Category archives: Economics

Nanotechnology: undermined by the patent system?

Nanotechnology: undermined by the patent system?

Economics

By Silvia Román

Originally, intellectual property legislation was created on the assumption that the profits derived from the monopoly of the patented inventions would encourage innovation and thus promote economic growth. This is one of many hypotheses that the vast majority of economists have ever considered as intuitive. Accordingly, it is generally believed that the patent system is […]

Tax data and top incomes

Tax data and top incomes

Economics

By Ricardo Molero-Simarro

Tax data are an important source of information for a wide range of statistical series. Their use, however, has been mainly confined to the analysis of the impact of fiscal policies on different socio-economic groups. Nevertheless, a recent group of researchers has started using personal income tax data to construct top income shares series, i.e […]

Evidence of education as a signal

Evidence of education as a signal

Economics

By José Luis Ferreira

One of the aspects in which modern economics has departed further away from the neoclassical paradigm is the treatment of information after the seminal works of Akerlof, Spence and Stiglitz, who rightly won the Nobel prize for their contributions. Some theoretical models were introduced to explain economic phenomena that did not fit well in the […]

Research funding: big vs. little science

Research funding: big vs. little science

EconomicsSociology

By Jorge Mejías

With the delicate economical situation that many developed countries are experiencing in the last years, a significant number of questions and concerns have been risen about how to properly assign and distribute funding to scientific institutions and research group leaders. In particular, a relevant question for science funding could be how to optimize the scientific […]

Distribution, demand and growth

Distribution, demand and growth

Economics

By Ricardo Molero-Simarro

The relevance of demand factors for explaining growth was stated almost simultaneously by Michal Kalecki and John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. The main conclusion of the theory of effective demand is that spending determines income. Keynes stated that the marginal propensity to consume decreases when total income growths. Kalecki considered different propensities to consume […]