inequality and the dynamics of public opinion the self reinforcing link between economic inequality and mass preferences this article assesses the influence of income inequality on the public s policy mood recent work has produced divergent perspectives on the relationship between inequality public opinion and government redistribution one group of scholars suggests that unequal representation of different income groups reproduces inequality as politicians respond to the preferences of the rich another group of scholars pays relatively little attention to distributional outcomes but shows that government is generally just as responsive to the poor as to the rich utilizing theoretical insights from comparative political economy and time series data from 1952 to 2006 supplemented with cross sectional analysis where appropriate we show that economic inequality is in fact self reinforcing but that this is fully consistent with the idea that government tends to respond equally to rich and poor in its policy enactments

joint management of capacity and inventory in make to stock production systems with multi class demand we evaluate the benefits of coordinating capacity and inventory decisions in a make to stock production environment we consider a firm that faces multi class demand and has additional capacity options that are temporary and randomly available we formulate the model as a markov decision process mdp and prove that a solution to the optimal joint control problem exists for several special cases we characterize the structure of the optimal policy for the general case however we show that the optimal policy is state dependent and in many instances non monotone and difficult to implement therefore we consider three pragmatic heuristic policies and assess their performance we show that the majority of the savings originate from the ability to dynamically adjust capacity and that a simple heuristic that can adjust production capacity based on workload fluctuation but uses a static production rationing policy can result in significant savings

production planning and pricing policy in a make to stock system with uncertain demand subject to machine breakdowns abstract we consider a make to stock system served by an unreliable machine that produces one type of product which is sold to customers at one of two possible prices depending on the inventory level at the time when a customer arrives i e the decision point the system manager must determine the production level and selling price at each decision point we first show that the optimal production and pricing policy is a threshold control which is characterized by three threshold parameters under both the long run discounted profit and long run average profit criteria we then establish the structural relationships among the three threshold parameters that production is off when inventory is above the threshold and that the optimal selling price should be low when inventory is above the threshold under the scenario where the machine is down or up finally we provide some numerical examples to illustrate the analytical results and gain additional insights

the drivers of efficient knowledge transfer performance evidence from british universities using data from the united kingdom this study explores the institutional and environmental factors that influence universities efficiency in knowledge transfer while studies of universities knowledge transfer performance have so far focused on patent commercialisation and research contracting with industry it is increasingly acknowledged that universities engage in a broader range of knowledge transfer activities including consulting public engagement and provision of knowledge intensive services when these are taken into account less research intensive universities and those with a greater share of staff in the arts and humanities improve their relative efficiency more specialised older and larger institutions are more efficient performers while research intensity is no longer a strong predictor of efficiency

integrated capacity and inventory management with capacity acquisition lead times we model a make to stock production system that utilizes permanent and contingent capacity to meet non stationary stochastic demand where a constant lead time is associated with the acquisition of contingent capacity we determine the structure of the optimal solution concerning both the operational decisions of integrated inventory and flexible capacity management and the tactical decision of determining the optimal permanent capacity level furthermore we show that the inventory either before or after production the pipeline contingent capacity the contingent capacity to be ordered and the permanent capacity are economic substitutes we also show that the stochastic demand variable and the optimal contingent capacity acquisition decisions are economic complements finally we perform numerical experiments to evaluate the value of utilizing contingent capacity and to study the effects of capacity acquisition lead time providing useful managerial insights

universities and fundamental research reflections on the growth of university industry partnerships the recent rise in university industry partnerships has stimulated an important public policy debate regarding how these relationships affect fundamental research in this paper we examine the antecedents and consequences of policies to promote university industry alliances although the preliminary evidence appears to suggest that these partnerships have not had a deleterious effect on the quantity and quality of basic research some legitimate concerns have been raised about these activities that require additional analysis we conclude that additional research is needed to provide a more accurate assessment of the optimal level of commercialisation

a dynamic rationing policy for continuous review inventory systems stock rationing is an inventory policy that allows differential treatment of customer classes without using separate inventories in this paper we propose a dynamic rationing policy for continuous review inventory systems which utilizes the information on the status of the outstanding replenishment orders for both backordering and lost sales environments we conduct simulation studies to compare the performance of the dynamic policy with the static critical level and the common stock policies and quantify the gain obtained we propose two new bounds on the optimum dynamic rationing policy that enables us to tell how much of the potential gain the proposed dynamic policy realizes we discuss the conditions under which stock rationing both dynamic and static is beneficial and assess the value of the dynamic policy

what does a university add to its local economy the local multiplier effects of a university are estimated using data for the university of nottingham gross output and disposable income multipliers are calculated the latter are adjusted to exclude the incomes of induced migrants whose welfare is assumed unchanged

a theoretical analysis of the role of social networks in entrepreneurship entrepreneurship involves innovation and uncertainty we outline a theory of entrepreneurship which highlights the importance of social networks in promoting innovation and reducing uncertainty our findings suggest that this social aspect of entrepreneurship increases the probability of entrepreneurial success the results also lend credence to theories of entrepreneurship that suggest that entrepreneurial opportunities are formed endogenously by the entrepreneurs who create them we also consider the public policy implications of our findings

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

income inequality in the united states 1913 1998 this paper presents new homogeneous series on top shares of income and wages from 1913 to 1998 in the united states using individual tax returns data top income and wages shares display a u shaped pattern over the century our series suggest that the large shocks that capital owners experienced during the great depression and world war ii have had a permanent effect on top capital incomes we argue that steep progressive income and estate taxation may have prevented large fortunes from fully recovering from these shocks top wage shares were flat before world war ii dropped precipitously during the war and did not start to recover before the late 1960s but are now higher than before world war ii as a result the working rich have replaced the rentiers at the top of the income distribution

a stock rationing policy in a s s controlled stochastic production system with 2 phase coxian processing times and lost sales abstract this paper analyzes a s s controlled stochastic production system with multi class demands and lost sales demands in each class are assumed to arrive according to a poisson process and the time required to process an item is assumed to follow a 2 phase coxian distribution for each class a stock rationing level is set when customers arrive if the inventory level is lower than the predetermined rationing level the demands are lost for future demands with higher priorities a behavior of the production system is modeled as a continuous time markov chain and an efficient algorithm to calculate the steady state probability distribution of the system is proposed the average operating cost under the stock rationing policy is compared with the one without stock rationing numerical experiment shows that the proposed stock rationing policy reduces the average operating cost significantly depending on the system parameters

assessing the relative performance of u k university technology transfer offices parametric and non parametric evidence abstract we present evidence on the relative performance of u k university technology transfer offices ttos using data envelopment analysis dea and stochastic frontier estimation sfe u k ttos are found to exhibit low levels of absolute efficiency there also appear to be decreasing returns to scale implying that ttos may need to be reconfigured into smaller units the development of regionally based sector focused ttos is also advised consistent with qualitative evidence from u s ttos we find that there is a need to upgrade the business skills and capabilities of u k tto managers and licensing officers

multi class dynamic inventory rationing with stochastic demands and backordering dynamic inventory rationing is considered for systems with multiple demand classes stationary stochastic demands and backordering in the literature dynamic programming has been often applied to address this type of problems however due to the curse of dimensionality computation is a critical challenge for dynamic programming in this paper an innovative two step approach is proposed based on an idea similar to the certainty equivalence principle first the deterministic inventory rationing problem is studied where the future demands are set to be the expectation of the stochastic demand processes the important properties obtained from solving the problem with the kkt conditions are then used to develop effective dynamic rationing policies for stochastic demands which gives closed form expressions for dynamic rationing thresholds these expressions are easy to calculate and are applicable to any number of demand classes numerical results show that the expressions are close to and provide a lower bound for the optimal dynamic thresholds they also shed light on important managerial insights for example the relation between different parameters and the rationing thresholds

stock rationing in an m ek 1 make to stock queue this paper considers the stock rationing problem of a single item make to stock production system with several demand classes and lost sales when demand is poisson and processing time has an erlang distribution we show that a single state variable called work storage level can be employed to completely capture the information regarding inventory level and the status of current production the optimal rationing policy can be characterized by a sequence of monotone critical work storage levels for each demand class there exists a work storage level at or below which it is optimal to start rejecting the demand of this class in anticipation of future arrival of higher priority demands the optimal production policy can also be characterized by a critical work storage level our numerical examples indicate that a critical stock level policy which ignores information on the status of current production performs very well

restricted time remembering policies for the inventory rationing problem abstract we analyse an s q inventory model with unit poisson demand several demand classes and lost sales when dealing with different demand classes the usual approach is to control the inventory by critical levels at which stock is reserved for demand of higher priority we focus on time remembering policies where the critical levels are allowed to depend on the time since the actual outstanding order if any was issued in particular we introduce a new class of policies called restricted time remembering rtr policies we divide the lead time in m intervals of time and restrict the critical levels of the rtr policy to be constant over each interval of time this policy is much easier to implement than the optimal rationing policy where the critical levels can change continuously over time and in a numerical study we show that the performance of the rtr policy is close to that of the optimal policy even when the number of intervals is 2 or 3

integrating resource and production decisions in a simple multi stage assembly system we consider a simple multi stage assembly system with stationary stochastic demand for a single final product that is made to stock the assembly tasks are performed by human resources this workforce consists of two parts regular workforce with a long term contract and temporary workforce that are contracted based on the actual demand contracting resources early is always cheaper than contracting later when we separate resource and production decisions we can first determine order up to levels and production decisions in a standard way and afterwards find the best mix of regular and temporary workforce next to this decoupled approach we present an integrated approach where these decisions influence each other in a set of examples we show that the integrated approach can be very beneficial

resources capabilities risk capital and the creation of university spin out companies abstract the commercialization of university research has become an increasingly important issue given concerns regarding licensing and the university s desire to maximize the returns to intellectual property ip in this paper we assess the impact of university resources and routines capabilities on the creation of spin out companies we find that both the number of spin out companies created and the number of spin out companies created with equity investment are significantly positively associated with expenditure on intellectual property protection the business development capabilities of technology transfer offices and the royalty regime of the university these results highlight the importance not just of resource stocks but also of developing appropriate capabilities of technology transfer officers in spinning out companies the results suggest that universities and policy makers need to devote attention to the training and recruitment of technology officers with the broad base of commercial skills

mid range universities linkages with industry knowledge types and the role of intermediaries we analyze how mid range universities can contribute to industrial change through the transfer of tacit and codified knowledge in the areas of spin offs licensing and patents contract research consultancy and reach out and graduate and researcher mobility we use archival survey and interview data relating to mid range universities in mid range environments in the uk belgium germany and sweden our findings suggest that mid range universities primarily need to focus on generating world class research and critical mass in areas of expertise as well as developing different types of intermediaries mid range universities may need to develop a portfolio of university industry linkages in terms of the scope of activities and the types of firms with which they interact we also show that different intermediaries have important roles to play in developing university industry linkages for mid range universities

inventory rationing in a make to stock production system with several demand classes and lost sales this paper considers the stock rationing problem of a single item make to stock production system with several demand classes and lost sales for the case of poisson demands and exponential production times we show that the optimal policy can be characterized by a sequence of monotone stock rationing levels for each demand class there exists a stock rationing level at or below which it is optimal to start rejecting the demand of this class in anticipation of future arrival of higher priority demands a simple queueing model is analyzed to compute the operating cost of a rationing policy in a numerical study we compare the optimal rationing policy with a first come first served policy to investigate the benefit of stock rationing under different operating conditions of the system

a production inventory system with markovian capacity and outsourcing option we study the optimal production inventory outsourcing policy for a firm with markovian in house production capacity that faces independent stochastic demand and has the option to outsource we find very simple optimal policy forms under fairly reasonable assumptions in addition when the capacity markov process is stochastically monotone the policy parameters decrease in the firm s current capacity level under additional assumptions all these results extend to the infinite horizon and undiscounted cost cases we analyze comparative statics and the necessity of some technical conditions and discuss when the outsourcing option is more valuable

taking time seriously dramatic world change has stimulated interest in research questions about the dynamics of politics we have seen increases in the number of time series data sets and the length of typical time series but three shortcomings are prevalent in published time series analysis first analysts often estimate models without testing restrictions implied by their specification second researchers link the theoretical concept of equilibrium with cointegration and error correction models third analysts often do a poor job of interpreting results the consequences include weak connections between theory and tests biased estimates and incorrect inferences we outline techniques for estimating linear dynamic regressions with stationary data and weakly exogenous regressors we recommend analysts 1 start with general dynamic models and test restrictions before adopting a particular specification and 2 use the wide array of information available from dynamic specifications we illustrate this strategy with data on congressional approval and tax rates across oecd countries

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

social capital and the dynamics of trust in government it is well understood that trust in government responds to the performance of the president congress and the economy despite improved government performance however trust has never returned to the levels witnessed in the 1950s and 1960s social capital may be the force that has kept trust low if so we need to assess the relative contributions of both government performance and social capital at the macro level using macrolevel data the analysis here is designed to capture the variation over time in both social capital and government performance and let them compete to explain the macro variation in trust the empirical results demonstrate that both government performance and social capital matter but that social capital appears to be the force which accounts for the decline in trust over the last 40 years

university industry relations and research group production is there a bidirectional relationship this study aims to analyze if there is a bidirectional relationship between university industry collaboration and scientific production the results from a sample of 137 research groups at a university in an ultra peripheral region reveal the existence of this bidirectional relationship scientific production has a positive influence on university industry relations thus when the articles published by the research groups increase the contracts between university and industry also increase moreover the results reflect a nonlinear relationship between contracts and scientific production university industry relations are complementary to scientific production up to a certain level and after that point there is a substitution effect the results also show the moderating effect of the knowledge area on this relationship because groups belonging to technology oriented areas have higher scientific production in response to university industry relations

dynamic inventory rationing with mixed backorders and lost sales abstract customers may react differently when stockouts occur in this paper we investigate the rationing policy for an inventory system with a mixture of demand classes of backorder type and lost sales type since the penalty cost of backorders varies with time the priorities of demand classes also alter with time this totally changes the problem structure compared with the classic rationing models a dynamic rationing policy is studied in this paper by considering the dynamics of demand priorities a markov decision model is developed to obtain the optimal dynamic rationing levels for multiple demand classes the results indicate that between the priority switching points rationing levels often exhibit different patterns for lost sales demand classes the rationing levels always decrease as the remaining time approaches to zero for backorder demand classes the rationing levels increase in some parts due to declining of the priorities the rationing levels of all demand classes finally decline to zero to reduce the inventory holding cost the application of dynamic rationing is further extended from a single period model to a multi period s t model where unit cost has to be included the optimal ordering policy is proved to be a myopic base stock policy and the dynamic rationing policy in the single period model can still be applied with modified time independent penalty costs for lost sales classes to overcome the computational complexity a heuristic dynamic rationing policy is introduced due to its good outcome implementing such a heuristic dynamic rationing policy can be a practical solution for inventory system with mixed backorders and lost sales in order to enhance the system performance

dynamic inventory rationing strategies for inventory systems with two demand classes poisson demand and backordering we study inventory systems with two demand classes critical and non critical poisson demand and backordering we analyze dynamic rationing strategies where the number of items reserved for critical demand depends on the remaining time until the next order arrives different from results in the literature we do not discretize demand but derive a set of formulae that determine the optimal rationing level for any possible value of the remaining time moreover we show that the cost parameters can be captured in a single relevant dimension which allows us to present the optimal rationing levels in charts and lookup tables that are easy to implement numerical examples illustrate that the optimal dynamic rationing strategy outperforms all static strategies with fixed rationing levels

universities technology and innovation centres and regional development the case of the north east of england the paper examines the role of technology and innovation centres tics in bridging the gap between the university research base and industry in order to foster economic development in a lagging industrial region the context is provided by an academic literature on the role of universities in regional innovation systems some of which casts doubt on the capacity of universities to operate in this domain particularly within a lagging region the empirical case reports on a bold experiment initiated by the regional development agency in the older industrial region of the north east of england to create and support new tics in the fields of process innovation in high value manufacturing and new and renewable energy and on the engagement of a regionally committed university with these centres the evidence presented suggests that while there are links between the university and the centres both are principally operating in a national science and technology system in which contributing to addressing uneven regional economic development is a secondary concern copyright the author 2012 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press