Clustering and international competitiveness of information technology industry in the Saint Petersburg area

The main objective of this study is to assess the potential of the information technology industry in the Saint Petersburg area to become one of the new key industries in the Russian economy. To achieve this objective, the study analyzes especially the international competitiveness of the industry and the conditions for clustering. Russia is currently heavily dependent on its natural resources, which are the main source of its recent economic growth. In order to achieve good long-term economic performance, Russia needs diversification in its well-performing industries in addition to the ones operating in the field of natural resources. The Russian government has acknowledged this and started special initiatives to promote such other industries as information technology and nanotechnology. An interesting industry that is basically less than 20 years old and fast growing in Russia, is information technology. Information technology activities and markets are mainly concentrated in Russia’s two biggest cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and areas around them. The information technology industry in the Saint Petersburg area, although smaller than Moscow, is especially dynamic and is gaining increasing foreign company presence. However, the industry is not yet internationally competitive as it lacks substantial and sustainable competitive advantages. The industry is also merely a potential global information technology cluster, as it lacks the competitive edge and a wide supplier and manufacturing base and other related parts of the whole information technology value system. Alone, the industry will not become a key industry in Russia, but it will, on the other hand, have an important supporting role for the development of other industries. The information technology market in the Saint Petersburg area is already large and if more tightly integrated to Moscow, they will together form a huge and still growing market sufficient for most companies operating in Russia currently and in the future. Therefore, the potential of information technology inside Russia is immense.

Beyond pure public and pure private management models: Mixed firms in the European Airport Industry

The use of private funding and management enjoys an increasing trend in airports. The literature has not paid enough attention to the mixed management models in this industry, although many European airports take the form of mixed firms or Institutional PPP, where ownership is shared between public and private sectors. We examine the determinants of the degree of private participation in the European airport sector. Drawing on a sample of the 100 largest European airports we estimate a multivariate equation in order to determine the role of airport characteristics, fiscal variables and political factors on the extent of private involvement. Our results confirm the alignment between public and private interests in PPPs. Fiscal constraints and market attractiveness promote private participation. Integrated governance models and the share of network carriers prevent the presence of private ownership, while the degree of private participation appears to be pragmatic rather than ideological.

Recovery Risk and Labor Costs in Public-Private Partnerships : Contractual Choice in the US Water industry

We use an ordered logistic model to empirically examine the factors that explain varying degrees of private involvement in the U.S. water sector through public-private partnerships. Our estimates suggest that a variety of factors help explain greater private participation in this sector. We find that the risk to private participants regarding cost recovery is an important driver of private participation. The relative cost of labor is also a key factor in determining the degree of private involvement in the contract choice. When public wages are high relative to private wages, private participation is viewed as a source of cost savings. We thus find two main drivers of greater private involvement: one encouraging private participation by reducing risk, and another encouraging government to seek out private participation in lowering costs.

Taxation of nuclear waste in Spain

Law 15/2012 established in Spain four new environmental taxes and extended the scope objective excise duties on mineral oils to tax the use of natural gas and coal as sources of electricity. One of the newly created taxes falls on all electric power producers, and has as tax base the turnover. The second one tax hydropower production, and the other two fall on the nuclear industry. So, there are two new taxes in Spain on the production of electricity from nuclear sources. The first one is a tax on nuclear waste production; the second one is a tax on the storage of nuclear waste. However, these are not the only levies in the Spanish tax system affecting nuclear waste. At the State level there are already several charges on nuclear waste. At the regional level, on the other hand, two Autonomous Communities were taxing nuclear waste. The creation of these new State taxes will finish with the regional taxes, but the State will be oblige to compensate these regions for losing revenues. The purpose of this work is to carry out a critical analysis of the Spanish system of taxation on nuclear waste.

Long-term persistence of immunity induced by OVA-coupled gas-filled microbubble vaccination partially protects mice against infection by OVA-expressing Listeria.

Vaccination aims at generating memory immune responses able to protect individuals against pathogenic challenges over long periods of time. Subunit vaccine formulations based on safe, but poorly immunogenic, antigenic entities must be combined with adjuvant molecules to make them efficient against infections. We have previously shown that gas-filled microbubbles (MB) are potent antigen-delivery systems. This study compares the ability of various ovalbumin-associated MB (OVA-MB) formulations to induce antigen-specific memory immune responses and evaluates long-term protection toward bacterial infections. When initially testing dendritic cells reactivity to MB constituents, palmitic acid exhibited the highest degree of activation. Subcutaneous immunization of naïve wild-type mice with the OVA-MB formulation comprising the highest palmitic acid content and devoid of PEG2000 was found to trigger the more pronounced Th1-type response, as reflected by robust IFN-γ and IL-2 production. Both T cell and antibody responses persisted for at least 6 months after immunization. At that time, systemic infection with OVA-expressing Listeria monocytgenes was performed. Partial protection of vaccinated mice was demonstrated by reduction of the bacterial load in both the spleen and liver. We conclude that antigen-bound MB exhibit promising properties as a vaccine candidate ensuring prolonged maintenance of protective immunity.

Governance mode vs. governance fit: Performance implications of make-or-ally choices for product innovation in the worldwide aircraft industry, 1942-2000

We examine the impact of governance mode and governance fit on performance in make-or-ally decisions. We argue that while horizontal collaboration and autonomous governance have direct and countervailing performance implications, the alignment of make-or-ally choices with the focal firm's resource endowment and the activity's resource requirements leads to better performance. Data on the aircraft industry show that relative to aircraft developed autonomously, collaborative aircraft exhibit greater sales but require longer time-to-market. However, governance fit increases unit sales and reduces time-to-market. We contribute to the alliance and economic organization literatures. (Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Innovation and horizontal mergers in a vertically related industry

This paper analyzes the effects of horizontal mergers on innovation and consumer welfare in a vertically related industry context, in which downstream firms compete for customers with a differentiated final good and can undertake R&D activities to reduce their unit costs. Upstream and downstream horizontal mergers can take place. The results suggest that competition authorities aiming to promote innovation and consumer welfare should treat upstream and downstream mergers differently, since horizontal mergers between upstream firms are detrimental to innovation and consumer welfare. By contrast, policy makers should evaluate the market characteristics under downstream integration. We show that downstream horizontal mergers can be both innovation and consumer welfare enhancing in the short run, when the markets are sufficiently small. Keywords: Horizontal Mergers. Innovation. Vertical Relations. JEL Classification Numbers: L22, L41, O32

Cooperation in R&D, firm size and type of partnership: Evidence for the Spanish automotive industry

This paper aims to analyse cooperation in R&D in the automobile industry in Spain. It first examines to what extent firms cooperate with external actors in the field of technological innovation, and if so, with what type of cooperation partner, paying special attention to the differentiation according to the size of the firms. Second, it aims to study how the firm’s size may affect not only the decision of cooperating but also with which type of partner, while controlling for other determinants that have been considered in the literature as main drivers of collaborative activities in R&D. We use data provided by the Technological Innovation Panel in the 2006-2008 period for firms in the automotive sector. We estimate a bivariate probit model that takes into account the two types of cooperation mostly present in the automotive industry, vertical and institutional, explicitly considering the interdependencies that may arise in the simultaneous choice of both.

Cooperation in R&D, firm size and type of partnership: Evidence for the Spanish automotive industry

This paper aims to analyse cooperation in R&D in the automobile industry in Spain. It first examines to what extent firms cooperate with external actors in the field of technological innovation, and if so, with what type of cooperation partner, paying special attention to the differentiation according to the size of the firms. Second, it aims to study how the firm’s size may affect not only the decision of cooperating but also with which type of partner, while controlling for other determinants that have been considered in the literature as main drivers of collaborative activities in R&D. We use data provided by the Technological Innovation Panel in the 2006-2008 period for firms in the automotive sector. We estimate a bivariate probit model that takes into account the two types of cooperation mostly present in the automotive industry, vertical and institutional, explicitly considering the interdependencies that may arise in the simultaneous choice of both.