred to as the global strategy the firm decides to make the it investment decision by simultaneously maximizing not only its own gains but also the gains accruing to the entire value chain in this case the firm could make a sub optimum decision regarding the it investment from its own perspective however under the latter strategy the firm could also structure a simultaneous one time charge for each value chain member which could compensate for this sub optimum decision after modeling both these strategies we then proceed to characterize conditions under which each strategy is the preferred choice for the firm through an illustration of our framework we show that the global strategy dominates the myopic strategy in a number of situations

policy responses to aid surges in countries with limited international capital mobility the role of the exchange rate regime summary we study the role of the exchange rate regime reserve accumulation and sterilization policies in the macroeconomics of aid surges absent sterilization a peg allows for almost full aid absorption an increase in the current account deficit net of aid delivering the same effects as those of a flexible regime but with a necessary increase in inflation regardless of the regime policies that limit absorption and result in large accumulation of reserves are welfare reducing they help reduce the real appreciation and inflation under the peg but at the expense of reducing private consumption and investment and therefore medium term growth

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

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

encouraging university entrepreneurship the effect of the bayh dole act on university patenting in the united states abstract universities are seen as a source of technology development that is useful to entrepreneurial activity as a result policy makers often consider mechanisms to stimulate technology commercialization at research universities as a way to encourage entrepreneurial activity in a region however the transfer of technology from universities to the private sector requires the exploitation of markets for knowledge which are fraught with difficulty arrow k 1962 economic welfare and the allocation of resources for inventions in nelson r ed the rate and direction of inventive activity princeton nj princeton univ press this article examines the effect of one u s public policy initiative the bayh dole act in the united states on one aspect of technology commercialization university patenting specifically the article explores the university share of patents from 1969 through 1996 across 117 lines of business and shows that the effectiveness of licensing in a line of business is significantly correlated with university share of patents in the post bayh dole period but not in the pre bayh dole period these results suggest that the bayh dole act provided incentives for universities to increase patenting in those fields in which licensing is an effective mechanism for acquiring new technical knowledge the paper discusses the implications of this shift in patenting for research and public policy

innovation and university collaboration paradox and complexity within the knowledge economy the paper will explore the nature and impact of universities and other higher education institutions heis on firms innovation and growth in an increasingly distributed and open innovation system using a survey of some 400 firms in the uk the analysis reveals significant differences in firms collaboration with heis across the uk and the value and impact that such collaborations have on a firm s development the nature and effects of such collaboration vary significantly between the type of firm involved and their location and the analysis investigates this in relation to various aspects of innovative activity and firms performance much of the nature and effects of such collaboration are as one would expect counterintuitive and highlight the care we should place on assessing the role of universities and other heis in open innovation systems

optimal governing instrument operation level and enforcement in natural resource regulation the case of the fishery most regulation studies have used industry output or inputs as the control variable s but these are only indirectly controlled by government action through its choice of governing instrument enforcement procedure and penalty structure and the operational level of each a model is developed which demonstrates how profit maximizing firms will react to these control variables taking into account the benefits extra production and costs possible penalties of noncompliance and the ability to avoid detection of noncompliance the optimal operation level for two sets of control variables is derived and discussed

the international economics of intellectual property right protection a welfare theoretic trade policy analysis abstract this paper provides an analytical construct for examining the trade policy effects of greater intellectual property protection in technology importing countries it is shown that two types of conflict are likely to arise between net technology importers and exporters the first relates to the level of protection with importers preferring a low level and exporters a high one the second conflict hitherto unexplored relates to the manner of protection with importers likely to prefer discriminatory regimes favoring local r d creation whereas exporters would prefer nondiscriminatory protection in importing countries

what do we learn about consumer demand patterns from micro data the aim of this paper is to assess the importance of using micro level data in the econometric analysis of consumer demand to do this we utilize a time series of repeated cross sections covering some 4 000 households in each of 15 years employing a number of different aggregation procedures we conclude that aggregate data alone are unlikely to produce reliable estimates of structural price and income coefficients however once certain aggregation factors as well as trend and seasonal components are included an aggregate model is not necessarily outperformed across all demand equations in terms of forecasting ability jel d12 c52 c31 the purpose of this paper is to develop a complete consumer demand system based on a time series of individual household data and to use it to measure the biases introduced into the study of consumer de mand behavior when aggregate data are used in place of the appropriate microeco nomic data we assess the suitability of ag gregate data through the impact on income and price elasticities and by evaluating the ability of both micro and aggregate based models to forecast aggregate consumer de mand the biases introduced by the use of aggregate data depend upon the way that household characteristics interact with in come and price effects and on departures of demand systems from linearity we explore the structure of microeconomic demand sys tems and the role of household characteris tics in the behavior of consumer demand both for the light this may shed on the pattern of future demands and for the im plications this behavior has for issues of aggregation consumer demand patterns typically found in micro data sets vary considerably across households with different household characteristics and with different levels of income we model this variability by making intercept and slope parameters in the budget share equations of our demand sys tem depend on household characteristics and by allowing for nonlinear total log expenditure terms in fact in theory consistent demand systems it is total ex penditure rather than disposable income that is allocated across goods we find that this general framework leads to a well specified data coherent demand system which is a quadratic extension of the popu lar almost ideal model of angus s deaton and john muellbauer 1980 the micro level estimates are shown to be sensitive to the treatment of endogeneity of total expen diture and to the specification of interaction terms with household characteristics in ad dition this specification is also shown to possess many attractive features for the evaluation of aggregate models

scientific linkages and firm productivity panel data evidence from taiwanese electronics firms using a panel of electronics firms listed on the taiwan stock exchange this paper explores the spillover of scientific research to the private sector by looking at the impact of the intensity a patent s backward citation of scientific publications relative to citation of other patents on the patent owning firm s productivity to identify the causal effect we use measures of a firm s financial constraints as instrumental variables to account for the potential endogeneity of scientific citation intensity of a patent the empirical results suggest that the citation of scientific publications by a patent has a strong and positive effect on the patent owning firm s productivity

regional economic impacts of federal r d by funding source and performer type hicks d a and lee s g 1994 regional economic impacts of federal r d by funding source and performer type reg studies 28 619 632 guided by persistent spatial and sectoral concentration of federal r d we find that while defence r d is stimulative funds flowing to non defence non profit and educational research institutions are more so effects are stronger in larger metro scale regions and in local economies in which manufacturing accounts for greater shares of total employment moreover federal r d flows appear to have local investment effects as indicated by their capacity to accelerate the rate of local employment expansion in the total technology intensive tti subsector in which r d intensive goods account for significant portions of inputs and final output hicks d a et lee s g 1994 les impacts economiques regionaux des depenses de r et d federales suivant l origine et la destination des fonds reg studies 28 619 632 pilote par la concentration geographique et sectorielle des d

relative efficiency of r d activities a cross country study accounting for environmental factors in the dea approach abstract this paper applies the production framework associated with the data envelopment analysis dea method to evaluate the relative efficiency of r d activities across countries r d capital stocks and manpower are treated as inputs while patents and academic publications are considered as outputs a three stage approach which involves using dea for evaluating efficiency and using tobit regressions for controlling the external environment is applied to 30 countries in recent years the results show that less than one half of the countries are fully efficient in r d activities and that more than two thirds are at the stage of increasing returns to scale most countries have a more significant advantage in producing sci cum ei publications than in generating patents

fiscal inertia donor credibility and the monetary management of aid surges abstract donors cannot pre commit to support scaled up public spending programs on a continuing basis nor can governments credibly commit to curtail expenditure rapidly in the event that aid revenues contract an aid boom may therefore be accompanied by a credibility problem when this is the case the absorb and spend strategy recommended by the imf leads to capital flight higher inflation and large current account surpluses inclusive of aid the right policy package combines a critical minimum degree of fiscal restraint with reverse sterilization

exploiting innovation options an empirical analysis of r d intensive firms abstract this paper examines the mechanisms adopted by rd firms with high levels of development related resources demonstrate a negative relationship between information asymmetry conditions and reliance on market exchange while firms with low levels of such resources demonstrate a positive relationship