crime and ethics abstract we consider a simple model in which agents are endowed with heterogeneous abilities and differing degrees of honesty agents choose either to commit property crimes or invest in education and become workers instead the model is closed in that all criminal proceeds are stolen from agents working in the formal sector and that expenditures on both deterrence and punishment of criminals are paid for through taxes levied on workers thus although we assume that there are no direct interactive effects among criminals criminals crowd each other in two ways positively in that enforcement and punishment resources become more widely diffused as more agents commit crimes and negatively in that the presence of more criminals implies that there is less loot to be divided over a larger number of thieves we establish the possibility of multiple equilibria and characterize the equilibrium properties we then evaluate the effectiveness of deterrence policies under a balanced government budget

technological regimes schumpeterian patterns of innovation and firm level productivity growth the paper investigates the relationships between technological regimes and firm level productivity performance and it explores how such a relationship differs in different schumpeterian patterns of innovation the analysis makes use of a rich dataset containing data on innovation and other economic characteristics of a large representative sample of norwegian firms in manufacturing and service industries for the period 1998 2004 first we decompose tfp growth into technical progress and efficiency changes by means of data envelopment analysis we then estimate an empirical model that relates these two productivity components to the characteristics of technological regimes and a set of other firm specific factors the results indicate that 1 tfp growth has mainly been achieved through technical progress while technical efficiency has on average decreased 2 the characteristics of technological regimes are important determinants of firm level productivity growth but their impacts on technical progress are different from the effects on efficiency change 3 the estimated model works differently in the two schumpeterian regimes technical progress has been more dynamic in schumpeter mark ii industries while efficiency change has been more important in schumpeter mark i markets

a search theoretic model of the retail market for illicit drugs a search theoretic model of the retail market for illegal drugs is developed trade occurs in bilateral potentially long lived matches between sellers and buyers buyers incur search costs when experimenting with a new seller moral hazard is present because buyers learn purity only after a trade is made this model is consistent with some new stylized facts about the drugs market and it is informative for policy design the effectiveness of different enforcement strategies is evaluated including some novel ones that leverage the moral hazard present in the market copyright oxford university press

measuring the affordability of home ownership typical measures of the affordability of home ownership are based on aggregate data that ignore the distribution of incomes and wealth and the range of house prices an analysis of household survey

reflections on the nature and policy implications of planning restrictions on housing supply discussion of planning policy planning practice and housing supply by kate barker planning is about other things as well but it is fundamentally an economic activity it allocates a scarce resource but independently of prices or any market information in analysing the effects this allocative mechanism has on housing supply or indeed the supply of buildings for any given use we need to think carefully about what exactly it is that planning allocates and whether in its operation it creates a constraint on the supply of what it is allocating in the british case our planning system does not operate on the supply of housing directly but indirectly via the constraint imposed on land supply given the income elasticity of demand for space this has policy implications perhaps even more serious than is acknowledged by barker

crime and poverty a search theoretic approach numerous studies document that criminal activity is positively related to unemployment and negatively related to educational attainment levels within given communities we study this phenomenon in the context of a search equilibrium model in which agents choose between formal employment and pursuing crimerelated activities theft prior to their occupational choices agents undertake costly schooling raising their productivity crime acts in essence as a tax on human capital by affecting the probability that a worker s earnings possessions are subsequently appropriated there are multiple equilibria high crime low levels of educational attainment long spells of unemployment and poverty are correlated across them

the paradox of openness revisited collaborative innovation and patenting by uk innovators we revisit the paradox of openness in the literature which consists of two conflicting views on the link between patenting and open innovation the spillover prevention and the organizational openness views we use the data from the survey of innovation and patent use and the community innovation survey cis6 in the uk to assess the empirical support for the distinct predictions of these theories we argue that both patenting and external sourcing openness are jointly determined decisions made by firms their relationship is contingent upon whether the firms are technically superior to their rivals and lead in the market or not leading firms are more vulnerable to unintended knowledge spillovers during collaboration as compared to followers and consequently the increase in patenting due to openness is higher for leaders than for followers we develop a simple framework that allows us to formally derive the empirical implications of this hypothesis and test it by estimating whether the reduced form relationship between patenting and collaboration is stronger for leaders than for followers

boom in bust out young households and the housing price cycle abstract the uk experienced a major residential real estate boom bust cycle from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s accompanied by unprecedented shifts in the owner occupancy rate of young households previous empirical analyses have pointed toward income changes and financial deregulation as the likely causes of this episode with little to say about the differential effects on various age groups we show that in a life cycle model with income heterogeneity and credit constraints the observed co movements of housing prices and owner occupancy rates can be explained as an equilibrium response to income and credit market shocks our findings suggest that the financial liberalisation of the early 1980s was crucial for the unparalleled increase in the owner occupancy rate of young households during the boom

technological innovation and the distribution of employment growth a firm level analysis this work studies the firm level relationship between different types of innovative activities and employment growth rates improving on previous investigations on the topic it combines a detailed analysis of the effects of product and process innovation on average employment growth with a broader outlook on the whole conditional employment growth distribution results show that product innovation especially in terms of good new to the entire market has a positive effect on employment growth this role is likely to be particularly relevant for both fast growing and shrinking firms process innovation appears instead to have less clear cut dynamics consistently with existing evidence among different types of process innovation the introduction of novel auxiliary processes appears to be more positively linked with employment growth

crime rates and local labor market opportunities in the united states 1979 1997 the labor market prospects of young unskilled men fell dramatically in the 1980s and improved in the 1990s crime rates show a reverse pattern increasing during the 1980s and falling in the 1990s because young unskilled men commit most crime this paper seeks to establish a causal relationship between the two trends previous work on the relationship between labor markets and crime focused mainly on the relationship between the unemployment rate and crime and found inconclusive results in contrast this paper examines the impact of both wages and unemployment on crime and uses instrumental variables to establish causality we conclude that both wages and unemployment are significantly related to crime but that wages played a larger role in the crime trends over the last few decades these results are robust to the inclusion of deterrence variables controls for simultaneity and controlling for individual and family characteristics

income distribution police expenditures and crime a political economy perspective in this paper i present a structural approach to investigate empirically the relation between income distribution police expenditures and crime the approach is based on the estimation of an equilibrium model where heterogeneous individuals choose whether to engage in criminal activities and expenditures on police to apprehend criminals are determined endogenously through majority voting i discuss the identification and estimation of the parameters of the structural model using data for the united states jel d72 d78 k42

an on the job search model of crime inequality and unemployment we extend simple search models of crime unemployment and inequality to incorporate on the job search this is valuable because although simple models are useful on the job search models are more interesting theoretically and more relevant empirically we characterize the wage distribution unemployment rate and crime rate theoretically and use quantitative methods to illustrate key results for example we find that increasing the unemployment insurance replacement rate from 53 to 65 percent increases unemployment and crime rates from 10 and 2 7 percent to 14 and 5 2 percent we show multiple equilibria arise for some fairly reasonable parameters in one case unemployment can be 6 or 23 percent and crime 0 or 10 percent depending on the equilibrium

innovation and productivity across four european countries nber working paper seriesinnovation and productivity across four european countriesrachel griffithelena huergojacques mairessebettina petersworking paper 12722http www nber org papers w12722national bureau of economic research1050 massachusetts avenuecambridge ma 02138december 2006we would like to thank laura abramovsky manuel arellano rupert harrison jordi jaumandreu elizabeth kremp pierre mohnen helen simpson the analysis contained in this paper was fundedby the european commission the esrc and esf under grant res 000 23 0901 and the advancedinstitute of management research aim all errors and omissions remain the responsibility of theauthors the views expressed herein are those of the author s and do not necessarily reflect the viewsof the national bureau of economic research 2006 by rachel griffith elena huergo jacques mairesse and bettina peters all rights reserved short sections of text not to exceed two paragraphs may be quoted without explicit permission providedthat full credit including notice is given to the source

contractibility and the design of research agreements we analyze how contractibility affects contract design a major concern when designing research agreements is that researchers may use their funding to subsidize other projects we show that when research activities are not contractible an option contract is optimal the financing firm obtains the option to terminate the agreement and in case of termination broad property rights the threat of termination deters researchers from cross subsidization and the cost of exercising the termination option deters the financing firm from opportunistic termination we test this prediction using 580 biotechnology research agreements contracts with termination options are more common when research is non contractible

do competitively acquired funds induce universities to increase productivity abstract this paper analyzes the impact of private and public third party funds on the productivity of swiss university departments and public research institutions estimating a production function assuming that labor inputs produce master students and scientific publications reveals a positive effect of public third party funding on productivity but not for private funds however once we include technology transfer as an additional output the coefficient for public third party funding turns insignificant while private funding becomes significant indicating that the disciplining effect of public donors focuses on publications while private donors foster technology transfer we employ three alternative approaches to tackle endogeneity and find qualitatively robust results

the evolution of comparative or competitive advantage a preliminary report on a study this paper is a preliminary report on a study of the comparative evolution of several major high tech industries in the us japan and western europe in general the paper examines similarities and differences in the ways these industries developed in different countries and the factors explaining those differences the project especially focused on understanding the instances when firms in a particular country gained a strong competitive advantage over firms based in other countries the industries studied are organic chemical products computers semiconductors software numerical controlled machine tools pharmaceuticals in the age of biotechnology and medical devices copyright 1996 by oxford university press

search theoretic models of the labor market a survey we survey the literature on search theoretic models of the labor market we show how this approach addresses many issues including the following why do workers sometimes choose to remain unemployed what determines the lengths of employment and unemployment spells how can there simultaneously exist unemployed workers and unfilled vacancies what determines aggregate unemployment and vacancies how can homogeneous workers earn different wages what are the tradeoffs firms face from different wages how do wages and turnover interact what determines efficient turnover we discuss various modeling choices concerning wage determination and the meeting process including recent models of directed search

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

knowledge management does capture impede creation economists and strategic management theorists interested in sustained competitive advantage often examine firms management of knowledge somewhat surprisingly the interaction between knowledge creation and knowledge capture practices has received little attention using survey data from nearly 900 australian firms we examine this issue paying particular attention to whether knowledge capture impedes knowledge creation we find that firms which favor closed learning practices tend to rely more upon patents and secrecy and eschew lead time and brands as ways to capture profits firms that favor open styles of learning operate in the opposite manner copyright 2009 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

an evaluation and explanation of in efficiency in higher education institutions in europe and the u s with the application of two stage semi parametric dea in this study the technical efficiency of number of public european and american heis is assessed over a decade efficiency scores are determined using nonparametric dea with different input output sets and considering different frontiers global frontier all heis pooled together regional frontier europe and the u s having their own frontiers and country specific ones the external factors affecting the degree of hei inefficiency are also investigated e g institutional settings size and department composition location and funding structure specifically the results indicate a positive association between both regional gdp per capita and number of departments and an institution s efficiency for both the european and u s samples on average older european heis are more efficient but this is not confirmed for american ones finally government funding seems to have a negative effect on the efficiency of universities in europe which again is not confirmed for the u s however some country heterogeneity at the european level is found through intensive sensitivity analysis

can pay won t pay or economic principles of affordability the term afford ability has been gaining currency in housing policy debates but neither government nor academic researchers have given much consideration to defining it this paper considers what meanings have been given to the term affordability in practice and suggests a range of analytically more useful definitions it argues from economic first principles that it is more logical to use some form of residual income definition than one based on a prescribed ratio of housing costs to income most researchers have been using a ratio definition the paper then uses data from a household survey in the glasgow travel to work area in 1988 89 to examine the incidence of unaffordability of housing costs according to a variety of definitions

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

universities and fundamental research reflections on the growth of university industry partnerships the recent rise in university industry partnerships has stimulated an important public policy debate regarding how these relationships affect fundamental research in this paper we examine the antecedents and consequences of policies to promote university industry alliances although the preliminary evidence appears to suggest that these partnerships have not had a deleterious effect on the quantity and quality of basic research some legitimate concerns have been raised about these activities that require additional analysis we conclude that additional research is needed to provide a more accurate assessment of the optimal level of commercialisation

wage differentials employer size and unemployment the unique equilibrium solution to a game in which a continuum of individual employers choose permanent wage offers and a continuum of workers search by sequentially sampling from the set of offers is characterized wage dispersion is a robust outcome provided that workers search while employed as well as when unemployed the unique nondegenerate equilibrium distribution of wage offers is constructed for three cases 1 identical workers and employers 2 identical employers and an atomless distribution of worker supply prices and 3 identical workers and an atomless distribution of job productivities copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

an equilibrium model of search unemployment this paper develops a simple general equilibrium model with sequential search in which a nondegenerate wage offer distribution is endogenously determined we use this model to analyze the comparati

what accounts for the decline in crime in this article we analyze recent trends in aggregate property crime rates in the united states we propose a dynamic equilibrium model that guides our quantitative investigation of the major determinants of observed patterns of crime our main findings can be summarized as follows first the model is capable of reproducing the drop in crime between 1980 and 1996 second the most important factors that account for the observed decline in property crime are the higher apprehension probability the stronger economy and the aging of the population third the effect of unemployment on crime is negligible fourth the increased inequality prevented an even larger decline in crime overall our analysis can account for the behavior of the time series of property crime rates over the past quarter century

the explicit economics of knowledge codification and tacitness this paper attempts a greater precision and clarity of understanding concerning the nature and economic significance of knowledge and its variegated forms by presenting the skeptical economist s guide to tacit knowledge it critically reconsiders the ways in which the concepts of tacitness and codification have come to be employed by economists and develops a more coherent re conceptualization of these aspects of knowledge production and distribution activities it seeks also to show that a proposed alternative framework for the study of knowledge codification activities offers a more useful guide for further research directed to informing public policies for science technological innovation and long run economic growth copyright 2000 by oxford university press

on research efficiency a micro analysis of dutch university research in economics and business management we argue that efficiency assessments of academic research should focus on micro units of research production rather than on conventionally employed aggregated macro units and show that such a detailed analysis of research performance provides interesting insights in addition we propose a non parametric methodology that is specially tailored for analyzing the productive efficiency of research it starts from a specification of the managerial objectives of research activities while imposing minimal structure on the typically unknown production technology we illustrate our points by assessing the productive efficiency of research in economics and business management faculties of dutch universities next to measuring productive efficiency we look for specific patterns in efficiency distributions over universities years and areas of specialization in addition we investigate the impact of external funding and the size of research programs on academic research efficiency we argue that our analysis has some interesting policy implications most notably our results show that a micro analysis of research efficiency may yield a more effective allocation of the limited financial resources that are available

what does a university add to its local economy the local multiplier effects of a university are estimated using data for the university of nottingham gross output and disposable income multipliers are calculated the latter are adjusted to exclude the incomes of induced migrants whose welfare is assumed unchanged

the dynamic capabilities of firms an introduction an expanded paradigm is needed to explain how competitive advantage is gained and held firms resorting to resource bas ed strategy attempt to accumulate valuable technology assets and employ an aggressive intellectual property stance however winners in the global marketplace have been firms demonstrating timely responsiveness and rapid and flexible product innovation along with the management capability to effectively coordinate and redeploy internal and external competences this source of competitive advantage dynamic capabilities emphasizes two aspects first it refers to the shifting character of the environment second it emphasizes the key role of strategic management in appropriately adapting integrating and re configuring internal and external organizational skills resources and functional competences toward changing environment 3 only recently have researchers begun to focus on the specifics of developing firm specific capabilities and the manner in which competences are renewed to respond to shifts in the business environment the dynamic capabilities approach provides a coherent framework to integrate existing conceptual and empirical knowledge and facilitate prescription this paper argues that the competitive advanis tage of firms stems from dynamic capabilities rooted in high performance routines z operating inside the firm embedded in the firm s processes and conditioned by its history it offers dynamic capabilities as an emerging paradigm of the modern business j firm that draws on multiple disciplines and advances with the help of industry studies in the usa and elsewhere

a theoretical analysis of the role of social networks in entrepreneurship entrepreneurship involves innovation and uncertainty we outline a theory of entrepreneurship which highlights the importance of social networks in promoting innovation and reducing uncertainty our findings suggest that this social aspect of entrepreneurship increases the probability of entrepreneurial success the results also lend credence to theories of entrepreneurship that suggest that entrepreneurial opportunities are formed endogenously by the entrepreneurs who create them we also consider the public policy implications of our findings

housing decisions of american youth abstract prior studies of household tenure choice have not accounted for possible simultaneity with household formation and labor supply decisions we address these methodological issues and introduce new measures of the relative cost of homeowning and potential earnings capacity we also estimate the demand for the quantity of owner occupied housing accounting for the limitation of the sample to those choosing to live alone and be homeowners potential earnings and housing rental costs affect young adults decisions of whether to live alone as single or married or with parents or some other group of adults tenure choice is influenced by wealth the relative cost of homeowning and a number of demographic variables housing demand depends on owner costs elasticity near 0 5 and potential earnings elasticity near 0 5

patents licensing and market structure in the chemical industry abstract the strategies of rent appropriation and industry structure are inter dependent how firms use patents depends upon industry structure and in turn affects industry structure in the 19th century market leaders in the chemical industry combined patents and secrecy to deter entry within cartels patents were used to stabilize cartels and organize technology licensing the role of patents changed in the less concentrated post world war ii markets in bulk organic chemicals and petrochemicals chemical producers use licensing as an important means of generating revenue from process innovations the increased importance of technology licensing is closely related to the emergence of a class of specialized process design and engineering firms that have played an important role in the development and diffusion of process innovations

are researchers deliberately bypassing the technology transfer office an analysis of tto awareness most universities committed to the commercialization of academic research have established technology transfer offices ttos nonetheless many researchers bypass these ttos and take their inventions directly to the marketplace while tto bypassing has typically been portrayed as deliberate and undesirable behavior we argue that it could be unintentional as many researchers may simply be unaware of the tto s existence taking an information processing perspective and using data on 3250 researchers in 24 european universities we examine researcher attributes associated with tto awareness our evidence confirms that only a minority of researchers are aware of the existence of a tto at their university tto awareness is greater among researchers who possess experience as entrepreneurs closed many research and consulting contracts with industry partners conduct research in medicine engineering or life sciences or occupy postdoctoral positions policy implications of these findings are discussed

the relative effectiveness of patents and secrecy for appropriation abstract changes in patent law global competition and the rise of several new technologies suggest that patents could be of greater value than secrecy for many innovative firms particularly small firms that are unable to use market power or other factors to appropriate their investments in innovation data from the 1993 european community innovation survey cis for up to 2849 r d performing firms is analysed to determine the relative importance of secrecy vs patents this particular combination of appropriation methods is interesting because secrecy can act as a mutually exclusive alternative to patents the results show that a higher percentage of firms in all size classes rate secrecy as more valuable than patents however ordered logit regressions show that the probability that a firm rates secrecy as more valuable than patents declines with an increase in firm size for product innovations while there is no relationship for process innovations the firm s r d intensity has no effect on the relative value of secrecy vs patents there is weak evidence to show that participation in cooperative r d increases the value of patents over secrecy for product innovations the results are relevant to ongoing debates over changes to the patent system and the need for policies to encourage small firms to patent more

the impact of academic patenting on university research and its transfer abstract this paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the impact of academic patenting on publishing and knowledge transfer drawing upon two separate surveys of academics and their cv information we provide empirical evidence for uk academics in engineering and physical sciences the contribution of this paper is two fold first our findings show that the intensity of academic patenting complements publishing up to a certain level of patenting output after which we find evidence of a substitution effect we also find weak evidence of important differences across scientific fields with the more basic oriented fields showing indications of a crowding out effect second our analysis of the potential impact of patenting on knowledge transfer shows a positive correlation between the stock of patents and engagement in knowledge transfer channels however we find that a substitution effect sets in indicating an inverted u shaped relationship between patenting and several knowledge transfer channels

crime and social interactions the high variance of crime rates across time and space is one of the oldest puzzles in the social sciences this variance appears too high to be explained by changes in the exogenous costs and benefits of crime we present a model where social interactions create enough covariance across individuals to explain the high cross city variance of crime rates this model provides an index of social interactions which suggests that the amount of social interactions is highest in petty crimes moderate in more serious crimes and almost negligible in murder and rape

a macroeconomic model on the quality of government and economic performance i introduction the empirical analysis of hall and jones 1999 suggests that the fundamental determinant of a country s economic performance is its social infrastructure the institutions and government policies that provide incentives for individuals those incentives can encourage productive activity or predatory behavior like rent seeking and corruption although suppression of rent seeking appears to be most efficient if it is carried out by the government the power to make and enforce rules makes the government itself particularly prone to expropriation for instance while bureaucrats protect property by suppressing private rent seeking that interferes with productive activity they may also seek rents themselves by soliciting bribes from citizens 1 how do the efficiency of bureaucrats in protecting property rights and the degree of their corruption affect the relative rewards received by producers private rent seekers and bureaucrats and how does the reward structure interact with the allocation of talent between productive and unproductive activity and hence influence a country s economic performance 2 to address the above issues we work with an essentially standard macroeconomic model of production and trade externality based on the work of diamond 1982 in which productive activity is subject to private and public expropriation private rent seekers and bureaucrats do not produce they are completely dependent on producers efforts one important feature is the presence of a negative externality the unproductive activity exerts on the relative rewards that determine the allocation of agent across activity see murphy shleifer and vishny 1993 we first consider as a benchmark a model where the size of bureaucracy is exogenously given and then endogenize it as an individual s choice under an exogenous bureaucracy an agent chooses to be a producer or a private rent seeker producers conduct transactions in the decentralized markets more productive activity yields higher returns to both producers and private rent seekers and this strategic complementarity results in multiple pareto rankable equilibria the equilibrium with a larger population of producers and less rent seeking features higher welfare by choosing a small size of bureaucracy the government can establish the superior equilibrium as the unique outcome that also achieves the constrained optimum social welfare however is decreasing in the size of bureaucracy in this equilibrium the implication is that the smaller the size of bureaucracy the higher the welfare the optimal size of bureaucracy depends on two opposite influences on producers incentives one is the positive effect through better property rights protection the other includes various negative effects as a result of corruption tax burdens and the fact that resources taken up in the public sector could otherwise be devoted to production if the population of bureaucrats is endogenously determined equilibria exist as long as bureaucrats efficiency is high and corruption is low the equilibrium with a larger bureaucracy is associated with higher production and welfare the reason is that with sufficient efficiency in deterring private rent seeking and low corruption a larger bureaucracy makes private production more profitable by reducing resources allocated to private rent seeking and the resulting externality further improves the relative rewards to productive activity in general the equilibrium size of the bureaucracy is not optimal one resulting implication is that for the equilibrium with a smaller bureaucracy society would benefit by increasing the size of bureaucracy despite the fact that bureaucrats are corrupt many believe that the size of government is an important factor for determining economic performance however hall and jones 1999 p 111 argue that the characteristics of an economy such as the size of government should better be thought as outcomes rather than determinants

explaining australia s increased share of isi publications the effects of a funding formula based on publication counts abstract australia s share of publications in the science citation index sci has increased by 25 in the last decade the worrying aspect associated with this trend is the significant decline in citation impact australia is achieving relative to other countries it has dropped from sixth position in a ranking of 11 oecd countries in 1988 to 10th position by 1993 and the distance from ninth place continues to widen the increased publication activity came at a time when publication output was expected to decline due to pressures facing the higher education sector which accounts for over two thirds of australian publications this paper examines possible methodological and contextual explanations of the trends in australia s presence in the sci and undertakes a detailed comparison of two universities that introduced diverse research management strategies in the late 1980s the conclusion reached is that the driving force behind the australian trends appears to lie with the increased culture of evaluation faced by the sector significant funds are distributed to universities and within universities on the basis of aggregate publication counts with little attention paid to the impact or quality of that output in consequence journal publication productivity has increased significantly in the last decade but its impact has declined

academic freedom private sector focus and the process of innovation we develop a model that clarifies the respective advantages and disadvantages of academic and private sector research rather than relying on lack of appropriability or spillovers to generate a rationale for academic research we emphasize control rights considerations and argue that the fundamental tradeoff between academia and the private sector is one of creative control versus focus by serving as a precommitment mechanism that allows scientists to freely pursue their own interests academia can be indispensable for early stage research at the same time the private sector s ability to direct scientists toward higher payoff activities makes it more attractive for later stage research

on the political economy of income redistribution and crime this article analyzes a general equilibrium model in which agents choose to specialize in either legitimate or criminal activities expenditures on police to apprehend criminals as well as income redistribution are determined endogenously through majority voting we investigate how crime redistribution and police expenditures depend on characteristics of the underlying distribution of income earning abilities and on the apprehension technology our model accounts for the positive correlation between inequality and crime the positive correlation between expenditures on police and redistribution and the lack of correlation between crime and redistribution observed in u s data

assessing the relative performance of u k university technology transfer offices parametric and non parametric evidence abstract we present evidence on the relative performance of u k university technology transfer offices ttos using data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier estimation sfe u k ttos are found to exhibit low levels of absolute efficiency there also appear to be decreasing returns to scale implying that ttos may need to be reconfigured into smaller units the development of regionally based sector focused ttos is also advised consistent with qualitative evidence from u s ttos we find that there is a need to upgrade the business skills and capabilities of u k tto managers and licensing officers

empirical observations on new public management to increase efficiency in public research boon or bane abstract new public management npm was the catch phrase of the reforms in the public research and higher education sector for the last decades the postulated effect of the npm reforms is increased efficiency in governmental resource spending on the public higher education and research institutions though backed by theoretical considerations this hypothesis has hardly been tested empirically using a unique dataset of german research units this paper deals with the influence that npm mechanisms have on research performance controlling for different university mission it can be shown that both greater internal hierarchy especially strong presidents as well as greater operative flexibility for the researchers themselves increase research performance some of the variables including the presence of research councils have a positive effect on research efficiency under some definitions of research output on the other hand the introduction of resource accounting systems has a negative impact all in all we conclude that the public science sector reforms implemented in most of the western economies were heading into the right direction by providing greater performance incentives and increasing allocative efficiency in resource spending also we provide some ideas of how npm may be combined in order to construct a sensible governance system we conclude that the mechanisms should be selected based on the mission of the university

does social capital reduce crime abstract we investigate the effects of civic norms and associational networks on crime rates civic norms may attach guilt and shame to criminal behavior thus increasing its opportunity cost associational networks may increase returns to noncriminal activities and raise detection probabilities but they may also work as communication channels for criminals and may offer official cover to criminal activities the empirical assessment of these effects poses serious problems of endogeneity omitted variables measurement error and spatial correlation italy s great variance in social and economic characteristics its homogeneity in policies and institutions and the availability of historical data on social capital in its regions allow us to minimize the first two problems to tackle the last two problems we use report rate adjusted crime rates and estimate a spatial lag model we find that both civic norms and associational networks have a negative and significant effect on property crimes across italia

the impact of technological and organizational innovations on employment in european firms by using firm level data provided by the fourth community innovation survey cis4 for a selected number of eu countries this article explores the employment impact of innovation extending the analysis to organizational change the empirical evidence presented shows that both technological and organizational innovation exert a positive impact on employment mainly indirectly that is by improving growth performances in firms the strength of these indirect effects have been found to vary across different types of innovations despite the limits imposed by data at our disposal the evidence presented seems to somewhat diminish the relevance of the labor displacing effects of the process innovation the latter being strong and clearly visible only within the manufacturing industry and only when process innovations are combined with organizational changes copyright 2012 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

the efficiency of german universities some evidence from non parametric and parametric methods due to tight public budget constraints the efficiency of publicly financed universities in germany is receiving increasing attention in the academic as well as in the public discourse against this background we analyse the efficiency of 72 public german universities for the years 1998 2003 applying data envelopment and stochastic frontier analysis contrary to earlier studies we account for the faculty composition of universities which proves to be an essential element in the efficiency of higher education our main finding is that east german universities have performed better in total factor productivity change compared to those in west germany however when looking at mean efficiency scores over the sample period west german universities still appear at the top end of relative efficiency outcomes

workers warriors and criminals social conflict in general equilibrium we incorporate appropriation activities social conflict into canonical models of trade and study how economic shocks and policies affect the intensity of conflict we show that not all shocks that could make society richer reduce conflict positive shocks to labor intensive industries diminish conflict while positive shocks to capital intensive industries increase it the key requirement is that conflict activities be more labor intensive than the economy as this determines how shocks affect the returns and costs of conflict our theory is consistent with several observed patterns of conflict and implies that empirical work should take into account the relative factor intensities of the productive and conflict sectors in each country incorporating appropriation into a canonic general equilibrium model affects what policies may be deemed desirable in order to reduce conflict and generate pareto improvements policy must be distortionary while reforms that appear efficiency enhancing under the unrealistic assumption of perfect property rights may backfire this offers one explanation for why reforms based on traditional models without appropriation may be delayed and become unpopular when implemented and why societies may sympathize with seemingly inefficient redistribution

resources capabilities risk capital and the creation of university spin out companies abstract the commercialization of university research has become an increasingly important issue given concerns regarding licensing and the university s desire to maximize the returns to intellectual property ip in this paper we assess the impact of university resources and routines capabilities on the creation of spin out companies we find that both the number of spin out companies created and the number of spin out companies created with equity investment are significantly positively associated with expenditure on intellectual property protection the business development capabilities of technology transfer offices and the royalty regime of the university these results highlight the importance not just of resource stocks but also of developing appropriate capabilities of technology transfer officers in spinning out companies the results suggest that universities and policy makers need to devote attention to the training and recruitment of technology officers with the broad base of commercial skills

trends in dutch housing policy and the shifting position of the social rented sector the housing system of the netherlands has acquired an international reputation because of its special nature and the way it has evolved in this contribution we explain how the dutch social rented

mid range universities linkages with industry knowledge types and the role of intermediaries we analyze how mid range universities can contribute to industrial change through the transfer of tacit and codified knowledge in the areas of spin offs licensing and patents contract research consultancy and reach out and graduate and researcher mobility we use archival survey and interview data relating to mid range universities in mid range environments in the uk belgium germany and sweden our findings suggest that mid range universities primarily need to focus on generating world class research and critical mass in areas of expertise as well as developing different types of intermediaries mid range universities may need to develop a portfolio of university industry linkages in terms of the scope of activities and the types of firms with which they interact we also show that different intermediaries have important roles to play in developing university industry linkages for mid range universities

crime inequality and unemployment there is much discussion of the relationships between crime inequality and unemployment we construct a model where all three are endogenous we find that introducing crime into otherwise standard models of labor markets has several interesting implications for example it can lead to wage inequality among homogeneous workers also it can generate multiple equilibria in natural but previously unexplored ways hence two identical neighborhoods can end up with different levels of crime inequality and unemployment we discuss the effects of anti crime policies like changing jail sentences as well as more traditional labor market policies like changing unemployment insurance this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

structural estimation of a becker ehrlich equilibrium model of crime allocating police across cities to reduce crime we develop a model of crime in which the number of police the crime rate the arrest rate the employment rate and the wage rate are joint outcomes of a subgame perfect nash equilibrium the local government chooses the size of its police force and citizens choose among work home and crime alternatives we estimate the model using metropolitan statistical area msa level data we use the estimated model to examine the effects on crime of targeted federal transfers to local governments to increase police we find that knowledge about unobserved msa specific attributes is critical for the optimal allocation of police across msa s

the theoretical and policy implications of knowledge codification the purpose of the following contribution is to present the main consequences in terms of policy of firms and governments that emerged from the theoretical and empirical work achieved under the tipik project in a first part the introduction is devoted to a summing up of the main theoretical dimensions used in tipik that led in particular to a special issue of industrial and corporate change june 2000 then the discussion envisages the main consequences of the theoretical debate in terms of policy issues and addresses the new perspectives of a knowledge oriented policy of firms and governments finally we expose a selected series of policy implications that are derived from the empirical studies presented in this special issue

search for a theory of organized crimes abstract casual empirical observations reveal no systematic relationship between the overall crime rate and organized criminal activity we develop a search theoretic framework to study the interactions not only between formal labor and crime sectors but also between individual and organized crimes in equilibrium individual and organized criminals face different arrest risks success rates reward structures and outside options we characterize agents occupational choices the gang s hierarchical structure and the responses of unemployment crime rates and crime composition to changes in labor market conditions and crime deterrence policies we further assess the effectiveness of arrest versus punishment policies in deterring individual and organized crimes

the effect of employment frictions on crime this article provides estimates on how long it takes for released inmates to find a job and when they find a job how less likely they are to be incarcerated an on the job search model with crime is used to model criminal behavior derive the estimation method and analyze policies including a job placement program the results show that the unemployed are incarcerated twice as fast as the employed and take on average 6 months to find a job the article demonstrates that reducing the average unemployment spell of previously incarcerated criminals by 3 months reduces crime and recidivism by more than 5

employment innovation and productivity evidence from italian microdata italian manufacturing firms have been losing ground with respect to many of their european competitors this paper presents some empirical evidence on the effects of innovation on employment growth and therefore on firms productivity with the goal of understanding the roots of such poor performance we use firm level data from the last three surveys on italian manufacturing firms conducted by mediocredito capitalia which cover the period 1995 2003 using a modified version of the model proposed by harrison jaumandreu mairesse and peters 2005 which separates employment growth rates into those associated with old and new products we provide robust evidence that there is no employment displacement effect stemming from process innovation the sources of employment growth during the period are split equally between the net contribution of product innovation and the net contribution from sales growth of old products however the contribution of product innovation is somewhat lower than that for the four comparison european countries considered by harrison et al

patents and data sharing in public science richard nelson s the simple economics of basic scientific research 1959 and kenneth arrow s economic welfare and the allocation of resources for invention 1962 presented the basic analytical tools still used to understand the patent system two subsequent changes one primarily legal and the other primarily technological represent a sufficient departure from the prior state of the world as to call for ongoing re examination of some old assumptions about the economics of r d first an increase over time in the appropriability and appropriation of basic research results through the patent system raises new questions about the role of government funding second the revolution in information technology it and information networks has had reverberations outside the law of intellectual property in the evolving norms of the scientific community regarding data sharing this article examines these changes with particular attention to their impact on biomedical research an area in which the patent system is generally thought to be particularly important to the incentives of innovators copyright 2006 oxford university press

strong and weak ties in employment and crime this paper analyzes the interplay between social structure and information exchange in two competing activities crime and labor we consider a dynamic model in which individuals belong to mutually exclusive two person groups referred to as dyads there are multiple equilibria if jobs are badly paid and or crime is profitable unemployment benefits have to be low enough to prevent workers for staying too long in the unemployment status because they are vulnerable to crime activities if instead jobs are well paid and or crime is not profitable unemployment benefits have to be high enough to induce workers to stay unemployed rather to commit crime because they are less vulnerable to crime activities also in segregated neighborhoods characterized by high interactions between peers a policy only based on punishment and arrest will not be efficient in reducing crime it has to be accompanied by other types of policies that take into account social interactions

institutional determinants of university spin off quantity and quality a longitudinal multilevel cross country study the creation of spin off firms from universities is seen as an important mechanism for the commercialization of research and hence the overall contribution from universities to technological development and economic growth governments and universities are seeking to develop framework conditions that are conductive to spin off creation the most prevalent of such initiatives are legislative changes at national level and the establishment of technology transfer offices at university level the effectiveness of such initiatives is debated but empirical evidence is limited in this paper we analyze the full population of universities in italy norway and the uk three countries adopting differing approaches to framework conditions to test whether national and university level initiatives have an influence on the number of spin offs created and the quality of these spin offs building on institutional theory and using multilevel analysis we find that changes in the institutional framework conditions at both national and university levels are conductive to the creation of more spin offs but that the increase in quantity is at the expense of the quality of these firms hence the effect of such top down changes in framework conditions on the economic impact from universities seems to be more symbolic than substantive

organisational change technology employment and skills an empirical study of french manufacturing this paper analyses the correlations between technological change organisational change and skill change using a survey on organisational change in manufacturing firms conducted in 1993 considerable diversity is allowed for in terms of the measure of technological and organisational change and the analysis shows a positive correlation between technological change and reorganisations whatever their types the paper then analyses the relationships between these changes and the employment behaviour of firms it shows that changes in the required skills and in the occupational structure of firms are more closely connected to organisational than to technological change although organisational change affects the work content and skill requirements of blue collar workers it is mainly indirect workers that are affected in terms of the number employed finally the analysis shows that technology tends to stabilise the workforce whereas the move towards the model of flexible enterprise favours its renewal copyright 2003 oxford university press

crime and the labor market a search model with optimal contracts abstract this paper extends the pissarides pissarides christopher a equilibrium unemployment theory cambridge mit 2000 model of the labor market to include crime and punishment a la becker becker gary s crime and punishment an economic approach journal of political economy 76 1968 169 217 all workers irrespective of their labor force status can commit crimes and the employment contract is determined optimally the model is used to study analytically and quantitatively the effects of various labor market and crime policies for instance a more generous unemployment insurance system reduces the crime rate of the unemployed but its effect on the crime rate of the employed depends on job duration and jail sentences when the model is calibrated to u s data the overall effect is to decrease crime but is quantitatively small small wage subsidies reduce unemployment and crime rates of employed and unemployed workers and raise society s welfare hiring subsidies reduce unemployment but they can raise the crime rate of employed workers crime policies police technology and jail sentences affect crime rates significantly but have only negligible effects on the labor market

employment and technological innovation evidence from u k manufacturing firms this article uses british firm level panel data on actual innovative activity drawn from different statistical sources to identify the effect of technical change on jobs previous work tends to find positive associations of proxies for technical change and employment but such studies suffer from various statistical drawbacks in this study even when one controls for fixed effects dynamics and endogeneity innovations have a positive and significant effect on employment which persists over several years there seems to be little direct role for spillover effects from industry innovations or any role for industry wages or union power

university industry relations and research group production is there a bidirectional relationship this study aims to analyze if there is a bidirectional relationship between university industry collaboration and scientific production the results from a sample of 137 research groups at a university in an ultra peripheral region reveal the existence of this bidirectional relationship scientific production has a positive influence on university industry relations thus when the articles published by the research groups increase the contracts between university and industry also increase moreover the results reflect a nonlinear relationship between contracts and scientific production university industry relations are complementary to scientific production up to a certain level and after that point there is a substitution effect the results also show the moderating effect of the knowledge area on this relationship because groups belonging to technology oriented areas have higher scientific production in response to university industry relations

alternative theories of wage dispersion abstract we analyze labor market models where the law of one price fails i e models with equilibrium wage dispersion we begin considering ex ante heterogeneous workers but highlight a problem with this approach if search is costly the market shuts down we then assume homogeneous workers but ex post heterogeneous matches this model is robust to search costs and delivers equilibrium wage dispersion however we prove that the law of two prices holds equilibrium implies at most two wages we explore other models including one combining ex ante and ex post heterogeneity which is robust and delivers more realistic wage dispersion

a general equilibrium model of crime and punishment abstract a model of crime and punishment is developed where individuals who differ in their earnings abilities choose between work and crime taking the probability and consequences of punishment into account an aggregate relationship between the probability of punishment and the level of crime is derived there is also a relationship between enforcement spending the number of criminals and the number punished in such an economy the possibility of multiple equilibria and the effects of changes in enforcement spending and in inequality on the levels of crime and punishment are discussed there is also discussion of social welfare and voting behavior

technical efficiency of european railways a distance function approach this study has two principal objectives the first objective is to measure and compare the performance of european railways the second objective is to illustrate the usefulness of econometric distance functions in the analysis of production in multioutput industries where behavioural assumptions such as cost minimization or profit maximization are unlikely to be applicable using annual data on 17 railways companies during 1988 1993 multioutput distance functions are estimated using corrected ordinary least squares cols the resulting technical efficiency estimates range from 0 980 for the netherlands to 0 784 for italy with a mean of 0 863 the distance function results are also compared with those obtained from single output production functions where aggregate output measures are formed using either total revenue or a tornqvist index the results obtained indicate substantial differences in parameter estimates and technical efficiency rankings casting significant doubt upon the reliability of

r d innovation and productivity new evidence from italian manufacturing microdata italian manufacturing firms have been losing ground with respect to many of their european competitors this article presents some empirical evidence on the effects of innovation on employment growth and therefore on firms productivity with the goal of understanding the roots of such poor performance we use firm level data from the last three surveys on italian manufacturing firms conducted by mediocredito capitalia which cover the period 1995 2003 using a slightly modified version of the model proposed by harrison jaumandreu mairesse and peters harrison et al 2005 which separates employment growth rates into those associated with old and new products we find no evidence of significant employment displacement effects stemming from process innovation the sources of employment growth during the period are split equally between the net contribution of product innovation and the net contribution from sales growth of old products however the contribution of product innovation to employment growth is somewhat lower than in the four european countries considered in harrison et al 2005 and the contribution of innovation in general to productivity growth is almost nil in italy during this period

are cleaner production innovations the solution for small mining operations in poor regions the case of padua in brazil abstract mining in santo antonio de padua a city located in the underdeveloped northeast area of the rio de janeiro state in brazil is currently the most important economic activity in the region unfortunately companies lag behind technologically and use rudimentary production methods which cause serious environmental problems social implications and poor competitiveness in order to seek sustainable solutions for the padua mining region local support organizations have created initiatives to develop endogenous cleaner production innovations to enhance the industry s sustainability performance during this process some barriers for mining companies to adopt these developed technologies have emerged this research draws on the cleaner production sustainability and innovation literature and uses a qualitative research with multiple sources of evidence to understand the dynamics behind the padua mining region more specifically this research explores how initiatives to improve the sustainability performance led by local support organizations took place analyzes their outcomes i e cleaner production innovations and identifies some of the barriers to technology adoption this paper offers three key research contributions first we claim that cleaner production approaches alone cannot create sustainable mining regions in emerging and developing countries but they are definitively a step in the right direction since they provide the base for expanding the scope towards sustainability second we argue that technology cannot be understood as the panacea for sustainability because it will never represent the complete solution for companies sustainability problems third we claim that companies can face a managerial trap if they pursue enhanced sustainability performance solely through the adoption of cleaner production innovations

assessing the accessibility of the homeownership market in this paper an examination is made of the accessibility of the homeownership market using measures that include both supply and demand characteristics of regional housing markets these measures are applied empirically on an extensive dataset that covers the dutch housing market the analysis quantifies the extent to which the position of first time buyers on the homeownership market has weakened over time and identifies the driving factors of this change it is found that smaller portions of the housing market are becoming affordable due to financial constraints of young households however more importantly first time buyers today need to contend with a much larger group of competing bidders on every house that suits their financial situation than ever before

learning and the sources of corporate growth this paper explores the link between learning and corporate growth by developing different models of learning and showing that they produce observably different models of corporate growth using data on the growth of a number of firms in the us automobile industry during the 20th century we compare these different models of growth in an effort to identify the major sources of learning which these firms seem to have relied on although there are interesting differences between growth processes before and after the second world war the basic conclusion that we are drawn to is that learning in this sector is largely unsystematic and opportunistic

productivity effects of organizational change microeconometric evidence this paper analyzes the relationship between investment in information and communication technologies ict non ict investment labor productivity and workplace reorganization firms are assumed to reorganize workplaces if the productivity gains arising from workplace reorganization exceed the associated reorganization costs two different types of organizational change are considered enhancement group work and flattening of hierarchies empirical evidence is provided for a sample of 411 firms from the german business related services sector we develop and estimate a model for labor productivity and firms decision to reorganize workplaces that allows workplace reorganization to affect any parameter of the labor productivity equation our general and flexible methodology allows us to properly take account of strategic complementarities between the input factors and workplace reorganization the estimation results show that changes in human resources practices do not significantly affect firms output elasticities with respect to ict non ict capital and labor although most of the point estimates of the individual output elasticities and of the control variables for observable firm heterogeneity are larger if workplace reorganization is realized we therefore apply the kernel density estimation technique and demonstrate that for firms with organizational change theentire labor productivity distribution shifts significantly out to the right if workplace reorganization takes place indicating that workplace reorganization induces an increase in labor productivity that is attributable to complementarities between the various input factors and workplace reorganization by contrast firms without organizational change would not have realized significant productivity gains if they had reorganized workplaces

if star scientists do not patent the effect of productivity basicness and impact on the decision to patent in the academic world abstract we run an event history analysis on a sample of italian researchers in the field of materials science aiming at understanding how the characteristics of the research trajectories followed by scientists in academia affect their opportunities to do development of industrial applications results of our estimates suggest that all measures of academic performances have a dual effect although different in magnitude scientists that are moving along applied research trajectories find it easier to produce industrial applications than their colleagues engaged in the quest for very fundamental understanding we interpret our results by suggesting that for the former more academic research results in more exploitable results hence in more chances to patent for the latter more academic research makes it just more unlikely that they will find the time to produce industrial applications similar results apply for the low versus high research impact

universities technology and innovation centres and regional development the case of the north east of england the paper examines the role of technology and innovation centres tics in bridging the gap between the university research base and industry in order to foster economic development in a lagging industrial region the context is provided by an academic literature on the role of universities in regional innovation systems some of which casts doubt on the capacity of universities to operate in this domain particularly within a lagging region the empirical case reports on a bold experiment initiated by the regional development agency in the older industrial region of the north east of england to create and support new tics in the fields of process innovation in high value manufacturing and new and renewable energy and on the engagement of a regionally committed university with these centres the evidence presented suggests that while there are links between the university and the centres both are principally operating in a national science and technology system in which contributing to addressing uneven regional economic development is a secondary concern copyright the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press