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This paper explores the importance of early-career characteristics of academic inventors and how they affect their patenting activity. Using a novel dataset on 555 UK academic inventors, we find that the quality of the first invention is the best predictor for subsequent participation in the patenting process. We further find evidence for a positive training effect whereby researchers who were trained at universities that had already established commercialisation units patent more. In addition, researchers who gained their first patenting experience in industry are able to benefit from stronger knowledge flows and receive more citations than their purely academic peers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Summary: International technological collaborations (ITCs) and face-to-face interactions are an important vehicle of knowledge diffusion. This paper analyzes ITCs among USPTO patents’ inventors in eleven emerging economies and seven advanced countries (1990–2004) and a novel database on companies’ country of origin. Technological proximity and sharing a common language are key drivers of ITCs. When the applicant’s ownership is in the emerging country ITCs depend positively upon transport and communication costs (geographical distance and longitude) and negatively upon the strength of intellectual property rights (IPRs). Stronger IPRs positively affect ITCs from subsidiaries of multinational firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies international knowledge flows looking at: (i) patent citations that track codified knowledge and (ii) technological collaborations between inventors that gauge knowledge transmitted through face to face contacts. It uses a gravity model for 13 countries ( Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China, South Africa, Mexico, the USA, the UK, Japan, Italy, Germany, France and Canada) using EPO data. In the case of tacit knowledge flows it shows that intellectual property rights ( IPRs) reinforcement has no effect and that sharing a common legal origin and technological proximity are more important than geographical distance. In the case of codified knowledge flows IPRs reinforcement has a positive effect only when applicants' citations are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We study the relationship between suicide rates and socioeconomic factors by using a panel data at Italian province level in the time span 1996–2005. Our analysis focuses on the impact of social norms on suicidal behaviors. In particular, beyond the usual social correlates of suicide rates, we propose an aggregate measure of social conformity which refers to the religious sphere as an area of conflict between individual and social behaviors. GMM and dynamic spatial panel data approach are implemented to control for serial and spatial autocorrelation. The results confirm the primary role of family, alcohol consumption and population density in explaining the suicide rates in Italy, while the economic variables, namely income per capita and economic growth, do not appear to have any effects. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]