What factors of early-stage innovative projects are likely to drive projects’ success? A longitudinal analysis of Korean entrepreneurial firms

Previous studies have identified the factors affecting successful technology commercialization as outcomes of R&D projects. However, most of them have used cross-sectional data, whereas there is a dearth of literature using longitudinal data analysis. Longitudinal analysis is essential for investigating the characteristics of early-stage innovative projects due to the inherent time lag between project evaluation and commercialization. Therefore, this study examines the early-stage project characteristics that can be used as meaningful evaluation criteria for predicting success, particularly in technology commercialization. We collected data on the ex-ante evaluation results and ex-post commercialization results of R&D projects pursued by entrepreneurial firms. We then conducted a logistic regression analysis and identified three market-related factors as significant in driving technology commercialization success in the early stages of technology development: market potential, commercialization plan, and market condition.     

The Survival of Unique Corporate Cultures

In this paper we identify two situations that can lead a firm to hire an executive who supports a corporate culture that differs from the firm's current culture. In the first case, there is a similarity between the firm's culture and that of the candidate, and in the second case, executives who support the firm's culture constitute a minority of the available candidates. In both cases the firm prefers to hire an available candidate, rather than risk a prolonged vacancy. We show how these scenarios can lead to the eradication of unique cultures and to the perpetuation of more common cultures. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The design of patent pools: the determinants of licensing rules

Patent pools are an important but little‐studied economic institution. In this article, we first make a set of predictions about the licensing terms associated with patent pools. The theoretical framework predicts that (i) pools consisting of complementary patents are more likely to allow members to engage in independent licensing and (ii) the requirement that firms license patents to the pool (grantbacks) should be associated with pools that consist of complements and allow independent licensing. We then examine the terms of 63 pools, and show that licensing rules are consistent with these hypotheses.     

Why Pay Taxes When No One Else Does?

In this paper we try to understand the phenomenon whereby a large proportion of the population evades tax payments. We present a model which incorporates elements from the theory of information cascades with the standard model of tax evasion and analyze the connection between the decision of a potential tax evader, the number of tax evaders, and the number caught in previous periods. General conditions exist under which any expected utility maximizing potential tax evaders will decide to emulate other tax evaders.     

Venture Capital Investment: An Agency Analysis of Practice. Gavin C. Reid. London,Routledge, 1998. ISBN 0415179696.

Small Business Economics -     

A Definition of Uncertainty Aversion

A definition of uncertainty or ambiguity aversion is proposed. It is argued that the definition is well-suited to modelling within the Savage (as opposed to Anscombe and Aumann) domain of acts. The defined property of uncertainty aversion has intuitive empirical content, behaves well in specific models of preference (multiple-priors and Choquet expected utility) and is tractable. Tractability is established through use of a novel notion of differentiability for utility functions, called eventwise differentiability.     

Discriminatory tariffs and international negotiations

Recent research has highlighted the efficiency of the MFN principle within the GATT/WTO structure. This paper analyzes the exception made to MFN within Article XXIII that allows discriminatory punishment for deviations from the agreement. We argue that, in the absence of collusion, the MFN exception reduces the severity of punishment and thus lowers the level of cooperation that can be achieved by the agreement. However, discriminatory punishment may still be beneficial as we show that it reduces the problems associated with the potential for renegotiation during the punishment phase. Finally, we argue that our results are also applicable to the question of whether to use trade policy sanctions as a means of enforcing agreements covering domestic policies.