pension profile preferences the influence of trust and expected expenses this paper studies the influence of people s expectations about expenses during retirement and trust in pension funds on preferences for different pension arrangements although most workers prefer

collateral damage for r d manufacturers how patent sharks operate in markets for technology patent sharks small firms that exploit information asymmetries in markets for technology to gain patent based competitive advantages challenge established theory by which i markets for technology benefit large firms and ii intellectual property rights systems strictly support markets for technology empirically linking the sharks different assault strategies to the patents they deploy we illustrate that patent sharks will likely be an enduring phenomenon in markets for technology we discuss policy and strategy implications copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

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

environmental and socio economic feasibility assessment of rice straw conversion to power and ethanol in thailand abstract technically 26 32 of rice straw residues accounting for about 5 6 mt year can be used for energy in thailand the quantified environmental and socio economic benefits of this potential renewable energy source could be a driving force noted by the decision makers and communities converting rice straw residues to electricity or ethanol would directly increase the standard of living of regional households in terms of expenditure fulfillments direct contributions to the housing healthcare education and necessities as well as the share of straw logistics on regional wise basis are estimated furthermore one environmental and four socio economic indicators are quantified for 1 mj of dry rice straw delivered and used in assumed commercial 10 mwe and 24 ml ethanol conversion facilities using the same yearly quantity of 116 000 t rice straw all the indicators show favor in the ethanol option comparison ratios of value added of straw to energy life cycle ghg reductions net currency savings direct value added gdp and employment direct indirect unemployed beneficiaries for ethanol and power options would be respectively 1 0 07 1 0 89 1 0 96 1 0 11 and 1 0 35 total yearly employment beneficiaries of 15 000 18 000 and 41 000 51 000 are expected for power and ethanol options respectively

patent trolls on markets for technology an empirical analysis of npes patent acquisitions abstract patent trolls or npes appropriate profits from innovation solely by enforcing patents against infringers they are often characterized as relying on low quality patents an assessment that if correct would imply that eradicating such patents would effectively terminate the npe business in this paper we shed light on this issue by empirically analyzing npes patent acquisitions we draw on a unique dataset of 392 u s patents acquired by known npes between 1997 and 2006 which we compare to three control groups of 784 u s patents each acquired by practicing firms we find that the probability that a traded patent is acquired by an npe rather than a practicing entity increases in the scope of the patent in the patent density of its technology field and contrary to common belief in the patent s technological quality our findings thus support recent theoretical propositions about the npe business model showing that npes procure patents that are more likely to be infringed harder to substitute for and robust to legal challenges the fact that npe acquired patents are of significantly higher quality than those in the control group implies that elevating minimum patent quality will not put an end to the npe business and suggests that this business is sustainable in the long run we furthermore discuss the fact that npes are peculiar players on markets for technology insofar as they are solely interested in the exclusion right not in the underlying knowledge we posit that transactions involving npes may only be the tip of the iceberg of patent only transactions a conjecture with strong implications for the efficiency and the study of markets for technologies managerial and policy implications are discussed

risk preferences around the world we present results from a large scale international survey on risk preferences conducted in 53 countries in all countries we find on average an attitude of risk aversion in gains and of risk seeking in losses the degree of risk aversion shows significant cross country differences moreover risk attitudes in our sample depend not only on economic conditions but also on cultural factors as measured by the hofstede dimensions individualism and uncertainty avoidance the data may also serve as an interesting starting point for further research on cultural differences in behavioral economics data as supplemental material are available at http dx doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2013 1869 this paper was accepted by peter wakker decision analysis

assessment and optimization of forest biomass supply chains from economic social and environmental perspectives a review of literature abstract forest biomass is a renewable source that has the potential to substitute fossil fuels in many applications from the generation of bioenergy heat electricity or transportation fuels to the production of bioproducts chemicals and other materials the increased use of forest biomass could support the reduction of anthropogenic carbon emissions to the environment and could help forest dependent communities achieve energy independence while generating jobs the viability and feasibility of generating valuable products from forest biomass depend on ensuring the long term availability of biomass supply with the required quality at a competitive cost this calls for a cost efficient design of the forest biomass supply chain social and environmental aspects have to be considered in the design as well to guarantee sustainable use of this renewable resource in this paper we present a review of studies that assessed or optimized economic social and environmental aspects of forest biomass supply chains for the production of bioenergy and bioproducts the majority of studies so far considered either economic techno economic and optimization studies or environmental life cycle assessment studies aspects of bioenergy projects nevertheless there is a recent trend to integrate economic environmental and social aspects in the assessment and optimization of forest biomass supply chains combined approaches integrating multi objective optimization and life cycle assessment have started to flourish in these studies ghg emissions are the most frequently used environmental indicator production and capital costs are the preferred economic measures and the number of created jobs is the most considered social criterion further research has to be done to study and assess the potential social impacts of using forest biomass there is a need for further development of decision support tools that consider economic environmental and social criteria to aid the design and planning of forest biomass supply chains

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

cognitive constraints on valuing annuities this paper documents consumers difficulty valuing life annuities using a purpose built experiment in the american life panel we show that the prices at which people are willing to buy annuities are substantially below the prices at which they are willing to sell them we also find that buy values are negatively correlated with sell values and that the sell buy valuation spread is negatively correlated with cognition this spread is larger for those with less education weaker numerical abilities and lower levels of financial literacy our evidence contributes to the emerging literature on heterogeneity in financial decision making abilities particularly regarding retirement payouts jel d14 d91 g11 h55

financial literacy and participation in the derivatives markets we set out in this study to determine whether individuals with higher levels of financial literacy are more likely to be active participants in the derivatives markets our empirical results based upon an official national survey undertaken by the financial supervisory commission of taiwan reveal that even after controlling for stock market participation rates financial literacy represents a significant benefit to individuals since it helps them to lower the entry barriers to purchasing complex derivatives products we also find that household wealth gender residential location and diverse sources of information have significant effects on participation rates in the derivatives markets furthermore when taking into consideration issues of accessibility or measurement error the positive effects of financial literacy on derivatives market participation are found to remain largely unchanged

behavioral impediments to valuing annuities complexity and choice bracketing this paper examines two behavioral factors that diminish people s ability to value a lifetime income stream or annuity drawing on a randomized experiment with about 4 000 adults in a u s national

forecasting job creation from renewable energy deployment through a value chain approach abstract this paper introduces a new approach to the study of the socioeconomic impact of renewable technologies through the analysis of the reinforcing effects of the expansion of this industry and the specific characteristics of the employment along the value chain the method proposed is based on the collection critical analysis and presentation of the results obtained using primary information sources the model design includes contributions extracted from a prior analysis of the existing assessment methods to lessen the uncertainty of the job ratios often used in these types of analysis one factor to be taken into account is the high degree of development in the sector and above all the maturity of the technology considered from the point of view of the industry fabric the economy of scale and technological development actually influences the human resources needs sometimes increasing the demand for professionals within the scope of r d and sometimes reducing jobs in the manufacturing industry which is gradually applying processes with a greater degree of automation the influence of these experience curves is different for every single stage of the value chain trade balance of technologies is also crucial for local employment generation an analytical model was developed based on the above assumptions and applied to the spanish pv industry this industry has been playing a leading role in the expansion of renewable energy and offers a high potential towards the short term development of the smart grids in this country this model represents very well the history of the spanish pv industry reflected through the evolution of the jobs and is shown to be the foundation of a methodology for prospective studies in the social and economic impacts of renewables

what determines patent value insights from the semiconductor industry abstract this paper contributes to an understanding which impacts certain patent characteristics have on the value of patent rights in an exploratory study 127 individual patents from a semiconductor company were evaluated comprehensively by technical and marketing representatives the analysis of this rare data shows that for patents used as bargaining chips novelty and inventive activity are most important difficulty of inventing around and disclosure turn out to be of limited importance due to a selection bias the influence of patent age on its value cannot be determined the results hint at a differentiated theoretical plausibility of value indicators

an investigation of time preferences life expectancy and annuity versus lump sum choices can smoking harm long term saving decisions abstract we exploit the fact that israeli pension insurance policies do not take health conditions or smoking status into account in annuity pricing to investigate the potential effect of being a smoker on retirement payout choices contrary to the idea that smokers have higher discount rates and thus should prefer the lump sum option and even though the insurance pricing mechanism means that smokers would be offered the same annuity as nonsmokers all else equal we find that smokers do not prefer the lump sum option we offer and test several potential explanations for our findings illusions regarding life expectancy self control and advantageous selection

an experimental test of the under annuitization puzzle with smooth ambiguity and charitable giving abstract in a life cycle model with a bequest motive we study the impact of smooth ambiguity aversion to uncertain survival probabilities on the optimal demand for annuities we implement a theory driven laboratory experiment first a subject s ambiguity attitude is elicited in a simple experimental setting able to make the smooth ambiguity model operational then in a two period annuity bequest decision problem the subject s bequest in the second period is presented as a donation to a previously chosen charity contingent to the subject being active after the first period in line with the theoretical predictions we find that ambiguity averse resp loving subjects invest less resp more in annuities than ambiguity neutral ones furthermore subjects contingent donation to the chosen charity increases in their investment in annuities only for sufficiently high levels of warm glow altruism

characteristics of patent litigation a window on competition we examine the patenting behavior of firms in an industry characterized by rapid technological change and cumulative innovation recent survey evidence suggests that semiconductor firms do not rely heavily on patents to appropriate returns to r d yet the propensity of semiconductor firms to patent has risen dramatically since the mid 1980s we explore this apparent paradox by conducting interviews with industry representatives and analyzing the patenting behavior of 95 u s semiconductor firms during 1979 1995 the results suggest that the 1980s strengthening of u s patent rights spawned patent portfolio races among capital intensive firms but it also facilitated entry by specialized design firms copyright 2001 by the rand corporation

patents as indicators of corporate technological strength abstract quantitative indicators of the technological strengths of individual companies would be an important addition to the financial and economic data used in competitor assessments merger acquisition analyses investment decisions and corporate planning and management this paper examines the links between corporate patent and patent citation data and several other indicators of corporate performance changes in sales and profits research and development budgets scientific productivity and expert opinions of company technological strength the study covers 17 us pharmaceutical companies for which financial r d and expert opinion data were readily available for these pharmaceutical companies it was found that the patent data are an excellent indicator of overall corporate technological strength with 1 an overall correlation of 0 82 between expert opinion of pharmaceutical company technical strength and the number of us patents granted to the companies and 2 correlations in the general range of 0 6 to 0 9 between increases in company profits and sales and both patent citation frequency and concentration of company patents within a few patent classes

portfolio choice and trading in a large 401 k plan we study nearly 7 000 retirement accounts during the april 1994 august 1998 period several interesting patterns emerge most asset allocations are extreme either 100 percent or zero percent in equities and there is inertia in asset allocations equity allocations are higher for males married investors and for investors with higher earnings and more seniority on the job equity allocations are lower for older investors there is very limited portfolio reshuffling in sharp contrast to discount brokerage accounts daily changes in equity allocations correlate only weakly with same day equity returns and do not correlate with future equity returns

the dynamics of the transfer and renewal of patents this article explores new data on the transfer and renewal of u s patents and interprets this new evidence using a model of patent transfers and renewal we find that the proportion of transferred patents is large and differs across technology fields and especially type of patentees we also find that the probability of a patent being traded depends on a number of factors the age of the patent the number of citations received by a given age the patent generality and whether the patent has been previously traded or not these findings are consistent with the predictions of a model of patent transfers and renewals

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

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

the inclusion of social aspects in power planning a b s t r a c t this paper overviews previous research addressing the inclusion of the social dimension of sustainable development on power systems planning consequences of the recent energy policies and strategies are already being felt in developed countries power systems with the integration of rising quotas in renewable energy technologies however while the tools that aid decision making on power planning show that economic and environmental issues are easily quantifiable and thus modeled social concerns have been addressed in a less extensive and more subjective way implying in most cases expert participation on multi criteria decision aid techniques a survey of recent papers providing public perceptions on electricity generation technologies and projects is presented these papers were chosen and reviewed in order to present a representative array of methodologies that are used to assess social acceptance of technologies according to some of the reviewed papers this issue is suggested to be fundamental to increase project success as a conclusion stands the fact that further discussion is still needed in order to achieve solid agreement among experts over what are the positive and the negative drivers to social sustainability otherwise models will not be able to translate reality and improve it under this point of view

motives to patent empirical evidence from germany abstract against the background of the patent upsurge we first analyse the role of patenting and alternative instruments to protect intellectual property based on a sample of german companies active in patenting in a second step we investigate the motives to patent considering sector and company size effects we find that company size matters both for the importance of instruments and the motives to patent especially important are the new strategic motives to patent like using patents to improve a company s own position in negotiations with partners licensees and the financial sector or to use patents as incentives for r d personnel or performance indicators these correlate positively with company size we derive some possible challenges for future patent policies from these insights

modeling the bio refinery industry in rural areas a participatory approach for policy options comparison the development of bio refineries has become a relevant topic in the eu s agenda however the promotion of a new industry in rural areas is typically hindered by the scarcity of human capital lack of information infrastructures and competing interests in this context public support is unavoidable to assist promotion of this innovative sector the various policy options reveal some strengths and drawbacks posing the problem of finding the best trade off to public decision makers in this paper we aim at developing a methodology to support policy decision making within the biorefinery framework with the purpose of determining a way to identify the most suitable policy option given the actual uncertainty in developing the bio refinery industry in rural areas the empirical experiment based on a simulation of the enforcement of four identified policy instruments highlights that although subsidies and incentives to profitability of dedicated crops appear to have the greatest effects on the development of bio refinery the best performances are exhibited by technological innovation and information options

what makes annuitization more appealing we conduct and analyze two large surveys of hypothetical annuitization choices we find that allowing individuals to annuitize a fraction of their wealth increases annuitization relative to a situation where annuitization is an all or nothing decision very few respondents choose declining real payout streams over flat or increasing real payout streams of equivalent expected present value highlighting the effects of inflation increases demand for cost of living adjustments frames that highlight flexibility control and investment significantly reduce annuitization a majority of respondents prefer to receive an extra bonus payment during one month of the year that is funded by slightly lower payments in the remaining months concerns about later life income spending flexibility and counterparty risk are the most important self reported motives that influence the annuitization decision

who chooses annuities an experimental investigation of the role of gender framing and defaults research suggests that women are more risk averse and less financially literate than men as evidenced by their choice of less risky asset investments we contribute to the literature by focusing on the role of gender in an increasingly important financial decision facing individuals at retirement the choice between purchasing an annuity in this case a fixed immediate lifetime annuity or investing their savings on their own by using a controlled experiment we eliminate the role of adverse selection and unfair annu ity pricing and are able to focus specifically on gender we also explore the role of defaults and framing and whether women react differently to these features we find that women are more likely to choose the annuity and this is only partly explained by differences in risk aversion and financial literacy furthermore biases in a five minute presentation of information signifi cantly affect choices in ways that differ across men and women

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

the annuity puzzle remains a puzzle abstract we examine incomplete annuity menus background risk bequest motives and default risk as possible drivers of divergence from full annuitization contrary to what is often suggested in the literature we find that full annuitization remains optimal if saving is possible after retirement this holds irrespective of whether real or only nominal annuities are available whenever liquidity is desired individuals save sizeable amounts out of their annuity income to smooth consumption shocks similarly adding equity linked annuities to the menu does not increase welfare significantly since individuals can invest in stocks in order to get the desired equity exposure

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

gender differences in revealed risk taking evidence from mutual fund investors abstract using data from a national survey of nearly 2000 mutual fund investors we investigate whether investor gender is related to risk taking as revealed in mutual fund investment decisions consonant with the received literature we find that women exhibit less risk taking than men in their most recent largest and riskiest mutual fund investment decisions more importantly we find that the impact of gender on risk taking is significantly weakened when investor knowledge of financial markets and investments is controlled in the regression equation this result suggests that the greater level of risk aversion among women that is frequently documented in the literature can be substantially but not completely explained by knowledge disparities

modeling of biomass to energy supply chain operations applications challenges and research directions reducing dependency on fossil fuels and mitigating their environmental impacts are among the most promising aspects of utilizing renewable energy sources the availability of various biomass resources has made it an appealing source of renewable energy given the variability of supply and sources of biomass supply chains play an important role in the efficient provisioning of biomass resources for energy production this paper provides a comprehensive review and classification of the excising literature in modeling of biomass supply chain operations while linking them to the wider strategic challenges and issues with the design planning and management of biomass supply chains on that basis we will present an analysis of the existing gaps and the potential future directions for research in modeling of biomass supply chain operations

the impact of choice architecture on sustainable consumer behavior the role of guilt companies often encourage consumers to engage in sustainable behaviors using their services in a more environmentally friendly or green way such as reusing the towels in a hotel or replacing paper bank statements by electronic statements sometimes the option of green service is implied as the default and consumers can opt out while in other cases consumers need to explicitly ask opt in for switching to a green service this research examines the effectiveness of choice architecture and particularly the different default policies i e the alternative the consumer receives if he she does not explicitly request otherwise in engaging consumer green behavior in four experiments we show that the opt out default policy is more effective than the opt in because it increases anticipated guilt this effect is stronger for consumers who are less conscious for the environment study 1 we also show that a forced choice policy in which the consumer is not automatically assigned to any condition and is forced to choose between the green and the non green service option is more effective than the opt in policy and not significantly more effective than the opt out policy study 2 finally we show that the role of defaults is weakened enhanced if a negotiated reciprocal cooperation strategy is used study 3 the article contributes to the literature of defaults and provides managerial and public policy implications for the design of green services

how to model different socio economic and environmental aspects of biomass utilisation case study in selected regions in slovenia and croatia abstract wood biomass is an important renewable source of energy especially in countries with traditional dependency on forestry resources in these countries wood biomass can have numerous positive socio economical and environmental effects this paper presents a new model score model for estimation of 15 socio economic and environmental aspects of increased use of biomass from the forests the presented model enables selected estimation of different aspects in the whole chain of biomass production preparation and use namely the model enables the estimation of net labour income net profit regional public finance income net direct jobs net indirect jobs net induced jobs total net jobs contribution to forest management impact on wood waste utilisation impact on other woody biomass utilisation avoided costs of landfill saving co2 emissions possible impact on regional unemployment avoided costs of unemployment additional jobs for farmers additional activities on farms from indirect and induced jobs and self sufficiency in electricity production the score model was tested in selected regions in slovenia and croatia and apart from a good understanding of the socio economic and environmental aspects it also enables an overview of the economy of wood biomass production given that it includes the economic analysis of wood biomass production and use the model is not intended for a detailed economic analysis of separate phases of wood biomass production processing and use but particularly to show advantages or disadvantages that can result from planned and existing biomass systems

testing patent value indicators on directly observed patent value an empirical analysis of ocean tomo patent auctions the valuation of patents is an important albeit challenging task extant research to identify patent value indicators has so far relied on expert estimates of patent value exploited patent renewal data or depended on more indirect measures of patent value recently specialized market places for patent transactions have emerged that allow us for the first time to directly observe patent s private value one of the most prominent market places for patents is ocean tomo a platform that offers periodical patent auctions we make use of this auction data to empirically test predictions on patent value identifiers on real world auction prices we find empirical support for forward citations and the patent s family size however both indicators explain only a small variance in patent value in contrast our full model explains a large share of variance making us optimistic that with increased directly observed patent value such models can be useful tools in patent valuation

demand for annuities price sensitivity risk perceptions and knowledge abstract the demand for voluntary individual lifetime annuities is low as merely 10 of soon to be retired canadians care to buy such contracts to assess the reasons why we design a stated preference experiment in which we vary characteristics of annuity contracts to estimate individuals sensitivity to an annuity s money s worth that is the value to cost ratio using different measures of longevity risk and survival expectations we investigate how knowledge of annuity products and mortality risk misperceptions affect the take up and the sensitivity of the demand for annuities we find that annuities are objectively actuarially neutral in general meaning that annuity premiums are equal to their expected payment and can appear to offer great value for the money given an individual s subjective mortality risk we also find that demand is somewhat price inelastic so that lowering the price of annuities could increase demand by at most 2 percentage points for a base of 10 lack of knowledge of annuities explains another 0 8 percentage points we find limited additional interest for deferred annuities compared to immediate annuities although respondents are less sensitive to deferred annuity prices

is roger federer more loss averse than serena williams using data from the high stakes 2013 dubai professional tennis tournament we find that compared with a tied score i male players have a higher serve speed and thus exhibit more effort when behind in score and their serve speeds get less sensitive to losses or gains when score difference gets too large and ii female players do not change their serve speed when behind while serving slower when ahead thus male players comply more with prospect theory exhibiting more loss aversion and reflection effect our results are robust to controlling for player fixed effects and characteristics with player random effects

new evidence on the money s worth of individual annuities this paper presents new information on the expected present discounted value of payouts on individual life annuities the annuity we examine is the single premium immediate life annuity an insurance product that pays out a nominal level sum as long as the covered person lives in exchange for an initial lump sum premium this annuity offers protection against the risk of someone outliving his saving given uncertainty about longevity for reasonable estimates of behavioral parameters we calculate that individual annuities are currently priced so that retirees without bequest motives should find these policies of substantial value in configuring their portfolios to smooth retirement consumption we also find that the expected present discounted value of payouts relative to the initial cost of the annuity has increased over the last decade these findings bear on the policy debate regarding the role of individual choice and self reliance in retirement planning this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

patent thickets courts and the market for innovation we study how fragmentation of patent rights and the formation of the court of appeals for the federal circuit cafc affected the duration of patent disputes and thus the speed of technology diffusion through licensing we develop a model of patent litigation which predicts faster settlement when patent rights are fragmented and when there is less uncertainty about court outcomes as was associated with the pro patent shift of the cafc we confirm these predictions empirically using a data set that covers patent suits in u s district courts during the period 1975 2000 finally we analyze how fragmentation affects total settlement delay considering both the reduction in dispute duration and the increase in the number of patent negotiations

the effects of perceived and actual financial literacy on financial behaviors a combined measure of financial literacy that includes both a test score of actual financial literacy and a self rating of overall financial literacy is used in this study we find that the combined measure appears to provide greater understanding about how financial literacy affects financial behaviors a large national survey of u s adults and households n 28 146 was used to investigate how this overall financial literacy is likely to change financial behaviors across five financial topics credit cards investments loans insurance and financial advice for each topic we include 4 5 financial behaviors 22 in total to demonstrate the consistency of the findings within and across topics although we are unable to identify a causal relationship the results from the probit analysis show that both actual and perceived financial literacy appear to influence financial behaviors and that perceived financial literacy may be as important as actual financial literacy jel d14 g00