The Impact of Uncertain Intellectual Property Rights on the Market For Ideas: Evidence From Patent Grant Delays

This paper considers the impact of the intellectual property (IP) system on the timing of cooperation/licensing by start-up technology entrepreneurs. If the market for technology licenses is efficient, the timing of licensing is independent of whether IP has already been granted. In contrast, the need to disclosure complementary (yet unprotected) knowledge, asymmetric information, or search costs may retard efficient technology transfer. In these cases, reductions in uncertainty surrounding the scope and extent of IP rights may facilitate trade in the market for ideas. We employ a dataset combining information about cooperative licensing and the timing of patent allowances (the administrative event when patent rights are clarified). While pre-allowance licensing does occur, the hazard rate for achieving a cooperative licensing agreement significantly increases after patent allowance. Moreover, the impact of the patent system depends on the strategic and institutional environment in which firms operate. Patent allowance seems to play a particularly important role for technologies with longer technology lifecycles or that lack alternative mechanisms such as copyright, reputation, or brokers. The findings suggest that imperfections in the market for ideas may be important, and that formal IP rights may facilitate gains from technological trade.

When Does Start-Up Innovation Spur the Gale of Creative Destruction?

This paper is motivated by the substantial differences in start-up commercialization strategies observed across different high-technology sectors. Specifically, we evaluate the conditions under which start-up innovators earn their returns on innovation through product market competition with more established firms (such as in many areas of the electronics industry) as opposed to cooperation with these incumbents (either through licensing, strategic alliances or outright acquisition as observed in the pharmaceutical industry). While the former strategy challenges incumbent market power, the latter strategy tends to reinforce current market structure. Though the benefits of cooperation include forestalling the costs of competition in the product market and avoiding duplicative investment in sunk assets, imperfections in the market for ideas' may lead to competitive behavior in the product market. Specifically, if the transaction costs of bargaining are high or incumbents are likely to expropriate ideas from start-up innovators, then product market competition is more likely. We test these ideas using a novel dataset of the commercialization strategies of over 100 start-up innovators. Our principal robust findings are that the probability of cooperation is increasing in the innovator's control over intellectual property rights, association with venture capitalists (which reduce their transactional bargaining costs), and in the relative cost of control of specialized complementary assets. Our conclusion is that the propensity for pro-competitive benefits from start-up innovators reflects an earlier market failure, in the market for ideas.'

Achieving Equity by Building a Bridge From Eligible to Enrolled

Calls for multilingual outreach and enrollment efforts to enable Californians of color and those with limited English proficiency to benefit from the Health Benefit Exchange. Recommends targeting high-need groups and strengthening data collection

Dynamic Commercialization Strategies for Disruptive Technologies: Evidence from the Speech Recognition Industry

When start-up innovation involves a potentially disruptive technology—initially lagging in the predominant performance metric, but with a potentially favorable trajectory of improvement—incumbents may be wary of engaging in cooperative commercialization with the start-up. While the prevailing theory of disruptive innovation suggests that this will lead to (exclusively) competitive commercialization and the eventual replacement of incumbents, we consider a dynamic strategy involving product market entry before switching to a cooperative commercialization strategy. Empirical evidence from the automated speech recognition industry from 1952 to 2010 confirms our main hypothesis.Wharton School. Mack Institute for Innovation ManagementSloan School of Management (Roberts E-Center Fund

‘I’d be proud to spend the sacred foreign aid budget on our poor pensioners’: Representations of macro aid resourcing in the Irish, UK and US print-media during the economic crisis, 2008–2011

The news-media has been identified as an influence on donor nations’ overseas aid allocations, acting as a site where decisions are justified to ‘domestic constituencies’ and through which resistance is mobilised. Mediated pressures on aid allocations amplified between 2008 and 2011 in three donor countries experiencing domestic economic difficulties: Ireland, the UK and the US. This study suggests that each country’s print-media positioned the macro resourcing of aid primarily as an inward concern, neglected recipient country needs, and made weak connections to international policy frameworks to benchmark, contextualise and rationalise aid allocations. The research suggests that the explanatory limitations of the countries’ news-models in communicating the processes and rationales underpinning macro aid resourcing may be a factor in sustaining a knowledge and legitimacy deficit among domestic publics for international aid agreements

Pasos Hacia La Salud: a randomized controlled trial of an internet-delivered physical activity intervention for Latinas.

BackgroundInternet access has grown markedly in Latinos during the past decade. However, there have been no Internet-based physical activity interventions designed for Latinos, despite large disparities in lifestyle-related conditions, such as obesity and diabetes, particularly in Latina women. The current study tested the efficacy of a 6-month culturally adapted, individually tailored, Spanish-language Internet-based physical activity intervention.MethodsInactive Latinas (N = 205) were randomly assigned to the Tailored Physical Activity Internet Intervention or the Wellness Contact Control Internet Group. Participants in both groups received emails on a tapered schedule over 6 months to alert them to new content on the website. The primary outcome was minutes/week of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) at 6 months as measured by the 7-Day Physical Activity Recall; activity was also measured by accelerometers. Data were collected between 2011 and 2014 and analyzed in 2015 at the University of California, San Diego.ResultsIncreases in minutes/week of MVPA were significantly greater in the Intervention Group compared to the Control Group (mean difference = 50.00, SE = 9.5, p < 0.01). Increases in objectively measured MVPA were also significantly larger in the Intervention Group (mean differences = 31.0, SE = 10.7, p < .01). The Intervention Group was also significantly more likely to meet national physical activity guidelines at 6 months (OR = 3.12, 95% CI 1.46-6.66, p < .05).ConclusionFindings from the current study suggest that this Internet-delivered individually tailored intervention successfully increased MVPA in Latinas compared to a Wellness Contact Control Internet Group.Trial registrationNCT01834287

A Method for Measuring Desquamation and its Use for Assessing the Effects of Some Common Exfoliants

Desquamation has been measured in the past by a counting chamber technique after corneocytes are removed from the skin surface and disaggregated in a dilute surfactant solution. However, we have found that complete corneocyte disaggregation is not always possible when these aggregates are recovered from sites where patent peeling is induced. Corneocyte counting in such instances is difficult or impossible. We have devised a method of measuring desquamation wherein the desquamating cells are determined as the total alkali-soluble protein after they are removed from the skin surface with an inert, self-hardening gel. Highly reproducible desquamation rates are obtained, characteristic of the individual subject. Using some common exfoliants, we show that pharmacologic response, observed as an increase in desquamation rate, is also an individual characteristic

Newly Insured Californians Would Fall by More than 1 Million Under the Affordable Care Act Without the Requirement to Purchase Insurance

Compares the estimated number and percentage of currently uninsured Californians who will be insured by 2019 under the Affordable Care Act with the individual mandate and without. Highlights the need for the mandate to ensure affordable coverage

Up and Out: Journalism, Social Media, and Historical Sensibility

Much of the modern theorizing about journalism and communication attained its robustness due to a powerful convergence of distinct middle-range scholarly findings that emerged primarily in the 1970s and 1980s. In the present day, when we turn our analytical gaze to the relationship between journalism and social media, we thus need to strike a delicate balance between conducting new qualitative research, re-conceptualizing and re-interrogating the classic conclusions of political communication scholarship, and linking these two aspects of research together. However, we might also wish to extend our analytical gaze “out,” interrogating the movement of journalistic technology across history, as well as “up,” looking at how journalism fits within larger structural explanations regarding the shape of political life