The Roles of Independent Research and Technology Organizations in the United Kingdom's Technology Transfer Mechanism to SMEs

Independent Research and Technology Organizations (RTOs) provide an increasing proportion of the UK's technology services requirements. RTOs, often former state research establishments spun out into the private sector, provide technology consulting and networking services to specific sectors or for generic technologies; some are membership-based organizations while others work for contract clients. In this paper we explore the roles and services provided by RTOs, together with the measures being taken to assist small firms that, for many RTOs, form a new and challenging market. The diversity of services and approaches to SMEs are related, in part, to the different origins of RTOs. The research indicates three forms of technology services market failure that suggest a need for ongoing external support for the market's mechanism.     

THE REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY OF U.S. BUSINESS SERVICES GROWTH, 1977–1987: EVIDENCE AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Regional analysts and policy makers have long struggled with problems arising from the uneven development of industrial systems. Most efforts have focused on manufacturing even though the business services sector continues to gain importance as a source of employment. This paper provides rigorous analyses of the regional organization of business services employment growth in the United States and discusses some implications of regionalism for the development of industrial policy. The analyses use chi-square goodness-of-fit tests and spatial statistics to examine regional structure. State-level employment data in ten business service industries for two periods, 1977–1982 and 1982–1987, are used in the analyses. The results show that although employment growth varies across the United States, it does not exhibit consistent regional organization. Instead, growth is organized more around metropolitan complexes. The lack of regional organization suggests that industrial policy should focus on the urban concentration of growth, telecommunications infrastructure and urban-rural linkages.     

Participation and purpose: Boilermakers to bankers

This paper focuses upon two divergent examples of employee participation in the 1980s in Britain. In contrasting the experiences of participation in the Co-op bank and shipbuilding group the paper seeks to question the characterization of employee involvement as either a neutral but progressive “tool” of management or a strategy for total control through diminuation of trade union power at work. Rather it is suggested that the meaning of participation at work will vary with the context both in terms of the objective form of the labour process, e.g. manual, non-manual, etc., and it will also depend upon the meta-contexts of wider social structures. A parallel is drawn between the forms of rationality implied in the practice of employee participation and that of management accounting where in both cases the “neutrality” of the practice is invalidated once placed with in the real terrain of social relationships at work and within wider society.     

Banks and the world’s major financial centers, 1970–1980

Zusammenfassung Banken und die wichtigsten Finanzzentren der Welt 1970–1980. — Analysiert wird die Verflechtung von internationalen Finanzzentren, indem die geographische Streuung von Zweigstellen der gr?\ten Banken zwischen 1970 und 1980 n?her untersucht wird. Es zeigt sich, da\ sich die gegenseitigen Beziehungen der Zentren im Laufe der Zeit verst?rkten. Bei der statistischen Analyse der gegenseitigen Durchdringung der Zentren stellt sich heraus, da\ die Attraktivit?t eines Zentrums für die Banken entscheidend von der wirtschaftlichen Gr?\e der Zentren abh?ngt und davon, wieviele Banken dort ans?ssig sind, da\ aber die Distanz zwischen den Zentren von geringer Bedeutung zu sein scheint. Es gibt auch Anzeichen sowohl für ein konkurrierendes als auch für ein kooperatives Verhalten von Banken.

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Résumé Banques et les centres financiers mondiaux les plus importants, 1970–1980. — Les auteurs analysent les interrelations des centres financiers mondiaux en examinant la structure géographique des offices des plus grandes banques mondiales en 1970 et 1980. Ils trouvent que les interrelations entre les centres ont augmenté pendant cette période. De plus ils utilisent des techniques statistiques pour analyser les déterminants de l’interpénétration des centres. Ils trouvent que la force d’attraction d’un centre pour les banques est bien figurée par la dimension de l’économie qu’elle représente ou par le nombre des banques qui se trouvent là pendant que la distance entre des centres semble avoir peu d’effet. Il y a aussi l’évidence pour un comportement de rivalité et de coopération entre des banques.

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Resumen Bancos y centros financieros más importantes, 1970–1980. — Analizamos la interdependencia entre los centros financieros del mundo observando la distributión geográfica de las oficinas de los bancos más importantes en 1970 y 1980. Encontramos que la interdependencia entre los centros ha aumentado en el período estudiado. Utilizando métodos estadísticos investigamos además las determinantes de la interrelación entre los centros. Concluímos que la atractividad de un centro para los bancos depende del tama?o de la economía en la que se encuentra o del número de bancos establecidos en él. La distancia entre los centros parece no influír mucho. También hay evidencia de un comportamiento competitivo o cooperativo por parte de los bancos.

     

次贷危机:规模,减少杠杆行为和一些政策选择

本文将我们对抵押贷款的预计损失从以前的3000亿美元修正为3500-4200亿美元.在修正过程中,本文没有使用以前的根据次贷债券综合指数(ABX)定价的潜在违约方法,因为这些价格易受资金流动影响并且波动性极大,可能导致对损失的错误估计.相反,文中采用了违约模型方法,并且允许通过对一段时期内房屋销售额来实现抵押品回收.把美国商业银行产生的损失单列出来,然后考察达到资本标准需要减少多少杠杆行为.银行如果单纯通过盈利方式来抵消损失,将需要6-12个月,而且还取决于联邦利率的降低和银行的分红政策.由于银行如果想要扩张资产负债表,则需要更多的资本,所以本文探讨了主权财富基金等外部机构注资的可能性,并且还讨论了以信托公司决议模式(RTC)来使用公共资金这一新颖计划,以及发行零息债券等方式.文章最后讨论了道德风险问题,以及对欧洲、亚洲的影响和非银行公司放贷行为的影响.     

Capital accumulation and welfare: a note

Diamond's neoclassical growth model with National Debt is reconsidered with respect to dynamic welfare considerations. Conditions under which capital deepening implies increasing welfare are dependent upon the stability of the steady state, the interest elasticity of savings, and the relationship between the marginal propensity to save and the elasticity of substitution in production.     

Stabex: An evalution of the economic impact over the first five years

The shortfall in funding to meet current claims on the EEC's export earnings stabilization scheme (Stabex) has diverted attention from the operations of the scheme and its merits and shortcomings in providing developing countries with compensatory finance. This paper takes a sample of 10 ACP recipients of Stabex, which together drew over half ($200m) of the Stabex transfers under Lomé I and evaluates the stabilization effects of the transfers at macroeconomic and sectoral level. It concludes that Stabex has proved to be a useful balance-of-payments support mechanism, albeit inequality distributed due to quirks in its rules of operation, although it was designed as a scheme to support smallholder export crop producers. In the light of this evidence, the future form of Stabex under a re-negotiated Lomé Convention is considered.