So far in this course we have dealt entirely with the evolution of characters that are controlled by simple Mendelian inheritance at a single locus. There are notes on the course website about gametic disequilibrium and how allele frequencies change at two loci simultaneously, but we didn’t discuss them. In every example we’ve considered we’ve imagined that we could understand something about evolution by examining the evolution of a single gene. That’s the domain of classical population genetics. For the next few weeks we’re going to be exploring a field that’s actually older than classical population genetics, although the approach we’ll be taking to it involves the use of population genetic machinery. If you know a little about the history of evolutionary biology, you may know that after the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900 there was a heated debate between the “biometricians” (e.g., Galton and Pearson) and the “Mendelians” (e.g., de Vries, Correns, Bateson, and Morgan). Biometricians asserted that the really important variation in evolution didn’t follow Mendelian rules. Height, weight, skin color, and similar traits seemed to

Human biochemical genetics

世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

The reference human genome sequence set the stage for studies of genetic variation and its association with human disease, but epigenomic studies lack a similar reference. To address this need, the NIH Roadmap Epigenomics Consortium generated the largest collection so far of human epigenomes for primary cells and tissues. Here we describe the integrative analysis of 111 reference human epigenomes generated as part of the programme, profiled for histone modification patterns, DNA accessibility, DNA methylation and RNA expression. We establish global maps of regulatory elements, define regulatory modules of coordinated activity, and their likely activators and repressors. We show that disease- and trait-associated genetic variants are enriched in tissue-specific epigenomic marks, revealing biologically relevant cell types for diverse human traits, and providing a resource for interpreting the molecular basis of human disease. Our results demonstrate the central role of epigenomic information for understanding gene regulation, cellular differentiation and human disease.

Integrative analysis of 111 reference human epigenomes

Empirical pricing studies are scarce in the modern literature in spite of their obvious importance for understanding competition. The present study employs a structural model to identify deviations of individual pricing routines from the commonly assumed single-period profit maximization. It is applied to individual wholesale firms, because wholesale pricing has a decisive influence on the price formation in the entire economic system and because hardly any research exists in this area. The results show that wholesale firms operate in imperfectly competitive world markets providing a highly differentiated service package. Traders apply pricing rules consistent with cost mark-up pricing. The mark-up varies among traders with the extent to which a firm's pricing strategy deviates from full profit maximization. This divergent behavior is associated with firm size, the type of buyers served and other aspects of the wholesale service package.

A model of pricing behavior: An econometric case study

The purpose of this study is to determine whethergender and business accomplishments influence the degree to which individualsperceive themselves to be entrepreneurs.Following a review of theliterature on the relationships among gender business accomplishments andentrepreneurial self-image, it is hypothesized that people with certainbusiness accomplishments will report a higher entrepreneurial self-image thanthose without such accomplishments. The second hypothesis predicts that women will report a lowerentrepreneurial self-image than men due to differences in particular businessaccomplishments. In other words, accomplishments will partially mediate therelationship between gender and entrepreneurial self-image.Data from asurvey of 207 alumni of a large Midwestern U.S. university were used to testthese hypotheses.Respondents, 148 male and 59 female, were asked abouttheir business accomplishments, as well as whether they considered themselvesentrepreneurs. Regression analyses of the survey data indicate thatbusiness owners, founders, and managers of small- and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) are most likely to describe themselves as entrepreneurs.Corporateentrepreneurs, including intrapreneurs and innovators, are not likely to callthemselves entrepreneurs.The data also suggest that women are less likelythan men to view themselves as entrepreneurs and tend to engage in businessactivities that are not regarded by either gender as entrepreneurial.(SAA)

Business Accomplishments, Gender, and Entrepreneurial Self-Image

This paper introduces the special issue of The Review of Industrial Organization on ‘The Dynamics of Industrial Organization’. What binds these papers together is a focus on markets in motion—the process by which new firms enter an industry, either grow and survive, or else ultimately exit out of the industry. In contrast to more traditional static analyses, the concern of these papers is identifying where do firms come from and what happens subsequent to their entry. Influences of geographic as well as product space are found to exert an influence on the dynamics of industrial organization.

/pdf/the-dynamics-of-industrial-organization-3b0k85g52m.pdf

The Dynamics of Industrial Organization

Human resources are recognised as one of the main sources of economic growth. The management of these resources (HRM) is therefore an important issue. However, while roughly half of all employees are employed in small and medium-sized enterprises, scientific studies on HRM are to a large extent limited to large enterprises. This thesis is an attempt to increase our understanding of how small and medium-sized enterprises manage their employees. The thesis examines main determinants of HRM practices within small and medium-sized enterprises, and how certain differences in HRM practices may affect an enterprise's performance and size.

Human Resource Management within small and medium-sized firms

In this study expectations and prediction errors are introduced in the context of retail price setting. A new model and a new data set are used to examine whether prediction errors influence retail price setting, whether prediction errors cause only limited price changes to maintain price stability and whether there are differences in influences according to whether prediction errors are positive or negative. The model is an extended version of a full costs pricing model and the averaged data are for a large number of shop types in German retailing for a long series of successive years.

/pdf/expectations-and-retail-profit-margins-2cnwg0ybt4.pdf

Roy Thurik

Papers

A model of pricing behavior: An econometric case study

Business Accomplishments, Gender, and Entrepreneurial Self-Image

The Dynamics of Industrial Organization

Human Resource Management within small and medium-sized firms

Expectations and retail profit margins