Trends in University Ag-Biotech Patent Production

This work exploits information on U.S. patents to identify trends in university ag-biotech patenting and citation performance. It sets forth some key issues concerning patterns of university ag-biotech patenting and then provides an empirical analysis of the evolving trends. Land grant universities account for most U.S. ag-biotech patents. The data show a path-dependent innovation pattern, in which there also seems to be a culture of patenting that develops at certain universities. Evidence shows that ag-biotech patents are more cited than the average university patent. Inequalities across land grant universities are also evident in the production of ag-biotech patents, although perhaps not to a much greater degree than underlying inequalities in funding and research qualities. The paper closes by considering how the evidence offered might be used to advance the public discussion regarding trends in agricultural biotechnology research in the United States.     

Equilibrium Real Options Exercise Strategies with Multiple Players: The Case of Real Estate Markets

This article derives a closed-form solution for an equilibrium real options exercise model with stochastic revenues and costs for monopoly, duopoly, oligopoly and competitive markets. Our model also allows one option holder to have a greater production capacity than others. Under a monopolistic environment we find that the optimal option exercise strategy in real estate markets is dramatically opposite to that in a financial (warrant) market, indicating the importance of paying attention to the institutional details of the underlying market when analyzing option exercise strategies. Our model can be generalized to the pricing of convertible securities and capital investment decisions involving both stochastic revenues and costs under different types of market structures.     

Efficiency and technological change at US research universities

This article investigates the determinants of efficiency and technological progress at US research universities. It relies on a unique panel data set of multiple outputs and inputs from 92 universities covering the period 1981–1998. Over that time span, US universities experienced large increases in industry funding and in academic patenting activity. In this context, the directional distance function and a nonparametric representation of the underlying production technology are combined to obtain estimates of productivity growth and technical efficiency. An econometric analysis is then presented to examine the determinants of technical efficiency and the rate of technological progress. The results show how changes in funding sources for US research universities affects research performance.     

An empirical investigation of consumers’ willingness-to-pay and the demand function: The cumulative effect of individual differences in anchored willingness-to-pay responses

Extant literature on anchoring demonstrates that priming affects willingness-to-pay (WTP), but it mainly focuses on average WTP values, neglecting the aggregate effects of priming on WTP distributions. In this research, we argue that when priming is in effect, WTP distribution rather than the average should be analyzed because important pricing decisions, such as optimal price determination or price customization, require an assessment of distributions. Therefore, the objective of this research is to uncover how priming affects WTP distributions and, consequently, the demand curve. The results of these two studies suggest that priming affects not only the average but also the whole distribution and that this effect is in the form of a shift/stretch to the right for high-priming manipulations and to the left for low-priming manipulations.     

Design and application of task administration protocols for collaborative production and service systems

This research investigates the design of Task Administration Protocols (TAPs) for effective task allocation and administration in collaborative production/service systems. Customer-focused and concurrent engineering service systems process tasks more effectively as a result of the power of collaboration among multiple participants. In such environments, however, complex situations might arise that require decisions that cannot be handled by simple Coordination Protocols (CPs). To design an effective control mechanism to manage complex situations, this research identifies basic problems in collaborative task administration and proposes the design framework of protocols to solve the problems. In the framework, TAPs consist of three component-protocols: (1) Task Requirement Analysis Protocol, (2) Shared Resource Allocation Protocol, and (3) Synchronization and Time-Out Protocol. Each component protocol is activated to address priority-based allocation, resource-aware allocation, and task re-allocation at a different task administration context, ranging from task initialization, task allocation, to task monitoring, respectively. To analyze feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed design, TAPs are applied to two collaborative production/service systems. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance achieved by different TAPs and non-TAP CPs under various load conditions. The results show that there is a significant performance improvement by TAPs over CPs in most cases, e.g., 84% vs. 64% in terms of task completion ratio. The advantage of TAPs can be explained by their design with relatively higher level of collaborative intelligence, addressing more complex control logic than non-TAP CPs.     

Agricultural support in selected Eastern European and Eurasian countries

The goal of this article is to assess the agricultural policies of eight countries from the former Soviet Union. They hold great potential for agricultural production, and some are relatively unanalysed from the point of view of agricultural policy. The analysis was conducted using qualitative and quantitative evidence. The key challenges facing the region are food security and competitiveness. Policy approaches range from strong interventionism to almost complete liberalisation. Budgetary support is relatively low compared to EU and OECD averages. Transfers to producers dominate (especially input subsidies and on-farm investment support) in all countries, and support to rural development and general services is weak. While prices for crops are near world prices, prices for animal products are fairly high in some countries, indicating high developmental needs. It is possible to discern four broad clusters of countries.     

Does A Firm's Entry or Exit Affect Competitors’ Value? Evidence from the REIT Industry

We analyze 483 entry and 439 exit events of publicly traded real estate investment trusts (REITs) and find that changes in the number of REITs in the market affect rival REITs’ stock performance. We also partition the sample by the modes of entries and exits as well as by REIT asset type in order to disentangle alternative explanations. Overall, our evidence indicates that the supply effect still matters for stock prices even after considering signaling and price pressure explanations.     

Preferred shopping destination: Hong Kong versus Singapore

Visitor shopping is an important contributor to the economy of Hong Kong as it accounts for more than half the total visitors' expenditure. Owing to its significance, and strong competition from Singapore, Hong Kong must re‐examine the city's attraction to shoppers. The tourism and retail industries of Hong Kong must formulate effective strategies to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the shopping environment in both cities. This study surveys 309 international visitors about their shopping expectations and perceptions of Hong Kong and Singapore in 15 attributes. Results were analysed by SPSS software (Statistical Package for Social Science) using the techniques of frequencies and paired t‐tests. Singapore outperforms Hong Kong notably in many areas, such as language ability, attitude and efficiency of service staff. The findings indicate an urgency for Hong Kong to strive harder. In conclusion, the article provides some recommendations for the city to re‐establish its reputation as the ‘shopping paradise’ of the Asia Pacific region and to meet the challenge of Singapore as the preferred shopping destination. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Macroeconomic sources of foreign exchange risk in new EU members

We address the issue of foreign exchange risk and its macroeconomic determinants in several new EU members. We derive the observable macroeconomic factors—consumption and inflation—using the stochastic discount factor (SDF) approach. The joint distribution of excess returns in the foreign exchange market and the factors are modeled using a multivariate GARCH-in-mean specification. Our findings show that both real and nominal factors play important roles in explaining the variability of the foreign exchange risk premium. Both types of factors should be included in monetary general equilibrium models employed to study excess returns. To contribute to the further stability of domestic currencies, the new EU members should strive to implement stabilization policies aimed at achieving nominal as well as real convergence with the core EU members.