The "Gradient Effect" in Federal Laboratory-Industry Technology Transfer Partnerships

Based on data from 229 industry-federal laboratory projects, our research analyzes combinations of technical roles and laboratory characteristics to determine their relation to projects' effectiveness. The results show increased effectiveness when the combination of technical roles follows a "gradient." That is, performance is enhanced when the company plays a different technical role than the laboratory, but a role that is only a step away on the basic-applied-development spectrum. Effectiveness diminishes when both the company and the federal laboratory play the same technical role or when the technical roles are far apart on the basic-applied-development spectrum. The results may have general implications for public policy partnerships, suggesting that although partnership effectiveness requires distinctive roles, partner roles should not be so different as to undermine possibilities for coordination and integration.     

Enforcing Emissions Trading Programs

Combining an analysis of the compliance incentives faced by firms in an emissions trading program, a comprehensive review of the enforcement strategies employed in Sulfur Dioxide Allowance and the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market (RECLAIM) programs, and a review of the compliance performance of these programs thus far, we are able to propose several practical guidelines for enforcing emissions trading programs. We stress the importance of prevailing market prices for emissions permits in determining compliance incentives, the importance of accurately measuring firms' emissions, and the importance of implementing enforcement strategies that remove the incentives firms may have to falsify emissions reports.     

The wider effects of inward foreign direct investment in manufacturing on UK industry

This paper examines the wider effects of inward foreign directinvestment (FDI) to the UK on improving the practices and competitivenessof domestic industry. Surveyed domestic suppliers, competitors,and customers to foreign investors reported extensive positiveimpacts on their practices, focused particularly on reductionsin X-inefficiencies, and on their competitiveness, althoughin the case of competitors benefits had to be balanced againstadverse effects. Knowledge transfers through personal contactsand the demonstration effect, were important to the transmissionof impacts, but a number of other channels were also important,including additional supplier sales, improved customer inputs,and the competitive spur. Regional policymakers should takethese wider benefits into account in the design of policiesfor attracting and embedding foreign investment. However, whilstthere was no evidence that foreign firms in assisted regionshad fewer benefits than those in core regions, there was a lotof leakage outside of the areas attracting foreign firms, suggestingthat policies to promote spillovers should not be developedentirely in a local or regional framework.     

Wessex cowboys?

Summary. Recent excavations in Wessex, and the full publication of many of them, have produced a rich variety of evidence reflecting on the dramatic economic and social changes which were taking place in the period c.1300–600 BC. The underlying trajectory is increased agro‐pastoral production, the development of secondary products and the acceptance of new consumption practices. The evidence is presented and a series of scenarios are offered to explain the observed changes.