crisis or opportunity economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability introduction to this special issue abstract this article reviews the burgeoning emerging literature on sustainable degrowth this is defined as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level in the short and long term the paradigmatic propositions of degrowth are that economic growth is not sustainable and that human progress without economic growth is possible degrowth proponents come from diverse origins some are critics of market globalization new technologies or the imposition of western models of development in the rest of the world all criticize gdp accounting though they propose often different social and ecological indicators degrowth theorists and practitioners support an extension of human relations instead of market relations demand a deepening of democracy defend ecosystems and propose a more equal distribution of wealth we distinguish between depression i e unplanned degrowth within a growth regime and sustainable degrowth a voluntary smooth and equitable transition to a regime of lower production and consumption the question we ask is how positive would degrowth be if instead of being imposed by an economic crisis it would actually be a democratic collective decision a project with the ambition of getting closer to ecological sustainability and socio environmental justice worldwide most articles in this issue were originally presented at the april 2008 conference in paris on economic degrowth for ecological sustainability and social equity this conference brought the word degrowth and the concepts around it into an international academic setting articles of this special issue are summarized in this introductory article hueting d alessandro and colleagues van den bergh kerschner spangenberg and alcott discuss whether current growth patterns are un sustainable and offer different perspectives on what degrowth might mean and whether and under what conditions it might be desirable matthey and hamilton focus on social dynamics and the obstacles and opportunities for voluntary social action towards degrowth lietaert and cattaneo with gavalda offer a down to earth empirical discussion of two practical living experiments cohousing and squats highlighting the obstacles for scaling up such alternatives finally van griethuysen explains why growth is an imperative in modern market economies raising also the question whether degrowth is possible without radical institutional changes

sharing intellectual property rights an exploratory study of joint patenting amongst companies joint patenting by companies the sharing of property rights on inventions is a relatively unknown phenomenon that is generally seen by patent lawyers and firms alike as a second best option that if possible should be avoided however the number of joint patents has increased during the last couple of decades and despite its impopularity firms frequently engage in co ownership of patents this exploratory study is one of the first contributions that provides insight into relevant international legal complications of joint patenting sectoral trends and patterns and the motivation of companies to enter into these specific patenting agreements

assessing the performance of renewable electricity support instruments abstract the performance of feed in tariffs and tradable certificates is assessed on criteria of efficacy efficiency equity and institutional feasibility in the early stage of transition to an energy system based entirely on renewable energy supplies renewable electricity can only thrive if support takes into account the specific technical economic and political problems which result from embedding this electricity in conventional power systems whose technology organizational structure environmental responsibility and general mission differ profoundly from the emerging renewable based system support schemes need to capture the diversity of power supplies the variable nature of some renewable supplies and their different attributes for the purposes of public policy they must take into account the variety of generators including small decentralized generation emerging in a renewable based system and the new relationships between generators and customers renewable energy policies need a clear point of reference because the incumbent power systems are not sustainable they must adapt to the requirements of the renewable ones not the other way round incumbent systems carry the responsibility of paying the transition something that corresponds best with the polluter pays principle

market share market value and innovation in a panel of british manufacturing firms this paper examines the empirical relationship between technological innovations market share and stock market value new developments in the estimation of dynamic count data models are used to control for unobserved firm specific heterogeneity we find a robust and positive effect of market share on observable headcounts of innovations and patents although increased product market competition in the industry tends to stimulate innovative activity furthermore the impact of innovation on market value is larger for firms with higher market shares we argue that our results are consistent with models where high market share firms have incentives to pre emptively innovate

public versus private investment in human capital endogenous growth and income inequality in this paper we present an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents in which human capital investment through formal schooling is the engine of growth we use simple functional forms for preferences technologies and income distribution to highlight the distinction between economies with public education and those with private education we find that income inequality declines more quickly under public education on the other hand private education yields greater per capita incomes unless the initial income inequality is sufficiently high we also find that societies will choose public education if a majority of agents have incomes below average

the impact of systemic factors on the deployment of cooperative projects within renewable electricity production an international comparison while cooperative organizations created with the aim to initiate develop and operate renewable electricity re projects have received attention for their roles in the transition to a sustainable

the family and the state the immaturity of children sometimes precludes efficient arrangements between children and parents or others responsible for child care the difficulty in establishing efficient relations within families provides the point of departure for our interpretation of the heavy state involvement in the family the authors believe that a surprising number of state interventions mimic the agreements that would occur if children were capable of arranging for their care many regulations of the family improve the efficiency of family activities these interventions include subsidies to education and training social security and other old age support subsidies to births laws that limit access to divorce and the sale of children and laws that require parents permission for early marriage and other choices of children families that leave bequests can force children to repay parents for investments in human capital by reducing bequests therefore these families do not underinvest in childrens human capital by contrast families that do not leave bequests often poorer families do underinvest in children the state may subsidize schools and other training facilities to raise investments in children by poorer families to efficient levels authors modified

regulatory design for res e support mechanisms learning curves market structure and burden sharing drawing from relevant experiences in power systems around the world this paper offers a review of existing policy support mechanisms for res e with a detailed analysis of their regulatory implications while recent studies provide an account of current res e support systems in this paper we focus on some of the impacts these mechanisms have on the overall energy market structure and its performance given the rising importance of res e in systems everywhere these impacts should no longer be overlooked

resources transactions and rents managing value through interfirm collaborative relationships this paper offers a theoretical explanation for why interfirm collaborations form yet fail and further suggests how firms might manage them for a more positive outcome based on a perspective of value we explain how a more inclusive and integrative perspective one which combines elements from transaction costs and resource based theory provides more robust insight into collaboration formation management and instability in doing so we differentiate rent yielding firm specific assets at the core of the resource based view from the transaction specific assets at the core of transaction cost theory the paper makes a crucial distinction between the potential value attainable through collaborations and its actual realization the crux of our argument is that firms enter into collaborative relationships because these are expected to yield superior value relative to alternate organizational forms in certain situations offering potentially synergistic combinations of complementary resources and capabilities yet such relationships are frequently prone to failure because the partner firms tend not to recognize ex ante the nature and extent of transaction specific investment that is required in the collaborative relationship to attain these synergies in our argument critically the relationship between organizations is seen not simply as a governance structure of a hybrid nature but more importantly as a productive resource for value creation and realization in this light transaction specific investment in what we term relational specificity becomes imperative in the search for value we explain why the transaction costs incurred in the exchange of resources are not independent of the nature of resources to be transacted and similarly why the returns realized from these resources are not independent of the relationship and transaction specific expenditures incurred in effectively combining them and maintaining the combination the interdependence between the two mediated by the quality of the relationship has direct implications for the earning of rents through collaborations these relationship specific expenditures can be of an internally generated nature endogenous to the alliance form itself and need not exceed alternative forms while the associated benefits have the capacity to potentially exceed the alternatives this translates into potentially superior value the paper contributes in three key related ways a the explicit recognition of the relationship as a value bearing asset embedded in a larger and endogenous institutional context namely a system of resource relationships both intraorganizational and inter organizational among partner firms and the collaboration b the recognition of the evolving relationship between production and exchange which at the level of the collaboration is directly dependent on the nature evolution and dynamics of the relationship among the parties to the transaction and c the provision of a nontrust explanation for why firms might knowingly forego opportunities to take advantage of their partners drawing from this the paper occasions a a shift in focus from the form to the process of governance which has direct implications for value creation and realization and b a shift in the primary identity of transaction specific and relationship specific expenditures from cost to investment in future value

regulating technological change the strategic reactions of utility companies towards subsidy policies in the german spanish and uk electricity markets abstract this paper focuses on how incumbent electric utilities strategically react to subsidy schemes supporting renewable energy technologies in the uk germany and spain firms coordinate the development of their technological capabilities and their political activities to shape their regulatory environment analysing the diffusion of wind power in these countries we show that the different ways in which firms coordinate their technological and political strategies lead to very different market outcomes both for the firms market share and the size of the overall market although incumbents are usually seen as being resistant to change in energy systems we show that spanish utilities proactively drive the diffusion of wind power we speculate about the relation between the ownership structure of the energy system and its inertia with respect to the integration of new technologies we derive novel policy implications that explicitly take into account the strategic actions of incumbent firms shaping the technological and regulatory system

is everything neutral in his well known analysis of the national debt robert barro introduced the notion of a dynastic family this notion has since become a standard research tool particularly in the areas of public finance and macroeconomics in this paper we critique the assumptions on which the dynastic model is predicated and argue that this framework is not a suitable abstraction in contexts in which the objective is to analyze the effects of public policies we reach this conclusion by formally considering a world in which each generation consists of a large number of distinct individuals as opposed to one representative individual we point out that family linkages form complex networks in which each individual may belong to many dynastic groupings the resulting proliferation of linkages between families gives rise to a host of neutrality results including the irrelevance of all public redistributions distortionary taxes and prices since these results are not at all descriptive of the real world we conclude

eu renewable energy support policy faith or facts the recent eu commission proposal for promoting the supply of power from renewable energy sources was originally based on a pan european harmonised tradable green certificate tgc scheme we suggest on the basis of a multi disciplinary analysis that a pan eu tgc system is not the way forward for europe it is vital that the commission and the majority of member states avoids implementation of such policy designs put forward by a coalition of vested interests they should instead look at and act upon the available evidence from those countries that have experimented with tgcs e g flanders uk and sweden and design policies that stand a better chance of meeting the criteria of effectiveness efficiency and equity in particular the policies must enable eu to meet the immense innovation industrialisation challenge by inducing the development of a capital goods industry that can eventually diffuse a broad range of technologies that use renewable energy sources only then we can acquire an ability to implement an industrial revolution in the energy system in a way that broadly meets the criteria of effectiveness and dynamic efficiency

can eliminating school fees in poor districts boost enrollment evidence from south africa abstractthe charging of school user fees is a much debated policy issue in developing countries in this paper i evaluate the impact of a south african fee elimination program that was targeted at the poorest two quintiles of schools based on a community poverty score fixed effects estimates find that the program increased enrollment by almost 2 percentage points in treated secondary schools an increase concentrated in earlier secondary grades there is substantial heterogeneity in the estimated secondary school effect it is driven entirely by an increase of around 3 5 percentage points in the poorer of the two treated quintiles regression discontinuity estimates confirm that the relatively wealthy schools near the treatment cutoff did not experience any effects on enrollment overall the abolition of fees seems to have been reasonably effective in increasing secondary school enrollment in particularly poor communities this is despite the fact that the eliminated fees were relatively low comprisin

analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems a scheme of analysis various researchers and policy analysts have made empirical studies of innovation systems in order to understand their current structure and trace their dynamics however policy makers often experience difficulties in extracting practical guidelines from studies of this kind in this paper we operationalize our previous work on a functional approach to analyzing innovation system dynamics into a practical scheme of analysis for policy makers the scheme is based on previous literature and our own experience in developing and applying functional thinking it can be used by policy makers not only to identify the key policy issues but also to set policy goals

the role of the business model in capturing value from innovation evidence from xerox corporation s technology spin off companies this paper explores the role of the business model in capturing value from early stage technology a successful business model creates a heuristic logic that connects technical potential with the realization of economic value the business model unlocks latent value from a technology but its logic constrains the subsequent search for new alternative models for other technologies later on an implicit cognitive dimension overlooked in most discourse on the topic we explore the intellectual roots of the concept offer a working definition and show how the xerox corporation arose by employing an effective business model to commercialize a technology rejected by other leading companies of the day we then show the long shadow that this model cast upon xerox s later management of selected spin off companies from xerox parc xerox evaluated the technical potential of these spin offs through its own business model while those spin offs that became successful did so through evolving business models that came to differ substantially from that of xerox the search and learning for an effective business model in failed ventures by contrast were quite limited

improving patent valuations for management purposes validating new indicators by analyzing application rationales abstract this paper analyzes the validity of so far untested indicators of patent value to enhance the quality of patent assessments using indicators at the corporate level the article expands the theory by eliciting patent attorneys filing rationales to maximize profits from protecting intellectual property to inspire the computation of new value indicators including patent full texts then based on a newly compiled data set consisting of 813 ep patents the probability of an opposition against a patent is modeled by established and new value indicators the results show that accelerated examination requests and qualified word counts enhance the quality of existing valuation methods

co ownership of intellectual property exploring the value appropriation and value creation implications of co patenting with different partners combining both interview data and empirical analyses at the patent and firm levels we explore the value appropriation and value creation implications of r d collaboration resulting in the co ownership of intellectual property i e co patents we make an explicit distinction between three different types of co patenting partners intra industry partners inter industry partners and universities our findings indicate that the value appropriation challenges of ip sharing are clearly evident with intra industry co patenting where partners are more likely to encounter overlapping exploitation domains co patenting with universities is associated with higher market value since appropriation challenges are unlikely to play a role and collaboration may signal novel technological opportunities although we find some evidence that co patenting corresponds to higher patent value patents co owned with firms are significantly less likely to receive self citations indicating constraints on the future exploitation and development of co owned technologies

what percentage of innovations are patented empirical estimates for european firms abstract a 1993 survey on the innovative activities of europe s largest industrial firms obtained useable results on patenting activities for 604 respondents the data are used to calculate the sales weighted propensity rates for 19 industries the propensity rates equal the percentage of innovations for which a patent application is made the propensity rates for product innovations average 35 9 varying between 8 1 in textiles and 79 2 in pharmaceuticals the average for process innovations is 24 8 varying from 8 1 in textiles to 46 8 for precision instruments only four sectors have patent propensity rates for both product and process innovations combined that exceed 50 pharmaceuticals chemicals machinery and precision instruments regression results that control for the effect of industry sector show that patent propensity rates increase with firm size and are higher among firms that find patents to be an important method for preventing competitors from copying both product and process innovations the effect of secrecy is not so straightforward firms that find secrecy to be an important protection method for product innovations are less likely to patent as expected but secrecy has little effect on the propensity to patent process innovations the r d intensity of the firm has no effect on patent propensity rates for both product and process innovations the sector of activity has a strong influence on product patent propensities but very little effect on process patent propensities after controlling for the effect of other factors

financing education using optimal redistributive taxation abstract in this article the joint use of an income tax and public provision of education as instruments to achieve the government s distributional objectives is considered individuals differ in innate labour productivity and in aptitude to acquire skills through education actual labour productivity depends on both innate skill and the amount of education received using a generalized version of the mirrlees tax problem that incorporates these features qualitative properties of an optimal tax schedule are investigated

pros and cons of exposing renewables to electricity market risks a comparison of the market integration approaches in germany spain and the uk abstract the article examines how renewable electricity res e producers are integrated into the electricity market under the support legislations and regulatory frameworks of germany spain and the uk focus is on wind power which faces the highest market integration challenge of all res e the analysis shows that the three countries follow contrasting approaches of exposing res e producers to the market risks of forward electricity markets balancing markets and system planning requirements risk exposure is highest in the uk and lowest in germany from a policy maker s perspective there is a trade off between a high risk and a low risk approach when res e face high market risks a higher level of financial support is required to stimulate res e development than in a low risk environment but the exposure to market risks may also give an incentive to make efficient use of the respective market thus limiting the indirect costs to society the special characteristics of wind energy however put natural limits to the response of wind power plants to market prices and locational price signals and will increasingly influence electricity markets and grid infrastructure these interdependencies should be recognised in the design of res e policies and market regulations

in search of complementarity in innovation strategy internal r d and external knowledge acquisition empirical research on complementarity between organizational design decisions has traditionally focused on the question of existence of complementarity in this paper we take a broader approach to the issue combining a productivity and an adoption approach while including a search for contextual variables in the firms strategy that affects complementarity analysis of contextual variables is not only interesting per se but also improves the productivity test for the existence of complementarity we use our empirical methodology to analyze complementarity between innovation activities internal research and development r d and external knowledge acquisition our results suggest that internal r d and external knowledge acquisition are complementary innovation activities but that the degree of complementarity is sensitive to other elements of the firms strategic environment we identify reliance on basic r dthe importance of universities and research centers as an information source for the innovation processas an important contextual variable affecting complementarity between internal and external innovation activities

network embeddedness and new product development in the biopharmaceutical industry the moderating role of open innovation flow this paper explores the role of centrality and structural holes positions on the likelihood to develop new products and the moderating role of the open innovation flow a measure of the net knowledge flow crossing the firm s boundaries on the aforementioned relation we argue that network positions provide the information content to the firm whilst open innovation flow describes how the firm uses such content thus the combination of these two concepts has a significant impact on new product development we test the theoretical framework on a large sample of 544 public companies and data from 1758 agreements among 1890 bio pharmaceutical firms through the period 2006 2010 our results show that being centrally located in the network positively affects the new product development process while having a structural holes position has no effect on the aforementioned performance however the interaction of the two network positions with the open innovation flow has a positive impact on the likelihood to develop new products

market value r d and patents abstract a significant relationship is found between the market value of the firm and its intangible capital proxied by past r d expenditures and the number of patents based on a time series cross section analysis of data for large u s firms

education and the poverty trap an overlapping generations model is constructed in which individual wealth is related to educational attainment and in which liquidity constraints may induce children to invest in a sub optimal level of education given their ability financing for education is obtained from within the family abilities differ among children and may be related to parental ability stationary state equilibria are found to exist in which children of poorer families are caught in a poverty trap because of an inability to finance their education the role of redistributive policy is studied in this context

who co operates for innovation and why an empirical analysis abstract in recent years there has been growing interest in co operative arrangements for innovation with some commentators arguing innovation is no longer the province of individual firms but depends increasingly on collective action this paper examines the response to the uk s version of the second european community innovation survey cis 2 to investigate the patterns of co operation between innovating firms and external partners the analysis shows the relationship between innovation and co operation is not straightforward from a subjective i e firm based perspective it is clear that most firms still develop their new products processes and services without forming formal co operative arrangements for innovation with other organisations however firms that engage in r d and that are attempting to introduce higher level innovations i e new to the market rather than new to the firm innovations are much more likely to engage in co operative arrangements for innovation consequently if an objective i e innovation based perspective is taken which weighs innovations by their significance then it is likely that a significant proportion of high level innovations are developed through co operative arrangements although unfortunately the cis 2 does not indicate the direct significance of these arrangements to the development of the innovations in summary the extent of co operative arrangements for innovation appears to depend on the type of firms being considered and on what is meant by innovation

ownership and control rights in internet portal alliances 1995 1999 we examine the structure of more than 100 alliances by internet portals and other firms between 1995 to 1999 from a contract theory perspective models of incomplete contracts frequently invoke unforeseen contingencies the cost of writing contracts and the cost of enforcing contracts in justifying the assumption of incompleteness the setting in which internet portals formed alliances was rife with these sorts of transaction costs we argue that these alliances can be viewed as incomplete contracts and find that the division of ownership and the allocation of control rights are consistent with the incomplete contracting literature copyright 2003 by the rand corporation

a penny for your quotes patent citations and the value of innovations the use ofpatents in economic research has been seriously hindered by the fact that patents vary enormously in their importance or value and hence simple patent counts cannot be informative about innovative output the purpose of this article is to put forward patent counts weighted by citations as indicators of the value of innovations thereby overcoming the limitations of simple counts the empirical analysis of a particular innovation computed tomography scanners indeed shows a close association between citation based patent indices and independent measures of the social value of innovations in that field moreover the weighting scheme appears to be nonlinear increasing in the number of citations implying that the informational content of citations rises at the margin as in previous studies simple patent counts are found to be highly correlated with contemporaneous rd however here the association is within afield over time rather than cross sectional

information processing moderators of the effectiveness of trust based governance in interfirm r d collaboration it is generally assumed that improved outcomes accompany the use of trust as a governance mechanism in an interfirm relationship briefly trust is a social lubricant that reduces the friction costs of existing trade and or serves to increase the scope of trade in contrast to this universalistic view we posit that the performance of trust based governance is contingent on the ability of trading partners to read each other and learn about counterpart behavior these information processing abilities allow firms to assess partner trustworthiness better which reduces the risk of misplaced trust the increased efficacy of communication and learning from one another also enables them to better capitalize from the adaptation and revision possibilities uncovered through trust based governance during the task execution phase given the central role of these cognitive requirements we assess these contingent effects with data from a knowledge intensive task setting using a sample of 129 firms that have engaged outside contractors on client sponsored r d projects we find strong support for our thesis specifically we find that trust based governance has a larger positive impact on task performance when the client is more skilled at understanding the outsourced tasks at hand the task itself requires skills that are relatively more readily taught less tacit and the task itself is organized in parallel with work being done at the contractor as well as the client as a corollary we also find that firms adopt trust based governance to a greater extent as these information processing abilities increase as well as with the colocation of the contractor and client suggestions for engineering trust based governance are offered

estimates of the value of patent rights in european countries during the post 1950 period this paper examines the distribution of the values of patent rights in the united kingdom france and germany during the post 1950 period these values are inferred from the behavior of patentees with respect to payment of renewal fees on their patents a simple economic model of renewal decisions is combined with data on the proportion of patents renewed at alternative ages and the renewal fee schedules to produce estimates of the distribution and the total value of patent rights in these countries moreover the data indicate that there have been changes in the value distribution and we follow these changes over the period the empirical results of particular interest concern the total value of patent rights and the relationship between changes in it and changes in the quantity of patents the skew in the distribution of patent values and the rate of obsolescence on the returns to patents

educational policy in a credit constrained economy with skill heterogeneity an overlapping generations model where agents choose whether to become educated when young is presented education enhances productivity but needs to be financed by borrowing because of the possibility of default lenders may ration credit we characterize the steady state equilibrium with and without credit constraints and show that credit constraints are associated with lower education and a lower real interest rate we then study the role of public policy in remedying the inefficiency which occurs with credit market imperfections and examine whether public education can improve on the constrained equilibrium

the duality of collaboration inducements and opportunities in the formation of interfirm linkages i argue that the linkage formation propensity of firms is explained by simultaneously examining both inducement and opportunity factors drawing upon resource based and social network theory literatures i identify three forms of accumulated capital technical commercial and social that can affect a firm s inducements and opportunities to form linkages firms possessing these capital stocks enjoy advantages in linkages formation however firms lacking these accumulated resources can still form linkages if they generate a radical technological breakthrough thus i identify paths to linkage formation for leading as well as peripheral firms i test these arguments with longitudinal data on technical collaborative linkages in the global chemicals industry copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

planning siting and the local acceptance of wind power some lessons from the french case abstract after some years of trifling development under a system of public tenders 1995 2000 french politicians progressively changed the national policy framework for feed in tariffs december 2000 and wind power development zones july 2005 the new policy framework has triggered a beginning of takeoff in wind power capacity the paper examines french wind power development in the light of two key dimensions and concepts related to wind power policy planning and siting part 1 we particularly focus on the recent french legislative debate which led to the adoption of the new policy framework part 2 the french case shows that the recourse to planning tools was not tailor made for siting issues but resulted from a political fight over the decentralization of energy policy the policy outcome which we call flexible decentralized planning is both interesting and ambiguous it is interesting in that it develops interfaces between planning tools and siting institutions it is ambiguous in that it is potentially very hierarchical the final decision power is left in state planners hands making it unpredictable the extent to which room will genuinely be provided for siting processes to take place

promoting the market and system integration of renewable energies through premium schemes a case study of the german market premium abstract with the share of renewable energies within the electricity sector rising improving their market and system integration is of increasing importance by offering plant operators a premium on top of the electricity market price premium schemes represent an option to increase the alignment of renewable electricity production with market signals and have been implemented by several eu member states this paper examines the case study of the german market premium scheme adopted in 2012 building on an evaluation of early experiences we discuss whether the market premium contributes to the aims of market and or system integration effectiveness and what potential efficiency gains and additional costs of administering integration are associated with it efficiency while exposing renewables to price risks is not the scheme s purpose it has successfully increased participation in direct marketing however risks of overcompensating producers for marketing and balancing costs are high and the benefits of gradually leading plant operators towards the market are questionable incentives for demand oriented production are established but they seem insufficient particularly in the case of intermittent renewable energy sources to conclude we provide an outlook on alternative designs of premium schemes and discuss whether they seem better suited for addressing the challenges ahead

are tradable green certificates a cost efficient policy driving technical change or a rent generating machine lessons from sweden 2003 2008 in the european policy debate tradable green certificates tgc have been suggested to be a superior regulatory framework for promoting the diffusion of renewable electricity technologies the purpose of this paper is to assess the performance of the swedish tgc system contributing to the european debate on the suitability of different types of frameworks the expectations of the tgc system were that it would a be effective in terms of increasing the supply of green electricity b do this in a cost effective manner from both a social and a consumer perspective c generate an equitable distribution of costs and benefits and d drive technical change so far it has performed adequately in terms of effectiveness and social cost effectiveness however consumer costs have been substantially higher than expected very large rents are generated and at best it contributes marginally to technical change thus a tgc framework should be selected if the overriding concern is to minimize short term social costs of reaching a certain goal with a high degree of predictability however it cannot be expected to also drive technical change keep consumer costs down and be equitable such trade offs need to be revealed and not obscured by analysts

levelling the playing field the influence of national wind power planning instruments on conflicts of interests in a swedish county slow and complicated wind power planning and permitting procedures have been a large obstacle for wind power diffusion in sweden and other countries this paper complements previous siting oriented literature with a planning perspective on these problems the focus is two national planning instruments implemented in sweden in the early 2000s a national planning target and an appointment of areas of national interest for wind power the paper identifies different types of conflicts of interest related to wind power in addition to the conflict between wind power as a national public interest and various local private interests and analyses the impact of the national planning instruments on the handling of these conflicts in the land use planning process in the county of ostergotland the analysis shows that the planning target actually made local planning officials even more inclined to treat wind power as a private rather than a public interest and that the method used to identify areas of national interest of wind power forced wind power to compete with the combined strengths of all other public interest the planning instruments thus left wind power to fight an uphill battle rather than to meet other interests face to face on a level playing field

the paradox of openness appropriability external search and collaboration a b s t r a c t to innovate firms often need to draw from and collaborate with a large number of actors from outside their organization at the same time firms need also to be focused on capturing the returns from their innovative ideas this gives rise to a paradox of openness the creation of innovations often requires openness but the commercialization of innovations requires protection based on econometric analysis of data from a uk innovation survey we find a concave relationship between firms breadth of external search and formal collaboration for innovation and the strength of the firms appropriability strategies we show that this concave relationship is stronger for breadth of formal collaboration than for external search there is also partial evidence suggesting that the relationship is less pronounced for both external search and formal collaboration if firms do not draw ideas from or collaborate with competitors we explore the implications of these findings for the literature on open innovation and innovation strategy 2013 the authors published by elsevier b v all rights reserved

who invests in renewable electricity production empirical evidence and suggestions for further research transforming energy systems to fulfill the needs of a low carbon economy requires large investments in renewable electricity production res e recent literature underlines the need to take a closer look at the composition of the res e investor group in order to understand the motives and investment processes of different types of investors however existing energy policies generally consider res e investments made on a regional or national level and target investors who evaluate their res e investments according to least cost high profit criteria we present empirical evidence to show that res e investments are made by a heterogeneous group of investors that a variety of investors exist and that their formation varies among the different types of renewable sources this has direct implications for our understanding of the investment process in res e and for the study of motives and driving forces of res e investors we introduce a multi dimensional framework for analyzing differences between categories of investors which not only considers to the standard economic dimension which is predominant in the contemporary energy literature but also considers the entrepreneurship innovation adoption and institutional dimensions the framework emphasizes the influence of four main investor related factors on the investment process which should be studied in future research motives background resources and personal characteristics