Networks of companies, research laboratories and universities provide benefits for innovation activities. Some success factors are bound to particular characteristics of a region. This is the case for industries based on craftsmanship such as the watch industry or the machine building industry.The latter is one of the most innovative in Switzerland. However, for successful innovationnationwide or even worldwide contacts play an increasingly important role, although there aremajor differences between technologies and sectors. It is shown that business success through innovation in biotechnology or medical technology relies not only on a strong scientific base within the home region but also on intensive contacts with the major centers of competence worldwide.The article identifies different types of innovative regions in Switzerland with different innovation strategies, though some may overlap. Their activities are supported by the openness and international connections of Switzerland as well as its high degree of internationalization.
Ernst Fehr, Initiant des 100-Millionen-Sponsoringvertrages der Uni Zürich mit der UBS, wehrt sich gegen die Kritik der
Wissenschaftler im «Zürcher Appell». Die Bank nehme keinen Einfluss auf die Forschung.
Rewards in real life are rarely received without incurring costs and successful reward harvesting often involves weighing and minimizing different types of costs. In the natural environment, such costs often include the physical effort required to obtain rewards and potential risks attached to them. Costs may also include potential risks. In this study, we applied fMRI to explore the neural coding of physical effort costs as opposed to costs associated with risky rewards. Using an incentive-compatible valuation mechanism, we separately measured the subjective costs associated with effortful and risky options. As expected, subjective costs of options increased with both increasing effort and increasing risk. Despite the similar nature of behavioral discounting of effort and risk, distinct regions of the brain coded these two cost types separately, with anterior insula primarily processing risk costs and midcingulate and supplementary motor area (SMA) processing effort costs. To investigate integration of the two cost types, we also presented participants with options that combined effortful and risky elements. We found that the frontal pole integrates effort and risk costs through functional coupling with the SMA and insula. The degree to which the latter two regions influenced frontal pole activity correlated with participant-specific behavioral sensitivity to effort and risk costs. These data support the notion that, although physical effort costs may appear to be behaviorally similar to other types of costs, such as risk, they are treated separately at the neural level and are integrated only if there is a need to do so.
Using data on young men from the National Education Longitudinal Survey, this paperinvestigates the relationship between childhood misbehavior and later education and labor marketoutcomes. The main finding is that eighth-grade misbehavior is important for earnings overand above eighth-grade test scores. Moreover, controlling for educational attainment, childhoodmisbehavior is associated with earnings at all educational levels, whereas achievement test scoresare related to earnings only for young men with postsecondary degrees. Possible explanations forthe association between eighth-grade misbehavior and economic success are explored.
