FOREIGN PROFESSIONALS AND DOMESTIC REGULATION

Changes in demographics and patterns of investment in human capital are creating increased scope for international trade in professional services. The scope for mutually beneficial trade is, however, inhibited not only by quotas and discriminatory taxation, but also by domestic regulation -- including a range of qualification and licensing requirements and procedures. To illustrate the nature and implications of these regulatory impediments, this paper presents a detailed description of the regulatory requirements faced in the United States market by four types of Indian professionals: doctors, engineers, architects, and accountants. India is one of the largest exporters of skilled services, and the United States is one of the largest importers of skilled services, so these two countries reflect broader global trends. The paper argues that regulatory discrimination, for example through preferential recognition agreements, has implications both for the pattern of trade and for welfare. It presents some illustrative estimates that suggest the economic cost of regulations may be substantial. The paper concludes by examining how the trade-inhibiting impact of regulatory requirements could be addressed through bilateral and multilateral negotiations.Accreditation; architect; architects; Architecture; barriers to entry; board meeting; candidate; candidates; career; career advancement; Certificate;

Preparing the Future Workforce: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Policy in K12 Education in Wisconsin

Last December, the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Coalition - a national organization of more than 600 groups representing knowledge workers, educators, scientists, engineers, and technicians wrote to President-elect Obama urging him to "not lose sight of the critical role that STEM education plays in enabling the United States to remain the economic and technological leader of the 21st century global marketplace." While that imperative appears to have resonated in Washington, has it and should it resonate in Madison? This report attempts to answer that question by examining the extent to which STEM skills are a necessity for tomorrow's Wisconsin workforce, whether our schools are preparing students to be STEM-savvy workers, and where STEM falls in the state's list of educational priorities

Spectrum Management: Property Rights, Markets, and The Commons

Gerald Faulhaber and David Farberconsider alternatives to the current licensing regime for spectrum, which appears to lead to substantial inefficiencies in spectrum allocation.Specifically, they examine two property rights regimes and a commons regime.Theynote that economists have favored a market-based regime while engineers have favored a commons-based regime to promote new technologies. Mr. Faulhaber and Mr. Farbershow that thereis aproperty rights market-based regime that unleashes the power of the market andthe power of the new technologies to efficiently allocate spectrum, and that is likely to meet our needs for the near-term future. This regime resolves the presumed dichotomy between the market-based and the commons-based views, so that both objectives can be realized.The authorsalso outline a transition processfor achieving the desired regime outcome that is a "win-win" for all stakeholders, and that could be politically feasible. The change to a property rights regime is likely to lower the cost of spectrum substantially, in many cases to zero.Mr. Faulhaber and Mr. Farberassert that a commons model and a market model can co-exist, at least until spectrum becomes truly scarce.

Developing the Curriculum for Collaborative Intellectual Property Education

Intellectual property education, i.e. how intellectual property should be taught or more importantly how intellectual property is learnt, is a recent addition to the academic 'intellectual property' agenda. The regulation, acquisition and management of intellectual property rights presents economic, ethical, social and policy challenges across the international academic and business communities. Intellectual property is also the starting point of interesting academic cross-disciplinary collaborations in learning and teaching and in research. It will probably always be primarily a law subject taught by lawyers to law students hoping to practice. At the same time there is a growing array of disciplines demanding an awareness of and a competence in handling intellectual property concepts and regulations. At Bournemouth, we have been teaching IP across the disciplines for more than a decade. Recently, the Higher Education Academy subject centres in Law and in Engineering jointly funded a project to research 'IP for Engineers'. WIPO has begun addressing IP Education in earnest. At an international symposium in July 2005, papers addressed different aspects of IP Education, including Collaboration between Law Faculties and other disciplines. In November 2005, they jointly sponsored a National Conference in China to consider IP Education from primary school thru postgraduate research. IP education beyond the law school raises interesting questions for anyone contemplating teaching this complex law subject to non-lawyers. What constitutes the IP syllabus? Who should be teaching IP? When should it be taught? How should it be taught? What resources should be available? This paper begins to explore some of the answers

Credit Where It’s Due: The Law and Norms of Attribution

The reputation we develop by receiving credit for the work we do proves to the world the nature of our human capital. If professional reputation were property, it would be the most valuable property that most people own because much human capital is difficult to measure. Although attribution is ubiquitous and important, it is largely unregulated by law. In the absence of law, economic sectors that value attribution have devised non-property regimes founded on social norms to acknowledge and reward employee effort and to attribute responsibility for the success or failure of products and projects. Extant contract-based and norms-based attribution regimes fail optimally to protect attribution interests. This article proposes a new approach to employment contracts designed to shore up the desirable characteristics of existing norms-based attribution systems while allowing legal intervention in cases of market failure. The right to public attribution would be waivable upon proof of a procedurally fair negotiation. The right to attribution necessary to build human capital, however, would be inalienable. Unlike an intellectual property right, attribution rights would not be enforced by restricting access to the misattributed work itself; the only remedy would be for the lost value of human capital. The variation in attribution norms that currently exists in different workplace cultures can and should be preserved through the proposed contract approach. The proposal strikes an appropriate balance between expansive and narrow legal protections for workplace knowledge and, in that respect, addresses one of the most vexing current debates at the intersection of intellectual property and employment law

The disjuncture of learning and recognition: credential assessment from the standpoint of Chinese immigrant engineers in Canada

To better recognise foreign qualifications, many OECD countries have promoted liberal fairness epitomised by universal standards and institutional efficiency. This paper departs from such a managerial orientation towards recognition. Building on recognitive justice, it proposes an alternative anchoring point for recognition practices: the standpoint or everyday experiences of immigrants. This approach is illustrated with a qualitative study of the credential recognition practices of the engineering profession in Canada. From the standpoint of Chinese immigrants, the study identifies a disjuncture between credential recognition practices and immigrants’ career stage post-migration. Taking this disjuncture as problematic, it further pinpoints recognition issues such as redundancy and arbitrariness, a narrow focus on undergraduate education, and a deficit view of training from other countries. While some of these issues may be addressed by improving administrative procedures, others demand a participatory space allowing immigrants to become partners of assessment, rather than merely its objects. (DIPF/Orig.

Summary of the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1)

Challenges related to development, deployment, and maintenance of reusable software for science are becoming a growing concern. Many scientists’ research increasingly depends on the quality and availability of software upon which their works are built. To highlight some of these issues and share experiences, the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1) was held in November 2013 in conjunction with the SC13 Conference. The workshop featured keynote presentations and a large number (54) of solicited extended abstracts that were grouped into three themes and presented via panels. A set of collaborative notes of the presentations and discussion was taken during the workshop. Unique perspectives were captured about issues such as comprehensive documentation, development and deployment practices, software licenses and career paths for developers. Attribution systems that account for evidence of software contribution and impact were also discussed. These include mechanisms such as Digital Object Identifiers, publication of “software papers”, and the use of online systems, for example source code repositories like GitHub. This paper summarizes the issues and shared experiences that were discussed, including cross-cutting issues and use cases. It joins a nascent literature seeking to understand what drives software work in science, and how it is impacted by the reward systems of science. These incentives can determine the extent to which developers are motivated to build software for the long-term, for the use of others, and whether to work collaboratively or separately. It also explores community building, leadership, and dynamics in relation to successful scientific software

An empirical look at software patents

U.S. legal changes have made it easier to obtain patents on inventions that use software. Software patents have grown rapidly and now comprise 15 percent of all patents. They are acquired primarily by large manufacturing firms in industries known for strategic patenting; only 5 percent belong to software publishers. The very large increase in software patent propensity over time is not adequately explained by changes in R&D investments, employment of computer programmers, or productivity growth. The residual increase in patent propensity is consistent with a sizeable rise in the cost effectiveness of software patents during the 1990s. We find evidence that software patents substitute for R&D at the firm level; they are associated with lower R&D intensity. This result occurs primarily in industries known for strategic patenting and is difficult to reconcile with the traditional incentive theory of patentsPatents