Suchergebnisse

This book challenges the common perceptions of Australian dependence upon great-power allies in the conduct of its foreign relations through a critical examination of Australia's relations with the People's Republic of China. The author focuses on the economic and political dimensions of the policy-making process from the founding of the PRC in 1949 to the present era, against an analytical framework that takes into account both internal and external factors in the formulation and implementation of Australian foreign policy.

"This paper combines a natural policy experiment and randomized lab experiments to estimate the differential impacts of counterfeiting on the sales and purchase intent of branded products of various quality levels. I collect new product-line level panel data from Chinese shoe companies from 1993-2004. Exploiting the discontinuity of government enforcement efforts for the footwear sector in 1995 and the differences in authentic companies' relationships with the government, I identify heterogeneous effects of counterfeit entry on sales of authentic products of three quality tiers. In particular, counterfeits have both advertising effects for the brand and substitution effects for authentic products. The advertising effect dominates substitution effect for high-end authentic product sales, and the substitution effect outweighs advertising effect for low-end product sales. The positive effect of counterfeits is most pronounced for the high-fashion products (such as women's high-leg boots) and for the high-end shoes of the brands that were not yet well-known at the time of the entry by counterfeiters. I provide a theoretical framework to generalize such impacts due to counterfeits. Analogous heterogeneous effects of counterfeiting on consumer purchase intent for branded products of three quality tiers are also discovered in lab experiments. Responses in the lab allude to the fact that counterfeits could increase brand awareness as well as steal business"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"Research on the effects of patent protection on innovation and technology transfer in the cross-country pharmaceutical industry adds to our understanding of the underlying forces driving a country's innovation level. Qian (2007) constructs a comprehensive database useful for evaluating the patenting effects on pharmaceutical innovations for 26 countries that established national pharmaceutical patent laws during the period from 1978 to 2002. This paper is a companion piece that extends the research to evaluating the effects of patent reforms on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) establishments and imports in the pharmaceutical sectors. This book chapter also attempts to integrate all the findings on innovations, technology transfer, and international trade, and discuss potential policy implications. By thoroughly controlling for the country covariates, through a combination of matched sampling techniques with fixed-effect panel regression models, the analyses arrive at robust results across the various model specifications. First, national pharmaceutical patent protection alone does not stimulate domestic innovation, as estimated by the US patent awards (both raw counts and citation-weighted) and domestic R&D. FDI establishments and pharmaceutical exports did not increase significantly either. Imports, however, did flourish. Second, national patent law implementation demonstrates conditional importance for innovation acceleration and technology transfer, conditional upon certain country variables. In particular, the interaction between implementation and the development level, educational attainment, and economic freedom index are shown to have positive relationships with the domestic R&D expenditure and domestic pharmaceutical patent awards in the US. The interaction between implementation and economic freedom, implementation and educational attainment are indicated to attract more FDI establishments. Third, terms of trade is likely to decline immediately upon the new implementation of IPR"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Combining classical democratic theory with compelling personal stories and rigorous empirical analysis, God and Karate on the Southside is the first book to analyze the intersection between race, religion, and martial arts in the United States. It is a must-read for scholars interested in issues of community diversity and civic democracy

The Istanbul guilds of the Ottoman Empire witnessed a period of profound economic and political turbulence throughout the seventeenth century. Drawing on the kadi court records of Istanbul, the author explores issues of guild organization, questions the so-called traditionalism of Ottoman guilds, and examines the ability of the guilds to negotiate with the state during times of peace, war and revolt. Not only does this study shed new light on the question of what the Ottoman guilds were and what they were capable of, but it also places the guilds of Istanbul into the wider, dynamic context of contemporary history. This work is a valuable addition to anyone interested in Ottoman social and political history