Das Buch zeigt die Zusammenhänge zwischen Innovationen bzw. Innovationsprozessen mit der Entwicklung moderner Volkswirtschaften. Untersucht werden die Faktoren und ihre Interaktionen, die für die Leistung der Innovationssysteme von Regionen oder ganzer Nationen verantwortlich sind. Dabei geht es um die Beiträge des Bildungssystems, der öffentlichen und privaten Forschungs- und Entwicklungsaktivitäten, von Unternehmen mit ihren Innovationsstrategien inklusive den staatlichen Rahmenbedingungen wie dem Schutz des geistigen Eigentums. Umsetzung und Diffusion von Innovationen werden unter anderem anhand von Unternehmensgründungen geprüft. Damit verbundene Innovationsnetzwerke entwickeln sich unter dem Druck und in der hohen Dynamik der Globalisierung weiter.
Zusätzliche Kapitel behandeln politische Strategien von Nationen und Regionen, die sich im globalen Innovationswettbewerb behaupten wollen. Dabei werden aus polit-ökonomischer Sicht die Faktoren von Erfolg und Misserfolg im globalen Innovationswettbewerb der führenden Nationen in Europa mit den USA und den wichtigsten asiatischen Staaten verglichen und die künftige Entwicklung dieser Volkswirtschaften abgeschätzt.
Die Zielgruppen
- Forscher und Studierende der Innovationsökonomie
- Medienmitarbeiter, Journalisten und alle, die mit Ökonomie und Politik von Innovationen in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft zu tun haben und diese gestalten wollen
Die Autoren
Dr. Beat Hotz-Hart ist Professor der Universität Zürich und langjähriges Mitglied des höheren Kaders der Bundesverwaltung der Schweiz in den Ressorts Bildung, Forschung und Innovation. Dr. Adrian Rohner ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Zürich. In seiner Dissertation untersuchte er den Markt für wissensintensive Güter am Beispiel von Dienstleistungen in Forschung und Entwicklung.
Policy makers around the world seek to encourage generic substitution. In this paper, the importance of prescribing physicians’ imperfect agency is tested using the fact that some Swiss jurisdictions allow physicians to dispense drugs on their own account (physician dispensing, PD) while others disallow it. We estimate a model of physician drug choice with the help of drug claim data, finding a significant positive association between PD and the use of generics. While this points to imperfect agency, generics are prescribed more often to patients with high copayments or low incomes.
Neuromodulators such as serotonin, oxytocin, and testosterone play an important role in social behavior. Studies examining the effects of these neuromodulators and others on social cognition and behavior, and their neural underpinnings, are becoming increasingly common. Here, we provide an overview of methodological considerations for those wishing to evaluate or conduct empirical studies of neuromodulation in social neuroscience.
People's desire for fair transactions can play an important role in negotiations, organizations, and markets. In this paper, we show that markets can also shape what people consider to be a fair transaction. We propose a simple and generally-applicable model of path-dependent fairness preferences, in which past experiences shape preferences, and we experimentally test the model's predictions. We find that previous exposure to competitive pressure substantially and persistently reduces subjects' fairness concerns, making them more likely to accept low offers. Consistent with our theory, we also find that past experience has little effect on subjects' inclinations to treat others unfairly.
Evolutionary theory predicts that observable traits should evolve to reliably indicate unobservable behavioral tendencies in coordination games but not social dilemmas. We conducted a two-part study to test this idea. First, we recorded 60-s videos of participants, and then these participants played a stag hunt game or a prisoner’s dilemma. Subsequently, raters viewed these videos, with the sound either off or on, and they guessed player choices. Raters showed a significant tendency to guess that attractive players chose stag. In contrast to the prediction, rater accuracy was at chance regardless of whether the sound of the video was off or on. For prisoner’s dilemma players, raters showed a significant tendency to guess that women cooperated at a higher rate than men. Again in contrast to the prediction, accuracy was significantly above chance in this case. To calibrate the importance of this accuracy rate, we developed two models that suggest the accuracy we observed in the prisoner’s dilemma case is probably not high enough to support the evolution of cooperation. Altogether, our results show that raters tried to achieve a meaningful degree of accuracy about players by using the limited information available in the videos, but they could not do so.
This paper studies whether people can avoid punishment by remaining willfully ignorant about possible negative consequences of their actions for others. We employ a laboratory experiment, using modified dictator games in which a dictator can remain willfully ignorant about the payoff consequences of his decision for a receiver. A third party can punish the dictator after observing the dictator’s decision and the resulting payoffs. On the one hand, willfully ignorant dictators are punished less if their actions lead to unfair outcomes than dictators who reveal the consequences before implementing the same outcome. On the other hand, willfully ignorant dictators are punished more than revealing dictators if their actions do not lead to unfair outcomes. We conclude that willful ignorance can circumvent blame when unfair outcomes result, but that the act of remaining willfully ignorant is itself punished, regardless of the outcome.
Sectoral data features (i) changing relative expenditures of different sectors, (ii) non-constancy in relative prices and (iii) long-run trends in relative TFP growth rates across sectors. We provide a tractable theory of industry directed technical change, which is able to reconcile these findings. In doing so, this paper emphasizes the importance of directed technical change, nonhomotheticity of preferences and structural change as a long-run phenomenon. Using the input-output tables of the U.S., our theory helps us to reconstruct how structural change in terms of final consumption affects the market size of industry value-added. Arguing that the structural change across broad categories of final consumption is exogenous from the perspective of an individual firm, this gives us an instrument for the industrial market size (at the valueadded level). We then empirically test for the market size effect of induced innovation. Our findings suggest that a 1 percent increase in an industry’s market size (relative to GDP) leads to an increase in the TFP growth rate of about 0.3 percentage points over five years.
Wirtschaftsprofessor Fabrizio Zilibotti äussert sich im Interview mit «Finanz und Wirtschaft» dazu, wie Italien die Eurozone gefährdet und wo das Land typisch ist für ihre Probleme.
We examine the distribution of income across Swiss primary school teachers at the end of the 19th century. To assess the income differences we use a detailed data set on income of 14000 Swiss primary school teachers in 1881 and 1894/95. In addition, we have annually aggregated test scores from pedagogical examinations at recruitment, to test for the impact of inequality on conscripts’ performance. Our results show that between-group inequality amounts to about 30 per cent of total income inequality, and that teachers’ income inequality does not play a role in explaining differences in the performance of conscripts in the pedagogical examinations.
