FROM MARKET MAGIC TO CALYPSO SCIENCE POLICY A Review of Terence Kealey's The Economic Laws of Scientific Research

The current reconsideration of public research funding policies in the U.S., and U.K. and other industrialized economies makes it important that policy makers and the public understand the valid economic grounds for government support of science. This review article of a book that which argues for the ending of all government support of non-military R&D, provides an occasion to take stock of what is known about the subject. The review concludes that the extreme laissez-faire science policy arguments adroitly advanced by Terrance Kealey's book are analytically without foundation, and are based upon distortions and misinterpretations of the evidence of economic history, as well as on the misuse of econometric methods. The problem is that Mr. Kealey is an engaging writer and there still is in some policy circles an audience for his message, hence to undo the damage will call for concerted and persistent efforts on the part of economists specializing in the economics of science and technology.

Preparing for the Next, Very Long Crisis: Towards a ‘Cool’ Science and Technology Policy Agenda For a Globally Warming Economy

This short paper on a very big subject deals with a worry - a worry that the present economic crisis is likely to contribute to the already-existing temptations of governmental and private actors alike to behave in a time-inconsistent fashion when responding to the challenge of climate change. The specific concern here is that science and technology research commitments be launched soon enough on the scale that is likely to be needed, and that timely steps be taken toward the supportive adaptations in long-standing institutional and regulatory readjustments that can render those investments in knowledge more effective. Institutional changes, new incentive mechanisms and a rethinking of national policies with regard to exploitation of the international regime of intellectual property protections - are needed to successfully address the looming crisis of global climate change.GHG emissions, CO2 pricing, Strategic Energy Technologies, EU SET Plan, green technologies, R&D, IRP, global technology transfers

Mitigating "Anticommons" Harms to Science and Technology Research

There are three analytically distinct layers of the phenomenon that has been labeled “the anticommons” and indicted as a potential impediment to innovation resulting from patenting and enforcement of IPR obtained on academic research results. This paper distinguishes among “search costs”, “transactions costs”, and “multiple marginalization” effects in the pricing of licenses for commercial use of IP, and examines the distinctive resource allocation problems arising from each when exclusion rights over research inputs are distributed among independent owners. Where information use-rights are gross complements (either in production or consumption), multiple marginalization—seen here to be the core of the “anticommons” – is likely to result in extreme forms of “royalty stacking” that can pose serious impediments to R&D projects. The practical consequences, particularly for exploratory scientific research (contrasted with commercially-oriented R&D) are seen from a heuristic analysis of the effects of distributed ownership of scientific and technical database rights. A case is presented for the contractual construction of “research resource commons” designed as efficient IPR pools, as the preferable response to the anticommons.law and economics, IPR, licensing, anticommons, patent hold-ups, royalty stacking, database rights, contractual commons, efficient pools

Tragedy of the Public Knowledge 'Commons'? Global Science, Intellectual Property and the Digital Technology Boomerang

Radical legal innovations in intellectual property protection have been introduced by the little noticed European Database Directive of March 1996. This initiative, part of the larger institutional transformations initiated in response to the economic ramifications of rapid progress in digital information technologies, poses numerous contentious issues in law and economics. These are likely to create ambiguities for business and non-profit activities in this area for years to come, and the terms on which those issues are resolved will materially affect the costs and organizational feasibility of scientific projects that are of global reach and significance. This is the case especially in fields such as geology, oceanography and climatology, which depend heavily upon the collection, management and analysis of large volumes of observational data that cannot be regenerated. More generally the conduct of open, collaborative science - along with many of the benefits that flow from it for the developed and the developing economies alike - may be seriously jeopardized by the consequences of the new database protections. This raises the spectre of a new and different "tragedy of the commons," one created by continuing the unbalanced pressure to extract greater economic rents by means of controlling access to information. "Over-fencing," which is to say, the erection of artificial cost barriers to the production of reliable public knowledge by means of reliable public knowledge, threatens the future of "the public knowledge commons" that historically has proved critically important for rapid advance in science and technology. The paper sets out the economic case for the effectiveness of open, collaborative research, and the forces behind the recent, countervailing rush to strengthen and expand the scope of intellectual property rights protection. Focusing upon innovations in copyright law and the sui generis protection of hitherto unprotected content, it documents the genesis and analyzes the economic implications of the EC''s Database Directive, and related legislative proposals (H.R. 3125, H.R. 354 and H.R. 1858) in the US. The discussion concludes by advancing a number of modest remedial proposals that are intended to promote greater efforts to arrive at satisfactory policy solutions for this aspect of "the digital dilemma."economics of technology ;

Can ‘Open Science’ be Protected from the Evolving Regime of IPR Protections?

Increasing access charges and transactions costs arising from monopoly rights in data and information adversely affect the conduct of science, especially exploratory research programs. The latter are widely acknowledged to be critical for the sustained growth of knowledge-driven economies, but are most efficiently pursued in the “open science” mode. In some fields, informal cooperative norms of behavior among researchers– in regard to the sharing of timely access to raw data- steams and documented database resources – are being undermined by legal institutional innovations that accommodate the further privatising of the public domain in information. A variety of corrective measures are needed to restore proper balance to the IPR.

Understanding Digital Technology’s Evolution and the Path of Measured Productivity Growth: Present and Future in the Mirror of the Past

Three styles of explanation have been advanced by economists seeking to account for the so-called 'productivity paradox'. The coincidence of a persisting slowdown in the growth of measured total factor productivity (TFP) in the US, since the mid-1970's, with the wave of information technology (It) innovations, is said by some to be an illusion due to the mismeasurement of real output growth; by others to expose the mistaken expectations about the benefits of computerization; and by still others to reflect the amount of time, and the volume of intangible investments in 'learning', and the time required for ancillary innovations that allow the new digital technologies to be applied in ways that are reflected in measured productivity growth. This paper shows that rather than viewing these as competing hypotheses, the dynamics of the transition to a new technological and economic regime based upon a general purpose technology (GPT) should be understood to be likely to give rise to all three 'effects.' It more fully articulates and supports this thesis, which was first advanced in the 'computer and dynamo' papers by David (1990, 1991). The relevance of that historical experience is re-asserted and supported by further evidence rebutting skeptics who have argued that the diffusion of electrification and computerization have little in common. New evidence is produced about the links between IT use, mass customization, and the upward bias of output price deflators arising from the method used to 'chain in' new products prices. The measurement bias due to the exclusion of intangible investments from the scope of the official national product accounts also is examined. Further, it is argued that the development of the general-purpose PC delayed the re-organization of businesses along lines that would have more directly raised task productivity, even though the technologies yielded positive 'revenue productivity' gains for large companies. The paper concludes by indicating the emerging technical and organizational developments that are likely to deliver a sustained surge of measured TFP growth during the decades that lie immediately ahead.

Results of a study to detect spawning marks in otoliths of Northern anchovy, Engraulis mordax

An attempt was made to detect spawning marks on the otoliths (sagittae) of the northern anchovy, Engraulis mordax, from waters of the Southern California Bight. While no spawning marks were detected, a modification of an existing technique for observing daily growth rings was developed. A discussion is presented on detecting spawning checks in the northern anchovy. (15pp.

Surface Free Energies, Interfacial Tensions and Correlation Lengths of the ABF Models

The surface free energies, interfacial tensions and correlation lengths of the Andrews-Baxter-Forrester models in regimes III and IV are calculated with fixed boundary conditions. The interfacial tensions are calculated between arbitrary phases and are shown to be additive. The associated critical exponents are given by $2-\alpha_s=\mu=\nu$ with $\nu=(L+1)/4$ in regime III and $4-2\alpha_s=\mu=\nu$ with $\nu=(L+1)/2$ in regime IV. Our results are obtained using general commuting transfer matrix and inversion relation methods that may be applied to other solvable lattice models.Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX 2e, requires the amsmath packag