Does Multinationality Affect the Propensity to Innovate? An Analysis of the Third UK Community Innovation Survey

The paper is developed at the interface between internationalization and innovation studies. It utilizes data on innovation from the UK Community Innovation Surveys 3 and 2 (CIS3 and CIS2) to assess whether multinationality affects the innovation propensity of surveyed enterprises. The indicators of innovation propensity—our dependent variables—are taken from the following CIS sets of variables: innovation outputs; innovation inputs; innovation outcomes (patent applications); innovation continuity/sustainability. The latter element is considered to be the ability of the enterprise to sustain innovation over a long period of time and the relevant variable is derived from both CIS3 and 2 data. This allows the paper to introduce dynamic elements into the analysis. Four hypotheses are developed and tested. Our main hypothesis states that multinationality per se (i.e. being part of a multinational company network) affects the propensity to innovate. We also test for three sub‐hypotheses related to characteristics of multinationality: belonging to a group vs being independent; degree of multinationality; being part of a foreign vs domestic multinational. The results show that all those CIS enterprises that belong to a multinational corporation—whether UK or foreign—are more likely to exhibit innovation propensity; they are also more likely to engage in innovation activities on a continuous basis.     

Are property rights enough?Re‐evaluating a big‐bang claim1

We investigate the claim made by proponents of the big‐bang strategy that the establishment of property rights in an economy in transition creates its own demand for the enforcement of laws to protect those rights. Our model contains a government engaging in activities to accomplish objectives that depend on public support for the enforcement of the rule of law and agents who interpret the level of activities of the government as indications of the government's intent to enforce the rule of law. Agents, using the level of government activities as an input to their decisions, choose whether to support the government's objectives. We establish conditions under which the level of activities chosen by the government maximizes its benefits, and simultaneously induces the constituency to support enforcement of the rule of law. These conditions provide a basis for the argument for the implementation of the big‐bang policy. When these conditions do not hold, however, we show that the level of activities that maximizes the government's benefits may have only a minor impact on support for the enforcement of the rule of law. Two characteristics play an important role in these conditions: the initial level of crime and the types of activities the government chooses to undertake. We present examples showing that the initial level of crime has the more dramatic effect on subsequent support for the rule of law.     

Is a Policy of Free Movement of Workers Sustainable?

In this paper, we study the costs and benefits of the adoption of a policy of free movement of workers. For countries to agree on uncontrolled movements of workers, short‐run costs must be outweighed by the long‐term benefits of better labor‐market flexibility and income smoothing. We show that such a policy is less likely to be adopted when workers are more impatient and less risk‐averse, when production technologies display stronger decreasing returns, and when countries trade a significant share of their products.     

面向大规模定制产品成本估算方法的比较研究

本文首先分析了大规模定制企业开发成本估算方法对获得客户定单的重要性,对适用于大规模定制环境下的成本估算方法进行分类,归纳成几种典型的成本估算方法,并对各个方法的特点进行对比分析,提出了大规模定制环境下成本估算发展趋势,最后针对客户定单的获取和成本估算方法开发提出了自己的看法。     

Cox-Ingersoll-Ross模型的统计推断

该文在离散样本观察下,研究了Cox-Ingersoll-Ross模型的统计推问题,给出了CIR过程的平稳均值m与平稳方差ν的矩估计,并用-m和-ν给出了CIR过程中尺度参数α与β波动率之间的关系,基于CIR过程的平方变差,得到参数β的平方变差估计和参数α的估计.通过数值模拟的方法对平方变差估计与条件矩估计([9])方法作了比较,并选择1997-2006年的R007数据对这两种方法进行了实证分析.