The impact of the general data protection regulation on innovation and the global political economy

This paper attempts to outline how the General Data Protection Regulation might be positive not only for consumers and societal well-being but also for innovation in the digital age. Situated within the highly charged debate regarding the impact of regulations on innovation, this paper examines the General Data Protection Regulation in light of the theoretical facets underpinning the contexts in which regulation has a positive effect on innovation. These are in relation to firstly, tackling concentrated market power where too much concentration leads to the hampering of competitiveness and innovation. Secondly, structural features outlined in the Porter hypothesis that a regulation should have to promote innovation and thirdly, whether the General Data Protection Regulation falls within the scope of the Brussels effect and hence, levels the competitive playing field as well as helps shape the future of the digital economy. The General Data Protection Regulation's alignment with these three dimensions is outlined with certain deviations being noted.     

Transnational innovation networks aren’t all created equal: towards a classification system

This paper examines the growth of transnational networks of innovation and proposes a preliminary classificatory system of four distinct kinds of forces which give rise to social networks that facilitate knowledge flows, relationship building, and collaborative activities important to accessing global markets. The networks may form around a technology sector, be identity based, emerge from a government-led initiative, or be stimulated by a civic or philanthropic organization. Each has a different mode of organizing, financing, and meeting its objectives, as shown by examples presented in the paper. The proposed classification of these characteristics is intended to open a conversation within the social sciences and among policy makers about how better to understand the ways in which transnational networks get formed, operate and produce desired results.     

Institutionalizing Legal Consciousness: Regulation and the Embedding of Market Participants in the Securities Industry in Ghana and Fiji

How do differences in the implementation of regulation impact market behavior? I propose a theoretical framework to understand this impact as part of the process of embedding market participants through the institutionalization of legal consciousness within a field of action. I use this framework to understand the impact of the difference in the implementation of securities regulation in Ghana and Fiji. In Fiji, where the regulatory agency is more present and process‐oriented, brokers operate with a greater orientation toward formal rules. In Ghana, where the regulatory agency is distant and auditing, brokers rely on explicit enforcement of floor‐based norms. Conceiving of legal consciousness as an emergent feature of a field of social action advances the understanding of how legality is institutionalized, since the emergent structure shapes the orientations, behavior, and relations of actors within the field.     

金融创新与法律规制——美国证券立法演进的回顾与思考

金融创新与监管规制是一个亟待研究的难题。美国证券立法的百年历程表明：早期的州立法，是对完全自由市场经济下，金融产品创新充满欺诈的法律规制，主要思路是保护投资者的基本利益；后来的联邦证券立法，是对美国经济危机反思的结果，对证券业务及其创新的限制，主要思路是维护金融安全、经济秩序；联邦立法的转型，是应对经济发展的制度变革，适应全球化经济发展的需要，促进金融创新增强竞争力、提高经济效率。在此基础上，揭示其通过立法平衡金融创新与法律规制以维护金融安全、经济效率的理念，包括金融创新是美国经济发展和稳定的重要因素．管制与放松是一个漫长、反复的制度变迁过程，要从实际出发，尊重市场机制。尊重金融市场的内在规律。     

The cost of regulation in a decentralized context: the case of the Spanish regions

The impact of regulation on productivity is an issue that has attracted increasing interest in recent decades, as some scholars have argued that the proliferation of red tape may be the cause of slower growth rates in some western economies. Regulation (and other public instruments) has significant effects that may be either benign or harmful. Justified and well designed regulation protects consumers from potentially unsafe products, limits pollution, enhances workplace safety and contributes to public health and safety, as well as a more productive and fair society. However, an overabundance of rules or badly designed regulation can cause confusion and delay, impose unreasonable compliance costs in terms of capital investment, labour and official paperwork, retard innovation, lower productivity and, accidentally, distort incentives for private initiative. The objective of this paper is to examine the possible impact of regulatory activity in the Spanish regions over the past decade (1989–2001) on growth and productivity.     

Multilevel Modeling in Family Violence Research

Family violence researchers often use an ecological perspective to describe persons nested within groups. Further, family violence researchers frequently investigate whether group characteristics impact individual outcomes. The theoretical orientation and research designs typically used therefore present opportunities to utilize multilevel modeling (MLM) for clustered designs. It is widely understood that MLM corrects standard errors for grouped data, though other approaches can address this issue. Importantly, MLM presents a structured approach to the examination of group differences in outcomes, group differences in the association between the characteristics of persons and these outcomes, and the explanation of group differences using group-level characteristics. This journal frequently receives studies that use MLM for clustered designs, and a set of analytical guidelines may assist authors in preparing such articles so as to properly implement and better leverage the power of MLM to advance family violence research. I describe MLM for the new user, providing guidance on estimation of these models in the context of two examples. In addition, for more experienced users of MLM, I argue for greater attention to between-group and compositional effects that may be prevalent in family violence research, and the opportunities they may raise for a better understanding of the complexities at the group level. In closing I discuss some extensions of MLM and place MLM in the context of research design, providing guidelines for designing, carrying out, and reporting findings from studies that use these methods.     

Legal Regulation and Communicative Couplings

From 1989 to 1991 we studied the relationship between legal regulation and decisions about acceptable risk at off‐shore installations in the North Sea. The study focused on the interaction between authorities and private actors, when they develop subsidiary rules, discuss projects, and execute audits. This article discusses the case of regulation within the framework of communicative systems theory; the problem is how to couple differentiated, closed functional systems (e.g., law and economy). Applying empirical data we attempt to create a more complex understanding of the communicative processes, on the basis of which we can elaborate upon the coupling between systems, and the potential effects of law. The point of the article is that the coupling itself may develop into a new independent system (the discursive system). If this is correct and fairly generalizable, legal regulation contributes to the differentiation of society into closed systems. At the practical level the differentiation will have consequences for both regulation and democracy.     

我国金融监管制度供给过剩的法经济学分析

中国金融监管存在显著的制度供给过剩。金融监管制度供给过剩会增加交易成本,不符合效率原则。从法经济学的角度分析,中国金融监管制度供给过剩的原因在于金融监管供给与需求不匹配、权力监管模式下监管机关的粗放型制度供给以及金融监管的行政化。改变金融监管制度供给过剩的状况,应当引入金融监管的成本收益理念和问责机制,将金融监管由权力监管向市场化监管转变,并合理处理金融创新与金融监管的关系。     

市场化进程提升了环境规制的有效性吗?——基于绿色技术创新视角的“波特假说”再检验

利用2000-2016年中国省级面板数据,识别了市场化进程、环境规制与绿色技术创新的非线性关系。结果显示:环境规制的绿色技术创新效应在规制类型、规制强度与绿色技术类型方面存在显著的差异性,因此“波特假说”未能得到完全验证;环境规制总体的绿色工艺创新与绿色产品创新效应受到了市场化进程的正向调节。市场激励型环境规制的绿色工艺创新与绿色产品创新效应受到了市场化进程的正向调节,命令控制型环境规制的绿色工艺创新效应受到了市场化进程的正向调节,市场化进程提升了环境规制的有效性,这意味着“波特假说”是“有条件的波特假说”。研究结论说明,各级政府的环境规制政策与规制强度选择,必须与各地区的市场化进程动态适应。     

Spaces and Places: A Systems Theory Approach to Regulatory Competition in European Company Law

Abstract:  This article takes issue with the longstanding oppositional themes of harmonisation versus regulatory competition in European company law. Instead of embracing one approach over the other in exclusivity, the article draws attention to the persisting mixture of approaches to an emerging European-wide law regulating the business corporation. Against the background of an ongoing struggle over identifying the goals and taboos of the European legislator's mandate in regulating the company, the argument put forward here is that this very struggle is reflective of the nature of the evolution of company law in an 'integrating Europe and a globalising world'. European attempts of developing European company law as part of a larger initiative of improving the Union's potential for innovation and competition are thus likely to meet with the challenges that contemporary Nation States are facing when adapting their modes of regulation and representation to the demands of an increasingly complex and decentralised fields of market activities. Situating the law of the business corporation within the larger theme of European integration on the one hand, and of issues of market regulation, domestic, transnational, and international, on the other, suggests the adoption of a systems theory-based approach to understanding the boundaries of law in this multilevel and multipolar process.     

论证券法的地方竞争体制

证券法的权力配置存在三种类型:单一监管者、私人合同和地方监管竞争体制。中国二十多年来形成与不断强化的证券监管体制是单一监管者垄断权力,但其问题已经暴露出来了,它使得发达地区与非发达地区的公司能进入资本市场的数量非常不平衡。提出中国证监会系统内部自上而下向地方分权的地方监管竞争方略,不仅可能拥有监管竞争理论所预测的优势,而且是治理当代中国金融体制弊病的一剂药方。     

Health care cost-containment regulation: prospects and an alternative.

Regulation of the health care system to achieve appropriate containment of overall costs is characterized by Professor Havighurst as requiring public officials to engage, directly or indirectly, in the rationing of medical services. This rationing function is seen by the author as peculiarly difficult for political institutions to perform, given the public's expectations and the symbolic importance of health care. An effort on the part of regulators to shift the rationing burden to providers is detected, as is a trend toward increasingly arbitrary regulation, designed to minimize regulators' confrontations with sensitive issues. Irrationality and ignorance are found to plague regulatory decision making on health-related issues, even though it is the consumer who is usually thought to suffer most from these disabilities. The author argues that consumer choice under some cost constraints is a preferable mechanism for allocating resources because it better reflects individuals' subjective preferences, has a greater capacity for facing trade-offs realistically, and can better contend with professional dominance of the resource allocation process. In view of the unlikelihood of regulation that is both sensitive and effective in containing costs, the author proposes that we rely primarily on consumer incentives to reform the system. A simple change in the tax treatment of health insurance or other health plan premiums, to strengthen consumers' interest in cost containment while also subsidizing needy consumers, is advocated. Steps to improve opportunities for innovation in cost containment by health insurers, HMOs, and other actors are outlined briefly.     

Innovation in the U.S. Service Sector

This paper contributes to ard a better understanding of innovation in the service sector by focusing on the disparate nature of R&D in the U.S. service sector as learned through case studies of the U.S. telecommunications, financial services, systems integration services, and research and development testing services industries. Based on this understanding of the nature and scope of R&D therein, a new policy-oriented model of innovation specific to the service sector is posited. Also, policy recommendations are offered with regard to the public sector’s collection and interpretation of R&D data related to the service sector.      

Slack resources,exploratory and exploitative innovation and the performance of small technology-based firms at incubators

This paper aims to contribute (1) to the understanding about how small technology-based firms in spite of being constrained by limited resources, can still perform exploratory and exploitative innovation and (2) to extend knowledge about the role of slack resources in the context of small technology-based firms in facilitating those innovation activities. Herein, we focus on two types of slack resources: internal slack, resources that are available within the firms and external slack, additional resources that are gathered through the facilitation of external sources such as business incubators. Using a sample of 141 small technology-based firms located at incubators, this study combined two streams of research on incubator studies and innovation to construct some hypotheses examining the role of slack resources and innovation activities in enhancing the performance of small technology-based firms operating in incubator setting. Our findings demonstrate that neither slack resources nor innovation activities alone explain firm performance. Instead, small technology-based firms fit their innovation activities to their slack resources. While the relationship between internal slack and performance is mediated by exploitative innovation, exploratory innovation plays a role as a mediator for the relationship between external slack and performance.     

Tuning knowledge ecosystems: exploring links between hotels’ knowledge structures and online government services provision

The development of knowledge-based business opportunities in many economic sectors worldwide is often conceived through a silo-mentality, whereby efforts are focused in either industry or government entities in isolation. Without a systemic or holistic understanding of connections between these, any present or future project evaluation becomes either input- or output-based instead of having a comprehensive understanding of its impact. In order to address such a challenge, this empirical study focuses on the Spanish hospitality sector, which currently thrives by continuously accessing external and internal sources of knowledge, thus offering opportunities to conceptualise it as a knowledge ecosystem. Lessons learned from the Spanish hospitality sector have the potential to inform the design of online government services as part of a knowledge ecosystem. This can, in turn, yield further opportunities for innovation in the hospitality sector. A structural equation model validated by factor analysis of 130 hotels is used to assess the extent to which hotels currently benefit from online government services. This study concludes that online government services can be better fostered by nurturing external communities while also setting up internal working communities and practices. The model and its implications can also inform initiatives which seek to pursue ecosystem-oriented research and practice, as well as future policy and technology transfer initiatives.     

Multiplicative-innovation synergies: tests in technological acquisitions

Technological innovations enjoy synergies that vary in their speed and magnitude of impact, depending upon whether they are additive or multiplicative in nature. Additive-innovation synergies build incrementally on familiar technologies (as is reflected in the technologies built upon within their patents’ respective antecedents) and the duration of their effect is shorter-lived. Multiplicative-innovation synergies arise from combining greater proportions of diverse technologies and their effects have longer duration. The most-effective organizational-learning processes accompanying exposure to exotic technology streams via technological acquisition will occur if firms have properly invested in adaptive capacity to synthesize inventions using the unfamiliar knowledge. In the first tests of innovation synergies on firm performance, we find that technological novelty in patent content improves return on assets for firms that consistently invested in R&D. Using patent-content scores to characterize whether inventors have integrated greater proportions of exotic technological antecedents into their inventions (or not), we test the impact of innovation synergies on firms’ performance after technological acquisitions. Diversification posture (which could be an alternative explanation for performance differences) is negatively-correlated with innovation synergies in our results.     

THE INNOVATION OF LAW: FROM CHINESE PERSPECTIVE

It is a new and meaningful research in discovering the impact of technology on law, and the reciprocal relationship between law and invention. This paper starts with a Chinese ancient tragedy to disclose the direct relationship between technology and law that was reflected in the play. It explains the “Needham Puzzle” that was engraved in Chinese law in discussion with the indirect impact of technology on law in the Chinese legal system. After that, the Chinese patent system is analyzed specifically to discover the law of innovation. It also discusses the impact of law on technology in the field of patent system.     

试论知识产权法的价值定位——创新

价值已成为划分法律部门的内在尺度和标准之一,在知识经济时代中,创新已经成为人们重要的价值追求。本文从知识产权制度最显著的功能、法律价值渊源以及创新、科技发展对人类意识形态、国家政策的影响等方面论证了“创新”是知识产权制度的主导性价值。对知识产权法价值的清楚认识有助于从一个全新的角度去解释知识产权制度的立法、执法、司法等各环节出现的新问题。     

Regulation and Human Rights in Socio-Legal Scholarship

This article sets the scene for a special issue of Law & Policy that brings together the themes of rights and regulation. The articles explore a number of settings where rapid changes in political commitments and economic systems, often stimulated by international developments, place pressures on rights regimes. The articles deploy a variety of methods to draw out differences in both focus and approach in the understanding of rights, when compared with regulation. This introductory article provides a more detailed analysis of these differences in approach, and is suggestive of ways in which they may complement each other. We argue that the articles collectively demonstrate the added valued in juxtaposing rights with regulation. They are suggestive not only of a richer understanding of the impact on rights of broad changes in regulatory frameworks, but more particularly argue for the importance of understanding how processes of institutionalization can underpin or undermine rights regimes, and that regulatory measures may form a key aspect of such institutionalization.     

Prizes for innovation of new medicines and vaccines

This article argues that prizes can help stimulate medical innovation, control costs and ensure greater access to new medicines and vaccines. The authors explore four increasingly ambitious prize options to reward medical innovation, each addressing flaws in the current patent system. The first option promotes innovation through a large prize fund linked to the impact on health outcomes; the second option rewards the sharing of knowledge, data, and technology with open source dividends; the third option awards prizes for interim benchmarks and discrete technical problems; and the final option removes the exclusive right to use patented inventions in upstream research in favor of prizes. The authors conclude that a system of prizes to reward drug development would break the link between R&D incentives and product prices, and that such a reform is needed to improve innovation and access to new medicines and vaccines.