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End date: 2009 × Start date: 2009 × search.filters.applied.f.isOrgUnitOfPublicationTitle: School of Public Policy × search.filters.applied.f.resourcesubtype: Working Paper ×

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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Meta-Review of Efficiency Potential Studies and Their Implications for the South

2009-08 , Chandler, Sharon (Jess) Ann , Brown, Marilyn A.

This paper reviews 19 separate studies published over the past 12 years that examine the potential for deploying greater energy efficiency in the South. These studies contain more than 250 estimates of the energy efficiency potential for different fuels (electricity, natural gas, and all fuels), sectors of the economy (residential buildings, commercial buildings, and industry), and types of potential (technical, economic, maximum achievable, and moderate achievable). The meta-review concludes that a reservoir of cost-effective energy savings exists in the South. The full deployment of these nearly pollution-free opportunities could largely offset the growth in energy consumption forecast for the region over the next decade.

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Commercialization and Other Uses of Patents in Japan and the US: Major Findings From the RIETI-Georgia Tech Inventor Survey

2009-02 , Walsh, John P. , Nagaoka, Sadao

Based on the newly implemented inventor survey in Japan and the US, we have examined the commercialization and other uses of triadic patents. Although the two countries have a similar overall level of commercialization (60% of the triadic patents), the structure is different: in Japan, we see a higher incidence of in-house use relative to the overall level of commercialization, more inventions being licensed and less used for startups. We also see more multiple uses (in-house and license/startup) in Japan. In both countries licensing plays a relatively important role for commercializing the inventions from R&D targeted to new business and to enhancing the technology base. Consistently, licensing becomes more important as a patenting reason as the invention involves more scientific knowledge. The key difference in startups between the two countries is a high incidence of the inventions of university researchers being used for startups in the US (35%). In both countries strategic holding (use of the patents for blocking and the prevention of inventing around) is one of the major reasons of non-commercialized patents. Only 20% of the internally commercialized patents can be used on a stand-alone basis in both countries, and both the incidence of cross-license conditional on license and the incidence of license itself tend to increase with the size of the bundle of the patents to be jointly used with that invention. As appropriation measures, the first mover advantage (FMA) in commercialization and the FMA in R&D are the most important in both countries, while the latter becomes more important as the invention involves more scientific knowledge. The US inventors rank patent enforcement significantly higher than possessing complementary capabilities, while the reverse is the case for Japanese inventors. In addition, enhancing the exclusive exploitation of the invention is a more important patenting reason in the US. The fact that the commercialization rate of patented inventions is quite similar between the two countries despite of the significant difference of the appreciation of exclusivity indicates that exclusivity may promote exploitation in certain areas and retard it in others. Finally, non-conventional patenting reasons are also important in both countries: blocking and pure defense are at least as important as licensing, and corporate reputation is an important reason for patenting by small firms.

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Labor and Employment Policies in the US Election 2008 and the Upcoming Legislative Agenda

2009-01 , Clark, Jennifer

The focus of the 2008 Presidential Election in the United States turned from foreign policy to domestic economic policy in response to the global financial crisis and its mounting effects on the US financial, housing, and labor markets. In recent elections, labor policy has not explicitly been at the forefront of campaign issues or political debate. Indeed, parsing out the policy positions of the 2008 presidential candidates, Senator Barack Obama (Democrat, Illinois) and Senator John McCain (Republican, Arizona), required delving into an array of issue areas and proposed legislation that often fell under headings loosely related to what is generally understood as "labor policy" by academics and labor and industrial relations professionals. Neither Senator Obama nor Senator McCain listed labor policy or employment policy as major issue areas on their candidate websites. However, Senator Obama and Senator McCain held opposing positions on specific employment and labor policies which reflected both their individual policy orientations toward labor and employment policy and the historic oppositional positions of the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States. The opposing positions of the US presidential candidates on labor policy reflected different perspectives on the role of government in economic security and the regulation of the employment relationship. The Democratic Party has historically supported a pro-worker agenda including legal and regulatory support for labor organizing and collective bargaining, income security through job protection, minimum wages, workplace-based health and retirement benefits for workers, and the regulation and/or prohibition of discriminatory practices in hiring, promotion, compensation, and firing (particularly related to race and gender and more recently inclusive of sexual orientation and immigration status). In contrast, the Republican Party has eschewed a regulatory approach to the labor market and privileged a "laissez-faire" approach to the employment relationship. In general, the Republican Party has opposed labor organizing and collective bargaining, arguing that they are coercive, and instead emphasized the right of each worker to agree on an individual employment contract with his employer. Similarly, the Republican Party has viewed workplace benefits (including health insurance and retirement plans) through a lens of employer flexibility, individual choice, and a preference for privatization. The Republican Party argues that regulatory requirements to provide workers with health and retirement benefits force US-based firms into an uncompetitive position in a global economy. And Clark, School of Public Policy 2 Georgia Institute of Technology finally, the Republican Party views questions of employment discrimination narrowly and proposes that policies are best adjudicated through private mediation. The labor and employment policies of the 2008 presidential candidates reflected the opposing ideological orientation of their respective parties. The specific policy positions of the candidates were found under a number of functional policy headings rather than as a comprehensive labor policy position. For example, the array of policies which support the participation of women in the labor force (including subsidized child-care, job protections and income support for primary care givers who take family leave, prohibitions against workplace discrimination, and flexible work arrangements) fell under the heading of "Work/Family Balance" in the Obama campaign’s policy materials. In the McCain campaign, the similar issue area, support and protections for women and families in the labor force, fell under the dual headings of "Workplace Flexibility in a Changing Economy" and "Workplace Flexibility and Choice." Neither candidate explicitly categorized these policies as "labor policies." This article describes the labor and employment debates likely to emerge in 2009 and during the Obama administration as well as the positions of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates on policy issues related to labor policy, employment regulation, and economic security for workers stated during the 2008 campaign. There are two major pieces of legislation, the extension of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) and the pending Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) which directly address the areas at the heart of national labor policy: 1) terms and conditions or employment and, 2) workplace wages and benefits. In addition, there are several secondary pieces of legislation pending. These acts are primarily constructed as a response to recent anti-labor judicial decisions during the Bush Administration. Secondly, this article outlines policy initiatives beyond the pending legislation which have been significantly affected by the recent global financial crisis: retirement security, pensions, and social security. And finally, this article discusses pending legislation regarding the regulation of workplace discrimination.

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Visualizing Ethical Controversies and Positions by Logical Argument Mapping (LAM) – A Manual

2009-05 , Hoffmann, Michael H. G.

Ethical decisions are often not clear-cut. Most of the time it is possible to argue for more than one "right thing to do," especially if there is a variety of ethical principles or conflicting arguments. In order both to understand those arguments and to participate in deliberation and communication on ethically relevant issues, we need some methods, tools, and the practical skills to use them. Such a method is Logical Argument Mapping (LAM). Its main functions are to facilitate the structuring of complex knowledge areas and belief systems, and to stimulate reflection and creativity. This manual describes the rules, the mapping conventions, and the procedure of Logical Argument Mapping. It describes the processes of argument construction and evaluation; the development of classifications that are necessary to structure a problem field; the integration of objections, questions, comments, and supporting data; and suggestions for the revision and improvements of argumentations. For these purposes, it provides lists of argument schemes, typology schemes, conflict schemes, and argument revision schemes.

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The R&D process in the US and Japan: Major findings from the RIETI-Georgia Tech Inventor Survey

2009-02 , Walsh, John P. , Nagaoka, Sadao

This paper analyzes and compares the objective, the nature and the performance of R&D projects in the US and Japan, based on the first large scale systematic survey of inventors, focusing on the R&D projects yielding triadic patents. Major findings are the following. First, the projects for enhancing the existing business line of a firm account for a large share of R&D projects in both countries, confirming the view that the R&D investment is significantly conditioned by the existing complementary asset of a firm. In both countries, the inventions from R&D for existing business have the highest in-house utilization rate but use least the scientific and technical literature for their conceptions, while the reverse is the case for the inventions from R&D for new technology base (or for cultivating seeds). R&D projects for enhancing the technology base are much more common in the US. This difference can be partly accounted for by US inventors being more likely to have a PhD, but not by the differences in the structure of finance. US government financial support is relatively more targeted to projects for existing business and US venture capital provides support mainly projects for creating new business (6% of them), but not for more upstream projects. Only about 20-30% of the projects are for process innovation in both countries, providing direct evidence for the earlier findings that were based on US patent information. Product innovation generates process patents more often in Japan than in the US (25% vs. 10%), while product innovation projects are relatively more numerous in Japan. In both countries a significant share of inventions (more than 20%) were not the result of an R&D project, and a substantial proportion of such inventions are valued among the top 10% of patents, suggesting that R&D expenditure significantly underestimates inventive activities. A US invention is more often an unexpected by-product of an R&D project (11%) than in Japan (3.4%). The two countries have surprisingly similar distributions of R&D projects in man month and the average team size. In both countries, smaller firms tend to have relatively more high-value patents. In the US, inventors from very small firms (with less than 100 employees) and universities jointly account for more than one quarter of the top 10% inventions, even though they account for only 14% of all inventions. Man-months expended for an invention has a significant correlation with the performance of the R&D projects for existing business, less so for new business and not at all for those enhancing the technology base,suggesting substantial heterogeneity by project types in the determinants of the performance and in the uncertainty. A PhD has a significant correlation with R&D project performance especially for new business.

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State-Level Variations in Open Source Policies

2009-03 , Baker, Paul M. A. , Noonan, Douglas S. , Seavey, Art , Moon, Nathan C.

The open source software (OSS) model represents an alternative to traditional proprietary software usage. Yet relatively little is known about the conditions impacting policy related to OSS development, diffusion, and adoption. This paper explores the concept of a state-level open source index (SLOSI) to measure open source policy related initiatives at the state-level in the United States. One rationale for developing a SLOSI is to gauge how well a state’s (political, economic, social, technological) environment relates to its OSS policies. This metric readily lends itself to evaluating the political, social, and economic aspects of adoption of the OSS approach. The SLOSI provides a heuristic and common set of "tools" to help assess how OSS-related conditions vary from state to state. Such a metric can be especially useful in this context where indicators can be elusive. By its nature, open source technology defies easy measurement. Nonetheless, a diverse and creative set of proxy measures are identified and tested for validity. The formulation of the index addresses the conceptual complexities surrounding OSS as a product, as a production process, and even as an ideology. The index construction follows from (1) a thorough literature review on OSS in society; (2) interviews with expert informants and policymakers; (3) extensive data search and then collection; and (4) various robustness checks and efforts to estimate missing data. Our construction, by relying heavily on the published literature and on input from a community of OSS experts, fosters an inclusive development process akin to the open source development process itself. The empirical analysis of SLOSI values compares readily to variation in statelevel OSS policy environments. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ways in which this new SLOSI can be used by those in the OSS industry, those researching OSS, and, potentially, by policymakers.

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Competing Dimensions of Energy Security: An International Perspective

2009-01-13 , Sovacool, Benjamin K. , Brown, Marilyn A.

How well are industrialized nations doing in terms of their energy security? Without a standardized set of metrics, it is difficult to determine the extent that countries are properly responding to the emerging energy security challenges related to climate change, growing dependence on fossil fuels, population growth and economic development. In response, we propose the creation of an Energy Security Index to inform policymakers, investors and analysts about the status of energy conditions. Using the United States and 21 other member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as an example, and looking at energy security from 1970 to 2007, our index shows that only four countries¡ªBelgium, Denmark, Japan, and the United Kingdom¡ªhave made progress on multiple dimensions of the energy security problem. The remaining 18 have either made no improvement or are less secure. To make this argument, the first section of the article surveys the scholarly literature on energy security from 2003 to 2008 and argues that an index should address accessibility, affordability, efficiency, and environmental stewardship. Because each of these four components is multidimensional, the second section discusses ten metrics that comprise an Energy Security Index: oil import dependence, percentage of alternative transport fuels, on-road fuel economy for passenger vehicles, energy intensity, natural gas import dependence, electricity prices, gasoline prices, sulfur dioxide emissions, and carbon dioxide emissions. The third section analyzes the relative performance of four countries: Denmark (the top performer), Japan (which performed well), the United States (which performed poorly), and Spain (the worst performer). The article concludes by offering implications for policy. Conflicts between energy security criteria mean that advancement along any one dimension can undermine progress on another dimension. By focusing on a 10-point index, public policy can better illuminate such tradeoffs and can identify compensating policies.

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