A cross-country comparison of the effects of institutions on internationally oriented innovation

In this paper, we probe the relationship between institutions and internationally oriented innovation. For the first time, we use Patent Cooperation Treaty statistics as a new source of national-level data on the inventive activities of internationally oriented innovators, which we refer to as “global innovators.” One third of global innovators are small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We apply these new data and investigate the effects of corruption and business climate on patenting activity. It is ascertained herein that the inventive activity of global innovators has a linear relationship with institutional factors, while there is no observed relationship between the quality of the institutional environment and PCT patenting by multinational enterprises (MNEs).     

Central and Eastern European cultural policies,media reform and development of media markets in the mid-nineties

In many ways the media has become (together with tourism) the most important and dynamic element of leisure in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The role of most traditional and all modern media has been greatly strengthened in the region after 1989/90, after the political and symbolic influence of the ‘fourth power’ in the region's reforms had been widely recognized. The expansion and (post)modernization of the media in CEE countries is taking part at a time when the position of traditional cultural institutions and activities in the regions is being seriously undermined. Following the changes made in 1989/90 to political and economic systems of the CEE countries, a breath of extreme liberalism swept through the region. At the critical initial stage of transition culture in the CEE, countries had to face an assault from two flanks. Severe curtailment of state commitment (both financial and ideological) coincided with a wide opening to the West and absorption of imported culture. Despite generally negative feelings about cultural policy, neither of the countries in question abandoned this realm nor scrapped its cultural administration, but their priorities shifted from aesthetic or ideological considerations to the management and financing of the cultural sphere. While governments still cherish visions of reformed cultural and media policy, the commercial media sector develops successfully throughout the region with minimum amount of regulation. The successful development of the media in Central and Eastern Europe shows not only high growth potential of new markets, but also produces interesting evidence on the co-existence of the state or public providers with new commercial operators. It also shows the difficult balancing act in which domestic cultural industries attempt to introduce legislation to protect local cultural production and curtail international competition, while keeping the domestic market open enough to attract foriegn investment.     

A decentralized solution to the car pooling problem

Existing carpool optimization techniques based on the centralized approach serve policy-makers’ goals, but neglect the realities of participants. Moreover, absent strict enforcement, participants often ignore centralized solutions and maximize their own savings. We present a new heuristic, formulated and tested on real-world, and simulated car pooling problem instances, that mimics a decentralized carpool self-organization process. Our findings reveal system-wide savings similar to centralized models, and a potential strategy for improving carpool utilization.     

Dependencies between price duration,volatility, volume and return on the Warsaw Stock Exchange

The successive changes of asset prices are the most visible manifestation of financial markets dynamics. There exist different views about factors generating these changes, but many researchers and practitioners agree that the most important among them is the impact of information flow. According to the market microstructure theories, it depends mainly on the behavior of informed and uniformed traders. In the paper, we investigate dependencies between the possible proxies of information process： price duration and corresponding to it volume change and return. Our main objective is to answer the question about the most important factor in the process of discovering information by uniformed traders. We apply a set of models for volatility, volume and duration data. Our analysis is performed for selected equities listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and uses tick-by-tick data. The obtained results show that the stock liquidity on this leading stock market in Central and Eastern Europe is the most important factor influencing the process of discovering information by uninformed traders.     

Ecomuseums as cross-sector partnerships: governance,strategy and leadership

Ecomuseums are attracting increasing attention as means of preserving heritage and also impacting positively on social and economic issues. This paper contrasts ecomuseums with previous forms of cross-sector partnerships. The authors focus on the governance, strategy and leadership of the Flodden 1513 Ecomuseum. The findings have lessons for ecomuseums and other cross-sector partnerships both in and outside the UK.     

Oil prices and life satisfaction: asymmetries between oil exporting and oil importing countries

In spite of general consensus on the importance of oil prices for objective measures of economic well-being across countries, almost no research has been carried out to analyse the effects of oil prices on subjective well-being internationally. Using the World Values Survey (2009 World Values Survey 1981–2008 Official Aggregate v.20090901. (2009) World Values Survey Association, Aggregate File Producer: ASEP/JDS, Madrid. Available at www.worldvaluessurvey.org (accessed September 2010). [Google Scholar]), we help fill this gap by studying the effects of oil prices on life satisfaction for two groups of countries, oil importers and oil exporters. Although some previous studies have shown negative effects of oil prices on subjective well-being of one oil importing country the United States, since it is an outlier in terms of dependence on automobiles and in gasoline consumption per capita, these findings may not be representative of other oil importing countries. Our results show that, in fact, oil prices have quite strong negative effects on life satisfaction in a sample of over 40 oil importing countries. By contrast, for oil exporting countries for which there have been virtually no previous quantitative studies, but theoretical analyses suggest the results could be ambiguous, we find strong positive effects on life satisfaction. Hence, our results reveal quite strong asymmetries in the effects of oil prices on life satisfaction between oil importers and oil exporters.     

Multivariate Analysis of the Condition of the Property Development Sector: Selected Local Real Estate Markets in the European Union

The aim of the study is to serve as a multidimensional analysis of relationships between the economic and financial standing of property developers and the residential property market situation. The discussion concerns the property development market situation in the context of the construction market situation, with particular emphasis on residential housing investment in selected EU countries. Property development companies whose activities focused on residential housing were assessed with respect to performance in the selected market on the stock exchange. Individual companies were classified using economic and financial indices. Despite the ongoing economic downturn in real estate markets, the results for these companies did not indicate poor performance on the stock exchange. In the study, a synthetic measure of development was used in linear ordering.