This book opens a fresh chapter in the debate on local enterprise clusters and their strategies for upgrading in the global economy. The authors employ a novel conceptual framework in their research on industrial clusters in Europe, Latin America and Asia and provide new perspectives and insights for researchers and policymakers alike.

Governance in global value chains

This article argues that in its “canonical” form, the path dependence model, with its core concept of lock-in, affords a restrictive and narrowly applicable account of regional and local industrial evolution, an account moreover that is tied to problematic underpinnings based on equilibrist thinking. As such, the canonical path dependence model actually stresses continuity rather than change. The article explores recent developments in political science, in which there have been active attempts to rethink the application of path dependence to the evolution of institutions so as to emphasize change rather than continuity. These developments are used to argue for a rethinking of path dependence ideas in economic geography.

Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography—Rethinking Regional Path Dependence: Beyond Lock‐in to Evolution

Two-person Cooperative Games

This paper surveys the existing fragmentary data on the growth of university-owned patents and university-invented patents in Europe. We find evidence that university patenting is growing, but this phenomenon remains heterogeneous across countries and disciplines. We found some evidence that university licensing is not profitable for most universities, although some do succeed in attracting substantial additional revenues. This might be due to the fact that patents and publications tend to go hand in hand. In a dynamic setting however, we fear that the increase in university patenting exacerbates differences across universities in terms of financial resources and research outcome.

University Patenting and its Effects on Academic Research: the Emerging European Evidence

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Career Choice Intentions of Students with Family Business Background

Echo-imaging has opened the rich habitat of nocturnal air space for bats. However echo imaging is governed by quite different physiological constraints than visual imaging. I will present results from psychophysical experiments both from the field and from the lab, and electrophysiological data de lineating these constrains in an attempt to explain how bats can achieve such exceptional sensory skills based on classical mammalian sensory-motor systems. Specifically, we have addressed how fast echolocation can get in terms of a reaction time, and how well a sonar system can be focussed on a point in space. The data show that reaction times of wild, hunting bats are below 100 ms, which is noteworthy given the discontinuous, stroboscopic nature of echolocation. The psychophysical and electrophysiological data show how bad mammalian auditory spatial resolution is in principle, and how bats have evolved complex and dynamic accessory elements to overcome these limitations.

https://www.orn.mpg.de/274575/121108_Lutz-Wiegrebe.pdf

Fast and focussed: spatio-temporal processing in bat sonar

A recent literature has pointed at potential negative effects of exchange rate volatility on innovation. In this paper, we propose that there may be a direct effect as well as an indirect effect via export activity. We test these hypotheses for sectoral R&D intensities using OECD panel data for manufacturing and services sectors for 14 OECD economies and the years 1987 - 2003. We find that the direct negative effect of volatility is pronounced in manufacturing sector but is dominated by the indirect effect via the export channel. Services do not face any effects of volatility on R&D intensities. While it is not clear which channel dominates our results confirm that there is a negative volatility affect related to openness on a sectoral level.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/32570/1/610738755.pdf

Sectoral R&D intensity and Exchange Rate Volatility: A Panel Study on Economies of the OECD

Strong growth in disposable income has inflated consumption to unprecedented , but not sustainable levels In this process consumer behavior has been changing To explain the driving forces of this development, the paper introduces a theory of evolving consumer preferences that is molded in an evolutionary paradigm The theory allows to better assess how individual welfare would be directly affected by policy measures designed to make consumption sustainable Such policy measures are likely to also trigger indirect welfare losses by negative employment effects The policy debate therefore needs to pay attention to both direct and indirect welfare effects As a concrete proposal a redesign of consumption taxes is discussed that accounts for both concerns

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/57553/1/679423702.pdf

Sustainability and the Problem of Consumption

Firm foundations are an important factor for regional development. A lot of valuable empirical research was already conducted to figure out which factors influence regional foundation activities. In this paper the focus is slightly different because changing patterns of firm foundation activities are the units of investigation and will be identified. Thus, the aim of the analysis is to find out if short- to medium-term changes in the regional firm foundation activity do exist and how they look like. Such an approach can serve as an input for future research in which the relevant factors that lead to theses changes shall be detected.

Empirical test of the existence of dynamic changes in regional firm foundation activities

We replicate three pricing tasks of Gneezy, List and Wu (2006) for which they document the so called uncertainty effect, namely that people value a binary lottery over non-monetary outcomes less than other people value the lottery’s worse outcome. Unlike the authors who implement a verbal lottery description, we use a physical lottery format which rules out any misinterpretation of the lottery structure. Contrary to Gneezy, List and Wu, we systematically observe that subjects’ willingness to pay for the lottery is significantly higher than other subjects’ willingness to pay for the lottery’s worse outcome.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/31723/1/591913232.PDF

Max Planck

Papers

Fast and focussed: spatio-temporal processing in bat sonar

Sectoral R&D intensity and Exchange Rate Volatility: A Panel Study on Economies of the OECD

Sustainability and the Problem of Consumption

Empirical test of the existence of dynamic changes in regional firm foundation activities

Uncertainty effect revisited using physical lottery format