Reconfiguring the innovation policy portfolios for Taiwan's SIP Mall industry

Since the year 2000, silicon intellectual property (SIP), which can minimize the gap in ‘design productivity’ that exists with systems-on-chip (SOC), has become one of the most important factors in the development of integrated circuit (IC) products in the SOC era. Although SIP is very important for IC industry development, complicated business, technical as well as legal issues inside SIP transactions have hindered successful transactions and the integration of SIPs into SOCs. Thus, web-based SIP e-Commerce mechanisms, called SIP Malls, have emerged, aiming to resolve complex SIP issues. To maintain its leading position and competitiveness in the World's IC industry, as well as the value added by SOC products in Taiwanese IC firms, the Taiwanese government has developed SIP Malls, using innovation policy tools. However, the Taiwanese SIP Mall industry remains immature. No existing Taiwanese SIP Malls generate a profit or account for a significant share of worldwide SIP transactions. This research will develop an analytical framework for defining an innovation policy portfolio that aims to develop Taiwan's SIP Mall industry, so that it will enhance the value added of SIP Malls and, thus, the nation's competitiveness in the SIP and IC industries, something which already has become one of the Taiwanese government's major concerns. The industry innovation requirements (IIRs) are summarized using the Delphi method. Meanwhile, the major IIRs identified by Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) are introduced. After the IIRs are derived, the relationships between the IIRs and innovation policy tools are derived by Grey relational analysis (GRA). Then, the innovation policy tools are clustered, based upon the Grey grades derived by GRA. Finally, reconfigured innovation policy portfolios are presented for the Taiwanese government's policy definition. The results demonstrate that developing an innovative policy portfolio that includes scientific, technical, educational, public enterprise, information, legal and regulatory, financial, and taxation policy tools will be the most necessary step towards developing Taiwan's SIP Mall industry.     

Environmental proactivism and firm performance: evidence from security analyst earnings forecasts

There is an ongoing debate over the impact of corporate pro-environment actions and strategies (reflected, for example, in pollution prevention and emission reductions, product re-design, materials stewardship) on corporate financial performance in US corporations today. A review of the existing literature in this area yields no consistent pattern of relationships between corporate environmental proactivism and financial performance when historical corporate accounting performance and stock market measures of performance are used. We revisit this relationship using a novel measure of firm performance: security analyst earnings forecasts. Specifically, we demonstrate a significant, negative relationship between environmental proactivism (using Toxic Release Inventory data) and industry analyst 1- and 5-year earnings-per-share performance forecasts for a sample of 523 US firms in 1992. We discuss the implications of these findings and provide suggestions for future research. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

U.S.-China Economic and Political Relations: Youths’ Perceptions

This paper is a study of the perceptions of young adults in the U.S. and China on the relations between the two nations. We conducted a case study by distributing a 17 question survey to 201 American undergraduate students (NYC) and 164 Chinese undergraduate students (Shanghai). The questions probed their views of U.S. and China’s economic and political systems, the future economic growth and political power in the world of the two nations, and the future political and economic relations between the two powers. The results of our study reveal a number of important perceptions that both U.S. and Chinese students have, some being similar and others being in sharp contrast. Most students in both countries view future political and economic relations between the U.S. and China predominantly as cooperative but only based on each nation’s self-interests. Both Chinese and American students agree that China is gaining political strength and economic influence among the advanced and the emerging nations of the world. While most of the U.S. students believe that China has been and will continue to grow at a much faster rate than the U.S., Chinese students are more likely to believe that this rate of growth is unsustainable. The results from our survey are compared and contrasted to the findings of national surveys for both countries. We believe that the study provides valuable insights into the similarities and differences in viewpoints of the next generation of adults in both nations about future U.S.-China relations.     

The profitability of momentum trading strategies: Empirical evidence from Hong Kong

This paper investigates whether momentum trading strategies are profitable in the Hong Kong stock market, and examines the sources of such profitability. Momentum portfolios are significantly profitable in the intermediate term in Hong Kong, but the profits become insignificant after risk adjustment by the Chordia and Shivakumar (2001) model. The stock-specific return strategy and factor-related return strategy are analyzed to examine which portion of the total return causes stocks to enter extreme portfolios. The Chordia and Shivakumar factor-related return strategy obtains profits with a magnitude that is close to that which is attained by the total return momentum strategy. Additional evidence further supports the view that the Chordia and Shivakumar model captures momentum profits.     

THE TIME‐SERIES PROPERTIES OF UK INFLATION: EVIDENCE FROM AGGREGATE AND DISAGGREGATE DATA

This paper contrasts the time‐series properties of aggregate and disaggregate UK inflation. While aggregate inflation is found to be non‐stationary, unit root rejection frequencies are increasing when we use more disaggregate data. Structural break analysis suggests that structural shifts in monetary policy could alter inflation persistence. Additionally, panel evidence indicates that the unit root hypothesis can be rejected for sectoral inflation rates. Finally, we compare the persistence properties of UK inflation, finding statistically significant differences between aggregate and disaggregate series. Our analysis suggests that aggregation matters, which has important implications for econometric analysis and the conduct of monetary policy.     

Measuring the Impact of Various Income Sources on the Link between Inequality and Development: Implications for the Kuznets Curve

To understand the link between inequality and development, a decomposition of the Gini index by income sources is used that emphasizes the role of three components measuring the impact of the shares of the sources, the degree to which they are unequally distributed, and their correlation with total income. Such a breakdown explains why the rising section of the Kuznets curve is mainly the consequence of the increasing share of wages while its declining section reflects the decreasing share of entrepreneurial income and the negative correlation between transfers and total income. The data sources were provided by the International Labour Office.     

Sudden stops, banking crises and investment collapses in emerging markets

We evaluate whether financial openness leaves emerging market economies vulnerable to the adverse effects of capital reversals (“sudden stops”) on domestic investment. We investigate this claim in a broad sample of emerging markets during the period 1976–2002. If the banking sector does not experience a systemic crisis, sudden stop events fail to have a significant impact on investment. Bank crises, on the other hand, have a significant negative effect on investment even in the absence of a contemporaneous sudden stop crisis. We also find that openness to capital flows worsens the adverse impact of banking crises on investment. Our results provide statistical support for the policy view that a strong banking sector which can withstand the negative fallout of capital flight is essential for countries that open their economies to international financial flows.     

Politics of The Ring: Limits to Public Participation in Engineering Practice

How engineering in the context of urban socio‐environmental challenges is practically and effectively mobilized has been the subject of some debate. Numerous professional bodies have encouraged engineers to approach socio‐environmental issues through increased engagement with, and accountability to, the public through effective participatory practices. This article presents a close empirical analysis of a major engineering project in London to argue that engineering has a more complex relationship with social, political and environmental conditions than the idealistic participatory conception supposes. In fact, the spatial, technical and economic arrangements of engineering practice may limit the potential for public participation. Through a detailed analysis of the example of the London Water Ring Main (from around 1988 to 1994), this article shows how myriad sometimes conflicting engineering issues and responsibilities interfered with key elements of effective participation. Therefore, although increased public engagement in engineering may be desirable in theory, substantial professional, institutional and political change may have to occur before this is possible in practice .     

Can the Timing of Negotiations Impact the Consequences of Mergers?

This paper uses a theoretical model to examine whether variation in the timing of negotiations between buyers and sellers can alter the effects of mergers between sellers. The model shows that mergers between horizontally overlapping firms lead to price increases regardless of how negotiations take place. In contrast, mergers between firms in different markets can only lead to higher compensation for the combined firm when negotiations occur sequentially. However, any price effects from out‐of‐market mergers stem from a mechanical redistribution of existing market power and not from a loss in competition. Published 2014. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.     

The Quality of Institutions and Organizational Form Decisions: Evidence from Within the Firm

In many retail and service sectors, firms have to establish a physical presence in a geographic market to access customers there. In countries where the quality of institutions is low, this can put assets at risk. We use data on the operations of a multinational, multibrand hotel company to show that in environments where local institutions are weaker—as proxied mainly by the World Bank's Checks index—the company eschews direct ownership. Rather than increasing its reliance on franchising, as predicted by some models, the company relies more on another form of organization commonly used in this industry, namely management contracts. We explain these patterns by emphasizing how the quality of the institutional environment affects the cost of using equity‐based organizational forms, per arguments in the current literature, but also the cost of enforcing the terms of franchise contracts.