This paper analyses the consequences for the European Patent System (EPS) of the recently ratified London Agreement (LA), which aims to reduce the translation requirements for patent validation procedures in 15 out of 34 national patent offices. The simulations suggest that the cost of patenting...

We propose a class of simple rank-based tests for the null hypothesis of a unit root. This class is indexed by the choice of a reference density g, which needs not coincide with the unknown actual innovation density f. The validity of these tests, in terms of exact finite sample size, is...

This paper investigates whether patent fee policies are a potential factor underlying the boom in patent applications observed in major patent offices. We provide the first panel-based evidence suggesting that fees affect the demand for patents in three major patent offices (EPO, USPTO and JPO),...

This paper argues that the consequences of the ‘fragmentation’ of the European patent system are more dramatic than the mere prohibitive costs of maintaining a patent in force in many jurisdictions. First, detailed analysis of judicial systems in several European countries and four case...

The likelihood ratio test for m-sample homogeneity of covariance is notoriously sensitive to the violations of Gaussian assumptions. Its asymptotic behavior under non-Gaussian densities has been the subject of an abundant literature. In a recent paper, Yanagihara et al. (2005) show that the...

Leading papers in a journal’s issue attract, on average, more citations than those that follow. It is, however, difficult to assess whether they are of better quality (as is often suggested), or whether this happens just because they appear first in an issue. We make use of a natural...

By using a unique dataset containing the entire newly enrolled student population at the University of Brussels (ULB), this case study aims to be the first complete analysis of the determinants that infuence the student's path at university in Belgium. We analyze the probability of succeeding...

In the presence of outliers in a dataset, a least squares estimation may not be the most adequate choice to get representative results. Indeed estimations could have been excessively infuenced even by a very limited number of atypical observations. In this article, we propose a new Hausman-type...

Nonparametric correlation measures at the Kendall and Spearman correlation are widely used in the behavioral sciences. These measures are often said to be robust, in the sense of being resistant to outlying observations. In this note we formally study their robustness by means of their infuence...

Multidimensional auctions are a natural and practical solution when auctioneers pursue more than one objective in their PPP transactions. However, it is difficult to achieve auction efficiency with multiple award criteria. Using auction data from road and railway concessions in Latin America,...