Technological Innovation and Social Change

"As the Copenhagen Climate Summit Approaches, heterodox economic analysis of climate change policies needs a bigger profile. The good news is that Edward Elgar Publishing is shortly to release Keynesian and Ecological Economics: Confronting Environmental Issues edited by Ric Holt, Steve Pressman and Clive Spash. The bad news, however, is that, as things currently stand, New Political Economy won’t be publishing an important paper in this area by Clive Spash, that the journal had accepted following normal refereeing processes. The paper is entitled ‘The Brave New World of Carbon Trading’, but Clive’s employer, Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) wrote to New Political Economy demanding that it not be published.  

Worse than this, as Clive says, ‘The CSIRO is currently maintaining they have the right to ban the written version of this paper from publication by myself as a representative of the organisation and by myself as a private citizen.’ A copy of the paper was leaked to The Australian this week and articles about the situation have been attracting wide interest here, along with predictable spin by the CSIRO and its Minister, Senator Kim Carr. While ABC Radio managed to track Clive down on vacation on a remote island and interview him, he received not even an email from the Senator’s office.

The row about the paper has been going on since June 2009, with Clive being advised that the paper can only be released if substantial cuts are made, removing any reference to government policies. It seems that the cuts would prune about 40 pages from the 47-page paper. To prove this, Clive would need to release internal CSIRO documents, and thus breach his employment contract. Worse still, the paper originally had a junior co-author who asked to be deleted as an author following harassment within CSIRO. The situation rather calls to mind Elliott Perlman’s 2001 novel Three Dollars (which was turned into an award-winning movie in 2005) about an environmental scientist who faces losing his job if he tells the truth.

Of course, had Clive been working in one of Australia’s top (Group of Eight) universities, rather than a government agency, he would probably have had pressure of another kind: New Political Economy is, like many heterodox journals, only on the ‘B-list’ of journals, and the pressure is to publish only in the A*- or A-listed journals.

It’s a fine paper that needs to reach a wide audience. Clive covers the theoretical problems of running carbon trading schemes in a complex world of incomplete and dispersed knowledge, the way that vested interests end up benefiting from the issue of permits, and what happens, in terms of both consumer psychology and corporate responses, when you and I sign up for ‘green electricity’ and assume that, say, forests will be planted as carbon offsets. Unfortunately, we can’t post it here without breaching the terms under which the Blog operates and putting Clive’s position further at risk."

go to this page to locate links to the following papers.

:: Study Summaries [pdf 234kb]


:: "The use of flexibilities in TRIPS by developing countries: can they promote access to medicines?" by Cecilia Oh & Sisule Musungu
(now available)

:: "Case Studies: developing innovative capacity in developing countries to meet their health needs" by MIHR
(now available)

:: "Economic aspects of access to medicines after 2005" by Padmashree Sampath
(now available)

:: "How does the regulatory framework affect incentives for research and development" by Precious Matsoso, Martin Auton, Shabir Banoo, Henry Fomundam, Henry Leng, Sassan Noazin
(now available)

:: "Health Innovation Systems in Developing Countries: Towards a Global Strategy for Capacity Building" by John Mugabe
(now available)

:: "Intellectual Property Issues: Public-private partnerships (PPPs)" by Jon Merz
(now available)

:: "Intellectual Property Rights and Technology Transfer: Enabling Access For Developing Countries" by Anthony D. So, Arti K. Rai, Robert M. Cook-Deegan

:: "Implications of Product Patents – Lessons from Japan" by Reiko Aoki
(now available)

:: "Pharmaceutical innovation and the burden of disease in developing and developed countries" by Frank R. Lichtenberg
(now available)

:: Pharmaceutical Tariffs: What is their effect on prices, protection of local industry and revenue generation? by Müge Olcay & Richard Laing
(now available)

:: "Statistical Trends in Pharmaceutical Research for Poor Countries" by Jean Lanjouw & Margarate MacLeod
(now available)

:: "Public-Private Partnerships for Product Development: Financial, scientific and managerial issues as challenges to future success" by Elizabeth Ziemba
(now available)

:: "A Framework for Developing a Research Agenda for Diseases Disproportianately Affecting the Poor: The Cases of Malaria, Diabetes and Rotavirus by Alyna Smith
(now available)

:: "Patents, Price Controls and Access to New Drugs: How Policy Affects Global Market Entry" by Jean Lanjouw
(now available)

:: "R&D for Development for Neglected Diseases. How Can India Contribute" by Sudip Chaudhuri
(now available)

:: "A Review of IP and Non-IP Incentives for R&D for Diseases of Poverty.What Type of Innovation is Required and How Can We Incentivise the Private Sector to Deliver It?" by Adrian Towse
(now available)

:: "The Right Tool(s): Designing Cost-Effective Strategies for Neglected Disease Research" by Stephen Maurer
(now available)

:: "Traditional Medicine: Modern Approach For Affordable Global Health" by Bhushan Patwardhan
(now available)

:: "Traditional medicine could make “Health for One” true" by Qian Jia
(now available)

:: "Using IP Agreements to promote the objectives of Public Private Partnerships in developing affordable products for developing countries" by Warren Kaplan
(now available)

:: "What has been achieved, what have been the constraints and what are the future priorities for pharmaceutical product-related R&D to the reproductive health needs of developing countries?" by Peter Hall
(now available)

:: Drug Regulation and Incentives for Innovation: The Case of ASEAN by Sauwakon Ratanawijitrasin
(now available)

The views expressed in these studies are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the World Health Organization or the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health.

Innovation and Public Health
Non-Patent Models of Innovation

There has always been debate about the patent system, but this has been fuelled in recent years by its extension to new fields of technology including biotechnology, business methods and software - fields where incremental rather than discrete innovation is most common. Two particular developments stand out.

First, the sequencing of the human genome raised the issue of the extent to which innovation based on this fundamental data would be best promoted by making it freely available in the public domain (as practised by the publicly-funded Human Genome Project) or by patenting/selling data in private databases. A number of private companies initially based their business models on the latter approach.

Secondly, the development and subsequent successful commercial application of open source software has raised the issue of the viability of so-called “open and collaborative” models of innovation as complements or alternatives to innovation systems dependent on the intellectual property rights system.
Documents
- Finding Cures for Tropical Diseases: Is Open Source an Answer? | S. Maurer, A. Rai and A Sali | Paper presented at BIO 2004

- Patents and R&D Incentives: Comments on the Hubbard and Love Trade Framework for Financing Pharmaceutical R&D | By Joseph A. DiMasi and Henry G. Grabowsk | 25 June 2004
[pdf 63kb]
- A New Trade Framework for Global Healthcare R&D | T. Hubbard, J. Love | PLOS Biology 2:2, February 2004

- An Efficient Reward System for Pharmaceutical Innovation | By Aidan Hollis | 2004
[pdf 297kb]
- Commission on Macroeconomics and Health Paper No. WG2:8- Public Policies to Stimulate the Development of Vaccines and Drugs for the Neglected Diseases | By M. Kremer | 2001

Wendy is retiring, so I don't know how long her page here will remain active - get material on gender and STI before it goes!  Sorry for mis-spelling name in the title of this post!

‘Genders in/of engineering’, which was the subject of an ESRC funded ethnographic study of engineers and their work between 2003 and 2005. [click here for full research report] .

European collaborative study about strategies of gender inclusion in the information society (SIGIS), which has generated a massive resource for theory and policy development around gender and ICT. [See www.sigis.ist.org]

Another European collaborative project, Prometea, investigating women in engineering research [See www.prometea.info]

The politics and processes of enhancing public engagement in new or controversial areas of science and technology -  contributes to the programme of socioeconomic research on innovation in genomics at the University of Edinburgh INNOGEN Centre. [See www.talkingstemcells.ed.ac.uk]

the  course:
* Gender, Science and Technology (Honours course) [click here for course handout]

"Social Trends draws together social and economic data from a wide range of government departments and other organisations; it paints a broad picture of UK society today, and how it has been changing."
it is an enduring achioevment of the Social Indicators Mopvement of the 1960s/70s, and is now going online-only.

13 chapters  focus on specific policy areas:

• population,
• households and families,
• education and training,
• labour market, income and wealth,
• expenditure,
• health,
• social protection,
• crime and justice,
• housing,
• environment,
• transport,
• lifestyles
• social participation.

Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on "Gold Farming": Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economies of Online Games

Richard Heeks
Abstract

"From the start of the 21st century, a new form of employment has emerged in developing countries. It employs hundreds of thousands of people and earns hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Yet it has been almost invisible to both the academic and development communities. It is the phenomenon of "gold farming": the production of virtual goods and services for players of online games. China is the employment epicentre but the sub-sector has spread to other Asian nations and will spread further as online games-playing grows. It is the first example of a likely future development trend in online employment. It is also one of a few emerging examples in developing countries of "liminal ICT work"; jobs associated with digital technologies that are around or just below the threshold of what is deemed socially-acceptable and/or formally-legal.

This paper reviews what we know so far about gold farming, seeking to provide the first systematic analysis of the sub-sector. It assembles available data at the sectoral, enterprise and worker level. Five main analytical lenses are then applied. Economic analysis shows how exchange rate variations and scale economies do and do not impact gold farming; and the strong influence of information failure in the purchase of virtual items: known as "real-money trading". Analysis from the perspective of industrial sociology charts the commoditisation and globalisation of the sub-sector, while value chain models identify resource dependencies and power inequities. Enterprise analysis investigates enterprise entry, existence and progression, and outlines the competitive forces shaping the sub-sector's development; particularly threats. Developmental analysis investigates the impact of this sub-sector in macro and micro terms. Finally, there is a sociological analysis of the role played by perceptions and other social forces.

In using a broad base of analytical perspectives, the paper aims to encourage, and provide a stepping stone for, further research on this growing phenomenon. It concludes by outlining and justifying a future research agenda."

Prizes to incentivize innovation are going through a renaissance - they’re calling these “philanthropic prizes.” Interestingly, find that, “prizes are a unique and powerful tool that should be in the basic toolkit of many of today’s philanthropists.” Some benefits of the “prize inducement” model are:

• Identify new levels of excellence
• Encourage specific innovations
• Change wider perceptions
• Improve performance of communities of problem solvers
• Build the skills of individuals
• Mobilize new talent and capital

Some promising practices identified in the report include:

• Philanthropist matching a clear goal with a large group of potential problem solvers who are willing to absorb some risk.
• Start with a clearly define aspiration for society benefit which can be translated into prize objectives that are specific, motivational, actionable, results-focused and time bound.
• A good prize will invest significant resources into its design, specifying the competitor pool, rules and award attributes.
• An effective prize process is at least as important as the prize design, which will attract candidates, manage the competition, celebrate winners, and publicize the effort.
• A good sponsor will invest significant resources in post-prize activities that convert the awards result into long-term societal benefits.