Ruslan Lukach

The effects of microcredit on women's control over household spending in developing countries : a systematic review and meta-analysis

The main objective of this campbell systematic review was to provide a systematic review of the evidence on the effects of microcredit on womens control over household spending in developing countries. More specifically, we aimed to answer two related research questions: 1) what does the impact evaluative evidence say about the causal relationship between microcredit and specific dimensions of womens empowerment (womens control over household spending); and 2) what are the mechanisms which mediate this relationship. We prioritise depth of analysis over breadth, thus the scope of this review is narrower than previous systematic reviews on microfinance (stewart et al., 2010; duvendack et al. 2011; stewart et al., 2012). We focused on specific aspects of womens empowerment which allowed us to combine statistical meta-analysis and realist (context-mechanism-outcome) synthesis. From the different searches we identified an initial number of 310 papers that were selected for full text examination. Eventually, 29 papers were retained for further analysis, corresponding to 25 unique studies. In line with three recent other reviews on microfinance (stewart et al., 2010; duvendack et al., 2011; stewart et al. 2012) we found that the microcredit evidence base is extensive, yet most studies are weak methodologically. From those studies deemed comparable and of minimum acceptable quality, we concluded that overall there is no evidence for an effect of microcredit on womens control over household spending.

Measuring knowledge spillovers in the new economy firms in Belgium using patent citations

This paper conducts a comprehensive study of patent citations in patents granted to new economy firms in Belgium by the US and the EU Patent Offices using general qualitative response variable analysis, allowing for asymmetries in size and other characteristics. The citation data studied provide evidence of very industry-specific inter-, intra-firm and inter-, intra-industry knowledge spillovers. No general high-tech or new economy knowledge spillovers pattern was observed in the data. Therefore, we advocate for considering the industry-specific situation when analysing knowledge spillovers in the new economy.

Protocol for synthetic review of the impact of microcredit

This paper is the protocol for a synthetic review of microfinance. The protocol describes the objectives and scope of the review, the search strategy, inclusion criteria, coding, and synthesis options.

Ranking USPTO Patent Documents by Importance Using Random Surfer Method (PageRank)

This study attempted to construct an alternative method for ranking patents by their importance in order to improve the existing techniques of determining citation weighted patent stocks. We apply the random surfer PageRank method to the problem of ranking the importance of the patent documents issued to inventors by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. PageRank patent importance weights turn out to differ systematically from the weights based on the number of backward or forward citations. Yet PageRanks perform similarly to the knowledge transfer indicator, which is the ratio of forward to backward citations.

Standard-Creating Coalitions: Open vs. Proprietary Standards

This paper studies the impact of entrepreneurial decisions regarding standard creation in an oligopolistic market with cooperative R&D investments. Our game-theoretic analysis shows that if standards are open and only multi-standard equilibria are allowed, it is impossible to attain a stable multi-standard equilibrium. However, if standards are proprietary, firms can reach two stable multi-standard equilibria. These stable equilibria imply the creation of two proprietary standards: symmetric in one equilibrium and asymmetric in the other, where the asymmetric equilibrium only exists when the innovating firms are strongly efficient in R&D.

Standard-creating coalitions in oligopoly with differentiated products and variable network density

This paper considers the problem of standard-creating coalition formation in an oligopoly. Cooperative R&D investments with the aim to improve product quality are explicitly taken into account. We obtain the following results. If both the strength of network effects and the degree of product substitutability are weak, no stable standard coalition is feasible and it is also socially optimal not to create a standard. However, with strong network effects and product substitutability the grand coalition is the stable equilibrium, which is also socially optimal. In between these limits a multiple-standards coalition structure can be a stable equilibrium, although from a welfare perspective it would be best to create one common standard. If a stable equilibrium contains multiple standards, the firms invest more in R&D than in the case of the grand coalition. It is shown that competition among standards stimulates quality improving innovation.