faculty entrepreneurship and economic development the case of the university of calgary abstract the common perception of universities as merely institutions of higher learning is giving way to one where universities are viewed as engines of economic growth and development this study documents the entrepreneurial activities of the faculty of the university of calgary as well as the impact the university has had and the impact its recent budgetary problems might have on such activities results indicate that nearly 100 new ventures with at least one full time employee were started by faculty or were started as a consequence of significant faculty inputs these ventures in turn have generated at least 723 new jobs in alberta furthermore our projections suggest that faculty entrepreneurs will create approximately 14 ventures per year in the near future implications for the role universities and governments should play to encourage faculty entrepreneurship are discussed

academic research underlying industrial innovations there has been no systematic study of the characteristics of the universities and academic researchers that seem to have contributed most to industrial innovation nor do we know how such academic research has been funded this paper based on data obtained from sixty six firms in seven major manufacturing industries and from over two hundred academic researchers sheds new light on the sources characteristics and financing of academic research underlying industrial innovation the findings should be of interest to economists concerned with technological change and to policymakers attempting to increase the economic payoff from the nation s academic research copyright 1995 by mit press

the link between pensions and retirement timing lessons from california teachers abstract i exploit a major unanticipated reform of the california teachers pension to provide quasi experimental evidence on the link between pension features and retirement timing using two large administrative data sets i conduct a reduced form analysis that leverages the nonlinearities in the return to work generated by the pension features and the reform induced shifts of these nonlinearities for identification the implied estimates of the elasticity of lifetime labor supply with respect to the return to work are centered around 0 04 in the medium run and are less than 0 1 in the long run

policy orientation effects on performance with licensing to start ups and small companies abstract this study empirically tests a model of a university s selectivity and support policy orientation for technology licensing and its interaction with the external environment for entrepreneurship using a sample of 134 us research universities we investigate main two way and three way interaction effects for two measures of technology transfer performance licenses with companies that subsequently go public and product royalties results indicate both main and moderating effects for both measures of performance implications for practice and policy are offered with special attention to public universities

did the affordable care act young adult provision affect labor market outcomes analysis using tax data using a data set of us tax records spanning 2008 to 2013 the authors study the impact of the affordable care act aca young adult dependent coverage requirement on labor market related outcomes including measures of employment status job characteristics and postsecondary education they find that the aca provision did not result in substantial changes in labor market outcomes results show that employment and self employment are not statistically significantly affected although some evidence supports the increased likelihood of young adults earning lower wages not receiving fringe benefits enrolling as full time or graduate students and young men being self employed the magnitudes imply extremely small impacts on these outcomes in absolute terms and when compared to other estimates in the literature the authors find these results to be consistent with health insurance being less salient to young adults compared to other populations when making labor market decisions

price flexibility credit availability and economic fluctuations evidence from the united states 1894 1909 the importance of disturbances in financial markets for real economic activity and the positive association between price level and output movements typically are explained by appeal to a combination of nominal aggregate demand shocks particularly money supply shocks and rigid prices we argue that this view is inconsistent with evidence for short run responsiveness of prices and gold flows to nominal disturbances during the pre world war i gold standard era we offer an alternative explanation that connects financial markets and real activity through disturbances to the availability of credit this approach links comovements in prices and output through real effects in credit markets associated with price level shocks empirical analysis using monthly data for the pre world war i period supports the assumption of rapid price adjustment and the credit supply interpretation of the transmission of financial shocks disturbances to credit availability including price shocks contribute substantially to our empirical explanation of output fluctuations during this period

strategy and the board of directors in venture capital backed firms abstract the results of this research demonstrate that boards of directors in venture capital backed companies are more involved in both strategy formation and evaluation than are boards where members do not have large ownership stakes these same results are demonstrated even when industry board size level of diversification and insider board representation are held constant agency theory and institutional theory are advanced as reasons for this higher level of involvement venture capitalists are generally seen as value added investors who have played a significant role in the development of many entrepreneurial businesses bygrave and timmons 1992 this success has lead students of industrial competitiveness like thurow 1992 to argue that the venture capitalist should serve as an example for directors of all types of organizations one of the most significant value added activities of the venture capitalist is involvement with strategy fried and hisrich 1995 macmillan kulow and khoylian 1988 sapienza 1989 sapienza et al 1996 rosenstein bruno bygrave and taylor 1993 implicit in the writings extolling directors who act like venture capitalists porter 1992a porter 1992b bhide 1994 thurow 1992 is the belief that they will be more active than traditional board members however little empirical work has been done to directly compare the level of strategic involvement of the two types of boards building on the work of judge and zeithaml 1992 this study compares the level of board involvement with strategy by the boards of venture capital backed companies with the boards of other types of organizations after establishing different levels of involvement it then examines why there is a difference finally this study provides additional empirical evidence on the relationship between board involvement and performance zahra and pearce 1989

the effects of university rules on spinoff creation the case of academia in italy the economics literature provides rich evidence on the convergence between the institutional factors and individual level characteristics influencing the involvement of academia in knowledge transfer activities and spinoff creation however little is known about the effects of internal university regulations on academic entrepreneurship in the last ten years spinoff activity from academia in italy has been intensive and most academic institutions have policies related to the regulation of academic entrepreneurship practices known as regolamento spinoff this paper investigates the impact of the set of university rules governing the creation of spinoffs on institutional capability to generate new ventures based on panel data analysis using detailed university level data on academic spinoffs we identify three classes of institutionally defined rules that can motivate faculty members to establish a spinoff company these are general rules and procedures rules regulating monetary incentives rules related to the entrepreneurial risk we find that at least some rules pertaining to each of these three classes have some effect on spinoff creation in particular we find that monetary incentives play a significant role in promoting academic spinoff activity and that overly restrictive university rules regarding contract research have a negative effect on spinoff creation

a critical exploration of sponsorship infrastructure and new organizations this research focuses on the effects of public sponsorship and regional infrastructure on the emergence and survival of new organizations propositions are tested regarding the joint effects of sponsorship and infrastructure on industrial development in a randomly selected sample of fourteen regions the data include six measures of infrastructure sponsorship as measured by the total dollars spent for economic development and their individual and joint effects on the number of firms and employees in high technology industries for the years 1965 1970 1975 1980 and 1984 this preliminary analysis suggests that variation in the infrastructure and level of sponsorship within a region is related to the birth and survival of new organizations

mapping the university technology transfer process abstract transfer of technologies from the universities to the private sector is increasingly regarded as playing a significant role in new business starts growth of existing businesses and new job creation further there are monerous models describing the process of technology transfer some of the existing models represent this process as a linear progression of steps from idea generation and technology development at the university to patenting the technology and then establishing a university private firm link through a formal search process the process culminates in patent rights transfer other models describe technology transfer in terms of networking arrangements and emphasize not so much formal search as the role of long term relationships between the two parties still other studies indicate that it is possible to combine the two approaches formal search and informal networking arrangements to ensure successful transfer business firms involved in transfer also may be classified into several groups transfer could occur between the university and an established firm between the university and a recently created new venture or transfer could result in the creation of a new company technology for example could be transferred to a large company that uses the transferred technology as a basis for just one of many product lines or to a small firm that makes the transferred technology a cornerstone of its product strategy are there any differences among the transfer processes used when large or small firms are involved or when technology is transferred to an existing company or results in the creation of a new firm to address these questions we mapped the technology transfer processes of 23 different technologies developed at the university of minnesota from 1983 to 1993 more than half of the technologies studied went to large companies and were used either to upgrade existing products or to extend existing product lines in eight cases technologies were transferred to small firms in three cases technologies were transferred to venture capital firms or intermediaries and had not been commercialized at the time the study was completed in the rest of the cases new firms were created by the inventors university scientists themselves and served as vehicles for marketing their inventions none of the firms of the latter group have grown beyond a part time employment opportunity for the inventors and only one firm provided evidence that additional hiring would be necessary in the near future only four cases involved transfers of technologies that have been developed and patented by the university to firms that did not have any relationships with the university prior to the transfer in these four cases the firms used some form of search strategy to find a needed technology however there is no evidence that any of the firms had a well developed formal search procedure in the overwhelming majority of cases some form of relationship existed between the university or individual inventors and the private firm prior to the transfer these relationships ranged from long term friendships and or cooperation to such less involved forms as interaction at research seminars and university sponsored events further in four cases the technologies were initially developed by private companies whereas the university s role was to assist in refinement or testing of the technology the research yielded a number of additional findings that deserve further investigation and discussion specifically the study did not provide any evidence that the successfully completed technology transfers made any substantial contribution to either new business creation or the generation of new jobs this finding suggests that scholars and policy makers should proceed with caution before accepting a notion that new or high technology firms will have any direct economic impact the study findings hold specific implications for entrepreneurial behavior and public policy the formal search and shopping for a technology model suggests that both business and academic government laboratories publicize respectively their requirements and offerings and that opportunities for creative brokerage ought to exist we found that in the majority of cases technology was transferred not through formal search but through some prior relationships among individuals this observation suggests that the ability to build extended networks of relationships not only within the business world but also with the university community is an important skill that owners and managers of the technology based businesses need to possess entrepreneurs seeking to start businesses based on new technologies may need to reevaluate how much of their limited time to allocate to build and maintain networks and cooperative relationships and how much time to shop for new technologies through formal channels further public policy and the efforts of the university transfer agencies intended to facilitate transfer may need to shift their emphasis from facilitating shopping by organizing and or paying for publicity which is currently the major emphasis to providing assistance in network building and relationship marketing efforts

health insurance and retirement of married couples summary most health insurance in the usa is provided by employers until eligibility for public health insurance medicare begins at age 65 retiring before 65 exposes workers who lack retiree health insurance coverage to the risk of catastrophic medical expenditure we solve and estimate a dynamic model of the employment behavior of older married couples that includes risky medical expenditure and health insurance parameter estimates imply that the risk reducing feature of health insurance can account for about half of the observed association between retiree health insurance and employment for married men but can account for only one tenth of the much larger observed association for married women policy simulations imply very small effects on employment of changing the age of eligibility for medicare from 65 to 67 copyright 2006 john wiley sons ltd

hidden effects of bank recapitalizations abstract given the importance of capital regulation in the banking industry how and why a bank s behavior reacts to a recapitalization has profound consequences to this end we investigate the effects of 306 seasoned equity offerings seos conducted by listed european banks between 2002 and 2014 we use propensity score matching and find that seos lead to asset expansion as opposed to any deleveraging further we find a decrease in lending in the short term followed by a subsequent increase a reduction in profitability and an increase in systemic risk regulators might not have fully considered this last negative externality when they imposed the tougher basel iii capital requirements the effects of seos strongly depend on the reasons behind the recapitalizations

university revenues from technology transfer abstract this paper analyzes the financial return of universities taking equity in their spin off companies and the prevailing attitudes toward taking equity the reasons for taking equity include the flexibility it gives licensing managers in structuring deals the possibility that the university will still hold something of value if their technology is replaced and the reduced time required to generate revenue compared to a traditional license a traditional license is preferred when the technology is not suitable for a spin off company or when the technology is one of the rare jackpot licenses that bring in millions of dollars every year the financial reward of taking equity was determined by comparing the value of equity sold in public spin off companies to the return on an average license a traditional license consists of a license issue fee between 10 000 and 250 000 and an annual royalty on sales in 1996 the average annual income from a traditional license was 63 832 the average value of equity sold in 16 university spin off companies is 1 384 242 if one assumes that half the spin offs fail before they go public the average value of equity is 692 121 this is more than 10 times the average annual income from a traditional license and is significantly higher than the amount usually received as a license issue fee the high average value of equity depends on the presence of a few million dollar equity sales if those sales are excluded the average value of equity is 139 722 which is within the range that can be received as a license issue fee there is a high correlation between million dollar equity sales and the amount of venture capital spending in the region the million dollar sales in this study all occurred in the top 11 states in the country in terms of venture capital spending in 1997 from a financial viewpoint it makes sense for licensing managers to take equity in their start up companies our data show that even if none of the start ups produces a million dollar equity sale the financial return of equity will be within the range normally received as a license issue fee taking equity leaves the door open for the occasional jackpot which will bring in significantly more money than a standard license when combined with a strong program of traditional licensing taking equity in start up companies maximizes the financial return that universities realize from their intellectual property

leveraging knowledge as a competitive asset the intensity performance and structure of universities entrepreneurial knowledge exchange activities at a regional level universities are no longer considered to be isolated islands of knowledge but as institutions increasingly engaged with a range of external partners through entrepreneurial activities this paper examines the associations between the intensity and performance of knowledge exchange activities undertaken in uk universities with non academic actors drawing on data concerning the structural factors of interactions of universities in the uk with external partners the paper sheds further light on the nature of these activities through a prism of competitive and uncompetitive regions in order to better understand how universities may be able to leverage both their knowledge and partnerships more effectively as competitive assets on the one hand it is found that academics in uncompetitive regions are more intensively engaged in entrepreneurial activities but generate less income from them than their counterparts in competitive regions suggesting that there are differences in the income generating capacity of academics across regions on the other hand academic knowledge is found to be more strongly bounded within a certain distance in uncompetitive regions whilst geographical distance seems less of a hindrance to academics in competitive regions

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

technology strategy and software new ventures performance exploring the moderating effect of the competitive environment abstract technology strategy ts is one of the most important aspects of any firm s strategic posture especially in dynamic environments such as the computer software industry not only do new ventures face the pressures that accompany all young companies e g shortages of capital but they also have to keep up with a rapid rate of technological change consequently ts the sum of a firm s choices on how to develop and exploit its technological resources can profoundly affect a venture s performance and survival this empirical study examines the relationships between ts and new venture performance nvp by focusing on ts variables and analyzing their performance outcomes the study offers insights into the factors that can influence the success of new ventures in a fast paced environment this study also examines key environmental moderators those external environmental forces which can significantly impact the strength or direction of the relationship between a firm s ts and nvp the study examines five tss that can enhance npv the first is radicality which means developing and introducing new products ahead of competitors the second is the intensity of product upgrades which refers to a venture s commitment to introducing more refinements and extensions of its products than its competition the third is the level of r d spending which indicates a venture s strong investment in internal research and development activities the fourth is the use of external technology sources e g strategic alliances and licenses to augment a firm s own r d efforts the final dimension is the use of

university start up formation and technology licensing with firms that go public a resource based view of academic entrepreneurship abstract although academic entrepreneurship is a topic receiving some attention in the literature higher education s appetite for expanding technology transfer activities suggests that more research is needed to inform practice this study investigates the effects of particular resource sets on two university commercialization activities the number of start up companies formed and the number of initial public offering ipo firms to which a university had previously licensed a technology utilizing multisource data on 120 universities and a resource based view of the firm framework a set of university financial human capital and organizational resources were found to be significant predictors of one or both outcomes

determinants of entrepreneurial activities in china abstract the institutional environment including protection of private properties and contract enforcement has been rather unfavorable for the emergence and development of china s private enterprises this is in sharp contrast to the case of the developed economies where the institutional environment is conductive to the entrepreneurial activities and only the personal attributes of would be entrepreneurs determine their entrepreneurship decision we thus propose a theoretical framework for the entrepreneurship decision in china with a focus on the role of the institutional environment using a life histories survey data of 2854 respondents from twenty cities in china we find strong support for the impacts of the institutional environment and its interactions with other determinants of entrepreneurship decision

using the medicare buy in program to estimate the effect of medicaid on ssi participation aaron s yelowitz this article assesses the importance of receiving supplemental health insurance on participation in supplemental security income ssi for the elderly the implementation of the qualified medicare beneficiary qmb program offered a substitute for medicaid and expanded health insurance eligibility to a higher income level using a sample of elderly respondents aged 66 to 75 i find that the qmb program reduced ssi participation more than half of the qmb participants were previously covered by ssi and medicaid the calculations suggest that the qmb program was not as expensive as it might first appear because of reductions in ssi expenditure jel h53 138 j14 i introduction the supplemental security income ssi program in the united states provides assistance to elderly blind and disabled individuals who are poor it is federally financed and administered by the social security administration although much more attention has been focused on the former aid to families with dependent children afdc program which primarily targets poor single parent families more money was spent on cash relief for ssi recipients in 1993 23 6 billion compared to 22 3 billion 1 in addition to cash ssi recipients receive supplemental health insurance coverage for medicare similar to private medigap policies through the medicaid program this provides a second important benefit to ssi recipients in fiscal year 1993 medicaid expenditure for elderly categorically needy ssi recipients amounted to 14 1 billion 2 several studies have examined the importance of health insurance for working age adults in the labor market 3 in addition the effects of recent medicaid expansions for younger populations have been extensively studied 4 little is known however about the quantitative importance of medicaid on the ssi participation of the elderly the key obstacle in assessing this effect is that until recently medicaid eligibility had been closely related to ssi eligibility in most states this study analyzes the introduction of the qualified medicare beneficiary qmb program enacted in different states from 1987 to 1992 which offered supplemental health insurance coverage to the elderly without the need to participate in ssi the qmb program offered some of the same medicare cost sharing benefits that an elderly ssi recipient would receive from medicaid including the payment of medicare premiums deductibles and copayments 5 moreover the qmb program expanded medicaid coverage to individuals with higher inc omes and assets than the ssi program 6 the primary goal of this article is to document the link between the qmb program and the decision to participate in ssi i find that raising the income limit in qmb program significantly reduces ssi participation particularly among african americans and the less educated the coefficient estimates suggest that in the absence of the qmb buy in program ssi participation would have been 45 higher in 1992 than it actually was the caseload growth in the elderly ssi population would have looked very similar to the caseload growth of the disabled 851 population a group not eligible for qmb in addition the qmb program was considerably less expensive than one would infer from simply calculating the increased health care expenditure because of reductions in ssi expenditure for cash benefits the rest of the article is arranged as follows section ii outlines some relevant features of the ssi medicaid and qmb programs in particular it reviews how the income eligibility limits for qmb and ssi are computed the difference between those limits is a measure of how closely are medicaid and ssi linked it will subsequently be used as the key independent variable in the regression analysis this section also shows the cross sectional and time series variation in the qmb program section iii models the potential effects on ssi participation of the introduction of the qmb program and considers the role of information

health insurance availability and the retirement decision because individuals aged 55 64 face large and uncertain medical expenditures without the guarantee of public insurance coverage provided by medicare the availability of post retirement health insurance could be an important determinant in the retirement decisions of this group we investigate the effect of health insurance on retirement by focusing on state and federal continuation of coverage mandates which grant the retiree the right to continue purchasing health insurance through a previous employer for a specified number of months after leaving the firm we exploit variation in the timing and generosity of these laws to identify the effect of the availability of continuation coverage on retirement decisions using data on 55 64 year old males from the current population survey and the survey of income and program participation we find a sizeable and significant effect of continuation coverage on retirement one year of mandated continuation benefits raises retirement rates by 20 the effect appears to be uniform at all ages rather that larger near the age of medicare eligibility there is also a large increase in the insurance coverage of individuals who would have retired in the absence of continuation benefits our findings have important implications for policies which change the insurance coverage of early retirees such as national health insurance this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was b this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the political economy of truth in advertising regulation during the progressive era abstract this paper explores the origins and effects of truth in advertising regulation during the progressive era was advertising regulation adopted in response to rent seeking on the part of firms that sought to limit the availability of advertising as a competitive device or was advertising regulation desired because it furnished a mechanism through which firms could improve the credibility of advertising we find the available evidence to be more consistent with the latter hypothesis

time to retire the effect of state fiscal policies on retirement decisions our research addresses the importance of state fiscal policies on the probability of retirement using a panel of individual tax return data results indicate that a one percentage point increase in the income or sales tax rate reduces the probability of retirement by about 8 7 percent the evidence suggests that state spending might also affect retirement decisions but magnitudes are inconclusive in general the results suggest that the income effect dominates that is higher tax rates at the state level reduce disposable income and decrease the probability of retiring results are similar in models examining single and married filers separately

health insurance and the labor supply decisions of older workers evidence from a u s department of veterans affairs expansion this paper exploits a major mid 1990s expansion in the u s department of veterans affairs health care system to provide evidence on the labor market effects of expanding health insurance availability using data from the current population survey we employ a difference in differences strategy to compare the labor market behavior of older veterans and non veterans before and after the va health benefits expansion to test the impact of public health insurance on labor supply we find that older workers are significantly more likely to decrease work both on the extensive and intensive margins after receiving access to non employer based insurance workers with some college education or a college degree are more likely to transition into self employment a result consistent with job lock effects however less educated workers are more likely to leave self employment a result suggesting that the positive income effect from receiving public insurance dominates the job lock effect for these workers some relatively disadvantaged sub populations may also increase their labor supply after gaining greater access to public insurance consistent with complementary positive health effects of health care access or decreased work disincentives for these groups we conclude that this reform has affected employment and retirement decisions and suggest that future moves toward universal coverage or expansions of medicare are likely to have significant labor market effects

do the sick retire early chronic illness asset accumulation and early retirement our objective is to determine how chronic illness affects asset accumulation and retirement previous studies have found that poor health leads to early retirement but those studies failed to look at the indirect impact of chronic illness on retirement using data from the health and retirement study we define an illness as chronic if the individual reports having asthma cancer heart disease stroke or diabetes for four or more years we first estimate how a chronic illness influences asset accumulation we then estimate how asset accumulation and current poor health influence retirement we observe that the vast majority of the chronically ill population do not report their general health to be poor nor do they report functional limitations in activities of daily living nevertheless our results indicate that chronic illness leads these people to accumulate fewer assets during their working years and consequently retire later neither researchers nor policy makers discussing the many critical issues

labor market shocks and retirement do government programs matter abstract this paper argues that labor market conditions are an important and often overlooked determinant of retirement transitions in our analysis we examine how the unemployment rate affects retirement and whether the social security ss system and unemployment insurance ui system influence how older workers respond to labor market shocks we use pooled cross sectional data from the march current population survey cps in our analysis we find that downturns in the labor market increase retirement transitions and that the magnitude of this effect is comparable to that associated with moderate changes in financial incentives to retire and to the threat of a health shock facing older workers interestingly retirements only increase in response to an economic downturn once workers become ss eligible suggesting that retirement benefits may help to alleviate the income loss associated with a weak labor market we also estimate the impact of ui generosity on retirement and find little consistent evidence of an effect this suggests that in some ways ss may serve as a more effective form of unemployment insurance for older workers than ui

the effects of health insurance and self insurance on retirement behavior this paper provides an empirical analysis of the effects of employer provided health insurance medicare and social security on retirement behavior using data from the health and retirement study we estimate a dynamic programming model of retirement that accounts for both saving and uncertain medical expenses our results suggest that medicare is important for understanding retirement behavior and that uncertainty and saving are both important for understanding the labor supply responses to medicare half the value placed by a typical worker on his employer provided health insurance is the value of reduced medical expense risk raising the medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 leads individuals to work an additional 0 074 years over ages 60 69 in comparison eliminating 2 years worth of social security benefits increases years of work by 0 076 years

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

social spending and automatic stabilizers in the oecd the macroeconomic literature on automatic stabilization tends to focus on taxes and dismiss the relevance of government expenditure except for unemployment compensation our results go sharply contrary to this view we engage in an empirical analysis of 21 oecd countries from 1982 to 2003 and find that age and health related social expenditure as well as incapacity and sick benefits all react to the cycle in a stabilizing manner while possibly new in the macro literature this conforms to many results in studies in labour economics the policy implications are broad since much previous analysis of discretionary fiscal policy rests on official figures for automatic stabilization there are also major implications for efforts to incorporate automatic fiscal policy in simulation models julia darby and jacques melitz

the impact of firmspecific capabilities on the amount of capital raised in an initial public offering evidence from the biotechnology industry abstract going public has a magical sound to most entrepreneurial managers by going public the firm increases its legitimacy in the business community improves access to debt financing and creates a means of exit for major shareholders however by far the most important reason for going public is to infuse a significant amount of investment capital into the firm it is well documented that small businesses frequently fail because of insufficient funding and heavy debt loads issuing an initial public offering ipo allows entrepreneurial firms to overcome these pitfalls clearly if access to capital is the major goal of going public then the success of an offering is measured by the amount of capital raised by the firm this study presents a model of the total amount of capital raised by a firm through an ipo the explanatory variables include several indicators of the scientific capabilities of the firm including the location of the firm the quality of the research staff the number of products under development the number of patents held by the firm and the firm s prior spending on research and development r d the model is empirically tested on a sample of 92 biotechnology ipos the results provide strong support for the hypothesized positive relationship between the total amount of capital raised by a firm s ipo and the scientific capabilities of the firm our results have important implications for entrepreneurs first an entrepreneur needs to develop and send credible signals indicating the value of the firm s intangible assets to the market second the market values as deep a product pipeline as possible given a firm s resource constraints third choice of location is a key strategic decision that should not be overlooked fourth the market values firm specific capabilities and will increase the capital it is willing to invest in a firm accordingly finally the amount of capital a firm raises in its ipo can be influenced by entrepreneurial managers strategic decisions

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

does retiree health insurance encourage early retirement the strong link between health insurance and employment in the united states may cause workers to delay retirement until they become eligible for medicare at age 65 however some employers extend health insurance benefits to their retirees and individuals who are eligible for such retiree health benefits need not wait until age 65 to retire with group health coverage we investigate the impact of retiree health insurance on early retirement using employee level data from 54 diverse firms that are clients of towers watson a leading benefits consulting firm we find that retiree health coverage has its strongest effects at ages 62 through 64 coverage that includes an employer contribution is associated with a 6 3 percentage point 36 2 percent increase in the probability of turnover at age 62 a 7 7 percentage point 48 8 percent increase in the probability of turnover at age 63 and a 5 5 percentage point 38 0 percent increase in the probability of turnover at age 64 conditional on working at age 57 such coverage reduces the expected retirement age by almost three months and reduces the total number of person years worked between ages 58 and 64 by 5 6 percent

transactions costs technological choice and endogenous growth abstract hicks a theory of economic history clarendon press oxford 1969 argues that an important aspect of industrial development is the adoption of technologies requiring highly illiquid capital investments the adoption of such technologies becomes economically viable in the presence of low cost financial markets that provide liquidity to investors this observation provides a mechanism by which the costs of transacting in financial markets affect the equilibrium choice of technology productive efficiency and by implication growth we analyze how the costs of financial market transactions affect the set of technologies in use and the equilibrium growth rate transactions cost reductions may depending on the capital structure enhance or reduce growth journal of economic literature classification numbers d90 e13 g14

universities and industrially relevant science towards measurement models and indicators of entrepreneurial orientation abstract which university departments engaged in industrially relevant science are likely candidates to become entrepreneurial at present there are neither measurement models nor leading indicators that can answer such questions at an international comparative level this paper introduces concepts theory and a measurement model for identifying the early stages of a university s enterpreneurial orientation within a quantitative analytical framework this approach focuses specifically on university industry interactions in which the connectivity between academic science and industrial research is captured and measured empirically in terms of 1 public private co authored research articles and 2 references citations within corporate research articles to university research articles the paper examines a range of country level and institutional determinants of industrially relevant science across 18 research areas of significant industrial interest and at two different levels of analysis research systems of oecd countries and large sets of research universities within those countries the results of these large scale analyses along with those of a case study dealing with european universities active in the field of immunology research suggest that many structural factors determine university industry interactions and the potential for entrepreneurial orientation the two connectivity indicators appear to be of minor significance compared to a university s country of location and the magnitude of its research activities in industrially relevant fields of science

solvency regulations and the management of banking risks abstract in the recent years international banking authorities have succeeded implementing harmonized solvency regulations however two stages can be distinguished 1 up to 1993 a rigid approach has prevailed with the cooke ratio for credit risks and the standardized approach to market risks 2 since then a movement towards flexibility has been acknowledged notably with the validation of internal models of the var type and the precommitment proposal of kupiec and o brien the objective of this article is to discuss the pros and cons of these different approaches within a coherent conceptual framework that applies contract theory to the regulation of banking

technology transfer and public policy a review of research and theory abstract my purpose is to review synthesize and criticize the voluminous multidisciplinary literature on technology transfer to reduce the literature to manageable proportions i focus chiefly not exclusively on recent literature on domestic technology transfer from universities and government laboratories i begin by examining a set of fundamental conceptual issues especially the ways in which the analytical ambiguities surrounding technology transfer concepts affect research and theory my literature review follows and i emphasize technology transfer s impact and effectiveness i employ a contingent effectiveness model of technology transfer to organize the literature as the model s name implies it assumes that technology effectiveness can take a variety of forms in addition to examining the more traditional effectiveness criteria those rooted in market impacts the model considers a number of alternative effectiveness criteria including political effectiveness capacity building

employment separation and health insurance coverage abstract we study the interrelationship between employment separation and insurance coverage we first document that employment separation is associated with large reductions in insurance coverage even conditioning on underlying tastes for insurance we then show that reducing the cost of insurance through state laws mandating continued access to employer provided health insurance for the non employed increases the likelihood of having insurance after separating from a job by 6 7 these mandates also increase the number of individuals who separate and the total amount of time spent jobless finally at least some of this increased non employment appears to be spent in productive job search as the availability of continuation coverage is related to significant wage gains among those who separate from their jobs

concentration and other determinants of bank profitability in europe north america and australia abstract this study reviews the performance of banks in twelve countries or territories in europe north america and australia and examines the internal and external determination of profitability to circumvent some of the difficulties in making comparisons between banks in different countries the concept of value added is introduced results parallel those in domestic u s studies and provide some support for the edwards heggestad mingo hypothesis of risk avoidance by banks with a high degree of market power

how social security and medicare affect retirement behavior in a world of incomplete markets this paper provides an empirical analysis of how the u s social security and medicare insurance system affect the labor supply of older males in the presence of incomplete markets for loans annuities and health insurance we estimate a detailed dynamic programming dp model of the joint labor supply and social security acceptance decision focusing on a sample of males in the low to middle income brackets whose only pension is social security the dp model delivers a rich set of predictions about the dynamics of retirement behavior and comparisons of actual vs predicted behavior show that the dp model is able to account for wide variety of phenomena observed in the data including the pronounced peaks in the distribution of retirement ages at 62 and 65 the ages of early and normal eligibility for social security benefits respectively we identify a significant fraction of health insurance constrained individuals who have no form of retiree health insurance other than medicare and who can only obtain fairly priced private health insurance via their employer s group health plan the combination of significant individual risk aversion and a long tailed pareto distribution of health care expenditures implies that there is a significant security value for these individuals to remain employed until they are eligible for medicare coverage at age 65 overall our model suggests that a number of heretofore puzzling aspects of retirement behavior can be viewed as artifacts of particular details of the social security rules whose incentive effects are especially strong for lower income individuals and those who do not have access to fairly priced loans annuities and health insurance

do immigrants delay retirement and social security claiming we use data from the health and retirement study hrs to examine how immigrants retirement and social security claiming patterns compare to those of natives we find that immigrants retire and cl

entrepreneurial orientation technology transfer and spinoff performance of u s universities this paper adopts a resource based perspective to understand why some universities are more successful than others at generating technology based spinoff companies in this respect we derive eight hypotheses that link attributes of resources and capabilities institutional financial commercial and human capital to university spinoff outcomes using panel data from 1980 to 2001 our econometric estimators reveal evidence of history dependence for successful technology transfer to occur although faculty quality size and orientation of science and engineering funding and commercial capability were also found to be predictors of university spinoff activity we conclude by drawing implications for policy makers and university heads