Edward Elgar Publishing

The economic theory of invention and innovation.

Invention leads to new technology which leads to higher productivity which leads to greater development and better living and working conditions. That much we know. However, how can we really describe how invention, which is related to newness, is related to innovation, which is related to usefulness, and how do they combine to drive new technologies? In these 24 articles reprinted from journals, contributors analyze exogenous and endogenous innovation, induced innovation, sources of innovation, and adoption and diffusion of innovation, addressing such issues as determinants of the direction of technological change, the economics of invention, theories of process innovations, economic theories of technological change, empirical support for the theory of induced innovation, entrepreneurs as innovators, simple economics of basic scientific research, expenditure patterns for risky research and development projects, inter-industry technology flows, technical change and the rate of imitation, and the production and transmission of technical knowledge. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Intellectual property and biotechnology; biological inventions.

Rimmer (law, Australian National U.) explores how the patent system, a product of the industrial revolution, has accommodated and adapted to the recent developments in the life sciences. Among his topics are plant breeders' rights, the human chimera patent initiative, the human genome project, the dilettante's defense, and the alchemy of junk. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

New global frontiers in regulation; the age of nanotechnology.

This collection of papers assesses what could be a global boon or a world-wide crisis, taking a broad consideration of the ethical, legal and social issues of the development of nanotechnology. Topics include the collective imaginary and the research agenda for nanotechnology, nanoethics, societal aspects of a new technology, negotiating the debates, regulation in the public interest, human health risk assessments, the risks of regulation and vice versa, and approaches from the US, the UK, Australia, Europe, the World Trade Organization, and the OECD. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Protecting nature; organizations and networks in Europe and the USA.

Nature protection has been propelled primarily by national non- governmental organizations and networks rather than national governments, state van Koppen (Wageningen U., the Netherlands) and Markham (U. of North Carolina at Greensboro). They provide a conceptual framework for a collaborative analysis by Western sociologists, introducing definitions of 'nature'; organizational goals; structures; strategies; role in civil society; and theories/social movements accounting for the motivational bases of environmental activism. Contributors present case studies from England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and the U.S. in the biogeographical, demographic, cultural, economic, and political contexts of these nations. The editors summarize common themes and differences in these studies, and challenges posed by a new 'green wave' of concerns including climate change. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Public or private economies of knowledge?; turbulence in the biological sciences.

Harvey (director, Centre for Research in Economic Sociology and Innovation, U. of Essex, UK) and McMeekin (Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, U. of Manchester, UK) examine the economics of biological knowledge (meaning databases of different biological entities such as expressed sequence tabs or protein sequences, bioinformatic tools for searching and analyzing biological data and the algorithms on which they are based, and the genomes of specific organisms) utilizing an "instituted economic process" approach originating in the work of Karl Polanyi. They utilize this approach to explore differentiations between the production and use of biological knowledge and the knowledge distribution and exchange processes that structure the divisions and interdependencies between public and private aspects of knowledge. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Technological change and environmental policy; a study of depletion in the oil and gas industry.

Managi (business administration, Yokohama National U.) describes the design and implementation of environmental policies that encourage technological progress in an industry facing dwindling natural resources and an increasing number of regulations. He finds it possible to develop market and environmental policies that encourage technological innovation as he describes how the oil and gas industry has learned to innovate as resources decline (in which he performs an econometric analysis of production and exploration), the role of the Porter hypothesis in analyzing environmental regulations and technological change, sector-specific contributions of innovations in exploration and development as well as production, the environmental Kuznets curve and what it says about the impact of pollution abatement, alternative technology indexes, methods of forecasting energy supply and pollution, and in a particularly interesting section, the question of whether environmental technology change saves pollution or costs. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)