This volume brings together eminent international scholars to discuss and analyze regional and national technology and innovation policies from an economic assessment or economic impacts perspective. The analysis covers policies relevant to countries in Europe and Asia, and the United States. Not only might this volume initiate further study of technology and innovation policies, on a country-by-country basis, but also it might open doors for comparative policy analysis. This book was originally published as a special issue of Economics of Innovation and New Technology.
Innovation underpins competitiveness, is crucial to addressing societal challenges, and its support has become a major public policy goal. But what really works in innovation policy, and why? This Handbook, compiled by leading experts in the field, is the first comprehensive guide to understanding the logic and effects of innovation polices. The Handbook develops a conceptualisation and typology of innovation policies, presents meta-evaluations for 16 key innovation policy instruments and analyses evidence on policy-mix. For each policy instrument, underlying rationales and examples are presented, along with a critical analysis of the available impact evidence. Providing access to primary sources of impact analysis, the book offers an insightful assessment of innovation policy practice and its evaluation.
A proposal for moving from price-centric to innovation-centric competition policy, reviewing theory and available evidence on economic incentives for innovation. Competition policy and antitrust enforcement have traditionally focused on prices rather than innovation. Economic theory shows the ways that price competition benefits consumers, and courts, antitrust agencies, and economists have developed tools for the quantitative evaluation of price impacts. Antitrust law does not preclude interventions to encourage innovation, but over time the interpretation of the laws has raised obstacles to enforcement policies for innovation. In this book, economist Richard Gilbert proposes a shift from price-centric to innovation-centric competition policy. Antitrust enforcement should be concerned with protecting incentives for innovation and preserving opportunities for dynamic, rather than static, competition. In a high-technology economy, Gilbert argues, innovation matters.
This volume offers a comprehensive analysis of the changing role of government with respect to domestic technology development in eight countries in both the developed and the developing world. The author distinguishes between those countries which can be classed as creators of new technologies (Japan, Korea and Israel) and those which possess the potential to create new technologies (Singapore, Malaysia, India, South Africa and Brazil).
This book offers a comprehensive assessment of the innovation system of Viet Nam, focusing on the role of government and providing concrete recommendations on how to improve policies that affect innovation and R&D performance.
Americans praise medical technology for saving lives and improving health. Yet, new technology is often cited as a key factor in skyrocketing medical costs. This volume, second in the Medical Innovation at the Crossroads series, examines how economic incentives for innovation are changing and what that means for the future of health care. Up-to-date with a wide variety of examples and case studies, this book explores how payment, patent, and regulatory policiesâ€"as well as the involvement of numerous government agenciesâ€"affect the introduction and use of new pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and surgical procedures. The volume also includes detailed comparisons of policies and patterns of technological innovation in Western Europe and Japan. This fact-filled and practical book will be of interest to economists, policymakers, health administrators, health care practitioners, and the concerned public.
'The book is quite valuable, with its broad international coverage of state activities in the area of research and innovation support. It should also foster serious debates on the balance between public and private efforts in research and innovation.' - Mats Benner, Journal of Economic Literature '. . . this book provides the reader with a valuable summary of national public policy approaches to research and innovation at the end of the twentieth century and is a useful addition to the shelves of industrial policy experts.' - David Gray, Entrepreneurship and Innovation The book analyses the evolution of research and innovation policies in the world's leading countries. The last decade has witnessed a radical transformation of the landscape shaped after World War II, as described in the seminal collection edited by Richard Nelson in the early 1990s. Even though national systems have inherited different institutional arrangements and trajectories, analyses show three major converging trends in their public policies. There has been a retraction from support to large firms and programmes and a shift toward small to medium enterprises and the innovation infrastructure; the focus on public research and training capabilities is growing; and there has been a redesign of public intervention with the growing role of regions and states on one hand and multinational authorities on the other, particularly in the European Union.
Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education. The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective? At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored. With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates.
Over the past few decades, there has been a growing concern about the social and environmental risks which have come along with the progress achieved through a variety of mutually intertwined modernization processes. In recent years these concerns are transformed into a widely-shared sense of urgency, partly due to events such as the various pandemics threatening livestock, and increasing awareness of the risks and realities of climate change, and the energy and food crises. This sense of urgency includes an awareness that our entire social system is in need of fundamental transformation. But like the earlier transition between the 1750's and 1890's from a pre-modern to a modern industrial society, this second transition is also a contested one. Sustainable development is only one of many options. This book addresses the issue on how to understand the dynamics and governance of the second transition dynamics in order to ensure sustainable development. It will be necessary reading for students and scholars with an interest in sustainable development and long-term transformative change.
