Assessment of innovative software technology: developing an end-user-initiated interface design strategy

Knowledge intensive services and, in particular, R&D services contribute significantly to innovation in firms. The objective of this paper is to find out which characteristics of firms explain the acquisition of R&D services and to analyse whether there are differences depending on the typology of the supplier (universities, technology centres and consulting firms). Three main conclusions emerge from the econometric estimations carried out with information from a survey of innovative firms in the region of Valencia in Spain. First, the results show that firm size and age matter in the decision to buy R&D services. Second, our results are consistent with the relevance that the literature gives to human capital in absorbing external knowledge. Third, innovation policy has a significant influence on the decision to acquire R&D services, particularly from universities and technology centres.     

Vanity and the love of system in Theory of Moral Sentiments

Abstract

Some recent writing on Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments has emphasised the importance of vanity as one of the most important human motivations. This reading leads to a new version of Das Adam Smith Problem, but this is unwarranted. Such a reading tends to conceal the significance that Smith gave to the love of system, which motivates the actions of the philosopher, the man of state, and above all the entrepreneur. This paper shows, by contrast, that by using this conception we can relate Theory of Moral Sentiments to Wealth of Nations, and reject the idea that these works are based upon contradictory assumptions.     

Absenteeism and Undergraduate Exam Performance

The author investigates the relationship between students' absenteeism during a principles of microeconomics course and their subsequent performance on exams. Records were maintained regarding the specific class periods that each student missed during the semester. Records were also kept of the class meeting when the material corresponding to each multiple-choice test question was covered. A qualitative choice model reveals that students who missed class on a given date were significantly more likely to respond incorrectly to questions relating to material covered that day than students who were present.     

A Survey of Textbooks for Industrial Organization and Public Policy

All teachers of economics will be interested in the author's dissection of the industrial organization course into its components. Teachers of this specialty will find this survey particularly useful for its examination of how the major texts treat each of the components.     

The Endurance and Eclipse of the Controlled Vote: A Formal Model of Vote Brokerage Under the Secret Ballot

Throughout much of mankind's experience with elections, vote brokers – local elites who direct the voting decisions of a subset of the electorate – have been able to make or break political careers. In various polities, brokers have thrived in spite of the secret ballot, a surprising outcome given that vote secrecy would ostensibly allow citizens to pocket the inducements offered by such individuals and vote their consciences anyway. To address this puzzle, we develop a framework for understanding the persistence and demise of vote brokerage under the secret ballot. In our model, a broker contracts with voters using an outcome contingent contract: some fixed benefit is promised to all voters sharing one of several observable profiles should the broker's candidate win the election. Using this framework, we demonstrate that the existence of brokerage depends on the size of the electorate contained within the jurisdiction controlled by the broker, with large jurisdiction sizes tending to drive brokerage out of existence. Moreover, we detail the manner in which the strategies employed by brokers depend on their economic power, the size of social groups, and ideological polarization. Empirical evidence from Minas Gerais, Brazil is used to evaluate the performance of the model.     

Supply function equilibria: Step functions and continuous representations

In most electricity markets generators must submit step-function offers to a uniform price auction. These markets are often modelled as simpler pure-strategy Supply Function Equilibria (SFE) with continuous supply functions. Critics argue that the discreteness and discontinuity of the required steps drastically change Nash equilibria, invalidating predictions of the SFE model. We prove that there are sufficient conditions, offered quantities can be continuously varied, offered prices are selected from a finite set, and the density of the additive demand shock is not too steep, where the resulting stepped SFE converges to the continuous SFE as the number of steps increases, reconciling the apparently very disparate approaches to modelling electricity markets.     

CAUSAL INFERENCE ON EDUCATION POLICIES: A SURVEY OF EMPIRICAL STUDIES USING PISA,TIMSS AND PIRLS

The identification of the causal effects of educational policies is the top priority in recent education economics literature. As a result, a shift can be observed in the strategies of empirical studies. They have moved from the use of standard multivariate statistical methods, which identify correlations or associations between variables only, to more complex econometric strategies, which can help to identify causal relationships. However, exogenous variations in databases have to be identified in order to apply causal inference techniques. This is a far from straightforward task. For this reason, this paper provides an extensive and comprehensive overview of the literature using quasi‐experimental techniques applied to three well‐known international large‐scale comparative assessments, such as PISA, PIRLS or TIMSS, over the period 2004–2016. In particular, we review empirical studies employing instrumental variables, regression discontinuity designs, difference in differences and propensity score matching to the above databases. Additionally, we provide a detailed summary of estimation strategies, issues treated and profitability in terms of the quality of publications to encourage further potential evaluations. The paper concludes with some operational recommendations for prospective researchers in the field.