Are Patent Laws Harmful to Developing Countries? Evidence from China

Has upgrading and enforcing its patent laws slowed China’s economic growth? The answer we draw from detailed analysis of provincial aggregate data covering roughly the period 1990 through 2007 is strongly negative, but understanding the channels through which stricter protection of intellectual property rights has contributed to more rapid productivity growth is elusive. Our best estimate of the direct impact of the 1992 and 2001 patent laws on TFP growth amounts to not quite 15 percent of the average TFP growth rate over the period, but a much larger share of TFP growth is associated with enactment of the laws in a simple interpretation of our empirical investigation. We estimate that virtually none of the laws’ impact on TFP growth can be directly associated with increased quantity of FDI or R&D, although both series are strongly positively correlated with promulgation of the patent laws. We infer that amount of technology transfer through a FDI and the focus of R&D activity, decline of state ownership and increased marketization, growth of the human capital stock, and movement of the labor force from agriculture to manufacturing and service industries are all processes that were encouraged and whose effect has been magnified by stronger IPR protection. Moreover, adopting and enforcing the patent laws probably cannot be treated as an independent event with causation running in only one direction to China’s economic development..Patent law, Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS, TFP Growth

Finite Horizon Reinforcement Learning in Solving Optimal Control of State-Dependent Switched Systems

In this article, the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) method is used to learn an optimal control policy of a multi-region state-dependent switched system. We observe good performance of this model-free method and explain it in a rigorous mathematical language. The performance of the learning-based methods is compared with the optimal solution given by vanilla differential dynamic programming (DDP) in three customized environments

Public space use in New York City, its relationship to space design character, surrounding context, and user's perception of publicness through space management and control

New York City initiated incentive zoning in 1961 to encourage the private sector to provide public space through bonusing allowable building floor area. Such incentive zoning brought a boom in quantity of public space in New York City, the bonus developers gained is yet to be justified by the resulting space quality, in addition to the provision of light and air at street level. Numerous studies have evaluated public space quality and investigate factors influencing space quality. This thesis investigates the relationship between the design and management of public space, surrounding social context of public space in New York City. This thesis will also tackle the question raised by previous studies, of whether there is a difference between the actual adoption of control methods in public spaces and public perceptions of such methods

Master of Science

thesisTraditional prognostic tools tended to overestimate the risk of cancer recurrence and recommend adjuvant chemotherapy plus tamoxifen for most of early stage breast cancer (ESBC) patients. 21-gene assay is validated as a better predictor that may support this decision-making process. Although the cost-effectiveness of 21-gene assay in developed countries is well researched, because of with huge differences in epidemiology, treatment, and healthcare system, these results cannot be generalized to China easily. This study aimed to evaluate the potential economic impact of incorporating 21-gene assay on Chinese ESBC patients. A cost-effectiveness analysis with a decision tree and Markov model was performed based on the validation studies of 21-gene assay and published literature. A hypothetical cohort of 10,000 Chinese female patients with LN-, ER+, HER2- ESBC at the age of 45 were chosen to undergo treatment guided by either 21-gene assay or NCCN guideline Chinese version. Costs were estimated under the Chinese health care system, from the health care provider's perspective, reported in 2008 Chinese Yuan (¥). Total costs, Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) were estimated as outcome measures. Under base case analysis with the AC regimen as adjuvant chemotherapy, 21-gene assay saves ¥11 125 (US$1 628) with a higher QALY of 0.30 year per patient over 10 iv years. Replacing the chemotherapy with TC regimen results in an even larger cost saving of ¥13 285 (US$ 1 934) but less effective gain of 0.24 year. Although overall results were sensitive to the cost of 21-gene assay and NCCN guideline risk classification accuracy, they were still considered as highly cost-effective, in terms of the threshold defined by the World Health Organization (WHO). In conclusion, 21-gene assay-guided treatment is considered to have cost saving and quality of life gain compared with NCCN guideline-guided treatment from a Chinese health care system perspective. The results of this study should inform better clinical decision making in China

Finite-sample analysis of rotation operator under l2l_2 norm and l∞l_\infty norm

In this article, we consider a special operator called the two-dimensional rotation operator and analyze its convergence and finite-sample bounds under the $l_2$ norm and $l_\infty$ norm with constant step size. We then consider the same problem with stochastic noise with affine variance. Furthermore, simulations are provided to illustrate our results. Finally, we conclude this article by proposing some possible future extensions