Contributing to markets for technology? A comparison of patent filing motives of individual inventors,small companies and universities

We compare patenting motives of individual inventors, small firms, and universities to those of large firms. We use data from a survey (641 responses) among applicants at the European Patent Office. Our results from regression and factor analyses confirm significant differences among applicant types. The generation of licensing opportunities is rated as being more important if the applicant is a university, individual inventor or small firm. Blocking and prevention of imitation is rated as being less important if the applicant is a university. We interpret that this finding results from the universities' willingness to license under adequate conditions and their tendency not to use their patents for preventing the diffusion of their technology and its usage by others. Individual inventors and small firms place a higher importance on using patents as signals to investors, suggesting that patents are perceived as useful to secure access to the capital necessary to start or grow a business. Among all applicant groups, individual inventors attribute the most importance to blocking as a patent filing motive. This gives cause for concern because individuals who do not manufacture products on their own but, rather, use their patents to block others from production act as patent trolls.     

Forecasting with Global Vector Autoregressive Models: a Bayesian Approach

This paper develops a Bayesian variant of global vector autoregressive (B‐GVAR) models to forecast an international set of macroeconomic and financial variables. We propose a set of hierarchical priors and compare the predictive performance of B‐GVAR models in terms of point and density forecasts for one‐quarter‐ahead and four‐quarter‐ahead forecast horizons. We find that forecasts can be improved by employing a global framework and hierarchical priors which induce country‐specific degrees of shrinkage on the coefficients of the GVAR model. Forecasts from various B‐GVAR specifications tend to outperform forecasts from a naive univariate model, a global model without shrinkage on the parameters and country‐specific vector autoregressions. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What matters in a price negotiation: Evidence from the U.S. auto retailing industry

While there is a great deal of theoretical and experimental literature on what factors affect bargaining outcomes, there is little empirical work based on data from real markets. In this paper we analyze negotiations for new cars, a $340 billion industry in the United States in 2010. Our results suggest that search costs, incomplete information, and bargaining disutility have an economically significant effect in real-world negotiations: we estimate that relative to an uninformed consumer, a consumer with basic information about the seller’s reservation price and his own outside options captures 15% of the average dealer margin from selling an automobile. We also find that a buyer’s search cost and bargaining disutility have significant effects on bargaining outcomes. Finally, our results show that while search is common, there remains a substantial group of consumers who do not engage in any of the search behaviors we measure. We hypothesize that these buyers are not aware of how easy and effective certain activities in improving negotiation outcomes can be.     

Der deutsche Kündigungsschutz — die Perspektive der Personalverantwortlichen

In Deutschland werden der Kündigungsschutz und das Kündigungsschutzgesetz in der ?ffentlichen wie der wissenschaftlichen Debatte1 kontrovers diskutiert. Obwohl sich viele für eine Liberalisierung aussprechen, lassen sich (negative) Besch?ftigungseffekte des deutschen Kündigungsschutzes auf gesamtwirtschaftlicher Ebene kaum nachweisen. Die vorliegende Analyse basiert auf umfassenden Befragungen von Personalverantwortlichen. Sie zeigt, dass sich durch einzelne arbeitsrechtliche ?nderungen wohl kaum erhebliche Besch?ftigungseffekte erzielen lassen.     

Third‐country Effects of Regional Trade Agreements

Does regionalism negatively impact non‐members? To answer this question, we examine the effect of regional trade agreements (RTAs) on imports from non‐members and the tariffs that they face. Using data from six RTAs in Latin America and Europe, we do not find evidence that implementation of the regional agreements is associated with trade diversion from third countries to regional members. Using detailed industry data on preference margins and most‐favoured nation (MFN) tariffs for three trade agreements in Latin America over 12 years, we find that greater preference margins do not significantly reduce imports from third countries. We also look at the effect of preferences on external tariffs. We find evidence that preferential tariff reduction tends to precede the reduction of external MFN tariffs in a given sector, offering evidence of tariff complementarity. Overall, the results suggest that regionalism does not significantly harm non‐members.     

An empirical analysis of multivariate copula models

Since the pioneering work of Embrechts and co-authors in 1999, copula models have enjoyed steadily increasing popularity in finance. Whereas copulas are well studied in the bivariate case, the higher-dimensional case still offers several open issues and it is far from clear how to construct copulas which sufficiently capture the characteristics of financial returns. For this reason, elliptical copulas (i.e. Gaussian and Student-t copula) still dominate both empirical and practical applications. On the other hand, several attractive construction schemes have appeared in the recent literature promising flexible but still manageable dependence models. The aim of this work is to empirically investigate whether these models are really capable of outperforming its benchmark, i.e. the Student-t copula and, in addition, to compare the fit of these different copula classes among themselves.     

On the Edge of Buying: A Targeting Approach for Indecisive Buyers Based on Willingness-to-Pay Ranges

Targeting the “right” consumers is a core part of marketing. Whereas existing techniques to identify these consumers use demographic or psychographic variables or behaviors such as response probabilities, a proposed new targeting approach builds on consumers’ incremental responses to identify them by their willingness-to-pay (WTP) ranges. These WTP ranges reveal a consumer as a definite buyer, a definite non-buyer, or an indecisive buyer. The proposed theoretical framework indicates that indecisive buyers offer the highest incremental responses to targeted marketing mix activities and thus should be the most preferred targeting group. A sequence of three laboratory experimental studies validates the proposed approach for targeted price discounts and non-price tactics. In addition, a large-scale field experiment involving a consumer engagement campaign that includes observed purchase behavior demonstrates the high external validity and applicability of this approach.     

A temporal analysis of how entrepreneurial goal intentions,positive fantasies,and action planning affect starting a new venture and when the effects wear off

The road from intentions to actions and new venture creation is long. So far, the literature has provided insights into action-regulatory factors that contribute to new venture creation. However, the literature has neglected to take into account the temporal dynamics underlying these relationships. We contribute to action-regulation theories in entrepreneurship by theorizing about and investigating how the effects of action-regulatory factors hold over time. We hypothesize that the action-regulatory factors of entrepreneurial goal intentions, positive fantasies, and action planning have combined effects on new venture creation. Furthermore, we hypothesize that these effects become weaker over time. To test our hypotheses, we studied 96 Ugandan entrepreneurs over 30 months. Our results supported our hypotheses. Action planning moderated the effects of entrepreneurial goal intentions and positive fantasies on new venture creation. Furthermore, the effects were significant in the beginning and wore off over time. Our study shows that including a time frame in theoretical models is important to derive valid conclusions from empirical results and to develop more precise theories.