Technology policy between ‘diversity’ and ‘one best practice’ — A comparison of Korean and German promotion schemes for new production technologies

Policy makers in all industrialized countries are increasingly orienting their science and technology policy towards foreign patterns. There seems to be ‘one best practice’ which is used by all nations to make their economies fit for global competition.This paper doubts this paradigm. By comparing the South Korean and German promotion schemes for new production technologies, it is shown that an appropriate technology policy has to take the individual national system of innovation into consideration. Merely initating the examples of countries with different frame conditions is inappropriate.Diversity in science and technology policy has been the precondition for the success of contributions of these policies to economic and technological development in both South Korea and Germany.     

What really matters: Discounting, technological change and sustainable climate

This paper discusses the interplay between the choice of the discount rate, greenhouse gas mitigation and endogenous technological change. Neglecting the issue of uncertainty it is shown that the Green Golden Rule stock of atmospheric carbon is uniquely determined, but is not affected by technological change. More generally it is shown analytically within the framework of a reduced model of integrated assessment that the optimal stationary stocks of atmospheric carbon depend on the choice of the discount rate, but are independent of the stock of technological knowledge. These results are then reinforced numerically in a fully specified integrated assessment analysis.     

Organizational innovation: The challenge of measuring non-technical innovation in large-scale surveys

Although the implementation of innovative organizational concepts is considered to be highly important for a company's competitiveness, so far there has been little research on possible approaches to measure and monitor organizational innovations in large-scale surveys. Based on an item-oriented typology of organizational innovations which serves as the precondition for a common understanding, we describe and compare how organizational innovations have been measured through existing surveys in Europe. Using a large-scale survey comprising data of 1450 German manufacturing companies, we show how these different approaches lead to significantly different results regarding the organizational innovativeness of companies within one and the same sample. We derive four implications for the future measurement and monitoring of organizational innovations. Our findings contribute to the further development of an adequate methodology for an organizational innovation monitoring system.     

Verhalten optimistisch

Information about music rank highest among the most popular media issues. With their information, music journalists contribute considerably to the media’s cultural basic services. However, there is a lack of reliable data on these specialists, their everyday work, their professional satisfaction, their self-conception as well as their role in society. The present study aims at closing this gap in communicator research. Additionally, we ask how music journalists anticipate their future in a changing media world which provides manifold other ways to gain information on music. The results of the unrepresentative online survey (n?=?209) show that today’s music journalists are relaxed about their professional situation and do not question the necessity of their job. Above all, they consider themselves to be information brokers with a subjective and critical demand for autonomy who unwaveringly believe that the review is the most important form of knowledge transfer. Also, a surprising consent is revealed between journalists reporting on entertaining music and journalists reporting on classical music as well as between newspaper and online journalists.     

Foreign Aid and the Quest for Poverty Reduction: Is Aid to Agriculture Effective?

Development statistics estimate that three quarters of the poor live in rural areas and most of them depend on agriculture and related activities for their livelihood. Consequently, research focusing on economic growth and poverty reduction has found that sustainable rapid transition out of poverty requires a special emphasis on the agricultural sector. This study contributes to the debate on aid effectiveness by disaggregating total aid into subcategories and specifically investigating the relationship between aid given to the agricultural sector and poverty reduction. If agricultural development is more effective in reducing poverty than some other types of development, then foreign aid directed towards agriculture may be more efficient in increasing the well‐being of the poor than aid directed to some other sectors or uses. Our analysis uses panel data for developing aid recipient countries to empirically test this relationship. We find a significant relationship between agricultural aid and poverty reduction in our estimates.     

Can Creativity Be a Collective Virtue? Insights for the Ethics of Innovation

Journal of Business Ethics - Virtue accounts of innovation ethics have recognized the virtue of creativity as an admirable trait in innovators. However, such accounts have not paid sufficient...     

Some technical implications of pegging exchange rates against a basket of currencies

Summary The paper examines the technical characteristics of an exchange rate arrangement in which a basket of currencies-as for example the SDR or the ECU-serves as a pivot of central rates. The analysis focuses first on the inter-relationship between the movement of basket currencies' market rates and the resulting changes in the value of the basket in terms of currencies. Attention is then given to special problems associated with the method of intervention, the adjustment of central rates and the temporary suspension of a currency's intervention obligation. In addition, the paper discusses briefly those elements of a basket-type exchange rate arrangement which are incorporated in the European Monetary System. The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to his colleagues at the Bank for International Settlements for their helpful comments and assistance. The responsibility for any errors lies, of course, wholly with the author.     

Phelps' technical progress model generalized

We generalize Phelps' technical progress function and make it more realistic, by weakening assumptions and by adding education and income as influences on technical progress. The result retains the simplicity of Phelps' result, and reinforces the heterodox conclusion that higher population growth implies faster economic growth and higher consumption.     

I. Allgemeine wirstchaftslehre

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Zeit bedeutet Leben

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