OPTIMAL RULES FOR PATENT RACES*

There are two important rules to patent races: minimal accomplishment necessary to receive the patent and the allocation of the innovation benefits. We study the optimal combination of these rules. A planner, who cannot distinguish between competing firms in a multistage innovation race, chooses the patent rules by maximizing either consumer or social surplus. We show that efficiency cost of prizes is a key consideration. Races are undesirable only when efficiency costs are low, firms are similar, and social surplus is maximized. Otherwise, the optimal policy involves a race of nontrivial duration to spur innovation and filter out inferior innovators.     

Critical Notes on German Development Strategy

The United Nations’ first development decade has not come up to expectations in Its results: neither did developing countries succeed in achieving a minimum growth rate of 5 p.c. of their GNP, nor did lndustriailsed nations use for aid the equivalent of I p.c. of their GNP. U Thant called this decade a decade of frustration.     

Ecotour Guide Training in Less Developed Countries: Some Preliminary Research Findings

This paper presents a critical discussion of the internationally prevailing understanding of the concept 'sustainable tourism'. It is argued that the current focus on stationary activities and local, intensive environmental issues is too limited both in relation to the concept of tourism and the concept of sustainable development. There is no tourism without travel. And, as shown in a Norwegian research study, tourist travel is a major source of serious environmental problems. The paper emphasises that sustainable tourism should be linked to a concept of sustainable mobility. However, this mobility would imply not only a change in the means of transport but also a reduced level of mobility in the rich part of the world. As this would entail new forms of tourism, other than those solely based on auto- and aeromobility, it represents a major challenge for the future development of tourism.     

Conference Tourism: A Problem for the Environment,as well as for Research?

The increase in professional trips to conferences and seminars made by employees in the 'knowledge industries' presents an environmentally worrying trend in mobility in contemporary post-industrial society. A number of factors are involved. Globalisation and regional competition encourage host cities and institutions to put themselves on the conference map. For the individual traveller, conferences and seminars offer escape from daily routines and the chance to experience new, perhaps exotic, places. But trips to distant conferences can have serious environmental impacts, especially if made by airplane. Because of the aggressive impact of greenhouse gas emissions in the upper atmosphere, their threat to the global climate is more serious than similar trips made at surface level. In addition, the time spent on such trips competes with other tasks: conference participation takes scarce time resources available to university academics for research. In the age of electronic communication, it is questionable whether conferences are effective arenas for communicating and gathering knowledge.     

Khat-chewing in liminal leisure spaces: British-Somali youth on the margins

Khat-chewing, a controversial leisure activity within the Somali diaspora in Britain, has received little attention within the academic field of Leisure Studies. This paper reports on ethnographic research to provide insights into the unique locations where young British-Somali men chew khat, exposing the liminal qualities of such localities. The paper begins with an overview of the contentious position khat-chewing occupies within Somali communities in Britain, highlighting reasons why young British-Somali men hide their association with the leisure practice. The discussion that follows considers how young male khat users conceptualise spatial environments, exposing how these locations temporarily produce a dual sense of privacy and sociality. The ambiences of such temporary leisure spaces remain open to the prospect of discovery, resulting in the use of discretionary tactics to maintain a sense of secrecy. In this context, we discuss how khat-chewing offers a sense of cultural identity and belongingness while also marking young British-Somali men as outsiders – even within their own communities.     

Über die verwendung von mittelwertprocessen in der bevölkerungsstatistik und in der Zinsrechnung

Abstract

Im Anschluss an die im Jahre 1916 erschienene Monographie von E. J. Gumbel: “Die Berechnung des Bevölkerungsstandes durch Interpolation” (Leipzig, Vogel) hat Verfasser dieser Zeilen den formalen Aufbau der für die Praxis einfachsten Interpolationsmethoden der mathematisch-statistischen Behandlung zugeführt; auf dieser Grundlage hat dann Gumbel die so erhaltenen verallgemeinerten Ansätze bereits auf praktische Fragen der Bevölkerungslehre angewendet. Im Folgenden sollen einige Resultate dieser Untersuchungen mitgeteilt werden, und zwar in Hinblick darauf, dass dieselben bei der Konstruktion von Volkssterbetafeln und bei der Ausarbeitung der Deckungssysteme in der Socialversicherung Verwendung finden können. Die für die Statistik und für die wirtschaftliche, Mathematik (z. B. Grundlegung der Zinsfunktionen). so wichtigen Mittelwertoperationen erscheinen erst durch die nähere methodische Bearbeitung in der für die zielbewusste Anwendung notwendigen Beleuchtung. Die mathematische Diskussion der Mittelwert-Interpolationen dünkt uns vom statistischen Gesichtspunkt als wesentlich, wenn auch der Verwaltungsstatistiker für primitivere Zwecke eine kürzere Behandlung der präcisen Auseinandersetzung bevorzugt. Dieser Standpunkt erweist sich als gerechtfertigt, sobald man — wie es z. B. in der Lebensversicherungstechnik der Fall ist — nicht nur Abschätzungen im Grossen vornimmt, sondern auf Grundlage des empirischen Materials feinere Berechnungen anstellt, deren numerisches Resultat von der Präcision der Ausgleichungsprocesse abhängt. Hauptziel der folgenden Betrachtung ist die genauere Festlegung der in der Verwaltungsstatistik üblichen rohen Interpolationsansätze, um auf diesem Wege solche Formeln zu gewinnen, die den Erfahrungen besser angepasst werden können und die es weiterhin ermöglichen, dass die Berechnung der auf den Interpolationsprocess beruhenden wichtigern Masszahlen (z. B. verlebte Zeit, Vermehrungsintensität, Fixirung partieller Bevölkerungsmassen, etc.) einer mathematjschen Kritik unterworfen werden können.