Innovation or Imitation? The effect of spillovers and competitive pressure on firms' R&D strategy choice

This article provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of a firm's optimal R&D strategy choice. In this paper a firm's R&D strategy is assumed to be endogenous and allowed to depend on both internal firms. characteristics and external factors. Firms choose between two strategies, either they engage in R&D or abstain from own R&D and imitate the outcomes of innovators. In the theoretical model this yields three types of equilibria in which either all firms innovate, some firms innovate and others imitate, or no firm innovates. Firms'equilibrium strategies crucially depend on external factors. We find that the efficiency of intellectual property rights protection positively affects firms'incentives to engage in R&D, while competitive pressure has a negative effect. In addition, smaller firms are found to be more likely to become imitators when the product is homogeneous and the level of spillovers is high. These results are supported by empirical evidence for German .rms from manufacturing and services sectors. Regarding social welfare our results indicate that strengthening intellectual property protection can have an ambiguous effect. In markets characterized by a high rate of innovation a reduction of intellectual property rights protection can discourage innovative performance substantially. However, a reduction of patent protection can also increase social welfare because it may induce imitation. This indicates that policy issues such as the optimal length and breadth of patent protection cannot be resolved without taking into account specific market and firm characteristics. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C35, D43, L13, L22, O31. Keywords: Innovation; imitation; spillovers; product differentiation; market competition; intellectual property rights protection.

On group strategy-proof mechanisms for a many-to-one matching model

For the many-to-one matching model in which firms have substitutable and quota q-separable preferences over subsets of workers we show that the workers-optimal stable mechanism is group strategy-proof for the workers. In order to prove this result, we also show that under this domain of preferences (which contains the domain of responsive preferences of the college admissions problem) the workers-optimal stable matching is weakly Pareto optimal for the workers and the Blocking Lemma holds as well. We exhibit an example showing that none of these three results remain true if the preferences of firms are substitutable but not quota q-separable.

Individual versus group strategy-proofness: when do they coincide?

A social choice function is group strategy-proof on a domain if no group of agents can manipulate its final outcome to their own benefit by declaring false preferences on that domain. Group strategy-proofness is a very attractive requirement of incentive compatibility. But in many cases it is hard or impossible to find nontrivial social choice functions satisfying even the weakest condition of individual strategy-proofness. However, there are a number of economically significant domains where interesting rules satisfying individual strategy-proofness can be defined, and for some of them, all these rules turn out to also satisfy the stronger requirement of group strategy-proofness. This is the case, for example, when preferences are single-peaked or single-dipped. In other cases, this equivalence does not hold. We provide sufficient conditions defining domains of preferences guaranteeing that individual and group strategy-proofness are equivalent for all rules defined on the

Glocalization as a generic entrepreneurial strategy

Nobody would deny that we today live in a globalized world. Our digitalized living daily revises our worldwide mindmaps. Thanks to free trade and travel our material and social worlds have become global as well. This radical sociocultural change has since the last decade been preached all over the world with public institutions and business-interest organizations as megaphones. Since those carrying the globalization message mainly represent nations or super-nations such as the EU, the viewpoints of lower-level actors such as regions, localities, firms and individual citizens have seldom been considered. Paternalistically (super-)national bodies have instructured its subjects, not the least the many small firms that populate the (private) economy, what action to take. The basic message is: submit to the global forces – local is not beautiful any longer.

Maximal operators and differentiation theorems for sparse sets

"Vegeu el resum a l'inici del document del fitxer adjunt."

On Strategy-proofness and symmetric single-peakedness

We characterize the class of strategy-proof social choice functions on the domain of symmetric single-peaked preferences. This class is strictly larger than the set of generalized median voter schemes (the class of strategy-proof and tops-only social choice functions on the domain of single-peaked preferences characterized by Moulin (1980)) since, under the domain of symmetric single-peaked preferences, generalized median voter schemes can be disturbed by discontinuity points and remain strategy-proof on the smaller domain. Our result identifies the specific nature of these discontinuities which allow to design non-onto social choice functions to deal with feasibility constraints.

Strategy-proof social choice

This paper surveys the literature on strategy-proofness from a historical perspective. While I discuss the connections with other works on incentives in mechanism design, the main emphasis is on social choice models. This article has been prepared for the Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, Volume 2, Edited by K. Arrow, A. Sen and K. Suzumura

Aprender investigando. Una experiencia formativa en el ámbito de la enfermería = Research teaching processes used as a methodological strategy in the education of healthcare professionals

Este trabajo tiene como propósito presentar y valorar, desde la perspectiva del alumnado participante, un proyecto de investigación-formación puesto en marcha durante el curso 2003-2004 en la elaboración del trabajo de tesina, fin de carrera, en la Escuela de Enfermería de Vitoria, dentro del programa de Licenciatura Europea de Enfermería. Constituye el punto de partida de un proyecto a largo plazo, iniciado con la intención de desarrollar principios teóricos y procedimientos prácticos que nos permitan sistematizar procesos formativos que, centrados en la investigación, articulen la teoría y la práctica e integren una perspectiva comunicativa y cooperativa.

Desenvolupament de vacunes peptídiques y dendrímers basats en polietilenglicol per al tractament del càncer

El principal problema de les teràpies actuals contra el càncer es la baixa especificitat envers les cèl•lules tumorals, cosa que comporta gran quantitat d’efectes secundaris. Per això es important el desenvolupament de nous tipus de teràpies i sistemes d’alliberament efectius per als fàrmacs ja existents al mercat. En la immunoteràpia contra el càncer es pretén estimular el sistema immunològic per a eliminar les cèl•lules canceroses de manera selectiva. En aquest projecte s’han sintetitzat derivats de l’antigen peptídic de melanoma NY-ESO1 i s’ha estudiat la seva capacitat per a estimular el sistema immunològic com a vacunes contra el càncer. També s’han encapsulat el antígens peptídics en liposomes com a adjuvants i sistemes d’alliberament. De totes les variants peptídiques la que resultà més immunogènica fou la que contenia el grup palmitoil i el fragment toxoide tetànic en la seva estructura. La utilització de liposomes com a sistema adjuvant sembla una estratègia interessant per al disseny de vacunes contra el càncer donat que l’encapsulació del pèptid en liposomes va augmentar notablement la resposta immunològica de l’antigen. Per altra banda, s’han desenvolupat dendrímers basats en polietilenglicol com a sistemes alliberadors de fàrmacs per al tractament de tumors. El polietilenglicol és àmpliament utilitzat com a sistema d’alliberament de fàrmacs degut a les seves interessants propietats, augment de la solubilitat i dels temps de residència en plasma, entre d’altres. La metodologia química descrita permet la diferenciació controlada de varies posicions en la superfície del dendrímer a més del creixement del dendrímer fins a una segona generació. S’ha sintetitzat la primera generació del dendrímer contenint el fàrmac antitumoral 5-fluorouracil i s’han realitzat estudis de citotoxicitat comprovant que l’activitat del nanoconjugat és del mateix ordre de magnitud que el 5-fluorouracil sense conjugar.

Lessons of peace in Aceh: administrative decentralization and political freedom as a strategy of pacification in Aceh

This working paper shows the evolution of the Aceh conflict until its peaceful resolution in 2005. The key factors in the success of this peace process have been the confluence of several factors related to the internal and external dynamics of the country, including the new political leadership, the decreasing role of the military power, the international support and the meeting of the objectives of both groups, and so on. The end of the conflict in Aceh shows that the administrative decentralization and the promotion of the political participation of the main actors involved have made possible the development of a solid alternative to the arms strategy of conflict resolution used for years in Indonesia.

Product differentiation, competitive pressure and the effects of innovation on the success and survivability of firms in oligopoly markets

In a recent paper Tishler and Milstein (2009) fi…nd that increased competition may increase aggregate R&D spending while market output decreases. Therefore, they obtain the surprising result that R&D spending is excessive when competition becomes intense. Their result is based on the standard linear demand function for differentiated products introduced by Bowley (1924) where decreased product differentiation is interpreted as more competitive pressure. In this paper I show that at an aggregate level this interpretation is problematic because equilibrium effects are dominated by a demand reduction effect. A slight modifi…cation of the standard demand function eliminates this effect. For the Tishler and Milstein (2009) setting it is shown that then increased competition increases both R&D spending and aggregate market output. Therefore, at least for consumers, more intense competition increases welfare. Journal of Economic Literature Classi…fication Numbers: D43, L1, O3. Keywords: Oligopoly markets, Product differentiation, Competitive pressure.

Group strategy-proof social choice functions with binary ranges and arbitrary domains: characterization results

We define different concepts of group strategy-proofness for social choice functions. We discuss the connections between the defined concepts under different assumptions on their domains of definition. We characterize the social choice functions that satisfy each one of them and whose ranges consist of two alternatives, in terms of two types of basic properties.

Two necessary conditions for strategy-proofness: on what domains are they also sufficient?

A social choice function may or may not satisfy a desirable property depending on its domain of definition. For the same reason, different conditions may be equivalent for functions defined on some domains, while different in other cases. Understanding the role of domains is therefore a crucial issue in mechanism design. We illustrate this point by analyzing the role of different conditions that are always related, but not always equivalent to strategy-proofness. We define two very natural conditions that are necessary for strategy-proofness: monotonicity and reshuffling invariance. We remark that they are not always sufficient. Then, we identify a domain condition, called intertwinedness, that ensures the equivalence between our two conditions and that of strategy-proofness. We prove that some important domains are intertwined: those of single-peaked preferences, both with public and private goods, and also those arising in simple models of house allocation. We prove that other necessary conditions for strategy-proofness also become equivalent to ours when applied to functions defined on intertwined domains, even if they are not equivalent in general. We also study the relationship between our domain restrictions and others that appear in the literature, proving that we are indeed introducing a novel proposal.

A new optimised De Bruijn coding strategy for structured light patterns

Coded structured light is an optical technique based on active stereovision that obtains the shape of objects. One shot techniques are based on projecting a unique light pattern with an LCD projector so that grabbing an image with a camera, a large number of correspondences can be obtained. Then, a 3D reconstruction of the illuminated object can be recovered by means of triangulation. The most used strategy to encode one-shot patterns is based on De Bruijn sequences. In This work a new way to design patterns using this type of sequences is presented. The new coding strategy minimises the number of required colours and maximises both the resolution and the accuracy