The Importance of R&D for Innovation: A Reassessment Using French Survey Data

This paper compares the contribution of R&D to innovation in terms of the various innovation output measures provided by the third Community Innovation Survey (CIS 3) for French manufacturing firms and in terms of accounting for interindustry innovation differences.     

The stability of punishment: A follow-up of Blumstein's hypothesis

Because of the intrinsic relativity of social tolerance toward crime, the rate of punishment that a given society inflicts on its criminals is expected to remain relatively constant over the long term, in spite of social changes and increasing or decreasing crime rates. This paper reconstructs the penal behavior of Montreal's criminal justice from 1845 to 1913 and finds that the stability hypothesis, all things considered, works quite well and has much heuristic value. Three problems, somewhat bypassed in the existing literature, are dealt with here: the reliability of penal statistical time series, the direct empirical evidence of stabilization processes, and a rather crude way of measuring prison punishment. It is suggested, furthermore, that the stability hypothesis include in its future argument the impact of increasing policing and that it be confined tentatively to modern western societies.     

两岸农产品贸易动态比较优势实证分析

基于2001—2012数据和显示性对称比较优势指数(RSCA),运用散点图和非参数核密度估计统计方法,实证分析两岸农产品贸易比较优势的动态变化。结果显示:大陆农产品的比较优势在恶化,农产品出口贸易越来越集中在少数具有比较优势的产品上;台湾农产品基本上不具有比较优势,但是2007年以来比较优势有改善趋势;在双边贸易中,大陆对台湾出口农产品的比较优势总体上呈上升趋势,具有比较优势的产品在增加,而台湾对大陆农产品贸易则不具有比较优势,但是在统计期间出口专业化程度明显下降,比较优势趋于改善。     

Human (In)Security and Democracy in Central America

Human security has increasingly shifted attention to the individual, while the state has become guarantor (or violator) of security given its role in governing the domestic environment. This article examines how variations in regime forms influence security, pointing to the importance of political security in the wider human security framework. To illustrate, the article examines the nature of political security in Central America, a region with weakly democratized states and histories of political violence. The findings suggest a link between democracy and human security that is mediated by state capacity and the ability to control non-state violence against individuals.