restabilizing matching markets at senior level abstract we study in many to one matching markets the restabilization process of a group stable matching disrupted by a change in the population if firms are not allowed to fire workers the market always reaches stability again only if the disruption is due to the opening of positions by firms or the retirement of workers this is shown by designing an algorithm which always leads to a group stable matching the algorithm mimics markets where firms make offers and workers accept the offer of their favorite firm if firms are allowed to fire workers we construct another algorithm which produces a group stable matching when the disruption is due to the entrance of workers or the closure of positions in this algorithm unemployed workers make offers to firms in both cases of disruption we require firms to have q substitutable preferences

china s oil use 1990 2008 abstract over the past two decades china s oil demand has risen steeply in 1990 it was only about 25 higher than that of 1978 the year economic reform was introduced by 2008 it had reached 396 0 million tons roughly four times the 1978 level making china the second largest oil user worldwide the country became a net oil importer in 1993 and between 1993 and 2008 its net import dependency a yardstick for energy security soared from 7 5 to 50 0 china s increased demand for oil has made the country a global energy player of critical importance although the literature on the global implications of china s oil use has proliferated relatively few studies have attempted to examine how china uses oil hence this study covers every oil consuming facility and sector in china exploring the patterns of and factors involved in oil demand by power plants oil refineries heat plants and gas works and industrial transport agricultural household and commercial sectors it concludes that in virtually all sectors in china oil demand will grow with transport and industry leading the way

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

the impact of the timing of patents on innovation performance abstract in the context of industry standard setting firms face the strategic decision of whether to move faster than competitors or wait for more information that reduces uncertainty these decisions are even more challenging if there are multiple standards and if there are benefits to belonging to more than one standard this paper examines the effect of the timing of patents on a firm s innovation performance the strategic logic of real options posits that patent timing is determined by the tension between the value of preemption and the value of waiting we analyze 680 dvd disc patents in dvd patent pools to test the effect of the timing of patents on innovation performance consistent with real options logic under high uncertainty the later the timing of the patent the higher the innovation performance while under low uncertainty there is an early mover advantage

intellectual property rights strategic technology agreements and market structure the case of gsm this paper investigates the role of intellectual property rights iprs in shaping the gsm industry this industry is an example of a high tech industry in which standards play a large role in the process of designing the gsm standard a lot of attention has been given to iprs mainly to avoid a situation in which a single ipr holder could hamper or even totally block the development of the standard nevertheless the ultimate gsm standard contains a large amount of so called essential iprs i e iprs without which the implementation of gsm products is impossible the paper starts with a general discussion of the development of gsm and the role of firm strategy and iprs in this process next we present a database on the essential iprs in the gsm standard this database has been compiled on the basis of international patent statistics and the data that manufacturers have supplied to etsi the european standardization body re sponsible for defining the gsm standard we use this database to assess the dynamic ipr position of firms in the original gsm standard and its subsequent development in a next part of our analysis we relate the firm s ipr p osition to the trends in strategic technology agreements in the mobile telecommunications field we ask the question whether firms that are powerful in terms of iprs are also the firms that are central in the technology agreements network or vice versa we also investigate whether developments over time in the technology agreements data follow from the dynamic movements in the ipr position of a firm and which other factors play a role in this

standard setting committees consensus governance for shared technology platforms voluntary standard setting organizations ssos use a consensus process to create new compatibility standards practitioners have suggested that ssos are increasingly politicized and perhaps incapable of producing timely standards this article develops a simple model of standard setting committees and tests its predictions using data from the internet engineering task force an sso that produces many of the standards used to run the internet the results show that an observed slowdown in standards production between 1993 and 2003 can be linked to distributional conflicts created by the rapid commercialization of the internet jel c78 l15 l86

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

complements and substitutes in profiting from innovation a choice experimental approach the ability of firms to effectively use mechanisms that support them in profiting from technological innovation is key to outperforming competitors yet such mechanisms have for the most part been studied in isolation without accounting for interactions between them we address this gap by developing a conjoint based method to study such interactions and by applying it to analyze interactions between product related patents and three other appropriability mechanisms to this end we conduct and analyze a series of discrete choice experiments with 319 managers within a leading international communications equipment company as a result we find the number of product related patents to be complementary to the overall size of the patent portfolio and complementary with an interesting exception to contributions to open standards we also find indications of a substitutive interaction with lead time advantages hence the effectiveness of patents seems to be leveraged by controlled diffusion of the underlying technologies and by the size of the firm s patent portfolio a finding that may contribute to explaining the patent paradox theoretical and managerial implications are discussed

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

understanding the motivations behind the myanmar china energy pipeline multiple streams and energy politics in china abstract why exactly did china decide to construct the myanmar china energy pipeline while important for china s long term energy strategy very few studies have yet analyzed the project from the standpoint of china s domestic policy process this paper fills the gap by illuminating the broader historical context and presenting how this pipeline fits into energy politics in china the policy making process is fleshed out by using the multiple streams framework msf analysis of this case using msf shows that first local governments and scholars played a key role in facilitating the project especially in raising the proposal to the government agenda second a policy window remains an important element in china s energy policy decisions in light of the china myanmar pipeline idea was not taken seriously in the 1990s when it was first proposed third although this cross border energy project is part of a national strategy of energy security domestic political considerations such as promoting investment in china s underdeveloped southwest were also at work these conclusions are useful for understanding not only the motivations behind such transboundary pipeline projects but also china s energy decisions at large

the u s patent system in transition policy innovation and the innovation process abstract this paper surveys the major changes in patent policy and practice that have occured in the last two decades in the u s and reviews the existing analyses by the economists that attempt to measure the impacts these changes have had on the processes of technological change it also reviews the broader theoretical and empirical literature that bears on the expected effects of changes in patent policy despite the significance of the policy changes and the wide availability of detailed data relating to patenting robust conclusions regarding the empirical consequences for technological innovation of changes in patent policy are few possible reasons for these limited results are discussed and possible avenues for future research are suggested

chinese energy investments in europe an analysis of policy drivers and approaches abstract enhancing the understanding of china eu energy relations the article examines chinese energy investments in europe from 2008 to 2015 and analyzes the energy interests and policy approaches underpinning them analysis of this data shows that within the eu 30 chinese investments largely focused on the oil and gas sector especially through the acquisition of company shares chinese energy investments in europe reflect a clear political and commercial strategy that addresses the prc s need to balance supply chain security of fossil fuels environmentally friendlier energy production and use as well as to enhance the market position and energy industrial capabilities of chinese state owned or state supervised energy companies based on a comprehensive set of domestic incentives for international investment the chinese penetration of the european energy sector is embedded within two levels of political cooperation the first level revolves around bilateral investment agreements between china and 27 eu member states on the second level china and the eu have established a variety of formats that guide their energy cooperation the conclusion of the proposed bilateral investment agreement between the prc and the eu would create a uniform investment environment across the continent and facilitate mutual economic benefits for both parties

entry and competitive dynamics in the mobile telecommunications market abstract we propose an extension of the gans stern gans j s stern s 2003 the product market and the market for ideas commercialization strategies for technology entrepreneurs research policy 32 2 333 350 framework that includes entry by existing firms an incumbent firm possessing complementary assets and strong appropriability is in a formidable position teece d j 1986 profiting from technological innovation implications for integration collaboration licensing and public policy research policy 15 6 285 305 however a de alio entrant can leverage complementary assets to enter along a new technological trajectory and then develop appropriability we illustrate how several mobile telecommunications firms ericsson nokia and samsung pursued this strategy to catch up with the market leader motorola we also identify several shortcomings in motorola s approach it was too inward looking in developing technologies but ironically not inward looking enough in exploiting its most valuable patents

elicitation of honest preferences for the assignment of individuals to positions the problem of eliciting honest preferences from individuals who must be assigned to a set of positions is considered individuals know that they will be charged for the positions to which they are assigned a set of prices that provide no incentive for the individual to misrepresent his preferences is suggested it is shown that these prices constitute an element of the optimal solution to the dual of a linear programming assignment problem both the optimal allocation and the prices to be charged can be derived by solving two linear programming problems once preferences have been elicited the procedure can usefully be viewed as a simulation of a competitive market under conditions where such a market cannot be expected to function well it results in an efficient allocation where all resources are valued at their opportunity costs and consumer surplus is maximized its outcome thus has the desirable properties of competitive market equilibria

evaluating china s natural gas supply security based on ecological network analysis abstract growing role of natural gas as an effective policy choice has kindled the discussions surrounding the security of its supplies in the policy circles of the chinese government this study tries to evaluate china s natural gas supply security and employs a system oriented modelling approach namely ecological network analysis ena to integrate all the critical compartments of china s natural gas supply system several ena indicators are constructed which disclose that domestic natural gas production contributes significantly to china s natural gas supply system in comparison with all the external natural gas suppliers in addition the variations in a system stability indicator suggest that diversification of external natural gas suppliers has a positive influence on china s natural gas supply security furthermore the results revealed that china s natural gas supply security policy is orchestrated on following features 1 to increase the investment in the upstream natural gas production sector to boost its domestic production in order to reduce its import requirements and 2 to diversify the external natural gas supplies by sources and routes to reduce the level of the economic and supply disruption related risks

challenges and countermeasures of china s energy security china is now a major consumer and importer of energy and its choices and policies will increasingly affect the rest of the world this paper analyses the key features of china s energy policy as it faces the prospect of possible challenges to its energy security given the increasing reliance on fuel imports and the need to transform its energy to meet the requirements of a modern fast growing economy the paper examines whether the current energy mix is appropriate and sustainable and considers the china s policymakers new emphasis on energy efficiency conservation renewable energy and the shift to natural gas the primary energy source it examines the internal and external constraints on china s energy policy and considers the strategic dilemmas arising from china s increasing involvement in international energy markets it concludes that both the domestic and international implications of china s search for energy security will confront policymakers with hard choices that will affect not only energy policy but also china s geopolitical grand strategy

when do stronger patents increase continual innovation under continual innovation greater patent strength expands innovating firms profit against imitation but also shifts profit from current to past innovators we show how the impact of patents on innovation as determined by these two opposing effects varies with industry characteristics when the discount factor is sufficiently high the negative profit division effect is negligible and innovation monotonically increases in patent strength otherwise innovation has an inverted u relationship with patent strength and stronger patents are more likely to increase innovation when the discount factor or the fixed innovation cost is higher we also show how the impact of patents on innovation may change with firms innovation capability and with the intensity of competition from imitators

industry technical committees technological distance and innovation performance abstract in most technology based markets industry technical committees tcs that establish new technical standards and specifications have assumed importance for companies as a critical source of information on existing and emerging technologies in this study we investigate how the technological distance of a tc from the firm will shape the impact of tc participation on the firm s innovation performance specifically we posit that participation in tcs that are central low technological distance to the company s existing product technologies and offerings will contribute to its competence enhancing innovation whereas participation in tcs that are peripheral high technological distance to current technologies and offerings will contribute to its new competence innovation given the need to interpret and apply the information internally we also consider the moderating effects of the firm s absorptive capacity and knowledge integration mechanisms the study hypotheses are validated by combining survey based and archival data related to a sample of 168 us based wireless telecommunication firms the findings provide broad support for the study theses and imply the need for companies to carefully plan the nature of their tc participation so as to advance the desired type of innovation broader implications for future research on external knowledge sourcing and competence based innovation are discussed

safe nests in global nets internationalization and appropriability of r d in wireless telecom this paper documents the case of the wireless telecom industry to bring new empirical evidence to the debate on the internationalization of research and development r d activities us patent statistics on the four industry leaders ericsson motorola nokia and qualcomm illustrate the growing trend of the internationalization of r d over the 1990s yet we show that the most critical r d projects related to the development of wireless standards remain homebound the paper then leverages qualitative data collected through interviews with informed managers to provide a fresh interpretation for the homeboundedness of critical industrial r d the stickiness of core r d projects to domestic locations is related not only to organizational inertia and the unripe maturation of subsidiaries as suggested by prior literature but particularly to the headquarters centralization of intellectual property ip management which offers a high level of appropriability of r d results the unequal distribution of appropriability across corporate r d networks is at the base of the formation of safe nests domestic r d centers that are sheltered from the forces of globalization because they offer a desirable setting for the exploitation of technologies deriving from a stronger coordination of inventive activities with the management of ip

vacancies in supply chain networks we use the supply chain matching framework to study the effects of firm exit we show that the exit of an initial supplier or end consumer has monotonic effects on the welfare of initial suppliers and end consumers but may simultaneously have positive and negative effects on intermediaries furthermore we demonstrate that there are no clear comparative statics for the effects of intermediary exit on the welfare of other firms most surprisingly intermediary exit may diminish the welfare of other firms at the same level of the supply chain

can foreign direct investment harness energy consumption in china a time series investigation abstract this study assesses the long run relationship and short run dynamics between foreign direct investment fdi and energy consumption in china applying the bounds testing approach to annual data from 1982 to 2012 we find that a stable fdi energy nexus exists in the long run and a 1 increase in fdi reduces energy consumption by 0 21 however this study shows a positive association between fdi and energy consumption in the short run attributing to the dominance of the scale effect our results remain robust to different measurements and estimators it is suggested that the chinese government shall support the inward fdi in the tertiary and energy sectors and strengthen local absorptive capacities to fully internalize fdi related knowledge spillovers in energy conservation

what determines china s crude oil importing trade patterns empirical evidences from 55 countries between 1992 and 2015 abstract this study develops a conceptual framework that synthesizes the supply demand price and openness of crude oil trade along with a list of traditional economic political and geographical factors to investigate the determinants of crude oil imports in emerging markets we test the framework using china s crude oil imports from 55 countries for the period from 1992 to 2015 using both static and dynamic panel data models we find that china s crude oil import is associated with exporting country s supply demand and price as well as its bilateral trade relationships these factors were found to affect china s import of crude oil from the middle east however only bilateral trade relationships affect its imports of crude oil from the asia pacific furthermore we do not find substantial evidence in this research to indicate that china s direct investment increases crude oil imports from those countries this article is part of a virtual special issue entitled comparing sustainable energy policies in northeast asia toward the harmonized public private partnership

ena based evaluation of energy supply security comparison between the chinese crude oil and natural gas supply systems abstract energy has become a scarce global strategic resource and energy supply security is receiving increasing attention a common evaluation platform is necessary to systematically understand the supply security levels of different energy sources and help make the national energy strategy ecological network analysis ena is thus regarded as a useful common tool to systematically simulate evaluate and compare the supply security for different energy sources when considering the fact that modern energy systems have formed a complex global energy network through extensive energy trading based on the established ena platform we evaluated and compared china s crude oil and natural gas supply security from 2000 to 2012 to this end we assessed the overall security level investigated the relationship among different compartments within the network system determined the system s structure and analyzed the system s properties it was found that the chinese crude oil supply security level was higher than that of the natural gas supply and that the crude oil supply system was more mature in terms of multiple properties suggestions are proposed to improve the chinese energy supply security based on further scenario analysis including increasing domestic energy production controlling energy consumption diversifying foreign supply sources and strengthening the strategic reserve the ena based common platform can be used for the systematic evaluation and improvement of energy supply security and further support national energy policymaking for both developed and developing countries both energy importers and exporters

do favorable land price policy affect renewable energy industry evidence from photovoltaics abstract renewable energy is necessary for sustainable social and economic development this is particularly so with global energy shortages the continuous deterioration of ecosystems and the environment as well as the world population explosion this article qualitatively and quantitatively analyzes the effects and problems of chinese favorable land price policy on photovoltaics in examining the favorable land price policy in china this study develops a multiple linear regression model to study the effects of favorable land price policy on photovoltaic power and photovoltaic industry data used in this research was mainly collected from 20 provinces in china it is found that the development of pv in china has been greatly affected by the favorable land price policy in the end it is highly recommended that favorable land price policy should be continued for renewable energy systemic deficiencies can be overcome through continual reform and innovation of mechanisms

a dynamic model of open source vs proprietary r d abstract we propose a dynamic model in which firms compete to produce sequential and cumulative innovations and in which the more firms do research in one sector the more likely it is that one of them innovates firms choose research effort and whether to patent innovations or to use an open source license like the general public license we show that i patents generate a larger stationary reward but foreclose research within a sector and that ii open source generates a smaller stationary reward but allows everyone to use the technology and therefore by attracting firms to the sector it induces a faster pace of innovation we characterize all the equilibria of the model and show that in equilibrium an open source sector appears only after a proprietary sector we also find conditions under which the model has a unique equilibrium in which a proprietary and an open source sector coexist and compete in the short run but the open source sector dominates the industry in the long run we use our model to study whether patents are inefficient and to explain firms behavior in the software and the biomedical industry

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

the integration of china into the world crude oil market since 1998 abstract the integration of china into the world oil market is an important issue for at least two reasons first the influence of the country on the world oil market is dependent on the level of the integration second integration into the world oil market means that china is opening itself up to potential disturbances in the world market and this leads to significant energy security concerns for the country the aim of this paper is to investigate whether or not china is an integral part of the world oil market by reviewing the relevant trade and pricing policies of the chinese government as well as the behavior of the chinese national oil companies we find that china is actively engaging itself in the world oil market our time series results show that the chinese oil price is cointegrated with the major oil prices in the world and a high degree of co movement between the prices is found causality between the price pairs is found to be bi directional in most cases the empirical results suggest that china is now an integral part of the world oil market

institutional regime shift in intellectual property rights and innovation strategies of firms in china this study develops a novel conceptual framework to understand the differential impact of formal institutional regime shift in intellectual property rights on the innovation and patenting strategies of chinese and western firms operating in china we argue that to the extent that chinese firms have been deeply embedded in china s informal institutions they are less responsive to formal institutional changes than western firms operating in china using the major china patent law reform of 2001 as an exogenous event we find results consistent with our key arguments with the strengthening of the previously weak utility model patent protection chinese firms are less likely to apply for such patents to safeguard their innovations than western firms however this difference becomes less pronounced in regions with higher quality intellectual property rights and legal institutions that foster research and development and innovation and when western firms gain longer operational experience in china this s

analyzing the evidence of an ipr take off in china and india abstract both china and india have been experiencing a historical take off in the use of intellectual property rights ipr in terms of trademark applications filed with domestic ip offices in 2009 the evidence demonstrates that china now ranks 1st worldwide and india 5th while for patent filings china ranks 3rd worldwide and india ranks 9th this performance is remarkable as both china and india experienced negligible demand for ipr protection as recently as two decades ago the ipr take up trends in these two countries are analyzed in detail highlighting the structure of patent and trademark demand since 1990 specifically the available series are broken down and analyzed according to i national versus foreign origin of patents and trademarks ii technological ipc and trademark nice classes and iii the major individual patent users in each country the data used refers to applications in the chinese and indian ip offices although the demand from residents of these two countries in both the international and other national systems is also assessed beyond the existing momentum in ipr registrations by china and india and their capacity to maintain it into the near future the paper addresses practical questions about the strategies motives and benefits behind the current trends in particular we seek to evaluate the capacity of both china s and india s national innovation systems to internalize the potential returns of this increasing demand for ipr the insight reached finds that should both china and india sustain their current ipr growth rates they will be able to catch up with the most advanced economies within the time span of a few decades

core structure and comparative statics in a hybrid matching market abstract flexible firms compete by means of wages in the assignment market while rigid firms have no flexibility over terms of appointment in the marriage market workers trade with both kinds of firms in the hybrid market examples show that standard results that characterize the core of the marriage market respectively assignment market are not robust to the entrance of flexible respectively rigid firms to this market a new algebraic structure provides a different characterization for the core of the hybrid model and reflects a sort of robustness to the exit of rigid respectively flexible firms from this market meaningful comparative static results are derived

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

the dragon awakens innovation competition and transition in the energy strategy of the people s republic of china 1949 2017 abstract based on a mix of original archival research and an extensive literature review this article assesses the history of the people s republic of china s national energy policies since 1949 we divide this history into six phases emergence 1949 1957 socialist construction 1958 1965 turbulence 1966 1978 reform 1979 2000 contestation 2001 2014 and transition 2015 present over the whole history of more than sixty years china s energy production and consumption grew at a surprising speed while energy intensity exhibited early fluctuations and a subsequent gradual decrease after the turbulence phase in tracing this history the article offers new historical and policy insights into the world s largest developing country and a theoretical contribution to the role of the state in shaping economy and society through energy policy the article lastly offers an in depth exploration of how command and control style administrative intervention and low levels of market liquidity have had a prophylactic effect on innovation and competition

standard setting organisations and standard essential patents voting and markets the analysis provides conditions under which standard setting organisations ssos choose efficient technology standards i introduce a two stage game with both voting and market competition in equilibrium standards and market outcomes are efficient even with market power from scarce capacity and standard essential patents seps i show that a drastic innovation with seps generates greater social welfare than a less efficient standard without seps a key finding is that voting power and market power have counterbalancing effects the discussion helps explain empirical observation of differences in sso voting rules intellectual property ip rules membership and alliances

interrelation between patenting and standardisation strategies empirical evidence and policy implications abstract this paper analyses the relationship between strategies to protect intellectual property rights and their impact on the likelihood of joining formal standardisation processes it is based on a small sample of european companies on the one hand theory suggests that the stronger the protection of own technological know how the higher the likelihood to join formal standardisation processes in order to leverage the value of the technological portfolio on the other hand companies at the leading edge are often in such a strong position that they do not need the support of standards to market their products successfully the results of the probit models to explain the likelihood to join standardisation processes support the latter theoretical hypothesis the higher the patent intensities of companies the lower is their tendency to join standardisation processes

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

a critical review of china s rapidly developing renewable energy and energy efficiency policies renewable energy and energy efficiency reee policies have far reaching implications for energy security climate change economic competitiveness pollution and human livelihood for these reasons reee has become a national priority for the chinese government particularly since 2005 this paper aims to critically review china s reee policies in six sectors electricity industry transportation buildings and local government in addition to examining the progress china has made in the development and implementation of reee policies this review also identifies limitations and room for improvement finally five policy recommendations are presented

china s energy security perception and reality abstract china now the world s second largest economy is worried about energy security which underpins the core objectives of beijing and the political legitimacy of the communist party of china the purpose of this study is to explore certain popular myths about china s energy security the study consists of six parts after the introduction it formulates the obscure concept of energy security and attempts to contextualize it with chinese characteristics then it explicitly points out that the largest driver of oil demand by china as the world s factory is transport instead of industry next it explores the effectiveness of transnational pipelines as a measure of energy security and explains why they are less effective than many observers have previously assumed furthermore it investigates the global expansion of chinese national oil companies and questions their actual contribution to energy security a few concluding remarks then follow

energy security measurement a sustainable approach abstract the main objective of this paper is to define new energy security indicator with the long term sustainability and to test it in a sample of 28 european union countries for the period 1990 2012 as well as to determine the level of impact of six different indicators on energy security the previous methodologies for measuring of energy security have been mainly focused on security of supply while not taking into account environmental indicators and the social component the newly proposed indicator energy security index differs from the existing measuring methods precisely in a way that it includes environmental and social aspects energy security index recorded a decline in values in most countries in the period 1990 2000 in the period 2000 2008 the values became positive and after 2008 some countries reported again gradual deterioration the index value varies by year and the biggest positive changes were recorded in the case of the netherlands slovenia and spain the four economically strongest eu countries the united kingdom france germany and italy recorded significantly less fluctuations in energy security over 23 years compared to other countries the data for france and denmark show that an increased share of energy from nuclear and renewable sources can compensate even increased energy import dependence the assessment of impact of individual indicators on energy security index was conducted by using principal component analysis and showed that energy intensity gdp per capita and carbon intensity have the greatest impact the countries of the former eastern bloc are facing particular challenges of energy security which is primarily related to the rapid economic growth and at the same time a high degree of dependence on import of energy generating products in terms of energy security the most stable transition was reported in hungary and poland

evaluation of electricity supply sustainability and security multi criteria decision analysis approach abstract electricity supply plays a significantly important role in national economy and society development accordingly the evaluation of electricity supply sustainability and security as an early warning method is beneficial for the decision makers policy makers to take various measures to enhance electricity supply sustainability and security this study aims at developing a multi criteria decision analysis framework for electricity supply sustainability and security evaluation and a total of nine metrics i e shannon weiner index electricity import dependence supply adequacy rural electrification rate electric power losses ratio residential consumption ratio electricity per gross domestic product electric power consumption per capita and fossil fuel dependence in four dimensions including availability and security of supply affordability and reliability energy and economic efficiency and environmental stewardship were employed for electricity supply sustainability and security evaluation fuzzy analytic hierarchy process which allows the users to use linguistic terms to express their opinions was used to determine the weights of the criteria which represent their relative importance in the evaluation of electricity supply sustainability and security grey rational analysis was used to prioritize the status of electricity supply sustainability and security of different countries in different years the electricity supply sustainability and security of the five major emerging national economies brazil russia india china and south africa was studied in chinese perspective by the proposed method

prospects of pakistan china energy and economic corridor abstract china s seaborne foreign oil supply through the strait of malacca is facing challenges because of territorial disputes pirate attacks and geopolitics the pakistan china energy and economic corridor pceec offers the option of constructing an oil pipeline to bypass the strait of malacca this paper studied the prospects of the pceec in the context of the security of china s foreign oil supply chain we assessed all the existing and proposed oil supply routes from the middle east and africa to china s border in terms of supply timeframes costs energy consumption and ghg emissions we used weight based model to estimate the capex opex and per barrel levelized cost of a proposed oil pipeline in the pceec from economic time energy and environmental perspective our assessment suggested that the construction of an oil pipeline in the pceec would be compatible with the existing routes and offer the shortest time for transporting oil to china s border the pceec would offer numerous prospects for regional energy and economic connectivity for both countries and the region including social economic commercial and geopolitical benefits

common and conflicting interests in two sided matching markets abstract this paper reviews and synthesizes some of what is now known about what i will call two sided matching markets a number of such models which arise naturally in the study of certain labor markets have been shown to have surprising implications about the common and conflicting interests of the agents and about the incentives they face

the strategy structure of two sided matching markets we study two sided markets in which agents are buyers and sellers or firms and workers or men and women the agents are to form partnerships which provide them with satisfaction and at the same time make monetary transfers e g salaries or dowries the core of this market game is shown to have a particularly nice structure so that precise answers can be given to questions concerning comparative statics and manipulability the idea of using walrasian equilibrium as a mechanism for making allocations with desirable properties of fairness and efficiency has been studied extensively the scheme involves having agents specify their supply and demand functions the competitive equilibria are then calculated and allocations are made accordingly in general this procedure may run into two difficulties first nonuniqueness if there are several equilibria there may be no fair way to decide which one should be implemented and second manipulability if there is only one equilibrium an informed agent may be able to influence it by suitably falsifying his demand data however as we will show here using the walrasian mechanism does work remarkably well for a certain class of important markets these are the matching markets of our title and they include markets for single items like houses where it is assumed that traders do not wish to acquire more than one item they also include labor markets in which it is desired to match workers with jobs at suitable salaries academic markets in which students are to be assigned to educational institutions marriage markets where men and women are matched through negotiating of dowries it turns out that in these markets both the problems of nonuniqueness and manipulability can be resolved in a

patent enforcement a review of the literature without the confidence that patent rights can be enforced quickly and efficiently when needed the patent system will not stimulate innovation for this reason governments academics international institutions and the private sector have poured significant resources into gathering and analysing statistics on patent enforcement over the last two decades this paper reviews these studies and finds that while infringement is relatively common much enforcement occurs informally and less than 1 2 of patents incur litigation new strategic uses of the enforcement system especially by nonpracticing entities are the major emerging enforcement issue especially in the united states while the old problem of litigation costs attracts the lion s share of empirical attention it has produced remarkably few solutions to date

the role of patents in information and communication technologies a survey of the literature during the last few decades the number of patents in information and communication technologies has increased considerably an increasing number of patents and the associated fragmentation of ip rights have generated a series of potentially problematic consequences patent thickets royalty stacking the emergence of patent assertion entities increased patent litigation particularly around standard essential patents and the difficulties with defining fair reasonable and nondiscriminatory licensing terms are some of the most debated issues in the literature that we review in this paper we devote a specific section of our survey to patent quality currently one of the most debated issues surrounding the patent system in our analysis we mix theoretical and empirical arguments with a more policy oriented reasoning this allows us to better position the different issues in the relevant political and economic context

novelty and disclosure in patent law the stringency of the novelty requirement in patent law affects the pace of innovation because it affects the amount of technical information that is disclosed among firms it also affects ex ante profitability of research we compare weak and strong novelty requirements from the standpoint of social efficiency we ask how our answer depends on the rule that determines which firm gets a patent when two firms have patents pending on the same technology the possible rules are first to invent which applies in the u s and first to file which applies everywhere else

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

the impact of standards and regulation on innovation in uncertain markets abstract this study analyses the impact of formal standards and regulation on firms innovation efficiency considering different levels of market uncertainty we argue that formal standards and regulation have different effects depending on the extent of market uncertainty derived from theoretical considerations about information asymmetry and regulatory capture our empirical analysis is based on the german community innovation survey cis the results show that formal standards lead to lower innovation efficiency in markets with low uncertainty while regulations have the opposite effect in cases of high market uncertainty we observe that regulation leads to lower innovation efficiency while formal standards have the reverse effect our results have important implications for the future application of both instruments showing that their benefits heavily depend on the market environment

meso level factors in technological transitions the development of td scdma in china this paper uses an industry case study of technological transition from second generation 2g to third generation 3g networks in china to unfold how meso level factors drove the development of td scdma china s home born 3g standard in this purposive transitional process under the coordination of a central authority multiple regime actors government agencies engaged in bargaining negotiation and consensus building that determined the developmental directions and outcome of td scdma td scdma proved to be a political success but an economic failure the policy implications are profound in particular as the silo regulatory model of policy making which focuses on a single industry is gradually replaced by a collective model involving interindustry players issues about how to manage the collective model pose a serious challenge to policy makers in china and other emerging countries the paper provides evidence for the importance of meso level factors in the multi level perspective mlp framework of sociotechnical transitions

entry and structures of interest groups in assignment games abstract this paper presents several comparative statics results concerning the entry problem in assignment games the results compare sets of equilibria and hence do not require the usual assumption of a unique equilibrium by the device of a competing group generator the set of players is decomposed into three interest groups for which three forms of entry effects are identified for the group with the strongest entry effect it is found that generically 1 the benefit functions form a complete ordering and 2 the turnover effect dominates the unemployment effect the implications of these results to bargaining immigrations and matching problems are discussed

an investigation into the dynamic relationship between international and china s crude oil prices abstractthis article studies the dynamic relationship between international wti brent and dubai and domestic da qing crude oil prices in china using threshold cointegration method we find evidence of a long run equilibrium relationship between each pair of international and da qing oil prices favouring the market integration hypothesis we also estimate asymmetric adjustments under the momentum threshold autoregressive m tar specification in a tvecm and the results show that adjustments to eliminate disequilibrium happen faster when oil price spread increases than when it decreases the long run and short run granger causality tests support the notion that china has influence on the international oil markets the results imply that china should open up its domestic and imported oil markets and also establish a well functioning crude oil futures market as they are essential for arbitrage and hedging strategies

assessment of energy security in china based on ecological network analysis a perspective from the security of crude oil supply abstract energy security usually considers both the stability of energy supply and security of energy use and it is receiving increasing attention globally considering the strategic importance and sensitivity to international change of the crude oil supply we decided to examine china s energy security an original network model was established based on ecological network analysis to holistically evaluate the security of the crude oil supply in china using this model we found that the security of the crude oil supply in china generally increased from 2001 to 2010 the contribution of different compartments in the network to the overall energy security resembled a pyramid structure with supply sources at the bottom the consumption sector at the top and the refining and transfer sectors in the middle north and south america made the largest contribution to the security of the crude oil supply in china we provide suggestions to improve the security of the crude oil supply in china based on our results and further scenario analysis the original network model provides a new perspective for energy security assessment which can be used as a baseline to develop other models and policy

supply push or demand pull strategic recommendations for the responsible development of biofuel in china this study investigates china s biofuel industry the third largest in the world by combining a strength weakness opportunity and threats swot analysis with a method known as fuzzy analytic hierarchy process fahp more specifically the study employs swot analysis to identify the influential factors affecting the development of the biofuel industry in china it then prioritizes their importance using the fahp method the study finds that high production costs competition with other renewable energy resources inconsistent policy and legislation support and poor technical standards are impeding the growth of the biofuel industry of china the study concludes by proposing strategic recommendations for how the industry can be made both leaner more efficient and effective and greener more socially and environmentally sustainable some of these options focuses on improving technical perform adhering to a supply push mentality others focus on improving affordability and consumer awareness adhering to a demand pull mentality