Economic espionage and interallied strategic cooperation

Incidents of economic espionage by foreign governments against US corporations, persons, and institutions are numerous and very costly. Meeting this challenge has become a high national priority, and several significant measures have been taken by Washington that affect the business community directly and indirectly. Allies of the United States are among the principal culprits. This raises a potentially serious issue: How to pursue mutually beneficial, essentially cooperative, interallied strategic relations while economic relations among allies are acquiring a sharper competitive edge? Thus far, economic espionage has not jeopardized traditional security ties. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Universal Service: Competition,Interconnection, and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System. Milton L. Miller,Jr.

Review of Industrial Organization -     

Regulating securities analysts

We examine the effects of regulations designed to address the potential conflict of interest that arises when sell-side analyst research is not independent of investment banking. We focus on two types of regulation: (1) internal barriers between equity research and investment banking that restrict communication; and (2) disclosure requirements relating to analyst compensation. We find that information barriers can increase research effort and improve report quality by limiting an investment bank's ability to distort its analyst's incentives. However, this type of regulation can also reduce information production and lower the quality of reports if an investment bank benefits directly from research activity. Disclosure requirements, on the other hand, unambiguously lead to more informative prices and a higher report quality relative to either information barriers or no regulation.     

Market Orientation,Generative Learning,Innovation Strategy and Business Performance Inter‐Relationships in Bioscience Firms

We propose conceptual arguments to establish relationships between market orientation and generative learning and their respective impact on exploitative innovation strategy and explorative innovation strategy. We then consider the ambidextrous association between both forms of innovation strategy and business performance. This model is subject to an empirical test using data generated from 160 bioscience firms. Using structural equation modelling, two mutually exclusive paths are specified where market orientation leads to exploitative innovation strategy, while generative learning leads to explorative innovation strategy. We then find that the ambidexterity exhibited by firms in the form of exploitative innovation strategy and explorative innovation strategy significantly explains improvements in firms’ business performance. Discussion is given to these findings and managerial implications are presented along with avenues for further research.     

Zinsrechnung und Zinsrecht

With the application of simple laws of logic to the clearly defined terms(capital) interest andinterest rate the rational dealing with interest-bearing money, the interest calculus, is derived followingLeibniz with present values, and according toEuler with future values. The procedure is determined by the equality in kind of the service rendered and the remuneration, the lending of money — a substitutable matter — as capital and the payment of money as interest for a certain time. With the addition of clear definitions of points and periods in time and of calculating with the accuracy of a day the rational dealing is a complete systems of rules compatible and coherent with other applications of mathematics and other situations in economics. It is logically simple, can easily be used with computers, and is suitable to serve as a basis for a transparent interest law, demanding and furthering clarity and truth, on a national and global level. The law claims the primacy of the rules of logic and nature over statute law, thecorpus juris, but it is not willing to base interest law on interest logic, interest calculus, it is not willing to admit the consequences of the equality in kind of capital and interest, the substitutability of money. It treats — for about the last 25 years with growing intensity —interest andinterest rate as word shells, to be filled with contents not to be subjected to matter-of-fact logic. Legal regulations, court decisions, scholarly opinions on using interest rates and calculating debts are full of contradictions to each other and in themselves. Theregula de tribus (the rule of three with linear conversion) is enforced wherever it is inappropriate. These circumstances are documented with examples from several states, with national, European and American regulations, and commented on with remarks by Leibniz, today as valid as in his time.     

Do Formula or Competitive Grant Funds Have Greater Impacts on State Agricultural Productivity?

This article examines the impact of public agricultural research and extension on agricultural total factor productivity at the state level. The objective is to establish whether federal formula or competitive grant funding of agricultural research has a greater impact on state agricultural productivity. A pooled cross-section time-series model of agricultural productivity is fitted to annual data for forty-eight contiguous states over 1970–1999. Our results show that public agricultural research and agricultural extension have statistically significant positive impacts on state agricultural productivity. In addition, Hatch formula funding has a larger impact on agricultural productivity than federal competitive grant funding, and a reallocation of Hatch formula funds to competitive grant funding would lower agricultural productivity. This seems unlikely to be a socially optimal policy. Furthermore, from a cost–benefit perspective, our study shows that the social marginal annualized real rate of return to public resources invested in agricultural research is 49–62%, and to public agricultural extension, the rate is even larger.     

Capacity Depreciation, Implicit Rental Price, and Investment Demand for Farm Tractors in Canada

Among the different factors pertaining to the demand for durable inputs in agriculture, the way the input depreciates over time is an important issue. This study investigates four alternative capacity depreciation patterns for farm tractors. While published estimates from government agencies implicitly assume convex capacity depreciation patterns, the results of this study demonstrate that the use of agricultural engineering data which depict a concave rather than convex pattern better reflect farmers' investment decisions. An implicit rental price measure is also proposed to account for the fact that the purchase price of a durable input is not an appropriate measure of the implicit rental cost of the asset.
Parmi les facteurs déterminants de la demande pour les biens durables en agriculture, la rapidité avec laquelle I'intrant se déprécie est certainement importante lors des décisions d'investissement. La présente etude analyse quatre différents scénarios de dépréciation pour les tracteurs agricoles au Canada. Bien que les données publiées par les agences gouver-nementales supposent implicitement que les biens durables se déprécient à un taux annuel constant, les résultats de cette etude montrent que I'utilisation de données basées sur la valeur productive de I'intrant telle que calculée sur une base expkrimentale donne de meil-leurs résultats statistiques dans I'estimation de la demande pour les tracteurs agricoles. De plus, une mesure du coût implicite de I'intrant est également proposée pour tenir compte du fait que le prix d'achat n'est pas une mesure appropriée dans I'analyse de la demande pour un bien durable.     

Pareto Optimal Trade in an Uncertain World: GMOs and the Precautionary Principle

Optimal trade policy in an uncertain world is examined. Decision-maker attitudes toward uncertainty are represented in terms of the Gilboa–Schmeidler (1989) maximin expected-utility (MMEU) model. The central result is that in a two-country, general-equilibrium setting with both trading partners possessing an MMEU preference structure, Pareto optimality can require one trading partner to absorb all uncertainty in the economy if its set of priors is a subset of its trading partners. An immediate corollary is that autarky is Pareto optimal if the trading partner with the more inclusive set of priors either chooses or is endowed with a nonstochastic technology.