Time allocations across collaborations of academic scientists and their impact on efforts to commercialize novel technologies: is more always better?

We investigate how time spent in different collaborative research arrangements by academic scientists affect their propensity of involvement in the commercialization of novel, university-originated technologies. Three common collaborative strategies used by academic scientists: (1) internal (within the research group or within the home university) research collaboration; (2) cosmopolitan research collaboration (with scientists in other US or foreign universities); or (3) university–industry research collaboration are assessed. Drawing on the concepts of cognitive and spatial distance, the empirical findings suggest that only one internal research collaboration strategy has a significant impact on the propensity of academic scientists to engage in the commercialization of novel technologies with a private firm; however, this relationship is inverse U shaped. More importantly, academic scientists adopting a university–industry collaboration strategy and spending more research time in such an arrangement have a significantly stronger propensity for being involved in technology commercialization with a private firm; however, this relationship is inverse U shaped as well. We discuss the managerial and policy implications of the findings.     

Economic and strategic considerations surrounding Chinese FDI in the United States

The growth of outward investment from China has generated expressions of concern from policymakers in the United States regarding the economic and national security impacts of such investments. While inward foreign direct investment (FDI) has come to be viewed by most observers as generally imparting net economic benefits to the host economy, acquisitions of US companies by Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) have been criticized on several grounds. One is based on the mode of entry itself: some critics believe that entry by acquisition brings lower benefits than greenfield entry. A second and more prominent concern is that acquisitions of US companies by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) may be motivated by non-commercial objectives which, in turn, make those acquisitions of questionable value to the host economy. In this paper, we argue that Chinese FDI in the United States is more likely to take the form of acquisitions than greenfield investments for the foreseeable future. However, there is no strong case to be made that the host country economic benefits from Chinese FDI would be larger if entry took place primarily through greenfield investments. Furthermore, most of the alleged costs to the US economy from inward FDI from China are either unlikely to occur or are already anticipated by existing US laws and regulations, thus necessitating no additional, specific legislation.

Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales

The growth of Internet-based piracy has led to a wide-ranging debate over how copyright policy should be enforced in the digital era. In this paper we analyze the impact of the US government's shutdown of a major piracy site – Megaupload.com – on digital sales and rentals of movies.Exploiting cross-country variation in pre-shutdown usage of Megaupload, we find that the shutdown of Megaupload and its associated sites caused digital revenues for three major motion picture studios to increase by 6.5–8.5%. Our results suggest that some consumers will turn to legal channels when a major filesharing site is shut down, and by extension that illegal filesharing displaces digital movie sales.     

The Effects of Taxes and Organizational Variables on Research and Development Intensity

Prior research has failed to reach consensus on which variables explain private-sector research and development (R&D) spending. This study extends prior research explaining R&D spending of firms in the US private sector by regressing R&D intensity on a number of tax and organizational variables. COMPUSTAT data from 113 firms in 1994 are used to estimate the effects of the variables on R&D intensity (used interchangeably with R&D activity). Ordinary least square estimates indicate that firms that were eligible for the R&D credit had higher R&D activity than firms that were ineligible. R&D intensity is a decreasing function of both capital intensity and the debt to capital ratio. Neither management stockholding nor diversification strategy meaningfully influenced R&D activity. The reported results have implications regarding US tax policy towards the tax subsidy for R&D. The results also help to clarify prior findings regarding a number of organizational variables on R&D intensity. One implication of these results for US tax policy is that private sector R&D intensity can be meaningfully influenced by the level of tax subsidy.     

Public Employee Compensation and the Efficacy of Privatization Alternatives in US State and Local Governments

This article investigates the evidence used in the debate over public‐sector collective bargaining and privatization as US states attempted to resolve their budget problems. Specifically, the article evaluates the research on whether US state and local government workers are overpaid and whether privatization provides a cost‐effective alternative to the provision of public services by public employees. All recent studies find that state and local public employees earn on average lower wages than comparable private‐sector workers and on average receive better health benefits and pensions than private‐sector employees. Most studies find that the better benefits offset lower wages on average, and there is no state and local public employee compensation premium. The research on privatization in the USA indicates that it has reached something of an equilibrium with approximately one‐quarter of municipal public services being provided by private organizations. The major costs of privatization include overhead costs of competitive bidding, monitoring, oversight, and evaluation, which if done properly can often offset any privatization cost advantage, while if privatization is done without adequate controls, it can result in corruption, poor quality services, and then demands for reverse privatization.     

A Consideration of Telecommunications Market Structure in the Presence of Municipal Provision: The Case of US Cities

We consider the effect of government-owned telecommunications providers on privately owned rivals by comparing the presence of private telecommunications services providers alongside municipal competitors in the US telecommunications industry from 1999 through 2002. Our primary finding is that the presence of a municipal provider is negatively correlated with a city’s having private providers. However, the marginal effects indicate that the effect of municipal competition on private provision is largely concentrated on the first entrant, suggesting cities may choose to provide telecommunications services in areas with inadequate demand to support private provision.     

Privacy,confidentiality and computers: National and international implications of US information policy

The author assesses what the USA has been doing or not doing in recent years to develop information policies for personal record information to deal with the rapidly changing record-keeping world of public and private organizations. He reviews how well these policies have been implemented and enforced in the context of the US system of government, and compares the experience of European countries with US efforts, especially in the light of the serious debate which is emerging over restraints placed on transborder data flows by the privacy protection efforts of various countries.     

Stakeholder theory and practice in Europe and North America: The key to success lies in a marketing approach

Corporate reputation in Europe and North America is increasingly seen as a function of how firms treat their stakeholders. In the United States, stakeholder theory has been touted as a paradigm of good management; yet despite enlightened stakeholder practice at home, US firms continue to run into problems in Europe. Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and GE have, in one way or another, all been caught off guard when doing business in Europe. This paper suggests that some of the stakeholder relations difficulties encountered by US corporations in Europe can be explained by fundamental cultural and philosophical differences between these regions that affect how stakeholders are viewed and how relations with those groups are managed. In this paper, we examine the historical and socio-political forces influencing stakeholder theory in the US and northern Europe and then use a business-to-business marketing approach to show how US firms might develop an approach to stakeholder relations that fits the northern European environment.     

河北省民营企业电子商务应用研究

电子商务作为新的商业运作模式，正在改变着民营企业的生产、经营乃至整个企业的管理模式。这既给民营企业带来了机遇，同时也提出了挑战。然而河北省民营企业电子商务应用起步较晚，发展水平相对落后，存在诸多问题。因此，只有通过借鉴国内外的先进经验，采取各种行之有效的措施，才能加快河北省民营企业电子商务的发展，提升其市场竞争力，逐步与世界经济接轨。     

Policy implications of technology for detecting P2P and copyright violations

The effectiveness of many proposed policies regarding both online copyright protection and network neutrality depend on the extent to which it is technically possible to detect peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), the transfer of copyrighted files, or both. There are many detection approaches, some performed primarily by network operators and some by application-layer agents. This paper describes capabilities, limitations, privacy issues, and policy implications of detection technologies and their countermeasures, in part through quantitative analysis of empirical data. Different approaches are better for different purposes. Network operators are well-positioned to estimate how widespread copyright violations are, but application-layer detection from outside entities has important advantages when the purpose is punishment. Detection is also imperfect, so policies should require more transparency regarding how it is done than we see today. It is shown that, although network operators may not detect every transfer, and they typically miss more video than audio, they can identify most individuals who share copyrighted files via P2P after several weeks of monitoring provided that traffic is unencrypted, which is useful for some purposes. However, it is also shown that encryption is already in use, and it effectively prevents network operators from detecting transfers of copyrighted content. Thus, if network operators are held responsible for monitoring illegal file sharing, there is a tension between using detection to identify violators of copyright law for punishment, which may motivate even greater use of encryption, and using detection for other purposes such as creating fair compensation schemes for copyright-holders, warning users that they may be violating copyright law, or allocating network resources. Alternatively, there are forms of detection that are not evaded through encryption, and application-layer agents rather than network operators are primarily responsible for these. These copyright policy issues are intertwined with network neutrality policy in subtle ways. Network neutrality rules do not protect illegal transfers of copyrighted content, but if network operators are responsible for enforcement (as in “graduated response”) then regulators must determine when it is reasonable to terminate or degrade service based on allegations of copyright violation given the limitations of detection technology to prove those allegations. Allegations of copyright violation should be considered invalid unless they are accompanied with information about how detection was performed and an opportunity for rebuttal. Such transparency has been routinely lacking in both laws and industry agreements.     

Aux armes, citoyens: Cyber security and regulation in the United States

Government policy for cyber security in the United States relies on voluntary and cooperative action by the private sector and has, until now, explicitly rejected the use of mandate or regulation. This stands in contrast to other defense and homeland security issues, such as those involving border protection or transportation, where government intervention is the norm. The decision to rely on voluntary action for cyber security reflects influential trends in security policies, deregulation, and the government's relation to the Internet that continue to shape US policy even after the attacks of September 11. The result is an ineffectual policy that underestimates the role of government.     

Fast Internet: An analysis about capacities,price structures and government intervention

While about 20% of all private households in the US had access to the Internet in 1997, the Internet penetration in Western Europe was significantly lower with little more than 5%. A key factor to explain the different penetration levels in the US and Western Europe is the pricing policy. In the US the pricing is heavily influenced by regulation. The flat rate pricing for local service stimulated rapid growth of the Internet. However, the regulatory regime that helped the Internet to succeed is now threatened by the same success. A comparison of the Internet in the US and the videotex systems deployed in France and Germany in the 1980s reveals an astonishing number of similarities. But there remains one significant difference, the pricing policy. Today, the telephony access network is perceived as a bottleneck by Internet users. Users demand more speed. Given the expected growth of the Internet and the demand for speed, the US telecommunications industry invests heavily in the local loop and sets up another four national long-distance networks. These investors do believe that demand for capacity will make a quantum leap.     

Regulating Labour Standards via Supply Chains: Combining Public/Private Interventions to Improve Workplace Compliance

Concern over global labour standards has led to a profusion of non‐governmental forms of regulation. Systematic evaluation of these systems has been very limited to date. This article empirically explores an innovative system to regulate labour standards in the US garment industry combining public enforcement power and private monitoring, thereby drawing on different elements of global labour standards systems. We examine the impact of this system over time and in two distinct markets on employer compliance with minimum wage laws and find that these initiatives are associated with substantial reductions in minimum wage violations. The system therefore offers a useful model for international labour standards regulatory systems.     

Public policy for fibre-to-the-home

Integrated broadband networks are very costly, but many US industry analysts believe their introduction to the residential sector should be a national policy goal. Unfortunately current policy towards fibre-to-the-home is inherently unstable, and pits public and private needs against one another. A choice must be made between a public infrastructure approach, in which social costs and benefits are given greatest weight, and a private market paradigm, where communications networks develop according to market forces. This article examines some of the implications of each approach.     

DOES COPYRIGHT ENFORCEMENT ENCOURAGE PIRACY?*

When copyright enforcement is targeted at high‐value buyers such as corporate and government users, the copyright holder charges super‐monopoly prices, thereby encouraging low‐value buyers to switch to inferior pirated copies. We show that enlarging the copyright holder's captive market through more extensive copyright enforcement reduces prices toward the monopoly level, increases sales of legitimate copies and can increase consumer surplus. Therefore, in contrast with the case of more intensive copyright enforcement, more extensive copyright enforcement over some range can increase the incentive to generate intellectual property while also reducing the loss to consumers from monopoly power.     

Cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) as technology transfer mechanisms

Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) between Federal R&D laboratories and private companies in the US are intended, in large part, to transfer technologies developed at Federal R&D laboratories to private companies. We surveyed the Federal laboratory and private CRADA partners involved in CRADAs at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in order to identify certain difficulties inherent in CRADAs as mechanisms for technology transfer. Company partners do not share a common organizational culture with their Federal laboratory counterparts, and are critical of the length of time and complexity of government administrative arrangements necessary to form a CRADA.     

Does the UK Minimum Wage Reduce Employment? A Meta‐Regression Analysis

The employment effect from raising the minimum wage has long been studied but remains in dispute. Our meta‐analysis of 236 estimated minimum wage elasticities and 710 partial correlation coefficients from 16 UK studies finds no overall practically significant adverse employment effect. Unlike US studies, there seems to be little, if any, overall reporting bias. Multivariate meta‐regression analysis identifies several research dimensions that are associated with differential employment effects. In particular, the residential home care industry may exhibit a genuinely adverse employment effect.     

Right person in the right place: How the host country IPR influences the distribution of inventors in offshore R&D projects of multinational enterprises

Research summary : Prior work has shown that the strength of the intellectual property regime (IPR) in a host country influences offshore R&D to that country. Building on this work we propose that the strength of the IPR in a host country differentially influences the threat of knowledge leakage on projects that are produced for the location where the multinational firm is headquartered (home) versus the offshore location to which the R&D project is sent (host). We argue and show that when the host location has a weak IPR, fewer host inventors are involved in host R&D projects when compared to home R&D projects. We test our hypotheses using a dataset of patents held by US assignees, but coinvented in 43 host locations with differing IPR strength. Managerial summary : Multinational enterprises often cite the weak IPRs at emerging economy host destinations as a significant impediment to offshore R&D activities in those countries, despite the abundant supply of inexpensive scientific talent there. We find that the weak IPR at the host destination is a greater impediment to offshore R&D that is aimed for end use at the host market than for R&D that is aimed for end use globally or in the home market. Since IPRs are local, a weaker IPR at the host location does not protect IP that is relevant to the host market. Since the IPR at the home country is more relevant for technologies aimed at the home market, the IPR at the host country is irrelevant for such R&D projects. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Policies on Union Representation in US Multinationals in the UK: Between Micro-Politics and Macro-Institutions

This paper examines the policies towards unions and collective representation in US multinationals in the UK. It uses detailed case‐study data to argue that the dominant ‘ideological norms’ of anti‐unionism in the US business system shape, but do not determine, the behaviour of US multinational subsidiaries in the UK. Within the structural constraints determined by such factors as sector, subsidiary policy and behaviour towards unions are the outcome of the complex interaction of the contrasting ‘macro‐institutional’ forces of home and host business systems, and how these are filtered through the perceptions and interests of actors at different levels of the multinational. The resulting ‘micro‐politics’ generates a complex and evolving pattern of union relations and non‐unionism in US subsidiaries.     

Grain reserves — unresolved issues

The authors focus on three relatively neglected issues in the debate over grain reserves: the role of private stockpiling and its relation to publicly held (or subsidized) reserves; the nature of export demand for US wheat and its relation to reserves proposals; and the distribution of (wheat) crop yields as it may affect the operation of a reserves plan. It is argued that these crucial issues bear directly on the feasibility of any proposed scheme, and will determine important attributes of any feasible scheme.