Can intellectual property rights impact directly on productivity: a case study in manufacturing industries

According to the institutional economics thesis the role of IPRs is one of the relevant determinants of economic growth in long run. Measures of IPRs have been limited and empirical studies have not been able to evaluate their impacts on productivity growth. The major conclusion that the author can be drawn from his estimations is that the extent to which patent rights and trademarks, ceteris paribus, positively correlated with output per capita depends on the intensity of technology.

Rethinking Kyoto Compliance from a Consumption-Based Perspective.

Environmental consequences of international trade are quite relevant for climate change policy. Apparent decoupling of GHG emission and GDP growth, observed in several European countries, is partly due to the increasing dislocation of manufacturing industries from the developed world to emerging economies. Consequently, decoupling is coupled with increasing GHG emission embodied in imported products from these nations. The article scrutinises the GHG emission embedded in Hungarian import of Chinese products. It argues that a stagnating GHG emission observed in Hungary is intertwined with hidden GHG export to China that takes place through trading of goods. Objective evaluation of compliance status with Kyoto targets would require a consumption-based accounting of GHG emissions rather than a production-based one, unless we accept facing a BIG problem at global level.

Aligning supplier evaluation with manufacturing competitive priorities. Results of an international survey in manufacturing and assembly industries

The aim of our research is to investigate a company’s purchasing and manufacturing competitive priorities jointly in order to uncover any relationships between them and also their effect on the supply chain tools implemented by the company. We assume that the supplier selection criteria of the companies reflect the true goals of the purchasing function and we take the purchasing function’s point of view to examine the aforementioned relationships. We use a multinational database for our empirical analysis which contains almost 700 companies from 20 countries and data that were acquired in 2009. We identified four different clusters which reflect a different level of supply chain tool implementation.

Környezeti innovációk a hazai feldolgozóiparban (Environmental innovations in the Hungarian manufacturing industry)

A cikk a hazai feldolgozóipari vállalatok környezeti innovációs tevékenységét, annak mozgatórugóit vizsgálja. Felvázolja a témakörrel foglalkozó jelentősebb elméleteket, kutatásokat, illetve az ezek által azonosított, a környezeti innovációs tevékenységet befolyásoló tényezőket (pl. hatósági szabályozás, vállalatméret, környezeti stratégia stb.). A bemutatott kutatás egy kérdőíves felmérésen alapul, melyben közel 300 vállalat vett részt az elektronika, az élelmiszeripar, a gépipar, a járműipar és a vegyipar területéről. A vizsgálat célja a környezeti innováció különböző típusainak (csővégi, megelőző, termék; új, adaptált) differenciált elemzése, figyelembe véve mind a vállalat, mind a környezet jellemzőit. A vállalatok innovációs tevékenysége jelentősen különbözhet az egyes ágazatokban, illetve a különböző méretű cégek között – a cikk ezen eltérések vizsgálatára is kitér. ______ The article examines the environmental innovation activity of Hungarian manufacturing companies and its determinants. It provides a brief overview of the most important theories and recent empirical studies addressing the topic. The research presented is based on a questionnaire survey with the participation of nearly 300 firms from the chemicals, electronics, food, machines and vehicles sectors. The goal of the study is to identify differences in the determinants of the various types of environmental innovation (end-of-pipe, cleaner production, product; novel, adopted), with regard to both the characteristics of the environment and the companies themselves. Differences between firms of various sizes and industries are also a part of the analysis.