Battle royal in biotechnology: R&D vs. product vs. process innovations

Companies regard innovation as a central element of their business. However, as not all innovation types are the same, the central question is: should their announcements bring about the same effect on performance? This article analyses potential differences in firm value derived from the innovation-type announcements ‘R&;D’, ‘product’, and ‘process’, made by intensive news-generating firms such as biotech companies. The empirical application shows a significantly positive reaction to innovation announcements, with the prospect of future innovation (‘R&;D’ investment announcements) having greater impact on firm value than ‘product’ and ‘process’ innovations. Firm experience also acts as a moderator in this innovation–performance relationship, which is particularly relevant for entrepreneurs who need to develop and send credible signals indicating the value of the firm's intangible assets to the market.     

高校教师对延迟退休年龄意愿的实证研究——基于成都市高校教师的调查

通过PPS抽样从成都市随机抽取了九所高校,并就其专任教师对延迟退休年龄的意愿进行了问卷调查,得到影响成都市高校教师退休意愿影响因素的数据,建立了二维选择logistic回归模型。是否延迟退休年龄的主要影响因素为性别、收入、和身体健康状况。对赞成延迟退休教师的意愿退休年龄进行了分布检验,发现其服从正态分布,并预测出赞成延迟退休的男教师意愿退休年龄为64-65岁,女教师的意愿退休年龄为61-62岁。     

Does Age Exacerbate the Gender-Wage Gap? New Method and Evidence From Germany, 1984–2014

ABSTRACT

Given theoretical premises, the gender-wage gap adjusted for individual characteristics is likely to vary according to age. This study adapts John DiNardo, Nicole M. Fortin, and Thomas Lemieux's (1996) semi-parametric technique to disentangle year, cohort, and age effects in adjusted gender-wage gaps. The study relies on a long panel of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) covering 1984–2015. The results indicate that, in Germany, the gender-wage gap increases over a birth cohort's lifetime, including in the post-reproductive age for some birth cohorts. The results suggest that age and gender are overlapping handicaps in the labor market and call for a policy intervention.     

A substitution orbit model of competitive innovations

Successful innovation and diffusion of technology can be attributed to the identification of the orbit of emerging new technologies that complement or substitute for existing technologies. This dynamism resembles the co-evolution process in an ecosystem. In an ecosystem, in order to maintain sustainable development, the complex interplay between competition and cooperation, typically observed in predator-prey systems, create a sophisticated balance. Given that an ecosystem can be used as a masterpiece system, this sophisticated balance can provide suggestive ideas for identifying an optimal orbit of competitive innovations with complement or substitution dynamism.Prompted by such a sophisticated balance in an ecosystem, this paper analyzes the optimal orbit of competitive innovations and, on the basis of an application of Lotka-Volterra equations, it reviews substitution orbits of Japan's monochrome to color TV system, fixed telephones to cellular telephones, cellular telephones to mobile Internet access service, and analog to digital TV broadcasting. On the basis of substitution orbits analyses, it attempts to extract suggestions supportive to identifying an optimal policy option in a complex orbit leading to expected orbit.Key findings include policy options that are effective in controlling parameters for Lotka-Volterra equations leading to expected orbit.     

On an optimal consumption problem for p-integrable consumption plans

A generalization is presented of the existence results for an optimal consumption problem of Aumann and Perles [4] and Cox and Huang [10]. In addition, we present a very general optimality principle. Received: July 14, 1999; revised version: September 9, 1999     

Contests where there is variation in the marginal productivity of effort

Summary. We provide a characterization of participants' behavior in a contest or tournament where the marginal productivity of effort varies across contestants and individual productivity is private information. We then consider the optimal design of such a contest. We first analyze contestant behavior for the usual type of contest, where the highest output wins. Abilities need not be independently distributed. We demonstrate that there is a unique symmetric equilibrium output function, that output is increasing in ability, and that marginal effort is increasing in ability, while effort decreases when the cost of effort increases. Next we consider the case where the highest output need not win, with independently distributed abilities. We analyze the contest designer's decisions in choosing contest rules optimal from her perspective. We show that the output produced, probability of winning, and contest designer's expected revenue are generally increasing in contestants' ability. We examine the relationship between the marginal cost of producing output and marginal utility per dollar of the net award for winning. Received: July 30, 1998; revised version: August 7, 2000     

河北省被征地农民社会养老保障制度建设的完善对策

近年来,河北省在探索建立被征地农民社会养老保障制度上取得了一定成效,对解决城市化进程中引发的被征地农民的生活安全问题发挥了积极作用,但仍存在诸多不足,亟待从土地征用补偿、养老保险政策体系及相关的管理监督机制等方面进一步加以完善。     

Commitment in sequential auctioning: advance listings and threshold prices

This paper models sequential auctioning of two perfect substitutes by a strategic seller, who learns about demand from the first-auction price. The seller holds the second auction only when the remaining demand is strong enough to cover her opportunity cost. Bidding in anticipation of such a contingent future auction is characterized, including a sufficient condition for existence of an invertible (increasing symmetric pure-strategy) bidding equilibrium that facilitates the seller’s learning. A unique invertible bidding equilibrium exists for the Dutch auction format, but only when the second auction is sufficiently discounted by the bidders. In the equilibrium, high-valuation bidders shade their bids down as if the second auction were guaranteed. To counter such strategic bidding, the seller would value ex-ante commitment to hold the second auction less often. Three forms of such commitment are analyzed: commitment to list future auctions in advance, commitment to not hold the second auction unless the first price exceeds a publicly announced threshold, and commitment to a reserve-price in the second auction. I would like to thank Georgios Katsenos, Thomas Jeitschko, Miguel Villas-Boas, George Deltas, and an anonymous referee for thorough and insightful feedback.     

中国企业规模与年龄对企业成长的影响——来自制造业上市公司的面板数据

本文基于2003—2006年中国制造业上市公司的面板数据研究发现：（1）中国制造业企业的规模与成长的关系不符合Gibrat法则,即规模并不是独立于成长的变量;（2）总体上,规模对于企业成长有正面影响,规模越大的企业成长率越高;（3）年龄对于企业成长有负面影响,年龄越大的企业其成长率越低。本文基于各细分行业的研究样本进一步发现,规模和年龄对于企业成长的影响在制造业各细分行业有所不同。     

人口年龄结构、财政政策与中国高储蓄率

论文以１９９９-２００９年的省际面板数据为样本,对人口年龄结构、财政影响与高储蓄率的关系进行了实证分析。研究发现：（１）影响我国高储蓄率的主要因素不是人口年龄结构,而是经济体的转型特征。（２）人口年龄结构对我国储蓄率的影响存在着明显的城乡差异,其中少儿抚养比对城镇居民储蓄率的影响为负,而对农村居民储蓄率的影响为正;老年抚养比对城镇居民储蓄率的影响为正,而对农村居民储蓄率的影响为负。（３）财政收支比重对城乡居民储蓄率的影响也存在着明显的差异,税收规模对城镇居民储蓄率的影响为正,而对农村居民储蓄率的影响为负;支出规模对城镇居民储蓄率的影响为负,而对农村居民储蓄率的影响为正。上述发现对于中国未来的改革取向具有重要的启示。