How private property protection influences the impact of intellectual property rights on economic growth: Working paper series--14-03

Although policy makers typically assume a positive relationship between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and economic growth, the empirical evidence on the IPR-growth relationship is rather inconclusive (e.g. Andersen and Konzelmann, 2008). We conjecture in this paper that the weak IPR-growth evidence in previous studies may be due to a neglect of the role of finance markets and private property rights. Our conjecture is motivated by the recent law and finance literature. We test our conjecture with a cross-section of 98 countries and find that once we modify our measure of IPRs to take into account general property rights, there is stronger evidence for a positive relationship between IPRs and economic growth. Our findings not only help explain the IPR-innovation puzzle in Lerner (2009), among others, but also have significant theoretical as well as policy implications

The Properties of Type Ia Supernova Host Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We investigate the properties and environments of Type Ia Supernova (SN Ia) host galaxies in the Stripe 82 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey centered on the celestial equator. Host galaxies are defined as the galaxy nearest to the supernova (SN) in terms of angular distance whose velocity difference from the SN is less than 1000 km s^{-1}. Eighty seven SN Ia host galaxies are selected from the SDSS Main galaxy sample with the apparent r-band magnitude m_r < 17.77, and compared with the SDSS Main galaxies. The SN Ia rates for early and late-type galaxies are 0.81 +- 0.19 SN (100yr)^{-1} and 0.99 +- 0.21 SN (100yr)^{-1}, respectively. We find that the host galaxies have a color distribution consistent with that of the Main galaxies, regardless of their morphology. However, host galaxies are on average brighter than the Main galaxies by ~ 0.3 mag over the range of -18.3 > M_r > -21.3. But the brighter ends of their luminosity distributions are similar. The distribution of the distance to the nearest neighbor galaxy shows that SNe Ia are more likely to occur in isolated galaxies without close neighbors. We also find that the SN Ia host galaxies are preferentially located in a region close to massive galaxy clusters compared to the Main galaxies.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication on Ap

Origin of the high piezoelectric response in PbZr(1-x)TixO3

High resolution x-ray powder diffraction measurements on poled PbZr(1-x)TixO3 (PZT) ceramic samples close to the rhombohedral-tetragonal phase boundary (the so-called morphotropic phase boundary, MPB) have shown that for both rhombohedral and tetragonal compositions, the piezoelectric elongation of the unit cell does not occur along the polar directions but along those directions associated with the monoclinic distortion. This work provides the first direct evidence for the origin of the very high piezoelectricity in PZT.Comment: 4 pages, 4 EPS figures embedded. More specific title and abstract. To appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Role of Baroclinic Processes on Flushing Characteristics in a Highly Stratified Estuarine System, Mobile Bay, Alabama

Flushing of an estuary quantifies the overall water exchange between the estuary and coastal ocean and is crucially important for water quality as well as biological and geochemical processes within the system. Flushing times and freshwater age in Mobile Bay were numerically calculated under realistic and various controlled forcing conditions. Their responses to external forcing were explained by the three‐dimensional characteristics of general circulation in the system. The flushing time ranges from 10 to 33 days under the 25th–75th percentile river discharges, nearly half of the previous estimates based on barotropic processes only, suggesting the important contribution of baroclinic processes. Their influence, quantified as the “new ocean influx,” is on the same order of the river discharge under low to moderate river discharge conditions. The baroclinic influence increases and then decreases with increasing river discharge, aligning with the response of horizontal density gradient. By enhancing the net influx from the ocean mainly through density‐driven circulation, baroclinic processes contribute to reduce flushing times. The three‐dimensional circulation, which differs greatly between the wet and dry seasons, explains the temporal and spatial variations of the flushing characteristics. Wind forcing influences the three‐dimensional circulation in the system with easterly and northerly winds tending to reduce the flushing time, while southerly and westerly winds the opposite

Measurements of the Composite Fermion masses from the spin polarization of 2-D electrons in the region 1<ν<21<\nu<2

Measurements of the reflectivity of a 2-D electron gas are used to deduce the polarization of the Composite Fermion hole system formed for Landau level occupancies in the regime 1<\nu<2. The measurements are consistent with the formation of a mixed spin CF system and allow the density of states or `polarization' effective mass of the CF holes to be determined. The mass values at \nu=3/2 are found to be ~1.9m_{e} for electron densities of 4.4 x 10^{11} cm^{-2}, which is significantly larger than those found from measurements of the energy gaps at finite values of effective magnetic field.Comment: 4 pages, 3 fig