How University Departmens respond to the Rise of Academic Entrepreneurship? The Pasteur's Quadrant Explanation

This paper examines how universities can develop a new organizational structure to cope with the rise of academic entrepreneurship. By deploying the Pasteurian quadrant framework, knowledge creation and knowledge utilization in universities are measured. The relationships between university antecedents, Pasteurian orientation, and research performance are analyzed. A survey of university administrators and faculty members collected 634 responses from faculty members in 99 departments among 6 universities. The findings indicate that university antecedents of strategic flexibility and balancing commitment contribute to a greater Pasteurian orientation in university departments. The higher degree of Pasteurian orientation has significantly positive impacts on the performance both of knowledge creation and knowledge utilization. Moreover, the Pasteurian orientation acts as a mediator between university antecedents and research performance. Using cluster analysis, the departments are categorized into four groups. The differences between university- and department- factors in these four groups are examined and discussed. We conclude that not all university departments should move toward the Pasteurian group, and there are specific organizational and disciplinary factors resulting in mobility barriers among groups. Policies to encourage academic entrepreneurship should consider these mobility barriers, along with this new governance of science.Academic entrepreneurship, Pasteur’s quadrant, research excellence, research commercialization

Supply response of West African agricultural households

This paper explores the implications of preference heterogeneity between wives and husbands in nonresource-pooling rural West African households for the effect of crop price changes on agricultural production, i.e., their supply response. A "semi-cooperative" game-theoretic model of household decisionmaking, in which household members make unilateral time and income allocation decisions and negotiate over who controls these resources, is proposed. The model is used to show that Pareto efficiency in both production and consumption do not hold. It is then employed to simulate the supply response to cotton price increases accompanying agricultural sector liberalization in Burkina Faso in the early 1980s. The simulated semi-cooperative model predicts the cotton supply response of (monogamous) Burkinabé households to be 25 percent below that which would ensue in households facing the same production constraints yet whose members have identical preferences. The analysis indicates that in nonresource-pooling agricultural households, preference heterogeneity can be expected to mute supply response and may do so in a quantitatively significant manner. It illustrates how an intrahousehold approach that allows for such heterogeneity and for disaggregation of resource control by gender contributes to a better understanding of price effects.Gender ,Resource management. ,Households Decision making. ,Household resource allocation ,

Valuing improvements in the water rights system in South Africa : a contingent ranking approach

In the context of increasing water scarcity, understanding is growing that irrigation water rights are important and that a lack of effective water rights systems constitute a major reason for inefficient water management. This study carried out a contingent ranking experiment to study how smallholder irrigators in South Africa would value potential changes in water rights. Three specific dimensions of water rights, relevant for the South African case, are considered: duration, quality of title and transferability. Results indicate that smallholder irrigators are prepared to pay considerably higher water prices if improvements are made in the water rights system. This implies that the proposed interventions in the water rights system would improve the efficiency and productivity of the small-scale irrigation sector. The increased willingness to pay could furthermore also assist South African government to reach the objective of increased cost recovery

Horses as Sources of Proprietary Information: Commercialization, Conservation, and Compensation Pursuant to the Convention on Biological Diversity

Horses indigenous to East and Southeast (E/SE) Asia, including native, landrace, feral, and wild populations, embody valuable genetic diversity. Conservation efforts for animals have largely been driven by humane altruism, with little consideration for the information value of genomes. Yet, if horses are viewed as archives of information as well as objects of affection, their conservation shifts to a market-based paradigm. Horse genetic resources (GR) likely contain significant value to the lucrative global horse industry, including veterinary applications such as diagnostics, therapeutics, genetic markers, gene therapies, and cloning technologies. As biotechnology becomes increasingly sophisticated, mining of horse GR will accelerate, thus facilitating identification, inventorying, bioprospecting, and commercialization of genetic information. Yet, establishing a value chain that balances equitable compensation for commercial applications while promoting conservation of horse populations remains a challenge. Recommendations presented here include establishing regional and national human resource and institutional capacity (competent national authorities), that catalog eco-geographical inventories of horse GR; monitor, manage, market and direct equitable value chains from horse to genetic information to commercial products; and ensure revenue flow back to support conservation. This system will foster market incentives to build capacity for sustainable conservation of the diverse horse populations of E/SE Asia

Subsistence agriculture in Central and Eastern Europe: how to break the vicious circle?

Subsistence agriculture is probably the least understood and the most neglected type of agriculture. In a globalised, market-driven world, it remains at the same time a myth and a marginal phenomenon. CONTENTS: Subsistence Agriculture in Development: Its Role in Processes of Structural Change; Franz Heidhues, Michael Brüntrup. Institutions and Technologies for Subsistence Agriculture: How to Increase Commercialization; Zvi Lerman. Policy Options to Overcome Subsistence Agriculture in the CEECs; Joachim von Braun, Daniela Lohlein. Decision Making Patterns of Subsistence Farmers in Bulgaria; Plamen Mishev, Philip Kostov. Commercialisation of Subsistence Agriculture in Transition Economies: On Imperfect Competition, Market Development and Support Policies; Ernst-August Nuppenau. Development Perspectives of Subsistence Farms in Southeastern Poland: Social Buffer Stock or Commercial Agriculture? Martin Petrick, Ewa Tyran. The Market Potential and Patterns of Contemporary Agriculture in Romania's Northwestern Plain; Csaba M. Kovács. Subsistence Farming in Bulgaria: Between Tradition and Market Requirements; Diana Kopeva, Nivelin Noev. The Significance of Subsistence Farming in Georgia as an Economic and Social Buffer; Hannah Kegel. Agrarian Reform and Subsistence Agriculture in Russia; Vladimir Yefimov. Economic Background and Development Opportunities of Individual Subsidiary Holdings in the Ukraine: Some Empirical Evidence; Andriy Nedoborovskyy. Modeling Subsistence Agriculture in Russia: Effects of Total Productivity Changes and Reduction of Marketing Margins; Peter Wehrheim, Peter Wobst --

Endogenous Discounting and Climate Policy

Under risk of abrupt climate change, the occurrence hazard is added to the social discount rate. As a result, the social discount rate (i) increases and (ii) turns endogenous to the global warming policy. The second effect bears profound policy implications that are magnified by economic growth. In particular, we find that greenhouse gases (GHG) emission should be terminated at a finite time so that the ensuing occurrence risk will vanish in the long run. Due to the public bad nature of the catastrophic risk, the second effect is ignored in a competitive allocation and unregulated economic growth will give rise to excessive emissions. In fact, the GHG emission paths under the optimal and competitive growth regimes lie at the extreme ends of the range of feasible emissions. We derive the Pigouvian hazard tax that implements the optimal growth regime.abrupt climate change, hazard rate, discounting, economic growth, emission policy, H23, H41, O13, O40, Q54, Q58,

An Assessment of PIER Electric Grid Research 2003-2014 White Paper

This white paper describes the circumstances in California around the turn of the 21st century that led the California Energy Commission (CEC) to direct additional Public Interest Energy Research funds to address critical electric grid issues, especially those arising from integrating high penetrations of variable renewable generation with the electric grid. It contains an assessment of the beneficial science and technology advances of the resultant portfolio of electric grid research projects administered under the direction of the CEC by a competitively selected contractor, the University of California’s California Institute for Energy and the Environment, from 2003-2014