A better way to innovate

Harvard professor Henry Chesbrough takes a look at leading-edge companies' latest moves to harvest ideas from outside and to benefit from sharing their own R&D with others--even with competitors.     

A Bayesian-like estimator of the process capability index Cpmk

Pearn et al. (1992) proposed the capability index C_pmk, and investigated the statistical properties of its natural estimator for stable normal processes with constant mean μ. Chen and Hsu (1995) showed that under general conditions the asymptotic distribution of is normal if μ≠m, and is a linear combination of the normal and the folded-normal distributions if μ=m, where m is the mid-point between the upper and the lower specification limits. In this paper, we consider a new estimator for stable processes under a different (more realistic) condition on process mean, namely, P (μ≥m)=p, 0≤p≤1. We obtain the exact distribution, the expected value, and the variance of under normality assumption. We show that for P (μ≥m)=0, or 1, the new estimator is the MLE of C_pmk, which is asymptotically efficient. In addition, we show that under general conditions is consistent and is asymptotically unbiased. We also show that the asymptotic distribution of is a mixture of two normal distributions. RID="*" ID="*"  The research was partially supported by National Science Council of the Republic of China (NSC-89-2213-E-346-003).     

How Large are the Welfare Gains from Technological Innovation Induced by Environmental Policies?

This paper examines whether the welfare gains from technological innovation that reduces future abatement costs are larger or smaller than the Pigouvian welfare gains from optimal pollution control. The relative welfare gains from innovation depend on three key factors—the initially optimal level of abatement, the speed at which innovation reduces future abatement costs, and the discount rate. We calculate the welfare gains from innovation under a variety of different scenarios. Mostly they are less than the Pigouvian welfare gains. To be greater, innovation must reduce abatement costs substantially and quickly and the initially optimal abatement level must be fairly modest.     

A revolutionary approach to health care cost control: leveraging the power of Web-enabled employee "consumerism"

The confluence of two trends--health care "consumerism" and employee self-service benefits programs--offers employers a promising opportunity for health care cost control. To take advantage of this opportunity, employers must take a fresh look at the health care cost dilemma and find ways to simultaneously offer employees a new kind of benefit and implement more effective cost-control measures.     

Organized medicine's new turf: e-services

Stodgy medical societies are partnering with, and creating, online companies. What can they do for your practice?