abstract o ur basic aim in this paper concerns the question that if overusing the information technology by service and manufacturing firms can increase the total productivity resulting from this kind of technology regarding the iran's economic structure and conditions. for this purpose, we primarily evaluate the productivity resulting from the rate of firms' use of it for the differe...

Job-Hopping in Silicon Valley: Some Evidence Concerning the Micro-Foundations of a High Technology Cluster In Silicon Valley’s computer cluster, skilled employees are reported to move rapidly between competing firms. This job-hopping facilitates the reallocation of resources towards firms with superior innovations, but it also creates human capital externalities that reduce incentives to invest...

BACKGROUND Activin B has been reported to promote the proliferation and migration of keratinocytes in vitro via the RhoA-JNK signaling pathway, whereas its in vivo role and mechanism in wound healing process has not yet been elucidated. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS In this study, we explored the potential mechanism by which activin B induces epithelial wound healing in mice. Recombinant lentiviral plas...

This paper analyzes the impact on social welfare of public policies supporting open source software (OSS). The focus of the paper is on desktop applications such as OpenOffice and Linux for desktops. Desktop users can be divided between those who know about the existence of OSS, the “informed” adopters, and the “uninformed” ones; the presence of uniformed users leads to market failures that may...

Social learning models of investment provide an interesting explanation for sudden changes in investment behaviour. Caplin and Leahy (1994) develop a model of social learning in which agents learn about the true state of demand from the investment suspension decisions of other agents. The author tests the main predictions of Caplin and Leahy’s model using a unique database of investment project...

The demand for electronic books (e-books) and the e-book readers are complementary. On the one hand, the emergence of e-book readers such as Amazon’s Kindle has triggered the recent growth of the e-book market. On the other hand, several issues in the e-book market can affect the future of the e-book reader market. Considering this complementarity, this paper quantifies the impact of digital ri...

We study whether licensing agreements can help firms to cut through the patent thicket and to prevent hold-up problems. Using a data set covering the semiconductor industry between 1989 and 1999, descriptive results reveal a puzzling picture: while the number of patents more than doubled over the time period, the number of licensing agreements followed an inverse U-shape. This relationship is s...