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771. Cyber War I: Estonia Attacked from Russia

Author:
Kertu Ruus
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
European Affairs
Institution:
The European Institute
Abstract:
Suddenly, the lights go out. Communication lines fall silent. Internet connections are lost. People venturing into the congested streets discover that banks are closed, ATMs are malfunctioning, traffic lights are jammed. Radio and TV stations cannot broadcast. The airports and train stations are shut down. Food production halts, and the water supply starts rapidly diminishing as pumps stop working. Looters are on the rampage; panic grips the public; the police cannot maintain order. This grim picture is not the opening scene of a Hollywood fantasy, but the beginning of a cyber attack, as described by Sami Saydjari, president of Professionals for Cyber Defense, to a Congressional homeland defense subcommittee in April 2007. In vivid terms, he described how a superpower can be reduced to third-world status by a cyber take-down of a nation's electronic infrastructure. The defense expert called his description “a plausible scenario” – and one for which the United States is unprepared. Even if military computer systems are usually protected against outside interference, most civilian electronic systems remain vulnerable to a massive assault that enjoyed the sponsorship of a state.
Topic:
Security, NATO, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, and Estonia

772. A Flat Playing Field Can Spread Western Innovation

Author:
Michael C. Maibach
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
European Affairs
Institution:
The European Institute
Abstract:
The world has modernized thanks to waves of Western inventions, and the next wave must be a regulatory revolution to ensure that discoveries spread horizontally as far and fast as possible. It is an agenda for the newly formed Transatlantic Economic Council.
Topic:
Economics, Government, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States and America

773. Global Tensions, Global Possibilities: Everyday Forces of Conformity and Contestation

Author:
Jean Michel Montsion, Samah Sabra, James Gaede, Jeremy D. Kowalski, Rhiannon Mosher, Teresa Kramarz, Kathryn Mossman, Adam Sneyd, Luis Alfredo Marroquin-Campos, Rob Downie, Heather Battles, Adrienne Smith, Ahmed T. Rashid, Joanne Nowak, Liam Riley, David Haldane Lee, Greg Shupak, Arun Nedra Rodrigo, Lauren Scannell, Naomi Achus, and Ethel Tungohan
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
Academics theorizing and analyzing the impacts of globalization on everyday life are conventionally divided between those who highlight the (overt or hidden) opportunities and advantages afforded by globalizing processes and others who emphasize their negative impacts on populations across the world. The former tend to focus on such things as increased access to paid labour, faster modes of communication, and technological ease of transportation (of people and information) across global networks. The latter, in contrast, generally stress the vicious implications of globalization's systemic processes, which continue to exacerbate polarization between rich and poor and, invariably, mean uneven access to labour, communication, and transportation. With this division in mind, the Graduate Student Research Group of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition held a conference titled Global tensions, global possibilities in September 2007. The conference organizers intended to bring together graduate students to challenge the above oppositions which often characterize contemporary globalization theories. By gathering an eclectic group of young scholars from various disciplines and backgrounds, the key aim driving Global tensions, global possibilities was to question disciplinary and attitudinal divides in theorizing globalization. A secondary, and related, intention of the organizers was for the conference to be a space in which participants (i.e. presenters, discussants, and audience) would together (re)think the implications of globalizing processes in non-dichotomizing ways that transcend such traditional divides. The organizers recognized that their intentions were not necessarily revolutionary. The works of several prominent scholars in various disciplines have denoted the need to be critical of further polarizing contemporary globalization theory (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001; Mudimbe-Boyi 2002; Ong 2006). For example, in their discussions of globalization, Jean and John Comaroff (2001) have indicated that globalizing processes and their attendant consequences can be neither classified nor understood in simple terms. Like the Comaroffs, the conference organizers felt that one cannot deny the intense messiness of any investigation of globalizing processes. Instead, they wanted to stress that globalization is simultaneously creative and destructive, enabling and constraining, beneficial and detrimental. Given that it has come out of the conference, the same line of reasoning forms the driving force behind this graduate student volume of the Working Paper Series. Below, we discuss our rationale for organizing the volume in the way we have. We begin with a brief discussion of our understanding of the need to move beyond theorizing globalization as either liberating or oppressive. Throughout the following sections, we move back and forth between our theorization of this necessity and the specifics of how the dichotomy beyond which we want to move re-emerged in the context of the conference. In the final section, we provide a brief description of the papers and our motivation for organizing them as we have.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Globalization, Health, Human Rights, Human Welfare, International Organization, Markets, Migration, and Science and Technology

774. Distance Isn't Quite Dead: Recent Trade Patterns and Modes of Supply in Computer and Information Services in the United States and NAFTA Partners

Author:
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the statistical strengths and weaknesses of available data on US computer and information services trade and estimates the scope of delivery through GATS modes 1, 3, and 4. Trade values are estimated using a new methodology that adheres, to the greatest extent possible, to the definitions of modes of supply in the 2002 Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services. This paper finds that US trade (particularly exports) in computer and information services are overwhelmingly and increasingly delivered through mode 3. The United States is found to have experienced declining overall revealed comparative advantage (RCA) in traditional mode 1 cross-border computer and information services trade from 1986 to 2006, while having a stable, positive RCA in mode-3 trade. A new methodology for tentatively estimating US imports of computer and information services in GATS mode 4 suggests that the IT services sector dominates US mode-4 imports, and that these are several times larger than US traditional mode-1, cross-border imports of computer and information services.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

775. The Domestic Trap verses the Launchpad: The Political Economies of Wireless Telecommunications in Japan and South Korea

Author:
Kenji Erik Kushida
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The wireless telecommunications markets of Japan and South Korea both developed rapidly, offering extremely sophisticated and advanced wireless services. Yet, their fortunes in international markets diverged significantly - while Japanese firms retreated to become virtual non-players, Korean firms became top global handset manufacturers.
Topic:
Markets and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, and South Korea

776. Reconsidering the Bayh-Dole Act and the Current University Technology Licensing Regime

Author:
Martin Kenney and Donald Patton
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 has been hailed by policy-makers and scholars as a critical policy innovation for ensuring the commercialization of inventions resulting from results of federally-funded research. This paper suggests that the current implementation of Bayh-Dole through university ownership of all researchers' inventions is not an optimal system in terms of economic efficiency and social interests regarding the rapid commercialization of technology. The current regime, within which the university owns researcher inventions, is plagued by ineffective incentives, information asymmetries, and contradictory goals for the university, the inventors, potential licensees, and university technology licensing offices (TLOs). These structural uncertainties lead to licensing delays, misaligned incentives among parties, and delays in the flow of scientific information and the materials necessary for scientific progress. For the very best TLOs these difficulties can be overcome, but for the average TLO this misalignment of incentives creates suboptimal outcomes in terms of technology transfer. The institutional arrangements within which TLOs are embedded are so perverse that it has encouraged a number of them to become income maximizers and operate in a manner similar to what pejoratively have been termed patent “trolls.”
Topic:
Economics, Education, Government, and Science and Technology

777. The Services Transformation and IT Network Regulation

Author:
John Zysman and Kenji Erik Kushida
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
There is currently a fundamental transformation of services, a transformation central to the growth of productivity and competition in the global economy. This transformation, a response to commodification generated by decomposition of production and intensified competition in global markets, is driven by developments in IT tools, the uses they are being put to, and the networks they run on. The service transformation is changing how firms add value, affecting the underlying economic activity in countries around the world.
Topic:
Government and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Japan and South Korea

778. Home Computers and Educational Outcomes: Evidence from the NLSY97 and CPS

Author:
Daniel O. Beltran, Kuntal K Das, and Robert W. Fairlie
Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Although computers are universal in the classroom, nearly twenty million children in the United States do not have computers in their homes. Surprisingly, only a few previous studies explore the role of home computers in the educational process. Home computers might be very useful for completing school assignments, but they might also represent a distraction for teenagers. We use several identification strategies and panel data from the two main U.S. datasets that include recent information on computer ownership among children -- the 2000-2003 CPS Computer and Internet Use Supplements (CIUS) matched to the CPS Basic Monthly Files and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 -- to explore the causal relationship between computer ownership and high school graduation and other educational outcomes. Teenagers who have access to home computers are 6 to 8 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school than teenagers who do not have home computers after controlling for individual, parental, and family characteristics. We generally find evidence of positive relationships between home computers and educational outcomes using several identification strategies, including controlling for typically unobservable home environment and extracurricular activities in the NLSY97, fixed effects models, instrumental variables, and including future computer ownership and falsification tests. Home computers may increase high school graduation by reducing non-productive activities, such as truancy and crime, among children in addition to making it easier to complete school assignments.
Topic:
Crime, Education, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Global Focus

779. Uncovering Dynamics in the Accumulation of Technological Capabilities and Skills in the Mozambican Manufacturing Sector

Author:
Alex Warren-Rodriguez
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
This paper examines the formation and accumulation of skills and technological capabilities in the Mozambican manufacturing sector. To this effect, it deploys Sanjaya Lall’s technology capabilities conceptual and methodological framework to examine these issues for the Mozambican metalworking and light chemical sectors in the context of historical dynamics taking place in Mozambique in the economic and industrial policy spheres. This analysis shows that these two industries are experiencing a process of gradual technological obsolescence, combined with a progressive simplification of production processes that is leading to a weakening of their technology capability and skill base. In this context, neither foreign direct investment, nor other mechanisms of technology transfer identified in the literature as contributing to the process of technological and skills accumulation, appear to have been able to reverse these trends. In light of available evidence on recent industrial (policy) developments, this paper argues that this process can be seen as a response to a deteriorating policy and economic environment that in the past two decades has undermined investments in industrial technological development in Mozambique.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Foreign Direct Investment, Manufacturing, and Industrialization
Political Geography:
Africa, Mozambique, and Sub-Saharan Africa

780. An Exploration of Factors Shaping Technology-Upgrading Efforts in Mozambican Manufacturing Firms

Author:
Alex Warren-Rodriguez
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
This paper presents an analysis of factors shaping technology-upgrading efforts in the Mozambican manufacturing sector. It uses firm-level data to examine these issues for the metalworking and light chemicals sectors, using Logit regression analysis to identify factors associated with firms’ decisions to engage in technology-upgrading efforts in three areas: (i) product development; (ii) production technology development aimed at upgrading existing equipment or purchasing entirely new manufacturing technologies; (iii) and process engineering. In line with much of the literature on industrial organization and the microeconomics of technology change, this paper finds that existing production and technological conditions in manufacturing firms do play an important role in shaping their technological efforts. However, this association is not always linear, cumulative or uniform across the various relevant spheres of manufacturing, underscoring the multifaceted nature of technology change at this level. Moreover, factors identified in the literature as being instrumental in shaping technology development efforts, such as skills or foreign ownership, play no role in dynamics of this kind in Mozambique. At the same time, other factors that have received less attention, such as the ability of firms to engage in technology cooperation arrangements or the role played by demand and market conditions appear as important factors shaping these technology-upgrading efforts. Altogether, these findings serve to underscore the importance of defining policy interventions for private sector development that go beyond investment climate concerns and take into account issues such as the promotion of linkages, technology cooperation and demand/market management considerations.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Demand, Manufacturing, and Private Sector
Political Geography:
Africa, Mozambique, and Sub-Saharan Africa