International patent analysis as a tool for corporate technology analysis and planning

New, techniques of international patent anabsis are illustrated and resultsfrom preliminary validity tests of these techniques are presented. Indicators of technological activity, technological significance and commercial potential are constructed, and used to analyze fiber-based opto-electronic couplers and monoclonal-antibody-based diagnostic kits at the levels o f the technology, nation and firm. The international patent indicators are found to be closely correlated with R&D expenditures, scientific publications and new product introductions. They also relate to these indicators in ways that moke sense as specified in simple regression models of the innovation process. Comparisons of patent analysis results with expert opinion (for two process technologies) reveal that technology–level analyzes conform quite well with expert opinion, but national – and firm–level analyes vary from a low to a modest correlation with expert opinion. The authors conclude that the techniques can provide important information for corporate technology management, but that studies of additional technologies and further validity tests are needed.     

The changing face of mainstream economics

This article argues that economics is currently undergoing a fundamental shift in its method, away from neoclassical economics and into something new. Although that something new has not been fully developed, it is beginning to take form and is centered on dynamics, recursive methods and complexity theory. The foundation of this change is coming from economists who are doing cutting edge work and influencing mainstream economics. These economists are defining and laying the theoretical groundwork for the fundamental shift that is occurring in the economics profession.     

Mankind at the Starting Point

The most striking feature of the current economic situation in Spain is the huge unemployment rate, above 25 percent. From an orthodox perspective, we suggest that this unemployment is the result of a highly inflexible labor market, which needs to be reformed by introducing flexibility measures. The paper argues, however, that labor market reforms introduced since the early 1980s, allowing an excessive use of temporary employment contracts, have had perverse effects on the Spanish economy. They have affected negatively not only aggregate demand and supply, but also income distribution. The emergence of these market reforms helps explain the current rate of unemployment as well as the deep impact of the global financial crisis on overall Spanish economic activity.     

Segmented labour markets and the estimation of wage functions

This paper uses a stratified random sample of private sector employees to estimate wage equations for both the male labour market as a whole and six ‘segments’ of the labour market, segement which are defined with respect to the industry and size characteristics of the employing establishmen. Highly conventional results are obtained when wage equations are estimated for the male labour market as a whole, or within two segements, comprising almost half the survey population. However, one can reject conclusively the hypothesis that the same estimating equation is appropriate for modelling wage determination in all segments and if a ‘human capital’ (HK) model is, within segements, tested against more appropriate alternative hypotheses for wage determination using the Davidson and Mackinnon (1981) methodology for the testing of non-nested hypotheses, the conclusion is that one should reject the HK specification and not reject the alternative.

It is therefore argued that the disaggregation of labour market data reveals differences in the wage determination process that are not consistent with the view that labour markets are ‘dualistic’ but are consistent with the view that are segmented.     

Numeraire choice in normalized quadratic functional forms

A semi-nested test procedure is developed for choosing the numeraire for a normalized quadratic profit function when too few observations exist for nested hypothesis testing and when too many alternatives exis for conventional non-nested testing. Sensitivity of empirical results to choice of numeraire price is examined using agricultural data for the US and ten multistate regions. Few test conclusions vary by numeraire but own price input demand elasticities differ greatly.     

Household formation by the young in the United States

A model of household formation by the young is specified and estimated. It was found that the headship rate for the young in the United States depends on income, the cost of housing, the number of families receiving AFDC payments, the age at first marriage for females and for males, and the percentage of males enrolled in college. Household formation by the young is much more sensitive to changes in income and the price of housing than household formation by the entire adult population. The estimated results are used to examine the change in the headship rate from 1961 to 1979 and from 1979 to 1987.     

Testing the presence and the absence of purchasing power parity: results for fixed and flexible regimes

Recent empirical studies concerning purchasing power parity (PPP), using the concept of cointegraton, have tested the null hypothesis of the absence orthe presence of PPP. The disadvantage of using either of these approaches is that the conclusion is ambiguous when not rejecting the null: the result could be due to either the null hypothesis being true or by the low power of the test and lack of information in the data. Therefore, there is substantial information to be gained by applying both approaches within the same study. This study uses the ordinary DF test with PPP as the alternative hypothesis and a recently suggested test by Kwiatkowski et al. (1992) with PPP as the null. The tests are applied to four major industrial countries real exchange rates, each split into four different samples, including fixed as well as flexible exchange rate regimes. The absence of PPP cannot be rejected while the presence can be rejected.     

Measuring country event risk compensation on BRICs international portfolio management

The BRICs nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have a strong relative economic growth pattern in the world among economic powers. The allure of globalization has made the analysis and assessment of national critical component of international portfolio management in recent years. We construct the model from comparing the relative SD of stock return whereby higher SDs are generally associated with more risk. This relative SD forms a principle component in the change of the weights on the international portfolio choice. The result shows that event jump risk not only makes the investor's allocation more conservative overall, but also it can be compensated on BRICs event risk.