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on Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2007‒07‒20
three papers chosen by Joao Carlos Correia Leitao University of the Beira Interior |
| By: | William J. Baumol |
| Keywords: | Baumol's Disease, Return on Investment in Art |
| JEL: | G11 Z11 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:use:tkiwps:0716&r=mic |
| By: | Sumon Majumdar (Queen's University); Sharun Mukand (Tufts University) |
| Abstract: | Individual leaders have been central to the transformation of organizations, political institutions and many instances of social and economic reform. In this paper we take a first step towards analyzing the role of leadership to ask: when and how does a leader engineer change? We show that while underlying structural conditions and institutions are important, there is an independent first-order role for individual agency in bringing about change and thus transforming the institutions. We emphasize the key nature of the symbiotic relationship between followers decisions' to willingly entrust their faith in the leader and the leader's initiative at leading them. This two-way interaction can endogenously give rise to threshold effects; slight differences in the leader's ability or the underlying structural conditions can dramatically improve the prospects for successful change. Given the centrality of this leader-follower relationship, we further explore conditions under which an individual may deliberately prefer to follow an ambitious leader with divergent interests rather than a benevolent one with congruent preferences. Thus by virtue of having followers, both `good' and `bad' leaders may be effective at bringing about change. |
| Keywords: | Leadership, Followers, Change |
| JEL: | P41 D72 D78 D83 O43 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qed:wpaper:1128&r=mic |
| By: | Jerry Thursby; Anne Fuller; Marie Thursby |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the empirical anomaly that in a sample of 5811 patents on which US faculty are listed as inventors, 26% of the patents are assigned solely to firms rather than to the faculty member's university as is dictated by US university employment policies or the Bayh Dole Act. In this paper we estimate a series of probability models of assignment as a function of patent characteristics, university policy, and inventor fields in order to examine the extent to which outside assignment is nefarious or comes from legitimate activities, such as consulting. Patents assigned to firms (whether established or start-ups with inventor as principal) are less basic than those assigned to universities suggesting these patents result from faculty consulting. A higher inventor share increases the likelihood of university assignment as compared with assignment to a firm in which the inventor is a principal but it has no effect on consulting with established firms versus assignment to the university. Faculty in the physical sciences and engineering are more likely to assign their patents to established firms than those in biological sciences. |
| JEL: | L24 L26 O31 O34 O38 |
| Date: | 2007–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13256&r=mic |