Property rights and information flows: a simulation approach

With the growth of the information economy, the proportion of knowledge-intensive goods to total goods is constantly increasing. Lessig (The future of ideas: the fate of the commons in a connected world. Vintage, New York 2001) has argued that IPRs have now become too favourable to existing producers and that their ‘winner-take-all’ characteristics are constraining the creators of tomorrow. In this paper we look at how variations in IPRs regimes might affect the creation and social cost of new knowledge in economic systems. Drawing on a conceptual framework, the Information Space or I-Space to explore how the uncontrollable diffusibility of knowledge relates to its degree of structure, we deploy an agent-based modelling approach to explore the issue of IPRs. We take the ability to control the diffusibility of knowledge as a proxy measure for an ability to establish property rights in such knowledge. Second, we take the rate of obsolescence of knowledge as a proxy measure for the degree of turbulence induced by different regimes of technical change. Then we simulate the quantity and cost to society of new knowledge under different property right regimes.

Tariff (De‐) Escalation with Successive Oligopoly

This paper explores the issue of a simultaneous reduction in tariffs at different stages of a vertically related market where each stage is oligopolistic. When vertically related markets are characterized as a successive oligopoly, reducing tariffs by an equivalent amount on upstream and downstream imports will have a differential effect on market access and hence profits at each stage as a result of a combination of horizontal and vertical effects. These differential effects have implications for the tariff structure post‐trade reform.     

Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media

Traditionally, consumers used the Internet to simply expend content: they read it, they watched it, and they used it to buy products and services. Increasingly, however, consumers are utilizing platforms—such as content sharing sites, blogs, social networking, and wikis—to create, modify, share, and discuss Internet content. This represents the social media phenomenon, which can now significantly impact a firm's reputation, sales, and even survival. Yet, many executives eschew or ignore this form of media because they don’t understand what it is, the various forms it can take, and how to engage with it and learn. In response, we present a framework that defines social media by using seven functional building blocks: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. As different social media activities are defined by the extent to which they focus on some or all of these blocks, we explain the implications that each block can have for how firms should engage with social media. To conclude, we present a number of recommendations regarding how firms should develop strategies for monitoring, understanding, and responding to different social media activities.     

Poverty in Edwardian Britain

This article introduces a newly discovered household budget data set for 1904. We use these data to estimate urban poverty among working families in the British Isles. Applying Bowley's poverty line, we estimate that at least 23 per cent of people in urban working households and 18 per cent of working households had income insufficient to meet minimum needs. This is well above Rowntree's estimate of primary poverty for York in 1899 and high in the range that Bowley found in northern towns in 1912–13. The skill gradient of poverty is steep; for instance, among labourers' households, the poverty rates are close to 50 per cent. Measures of the depth of poverty are relatively low in the data, suggesting that most poor male-headed working households were close to meeting Bowley's new standard.     

On the perceived usefulness of scaling techniques in market analysis

This study examines the perceived usefulness of alternative spatial and tree-based similarity scaling techniques in a market analysis task. These techniques are typically evaluated on their ability to fit or explain customer input data. The psychological reaction of individuals who use these techniques to analyze markets has been largely ignored. The study reveals that spatial representations are perceived as more useful than tree-based clustering techniques, even though the latter provide a better fit to customer perceptions. The results have implications for both the use and development of scaling techniques in psychology and marketing. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Awareness as a foundation for developing effective spatial data infrastructures

The development of an effective spatial data infrastructure (SDI) often occurs in a fragmented organizational environment requiring a high level of inter-organizational collaboration. Different organizations from various jurisdictions need to work together closely when agreeing on how they will jointly register, store, use and share data and how they will make their data available to the wider society. However, this collaboration is generally regarded as very difficult. For example people often resist data sharing across organizational boundaries due to loss of control, power and independency. Organizational issues are thus considered one of the fundamental constraints to inter-organizational sharing of spatial data.     

Further participatory adaptation is required for community leaders to champion conservation agriculture in Africa

There is a recognized need for the participation of local communities in designing and implementing agricultural interventions for the sustainable intensification in smallholder systems. This study examines the perspectives of local community leaders towards the widely promoted, but not widely adopted, practice of Conservation Agriculture (CA) in African smallholder systems. Perceptions from 47 community leaders (both from traditional local authorities and farmer organizations) across six African countries are documented regarding how CA matches the wants, needs and capabilities of farmers in their communities. While community leaders generally perceived CA as potentially beneficial, they also indicated that CA is not currently perceived as feasible within their communities and hence has limited relevance. Three key themes were identified that limit both CA use and sustainable intensification more generally: [1] a perceived reluctance of farmers to engage with the community platform as part of a higher input, market-oriented production system; [2] informational constraints due to non-functional exchange mechanisms; and [3] a lack of local adaptation of CA underscored by the persistence of top-down, linear research and extension approaches. Through greater understanding of local perspectives, a clearer picture emerges of the need for greater participatory engagement and local adaptation if sustainable intensification of African smallholder agricultural systems is to be achieved.     

ON PASLNETTI'S ‘G’ MATRIX

Pasinetti's vertically integrated H matrix has been much used in economic theory but his other vertically integrated matrix, G — which is of a quite different nature — has been little noticed. This paper considers the nature of the G matrix, its relationship to H, and varous issues — concerning consumption and growth, value added, sales revenue and differential growth or profit rates — for the analysis of which G is a very useful analytical tool.