Table of Contents

Table of contents for Explorations in Sights and Sounds, Number 15, Summer, 199

National Innovation System in the Era of Liberalization: Implications for Science and Technology Policy for Developing Economies

The national system of innovations in the recent phase of globalization has undergone dramatic structural transformation. Innovations entails organizational as well as changes in the rules of the game. The history of economic development of the developing and newly industrializing economies shows that national systems of innovation have evolved keeping in view the most pressing requirements of the national economic development. The knowledge generation and transmission are the two essential characteristics of national innovation system that connects the users and producers of knowledge and also allows institutional arrangements to functions as a feedback system. The institutional arrangements are being altered substantially to allow capital to move freely across national borders on the one side and strict trade related intellectual property rights on the other. How these arrangements have affected the national system of innovation both in the developed and developing countries during the recent liberalisation phase of economic development? In this paper an attempt has been made to provide some plausible answers to this question. Input and output indicators have been used with a view to unravel the dramatic structural changes occurring both in the economic and innovation structure of the global economy. The internationalisation of R&D expenditure and its implications for revealed comparative advantage have been examined in order to understand the direction of change during the era of liberalisation. The suitable changes in the science and technology policy have been suggested to strengthen the national system of innovation for generating unique competitive advantage in the developing countries.National system of innovation; structural transformation; input and output measures of innovations; revealed competitive advantage; public policy; internationalisation of R&D; intellectual property rights

'Whatever Is, Is Right'?, Economic Institutions in Pre-Industrial Europe (Tawney Lecture 2006)

Institutions – the structures of rules and norms governing economic transactions – are widely assigned a central role in economic development. Yet economic history is still dominated by the belief that institutions arise and survive because they are economically efficient. This paper shows that alternative explanations of institutions – particularly those incorporating distributional effects – are consistent with economic theory and supported by empirical findings. Distributional conflicts provide a better explanation than efficiency for the core economic institutions of pre-industrial Europe – serfdom, the community, the craft guild, and the merchant guild. The paper concludes by proposing four desiderata for any future economic theory of institutions.

Rethinking the Role of History in Law & Economics: The Case of the Federal Radio Commission in 1927

In the study of law and economics, there is a danger that historical inferences from theory may infect historical tests of theory. It is imperative, therefore, that historical tests always involve a vigorous search not only for confirming evidence, but for disconfirming evidence as well. We undertake such a search in the context of a single well-known case: the Federal Radio Commission's (FRC's) 1927 decision not to expand the broadcast radio band. The standard account of this decision holds that incumbent broadcasters opposed expansion (to avoid increased competition) and succeeded in capturing the FRC. Although successful broadcaster opposition may be taken as confirming evidence for this interpretation, our review of the record reveals even stronger disconfirming evidence. In particular, we find that every major interest group, not just radio broadcasters, publicly opposed expansion of the band in 1927, and that broadcasters themselves were divided at the FRC's hearings.

Computable Rationality, NUTS, and the Nuclear Leviathan

This paper explores how the Leviathan that projects power through nuclear arms exercises a unique nuclearized sovereignty. In the case of nuclear superpowers, this sovereignty extends to wielding the power to destroy human civilization as we know it across the globe. Nuclearized sovereignty depends on a hybrid form of power encompassing human decision-makers in a hierarchical chain of command, and all of the technical and computerized functions necessary to maintain command and control at every moment of the sovereign's existence: this sovereign power cannot sleep. This article analyzes how the form of rationality that informs this hybrid exercise of power historically developed to be computable. By definition, computable rationality must be able to function without any intelligible grasp of the context or the comprehensive significance of decision-making outcomes. Thus, maintaining nuclearized sovereignty necessarily must be able to execute momentous life and death decisions without the type of sentience we usually associate with ethical individual and collective decisions

Knowledge, Coordination, and Fiscal Federalism: An Organizational Perspective

This essay brings fiscal federalism theory into contact with the knowledge perspective to economic organization. The question addressed is: can a central government be justified in the context of fiscal federalism on grounds of economic organization? We point out that if one looks at the organizational problem of the vertical structure of the public sector from the standpoint of knowledge asymmetry the question of a central government in a federation becomes primarily a story of coordination of dispersed and specific knowledge.Federalism, economic organization, information asymmetry, knowledge asymmetry, coordination, EU.

Rethinking privacy in social networks: A case study of beacon

Popular online social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Bebo are technological platforms that are posing questions about personal privacy. This paper contributes to our understanding of the nature and form of online privacy by critically analysing the issues surrounding the failed launch of Facebook’s advertising tool Beacon. Beacon is an interesting case study because it highlighted the complexity of information ownership in an online social network. Qualitative data was gathered from 29 weblogs (blogs) representing user opinions published between 6th November 2007(when Beacon was launched) and 28th February 2008 (when commentary had dwindled). A thematic analysis of the blogs suggest that concerns such as commercialism, terms of service (TOS), lack of user control, lack of user awareness and data protection are factors that influence user perceptions of information ownership as a subset of online privacy