Incorporating technology buying behaviour into UK-based long term domestic stock energy models to provide improved policy analysis

The UK has a target for an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 from a 1990 base. Domestic energy use accounts for around 30% of total emissions. This paper presents a comprehensive review of existing models and modelling techniques and indicates how they might be improved by considering individual buying behaviour. Macro (top-down) and micro (bottom-up) models have been reviewed and analysed. It is found that bottom-up models can project technology diffusion due to their higher resolution. The weakness of existing bottom-up models at capturing individual green technology buying behaviour has been identified. Consequently, Markov chains, neural networks and agent-based modelling are proposed as possible methods to incorporate buying behaviour within a domestic energy forecast model. Among the three methods, agent-based models are found to be the most promising, although a successful agent approach requires large amounts of input data. A prototype agent-based model has been developed and tested, which demonstrates the feasibility of an agent approach. This model shows that an agent-based approach is promising as a means to predict the effectiveness of various policy measures.

Transferring technology from university to rural industry within a developing economy context:the case for nurturing communities of practice

The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate how technology transfer between universities and rural industries in developing countries can be achieved effectively, using independent research and advisory centres as intermediaries. It draws on a longitudinal action research study, which experiments with the process of nurturing and bridging communities of practice amongst recipients of technology and stakeholders concerned with technology diffusion, productivity and economic development. Its empirical evidence is from an academic-related, non-government intervention initiative targeting two small-scale industries, namely fish farming and coffee production, in the Cauca region of Colombia. Results demonstrate how barriers to transfer can be overcome. The intervention is considered as instrumental; its key components and outcomes are discussed in detail. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Nurturing communities of practice for effective university-to-industry technology transfer:two exemplar cases from the Cauca Region of Columbia

This paper’s primary aim is to demonstrate how university-industry technology transfer can be achieved effectively by nurturing and bridging communities of practice amongst recipients of technology and stakeholders concerned with technology diffusion, productivity and economic development. Its empirical evidence is from an intervention initiative targeting two small-scale industries, namely fish farming and coffee production, in the Cauca region of Colombia. Results show how barriers to transfer have been overcome and the intervention’s design elements and outcomes are discussed.

The international diffusion of project management

This paper examines the international diffusion of one business practice, project management, through the prism of prior literature and data on the diffusion of ISO 9000. The study took an inductive approach, building theory through the iterative collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. The findings problematise the central position accorded to the S-curve model and neo-institutional theory in explaining technology diffusion. The research posits three distinct processes driving the diffusion process: utility, institutional isomorphism, and competitive isomorphism, with the latter consisting of three primary mechanisms: competitive imitation, trendslators and fashion retailers. Contrary to prior literature, national, quasi-professional associations are found to be central to the diffusion process and play a key role in advocating and containing management technologies.

New Framework and Metrics for Economic Evaluation of Medical Technology in the Presence of Heterogeneity and Its Application to the Evaluation of Bariatric Surgery

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-07

Being ahead of its time the consumer resistance phenomenon: A comparative case study research

Double Degree.

Horizontal innovation in the theory of growth and development

We analyze recent contributions to growth theory based on the model of expanding variety of Romer (1990). In the first part, we present different versions of the benchmark linear model with imperfect competition. These include the labequipment model, labor-for-intermediates and directed technical change . We review applications of the expanding variety framework to the analysis of international technology diffusion, trade, cross-country productivity differences, financial development and fluctuations. In many such applications, a key role is played by complementarities in the process of innovation.

Factors influencing the evolution of e-commerce : an empirical analysis in a developed market economy

Peer-reviewed

Appropriate IPRs, Human Capital Composition and Economic Growth

We generalize a standard technology diffusion model by allowing for IPRs regimes to be endogenously defined by the development level of each country. Also we insert differences in the composition of human capital between North (leader) and South (followers) which shape the relative costs of innovation and imitation. Results show how an optimal growth trajectory is found for the follower country which initially imitates and that, once a "threshold development stage" is reached, optimally switches to innovation by fully enforcing IPRs achieving a higher proximity with the technology frontier in the long-run. Other scenarios, such as a premature increase in the enforcement of IPRs or a switch from imitation to innovation at early stages of development of the followers are found to be sub-optimal.

Suppliers' Associations in the Japanese Automobile Industry

This paper analyzes the structure and functions of suppliers' associations (kyoryokukai) in the automobile industry in Japan. The bilateral assembler-supplier relationship has received much attention recently as a source of Japanese industrial competitiveness. However, this paper argues that the hitherto neglected area of inter-supplier coordination in technology diffusion is at least as important as the bilateral assembler-supplier relationship in accounting for the overall performance of the Japanese automotive industry. On the basis of company visits and a largescale survey of first-tier suppliers conducted by the author, the paper analyzes the reasons why suppliers' associations were established, why they continue to exist today, and their effects on economic performance.

ICT in Latin America: a microdata analysis

Includes bibliography

Is ICT key to development?

Using panel data for 52 developed and developing countries over the period 1998-2006, this article examines the links between information and communication technology diffusion and human development. We conducted a panel regression analysis of the investments per capita in healthcare, education and information and communication technology against human development index scores. Using a quantile regression approach, our findings suggest that changes in healthcare, education and information and communication technology provision have a stronger impact on human development index scores for less developed than for highly developed countries. Furthermore, at lower levels of development education fosters development directly and also indirectly through their enhanced effects on ICT. At higher levels of development education has only an indirect effect on development through the return to ICT.

Determinants of entry mode choice of MNCs in emerging markets:evidence from South Africa and Egypt

It is now stylized that the importance of foreign direct investment for developing countries and emerging markets arises from the impact of the presence of multinational corporations (MNCs) in the host country on the productivity of local firms, by way of technology diffusion and competition. There is also general agreement that the extent of technology transfer by an MNC to a developing country affiliate depends on the extent of its control on the local affiliate and that, in turn, the extent of this control depends on the mode of entry of the MNC into the host country. However, the existing literature is based on the experience of developed countries and as such does not contribute to the literature on development economics. This article addresses this lacuna using unique firm-level data from South Africa and Egypt. Our results indicate that the determinants of entry mode choice not only differ between developed and developing countries, but also among developing countries. They also bring into question the role of MNCs in fostering productivity growth in developing countries.

Effects of international diffusion of a general purpose technology on wage inequality

This paper studies the effects of the diffusion of a General Purpose Technology (GPT) that spreads first within the developed North country of its origin, and then to a developing South country. In the developed general equilibrium growth model, each final good can be produced by one of two technologies. Each technology is characterized by a specific labor complemented by a specific set of intermediate goods, which are enhanced periodically by Schumpeterian R&D activities. When quality reaches a threshold level, a GPT arises in one of the technologies and spreads first to the other technology within the North. Then, it propagates to the South, following a similar sequence. Since diffusion is not even, neither intra- nor inter-country, the GPT produces successive changes in the direction of technological knowledge and in inter- and intra-country wage inequality. Through this mechanism the different observed paths of wage inequality can be accommodated.

Struggles for meaning and struggles for control: the diffusion of bandwagon technology in two institutional environments

In this thesis, I examine the diffusion process for a complex medical technology, the PET scanner, in two different health care systems, one of which is more market-oriented (Switzerland) and the other more centrally managed by a public agency (Quebec). The research draws on institutional and socio-political theories of the diffusion of innovations to examine how institutional contexts affect processes of diffusion. I find that diffusion proceeds more rapidly in Switzerland than in Quebec, but that processes in both jurisdictions are characterized by intense struggles among providers and between providers and public agencies. I show that the institutional environment influences these processes by determining the patterns of material resources and authority available to actors in their struggles to strategically control the technology, and by constituting the discursive resources or institutional logics on which actors may legitimately draw in their struggles to give meaning to the technology in line with their interests and values. This thesis illustrates how institutional structures and meanings manifest themselves in the context of specific decisions within an organizational field, and reveals the ways in which governance structures may be contested and realigned when they conflict with interests that are legitimized by dominant institutional logics. It is argued that this form of contestation and readjustment at the margins constitutes one mechanism by which institutional frameworks are tested, stretched and reproduced or redefined.