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Patent data have been exploited to track invention and international technology diffusion. We review evidence on research activity, international patenting, and income differences across countries. Guided by that evidence, we construct a model of ideas in the world economy that includes the decision of whether and where to patent them. The model makes precise connections between international patent statistics and cross-country differences in innovation, technology diffusion, market size, and strength of patent protection. We use it to organize our discussion of existing empirical studies, which typically focus on one of five core relationships: (i) national pools of knowledge and international spillovers from basic research; (ii) aggregate productivity and international technology diffusion from applied research; (iii) international patenting and the production of ideas, international diffusion, market sizes, and intellectual property regimes; (iv) the value of ideas and diffusion, market sizes, and the intellectual property regimes; or (v) investment in research and research productivity, the cost of research, and the value of ideas. While distinguishing between these five relationships proves useful, they are, of course, logically intertwined. Taking these interconnections into account will contribute to the goal of building a quantitative model of the creation, diffusion, and adoption of ideas in the global economy.

We examine the influence of venture capital on patented inventions in the United States across twenty industries over three decades. We address concerns about causality in several ways, including exploiting a 1979 policy shift that spurred venture capital fundraising. We find that increases in venture capital activity in an industry are associated with significantly higher patenting rates. While the ratio of venture capital to R&D averaged less than 3% from 1983–1992, our estimates suggest that venture capital may have accounted for 8% of industrial innovations in that period.

In the last two decades the subject of intellectual property rights (IPR) took on major significance as an element of global trade regulation and commercial policy. Implementation of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 obliged member countries, over various transition periods, to adopt and enforce minimum standards of protection for patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and related policies. This mandate forced legislative and administrative changes in virtually all countries, but had particular impact in developing nations, which had generally weaker IPR standards prior to TRIPS. Since 1995 there have been additional multilateral negotiations, largely at the World Intellectual Property Organization, over stronger global standards for patents and copyrights for digital electronic goods. Most controversially, in its negotiations of bilateral free trade areas the United States aggressively demands highly rigorous standards, beyond those called for in TRIPS, for patent rules governing pharmaceutical products and new biotechnological goods in the agricultural and life sciences.

This chapter estimates heterogeneous productivity growth and spatial spillovers through industrial linkages in the United States and China from 1981 to 2010. The authors employ a spatial Durbin stochastic frontier model and estimates with a spatial weight matrix based on inter-country input–output linkages to describe the spatial interdependencies in technology. The authors estimate productivity growth and spillovers at the industry level using the World KLEMS database. The spillovers of factor inputs and productivity growth are decomposed into domestic and international effects. Most of the spillover effects are found to be significant and the spillovers of productivity growth offered and received provide detailed information reflecting interdependence of the industries in the global value chain (GVC). The authors use this model to evaluate the impact of a US–Sino decoupling of trade links based on simulations of four scenarios of the reductions in bilateral intermediate trade. Their estimation results and their simulations are as mentioned based on date that ends in 2010, as this is the only KLEMS data available for these countries at this level of industrial disaggregation. As the GVC linkages between the United States and China have expanded since the end of their sample period their results can be viewed as informative in their own right for this period as well as possible lower bounds on the extent of the spillovers generated by an expanding GVC.

A key element in the development of a technology, a company or an industry is the availability of finance. While much effort has been directed at understanding the roles of venture capital, angel investment and public investment, there does not appear to be much analysis of the industry-level effects as a new industry is emerging. In this chapter, we investigate the patterns of public and private investments and the role of government in support of financing the emergence of science and technology industries. We also examine the criteria used by venture capitalists in their assessment of investment opportunities regarding new technology-based ventures. We focus on the analysis of investment at stage between prototyping and commercialisation of a new technology. This stage has been labelled as the ‘valley of death’ from an investor perspective, which reflects greater risks for investors due to the high level of both technology and market uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the role of information and knowledge in the context of health behaviour change.

As internet use in Finland is among the highest in Europe, two Finnish web-based weight management services were analysed regarding their weight maintenance information by using a theoretical approach constructed for the purpose. The approach combines the elements of web-based weight maintenance information and the typologies of knowing and actional information. The approach was tested by examining the services deductively with theory-based content analysis.

The approach indicated differences between the profiles of the two analysed information environments, which focus on factual and tailored information and their relation to pragmatic, provisional and contested knowing and the initiation, maintenance and recovery of actional information. Both services support weight maintenance; the other slightly more due to its rich social features.

The examination was focused on the free content of two Finnish weight management services. Further research should include the role of socially interactive information and further testing of the approach with more services.

The proposed approach sheds light on the relationship between the types of weight maintenance information and the dimensions of the typologies of knowing and actional information. The approach has the potential to be applied when designing the information environment of new web-based weight management services.

The approach has potential to be applied when designing the information content of new web-based weight management services to support health behaviour change. The approach could be elaborated further by focusing on enabling social support required in long-term weight maintenance.

The study adopted a novel approach to studying typologies of knowing and actional information, thus providing new viewpoints in both information behaviour and organisational knowledge. The study enables further research on weight maintenance information use by proposing a theoretical background.