A Bayesian Real Option Approach to Patents and Optimal Renewal Fees

This article aims at estimating the optimal profile of renewal fees patent offices should implement. It is at the crossroad of two strands of literature. The first strand is the theoretical literature analysing renewal fees as an optimal revelation mechanism. The second strand is the econometric literature developing real option models of patent renewal decisions to assess the value of patents. Using data from the French patent office, we find that there is little room to lower the social cost of patents without affecting the monetary incentives to apply for a patent and innovate. We show that a menu of optimally defined profiles helps to further discriminate among patents.

Precautionary principle and the cost benefit analysis of innovative projects

Public authorities often invoke the precautionary principle to ban or postpone the development of innovative projects with uncertain but potentially harmful irreversible impacts on the environment or health. As stated in the Rio declaration, the precautionary principle suggests balancing costs and benefits associated with irreversible decisions while taking account of the perspective to acquire better but costly information in the future. Though the real option theory seems to be an appropriate tool to deal with the precautionary principle it has two important limits with this respect. First it focuses on Markovian processes rather than on Bayesian learning. Second, it disregards the role of preferences whereas preferences are at the core of the seemingly linked concept of precautionary saving. The article is an attempt to circumvent these two limits. A canonical model of Bayesian real option expressed in terms of intertemporal utility maximisation is presented and solved. The optimal decision rule is discussed in the light of the precautionary principle. It is then shown how to switch consistently to an equivalent problem expressed in terms of costs and benefits

A Bayesian Real Option Approach to Patents and Optimal Renewal Fees

This article aims at estimating the optimal profile of renewal fees patent offices should implement. It is at the crossroad of two strands of literature. The first strand is the theoretical literature analysing renewal fees as an optimal revelation mechanism. The second strand is the econometric literature developing real option models of patent renewal decisions to assess the value of patents. Using data from the French patent office, we find that there is little room to lower the social cost of patents without affecting the monetary incentives to apply for a patent and innovate. We show that a menu of optimally defined profiles helps to further discriminate among patents

Les impôts locaux sont-ils gaspillés?

Bien qu'il est généralement admis en économie publique que le fossé qui sépare l'approche positive des choix publics et leur approche normative implique l'existence de possibles pareto améliorations dans les choix en matière de dépense publique, il semble que l'économiste manque d'outils adéquats pour déterminer la réelle importance de ces possibles améliorations. Le présent article vise à combler, en partie, le manque et met plus particulièrement l'accent sur les inefficacités coût dans la production de biens et services publics locaux. En effet, ces inefficacités étant indubitablement des inefficacités paretiennes, elles sont nécessairement à l'origine d'un gaspillage des ressources fiscales. Une méthode paramétrique fondée sur l'application du concept économétrique de frontière stochastique au concept microéconomique de fonction d'utilité en équivalent monétaire est développée puis appliquée dans le contexte du modèle bien connu de l'électeur médian. Une mise œuvre à partir de données sur les communes françaises est finalement proposée.Dépense publique locale, efficacité coût, fonction de revenu minimum, frontière stochastique, électeur médian

Highly trans-stereospecific Isoprene Polymerization by Neodymium Borohydrido Catalysts

Highly stereospecific polymerization of isoprene was achieved using borohydrido neodymium complexes. In combination with stoichiometric amounts of dialkylmagnesium, Nd(BH4)3(THF)3 (1) and Cp*'Nd(BH4)2(THF)2 (2) (Cp*' = C5Me4nPr) afford very efficient catalysts. Activity reaches 37300 g polyisoprene/mol Nd/h. Half-lanthanidocene 2 gives rise to polyisoprene 98.5 % trans-regular, the highest content yet described for a homogeneous organometallic catalyst. NMR experiments argue for the formation of bimetallic Nd(m-BH4)Mg active species

Top Two Algorithms Revisited

Top Two algorithms arose as an adaptation of Thompson sampling to best arm identification in multi-armed bandit models (Russo, 2016), for parametric families of arms. They select the next arm to sample from by randomizing among two candidate arms, a leader and a challenger. Despite their good empirical performance, theoretical guarantees for fixed-confidence best arm identification have only been obtained when the arms are Gaussian with known variances. In this paper, we provide a general analysis of Top Two methods, which identifies desirable properties of the leader, the challenger, and the (possibly non-parametric) distributions of the arms. As a result, we obtain theoretically supported Top Two algorithms for best arm identification with bounded distributions. Our proof method demonstrates in particular that the sampling step used to select the leader inherited from Thompson sampling can be replaced by other choices, like selecting the empirical best arm.Comment: 75 pages, 8 figures, 3 table

Construction de bancs de filtres non uniformes à partir des paquets d'ondelettes

Nous proposons une nouvelle représentation dans le plan temps-fréquence, des signaux à énergie finie. Nous commencerons par décrire deux bibliothèques de bases orthogonales qui sont les paquets d'ondelettes et les ondelettes de Malvar. Nous présentons ensuite les bases Σ-dyadiques d'ondelettes qui forment une extension de ces deux dernières et présenterons les représentations temps-fréquence correspondantes. Les connexions entre les bases orthogonales d'ondelettes discrètes avec d'une part les filtres à réponse impulsionnelle finie et d'autre part les bancs de filtres à reconstruction parfaite ont été établies par plusieurs auteurs. Les représentations obtenues nous permettent de construire de nouvelles familles de bancs de filtres non uniformes

Structural diversity in the borohydrido lanthanides series: first isolation and X Ray crystal structure of ionic [Sm(BH4)2(THF)5]+[Cp*'Sm(BH4)3]-

International audienceTwo new borohydrido complexes of samarium were prepared: [Sm(BH4)2(THF)5]+[Cp*'Sm(BH4)3]- (1) and Cp*'2Sm(BH4)(THF) (3) (Cp*' = C5Me4nPr). X Ray studies revealed that 1 displays an unprecedented ionic structure comprising a half samarocene moiety, whereas 3 is monomeric and bears a terminal BH4 ligand

Software Diversity: Challenges to handle the imposed, Opportunities to harness the chosen

National audienceDiversity emerges as a critical concern that spans all activities in software engineering (from design to verification, from deployment to runtime resilience) and appears in all sorts of domains, which rely on software intensive systems, from systems of systems to pervasive combinations of Internet of Things and Internet of Services. If these domains are apparently radically different, we envision a strong convergence of the scientific principles underpinning their construction and validation towards flexible and open yet dependable systems. In this paper, we discuss the software engineering challenges raised by these requirements for flexibility and openness, focusing on four dimensions of diversity: the diversity of functionalities required by the different customers; the diversity of languages used by the stakeholders involved in the construction of these systems; the diversity of runtime environments in which software has to run and adapt; the diversity of failures against which the system must be able to react. In particular, we want to emphasize the challenges for handling imposed diversity, as well as the opportunities to leverage chosen diversity. The main challenge is that software diversity imposes to integrate the fact that software must adapt to changes in the requirements and environment -- in all development phases and in unpredictable ways. Yet, exploiting and increasing software diversity is a great opportunity to allow the spontaneous exploration of alternative software solutions and proactively prepare for unforeseen changes. Concretely, we want to provide software engineers with the ability: to characterize an 'envelope' of possible variations; to compose 'envelopes' (to discover new macro envelopes in an opportunistic manner); to dynamically synthesize software inside a given envelop

Customization and 3D Printing: A Challenging Playground for Software Product Lines

International audience3D printing is gaining more and more momentum to build customized product in a wide variety of fields. We conduct an exploratory study of Thingiverse, the most popular Website for sharing user-created 3D design files, in order to establish a possible connection with software product line (SPL) engineering. We report on the socio-technical aspects and current practices for modeling variability, implementing variability, configuring and deriving products, and reusing artefacts. We provide hints that SPL-alike techniques are practically used in 3D printing and thus relevant. Finally, we discuss why the customization in the 3D printing field represents a challenging playground for SPL engineering