Innovation strategy of local pharmaceutical firms in Korea: a multivariate analysis

This article examines 37 local pharamaceutical firms in Korea to identify different patterns of innovation behaviour associated with four types of firms, which are categorized by two variables: the scale of operation and technological capability. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses support the hypotheses that these four types of firms exhibit different innovation strategies and in turn the level of performance they achieved. Specifically, large firms with high technological capability diversify their efforts, investing in their own R & D and tapping foreign capabilities, and as a result exhibit the highest degree of innovativeness, while large firms with low technological capability resort primarily to the transfer of foreign technology for short-term profitability. In contrast, small firms with high technological capability rely mainly on their own R & D efforts with the assistance from local R & D institutes and enjoy the highest growth rate, whereas small firms with low technological capability imitate technologically low-grade products by hiring experienced technical personnel from other firms. There are also fragmented indications that many local firms have long evolved from small firms with low capability to large firms with high capability. Finally, managerial and theoretical implications for the innovation strategies in LDCs/NICsE are discussed.     

Teaching the Concept of Demand: Another Approach

Using a market with which the students themselves are familiar, the author describes a lecture exercise that helps explicate the concepts of demand, elasticity, and price setting.     

Political Economy of Course Evaluations

Professors Hansen and Kelley suggest practical guidelines for implementing course evaluation systems, drawing upon their experience at the University of Wisconsin. They develop a model to conceptualize course evaluations in the context of the professor's decision-making framework, focusing upon the allocation of time between teaching and research. Costs and benefits associated with collecting evaluations are considered, and ways of minimizing the former and maximizing the latter are suggested.     

REPETITION AND FINANCIAL INCENTIVES IN ECONOMICS EXPERIMENTS

Abstract While experimental methods have been an effective tool for economic research, there have been controversies on the methodological aspects. The reason why we need to care about it is clear: if the method in an experiment is not valid, the results from that experiment cannot be valid too. Among other things, the methodological issues of financial incentives and repetition, which are norms in experimental economics, have been at the centre of many debates. While there are previous reviews that investigate financial incentives and repetition separately, our view is that the effects of these two factors are interdependent rather than independent. Thus, our review here is more specific and more conditional, that is, we are interested in the answer to the question, ‘Do we need to use financial incentives conditional on the use of repetition?’ After we discuss the relationship between financial incentives and repetition, we argue, from a review of 44 experimental studies, that using financial incentives would be more necessary to improve the validity of experimental results if an experimenter needs to use repetition.     

Reverse knowledge diffusion: Competitive dynamics and the knowledge seeking behavior of Korean high-tech firms

This paper endeavors to enrich the existing knowledge acquisition literatures by specifically highlighting downsides of external ties of individuals. We introduce the concept of reverse knowledge diffusion (RKD) through external ties of individuals, and develop theoretical propositions to explain how the risks of RKD vary based on competitive dynamics and status of firms as innovation market leaders or market followers. We develop the construct of RKD to help explain why rivals may pursue contrasting knowledge seeking strategies with regards to leverage external ties of individuals, the timing of establishing these ties, and ex ante control mechanisms designed to regulate these relationships. We also discuss how our propositions advance the theory of knowledge seeking behaviors and generate future research opportunities.     

Insurance development,banking activities,and regional output: evidence from China

This paper applies panel cointegration tests and panel vector error correction models to investigate the interrelationship among the banking sector, insurance market, and regional output based on the samples from 25 Chinese provinces. We first find that there is a fairly strong long-run cointegrating relationship among real GDP, banking credit, and real insurance premiums. Second, both insurance markets (life and non-life) and the banking sector have a positive effect on real output. Third, we determine that banking activities and economic growth exhibit long-run and short-run bidirectional causalities. Fourth, there is fairly strong evidence in favor of the hypothesis for the long-run bidirectional causal relationships between insurance premiums and economic growth, taking into account the critical channel of the banking sector. Finally, we provide some beneficial suggestions for investors and policy-makers.