nep-ipr New Economics Papers
on Intellectual Property Rights
Issue of 2012‒01‒18
five papers chosen by
Roland Kirstein
Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg

  1. Entrepreneurial Commercialization Choices and the Interaction between IPR and Competition Policy By Gans, Joshua S.; Persson, Lars
  2. Value of invention, prolific inventor productivity and mobility: evidence from five countries, 1975-2002 By William Latham; Christian Le Bas; Dmitry Volodin
  3. Entrepreneurial Innovations and Taxation By Haufler, Andreas; Norbäck, Pehr-Johan; Persson, Lars
  4. What do Experts Know About Ranking Journal Quality? A Comparison with ISI Research Impact in Finance By Michael McAleer; Chia-Lin Chang
  5. Applications Want to be Free: Privacy Against Information By Michael R. Hammock; Paul Rubin

  1. By: Gans, Joshua S. (Rotman School of Management); Persson, Lars (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))
    Abstract: This paper examines the interaction between intellectual property protection and competition policy on the choice of entrepreneurs with respect to commercialization as well as the rate of innovation. We find that stronger intellectual property protection makes it more likely that entrepreneurs will commercialize by cooperating with incumbents rather than competing with them. Consequently, we demonstrate that competition policy has a clearer role in promoting a higher rate of innovation in that event. Hence, we identify one reason why the strength of the two policies may be complements from the perspective of increasing the rate of entrepreneurial innovation.
    Keywords: Entrepreneurs; Innovation; Commercialization; Intellectual property law; Competition law
    JEL: O31
    Date: 2012–01–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0895&r=ipr
  2. By: William Latham (Department of Economics, University of Delaware - University of Delaware); Christian Le Bas (GATE Lyon Saint-Etienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - CNRS : UMR5824 - Université Lumière - Lyon II - École Normale Supérieure de Lyon); Dmitry Volodin (Department of Economics, University of Delaware - University of Delaware)
    Abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide new insights into (1) the determinants of the value of inventions and (2) the role that mobility plays in the behavior of prolific inventors, whom we identify based on the number of patents exceeding a threshold of productivity. We examine mobility in two dimensions: from firm to firm (inter-firm) and from one technical field to another. We exploit data on patents filed by inventors from five countries (France, the UK, Germany, the US and Japan) in the US Patent and Trademark office during the period from 1975 to 2002. From our regressions we obtain a rich set of results. In particular we show that: (1) as predicted by evolutionary theory, inventor productivity is a positive determinant of invention value, (2) inter-firm mobility is a consistently positive determinant of productivity and (3) technological mobility is a negative determinant. The last implies that the more specialized an inventor is, the higher his productivity is.
    Keywords: prolific inventor; mobility; productivity; value of invention
    Date: 2011–12–22
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00654501&r=ipr
  3. By: Haufler, Andreas (University of Munich); Norbäck, Pehr-Johan (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)); Persson, Lars (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))
    Abstract: Many governments promote small businesses for the dual reasons of fostering ‘breakthrough’ innovations and employment growth. In this paper we study the effects of tax and subsidy policies on entrepreneurs’ choice of riskiness of an innovation project and on their mode of commercializing the innovation (market entry versus sale). Limited loss offset provisions in the tax system induce entrepreneurs to choose projects with too little risk and this problem arises primarily when entrepreneurs market their product themselves. When innovations reduce only the fixed costs of production this leads to a fundamental policy trade-off between the declared goals of promoting employment and innovation in small, entrepreneurial firms. When innovations reduce variable production costs, policies to promote small businesses may even be unambiguously harmful.
    Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Innovation; Corporate taxes; Firm growth
    JEL: H25 L13 M13 O31
    Date: 2012–01–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0896&r=ipr
  4. By: Michael McAleer (Erasmus University Rotterdam,Tinbergen Institute,Kyoto University,Complutense University of Madrid); Chia-Lin Chang (Department of Applied Economics Department of Finance National Chung Hsing University)
    Abstract: Experts possess knowledge and information that are not publicly available. The paper is concerned with the ranking of academic journal quality and research impact using a survey of experts from a national project on ranking academic finance journals. A comparison is made with publicly available bibliometric data, namely the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science citations database (hereafter ISI) for the Business - Finance category. The paper analyses the leading international journals in Finance using expert scores and quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAMs), and highlights the similarities and differences in the expert scores and alternative RAMs, where the RAMs are based on alternative transformations of citations taken from the ISI database. Alternative RAMs may be calculated annually or updated daily to answer the perennial questions as to When, Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited (see Chang et al. (2011a, b, c)). The RAMs include the most widely used RAM, namely the classic 2-year impact factor including journal self citations (2YIF), 2-year impact factor excluding journal self citations (2YIF*), 5-year impact factor including journal self citations (5YIF), Immediacy (or zero-year impact factor (0YIF)), Eigenfactor, Article Influence, C3PO (Citation Performance Per Paper Online), h-index, PI- BETA (Papers Ignored - By Even The Authors), 2-year Self-citation Threshold Approval Ratings (2Y-STAR), Historical Self-citation Threshold Approval Ratings (H-STAR), Impact Factor Inflation (IFI), and Cited Article Influence (CAI). As data are not available for 5YIF, Article Influence and CAI for 13 of the leading 34 journals considered, 10 RAMs are analysed for 21 highly-cited journals in Finance. Harmonic mean rankings of the 10 RAMs for the 34 highly-cited journals are also presented. It is shown that emphasizing the 2-year impact factor of a journal, which partly answers the question as to When published papers are cited, to the exclusion of other informative RAMs, which answer Where and How (frequently) published papers are cited, can lead to a distorted evaluation of journal impact and influence relative to the Harmonic Mean rankings. A simple regression model is used to predict expert scores on the basis of RAMs that capture journal impact, journal policy, the number of high quality papers, and quantitative information about a journal.
    Keywords: Expert scores, Journal quality, Research assessment measures, Impact factor, IFI, C3PO, PI-BETA, STAR, Eigenfactor, Article Influence, h-index.
    JEL: C18 C81 C83
    Date: 2012–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kyo:wpaper:806&r=ipr
  5. By: Michael R. Hammock; Paul Rubin
    Abstract: The debate over online privacy pays too little attention to the costs and benefits of the current systems of privacy protection and advertising-supported online applications. The costs of online privacy-related harm (such as identity theft) and of protective activities are small relative to the benefits from applications that are supported by online advertising, which depends on the collection of personal information. Advocates of increased privacy focus too much on increased privacy as a solution, and not enough on alternative forms of information security. Surveys show that consumers do not like targeted advertising, or the information collection that allows it, but this may be a form of rational irrationality. That is, it may not pay for consumers to understand the costs and benefits of reduced information use.
    Date: 2011–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:emo:wp2003:1103&r=ipr

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