efficient resource allocation on the basis of priorities many institutions allocate resources by non market mechanisms based on priorities in this paper we introduce a model of resource allocation on the basis of priorities and address the following questions is it possible to allocate resources on the basis of any priority structure if yes when can we do this pareto efficiently without creating incentives for manipulation and consistently across different groups of agents and resource levels we adopt a basic indivisible objects model with a finite number of object types and a finite quota of goods of each type some interesting examples are the determination of access to education allocation of graduate houses offices or tasks agents are assumed to have strict preferences over object types and remaining unassigned an assignment is an allocation of the objects to the agents such that every agent receives at most one object a rule associates an assignment to each preference profile we formalize a priority structure to be a collection of strict priority rankings of individuals indexed by the object types where i a j would be read as i has higher priority for object a than j we assume that the priority structure is exogenously fixed and allow the preferences of the agents to vary a rule is said to violate a priority of i for a if there is a preference profile under which i envies j who is assigned a and publication information econometrica 70 6 november 2002 2489 2497 the copyright to this article is held by the econometric society http www econometricsociety org it may be downloaded printed and reproduced only for personal or classroom use absolutely no downloading or copying may be done for or on behalf of any for profit commercial firm or other commercial purpose without the explicit permission of the econometric society for this purpose contact julie p gordon executive director of the society at jpg northwestern edu i would like to thank faruk gul wolfgang pesendorfer the co editor the four anonymous referees and the participants of the micro theory lunch seminar in princeton university for their comments and suggestions

technology based smes in the go teborg region their origin and interaction with universities and large firms lindholm dahlstrand a 1999 technology based smes in the go teborg region their origin and interaction with universities and large firms reg studies 33 379 389 this paper investigates the local origins and continued regional interaction of a group of new technology intensive go teborg smes the results are based on an original survey of 52 such firms it finds that these go teborg smes were almost exclusively established as spin offs by founders who were previously working for another local firm or university local links and relationships especially with the previous employer and with chalmers university were initially important for their development with time however the importance of such links has tended to decline and instead wider national relationships are becoming more important lindholm dahlstrand a 1999 pme a la pointe de la technologie situees dans la region de goteborg gene se et synergie quant aux universites et aux grandes entreprises reg studies 33 379 389 c

corporate venturing and value creation a review and proposed framework abstract over the past decade companies worldwide have used corporate venturing cv as a means of revitalizing their operations building new capabilities and achieving strategic renewal creating value for shareholders business interest in cv has stimulated academic interest in the topic resulting in a rapidly growing but fragmented body of literature despite the growing international scholarly interest in cv researchers have devoted little effort to integrating prior findings in a cumulative fashion as a result studies do not build upon one another making it difficult to gauge the progress being made in addressing the fundamental research questions related to cv in this paper we examine the literature on cv seeking to synthesize integrate and link its key findings to do so we analyze this literature over the past decade to identify its major themes and research findings setting the stage for greater coherence in future research on cv we give special attention to the challenges and rewards of theory building in future cv research our review clearly shows that cv is an area of scholarly inquiry that has important implications for managerial practice

matching markets with mixed ownership the case for a real life assignment mechanism we consider a common indivisible good allocation problem whose popular applications include on campus housing kidney exchange and school choice we show that the so called new house 4 nh4 mechanism which has been in use at mit since the 1980s is equivalent to a natural adaptation of the well known gale shapley gs mechanism we run two experiments comparing nh4 with the prominently advocated top trading cycles ttc mechanism and nh4 with gs we find that under nh4 the participation rate is significantly higher than under ttc based on a new ordinal test of efficiency nh4 is more likely to pareto dominate ttc

speciation through entrepreneurial spin off the acorn arm story abstract can the concept of speciation explain evidence on how technologies branch and advance can evidence on innovation through spin off usefully inform the concept of speciation these questions are addressed through a case study of detailed processes enabling the shift of technology to new domains of application an innovative it firm developed its own semiconductor technology to remedy supplier deficiencies but it required a joint venture with a completely new business model to adapt and move the technology into new market domains we propose the concept of techno organizational speciation to delineate this phenomenon competing perspectives on speciation compatibility niche and lineage approaches are found to illuminate the evidence while complementarities between these conceptual dimensions are revealed by the case causal processes uncovered include the following 1 techno organizational speciation through spin off may be needed to launch a dominant technical standard compatible with multiple applications 2 this can be achieved through niche creation from which develops a new business ecosystem 3 inherited knowledge together with organizationally based learning foster the branching and renewal of technological lineages

the entrepreneur s search for capital abstract the popular media have been inundated with stories of the spectacular success of start up companies whose very existence let alone their meteoric growth would not have been possible without the infusion of venture capital by comparison there is a dearth of scientific research on the topic of venture capital in this article we take a systematic look at entrepreneurs in search of risk capital this inquiry is based upon five data bases including surveys of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs we have tracked 193 ventures which were denied venture capital surveyed 179 new high technology companies in northern california and reviewed the dun bradstreet credit reports of 145 new ventures in california in sic codes related to the high tech sector with follow up interviews of 86 of these 145 start ups

a dynamic school choice model this paper inspires from a real life assignment problem faced by the mexican ministry of public education we introduce a dynamic school choice problem that consists in assigning positions to overlapping generations of teachers from one period to another teachers can either retain their current positions or choose a preferred one in this framework a solution concept that conciliates the fairness criteria with the individual rationality condition is introduced it is then proved that a solution always exists and that it can be reached by a modified version of the deferred acceptance algorithm of gale and shapley we also show that the mechanism is dynamically strategy proof and respects improvements whenever the set of orders is lexicographic by tenure

wages in high tech start ups do academic spin offs pay a wage premium due to their origin in universities academic spin offs operate at the forefront of technological development therefore academic spin offs exhibit a skill biased labour demand i e academic spin offs have a high demand for employees with cutting edge knowledge and technical skills in order to accommodate this demand academic spin offs may have to pay a relative wage premium compared to other high tech start ups however neither a comprehensive theoretical assessment nor the empirical literature on wages in start ups unambiguously predicts the existence and the direction of wage differentials between academic spin offs and non spin offs this paper addresses this research gap and examines empirically whether or not academic spin offs pay their employees a wage premium using a unique linked employer employee data set of german high tech start ups we estimate mincer type wage regressions applying the hausman taylor panel estimator our results show that academic spin offs do not pay a wage premium in general however a notable exception to this general result is that academic spin offs that commercialise new scientific results or methods pay a wage premium to employees with links to the university sector either as university graduates or as student workers

eliminating price supports a political economy perspective abstract this paper characterizes information and politically constrained government programs for eliminating price supports the issues which we examine in this model include i to what extent is it possible to reduce the size of oversubscribed industries in light of the information and political constraints that exist is a complete decoupling of a worker s compensation from her output possible or desirable ii which type of workers as characterized by their skill levels and outside employment opportunities remain in the industry iii which type of worker is harmed by the relocation program which coalitions of workers will oppose the reorganization

time horizons lattice structures and welfare in multi period matching markets abstract we analyze a t period two sided one to one matching market without monetary transfers under natural restrictions on agents preferences which accommodate switching costs status quo bias and other forms of inter temporal complementarity dynamically stable matchings exist we propose a new ordering of the stable set ensuring that it forms a lattice we investigate the robustness of dynamically stable matchings with respect to the market s time horizon and frequency of rematching opportunities

knowledge conversion capability and the performance of corporate and university spin offs corporate and university spin offs are often created to commercialize new technologies yet it is not clear how these spin offs transform their inventions into new products goods and services that create value in this article we use the knowledge based theory to argue that this transformation requires a knowledge conversion capability kcc that has three components conceptualization and visioning of applications of that knowledge configuration and design of potential products and other applications and the embodiment and integration of knowledge into products using data from 91 corporate and 78 university spin offs we find that these two sets of firms differ in their emphasis on the three kcc components benefit differentially from these three components in terms of their performance and vary significantly in their performance

commercialization of patents and external financing during the r d phase abstract using a unique database on swedish patents owned by small firms and individuals survival models estimate how different factors influence the decision to commercialize the patents such an analysis has seemingly never previously been undertaken since the owners know more about the patents than potential external financiers problems related to asymmetrical information are present to overcome these problems when inventors and small technology based firms need financing sweden has for a long time relied on government support rather than private venture capital firms the empirical results show that the larger is the share of patent owners costs covered by government financial support during the r d phase the lower is the probability of patents being commercialized this lower degree of commercialization is likely to depend on 1 the soft terms of the government loans where the patent owner can avoid paying back the loan if the patent is never commercialized and or 2 that the government is not able to select promising projects the first explanation is related to moral hazard and the second one to adverse selection the policy suggestion is for government to change the design of the loans to base them on firms rather than projects

is the commercialization of european academic r d weak a critical assessment of a dominant belief and associated policy responses there is a widespread belief that eu underperforms in the commercialization of publicly funded research and that the appropriate policy response is to transfer the ownership of intellectual property rights to universities this paper assesses the validity of these twin beliefs in addressing the first we limit ourselves to sweden which still retains its teacher s exemption model in spite of confident statements made in the literature and by government we provide evidence to the contrary i e that swedish academia performs well in terms of commercialization we also have doubts about the usefulness of the medicine prescribed to cure the alleged problem largely drawing on us literature we argue that the medicine risks harming strong university industry networks biasing technical change reducing entrepreneurial activity and generating costs to universities which may be detrimental to technology transfer in conclusion we seriously question the validity of both beliefs

a review of literature and hypotheses on new technology based firms abstract this paper examines the existing literature on new technology based firms in an attempt to understand how such companies contribute to the vitality of an economy and to see which variables are critical in enabling them to do so from recent research efforts we have drawn together a set of hypotheses and organized them around four central questions 1 what do new firms contribute to the economy 2 what factors contribute to the success of such enterprises 3 in what cultural contexts do new businesses succeed and 4 which government policies are effective in stimulating and supporting new companies we found that existing studies suggest 1 that new technology based firms contribute significantly to an economy in terms of exports employment taxes paid research and development and innovations 2 that the founders of these new businesses tend to have a strong entrepreneurial heritage a development rather research oriented background and a high need to achieve and are young and highly educated 3 that sector differences may be a more important influence on company location than are regional policies and 4 that no one government program has proven itself to be more than marginally successful in stimulating industrial innovation

dynamic kidney exchange we study how barter exchanges should be conducted through a centralized mechanism in a dynamically evolving agent pool with time and compatibility based preferences we derive the dynamically efficient two way and multi way exchange mechanisms that maximize total discounted exchange surplus recently several live donor kidney exchange programs were established to swap incompatible donors of end stage kidney disease patients since kidney exchange can be modeled as a special instance of our more general model dynamically efficient kidney exchange mechanisms are derived as corollaries we make policy recommendations using simulations

route 128 the development of a regional high technology economy abstract a corner of massachusetts not far from boston s route 128 has become a world center of high technology hundreds of enterprises mainly in electronics based industries employ over 250 000 people 75 000 of whom were added between 1975 and 1980 enterprises founded after world war ii have spearheaded growth in the state with a rapid rate of new firm formation continuing through the 1970s this paper examines the state s high tech growth to determine what caused it to happen where it did and assess the special role of new enterprises in promoting it the development is found to have been largely indigenous and spontaneous rather than the result of a concerted effort to attract industry massachusetts distinguished universities and their research laboratories an inherited technological infrastructure the importance of agglomeration externalities and the good fortune of having a home grown firm become the world s leading manufacturer of minicomputers were major contributors to the state s success but the enormous opportunities for new enterprises which the electronics revolution generated and the tendency for such firms to start up mainly as spin offs from other high tech firms or from university laboratories and to remain close to their sources fueled the tendency towards spatial concentration

academic spin off s transfer speed analyzing the time from leaving university to venture for academic spin offs i analyze the length of time between the founder s leaving of academia and the establishment of his firm technology transfer can take place even years after leaving the mother institution a duration analysis reveals that a longer time lag is caused by the necessity of assembling complementary skills either by acquisition by a single founder or by searching for suitable team members furthermore new ventures are established earlier if the intensity of technology transfer is high the founders have access to university infrastructure or received informal support by former colleagues

public investment and real price supports abstract the social rate of return to public investment in industries with fixed real price supports is studied using a simple general equilibrium model fixed real price supports are shown to enhance the likelihood of immiserizing growth due to capital accumulation or technological innovation in the supported sector general conditions under which an intervention price will induce a negative social rate of return to public investment are derived

on the operation of multiple matching markets abstract we provide a new perspective on how to operate matching markets when there are many types of markets our finding is that the market wise adaptation of strategy proof and non wasteful rules yields a strategy proof rule with the following efficiency property no strategy proof rule pareto dominates the rule such rules are abundant as they include the market wise use of the well known priority based rules of the top trading cycles and the deferred acceptance this result gives theoretical support to the independent operation of markets observed in real life markets as well as our practice in market design that separately treats each market for its design

reversal of fortune immiserizing technical change in agriculture several recent studies have reported the possibility of immiserizing technical change in agriculture in these studies the interaction of government commodity policy and technical change has been shown potentially to lead to a loss of national welfare a negative rate of return to research the purpose of this paper is to tie these recent results to the earlier results of bhagwati and johnson on immiserizing growth technical change and to offer a more general condition for describing the impacts of distortions on the benefits from technical change

agricultural pricing and public investment abstract aggregate agricultural supply is price inelastic but responsive to investment in agricultural infrastructure irrigation roads research extension thus the government should tax agriculture and finance infrastructure although unlikely to pay for itself directly it will increase taxable agricultural surplus but by raising rural living standards and therefore the supply price of urban labour it reduces urban tax revenue its marginal social product is therefore overstated when measured at world prices though understated at distorted agricultural prices with scale economies in industry the case for taxing and investing in agriculture is strengthened it may allow the economy to escape stagnation

growth and inventiveness in technology based spin off firms abstract this study focuses on technology based spin off firms that have had their initial product idea originated in the previous employment of the founder such entrepreneurial spin offs esos arise when an entrepreneur leaves an organisation to start a firm of his own using the data from 60 small swedish technology based firms 30 such entrepreneurial spin offs are identified it was found that as many as two thirds of the spin offs had originated in private firms and only one sixth from universities in this paper the background and the performance in terms of growth and inventiveness are compared for the spin off and the non spin off firms it was found that after an initial ten year period the spin offs were growing significantly faster than the non spin offs however no significant difference in the inventiveness was found between the two groups neither the growth nor the inventiveness could be explained by pre spin off variables but it is speculated that the earlier employment within the spin off parent has indirectly influenced the performance of the spin off firms

growing firms and the credit constraint restricted access to finance either debt or equity or both is potentially a significant constraint on the growth of small businesses financing problems arise primarily as a consequence of information asymmetries the adverse effects of these may in part be counteracted by the use of collateral as a signalling and bonding mechanism and or by the development of a good working relationship between lender and borrower if the form of information asymmetry differs for growth firms or if the effects of information asymmetries are less easily ameliorated then growing firms may be more adversely affected by credit constraints if growth is contingent upon access to credit then the generalised implications for the economy may be significant and detrimental using evidence from a survery of over 6 000 firms conducted in 1992 this paper addresses the extent to which growth firms are adversely affected by a credit constraint the results suggest that the credit constraint for growing firms per se is no greater but growth firms may still experience a credit constraint as a consequence of their relative youth however there is evidence to suggest that firms expecting to grow in the future do perceive a rather tighter credit constraint but this may be partly or wholly offset by a generally better relationship with their bank

technology and industrial innovation in sweden a study of technology based firms formed between 1965 and 1980 abstract interest in the economic and technological contributions of new enterprises has grown steadily and has captured an international audience the formation of new companies especially those competing in technology based fields may even be generally viewed as a potential indicator of a country s economic competitiveness and its capacity for industrial innovation this paper reports a study of swedish technology based enterprises examining the contributions of such firms to the overall economy and their essential characteristics in the areas of product innovation organization growth and finance