Learning by doing,spillovers and shakeouts

This paper studies industry evolution driven by non strategic learning by doing and spillovers. We characterize a dynamic process of cost and output changes and its effect on welfare and industry profits. The paper gives conditions for shakeouts to occur and analyzes the key factors affecting these conditions. Since shakeouts could lead to a long-run social loss due to higher market concentration, there is a role for a government to play in limiting unnecessary shakeouts. The most effective way to do so is to enhance spillovers.JEL Classification: L11, L13, O31Correspondence to: Michael TroegeWe would like to thank Hans Mewis, Christophe Moussu and an anonymous referee for valuable comments and suggestions. We also benefited from comments of seminar participants at WZB, Humboldt University, Northwestern University and the EEA/ESEM 1999 meetings. Part of the research was carried out while Michael Tröge was visiting Northwestern University. Financial support by the German Research Council (DFG) is gratefully acknowledged.     

Managing academic innovation in Taiwan: Towards a ‘scientific-economic’ framework

Since the passage of the Science and Technology Basic Law in 1999, Taiwanese universities have taken a more “scientific-economic” approach to protect and commercialize their research. This research mainly examines innovation activities such as patenting, licensing, and incubated startups in the context of Taiwanese higher education institutions (HEIs). The “scientific-economic” framework used to analyze the strategic aspects influencing these academic innovations includes (1) intellectual property managerial capabilities, (2) the strength of external industrial partnerships, (3) the university entrepreneurial orientation, and (4) government research policy. Four hypotheses were developed. Data were collected via a questionnaire with all 122 HEIs in Taiwan surveyed.The research reveals that the aspects of intellectual property managerial capability, HEI-industry partnerships, and academic entrepreneurial orientation are useful to distinguish the university's innovation performance on patent grants, licensing incomes, and firm incubation. Also, government support on research plays a moderating role in academic innovation. Managerial and policy implications for managing innovation effectively in universities were drawn.     

Pseudo empirical likelihood method in the presence of missing data

In this paper, we propose an estimator for the population mean when some observations on the study and auxiliary variables are missing from the sample. The proposed estimator is valid for any unequal probability sampling design, and is based upon the pseudo empirical likelihood method. The proposed estimator is compared with other estimators in a simulation study.     

基于人工表面等离激元的隐身材料与结构研究进展

面对未来战争陆、海、空、天、网、电“多域融合”的作战模式,新一代武器装备将强调拥有更高的隐身能力以增强其突防能力和生存能力,对隐身材料与结构提出了迫切的应用需求,亟需探索隐身新机理、开发高性能隐身材料与结构。人工表面等离激元(spoof surface plasmon polaritons,SSPP)是电子振荡与电磁振荡强烈耦合产生的一种混合模式,具有波长短、色散强等特点,在隐身、电子对抗等领域具有极为重要的军事应用价值。近年来,SSPP理论与耦合结构设计方法等快速发展,推动了SSPP在隐身技术中的应用研究。着眼于SSPP最新研究进展,结合SSPP色散特性,着重介绍了SSPP在波形畸变、吸波结构、隐身天线罩和隐身天线中的应用,最后对SSPP在隐身技术中的应用及发展趋势进行了展望。     

The co-evolution of business incubation and national innovation systems in Taiwan

Incubation has already proven to be of great value in promoting small and medium enterprise (SME) entrepreneurship activities and technological development in developed and developing countries. Incubation not only provides a diversified and integrated service for entrepreneurial ventures but also contributes upward to regional and national innovation and economic growth. Building upon the logic of co-evolution theory, this paper argues that incubation acts at the meso-level as a critical interface between macro-innovation systems and micro-business ventures. These multi-directional coupling elements in innovation ecology co-evolve to achieve collective interests and excellence, which in turn may stimulate technological development and social change. Important processes/mechanisms, including a policy kit and action, strategic networking, supportive associations, knowledge and intellectual capital management, among others, are discussed. Drawing on the national innovation system (NIS) and business incubation (BI) experience in Taiwan, we discuss the future prospects of incubation and innovation policies, including industrializing and globalizing incubation activities and virtual business incubation.     

Hölder properties of local times for fractional Brownian motions

We study the local times of fractional Brownian motions for all temporal dimensions, N, spatial dimensions d and Hurst parameters H for which local times exist. We establish a Hölder continuity result that is a refinement of Xiao (Probab Th Rel Fields 109:129–157, 1997). Our approach is an adaptation of the more general attack of Xiao (Probab Th Rel Fields 109:129–157, 1997) using ideas of Baraka and Mountford (1997, to appear), the principal result of this latter paper is contained in this article.     

What are guests scared of? Crime-related hotel experiences and fear of crime

ABSTRACT

This study aims to explore the typology of hotel crime and how it is related to guests’ fear of crime based on a cause-and-consequence model. A total of 873 TripAdvisor reviews were content-analyzed to develop a typology of hotel crime. High-class hotels experienced more theft, fraud, and burglary while low-class hotels encountered more prostitution and drug-related activities. Hotel guests generated a higher fear of crime when crime occurred inside guest rooms, especially in cases of burglary, theft, or fraud. Reviews mentioning crimes were perceived to be more helpful. Managerial implications and best practices of crime prevention are provided for hotel practitioners.     

Trends in international business thought and literature: Parallels between the east and the west: The teachings of ancient Chinese philosophers and the echoes from western management theorists

This article aims to bridge the gap between an oriental culture and a western approach to management concepts and practice with a view to exploring a culturally fit style of management for China. Comparisons are drawn between the teachings of early Chinese philosophers and scholars with those of their western counterparts. It is envisaged that hidden links may be eventually found so that management as a universal concept with cultural variations may be the trend in the nineties and beyond.     

Flexible Estimation of Copulas: An Application to the US Housing Crisis

Zimmer (‘The role of copulas in the housing crisis’, Review of Economics and Statistics 2012; 94 : 607–620) provides an interesting case study of the pitfalls of using parametric copulas to understand the US housing crisis in the latter part of 2000s. The original study by Zimmer (2012) employs a finite‐mixture copula to illustrate that the symmetry of the Gaussian copula may not be tenable, especially for US housing price data during the time period from 1975:Q2 to 2009:Q1. We undertake a replication of his study in a wide sense. First, we replicate the study by incorporating revised data and then extending the dataset to include the most recent data. Second, we implement a nonparametric copula estimator recently proposed by Racine (‘Mixed data kernel copulas’, Empirical Economics forthcoming) to the parametrically filtered data used in Zimmer (2012). Our replication finds that the application of the nonparametric copula to the same and extended filtered data provides an alternative flexible specification for copulas. However, the overall cautionary message of the flexible‐form copula espoused in Zimmer (2012) remains. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Division of Labor in Teams

This paper examines the incentive effects of division of labor on worker effort, in the absence of the scale effects studied by Adam Smith. The game-theoretic model gives two results. (1) Suppose workers are identical and risk-neutral, and there is stochastic observation of group output by the firm offering compensations subject to some worker-participation constraint. Then the firm can arrive at the same first-best outcome with or without division of labor. However, if workers are risk-averse, division of labor can give the firm strictly greater profit. (2) A deepening division of labor magnifies this positive incentive effect; but if workers are heterogeneous, or if there are certain informational imperfections in the production process, this incentive advantage of division of labor could be impaired or even reversed. The first result may help explain the emergence of division of labor in the early stages of industrialization without relying on the Smithian advantages, which are also present in some labor deployment schemes without division of labor. The second result throws light on some recent anecdotal evidence of a shallowing division of labor in some areas of modern manufacturing. These factors affecting the efficiency of division of labor are then further discussed in the light of recent empirical findings on division of labor and team work, such as those in Katzenbach and Smith (1993).