Complementarities and spillovers in mergers: an empirical investigation using patent data

We investigate the merger behavior of firms in the plant biotechnology sector using firm-level patent data for public and private firms in the 1980s and 1990s. Conditional logit estimation is used to estimate the probability that the firms will match in mergers and spinoffs. We calculate several patent portfolio-based measures of complementarity and spillovers between firms, and find that both are important to defining a good match of acquirer and target. However, complementarities provide the more robust explanation. The mergers and spinoffs observed in plant biotechnology may have been designed to overcome the anti-commons problem of mutually blocking technology, an extreme form of complementarity. Our results highlight the need to integrate patent and competition policy.mergers, acquisitions, patents, plant biotechnology, agricultural biotechnology, complementarities, spillovers,

Consulting pupils in assessment for learning classrooms: the twists and turns of working with students as co‐researchers

Research literature on students as researchers demonstrates a spectrum of constructive ways in which students are being actively engaged in school and classroom action inquiries. Any identified tensions lie in the degree to which students themselves are genuinely engaged as action researchers. Increasingly, externally driven agendas for change and improvement are appropriating action research as means to facilitate teachers in developing new skills and tailor‐making national initiatives. According students appropriately democratic roles in such research processes are a lot less evident. This paper illustrates and discusses some of the difficulties, tensions and positive outcomes of engaging with students as co‐researchers at Key Stage 3 within a nationally funded project that intersects an action research policy framework supporting the introduction of Assessment for Learning throughout Northern Ireland. Issues discussed include student research advisory groups, students as data gatherers and students acting as co‐interpreters of video‐taped and image‐based classroom data