Brain drain or brain bank? The impact of skilled emigration on poor-country innovation

The development prospects of a poor country or region depend in part on its capacity for innovation. In turn, the productivity of its innovators, whom are often concentrated around urban centers, depends on their access to technological knowledge. The emigration of highly skilled individuals weakens local knowledge networks (brain drain) but may also help remaining innovators access valuable knowledge accumulated abroad (brain bank). We develop a model in which the size of the optimal innovator Diaspora depends on the competing strengths of co-location and Diaspora effects for accessing knowledge. Then, using patent citation data associated with inventions from India, we estimate the key co-location and Diaspora parameters. The net effect of innovator emigration is to harm domestic knowledge access, on average. However, knowledge access conferred by the Diaspora is particularly valuable in the production of India’s most important inventions as measured by citations received. Thus, our findings imply that the optimal emigration level may depend, at least partly, on the relative value resulting from the most cited compared to average inventions.     

The Capitalization of Public Services and Amenities into Land Prices — Empirical Evidence from German Communities

Applying the hedonic approach to land prices, this article investigates the capitalization of public services and pure amenities in a cross section of German communities. Possible spillover effects from neighboring municipalities are explicitly included in the analysis and prove to be of considerable importance. Estimates of the impacts of local attributes on land prices are obtained taking into account the spatial structure among unobserved variables. The results confirm that differences in land prices are largely attributable to local conditions and policies. This implies a significant degree of mobility as well as high estimation of local attributes on the part of German households.     

Conceptualizing businesses as social actors: A framework for understanding sustainability actions in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises

Small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) can play a crucial role in advancing environmental and social well‐being. Yet various—often conflicting—explanations have been offered to clarify why SMEs pursue sustainability. Some arguments foreground possibilities of profit maximization, whereas others emphasize individual values and convictions. Research supporting such contradicting explanations is often biased towards large enterprises or small, innovative frontrunners. In this article, we examine the underlying drivers of social and environmental interventions of SMEs by exploring empirical data from a survey of over 1,600 Canadian SMEs and complementary in‐depth interviews. We argue that sustainability actions of SMEs can be understood by viewing these firms as social actors—organizations that are shaped by individual values, internal and external interpersonal relationships, and are embedded in a social environment. This conceptualization directs attention to the full range of factors that shape sustainability engagement of SMEs and highlights frequently overlooked forms of sustainability‐oriented actions.     

Perceptions of facilitators of a keypad‐based group support system

Organizations are using Group Support Systems (GSSs) to improve the quality of group meetings. Keypad‐based GSSs are a widely used form of this technology, yet there has been little research on their use and effects. This paper reports the findings of a survey of facilitators of a particular keypad GSS. Facilitators indicate that keypad technology improves the quality of meetings for a variety of tasks in a range of group settings and cultures. The findings are in general agreement with field studies of workstation‐based systems.     

Why did socialist economies fail? The role of factor inputs reconsidered

This article presents new estimates for investment and new growth accounts for three socialist economies between 1950 and 1989. Government statistics reported distorted measures for both the rate and the trajectory of productivity growth in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. Researchers have benefited from revised output data, but have continued to use official statistics on capital input, or estimated capital stock from official investment data. Investment levels and rates of capital accumulation were much lower than officially claimed and over‐reporting worsened over time. A setback in factor accumulation—both investment in equipment and labour input—contributed very significantly to the socialist growth failure of the 1980s.     

$$\mathcal{D}$$-optimal Minimum Support Mixture Designs in Blocks

An easy method to construct efficient blocked mixture experiments in the presence of fixed and/or random blocks is presented. The method can be used when qualitative variables are involved in a mixture experiment as well. The resulting designs are -optimal in the class of minimum support designs. It is illustrated that the minimum support designs are more efficient than orthogonally blocked mixture experiments presented in the literature and only slightly less efficient than -optimal designs.     

Personal responsibility in health benefits: looking backward, looking forward

Consumerism and care management continue to make inroads as cost-containment strategies for employers, as well as for employees who have endured the steady rise in benefit cost-shifting. The latest statistics and trends point the way to a new era of personal responsibility in health benefits. The author describes how this trend has grown, and where it is leading.     

Under what conditions may social contracts arise? Evidence from the Hanseatic League

Social contractarians commonly take social contracts to be solely hypothetical and refrain from elaborating on the factors that influence the feasibility of the formation of social contracts. In contrast, this paper aims at providing a discussion of the conditions affecting the feasibility of social contracts. I argue that the more aligned the preferences of group members for public goods are, the more the individuals share similar social norms, and the smaller the group is the more feasible a genuine social contract becomes. I provide evidence in support of my contention from the medieval Hanseatic League. At the Hanseatic Kontor in Novgorod, one of the four major trading posts of the Hanseatic League in cities outside of Germany, German merchants agreed to live under the rule of a constitution that gave rise to a political authority for the Kontor society.