James D. Adams

Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers

This paper takes a first look at the effect of Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRCs) on industrial R&D laboratories. IUCRCs are small academic centers designed to foster technology transfer between universities and firms. Since IUCRCs depend on industry support we expect them to further the research of member companies.Our findings suggest that IUCRCs promote industry-university technology transfer. We find strong associations between laboratory membership in IUCRCs and the importance of faculty consultants, co-authorship with faculty and hiring of graduate students to the laboratories. IUCRC membership contributes small increments, not always statistically significant, of 2% in laboratory patenting and research expenditures. Both estimates are larger for National Science Foundation IUCRCs, consistent with their quality and their sorting to larger laboratories.These results survive a simultaneous equation analysis of the joint decision to patent and join IUCRCs. Nevertheless more work is needed to separate the effect of the IUCRCs from the matching mechanism that assigns IUCRCs to R&D laboratories.

Research Productivity in a System of Universities

This paper considers research performance of U.S. universities for eight science fields. At the aggregate level we find that research output follows a constant returns to scale process. However, for individual universities we find evidence of diminishing returns. We offer two explanations for these differing results. First, data errors are more important at the individual level. Second, research spillovers exist between universities and fields that are captured only at the aggregate level.

The Structure of Firm R&D, the Factor Intensity of Production, and Skill Bias

This paper explores the effect of research and development (R&D) and capital on factor intensity and skill bias in a sample of manufacturing plants. Firm and industry R&D as well as plant level capital increase the factor intensity of labor over materials. In contrast, skill bias originates in portions of capital and R&D. Equipment capital and firm R&D in the same product as a plant are consistently skill biased, while structures are biased against skill. Furthermore, general firm and industry R&D increase investment in equipment but not structures. This shows that the skill bias of R&D occurs through two distinct channels. First, firm R&D specific to the product increases the relative demand for skilled labor directly and in the short run through the cost function. Second, general firm and industry R&D exert an additional skill bias by favoring equipment over structures in the long run, demonstrating the broader compass of the skill bias of R&D over time.

Permanent Differences in Unemployment and Permanent Wage Differentials

This paper tests for the existence of wage premiums based on geographic and industry unemployment differences. These differences are broken down into permanent and transitory components in equations controlling for variation in state generosity of unemployment insurance benefits. Findings indicate that wage premiums arise for long-run unemployment differences, but that negative short-run shocks to industries generate wage cuts, while positive shocks generate wage hikes. Therefore, labor contracts accommodate long-term anticipated unemployment, and entail sharing of short-term unemployment risks.

Doctoral Education and Economic Development: The Flow of New Ph.D.s to Industry

Doctoral education in science and engineering is critical to the university’s role in fostering economic development. One aspect of this is the placement of recent graduates with firms. Despite the role Ph.D.s play in this process, little work has documented and analyzed these firm placements. This article takes a first step at rectifying this deficiency, using data from the 1997-1999 Survey of Earned Doctorates administered by the National Science Foundation to all doctoral recipients in the United States. The authors show that knowledge sources, as measured by the training location of new Ph.D.s going to industry, are concentrated in different geographic centers from those that university R&Dexpenditure data would suggest. The authors also find significant outflows from the Midwest of Ph.D.s and significant inflows to the Pacific and northeast regions of the country. The authors’work suggests that many states fail to capture the economic development advantages that come from training a skilled work force.

Personal Wealth Transfers

A theory of personal wealth transfers is developed which implies that components given to a recipient, such as education and bequests, are perfect substitutes. Therefore, components whose marginal cost rises more rapidly than average reveal wealth elasticities that are smaller than average. For related reasons, time series elasticities are expected to fall short of cross-sectional elasticities. An empirical investigation estimates cross-sectional wealth elasticities of gifts and bequests and time series wealth elasticities of bequest. The estimates are ranked in the order that is anticipated from the theory.

Learning, internal research, and spillovers

This paper presents new evidence on the practice of industrial Research and Development (R&D), especially its allocation between learning and internal research, and the role of outside knowledge in reshaping this allocation. The evidence describes the sources of outside knowledge, portrays the flow of that knowledge into firms, and interprets the channels by which outside knowledge influences R&D. In this way, the paper illustrates R&Ds value in dealing with disequilibria. The empirical work is based on a sample of 220 R&D laboratories owned by 115 firms in the US chemical, machinery, electrical equipment, and motor vehicle industries. The findings are consistent with the view that universities and firms generate technological opportunities in R&D laboratories. In addition to partnerships that define rather strict channels of opportunity, the paper uncovers broader effects of R&D spillovers. The results also suggest that academic spillovers drive learning about universities and that industrial spillovers drive learning about industries. Thus, externally derived opportunities reshape the rate and direction of R&D. Overall the findings paint an image of practitioners of industrial R&D reaching aggressively for opportunities rather than waiting for opportunities to come to them. †Evidence from a sample of R&D laboratories

The retention of state governors

ConclusionIn this paper, we have provided some support for several hypotheses about the determinants of which governors get reelected. The benefit from being a member of a particular party varies from state to state and from year to year. Personal characteristics such as age are also important. The logits give some support to the importance of coalition formation; reelection is easier in states with low voter turnout and in farm states. The paper is most concerned with the connection between the economic performance and the electoral success of incumbent candidates for governor, and we find support for a model of electoral acountability, in which governors are powerful in state governments and state governments have the ability to differentially tax fixed factors relative to neighboring states.This paper raises some important issues regarding the measurement of variables in political economy, which have wide applicability to other studies in the economics of politics. Peltzman (1988) finds that the difference between the growth rate in state personal income and the national growth rate over a one to four year period prior to the election does not affect gubernatorial electoral outcomes. Concurrently, we find that the current years growth rate in state personal income and its difference from the national growth rate are not significantly related to electoral success but that the average deviation from predicted state personal income during the governors tenure in office is significantly related to the odds of getting reelected. That is, the data reject simplistic views of voter behavior and support a sophisticated model of voter behavior. Similarly, Peltzman (1988) has greater success using more sophisticated, cumulative measures of national economic performance.This suggests that great care must sometimes be taken to create variables that are capable of giving our economic models a fair hearing. Voting studies often find that only current period effects matter, which is attributed either to voter myopia or — and this is the more popular explanation nowadays — to the confinement of effects by rational expectations to current period, ‘white noise’ effects. The specifications in these voter studies ignore the cumulative information generated in political economy. Both our results and Peltzmans (1988) results suggest that variables that reflect this cumulative information may be more successful than variables that are based only on the current year.

Optimal Tenure of Elected Public Officials

CONSTITUTIONAL limits on the tenure of elected chief executives are a prominent feature of many governments, yet they have received little attention from economists working in the field of political behavior. This paper develops an analysis of tenure limits and their incidence. The analysis assumes that the limits substitute for more familiar electoral controls, such as elections, recalls, and impeachment proceedings. We assume that restrictions are imposed if they cause the constitutionally decisive voter to be better off on average. This assumption, although not a standard one applied to policy in general, is fairly common in the literature on constitutional choice, where the memberships of interest groups later to be formed are plausibly unknown at the time of the constitutional convention.1 The decision to restrict is undertaken in an environment of uncertainty, and naturally it is not without its costs. It is clear, for instance, that restriction substitutes inexperienced politicians for experienced ones. Moreover, a tenure limit generates an incentive problem during the final term in office since no further electoral test remains.2 This lame duck

Equilibrium taxation and experience rating in a federal system of unemployment insurance

Abstract This paper seeks to explain why there is apparent redistribution of tax burdens in UI systems from high to low unemployment firms. In addition to providing reasons for the direction taken by redistribution, the model interprets the accompanying institution of imperfect experience rating, defined as the practice of taxing firms by less than a dollar for every dollar of benefits paid a firms employees. The null hypothesis views the design of the UI tax as the result of intentional redistribution of economic rents between industries. Concluding sections explore the limitations on redistribution imposed by a federal system and discuss alternative explanations for the design of the UI laws. Empirical evidence is provided on the redistributive hypothesis, which generally receives strong support.