Development similarities in urban clusters: Evidence from a spatial analysis of Israel''s urban system

The effect of geographic proximity on the similarity of development rates exhibited by urban localities in Israel is investigated. The analysis is carried out in three stages. During the first stage, Moran's I measure of spatial autocorrelation is used, indicating that the spatial autocorrelation of development rates drops as inter-town distances increase. In the second stage, the impact of explanatory variables (population size, remoteness, etc.) is tested using both Ordinary Least Squares (OLSs) and Spatial Lag Models (SLMs). The analysis indicates that inter-town proximity is a significant factor that helps to improve regression fits. Lastly, during the third step of the analysis, the spatial association of development rates is studied separately for centrally located and peripheral towns. The analysis points out that proximity effects appear to be stronger in the periphery.     

Alliances and the innovation performance of corporate and public research spin-off firms

We explore the innovation performance benefits of alliances for spin-off firms, in particular spin-offs either from other firms or from public research organizations. During the early years of the emerging combinatorial chemistry industry, the industry on which our empirical analysis focuses, spin-offs engaged in alliances with large and established partners, partners of similar type and size, and with public research organizations, often for different reasons. We seek to understand to what extent alliances of spin-offs with other firms (either large- or small- and medium-sized firms) affected their innovation performance and also how this performance may have been affected by their corporate or public research background. We find evidence that in general alliances of spin-offs with other firms, in particular alliances with large firms, increased their innovation performance. Corporate spin-offs that formed alliances with other firms outperformed public research spin-offs with such alliances. This suggests that, in terms of their innovation performance, corporate spin-offs that engaged in alliances with other firms seemed to have benefitted from their prior corporate background. Interestingly, it turns out that the negative impact of alliances on the innovation performance of public research spin-offs was largely affected by their alliances with small- and medium-sized firms.     

Property taxation in Israel: a non ad valorem approach

The arnona, the system of property taxation in Israel, is a unique form of taxation being based on a property's size (m²) and not on its discrete open market value. The actual use of the property (residential versus non-residential), its location in the municipality, type of property and its age are the determining factors for tax liability. In order to test for equity within the current system, the methodology adopted was to investigate the effect of population size, remoteness and population makeup with respect to some 80 municipalities on the levels of arnona. Although the thresholds of arnona for individual municipalities are approved by a committee of the Knesset, the present analysis indicates that the current differences in per capita amount of arnona collected by local authorities do reflect factors that would normally be expected to influence an ad valorem property tax in a market economy. It is argued that whilst the arnona is an accepted form of local authority property taxation, there are a number of fundamental weaknesses. Its application could be improved by incorporating elements of an ad valorem property tax, which would more fully reflect the socio-economic level of taxpayers and the physical condition of the built environment. However, the arnona, not being based directly on a property's market value should be of interest to countries (e.g. transitional countries of Central and Eastern Europe) who are presently introducing property taxes within an environment where property markets are not as yet fully developed.