Technology transfer contracts between R&D labs and commercial partners: choose your words wisely

Our study is motivated by the problems encountered by external collaborators, particularly those between research and development laboratories and commercial partners, when writing technology transfer contracts. Kruskal?CWallis one-way nonparametric Analyses of Variance are used to analyze Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) from a national, Department of Defense laboratory in the United States of America. The CRADA information elements serve as the independent variables for the study. Benefits accrued by the laboratory serve as the dependent variable. The results highlight the link between information asymmetry and technology transfer and the connection between benefits obtained and contract specificity. Quantifying royalty streams in the CRADA increases the likelihood of achieving of these royalty payments. Too much contract detail may boomerang: limiting laboratory image enhancement, harming employee morale, and impeding efficient and effective laboratory management. Always, technology transfer involves a bargain: a contract where tacit knowledge must be nurtured and the amount of specificity managed.     

Politics or Technical Criteria? The Determinants of Infrastructure Investments in Brazil

To what extent do public infrastructure projects respond to political pressures or developmental imperatives? Do these projects reflect a technical strategy aimed at upgrading economic productivity or the political distribution of public goods that rewards certain voters or political actors? This paper analyses the Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC), an $817 billion-dollar Brazilian infrastructure programme with a multi-method research design pairing in-country interviews and analysis of an original, municipal-level dataset. I conclude that my case study reflects a mixture of political and technical factors, which mirrors the competing influence of technocratic bureaucrats and politically-driven politicians during the project selection process. Despite explicitly targeting larger municipalities with infrastructure deficiencies, the programme still rewarded core-voting districts supporting the winning PT (Workers Party/Partido dos Trabalhadores) presidential candidates. A secondary result finds older municipalities with greater bureaucratic capacity were better positioned to successfully submit projects for federal funding.     

Neither public nor private: The efficacy of mixed model public service delivery in two Canadian municipalities

The New Public Management emerged in the 1980s, and with it, alternative service delivery (ASD) mechanisms, which removed service delivery from the public bureaucracy and separated policy making from policy implementation. Most western governments implemented measures including privatization or contracting out of service delivery to the private sector. By the mid‐1990s, many governments started reversing ASD policies and sought new ways to deliver services, leading to a mixed model approach to service delivery, which combines the benefits of the public and private sectors. We examine the adoption of the model in the Canadian municipalities of Hamilton and Ottawa to determine if and how it enhances competition, cost‐savings, efficiency, effectiveness, and good governance in the delivery of public services, during an era of fiscal constraint. Our findings indicate the model is better in enhancing the five variables when compared to solely public or private services delivery.