89,111 research outputs found

    Policies with Respect to Foreign Investors in the New Member States of the European Union and in the Developing Countries of Asia: A Comparative Aspects

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    The purpose of this article is to provide a comparative analysis of policies aimed at foreign investors in the new member states of the European Union as well as in the developing countries of Asia. The policies demonstrate certain similarities in spite of the fact that the analyzed world economic regions are subject to different conditions. A common feature is the opening up of economies to foreign investors, coupled with the application of certain incentives intended to increase the attractiveness of the country to foreign investors. Countries strive to modernize their economies with the help of foreign capital. The developing countries of Asia, in contrast to the new member states of the European Union, are not restricted in their policies with respect to foreign investors by the requirements of regional economic integration

    Codified-Tacit and General-Specific Knowledge in the division of labour among firms. A study of the Software Industry

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    This paper addresses the organisation and codification of knowledge in the software industry. It analyses various economic incentives to codification, including the need to improve the productivity and quality of software production processes and to access inter-firm collaborations. The paper examines the experience of four Italian software firms specialised in software packages and services. It compares their capabilities, the main sources of tacit knowledge, their specific incentives to invest in knowledge codification, their usage of formal software development methodologies and quality control systems. Finally, the paper analyses two distinct technological collaborations that two of these firms have recently established.

    Markets for technology (why do we see them, why don't we see more of them and why we should care)

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    This essay explores the nature, the functioning, and the economic and policy implications of markets for technology. Today, the outsourcing of research and development activities is more common than in the past, and specialized technology suppliers have emerged in many industries. In a sense, the Schumpeterian vision of integrating R&D with manufacturing and distribution is being confronted by the older Smithian vision of division of labor. The existence and efficacy of markets for technology can profoundly influence the creation and diffusion of new knowledge, and hence, economic growth of countries and the competitive position of companies. The economic and managerial literatures have touched upon some aspects of the nature of these markets. However, a thorough understanding of how markets for technology work is still lacking. In this essay we address two main questions. First, what are the factors that enable a market for technology to exist and function effectively? Specifically we look at the role of industry structure, the nature of knowledge, and intellectual property rights and related institutions. Second, we ask what the implications of such markets are for the boundaries of the firm, the specialization and division of labor in the economy, industry structure, and economic growth. We build on this discussion to develop the implications of our work for public policy and corporate strategy

    Vertical Integration and Market Structure

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    Contractual theories of vertical integration derive firm boundaries as an efficient response to market transaction costs. These theories predict a relationship between underlying features of transactions and observed integration decisions. There has been some progress in testing these predictions, but less progress in quantifying their importance. One difficulty is that empirical applications often must consider firm structure together with industry structure. Research in industrial organization frequently has adopted this perspective, emphasizing how scale and scope economies, and strategic considerations, influence patterns of industry integration. But this research has paid less attention to contractual or organizational details, so that these two major lines of research on vertical integration have proceeded in parallel with only rare intersection. We discuss the value of combining different viewpoints from organizational economics and industrial organization.

    Productive Development Policies and Supporting Institutions in Latin America and The Caribbean

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    This paper examines the evolution of productive development policies in Latin America in the last half century, with an emphasis on the post-reform period. The paper begins with a review of the import-substitution era and goes on to describe and make a preliminary assessment of the meaning and implications of productive development policies in the liberalization period.

    A First-Order Logic Formalization of the Industrial Ontology Foundry Signature Using Basic Formal Ontology

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    Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology used in hundreds of active projects in scientific and other domains. BFO has been selected to serve as top-level ontology in the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF), an initiative to create a suite of ontologies to support digital manufacturing on the part of representatives from a number of branches of the advanced manufacturing industries. We here present a first draft set of axioms and definitions of an IOF upper ontology descending from BFO. The axiomatization is designed to capture the meanings of terms commonly used in manufacturing and is designed to serve as starting point for the construction of the IOF ontology suite

    Ecosystem Services in Decision Making: Time to Deliver

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    Over the past decade, efforts to value and protect ecosystem services have been promoted by many as the last, best hope for making conservation mainstream – attractive and commonplace worldwide. In theory, if we can help individuals and institutions to recognize the value of nature, then this should greatly increase investments in conservation, while at the same time fostering human well-being. In practice, however, we have not yet developed the scientific basis, nor the policy and finance mechanisms, for incorporating natural capital into resource- and land-use decisions on a large scale. Here, we propose a conceptual framework and sketch out a strategic plan for delivering on the promise of ecosystem services, drawing on emerging examples from Hawai‘i. We describe key advances in the science and practice of accounting for natural capital in the decisions of individuals, communities, corporations, and governments

    Integrating Research Data Management into Geographical Information Systems

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    Ocean modelling requires the production of high-fidelity computational meshes upon which to solve the equations of motion. The production of such meshes by hand is often infeasible, considering the complexity of the bathymetry and coastlines. The use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is therefore a key component to discretising the region of interest and producing a mesh appropriate to resolve the dynamics. However, all data associated with the production of a mesh must be provided in order to contribute to the overall recomputability of the subsequent simulation. This work presents the integration of research data management in QMesh, a tool for generating meshes using GIS. The tool uses the PyRDM library to provide a quick and easy way for scientists to publish meshes, and all data required to regenerate them, to persistent online repositories. These repositories are assigned unique identifiers to enable proper citation of the meshes in journal articles.Comment: Accepted, camera-ready version. To appear in the Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Semantic Digital Archives (http://sda2015.dke-research.de/), held in Pozna\'n, Poland on 18 September 2015 as part of the 19th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (http://tpdl2015.info/

    INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES AND STRATEGIES FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE: VIEW FROM WITHIN THE LAND-GRANT UNIVERSITY

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    Sustainable agricultural research and education have gained acceptability within the land-grant system in less than a decade, an impressive change. Attitudes were changed by a set of forces which include lobbying by sustainable agriculture advocates, requests from farmers as a result of the cost-price squeeze of the early 1980's, changing demands for both environmental quality and less pesticide residues from food consumers, and the availability of new funding sources. Despite its hard-won acceptability, there are tensions with respect to sustainable agriculture within the land-grant system. Sustainable agricultural issues are not yet integrated into the fabric of the land-grant institution. In order to integrate it fully, challenges remain in three key areas: knowledge generation, research and education, and funding. The challenge to generate new knowledge embraces not only biological and ecological systems, but also the socioeconomic systems of the humans who manage agriculture. We must move beyond anecdotal evidence of biological integration efficiencies to scientific understanding of the underlying processes and opportunities for human intervention. The biological research agenda covers a plethora of plant-animal-environment interactions from the microbial level on upward. Socioeconomic research must grapple with human motivations to change farming methods, as well as the likely impacts of change on farmers, consumers, other species, and the quality of the environment in which we live. One important area for such knowledge-generation is the relative merits of government policy tools, which have been and will continue to be central to environmental quality assurance. Attempts to generate new sustainable agriculture knowledge have already begun to raise new challenges for the integration of research and education. Research trials conducted off the research station pose new quandaries for scientific analysis and validation. Having farmers set the research and outreach agenda can be threatening to land-grant personnel as the old distinction between research and extension begins to dissolve. This situation is complicated by the budgetary stress on land-grant institutions and uncertainty about the dividing line between public and private responsibilities in a rapidly changing agricultural business environment. Funding is the third area where more integration into the land-grant university is needed. Earmarked funding for sustainable agriculture has helped to legitimize it in the land-grant university. But earmarked funding is a two-edged sword. If sustainable agriculture fails to become integrated into the routine land-grant agenda for research and education, it will lose its newly gained momentum if those funds disappear. It needs to gain full acceptance as legitimate science that will allow its researchers to compete for "mainline" funding sources such as the USDA National Research Initiative grants. Sustainable agriculture has made strong gains within the land-grant university system. But it can easily slip from the land-grant agenda or become co-opted if sustainable agriculture research and education are not integrated further into the system while retaining a clear focus on its original goals.Environmental Economics and Policy,
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