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Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) wrote to New Political Economy demanding that it not be published.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