Three essays on welfare implications of R&D policies in the presence of spillovers

This dissertation consists of three essays investigating welfare implications of R&D policies in the presence of spillovers.;The first essay examines the policy implications of a research joint venture (RJV) while introducing endogenous spillovers and costly RJV. The research joint venture is costly in the sense that the firms incur two kinds of costs when they join in an RJV: RJV formation costs and spillover costs. RJV formation costs are modeled as fixed while spillover costs increase with the amounts of information sharing within an RJV. We derive the condition under which firms do not have an incentive to form an RJV, and identify when firms within an RJV share information completely. This essay also finds that private interests with an RJV are not consistent with public interests for a wide range of RJV formation costs, which suggests the potential need for active government intervention with respect to RJV formation.;The second essay investigates the welfare effects of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in terms of north-south trade. It asks which southern countries, if any, should provide more IPR protection, assuming that the differentiated IPR protection among southern countries can be made through a WTO (World Trade Organization) agreement. Only the northern country innovates, and n-1 southern countries have different capacities to absorb knowledge from the northern innovations. The outcome of innovations reduces the unit production cost of the northern firm, and also provides benefits to the southern firms through spillovers. This essay shows that the southern countries can be classified into three groups in terms of the welfare effects of spillovers. The countries in the first group are better off from relaxed IPR protection both in their own countries and in the other countries. The countries in the second group are better off from spillovers in their country, but worse off from spillovers in the other group. The third group suffers from welfare loss whenever IPR protection is relaxed in any southern country. The northern country is worse off by relaxed IPR protection in any southern country for wide ranges of R&D efficiency and the sum of spillovers.;The last essay combines the analysis of the R&D cooperation with the strategic trade policy theory. Endogenizing spillovers (information sharing) within an RJV, it identifies when the RJV works as a tool of strategic trade policy, and provides its welfare implications. Many results obtained in the third market structure become reversed in the integrated market structure. In the situation where only the home country allows an RJV formation while the foreign country does not, allowing an RJV benefits the home country in the third market structure, but it hurts the home country in the case of integrated market structure if spillover costs are sufficiently high. We also identify the Nash equilibria of the policy game in which both the home and the foreign countries simultaneously decide whether to allow an RJV or not, and investigate the welfare implications when both the home and the foreign countries allow an RJV formation in each country. (Abstract shortened by UMI.

Heterogeneity of Southern Countries and Southern Intellectual Property Rights Policy

We develop a model with one innovating northern firm and heterogeneous southern firms that compete in a final product market. We assume southern firms differ in their ability to adapt technology and study southern incentives to protect intellectual property rights. We find that, in a non-cooperative equilibrium, governments resist IPR protection, but collectively southern countries benefit from some protection. We show that, in general, countries with more efficient firms prefer higher collective IPR protection than those with less efficient firms. Given the aggregate level of IPR protection, it is more efficient if the more efficient countries have weaker IPR protection.

Welfare Effects of Intellectual Property Rights Under Asymmetric Spillovers

We develop a model with one innovating northern firm and several heterogeneous Southern firms that compete in a final product market. We assume the southern firms differ in their ability to adapt technology and use this heterogeneity to study the differing incentives of southern governments to protect intellectual property rights. We find that governments representing more efficient firms have greater incentive to protect IPR than do those representing less efficient firms. However, efficiency considerations imply that, given policies resulting in the same overall innovation rate, it would be better to have weaker IPR protection for the more efficient southern firms.innovation; imperfect competition; commercial policy; intellectual property rights protection; trade

Heterogeneity of southern countries and southern intellectual property rights policy

We develop a model with one innovating northern firm and heterogeneous southern firms that compete in a final product market. We assume southern firms differ in their ability to adapt technology and study southern incentives to protect intellectual property rights. We find that, in a non-cooperative equilibrium, governments resist IPR protection, but collectively southern countries benefit from some protection. We show that, in general, countries with more efficient firms prefer higher collective IPR protection than those with less efficient firms. Given the aggregate level of IPR protection, it is more efficient if the more efficient countries have weaker IPR protection

Large-scale filamentary structures around the Virgo cluster revisited

We revisit the filamentary structures of galaxies around the Virgo cluster, exploiting a larger dataset based on the HyperLeda database than previous studies. In particular, this includes a large number of low-luminosity galaxies, resulting in better sampled individual structures. We confirm seven known structures in the distance range 4~$h^{-1}$~Mpc~$<$ SGY~$<$ 16~$h^{-1}$ Mpc, now identified as filaments, where SGY is the axis of the supergalactic coordinate system roughly along the line of sight. The Hubble diagram of the filament galaxies suggests they are infalling toward the main-body of the Virgo cluster. We propose that the collinear distribution of giant elliptical galaxies along the fundamental axis of the Virgo cluster is smoothly connected to two of these filaments (Leo~II~A and B). Behind the Virgo cluster (16~$h^{-1}$~Mpc~$<$ SGY~$<$ 27~$h^{-1}$~Mpc), we also identify a new filament elongated toward the NGC 5353/4 group ("NGC 5353/4 filament") and confirm a sheet that includes galaxies from the W and M clouds of the Virgo cluster ("W-M sheet"). In the Hubble diagram, the NGC 5353/4 filament galaxies show infall toward the NGC 5353/4 group, whereas the W-M sheet galaxies do not show hints of gravitational influence from the Virgo cluster. The filamentary structures identified can now be used to better understand the generic role of filaments in the build-up of galaxy clusters at z~$\approx$~0.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Ultrafast giant magnetic cooling effect in ferromagnetic Co/Pt multilayers

The magnetic cooling effect originates from a large change in entropy by the forced magnetization alignment, which has long been considered to be utilized as an alternative environment-friendly cooling technology compared to conventional refrigeration. However, an ultimate timescale of the magnetic cooling effect has never been studied yet. Here, we report that a giant magnetic cooling (up to 200 K) phenomenon exists in the Co/Pt nanomultilayers on a femtosecond timescale during the photoinduced demagnetization and remagnetization, where the disordered spins are more rapidly aligned, and thus magnetically cooled, by the external magnetic field via the lattice-spin interaction in the multilayer system. These findings were obtained by the extensive analysis of time-resolved magneto-optical responses with systematic variation of laser fluence as well as external field strength and direction. Ultrafast giant magnetic cooling observed in the present study can enable a new avenue to the realization of ultrafast magnetic devices.111Ysciescopu