Impact of government R&D spending and the bifurcating labor market on high technology and higher education

In the past decade the social effects of technological change have contributed to the increasing bifurcations in the economy and the occupational structure. These changes, taken together with the consequences of governmental research and development spending patterns and the structural changes taking place at higher educational institutions, have implications for higher education policy making in the 1990s and beyond that are too important to minimize or ignore any longer. This paper demonstrates how the academic community can enhance its income, status, and effectiveness in society by responding to the effects of technological change, and offers some strategies for coping with changing skill requirements and industry-university partnerships.     

The minimum optimal steel plant and the survivor technique of cost estimation

The survivor technique is used to examine economies of scale in the U.S. steel industry, and the results are compared to an earlier engineering approach study by Tarr. Specifically, the paper focuses on the conventional fully-integrated steel mill with capacities of over 1 million tons (MT) per year. The results are consistent with Tarr's estimate of a conventional integrated steel mill Minimum Optimal Scale of 6 MT a year. The analysis and conclusions set forth are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of other members of the Bureau of Economics, other Commission staff, or the Commission itself. The author would like to thank the following people: Morris Morkre, Joseph Mulholland, Pauline Ippolito, John Rolfe, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions on the various drafts and Ty D. Weisendanger and Barry R. Sherman for help in the data collection.     

Technology Strategy and Innovation: The Use of Derivative Strategies in the Aerospace Industry

Strategy has become an increasingly important theme within the management of innovation. This is reflected in the increasing amount of attention given to topics such as technology strategy within the innovation literature. However research into technology strategy has tended to focus on technology acquisition rather than technology exploitation. This paper focuses on one often neglected way in which companies can exploit the technological resources at their disposal, namely through the use of a derivative strategy where new technology is combined with old products or parts of old products in order to develop new products. The paper explores this type of strategy by means of a case study from the commercial jet engine sector of the aerospace industry. The case study provides an opportunity not only to explore the nature of derivative strategies in detail it also highlights the benefits, both direct and indirect, to be gained from this type of strategy as a means of exploiting an organisation's technological resources. The paper shows how a derivative strategy can contribute to the broader strategic goals of companies in technology based industries through strategies designed to ensure the most effective utilisation of the technology base.     

Innovation and Performance: Benchmarking Australian Firms

This article empirically analyses the link between innovation and performance using a sample of large Australian firms, with a specific aim of developing benchmarking tools. Innovation is measured by firms' investment in R&D and applications for patents, trademarks and designs. An innovation index is constructed to provide one method of benchmarking. The index incorporates a firm's innovative activities into a single figure after accounting for firm size. The index provides a ranking of the most innovative firms in Australia. A second method of benchmarking uses a stochastic production frontier. This type of analysis identifies the firms which are located closest to a ‘best practice innovation frontier’.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EARNINGS YIELD AND MARKET VALUE: EVIDENCE FROM THE AMERICAN STOCK EXCHANGE

This paper provides new evidence on the empirical anomalies known as the earnings/price (E/P) effect and the size effect in the pricing of common stock. Previous authors have arrived at contradictory conclusions regarding the existence and relative importance of the anomalies, and the intent of this paper is to help clarify the issues. An empirical method used in a previous study of these issues is replicated and applied to a new set of firms—those traded on the American Stock Exchange (AMEX). This approach assures comparability with previous results and provides a sample with different market value and E/P distributions. The results from the AMEX suggest that the size effect and the E/P effect both exist and that the size effect is predominant. These results persist even after accounting for the January effect.     

Changes in market concentration of manufacturing industries

The impact on concentration of advertising and other variables is examined in a multiple regression model. The findings indicate that the positive influence of advertising observed for earlier periods continued during 1972–1977. By testing hypotheses suggested by other researchers, this paper resolves most, if not all, of the seemingly conflicting findings of researchers examining changes in concentration since 1963. The findings also strongly suggest that lagged models provide little, if any, added insight into the causes of changes in concentration.