Scant discussion exists in the literature about the relative design merits of various R&D schemes and most authors treat program design as a black box. In this paper, we assess the design features of three major forms of R&D support: entitlement schemes, competitive schemes and industry R&D...

Patents may assist trade in technology either by protecting buyers against the expropriation of the idea by third parties (the appropriation effect) or by enabling sellers to more frankly disclose the idea during the negotiation phase (the disclosure effect). We test for the presence of both...

Two parallel streams of research investigating the determinants of corporate R&D exist: one from economics and the other from management. The economists' variables tend to reflect the firm's external environment while the explanatory variables used by management scientists are commonly internal...

In this paper, we take another look at the role that patents play in determining successful commercialization. We address this issue using survey data on 3,736 Australian inventions which were the subject of a patent application between 1986 and 2005. Although almost half of the survey...

This paper aims to show how firms account for expenditure on their intangible investments and how this influences their decision making processes. Evidence from our survey of 614 large Australian companies show that (1) firms do not systematically identify and separate expenditures on intangible...

The commercialization of inventions is an investment, similar to spending on plant and equipment, and accordingly we would expect it to be affected by macroeconomic conditions. Using data on the commercialization activity from over 4000 inventors, we find evidence that macroeconomic conditions...

One of the major emerging macroeconomic problems during the century has been the tendency for inflation to accelerate under prolonged periods of full employment. According to Isaac (1977) and Kaldor (1996, 5th Lecture), this arises from the process of wage determination common to most western...

This paper describes two dimensions of the international patenting process: application outcomes and pendency periods using matched samples of patent applications filed at the Australian Patent Office (APO), the Japanese Patent Office (JPO), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)...

Labour market programs aim to enhance both total employment and equality of job opportunities. While the employment effects have been studied extensively in Australia and overseas, the effects on equality has scarcely received any attention. The existing literature implies that any assistance to...

This paper provides non-technical summaries of theories which posit a relationship between aggregate employment and real wages and presents results from Australian and selected overseas empirical studies. Neoclasssical supply side theories assume that real wages, for given endowments of physical...