Public Knowledge,Private Property and the Economics of High-tech Consortia

The management of knowledge in research consortia raises new appropriability issues, such as copying with the tension between individual protection and data sharing which is required in any process of collective invention. Based on case studies carried out in the field of biotechnology, the paper discusses these issues and develop some policy implications.     

Open-Economy Macroeconomics: Developments in Theory and Policy

This paper views developments in open-economy macroeconomics through the lens of the debate over European monetary unification. The empirical tendency for nominal exchange rate regimes to affect the variability of nominal and real exchange rates alike can be rationalized by sticky-price theories or models of asset-market liquidity effects. But plausible liquidity models have difficulty generating enough persistence to match the data. Thus, the macroeconomic stabilization costs of forgoing the exchange-rate realignment option seem pertinent. It is argued that our theories of efficiencies due to a common currency remain unsatisfactory, despite recent advances. The paper concludes by reviewing theories of currency crisis     

Do Unexpected Land Auction Outcomes Bring New Information to the Real Estate Market?

Land and real estate are intrinsically related but generally traded in two different markets. Vacant land, being a major “raw material” for development of real estate, is traded by developers who actively manage development risk for profit. Real estate, being a long lived final product, is traded by end-users or investors for use or investment in the secondary market. This study examines price discovery between the two markets. The key question is whether land transactions, in the form of public auctions, convey any new information to the secondary real estate market. Our results suggest unexpected land auction outcomes have both market-wide and local effects on real estate prices. However, the impacts are asymmetric. We found that lower than expected land auction prices have a significant negative market-wide and local impact on real estate prices while higher than expect land auction prices have little or no impact.     

World-wide effects and import elasticities

This paper shows that estimates of import demand elasticities will be biased towards zero from the exclusion of any variable that has internationally common or world-wide effects. This is true for both demand- and supply-affecting variables. The bias from world-wide effects is demonstrated in conjunction with the bias from mismeasured prices and quantities. It is shown that the true price elasticity can be bounded by the regression of quantities on prices and of prices of quantities. Estimates are presented on the range within which the true values lie. It is shown that the true import demand elasticities could be very large.