There is an ambiguity in Amartya Sen's capability approach as to what constitutes an in-dividual's resources, conversion factors and valuable functionings. What we here call the\circularity problem" points to the fact that all three concepts seem to be mutually en-dogenous and interrelated. All...

This paper shows how cognitive human dispositions that take effect at the level of an individualfirm’s corporate culture have repercussions on an industry’s evolution. In our theory, the latter isattributable to evolving corporate cultures coupled with changes in a firm’s...

Using a new dataset encompassing more than 2,200 inventions made by Max Planck Societyresearchers from 1980 to 2004, we explore how licensee and technology characteristics affectthe licensing and commercialization of technologies from public research. We find noevidence that spin-offs and...

Beyond its explanatory ambitions as positive science, economics has always had its normativeor applied branch that aims at providing advice about how man’s socio-economic conditionmight be improved. Under the name welfare economics the discipline’s normative branch hasbeen formalized, in the...

Paternalism, the interference with a person, against their will, for her own good, has longbeen held in disregard. Yet recently, new arguments for paternalistic governmentinterventions have been proposed. These arguments draw on two premises. First, theproposed paternalism is characterised as...

As people become richer they get the opportunity of consuming more but also qualitativelybetter goods. This holds for a basic commodity like food as well. We investigatefood consumption in Russia, taking into account both expenditure and nutrition value interms of calories. We analyze how food...

Extrinsic motivations like intellectual property protections and fiscalincentives continue to occupy the centre stage in debates on innovationpolicies. Joseph Schumpeter had, however, argued that the motive toaccumulate private property can only explain part of innovative activities. Inhis view,...

Empirical work on micro and small firms has focused on developed countries.The little work that exists on developing countries is all too often based on smallsamples taken from ad hoc questionnaires. The census data we analyze are fairlyrepresentative of the structure of small business in India....

While several plots of the aggregate age distribution suggest that rm age is expo-finentially distributed, we find some departures from the exponential benchmark. At thelower tail, we find that very young establishments are more numerous than expected,but they face high exit hazards. At the...

The issue of technological unemployment receives perennial popular attention. Although there are previous empirical investigations that have focused on the relationship between innovation and employment, the originality of our approach lies in our choice of method. We focus on four 2-digit...