The impact of public R&D investments on patenting activity: technology transfer at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

ABSTRACT

This paper presents estimates of the impact of public R&D on patenting activity at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Using a time series of public sector agency data, we estimate the per-capita R&D elasticity of new patent applications using a knowledge production function framework model that is an expanded version of what other scholars have used with private sector data. New patent applications are an important step in the technology transfer activities of a federal agency. We estimate this elasticity to be about 2.0. This elasticity value represents an initial estimate of the impact of EPA’s R&D investments on its technology transfer activity.     

The private net present value and private internal rate of return to becoming a nurse in Great Britain

The private net present value and private internal rate of return to becoming a nurse in Great Britain is estimated. The calculations are made using the standard equations inputted with data from the New Earnings Survey and the British Household Panel Survey. Basic age-earnings profiles are adjusted for mortality, unemployment, other causes of economic inactivity, and discontinuation from training. The conclusions are that: (1) there is a high private internal rate of return to becoming a nurse in Great Britain relative to other occupations; (2) using the internal rate of return criterion is inappropriate when there exists a crossover marginal time preference rate, which is shown to be the case here; and, (3) using the net present value criterion there are net financial benefits to becoming a nurse in Great Britain for individuals with a marginal time preference rate of 8-13% or more.     

A Study of the Informal Interactions between Audit Committees and Internal Auditors in Australia

This paper finds evidence for the growing importance of informal interactions between the internal audit function and the audit committee (AC) in Australia – a relatively unexplored topic in the literature – using a survey of Chief Audit Executives (CAEs). It also describes the nature of these informal interactions. The most innovative elements of this paper are the findings that certain personal characteristics of CAEs, the specific knowledge and expertise of the AC chair, as well as some of the AC chair's personal characteristics are associated with the existence (and increase) of informal interactions.     

Signalling,Agency Theory and Accounting Policy Choice

Signalling and agency theories appear in the accounting literature to be competing theories. This article demonstrates that they are actually consistent theories, in that one set of sufficient conditions of signalling theory is at least consistent with one set of sufficient conditions of agency theory. Indeed, a considerable overlap exists between the two theories: rational behaviour is common to both; information asymmetry in signalling theory is implied by positive monitoring costs in agency theory; ‘quality' in signalling theory can be defined in terms of agency theory variables; and signalling costs are implicit in some bonding devices of agency theory. Examples are given where both theories’ predictions about lobbying, accounting choices, and voluntary auditor selection are added together.     

New development: The role of benchmarking in supporting improvement in local government— Scottish and Welsh practitioners' perspectives

A primary leadership challenge facing central budget agencies is sustaining the respect of finance ministers. Lessons are drawn in this article from the corrosive effect that missed opportunities to take the lead on economic strategy and public service modernization had on the long-term respect commanded by the Irish Department of Finance, and from the strategic re-orientation the New Zealand Treasury undertook to correct its tendency to ‘over-reach’ itself in these areas following a process of capacity-building and cultural transformation in the 1980s.     

THE RENT-PRICE RATIO FOR THE AGGREGATE STOCK OF OWNER-OCCUPIED HOUSING

We construct a quarterly time series of the rent-price ratio for the aggregate stock of owner-occupied housing in the United States, starting in 1960, by merging micro data from the last five Decennial Censuses of Housing surveys with price indexes for house prices and rents. We show that the rent-price ratio ranged between 5 and 5.5 percent between 1960 and 1995, but rapidly declined after 1995. By year-end 2006, the rent-price ratio reached a historic low of 3.5 percent. For the rent-price ratio to return to its historical average over, say, the next five years, house prices likely would have to fall considerably.     

Evolutionary targeting

Evolutionary Targeting is a dynamic, systems-evolutionary policy perspective which focuses on triggering, re-enforcing and sustaining market-led evolutionary processes of emergence of Multiagent Structures (industries, clusters, markets, etc). A major aspect is leveraging existing successes in firms to promote emergence of such structures. This requires discrete policy interventions directed at varying areas of system/market failure, which make their appearance at difference phases of the overall process. The paper briefly illustrates the approach through an analysis of VC policies in Israel and selected European countries, and by referring to the traditional view of Infant Industry development and existing views on high tech cluster development. The resulting framework of analysis, which differs radically from the ‘Picking Winners’ policies of the past and from the successful targeting of infant industries in Korea and post war Japan, seems to fit the increasingly turbulent and high return/high risk global environment prevailing today.