Organizational Unit:
School of Public Policy

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 223
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    A Science of Science and Innovation Policy Research Agenda
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-12-10) Feller, Irwin ; Cozzens, Susan E.
    Dr. John Marburger’s recent calls for a new science of science policy open up new opportunities to reconceptualize, retest, and revise as needed the theories, models, descriptions, and mainstream propositions underlying United States’ science and innovation policies and programs. We respond to these calls by presenting a research agenda directed at two objectives. First, as academic researchers who have long worked in the field of science and innovation policy, albeit from different analytical and disciplinary perspectives, we seek to insure that efforts to promote the "science" of science and technology, or innovation policy produce substantive scholarly work that in fact advances our fundamental understanding of underlying processes. Second, as participants in numerous U.S. and international science and innovation policy advisory forums and commissions, we seek to promote a closer, better fitting, coupling between the research communities who are addressing questions of the science of science policy -- themselves a disparate disciplinary lot -- with the policy communities who are seeking improved understandings of whether or how the decisions they have made or are being called upon to make in fact have led to the intended results. Our strategy to achieve these two objectives is to identify questions that are simultaneously intellectually challenging and policy relevant.
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    Developing an "Energy Sustainability Index" to Evaluate American Energy Policy
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-12-07) Brown, Marilyn A. ; Sovacool, Benjamin K.
    This paper proposes the creation of an energy sustainability index (ESI) to inform policymakers, investors, and analysts about the status of energy conditions, and to help educate the public about energy issues. The proposed ESI builds on the substantial body of literature on "sustainability" and also draws on past efforts to measure environmental and energy progress – both of which are reviewed below. The index covers four dimensions (oil security, electricity reliability, energy efficiency, and environmental quality) and includes twelve individual indicators. Comparing these indicators in 1970 with 2004, nine have trended in an unfavorable direction, two have moved in a favorable direction, and one has been essentially unchanged. Clearly, the "energy problem" fretted about in the 1970s has not been fully addressed. While the proposed ESI is preliminary and requires further refinement, it takes an important step toward creating a set of indicators that can easily assess and communicate the condition of the U.S. energy system.
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    The Net Fiscal Effects of Illegal Immigrants: Evidence from the Urban Counties of Georgia
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-11-26) Glover, Victoria Anne
    This thesis engages in a review of the existing literature and empirical analysis, which addresses the impact of immigrants, specifically illegal, on urban counties in Georgia. It is increasingly accepted that immigration plays a significant role in many aspects of government services, and that immigrants in some form, do provide income, but the debate wages between how much transfers an immigrant takes and the taxes an immigrant pays. However, little attention has been focused on illegal immigrants and their local fiscal effects on government taxes and transfers. This area has not been the focus of systematic inquiry or substantive critical consideration because most studies center around legal immigrants and their federal impacts. The results from this thesis call for a mobilization of a heightened enthusiasm for addressing research challenges in this field and for current immigration policy to strive to maximize the well-being of the native population.
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    Representation and Reward in High Technology Industries and Occupations: The Influence of Race and Ethnicity
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-11-13) Gatchair, Sonia Denise
    This study examined whether the demand for more educated science and engineering workers outweighed longstanding practices of discrimination in hiring in high technology industries and science and engineering occupations. The study focused on the effects of education on the distribution of employment and wages among four racial and ethnic groups (non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, Hispanics and Asians), for the period 1992 to 2002. The main data used in the analyses came from the March Annual Demographic Survey. Multinomial logit analyses were used to determine the probabilities of employment, and ordinary least squares, non-parametric regressions and t-tests were used to examine wages. The analyses showed that education was more important in determining employment in S &E occupations, when compared to its effects in other occupations; and compared to race, other demographic and labor market characteristics. The effects of education were greater in S &E jobs in the high technology sector when compared to S &E jobs elsewhere in the economy. However, the effects of education varied with race, the level of education, and the industry/ occupational group under consideration in ways that suggest that both employment and wages continue to be influenced by correlates of race. Based on the findings, the study provides recommendations for policy and future research.
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    Resource Spillover from Academia to High Tech Industry: Evidence from New Nanotechnology-Based Firms in the U.S.
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-10-12) Wang, Jue
    The role of universities in supporting economic development has been explored in numerous studies emphasizing the mechanisms of technology transfer and knowl-edge spillover. However, in addition to these forms of intellectual capital, university scientists bring other resources into research collaboration and contribute to firm part-nerships in both direct and indirect ways. This thesis proposes the concept of resource spillover, which captures the various ways in which university scientists can benefit col-laborating firms. The study first analyzes firms, university scientists, and collaboration along with the concepts of ego, alter, and network ties in social capital theory; then it categorizes the resources possessed by university scientists into human capital, social capital, and positional capital, and tests the impact of each on the performance of a firm. The study finds that firms benefit from research collaboration in terms of both increased research capability and research output and improved public relations and research credibility. The study is carried out using a sample of new nanotechnology-based firms in the United States. As the U.S. government recognizes nanotechnology as providing scientific and technological opportunities with immense potential, this industry has be-come the recipient of significant federal R&D funding. In turn, because academic re-search has proven to be important to not only overall nanotechnology R&D but also in-dustrial R&D, it necessitates appropriate policy programs that support successful re-source spillover from academia and promote the development of industry.
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    Workshop: Social organization of science and science policy
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-10) Cozzens, Susan E. ; Regan, Priscilla ; Rubin, Beth
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    School-university partnerships for math and science education
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-07-17) Sosinska, Olga Halina
    Math and Science Programs for improving math and science education at K12 level through are analyzed in terms of a policy that establishes shool-university partnerships.
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    Modelling stock market performance of firms as a function of the quality and quantity of intellectual property owned
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-07-12) Chauhan, Lokendra Pratap Singh
    This thesis attempts to analyze a part of the big and complex process of how intellectual property ownership and technological innovation influence the performance of firms and their revenues. Here I analyze a firm's stock market performance as a function of the quantity and quality of intellectual property (patents) owned by the firm in context of the three US high-technology sectors, Pharmaceuticals, Semiconductors and Wireless. In these sectors, value of a firm is predominantly driven by the technologies which a firm owns. I use citation based indicators and number of claims to measure the quality of patents. This research presents empirical evidence for the hypothesis that in high-tech sectors, companies which generate better quality intellectual property perform better than average in the stock market. I also posit that firms which are producing better quality technologies (good R&D) invest more in R&D regardless of their market performance. Furthermore, though smaller firms get relatively less returns on quality and quantity of innovation, they tend to invest a bigger fraction of their total assets in R&D when they are generating high quality patents. Larger firms enjoy the super-additivity effects in terms of market performance as the same intellectual property gives better returns to them. In addition, returns to R&D are relatively higher in the pharmaceutical industry than semiconductor or wireless industries.
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    Overcoming the "Do-Gooder Fallacy": Explaining the Adoption of Effectiveness Best Practices in Philanthropic Foundations
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-07-12) Ashley, Shena R.
    An adoption model was proposed to examine the influence of four types of organizational factors- organizational capacity, organizational structure, operating environment and grantmaking orientation- on the adoption of four effectiveness best practices, formal evaluation, knowledge management, leadership development and operating grants in philanthropic foundations. Data were collected from a national survey of foundations and the Foundation Center database. The results indicate that the grantmaking orientation of a foundation is the greatest indicator of adoptive behavior. Furthermore, capacity constraints are most relevant to the adoption decision when the adopting practice requires significant investments of time, money and expertise. Given the social and political context in which the effectiveness best practices are associated, this dissertation research has broad relevance for the ways in which foundation behavior is perceived and the means by which that behavior is shaped through policy and practice.
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    Atlanta's Digital Music Industry: Implications for Workforce and Economic Development
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007-07-12) Stephens, Alexa Renee-Marie
    Research on workforce development has focused on general employment trends and traditional industry. Few researchers have studied the potential workforce development implications of emerging industries particularly in those that have sprung from the digital economy. This thesis focuses upon the digital music industry in the Atlanta region. An economic impact study was conducted to illustrate and define the digital music industry and understand its implications for workforce and economic development. This research is significant because it will enable Atlanta workforce developers to assist in reducing unemployment and educational attainment gaps particularly in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Implications for the state includes creating a workforce development strategy based upon digital music innovation that increases Atlanta s overall competitiveness and quality of life by increasing the high-technology and Information-technology workforces.