Financing agricultural R&D in rich countries: what's happening and why

Governments everywhere are trimming their support for agricultural R&D, giving greater scrutiny to the support that they do provide, and reforming the public agencies that fund, oversee, and carry out the research. This represents a break from previous patterns, which had consisted of expansion in the public funds for agricultural R&D. Private-sector spending on agricultural research has slowed along with the growth of public spending in recent years, but the balance continues to shift towards the private sector. This article presents a quantitative review of these funding trends and the considerable institutional changes that have accompanied them. We discuss new data for 22 OECD countries, providing institutional details for five of these countries, and conclude with an assessment of policy developments.     

Covert operations

Few executives have insight into what really goes on in their organizations. CEO Stephen Martin seized a rare opportunity to anonymously discover the nitty gritty of his company. He shares his insights with Julian Birkinshaw and Stuart Crainer.     

Ownership and trust

In unique research, Julian Franks looked at over 100 years of data on corporate ownership and found that relationships of trust have been a crucial historical ingredient in the ownership of firms. He argues that relationships of trust are as important now as ever.     

The Russian budgetary process and defence: finding the ‘golden mean’

Abstract

In Russia the budgetary process for defence is broadly similar to that for other sectors but is characterised by a considerable degree of secrecy, limiting the role of parliament and any form of effective social control. The article examines the main actors and features of the defence budgetary process, the system of state secrecy, and explores the issue that generates the most conflict between the ministries of finance and defence, namely the long-term state armament programme.     

Estimating time-varying variances and covariances via nearest neighbour multivariate predictions: applications to the NYSE and the Madrid Stock Exchange Index

In this article, we present a technique to obtain the time-varying covariance matrix for several time series for nearest neighbour predictors. To illustrate the use of this technique, we analyse the time-varying variances and correlations between the daily returns on two equity stock market indexes, the New York Stock Exchange and the Madrid Stock Exchange Index.     

中国上市公司股权结构与总经理变更

研究上市公司股权结构、业绩与总经理的强制性变更和正常性变更的关系。可以发现,总经理的变更,特别是强制性变更作为最极端的约束手段,能够约束业绩差的总经理;国家股比例、流通股比例和大股东比例与总经理的强制性变更和正常性变更都不具有任何显著的相关性,这说明在国有股“所有者缺位”、流通股比例过低,市场投机气氛浓重的情况下,国家股东、流通股东以及大股东无法有效地监管经理人;而经理人持股比例与总经理的强制性变更和正常性变更之间具有非常显著的负相关性,证明了中国上市公司的“内部人控制”现象。     

LIFFE: a great british success story

Julian Roche, an independent futures market consultant, celebrates the success of the London International Financial Futures Exchange - London's newest market place which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary.     

Commercialization of university research: A policy perspective

Academic research has been shown to have considerable commercial potential but there is a wide range of routes available for its exploitation.These routes vary in terms of the extent to which the gains from research are 'captured' by the academics, the parent institution or imitators. A model is developed to identify the most appropriate exploitation policies for dgerent fields of academic research.This model is then tested against a large sample of data from British universities and their academics.It is concluded that the alternative routes of spin-off enterprises, licensing, collaboration or consultancy depend on the nature o f the technology, the intellectual property protection available and the need for complementary assets to assist in their exploitation.