We analyse the development of world records speed skating from 1893 to 2000 for both men and women. The historical data show that it is likely that the relation between skating speed and distance of the various events is non-linear and converges to a limit value. We pay special attention to...

Action learning programs are supposed to result in both personal and organizational development. Recent research indicates however that although more and more programs lead to personal development, organizational development is negligible. This may be caused by the fact that organizational...

The process of developing a new technology through open discussion has been called collective invention. This paper documents two episodes of collective invention and proposes a general model based on search theory. The first episode deals with the development of mass production steel in the...

We develop an economic partial equilibrium model for energy supply and demand with capital and labor as production factors, and endogenous technological change through learning by research and learning by doing. Our model reproduces the learning curve typical for (bottom-up) energy system...

This paper employs unit root tests that allow for two endogenously determined structural breaks to study whether or not invention activities are converging across U.S. regions/states. Using U.S. patent data from 1929 to 1997, we find technological beta convergence in six of the nine Census...

One of the more critical and complex issues to be resolved between a would-be supplier (licensor) and recipient (licensee) of technological know-how is the determination of a fair transaction price. The price should reflect a number of factors, including the risk and return associated with the...

In many OECD countries several public agencies are involved in granting some form of R&D subsidy to firms. Empirical work on the effects that subsidies have on firm behavior and performance has produced mixed evidence. We focus on the firm participation stage in R&D subsidy programs in order to...

Many novel projects are characterized by ambiguity (impossibility to recognize all influence variables and to foresee all possible events) and complexity (interaction of many performance influence variables, making the overall performance difficult to estimate). Two fundamental approaches to...

We study asymmetric second-price auctions under incomplete information. The bidders have potentially different, commonly-known, valuations for the object and private information about their entry costs. The seller, however, does not benefit from these entry costs. We calculate the equilibrium...