Technology Foresight for Wiring Up the National Innovation System: Experiences in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand

Since 1990, technology foresight has spread rapidly. We begin by analyzing the reasons for this before examining the specific political background to technology foresight in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The article analyzes and compares the approaches to foresight in these countries, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. We then propose a new rationale for technology foresight, which centers on its role in “wiring up” and thereby strengthening the national innovation system, before arriving at a number of conclusions.     

Further evidence of the November effect

Tax-loss selling by individuals has long been thought to be a major factor driving the January effect. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 changed the tax-year end for mutual funds to October 31 and increased the marginal tax rate, creating a natural experiment allowing Bhabra, Dhillon, and Ramirez (1999) to empirically test the tax-selling hypothesis. They find empirical support for a postact November effect. However, a second paper by Gibson, Safieddine, and Titman (2000) finds empirical support for the November effect in only one post-act year, 1990. In this article, we respecify betas, calculate holding period returns over each tax year, construct portfolios with large, differences in mutual fund ownership, and test for the presence of a bid-ask spread bias. The empirical results offer evidence of a November effect but only in the first week of November.     

Knowledge flow and inter-firm networks: The influence of network resources,spatial proximity and firm size

The objective of this paper is to analyse the characteristics and nature of the networks that firms utilize to access knowledge and facilitate innovation. The paper draws on the notion of network resources, distinguishing two types: social capital–consisting of the social relations and networks held by individuals; and network capital–consisting of the strategic and calculative relations and networks held by firms. The methodological approach consists of a quantitative analysis of data from a survey of firms operating in knowledge-intensive sectors of activity. The key findings include: social capital investment is more prevalent among firms frequently interacting with actors from within their own region; social capital investment is related to the size of firms; firm size plays a role in knowledge network patterns; and network dynamism is an important source of innovation. Overall, firms investing more in the development of their inter-firm and other external knowledge networks enjoy higher levels of innovation. It is suggested that an over-reliance on social capital forms of network resource investment may hinder the capability of firms to manage their knowledge networks. It is concluded that the link between a dynamic inter-firm network environment and innovation provides an alternative thesis to that advocating the advantage of network stability.     

META‐ANALYSIS OF ECONOMICS RESEARCH REPORTING GUIDELINES

Meta‐regression analysis (MRA) can provide objective and comprehensive summaries of economics research. Their use has grown rapidly over the last few decades. To improve transparency and to raise the quality of MRA, the meta‐analysis of economics research‐network (MAER‐Net) has created the below reporting guidelines. Future meta‐analyses in economics will be expected to follow these guidelines or give valid reasons why a meta‐analysis must deviate from them.     

Measuring firms’ imitation activity

Although imitation is more abundant and prevalent than innovation in firms’ product and process development activities, it has been understudied in research on innovation and R&D management. For example, a valid and reliable objective firm-level measure of the intensity of imitation activity is lacking in the extant literature. This measure is necessary to understand the antecedents and consequences of firms’ imitation activity, which has implications for R&D management. In this paper, we present novel methods that employ patent infringement litigations data to improve on the validity and reliability of measuring firms’ imitation activity. We validate our proposed measure by presenting a first model and test of R&D as a multiple-output production function with R&D expenditure as the primary input, and innovation and imitation as joint outputs. This is in contrast to current R&D models as a single-output production function of either innovation or imitation. This study uses a sample of 227 public firms from the computer, semiconductor, and pharmaceutical industries in the United States during 1991–2010.     

Meta-Modeling and Benefit Transfer: The Empirical Relevance of Source-Consistency in Welfare Measures

A common assumption within the meta-analysis and benefit transfer literature is that the validity of benefit predictions depends on the utility-theoretic consistency of welfare measures in underlying source studies. However, to date there exists little evidence as to the empirical relevance of this proposition in terms of the accuracy or efficiency of predicted benefits. Using Bayesian Model Search techniques we examine whether different portions of metadata, distinguished by underlying welfare construct, share common willingness-to-pay distributions. Applying our algorithm to two separate meta-datasets we find strong evidence of information sharing across welfare categories for a large subset of contexts. For cases where information sharing is indicated, substantial efficiency gains in predicted benefits can be achieved by pooling the underlying data.     

Islam and Human Rights: A Growing Rapprochement?

Can Islamic thought provide a basis for a fully developed theory of human rights? This article begins with an examination of the tensions between religion in general and the secular framing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). From a historical perspective, it then delves into the history of the relationship between Muslim political and religious leaders and the UDHR. With that background in mind, the author analyzes the positions of three influential Muslim scholars on human rights: Khaled Abou El Fadl's emphasis on ethics and law; Abdulaziz Sachedina's recent book Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (2009), in which he urges the traditionalists to develop a “public theology”; and finally, Abdullahi An‐Na'im's focus on shari'a and the secular state. He concludes that the majority of Muslims worldwide remain more conservative than these authors, and yet they overwhelmingly support the notion of human rights. This bodes well for the growing influence of such reformist thinking and, as a result, for the retooling of traditional Islamic jurisprudence in addressing human rights.     

Politics in the Informalizing Metropolis: Displacement,Resettlement and Unstable Negotiations in Uncivil Ahmedabad

This article documents the displacement of Baoris, an adivasi (indigenous) community living in the city of Ahmedabad, India, and their subsequent resettlement along the city's precarious urban–rural frontier. I argue that this process signals the informalization of rights and territories, representing a political regime of governing in the remaking of the contemporary Indian metropolis. Recent actions taken by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation to evict Baoris from the inner city are situated within the entangled processes and politics of urban restructuring, liberalization and Hindu nationalism. The absence and erosion of democratic protections, however, has not precluded the possibility of political negotiations with the local agents of state and capital, and this article assesses the tactics that community residents have deployed in their bid to maintain claims to territory, labour and services. I end by tempering enthusiasm for the informalizing city as a site for realizing alternative forms of justice and possible democratization.     

Achieving Focus in Service Organisations

This article builds upon the work on focus found in both the manufacturing and service literatures. The theme of the study is that lack of focus is a fact of life for many service organisations but there are many ways in which organisations can achieve the advantages of focus. The author uses information from thirty service organisations and proposes that there are five distinct and hierarchical levels at which service organisations may choose to focus. The five levels are service concept, business, site, delivery system and service encounter: Each level is described and some of the operational implications are identified.