intergenerational mobility under private vs public education intergenerational earnings mobility is analyzed in a model where human capital is produced using schooling and parental time in steady states more mobile societies have less inequality but in the short run higher mobility may result from an increase in inequality starting from the same inequality mobility is higher under public than under private education a rise in income shocks for example due to increased returns to ability or a switch from public to private schooling both increase inequality however increased shocks raise mobility in the short run and do not affect it in the long run whereas an increased role for private schooling reduces mobility in both the short and long run that these differences may help to identify the source of changes in inequality and other real world implications are illustrated in a brief discussion of time trends and cross country differences

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

litigation and settlement in patent infringement cases a patent grants its owner the right to sue intruders that have been identified the patentholder must then supervise the market and react in case of infringement his reaction may be to go to court to settle or to accept entry we investigate how intensive the monitoring effort should be and how it will influence the entry decision in a simultaneous game even if the penalty paid by the infringer in case of a finding of liability is high the patentholder may prefer a settlement to a trial the likelihood of entry may increase with the penalty in sequential games regardless who plays first entry occurs comparatively less often than in the simultaneous game

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

tilting the table the use of preliminary injunctions abstract this paper examines the economic role of preliminary injunctions in legal disputes we present a model in which differences in financing costs drive the use of preliminary injunction and explore the implications of this legal remedy for ex post efficiency and ex ante incentives controlling for the nature of the dispute we examine the relationships between the financial status of litigating parties and whether a preliminary injunction is requested the empirical analysis uses detailed data compiled for a sample of 252 patent suits and reveals patterns generally consistent with those suggested by the model

fiscal policy composition of intergenerational transfers and income distribution abstract in this paper we characterize the relationship between the initial distribution of human capital and physical inheritances among individuals and the long run distribution of these two variables in a model with indivisible investment in education we analyze how the initial distribution of income determines the posterior intergenerational mobility in human capital and the evolution of intragenerational income inequality this analysis enables us in turn to characterize the effects of fiscal policy on future income distribution and mobility when the composition of intergenerational transfers is endogenous to this end we consider the following government interventions a pay as you go social security system a tax on inheritance a tax on capital income a tax on labor income and a subsidy on education investment

educational inequality and intergenerational mobility in latin america a new database abstract the causes and consequences of the intergenerational persistence of inequality are a topic of great interest among various fields in economics however until now issues of data availability have restricted a broader and cross national perspective on the topic based on rich sets of harmonized household survey data we contribute to filling this gap by computing time series for several indexes of relative and absolute intergenerational education mobility for 18 latin american countries over 50 years and making them publicly available we find that intergenerational mobility is on average rising in latin america this pattern seems to be driven by the high upward mobility of children from low educated families at the same time there is substantial immobility at the top of the distribution significant cross country differences are observed and are associated with income inequality poverty economic growth public educational expenditures and assortative mating

protecting intellectual property rights are small firms handicapped this paper studies the determinants of patent suits and settlements during 1978 99 by linking information from the u s patent office the federal courts and industry sources we find that litigation risk is much higher for patents that are owned by individuals and firms with small patent portfolios patentees with a large portfolio of patents to trade or other characteristics that facilitate cooperative resolution of disputes are much less likely to prosecute infringement suits however postsuit outcomes do not depend on these characteristics these findings show that small patentees are at a significant disadvantage in protecting their patent rights because their greater litigation risk is not offset by more rapid resolution of their suits our empirical estimates of the heterogeneity in litigation risk can help in developing private patent litigation insurance to mitigate the adverse affects of high enforcement costs

persistent inequality an explanation based on limited parental altruism abstract this paper proposes an alternative theory for the observed persistence in income inequality across households a theory based on limited parental altruism we argue that the degree of parental altruism is limited by the economic status of the parent a poor parent not only has less ability but also has less willingness to invest in children s human capital formation this generates a non linearity in such investment expenditures as a result initial income differences may perpetuate over time even with convex technology and convex preferences in this context we also compare the efficacy of the public vis a vis the private education system from the perspective of long run growth

political repression and child labour theory and empirical evidence most normative studies on child labour arrive at the conclusion that child labour is detrimental to social welfare child labour is however still prevalent in many developing countries even though in many of these countries it is forbidden by law in this paper we develop a political economic model that explains lenient enforcement of existing child labour legislation the most important implication of our model is that in countries with repressive political regimes enforcement is more lenient and child labour thus more prevalent than in countries enjoying political freedom we test this implication and find that it is confirmed by the data

worldwide venture capital intellectual property rights and innovation this study based on the historical data of venture capital vc investment and patenting for 99 countries and 83 industries explores the effects of vc investment on firms innovation in different intellectual property rights ipr environments worldwide utilizing large data sets and various empirical models our negative binomial and panel data analysis presents the significant and positive impacts of vc investment and ipr parameters on firms innovation controlling for cultural regulatory and economic and market conditions of the business environment however vc investment is more effective in weaker ipr environments this effect is robust to a number of different specifications for endogeneity among other things the economic effect is pronounced the impact of vc on patents is up to five times more pronounced between the weakest and strongest ipr regime in the sample

letting rivals come close or warding them off the effects of substitution threat on imitation deterrence a resource based theory postulate is that firms must defend their resources against imitation to sustain competitive advantage however by deterring imitation firms may induce rivals to create su

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

social capital in dis similar democracies the development of generalized trust in japan and switzerland this article evaluates the foundations of a key component of social capital namely generalized trust in japan and switzerland although the two countries are remarkably different they share a nu

should higher education subsidies depend on parental income textabstractin many countries student grants tuition fees and subsidized loans depend on parental income this paper examines the efficiency and distributional effects of such conditioning and assesses whether it is optimal practice when the government wants to reduce after tax income inequality in the most efficient manner increasing the mean level of education among the work force compresses wage differentials by level of education and thereby the pre tax income distribution hence subsidizing education may be part of an optimal redistribution policy however education subsidies mainly benefit high ability students limiting their redistributive virtues conditioning education subsidies on parental income may enable the government to reduce inframarginal subsidies mainly benefiting high ability students while preserving the marginal subsidy and thus the favourable effect on the mean education level which leads to wage compression

the effect of environmental regulation on optimal plant size and factor shares the method for measuring the effects of environmental regulation on the size distribution of industrial plants and the distribution of factor shares described in this paper focuses on the 20 industries with highest per unit pollution abatement costs and the 20 with the lowest costs the study finds that compliance with environmental laws has not only reduced the number of plants in the affected industries but has placed a greater burden on small rather than on large plants besides redistributing within industry market shares environmental regulation has increased the use of capital relative to labor although the disproportionate burden placed on small plants in the high abatement cost industries may have been unintended it is likely that large firms will be less vocal opponents of environmental regulation than are small firms 22 references 12 tables

patent office in innovation policy nobody s perfect abstract the number of patent applications and bad patents issued has been rising rapidly in recent years based on this trend we study the overload problem within the patent office and its consequences on the firms r d incentives we assume that the examination process of patent applications is imperfect and that its quality is poorer under congestion depending on policy instruments such as submission fees and the toughness of the non obviousness requirement the system may result in a high r d equilibrium in which firms self select in their patent applications or in an equilibrium with low r d opportunistic patent applications and the issuance of bad patents multiple equilibria often co exist which deeply undermines the effectiveness of policy instruments we investigate the robustness of our conclusions as to how the value of patent protection is formalized taking into consideration the introduction of a penalty system for rejected patent applications as well as the role of commitment to a given patent protection policy

returns to education a further international update and implications this paper updates evidence on the returns to investment in education by adding estimates for new countries and refining existing estimates to bring the total number of country cases to over 60 the new cross country evidence confirms and reinforces earlier patterns namely that returns are highest for primary education the general curricula the education of women and countries with the lowest per capita income the findings have important implications for directing future investment in education which for efficiency and equity purposes should concentrate on these priority areas

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

litigation and settlement an empirical approach litigants in civil lawsuits involving monetary damages often find an out of court settlement preferable to a trial most theoretical models of settlement choice employ an expected utility maximizing framework that emphasizes the importance of risk preferences litigation costs and the distribution of trial awards an empirical model of settlement choice is used to examine whether the variables prominent in the theoretical literature are statistically useful in explaining the occurrence and monetary value of settlements estimates from a sample of civil filings provide new empirical evidence of how the legal system affects the behavior of litigants during the settlement process copyright 1989 by mit press

the settlement of patent litigation in this article i develop a model to analyze patent licensing that is induced as part of a settlement agreement to avoid litigation of the issue of patent validity the patentee possesses private information about patent validity and makes a take it or leave it settlement offer to a single potential rival an essentially unique sequential equilibrium exists if out of equilibrium beliefs are restricted appropriately the model analyzes the effect of the probability of settlement and litigation

the costs of inefficient bargaining and financial distress abstract this study provides the first large sample analysis of the stock market reactions to interfirm litigation when a suit is filed the common stock of the typical defendant declines by about 1 while the plaintiff experiences no significant gains for the average pair of firms the combined drop in value upon filing is 21 million much of the loss is regained if the suit is settled the findings suggest that bargaining among firm claimants sometimes leads to very inefficient outcomes part of the leakage is explained by the costs of increased financial distress imposed on the defendant

intergenerational earnings mobility inequality and growth abstract we examine a model in which per capita income inequality intergenerational mobility and returns to education are all determined endogenously individuals earn wages depending on their ability which is a random variable they purchase an education with transfers received from their parents and are subject to liquidity constraints in the model multiple steady state equilibria are possible countries with identical tastes and technologies can reach differing rates of mobility inequality and per capita income equilibria with higher levels of output also have lower inequality higher mobility and more efficient distribution of education

social mobility what is it and why does it matter the definition of social mobility is a matter of debate in the following discussion conceptual issues in the literature on mobility are commented this paper defines social mobility as a situation in which the relative economic status of an agent is not dependent on starting conditions such as parental income or family background analyzing the determinants of mobility involves exploring the channels through which offspring s income is correlated to its parents such as inherited bequest education skills among many others this survey explores in an analytical framework the relation between social mobility and inequality among other important dimensions of income distribution that are jointly determined the focus is on the relevance of social mobility as it affects variables determining welfare and economic efficiency and therefore on policies to promote it

endogenous capital market imperfections human capital and intergenerational mobility in this paper capital market imperfections are endogenized considering an adverse selection problem between banks and borrowers we develop a growth model with linear olg wealth dynamics where agents are heterogeneous in terms of observable wealth and ability which is private information we show that banks react to this informational asymmetry by granting higher loans to talented borrowers this in turn helps poor and talented agents to become educated and catch up with the rich agents furthermore the credit market friction leads to greater human capital accumulation

what makes companies pursue an open science strategy whereas recent scholarly research has provided many insights about universities engaging in commercial activities there is still little empirical evidence regarding the opposite phenomenon of companies disseminating scientific knowledge our paper aims to fill this gap and explores the motivations of firms that disclose research outcomes in a scientific format besides considering a dimension internal to the firm we focus particularly on knowledge sourcing from academic institutions and the appropriability regime we conduct an econometric analysis with firm level data from the fourth edition of the french innovation survey cis and matched scientific publications for a sample of 2512 rd performing firms from all manufacturing sectors this analysis provides evidence that firms are more likely to adopt academic principles if they need to access scientific knowledge that is considered important for their innovation development whereas the mere existence of collaborative links with academic institutions is not a strong determinant furthermore the results suggest that the inclination of firms to publish is sensitive to the level of knowledge spillovers in a sector and the effectiveness of legal appropriation instruments c 2013 elsevier b v all rights reserved

the firm strikes back non compete agreements and the mobility of technical professionals this study explores how firms shape labor markets and career paths using employee non compete agreements the sociology of work has overlooked non competes but data indicate that nearly half of technical professionals in the united states are asked to sign such employment contracts fearing loss of investments in talent and trade secrets firms use non competes to strike back against technical professionals increased mobility following the decline of internal labor markets in depth interviews with 52 randomly sampled patent holders in a single industry coupled with a survey of 1 029 engineers across a variety of industries reveal that ex employees subject to non competes are more likely to take career detours that is they involuntarily leave their technical field to avoid a potential lawsuit moreover firms strategically manage the process of getting workers to sign such contracts waiting for workers bargaining position to weaken these findings inform our understanding of the social organizati

spillovers stratification and inequality this paper surveys some recent work which seeks to model persistent income inequality and explain such phenomena as ghetto formation and poverty traps the paper illustrates how a number of these models possess a common structure in which local spillover effects interact with income based stratification of neighborhoods to transmit parental economic status from generation to generation as such these models represent an extension of the macroeconomic literature on spillovers and coordination failures to economic environments which endogenize the interaction environments of individual agents the theoretical and empirical justifications of these spillover and stratification effects are discussed finally some empirical implications of these models are analyzed

patents and cumulative innovation causal evidence from the courts cumulative innovation is central to economic growth do patent rights facilitate or impede such follow on innovation this paper studies the effect of removing patent protection through court invalidation on the subsequent research related to the focal patent as measured by later citations we exploit random allocation of judges at the u s court of appeal for the federal circuit to control for the endogeneity of patent invalidation we find that patent invalidation leads to a 50 percent increase in subsequent citations to the focal patent on average but the impact is highly heterogeneous patent rights appear to block follow on innovation only in the technology fields of computers electronics and medical instruments moreover the effect is entirely driven by invalidation of patents owned by large patentees that triggers entry of small innovators suggesting that patents may impede the democratization of innovation

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

education technologies wages and technological progress abstract we analyze the worker s incentives to acquire skills under technological progress when the costs of education are endogenous and depend on the wage distribution we show that the agent s intergenerational elasticity of substitution plays then a relevant role in determining how incentives and the long run wage distribution react to technological progress moreover whenever poverty traps of unskilled workers exist higher rates of technological progress can even decrease the incentives of low skill workers to acquire skills we also analyze the effects of educational subsidies in contrast with previous analytical findings we obtain that subsidies always decrease the long run skill premium finally we study the efficiency of the resulting competitive equilibria

intergenerational persistence of earnings the role of early and college education recent empirical evidence from the united states indicates a high degree of persistence in earnings across generations designing effective public policies to increase social mobility requires identifying and measuring the major sources of persistence and inequality in earnings we provide a quantitative model of intergenerational human capital transmission that focuses on three sources innate ability early education and college education we find that approximately one half of the intergenerational correlation in earnings is accounted for by parental investment in education in particular early education we show that these results have important implications for education policy

international trade and the accumulation of human capital changes in the terms of trade affect both the incentives and the ability of individuals to purchase education in a credit constrained economy a model is developed that shows how individual decision making is affected in a small economy when it opens up to trade empirical results indicate that credit constraints are an important factor influencing school enrollment rates particularly in low income countries as a result countries with low human capital stocks tend to increase their accumulation of human capital with increased trade the response in high income countries is more muted

litigation liability and incentives for care abstract in this paper potential injurers are subject to a negligence standard and differ in cost of taking care in the event of accident the injurer s degree of care is private information in litigation that follows award of damages for pain and suffering will lead to a general increase in care and hence reduce the likehood of accident a tighter negligence standard will lead some potential injurers to take more care and others to take less adoption of a rule under which the loser at trial must pay the litigation costs of the winner will reduce the pressure for punitive damages

inequality and growth uncovering the main conclusions from the empirics abstractthis paper is a critical survey of the empirical literature on the effects of inequality on economic growth we conclude that it is most likely that the disparities found in the results are due to differences in the type of countries and time periods included in the samples the variable used to measure inequality the structure of the data and the estimation techniques these findings suggest that the mechanisms that link inequality to growth are likely to operate differently in different circumstances an element that may offer important guidelines for both policy makers and researchers

eating the rich vs feeding the poor borrowing constraints and the reluctance to redistribute this paper offers an explanation why most democracies arecharacterized by moderate taxation of wealth although thewealth distribution is persistently skewed to the right wemodel an economy in which agents have to acquire highereducation to qualify for skilled work and in which capitalmarket imperfections prevent poor individuals from making sucha profitable human capital investment if these borrowingconstraints do not bind for members of the middle class theymay rationally reject redistribution although both the currentand the future median of the wealth distribution are below themean

what is behind the recent surge in patenting abstract we investigate the cause of an unprecedented surge of us patenting over the past decade conventional wisdom points to the establishment of the court of appeals of the federal circuit by congress in 1982 we examine whether this institutional change which has benefited patent holders explains the burst in us patenting using both international and domestic data on patent applications and awards we conclude that the evidence is not favorable to the conventional view instead it appears that the jump in patenting reflects an increase in us innovation spurred by changes in the management of research

ethnic capital and intergenerational mobility this paper analyzes the extent to which ethnic skill differentials are transmitted across generations i assume that ethnicity acts as an externality in the human capital accumulation process the skills of the next generation depend on parental inputs and on the quality of the ethnic environment in which parents make their investments or ethnic capital the empirical evidence reveals that the skills of today s generation depend not only on the skills of their parents but also on the average skills of the ethnic group in the parent s generation

public education and intergenerational economic mobility this paper examines the role of public education in determining intergenerational economic mobility it considers a model in which education is free and admission to schools is competitive the results indicate that for mobility to increase during the process of development the share of resources devoted to public education needs to be large enough to offset the relative advantage of having educated parents in academic attainment

unintentional unavoidable and beneficial knowledge leakage from the multinational enterprise knowledge leakage as an undesirable outcome for mnes is an accepted view in ib literature we challenge this view and argue that knowledge leakage is often unintentional unavoidable and beneficial for the mne in a highly networked and information rich society knowledge leakage from mnes 1 happens naturally due to interfirm relationships interactions and socialization 2 is unavoidable due to employee mobility and 3 facilitates knowledge inflows due to the reciprocity nature of knowledge exchange and hence is beneficial for mnes in addition the costs of protecting knowledge incurred by an mne will often outweigh the benefits

the value of intellectual property rights to firms and society economists view intellectual property rights iprs as policy tools for encouraging innovation but they recognize that they can also inhibit competition there are many types of iprs and institutions concerned with their administration we begin by outlining how these complex and varied rights are supposed to work and how they interact with other characteristics of firms and markets we then survey the available literature on patents trade marks and copyright to assess the value of these iprs to firms and the costs to firms of acquiring and defending their rights the paper concludes with suggestions for topics requiring further research to inform public policy better

appropriate intellectual property protection and economic growth in countries at different levels of development this paper examines how the role of patents and utility models in innovation and economic growth varies by level of economic development using a panel dataset of over 70 countries we find that patent protection is an important determinant of innovation and that patentable innovations contribute to economic growth in developed countries but not in developing instead in developing economies a minor form of intellectual property rights iprs namely utility models is conducive to innovation and growth controlling for other factors using korean firm level data as a case study we find that utility model innovations contribute to firm performance when firms are technologically lagging and that those minor innovations can be a learning device and thus a stepping stone for developing more patentable inventions later on upon reaching higher levels of technological capabilities firms become more reliant upon patents and less on utility models thus the lesson here is that patent protection enhances innovation and economic growth in countries where the capacity to conduct innovative research exists where this capacity is weaker a system that provides incentives to conduct minor incremental inventions is more conducive to growth the significance of this paper is to emphasize the importance not just of the strength of iprs but of the appropriate type of iprs for economic development

the economics of product patents this paper develops a model of product patents in which the patent changes the nature of market entry behavior rather than preventing entry entirely the model incorporates three levels of action namely the innovator s patenting decision the potential entrant s location decision and possible court action the analysis demonstrates how the characteristics of the patents system and the enforcement framework can influence rivals variety choices and thus the market equilibrium it also considers how the system can in principle be adjusted to improve social welfare copyright 1990 by american economic association

stratification and growth in agent based matching markets abstract this paper examines the dynamic impact of matching on economic mobility and growth to account for complex interactions over time experimental economies of heterogeneous agents are simulated with the match process acting as a fitness selection mechanism even with perfect information and substantial variety in both offspring and entrants two sided matching inevitably causes the population to evolve into stratified groups corrective measures are possible to improve mobility but by altering the path of market evolution a policy may have unintended impacts on growth and inequality

josh lerner recipient of the 2010 global award for entrepreneurship research this article describes the academic contributions of the 2010 recipient of the global award for entrepreneurship research professor josh lerner of the harvard business school lerner s empirical research on the inter relationship between venture capital innovation and entrepreneurship has greatly extended and improved our understanding of one of the major drivers of growth in modern economies the first part of this article explains lerner s contributions as regards the structure and organization of the venture capital industry later his most important publications on entrepreneurship innovation and intellectual property rights are surveyed several aspects of lerner s policy oriented work are then outlined before the article closes with a brief conclusion

inequality mobility and redistributive politics abstract this paper develops a model where income inequality and intergenerational mobility are jointly determined via redistributive politics the model includes two key factors accessibility of tertiary education for poor born agents and multiple self fulfilling expectations of agents given these factors the model provides predictions of cross country differences in inequality and mobility consistent with empirical observations

the administrative costs of corporate bankruptcy a note in this paper we present evidence on the direct administrative costs of corporate bankruptcy the investigation is directed toward providing evidence that may be helpful in answering questions about the role of bankruptcy costs as a determinant of corporate capital structures the importance of bankruptcy costs as a determinant of corporate financing policy has been extensively debated in the finance literature the origins of the debate can be traced to modigliani and miller 8 and robichek and myers 9 under the assumption that debt is default free and interest payments are taxdeductible modigliani and miller demonstrated that firms will maximize their market values by maximizing their use of debt financing robichek and myers demonstrated that this conclusion also holds when debt is not default free but bankruptcy is costless to explain observed corporate debt to total value ratios which typically fall in the range of 20 percent to 30 percent robichek and myers 9 and baxter 1 appealed to the existence of bankruptcy costs as a possible counterweight to the tax deductibility of interest payments subsequently kraus and litzenberger 5 scott 10 lee and barker 6 kim 4 and turnbull 13 developed formal models in which firms maximize value by increasing their use of debt financing to the point where the marginal present value of future tax shields equals the marginal present value of future bankruptcy costs the bankruptcy cost literature has identified three types of costs as potentially relevant to the determination of a firm s optimal mix of debt and equity financing 1 the direct administrative expenses paid to various third parties involved in the bankruptcy proceedings 2 the shortfall in realized value when assets are sold in liquidation or the indirect costs of reorganization and 3 the loss of tax credits which the firm would have received had it not gone bankrupt contrarily haugen and senbet 3 and to a lesser extent miller 7 and warner 14 have argued that the only bankruptcy costs relevant to the determination of a firm s optimal capital structure are the direct administrative costs of bankruptcy the crux of their argument is that the shortfall costs of liquidation the indirect costs of reorganization and the loss of tax credits which occurs upon dissolution of the firm are in fact relevant to the liquidation investment decisions of the firm these costs would be borne by the security holders of a failing firm

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

patent pools and innovation in substitute technologies evidence from the 19th century sewing machine industry patent pools which combine complementary patents of competing firms are expected to increase overall welfare but potentially discourage innovation in substitutes for the pool technology this article exploits a new historical data set on changes in patenting and firm entry for a clearly defined pool technology and substitutes in the 19th century sewing machine industry this analysis reveals a substantial increase in innovation for an albeit technologically inferior substitute technology historical evidence suggests that the creation of a pool diverted innovation toward an inferior substitute technology by creating differential license fees and litigation risks

product liability research and development and innovation product liability ideally should promote efficient levels of product safety but misdirected liability efforts may depress beneficial innovations this paper examines these competing effects of liability costs on product r d intensity and new product introductions by manufacturing firms at low to moderate levels of expected liability costs there is a positive effect of liability costs on product innovation at very high levels of liability costs the effect is negative at the sample mean liability costs increase r d intensity by 15 percent the greater linkage of these effects to product r d rather than process r d is consistent with the increased prominence of the design defect doctrine

education cost intergenerational mobility and income inequality abstract using a modified version of the maoz and moav maoz y d and moav o 1999 intergenerational mobility and the process of development economic journal 109 458 677 697 model we show that the dynamics of income inequality and intergenerational mobility and the effects of technological changes on inequality depend crucially on the share of education cost in income

value change and democratic reform in japan and korea this study explores the underlying causes of the processes of democratic reform in japan and korea over the past decade in both nations elite challenging pressures from below have been the stimulus forcing reforms on the governing elites for this reason changes in mass attitudes and values become a crucial explanatory variable in accounting for recent political reforms the authors discuss the pattern of political development in these two nations and their theory of how and why values are changing from an authoritarian to libertarian set of attitudinal orientations this pattern of value change has been eroding the traditional tolerance of the mass publics in these two nations for authoritarian and corrupt practices the authors empirically demonstrate how and why values have been changing and how these changes are related to increasing levels of elite challenging protest potential and leftist reform oriented attitudes

intergenerational mobility and the process of development this paper offers an explanation for some evidence that intergenerational earnings mobility is higher in more developed economies and that mobility is positively correlated with wage equality in the model mobility promotes economic growth via its effect on the accumulation and allocation of human capital growth influences mobility via its effect on incentives to acquire education and its effect on liquidity constraints upon such acquisition in the process of development mobility increases and the distribution of education becomes better correlated with ability redistributive policy has a negative effect on growth in developed economies and a positive effect in developing economies

tax incentives and r d activity firm level evidence from taiwan this paper investigates the effect of tax incentives on r d activities in taiwanese manufacturing firms specifically we assess the potential r d enhancing effect on recipients of r d tax credits compared with their non recipient counterparts moreover the potential difference in the r d enhancing effect between high tech and non high tech firms is also examined utilizing a firm level panel dataset during 2001 and 2005 empirical results obtained by propensity score matching show that recipients of r d tax credits appear on average to have 93 53 higher r d expenditures and a 14 47 higher growth rate for r d expenditures than non recipients with similar characteristics the r d enhancing effect of r d tax credits is not found to be particularly relevant to high tech or non high tech firms we further employ a generalized method of moment gmm of the panel fixed model to control for the endogeneity of r d tax credits and firm heterogeneity in determining r d expenditure various estimates based on the entire sample and high tech firms are quite similar and there is a significantly r d enhancing effect of r d tax credits this result suggests that the r d preferential policy has induced more r d expenditure by firms in taiwan while the existence of the r d enhancing effect brought on by tax incentives is intuitive the estimates can provide insightful implications for the r d tax policy