optimal environmental road pricing abstract an optimal first best road charge should not only be differentiated with respect to factors that affect the direct external environmental and time costs from the road user himself indirect effects such as the fact that others cars will be more polluting when congestion increases should also be taken into account

road congestion the diagrammatic analysis this paper is a commentary on an article by de meza and gould 1987 that discusses the change in income distribution resulting when a common property resource to which everyone formerly had free access is taken into private ownership the author of this commentary takes issue with the de meza and gould example that applied to the use of a congested road in their analysis of the problem de meza and gould use what appears to a reader to be the standard graphical analysis of a problem involving demand and supply however the author believes it is incorrect to apply the graphical approach in this form to the analysis of road congestion and in showing that their conclusion is incorrect shows that the conventional graphical approach is incorrect as well the author attempts to prove his contention by showing that the conventional graphical analysis of the economics of road congestion may be incorrect if a conventional downward sloping demand curve is drawn relating traffic flow to cost

squatting as rent seeking and pressure group competition a south african case study a new squatting phenomenon in south africa is analysed from a rent seeking pressure group perspective while such squatting may play an expanded role in privatising publicly and even privately held land and in redistributing wealth over the near future in the longer term its expansion will tend to be limited by rent protecting and counter innovation as long as this rent seeking competition stays within the bounds set by constitutional government

do subsidies to cooperative r d actually stimulate r d investment and cooperation abstract a popular view in the industrial policy debate is that cooperation among firms r d departments should be encouraged the european community japan and the us all subsidize research cooperatives this study presents the first empirical test of the effectiveness of such subsidies using a database of competitors in 45 technological races the results indicate that subsidies that require cooperation in the form of result sharing agreements significantly increase the likelihood of cooperation but they decrease incentives to conduct r d subsidy programmes such as eureka that require cooperation but do not require result sharing agreements do not increase the likelihood of cooperation they do however increase incentives to conduct r d somewhat about to the same extent as subsidies that do not require cooperation

is public r d a complement or substitute for private r d a review of the econometric evidence is public r d spending complementary and thus additional to private r d spending or does it substitute for and tend to crowd out private r d conflicting answers are given to this question we survey the body of available econometric evidence accumulated over the past 35 years a framework for analysis of the problem is developed to help organize and summarize the findings of econometric studies based on time series and cross section data from various levels of aggregation laboratory firm industry country the findings overall are ambivalent and the existing literature as a whole is subject to the criticism that the nature of the experiment s that the investigators envisage is not adequately specified we conclude by offering suggestions for improving future empirical research on this issue

the european constitutional settlement this paper argues first that a synthesis of the theories of endogenous policy formation non coercive interstate bargaining theo ry and international regime theory provides a plausible account of the path of european integration with little role for expl anations stressing geopolitical or ideological factors international mediation or political entrepreneurship moreover these theories which embrace economic fundamentals as driving factors help explain the sequencing of the european union especially in regard to successive enlar gements however the paper concludes that the process of european integration appears to have reached an institutiona l platea u for which a constitutiona l compromise appears to be the only plausible equilibrium

research joint ventures and optimal r d policy with asymmetric information abstract when to allow research joint ventures rjvs or not is an important instrument in the development of an optimal r d policy the regulator however is unlikely to know all the relevant information to regulate r d optimally the extent to which there exist appropriability problems between the firms is one such variable that is private information to the firms in the industry in a duopoly setting we analyze the characteristics of a second best r d policy where the government can either allow rjvs or not and give lump sum subsidies to the parties involved the second best r d policy without subsidies will either block some welfare improving rjvs or allow some welfare reducing ones with lump sum subsidies the second best policy trades off the expected subsidy cost with allowing welfare decreasing rjvs or blocking welfare increasing ones

privatization and the distribution of income in the commons abstract the explicit treatment of heterogeneity among the users of the commons leads to results that differ from those that are now generally accepted in the literature the owner of the fixed factor is not able to expropriate the rents of privatization rather the resulting distribution of income to the free factor after privatization depends on the technology and the institutional arrangements this result extends to more than two goods if the decline in the price of the good produced in the commons is sufficient to offset the decline in the marginal product of labor in the rest of the economy

commons as insurance and the welfare impact of privatization abstract it is shown here that despite the efficiency gains from privatization when markets are incomplete all individuals may be made worse off by privatization even when the resource is equitably privatized such market incompleteness is common in the developing world and can explain the often encountered resistance to efficiency enhancing privatizing reforms especially in the case of village level landholdings and forests the advantage of common held property arises because of its superior insurance properties which tend to provide income maintenance in low states sufficient conditions are established under which any feasible insurance scheme under private property cannot ex ante pareto dominate allocations under the commons

peasants against private property rights a review of the literature land is the main if not the only asset for a majority of people in developing countries the definition and allocation of rights over land are thus naturally essential aspects of individuals daily lives as well as critical determinants of social and economic development the privatization of land rights has long been seen as a necessary process enhancing both efficiency and equity however privatized land rights have not always emerged endogenously while exogenously driven programs of land privatization have not always been successful nor popular this has raised questions about the expected benefits of land rights privatization this paper aims at summarizing the main arguments and studies both theoretical and empirical on this issue with a specific focus on the factors that can make privatization inefficient or detrimental for the most concerned individuals

policy entrepreneurship creativity and sustainability the case of principi attivi active ingredients in apulia region southern italy the present work assesses the case of principi attivi active ingredients this is a policy initiative of the apulia region in southern italy to support new start ups of young entrepreneurs since 2010 the year of green revolution 2 0 entrepreneurship remains active and competitive in the globalised world through sustainable innovation initiatives if innovation is the successful implementation of new ideas then creativity can be seen as the seed of innovation inspired by these arguments and the case of principi attivi active ingredients the present work adds new insights to the current debate and investigates the relationships between creativity and sustainability from supply and demand side perspectives in particular this paper addresses the following aims i on the demand side we question how creativity relates to sustainability through entrepreneurship to reach this aim we employ a cluster analysis and a network meta analysis nma approach to determine the existence of latent relationships between creativity and sustainability within the project proposals submitted to principi attivi active ingredients ii to understand on the demand side what are the main factors affecting the allocation of regional funding for young entrepreneurs and iii to determine on the supply side to what extent creativity and sustainability proposals influence the outcome of the selection process to reach aims ii and iii we use a probabilistic model to infer data on the probability of project proposals to be admitted to regional funding main results suggests i the existence of latent relationships between creativity and sustainability in business initiatives ii the potential propensity of the decision maker to support green entrepreneurship and larger groups of young entrepreneurs iii the limited influence almost non existent on the decision maker of creativity and sustainability proposals during the evaluation process the present work point us to assert the persistence of asymmetric information between the young entrepreneur and the policy maker adequate initiatives are needed to close this gap to help foster creativity and sustainability driven entrepreneurship

public financing of cooperative r d projects in spain the concerted projects under the national r d plan abstract this work will analyse the factors which influence decision making within the spanish public sector on the financing of precompetitive research projects developed by firms in collaboration with universities and public research organisms with this objective in mind an econometric model is proposed that explains simultaneously the concession of aid on behalf of the public sector and the amount of such aid the estimates carried out indicate among other results that the destination of the budgeted funds explains a large part of the public financing received however all the evidence would seem to indicate that the funding has not been awarded either in order to significantly favour those firms which most need it nor to give incentive to high levels of cooperation

public selection and financing of r d cooperative projects credit versus subsidy funding abstract in this article we develop an analytical model of the selection process for r d cooperative projects to study the factors that motivate public project selection and corresponding funding using two different financial instruments subsidies and credits for this purpose we propose a three stage empirical strategy to analyse the differential individual effects of several factors on the decisions taken by the public agency this analysis is based on project level data from cooperative r d project calls under the spanish profit initiative for the period 2000 2003 the main results show that the public agency uses the two financial instruments to address different objectives first some projects close to the market are well supported through credits while basic research projects receive only selective support in the form of subsidies second there is significant diversity in the selection and funding of technological areas third regarding the explicit goal of fostering cooperation the public agency selectively favours partnerships with universities and technology institutes through the award of subsidies however there seems to be less incentive for large consortia fourth there are significant regional differences among financed projects and also our data show sharp yearly fluctuations

antitrust policy towards co operative r d ventures this paper surveys the theoretical literature on r d cartels and the empirical literature on problems of appropriability in order to evaluate the case for encouraging antitrust authorities to treat r d cooperative ventures leniently the case for r d cooperative ventures trades potential gains from internalizing technological spillovers off against a possible reduction in output market competition but the empirical evidence suggests that r d spillovers can easily be exaggerated this suggests that the design of antitrust policy towards r d cooperative ventures is likely to be of major importance if they are to yield net social gains and the paper concludes with a critical examination of the ncra introduced in u s and block exemption introduced in europe in the 1980s copyright 1993 by oxford university press

free access versus private property in a resource income distributions compared distributions of income are compared under the alternative regimes of free access to and private property in a resource it is shown that in several analytically distinct cases all those deprived of free access on conversion of a resource to private property can be better off even though no compensating transfers are made this resu lt can hold even if the granting of private property rights also conf ers monopoly or monopsony power copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

pareto improvements from lexus lanes the effects of pricing a portion of the lanes on congested highways abstract though economists have long advocated road pricing as an efficiency enhancing solution to traffic congestion it has rarely been implemented primarily because it is thought to create losers as well as winners this paper shows that a judiciously designed toll applied to a portion of the lanes of a highway can generate a pareto improvement before using the revenue a sufficient condition being that drivers with a high value of time travel at the peak of rush hour i obtain these new theoretical results by extending a standard dynamic congestion model to reflect an important additional traffic externality extra traffic does not simply increase travel times but also introduces frictions that reduce throughput the analysis draws attention to a practical policy that may help overcome the widespread opposition to road pricing

who participates in r d subsidy programs the case of spanish manufacturing firms abstract empirical evidence on the effectiveness of r d subsidies to firms has produced mixed results so far one possible explanation is that firms and project selection rules may be quite heterogeneous both across agencies and across industries leading to different outcomes in terms of the induced additional private effort here we focus on the participation stage using a sample of spanish firms we test for differences across agencies and industries our results suggest that firms in the same industry face different hurdles to participate in different agencies programs that participation patterns may reflect a combination of agency goals and that patterns differ across high tech and low tech industries

issues and perspectives on evaluating manufacturing modernization programs abstract the establishment of a national system of federal state manufacturing modernization centers to serve small and medium sized manufacturing systems is a major experiment in the us the system s rapid expansion has made it impossible to begin with an experimental design that would systematically permit tests of the variables and relationships likely to effect the long term economic effectiveness of these centers or their political and financial stability relatedly many existing evaluation studies and journalistic narratives are marred by serious analytical and empirical flaws it is not too late to attempt to improve practice in future evaluations several areas of expanded evaluation are described including theories of industrial restructuring regional technology infrastructure public management financing evaluation design evaluability assessment firm learning and measurement of benefits and costs in each case evaluation is presented as a means of simultaneously yielding information relevant to formative and summative program level decisions and to hypothesis testing

the impact of institutional and land use change on local incomes in chilean patagonia many developing rural economies depend on natural capital stocks for generating income and wealth however common property natural resources are often over exploited one method of solving over ex

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