Are patent fees effective at weeding out low‐quality patents?

The paper investigates whether patent fees are an effective mechanism to deter the filing of low‐quality patent applications. The study analyzes the effect on patent quality of the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1982, which resulted in a substantial increase in patenting fees at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Results from a series of difference‐in‐differences regressions suggest that the increase in fees led to a weeding out of low‐quality patents. About 10% of patents in the lowest quality decile were filtered out, with the effect concentrated in the patents of firms whose overall patent portfolio was medium to large (more than 20 patents). The study has strong policy implications in the current context of concerns about declines in patent quality.     

Wine Tourism as an Opportunity for Tourism Development: Examples of Good Practice in Slovenia

The authors discuss wine tourism activities in the context of general tourism development in Slovenia. The country’s winegrowing areas have developed traditionally important viticulture, a relatively intensive production of typical grape varieties and in some cases also a distinct entrepreneurial spirit, which consequently reflects in tourism and regional development, based on diverse cultural heritage and natural values. Three Slovene wine regions are divided into nine wine districts with their own identities and more or less distinct terroirs. Despite a several centuries’ long tradition and a rich wine culture, it is evident that in national tourism strategies and development plans, wine tourism still does not occupy the position that it probably deserves, although most of the documents stress its potential for local or regional development. On the other hand, the authors recognize a significant interest among winemakers and tourism professionals for strategic cooperation and systematic approach to develop wine tourism in the selected destinations. The authors therefore focus on some paradoxes and emphasize examples of good practice at the national, regional, and local levels.     

Geographic distribution of suicide and railway suicide in Belgium, 2008–2013: a principal component analysis

This study investigated the geographic distribution of suicide and railway suicide in Belgium over 2008--2013 on local (i.e., district or arrondissement) level. There were differences in the regional distribution of suicide and railway suicides in Belgium over the study period. Principal component analysis identified three groups of correlations among population variables and socio-economic indicators, such as population density, unemployment, and age group distribution, on two components that helped explaining the variance of railway suicide at a local (arrondissement) level. This information is of particular importance to prevent suicides in high-risk areas on the Belgian railway network.     

The kinetic quality of store design: An Exploration of its influence on shopping experience

Kinetic quality of store space is the appreciation of the store with regard to the movements and gestures that can be performed during the shopping trip. Few researches have studied this concept despite its potential influence on shopping outcomes. In this paper, we show that the kinetic quality of the store has an impact on hedonic and utilitarian shopping values and on purchase. The impact on shopping value is similar in magnitude to that of atmospheric quality. Music and visual esthetics positively influence kinetic quality.     

Beyond ideological cleavages: A unifying framework for industrial policies and other public interventions

This paper introduces a new framework to characterize the diversity of public policies and interventions to spur investment and growth. Going beyond ideological cleavages on this topic, we argue that two orthogonal features determine how much interventions depart fundamentally from neutral policies: (1) their degree of selectivity (in terms of sectors or other targeted categories of firms) and (2) the extent of price subsidies embedded in such interventions. These two characteristics of interventions respond to different types of justifications, and they do not necessarily need to go hand in hand, even if they often do in practice. Depending on their selectivity and/or the extent of price subsidies, interventions are shown to vary in their distortions, their benefits, and their opportunity costs. The framework is used to illustrate how different country characteristics affect these pros and cons of interventionism. In particular, we look at the effects of the initial state of the investment climate, the country's institutional capacity, its political economy context and the nature of the State-business interaction. Using the examples of poor countries with a small undiversified industrial base, we show that it is often in the situations where interventions may be the most needed, that the conditions for their success are likely to be the weakest, which does not mean either that some interventions cannot succeed in low-income countries.     

An Introduction to the Patstat Database with Example Queries

This article provides an introduction to the Patstat patent database. It offers guided examples of 10 popular queries that are relevant for research purposes and that cover the most important data tables. It is targeted at academic researchers and practitioners who are willing to learn the basics of the database.     

青藏铁路开通与西藏大发展——青藏铁路：西藏发展的助推器

2005年我国历史上最重要的一条铁路——青藏铁路全线贯通，2006年7月正式试运营。对于这样一条全世界都关注的铁路的建成和运营，将对西藏的经济社会发展产生什么影响？我们应该选择什么样的应对策略，是值得认真研究的大课题。为此，本期封面文章全力推出专题：青藏铁路开通与西藏大发展。本刊特邀《西藏人口发展战略研究》课题组专家学者，力图从西藏的社会、文化、经济各个方面作一深入探讨，为各级政府决策提供科学建议，为西藏的发展建言献策。[编者按]     

Chebyshev interpolation for parametric option pricing

Recurrent tasks such as pricing, calibration and risk assessment need to be executed accurately and in real time. We concentrate on parametric option pricing (POP) as a generic instance of parametric conditional expectations and show that polynomial interpolation in the parameter space promises to considerably reduce run-times while maintaining accuracy. The attractive properties of Chebyshev interpolation and its tensorized extension enable us to identify broadly applicable criteria for (sub)exponential convergence and explicit error bounds. The method is most promising when the computation of the prices is most challenging. We therefore investigate its combination with Monte Carlo simulation and analyze the effect of (stochastic) approximations of the interpolation. For a wide and important range of problems, the Chebyshev method turns out to be more efficient than parametric multilevel Monte Carlo. We conclude with a numerical efficiency study.     

Nash implementation with an infinite-dimensional trade space

This paper deals with the problem of implementing the Walras correspondence via Nash equilibria, in exchange economies with infinitely many commodities and finitely many households with possibly non-ordered preferences. We explicitly construct a feasible mechanism enjoying some features, which have natural economic meanings. Under a fairly weak boundary condition, this game fully implements the Walras equilibria. If this condition is not fulfilled, our mechanism nevertheless implements the constrained Walras equilibria. Received: 11 December 2003, Accepted: 29 July 2005 JEL Classification: D41, D43, D51 We thank (without implicating) Prof. Jean-Marc Bonnisseau and Cuong Le Van for helpful comments. The views expressed in this paper reflect those of the authors and not necessarily those of Calyon.