What is the ‘Future’ of Greek? Towards a Pragmatic Analysis

The paper investigates the problems related to futurity and modality in modern Greek. The discussion of Greek temporal future expressions is conducted with reference to relevant literature from the areas of English linguistics, cognitive studies and pragmatics. The focus is on the status of future-oriented expressions and the question whether they are primarily epistemic in nature, whether they are tense-based, or modality-based. It is argued that the future tense in Greek has a modal semantic base conveying epistemic modality and that the preferred future prospective reading is a pragmatic development of the semantic modal base. The author further suggests that the future reading is a kind of presumptive meaning which follows from the neo-Gricean Principle of Informativeness, known as the I-principle (Levinson 2000) being a generalised interpretation which does not depend on contextual information

A Simple Theory of Defensive Patenting

This paper examines innovating firms’ incentives to engage in defensive patenting. It first establishes a “truce equilibrium” in patent enforcement: when litigation is costly, the equal strength of two symmetric parties’ patent portfolios deters any patent disputes along the equilibrium path. This equilibrium behavior generates two benefits of defensive patenting, namely, to prevent licensing outlays and to protect downstream investments. In addition, firms can use patents to coordinate non-contractible investment decisions. Depending on the joint interests, they can either reach a license in order to guarantee high investment incentives, or agree not to grant a license so that investments are deterred by the litigation threat. On the other hand, the strategic patenting concern may generate a bandwagon of patent accumulation, where firms rush to the patent office to get a patent, but the subsequent investment performance is the same as when there is no patent at all. The paper also argues that defensive patenting may weaken the effectiveness of patents as an appropriation scheme. This offers an explanation that the “pro-patent” policy shift in the United States since the 1980s may actually have undermined the incentive power of the patent system

In the shadow of giants

Intellectual giants provide broad shoulders for subsequent inventors. Their unfinished inquiry, however, also casts shadow on the prospect of future research. This paper incorporates this shadow effect into a two-stage innovation process and shows that patenting the first-stage result (the basic invention) may enhance the second-stage innovation. It is optimal to reject patent protection to the basic invention only when this beneficial effect does not arise, and when it is essential to preserve the pioneering inventor's incentive to continue research activities.Cumulative Innovation; Patentable Subject Matter; Probabilistic Patents; Search; Shadow Effect

Protein chainmail variants in dsDNA viruses.

First discovered in bacteriophage HK97, biological chainmail is a highly stable system formed by concatenated protein rings. Each subunit of the ring contains the HK97-like fold, which is characterized by its submarine-like shape with a 5-stranded β sheet in the axial (A) domain, spine helix in the peripheral (P) domain, and an extended (E) loop. HK97 capsid consists of covalently-linked copies of just one HK97-like fold protein and represents the most effective strategy to form highly stable chainmail needed for dsDNA genome encapsidation. Recently, near-atomic resolution structures enabled by cryo electron microscopy (cryoEM) have revealed a range of other, more complex variants of this strategy for constructing dsDNA viruses. The first strategy, exemplified by P22-like phages, is the attachment of an insertional (I) domain to the core 5-stranded β sheet of the HK97-like fold. The atomic models of the Bordetella phage BPP-1 showcases an alternative topology of the classic HK97 topology of the HK97-like fold, as well as the second strategy for constructing stable capsids, where an auxiliary jellyroll protein dimer serves to cement the non-covalent chainmail formed by capsid protein subunits. The third strategy, found in lambda-like phages, uses auxiliary protein trimers to stabilize the underlying non-covalent chainmail near the 3-fold axis. Herpesviruses represent highly complex viruses that use a combination of these strategies, resulting in four-level hierarchical organization including a non-covalent chainmail formed by the HK97-like fold domain found in the floor region. A thorough understanding of these structures should help unlock the enigma of the emergence and evolution of dsDNA viruses and inform bioengineering efforts based on these viruses

Revisiting Antitrust Limits to Probabilistic Patent Disputes: Strategic Entry and Asymmetric Information

We consider separately strategic entry and asymmetric information in the design of the settlement policy governing patent disputes, with a focus on Shapiro (2003)’s consumer protection rule. We show that, when a potential entrant strategically incurs an entry cost before engaging in a patent dispute, a more stringent settlement policy of deterring costly entry is preferable to the patent-holder and may lead to higher static efficiency. Concerning asymmetric information, when the disputants, but not the court, learn the patent validity, we derive an “expectation test,” which requires that a laxer settlement policy be coupled with higher expected patent validity under settlement

Marginal Deformations of Tree-Level N=4 SYM from Twistor String Theory

The topological B-model with target the supertwistor space CP(3|4) is known to describe perturbative amplitudes of N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory. We review the extension of this correspondence to the superconformal gauge theories that arise as marginal deformations of N=4 by considering the effects of turning on a certain closed string background, which results in non-anticommutativity in the fermionic directions of CP(3|4). We generalise the twistor string prescription for amplitudes to this case and illustrate it with some simple examples.Comment: 7 pages. Talk by K. Z. at the RTN conference "Constituents, Fundamental Forces and Symmetries of the Universe", Corfu, Greece, Sept. 20-26, 2005. Contribution to the proceeding

Consumer Response to Cigarette Excise Tax Changes

We use a rich dataset of weekly cigarette sales to examine how consumers adapt their behavior before and after excise tax increases--whether by reducing demand, stockpiling, traveling to low-tax jurisdictions, or substituting towards lower-cost brands. Consumer response varies substantially for different types of cigarettes. Stockpiling primarily occurs for discount cigarettes and is most pronounced at stores far from lower-tax jurisdictions. Border-crossing is greatest at stores close to low-tax jurisdictions and occurs primarily for cigarettes sold by the carton. Finally, we find modest short-run substitution towards lower-cost brands following a tax-increase, consistent with consumers smoothing the transition to higher cigarette taxes. These differences in consumer behavior lead to meaningful differences in tax incidence--pass-through is higher for discount cigarettes which have more inelastic demand. Pass-through is lower near low-tax borders, especially for cigarettes sold by the carton for which cross-border evasion is greatest.