TM-Link: An Internationally Linked Trademark Database

This article describes a new database—TM-Link—that contains 12 million trademark applications and registrations across six jurisdictions. A feature of the database is the identification of trademark equivalents (or families) within and across national trademark offices. Equivalent trademarks are two, or more, insignias for the same product applied for by the same company. Unlike patents, the incentive to file for global priority is comparatively weak since legal priority for trademarks is territorial. To identify the number of true trademark equivalents we therefore create synthetic links using a neural network-based machine learning algorithm.     

Economies with Public Goods: An Elementary Geometric Exposition

This paper explains how to represent economies with one private good, one public good, and two agents when the public good is produced from the private good by operating a linear technology, by means of the so-called "Kolm triangle." It also shows the usefulness of this representation in analyzing this class of economies.     

Lorenz rankings of rules for the adjudication of conflicting claims

For the adjudication of conflicting claims, we develop three general approaches to obtain Lorenz rankings of rules. Our first approach concerns a parameterized family that contains several important rules (Thomson in Soc Choice Welf 31:667?C692, 2008). We give a condition that the parameters defining two members of the family should satisfy for one of them to Lorenz dominate the other. Our second approach exploits the concept of ??consistency?? (Young in Math Oper Res 12:398?C414, 1987). We derive a criterion to deduce Lorenz domination for arbitrarily many claimants from Lorenz domination in the two-claimant case. Our third approach is based on the notion of an ??operator?? on the space of rules (Thomson and Yeh in J Econ Theory 143:177?C198, 2008). We develop conditions under which operators preserve the Lorenz order, or reverse it. As corollaries of our general theorems, we obtain rankings of most of the rules that have been discussed in the literature.     

Decomposing Input–Output Tables to Establish the Effects of Temporal Changes in Demographic and Economic Characteristics

This paper reports on an analysis of economic and demographic changes in the UK during the period 1981–91, using an extended input–output (IO) formulation designed to measure impacts of such changes in economic and demographic systems. We derive a simple temporal change decomposition method and apply it to the extended IO formulation. This is then linked to a labour market account decomposition, and the conjoint decomposition applied to two labour market accounts and two IO tables for the UK. We are able to identify the impacts on the demographic and economic systems caused by changes in the economy, economic activity of the population, natural population change, migration and coefficient shifts of different types.     

Extending the investment development path model to include the human environment factor

This article aims to address Dunning's call to include the “human environment” (HE) as a new trend and trajectory for research in international business (IB). Dunning argues that the most important driver for economic advancement is knowledge, which arises from the HE. We extend Dunning's IB theory of the five stages of a country's investment development path (IDP) to include the HE factor. Further, we use China as an example in which to examine the role of human resource management (HRM). We identify and analyze an important link between foreign direct investment, multinational enterprises, and both domestic and global HRM. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Independent financial adviser (IFA)-based brand equity pyramid

This paper aims to evaluate the applicability of the existing brand equity pyramid models in the context of independent financial advisers (IFAs) in the UK financial services sector. Nine in-depth interviews with IFAs and nine in-depth corroboration interviews with senior marketing managers and employees in one of the UK’s largest financial services providers were undertaken for the purpose of the study. The findings indicate that when applied in the context of IFAs, the existing brand equity pyramid models require modification. These findings lead to the development of an IFA-based brand equity pyramid. The new model can provide insight for financial services marketing academics and practitioners on how IFAs perceive and evaluate financial services brands to be recommended to their customers. Our findings will help financial services providers to develop strong brands in the mind of IFAs.

     

Information and incentives in labor-managed economies

The incentive problems that result in labor-managed economies from attempting to eliminate the inefficient allocation of labor due to this institutional arrangement are discussed. Games are searched for such that, at an equilibrium, firms have revealed truthful information and labor is allocated efficiently. It is shown that such games do not exist if output is not observable, and even if aggregate deficits or surpluses are permitted. By contrast, if output is observable, balanced games exist in which it is dominant strategy for each firm to be truthful.     

Romania’s accession to the EU: Short-term welfare effects on food consumers

This paper focuses on estimation of the welfare effects on different Romanian households of assumed food price changes as a result of EU accession. Using the Slutsky compensating variation approach, results suggest that these changes affect welfare differently for various categories of households. Although on average the welfare loss is 2.6%, a higher impact is estimated for low-income groups. However, the relatively high share of home-produced consumption of food diminishes these impacts, in particular for rural households, and somewhat smaller monetary amounts would be required if compensation is paid.