Revisiting the size-R&D productivity relation: introducing the mediating role of decision-making style on the scale and quality of innovative output

We develop a mediation model in which firm size is proposed to affect the scale and quality of innovative output through the adoption of different decision styles during the R&D process. The aim of this study is to understand how the internal changes that firms undergo as they evolve from small to larger organizations affect R&D productivity. In so doing, we illuminate the underlying theoretical mechanism affecting two different dimensions of R&D productivity, namely the scale and quality of innovative output which have not received much attention in previous literature. Using longitudinal data of Spanish manufacturing firms we explore the validity of this mediation model. Our results show that as firms evolve in size, they increasingly emphasize analytical decision making, and consequently, large-sized firms aim for higher-quality innovations while small firms aim for a larger scale of innovative output.

Structural decomposition analysis and input-output subsystems: An application to Spanish CO2 emissions

Analysis of gas emissions by the input-output subsystem approach provides detailed insight into pollution generation in an economy. Structural decomposition analysis, on the other hand, identifies the factors behind the changes in key variables over time. Extending the input-output subsystem model to account for the changes in these variables reveals the channels by which environmental burdens are caused and transmitted throughout the production system. In this paper we propose a decomposition of the changes in the components of CO2 emissions captured by an input-output subsystems representation. The empirical application is for the Spanish service sector, and the economic and environmental data are for years 1990 and 2000. Our results show that services increased their CO2 emissions mainly because of a rise in emissions generated by non-services to cover the final demand for services. In all service activities, the decomposed effects show an increase in CO2 emissions due to a decrease in emission coefficients (i.e., emissions per unit of output) compensated by an increase in emissions caused both by the input-output coefficients and the rise in demand for services. Finally, large asymmetries exist not only in the quantitative changes in the CO2 emissions of the various services but also in the decomposed effects of these changes. Keywords: structural decomposition analysis, input-output subsystems, CO2 emissions, service sector.

Water Reallocation in the Input-Output Model

Water reallocation between economic agents has been –and continues to be- the subject of a considerable amount of research. This paper proposes a method for evaluating how water is reallocated within the economy in response to changes in final demand and changes in the technical water needs of activities and consumers. The empirical application, which is for the Catalan economy, shows important asymmetries in the effects that exogenous inflows and changes in water technical requirements cause on water reallocation. In the process of water distribution, exogenous inflows mostly benefit agriculture and damage private consumers. On the other hand, increases in technical water requirements have negative effects on agriculture and positive effects on the other production activities. The results of the study suggest that agriculture is an important activity not only in terms of water distribution but also in terms of water reallocation due to changes in final demand and technical water needs. Keywords: Water reallocation, water distribution, exogenous shock, technical water needs.

Structured output SVM for remote sensing image classification

In the recent years, kernel methods have revealed very powerful tools in many application domains in general and in remote sensing image classification in particular. The special characteristics of remote sensing images (high dimension, few labeled samples and different noise sources) are efficiently dealt with kernel machines. In this paper, we propose the use of structured output learning to improve remote sensing image classification based on kernels. Structured output learning is concerned with the design of machine learning algorithms that not only implement input-output mapping, but also take into account the relations between output labels, thus generalizing unstructured kernel methods. We analyze the framework and introduce it to the remote sensing community. Output similarity is here encoded into SVM classifiers by modifying the model loss function and the kernel function either independently or jointly. Experiments on a very high resolution (VHR) image classification problem shows promising results and opens a wide field of research with structured output kernel methods.

Construcción de un modelo Multi- Regional Input-Output (MRIO) medioambiental para Cataluña y el resto de España: Estudio del balance en CO2 incorporado en el comercio

El objetivo de este estudio es analizar el impacto, en emisiones de CO2, de la demanda final de Cataluña en relación a los vínculos comerciales interregionales con el resto de España y el resto del mundo. Este proceso implica el análisis del balance en CO2 incorporado para Cataluña, lo que permitirá evaluar la responsabilidad de la economía catalana respecto a estas emisiones. Para este propósito se construye, para esta determinada desagregación regional, un modelo Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) extendido al medioambiente con sectores verticalmente integrados. La incorporación de la técnica de la integración vertical nos permite un enfoque alternativo para el Balance Neto y un análisis más detallado de los vínculos interregionales entre los diversos sectores productivos, centrado en la responsabilidad última de la demanda final de cada sector en cada región. Hasta el momento, los estudios previos sobre los impactos medioambientales incorporados al comercio español se han centrado principalmente en el ámbito nacional. No obstante, por un lado el comercio interregional con el resto de España en términos monetarios representa cerca de la mitad del comercio exterior catalán. Por otro lado, los distintos metabolismos energéticos de ambas economías tienen como consecuencia una importante diferencia en la intensidad de emisión en la producción de bienes y servicios. Esta situación genera para Cataluña un déficit en el Balance Neto estimado con el resto de España, aún teniendo un importante superávit monetario. De esto se desprende la importancia de integrar el nivel interregional en los estudios de los impactos medioambientales incorporados en el comercio y, en consecuencia, en la planificación y formalización de políticas económicas y ambientales a nivel nacional.

Annual Output Statement 2007 For Health Group of Votes

Annual Output Statement 2007 For Health Group of Votes The overall aim of this Vote Group is to provide health and personal social services to improve the health and well being of the people of Ireland in a manner that promotes better health for everyone, fair access, responsive and appropriate care delivery and high performance. The money voted goes to the of Health and Children (Vote 39), the Health Service Executive (Vote 40), and the Office of the Minister for Children (Vote 41). Click here to download PDF 92kb

Department of Health and Children Annual Output Statement 2008

The overall aim of this Vote Group is to provide health and personal social services to improve the health and well being of the people of Ireland in a manner that promotes better health for everyone, fair access, responsive and appropriate care delivery and high performance. The money voted goes to the Department of Health and Children (Vote 39), the Health Service Executive (Vote 40), and the Office of the Minister for Children (Vote 41). The Department of Health and Children has responsibility for the overall organisational, legislative, policy and financial accountability framework for the health sector. The Health Service Executive is responsible for the management and delivery of health and personal social services within available resources. The Office of the Minister for Children (OMC) brings together functions relating to children and their well being, along with policy functions on Youth Justice and Early Years Education. Download document here

Dept of Health & Children Annual Output Statement 2009 for Health Group of Votes

The overall aim of this Vote Group is to provide health and personal social services to improve the health and well being of the people of Ireland in a manner that promotes better health for every one, fair access, responsive and appropriate care delivery and high performance. The money voted goes to the Department of Health and Children (Vote 39), the Health Service Executive (Vote 40), and the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (Vote 41). The Department of Health and Children has responsibility for the overall organisational, legislative, policy and financial accountability framework for the health sector. The Health Service Executive is responsible for the management and delivery of health and personal social services within available resources. The Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs brings together functions relating to children and their well being, along with policy functions on Youth Justice and Early Years Education. This Output Statement is the third of its kind attempting to match outputs and strategic impacts to financial and staffing resources for the financial year. The Statement also reports on outputs achieved for 2008. Click here to download PDF 443kb

Annual Output Statement For Health Group of Votes 2010

The overall aim of this Vote Group is to provide health and personal social services to improve the health and well being of the people of Ireland in a manner that promotes better health for everyone, fair access, responsive and appropriate care delivery and high performance. The money voted goes to the Department of Health and Children (Vote 39), the Health Service Executive (Vote 40), and the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs (Vote 41). The Department of Health and Children has responsibility for the overall organisational, legislative, policy and financial accountability framework for the health sector. The Health Service Executive is responsible for the management and delivery of health and personal social services within available resources. The Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs brings together functions relating to children and their well being, along with policy functions on youth justice and early years education. Click here to download Annual Output Statement For Health Group of Votes 2010 PDF 187KB Click here to download Additional notes for readers PDF 17KB

Annual Output Statement 2012 For Health Group of Votes - 38 and 39

The overall aim of this Vote Group is to provide health and personal social services to improve the health and well being of the people of Ireland in a manner that promotes better health for everyone, fair access, responsive and appropriate care delivery and high performance. The money voted goes to the Department of Health (Vote 38), and the Health Service Executive (Vote 39). The Department of Health has responsibility for the overall organisational, legislative, policy and financial accountability framework for the health sector. The Health Service Executive is responsible for the management and delivery of health and personal social services within available resources. Click here to download

Andalusian Health Repository: Promoting the scientific health output among professionals and providing citizens with quality health information

The Andalusian Public Health System (Sistema Sanitario Público de Andalucía -SSPA) Repository is the open environment where all the scientific output generated by the SSPA professionals, resulting from their medical care, research and administrative activities, is comprehensively collected and managed. This repository possesses special features which determined its development: the SSPA organization and its purpose as a health institution, the specific sets of documents that it generates and the stakeholders involved in it. The repository uses DSpace 1.6.2, to which several changes were implemented in order to achieve the SSPA initial goals and requirements. The main changes were: the addition of specific qualifiers to the Metadata Dublin Core scheme, the modification of the submission form, the integration of the MeSH Thesaurus as controlled vocabulary and the optimization of the advanced search tool. Another key point during the setting up of the repository was the initial batch ingest of the documents.

Economic and environmental effects of the CO2 taxation: an input-output analysis for Spain

CO2 emissions induced by human activities are the major cause of climate change; hence, strong environmental policy that limits the growing dependence on fossil fuel is indispensable. Tradable permits and environmental taxes are the usual tools used in CO2 reduction strategies. Such economic tools provide incentives to polluting industries to reduce their emissions through market signals. The aim of this work is to investigate the direct and indirect effects of an environmental tax on Spanish products and services. We apply an environmentally extended input-output (EIO) model to identify CO2 emission intensities of products and services and, accordingly, we estimate the tax proportional to these intensities. The short-term price effects are analyzed using an input-output price model. The effect of tax introduction on consumption prices and its influence on consumers’ welfare are determined. We also quantify the environmental impacts of such taxation in terms of the reduction in CO2 emissions. The results, based on the Spanish economy for the year 2007, show that sectors with relatively poor environmental profile are subjected to high environmental tax rates. And consequently, applying a CO2 tax on these sectors, increases production prices and induces a slight increase in consumer price index and a decrease in private welfare. The revenue from the tax could be used to counter balance the negative effects on social welfare and also to stimulate the increase of renewable energy shares in the most impacting sectors. Finally, our analysis highlights that the environmental and economic goals cannot be met at the same time with the environmental taxation and this shows the necessity of finding other (complementary or alternative) measures to ensure both the economic and ecological efficiencies. Keywords: CO2 emissions; environmental tax; input-output model, effects of environmental taxation.

Development of a retrospective job exposure matrix for PCB-exposed workers in capacitor manufacturing

Objectives: Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are considered probable human carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and one congener, PCB126, has been rated as a known human carcinogen. A period-specific job exposure matrix (JEM) was developed for former PCB-exposed capacitor manufacturing workers (n=12,605) (1938-1977). Methods: A detailed exposure assessment for this plant was based on a number of exposure determinants (proximity, degree of contact with PCBs, temperature, ventilation, process control, job mobility). The intensity and frequency of PCB exposures by job for both inhalation and dermal exposures, and additional chemical exposures were reviewed. The JEM was developed in nine steps: (1) all unique jobs (n=1,684) were assessed using (2) defined PCB exposure determinants; (3) the exposure determinants were used to develop exposure profiles; (4) similar exposure profiles were combined into categories having similar PCB exposures; (5) qualitative intensity (high-medium-low-baseline) and frequency (continuous-intermittent) ratings were developed, and (6) used to qualitatively rate inhalation and dermal exposure separately for each category; (7) quantitative intensity ratings based on available air concentrations were developed for inhalation and dermal exposures based on equal importance of both routes of exposure; (8) adjustments were made for overall exposure, and (9) for each category the product of intensity and frequency was calculated, and exposure in the earlier era was weighted. Results: A period-specific JEM modified for two eras of stable PCB exposure conditions. Conclusions: These exposure estimates, derived from a systematic and rigorous use of the exposure determinant data, lead to cumulative PCB exposure-response relationships in the epidemiological cancer mortality and incidence studies of this cohort. [Authors]

The Impact of Industry Collaboration on Academic Research Output: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of university knowledge and technology transfer activities on academic research output. Specifically, we study whether researchers with collaborative links with the private sector publish less than their peers without such links, once controlling for other sources of heterogeneity. We report findings from a longitudinal dataset on researchers from two engineering departments in the UK between 1985 until 2006. Our results indicate that researchers with industrial links publish significantly more than their peers. Academic productivity, though, is higher for low levels of industry involvement as compared to high levels.