Importance of international linkages for local know-how flows. Some econometric evidence from Belgium

External knowledge is an important input for the innovation process of firms. Increasingly, this knowledge is likely to originate fromoutside of their national borders. This explains the preoccupationof policymakers with stimulating local technology transfers coming from international firms. We find that firms that have access to the international technology market are more likely to transfer technology to the local economy. In doing so, we qualify the traditional assertion that multinational firms are more likelyto transfer technology to the local economy. Once controlled for the superior access to the international technology market that multinationals enjoy, we find that these firms are not more likelyto transfer technology to the local economy compared to exportingor local firms that have access to the international technology market. In summary, the main result of this paper is that it isnot so much the international character of the firms, but rathertheir access to the international technology market that is important for generating external knowledge transfers to the local economy.

Absolute and relative deprivation and the measurement of poverty

This paper develops the link between poverty and inequality by focussing on a class of poverty indices (some of them well-known) which aggregate normative concerns for absolute and relative deprivation. The indices are distinguished by a parameter that captures the ethical sensitivity of poverty measurement to ``exclusion'' or ``relative-deprivation'' aversion. We also show how the indices can be readily used to predict the impact of growth on poverty. An illustration using LIS data finds that he United States show more relative deprivation than Denmark and Belgium whatever the percentiles considered, but that overall deprivation comparisons of the four countries considered will generally necessarily depend on the intensity of the ethical concern for relative deprivation. The impact of growth on poverty is also seen to depend on the presence of and on the attention granted to concerns over relative deprivation. }

Endogeneizing know-how flows through the nature of R&D investments

In this paper we carefully link knowledge flows to and from a firms innovation process with this firms investment decisions. Three types of investments are considered: investments in applied research, investments in basic research, and investments in intellectual property protection. Only when basic research is performed, can the firm effectively access incoming knowledge flows and these incoming spillovers serve to increase the efficiency of own applied research.. The firm can at the same time influence outgoing knowledge flows, improving appropriability of its innovations, by investing in protection. Our results indicate that firms with small budgets for innovation will not invest in basic research. This occurs in the short run, when the budget for know-how creation is restricted, or in the long-run, when market opportunities are low, when legal protection is not very important, or, when the pool of accessible and relevant external know-how is limited. The ratio! of basic to applied research is non-decreasing in the size of the pool of accessible external know-how, the size and opportunity of the market, and, the effectiveness of intellectual property rights protection. This indicates the existence of economies of scale in basic research due to external market related factors. Empirical evidence from a sample of innovative manufacturing firms in Belgium confirms the economies of scale in basic research as a consequence of the firms capacity to access external knowledge flows and to protect intellectual property, as well as the complementarity between legal and strategic investments.

Label Space Reduction in All-Optical Label Switchiing Networks

Report for the scientific sojourn at the Department of Information Technology (INTEC) at the Ghent University, Belgium, from january to june 2007. All-Optical Label Swapping (AOLS) forms a key technology towards the implementation of All-Optical Packet Switching nodes (AOPS) for the future optical Internet. The capital expenditures of the deployment of AOLS increases with the size of the label spaces (i.e. the number of used labels), since a special optical device is needed for each recognized label on every node. Label space sizes are affected by the wayin which demands are routed. For instance, while shortest-path routing leads to the usage of fewer labels but high link utilization, minimum interference routing leads to the opposite. This project studies and proposes All-Optical Label Stacking (AOLStack), which is an extension of the AOLS architecture. AOLStack aims at reducing label spaces while easing the compromise with link utilization. In this project, an Integer Lineal Program is proposed with the objective of analyzing the softening of the aforementioned trade-off due to AOLStack. Furthermore, a heuristic aiming at finding good solutions in polynomial-time is proposed as well. Simulation results show that AOLStack either a) reduces the label spaces with a low increase in the link utilization or, similarly, b) uses better the residual bandwidth to decrease the number of labels even more.

Simulations of parasitic and intrinsic capacitances related to Multiple-Gate-Field-Effect Transistor architectures

Report for the scientific sojourn carried out at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, from March until June 2007. In the first part, the impact of important geometrical parameters such as source and drain thickness, fin spacing, spacer width, etc. on the parasitic fringing capacitance component of multiple-gate field-effect transistors (MuGFET) is deeply analyzed using finite element simulations. Several architectures such as single gate, FinFETs (double gate), triple-gate represented by Pi-gate MOSFETs are simulated and compared in terms of channel and fringing capacitances for the same occupied die area. Simulations highlight the great impact of diminishing the spacing between fins for MuGFETs and the trade-off between the reduction of parasitic source and drain resistances and the increase of fringing capacitances when Selective Epitaxial Growth (SEG) technology is introduced. The impact of these technological solutions on the transistor cut-off frequencies is also discussed. The second part deals with the study of the effect of the volume inversion (VI) on the capacitances of undoped Double-Gate (DG) MOSFETs. For that purpose, we present simulation results for the capacitances of undoped DG MOSFETs using an explicit and analytical compact model. It monstrates that the transition from volume inversion regime to dual gate behaviour is well simulated. The model shows an accurate dependence on the silicon layer thickness,consistent withtwo dimensional numerical simulations, for both thin and thick silicon films. Whereas the current drive and transconductance are enhanced in volume inversion regime, our results show thatintrinsic capacitances present higher values as well, which may limit the high speed (delay time) behaviour of DG MOSFETs under volume inversion regime.

Disseny i optimització de membranes compòsit amb xarxes metal•loorgàniques per a nanofiltració i separacions de gasos

Projecte de recerca elaborat a partir d’una estada a la Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, entre 2007 i 2009. Aquest projecte descriu la síntesi i aplicació de nous tipus de membranes compòsit basades en xarxes metal•loorgàniques (MOFs). Aquestes es van seleccionar tenint en compte les seves propietats estructurals per tal de discriminar les espècies a separar en funció de la seva mida molecular. Les membranes obtingudes s'han aplicat satisfactòriament tant en separacions líquides, concretament en nanofiltració resistent a dissolvents (SRNF), i en separació de parells de gasos com CO2/CH4, CO2/N2 i H2/CO2. Els resultats obtinguts posen de manifest l'obtenció de membranes sense defectes i amb rendiments prometedors, en la majoria dels casos, amb permeabilitats i selectivitats superiors a membranes purament polimèriques. Tanmateix s'ha desenvolupat un nou equipament d'alt rendiment (HT) per a separacions de gasos que inclou un mòdul que permet realitzar 16 experiments simultàniament. Els resultats obtinguts amb el nou equip són comparables amb els obtinguts amb mòduls convencionals, i alhora presenten una millor reproduïbilitat. Finalment, s'ha establert un nou mètode per a obtenir membranes per a SRNF, que han estat aplicades en processos de separació de catalitzadors homogenis en dissolvents polars apròtics i s'han caracteritzat emprant la tècnica d'espectroscòpia d'annihilació de positrons, que ha permès establir per primer cop una relació entre les propietats estructurals de les membranes a nivell molecular i el seu rendiment en les aplicacions anteriors.

És el conferencing una eina útil per als programes de mediació en l’àmbit penal del Departament de Justícia?

L'estudi té per objectiu valorar la conveniència d'implementar la pràctica del conferencing en els programes de mediació i reparació penal, tant en la jurisdicció penal juvenil com en la jurisdicció ordinària. La recerca inclou dos estudis: el primer és una anàlisi dels programes i models de conferencing desenvolupats en 4 països: Nova Zelanda, Austràlia, Irlanda del Nord i Bèlgica; el segon recull les percepcions dels mediadors de l'àmbit penal a Catalunya pel que fa a l'assoliment dels objectius dels programes, la inclusió espontània de més persones en el procés de mediació, el coneixement sobre el conferencing, l'opinió en relació amb la implementació d'aquesta pràctica, les necessitats formatives i els interessos de futur. La metodologia de la recerca combina aproximacions qualitatives i quantitatives, i inclou l'anàlisi de la documentació dels programes dels països estudiats, la creació, validació i passació a càrrec d’experts d'un qüestionari, i la realització de dos grups de discussió i d’una entrevista als professionals dels programes de mediació penal. Els mediadors consultats consideren que el conferencing és una eina útil per als programes de mediació en l'àmbit penal. L'estudi dels models implementats en d'altres països aporta elements útils per a l'adaptació del conferencing a la realitat i les especificitats de Catalunya. Així, es concreten aspectes que cal tenir en compte per a la definició d'un programa pilot.

¿Es el conferencing una herramienta útil para los programas de mediación en el ámbito penal del Departamento de Justicia?

El estudio analiza la práctica del conferencing en 4 países (Nueva Zelanda, Australia, Irlanda del Norte y Bélgica), y efectúa un estudio empírico que recoge las percepciones de los mediadores sobre si esta práctica restaurativa puede ser una herramienta útil para los programas de mediación en el ámbito penal.

Women in police services in the EU: facts and figures 2012

The Institute for Public Security of Catalonia (ISPC), the only state-funded education and research centre for police in Catalonia-Spain, developed in 2012 a comparative study on Gender diversity in police services in the European Union. The study is an update of the research Facts & Figures 2008 that was carried out by the European Network of Policewomen (ENP), a non-profit organization that works in partnership with colleagues from police and/or law enforcement organizations in its member countries to facilitate positive changes in the position of women in police services. To gather the 2012 data, the ISPC invited EU Member States’ police services to cooperate in the study answering a 10- ITEM questionnaire. The questionnaire was the same tool used in 2008 by the ENP. In February 2012, the ISPC sent the questionnaires through Cepol National Contact Points’ network. In order to include as many police services as possible in the study, the ENP also supported us to gather some of the data. Altogether we received questionnaires from 29 police services corresponding to 17 UE countries. Besides, we used data from open sources about England and Wales police services and the French National Police. In this document you can find: first, the tool we used to collect the data; second, the answers we gathered presented per country; finally, some comparative tables and graphics developed by the ISPC. Countries: Austria, Belgium Cyprus, Denmark, England, Wales, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Swden.

Immigration and contested nation-building : explaining the political salience of immigration in multi-national societies

Multi-national societies present a complex setting for the politics of immigration, as migration’s linguistic, economic and cultural effects may coincide with existing contestation over nationhood between sub-units and the central state. Empirically, though, political actors only sometimes, and in some places, explicitly connect the politics of immigration to the stakes of multi-level politics. With reference to Canada, Belgium and the United Kingdom, this paper examines the conditions under which political leaders link immigration to ongoing debate about governance in multi-national societies. The paper argues that the distribution of policy competencies in the multi-level system is less important for shaping immigration and integration politics than is the perceived impact (positive or negative) on the sub-unit’s societal culture or its power relationship with the center. Immigration and integration are more often politicized where center and sub-unit hold divergent views on migration and its place in national identity.

Body Size, Activity, Employment and Wages in Europe: A First Approach

In this article we present the first empirical analysis on the associations between body size, activity, employment and wages for several European countries. The main advantage of the present work with respect to the previous literature is offered by the comparability of the data and its large geographical coverage. According to our results, for Spanish women, being obese is associated with both a 9% lower wage and probability of being employed, while for Swedish and Danish, obesity is associated with a 12% lower probability of being employed, and a 10% lower wage respectively. In Belgium, obesity is associated with a 19% lower probability of being employed for men. These robust estimates are strongly informative and may be used as a simple statistical rule of thumb to decide the countries in which lab and field experiments should be run.

The evolution of adult height in Europe: A brief note

This paper presents new evidence on the evolution of adult height in 10 Europeancountries for cohorts born between 1950 and 1980 using the European CommunityHousehold Panel (ECHP), which collects height data from Austria, Belgium, Denmark,Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Our findings show agradual increase in adult height across all countries. However, countries from SouthernEurope (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain) experienced higher gains in stature than thoselocated in Northern Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Sweden).

Endogeneizing know-how flows through the nature of R&D investments

In this paper we carefully link knowledge flows to and from a firm s innovation process with this firm s investment decisions. Three types of investments are considered: investments in applied research, investments in basic research, and investments in intellectual property protection. Only when basic research is performed, can the firm effectively access incoming knowledge flows and these incoming spillovers serve to increase the efficiency of own applied research. The firm can at the same time influence outgoing knowledge flows, improving appropriability of its innovations, by investing in protection. Our results indicate that firms with small budgets for innovation will not invest in basic research. This occurs in the short run, when the budget for know-how creation is restricted, or in the long-run, when market opportunities are low, when legal protection is not very important, or, when the pool of accessible and relevant external know-how is limited. The ratio of basic to applied research is non-decreasing in the size of the pool of accessible external know-how, the size and opportunity of the market, and, the effectiveness of intellectual property rights protection. This indicates the existence of economies of scale in basic research due to external market related factors. Empirical evidence from a sample of innovative manufacturing firms in Belgium confirms the economies of scale in basic research as a consequence of the firm s capacity to access external knowledge flows and to protectintellectual property, as well as the complementarity between legal and strategic investments.

Patients' right to information: a review of the regulatory and ethical framework

[eng] Aim: The paper examines the current situation of recognition of patients' right to information in international standards and in the national laws of Belgium, France, Italy, Spain (and Catalonia), Switzerland and the United Kingdom.Methodology: International standards, laws and codes of ethics of physicians and librarians that are currently in force were identified and analyzed with regard to patients' right to information and the ownership of this right. The related subjects of access to clinical history, advance directives and informed consent were not taken into account.Results: All the standards, laws and codes analyzed deal with guaranteeing access to information. The codes of ethics of both physicians and librarians establish the duty to inform.Conclusions: Librarians must collaborate with physicians in the process of informing patients.