Hedonic price theory is adapted to advertising. A quality-adjusted advertising spending function is embedded in a sales response model and the parameters of both equations are estimated in one step. The procedure provides an alternative to the judgmental aggregation of attributes of advertising quality into a single value. The results permit comparison of the sales effects of variations in advertising spending with the effects of variations in copy quality, and permit computation of an advertising figure that accounts for both copy quality and actual spending. A pilot study illustrates the procedure.
The authors make a useful and original contribution to evaluating the impact of strengthened patent protection of pharmaceuticals on Canadian healthcare expenditures. This commentary argues that their second task - measuring the impact of strengthened patent protection on R&D spending in Canada - faces an insurmountable conceptual problem: Corporate decisions on the location of R&D activities bear no theoretical relationship to the location of sources of R&D funding and are guided by other factors, including political considerations.
This study investigates food production and agrobiodiversity in the Tarikhet and Ukhimath blocks in Uttarakhand, India, located in the middle ranges of the Himalayas. On the small patches of terraced land available to the average household in these areas, the cultivation of a wide range of traditional and high-yielding varieties of grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits is a positive feature in terms of sustainability. Some villages also supplement plant-based food production and income by incorporating animal husbandry into the overall agroecosystem. It was found, however, that the output of the average farm provides only about half of the household energy requirements, forcing most families to resort to off-farm activities to support a large proportion of their food and other requirements. There is therefore a need to develop policies that will continue to support the rich agrobiodiversity of these areas, while providing for the nutritional and economic needs of the population.
Abstract This paper employs Canadian stock market and corporate financial data to test the hypothesis that the market places a positive value on reported research and development spending of firms as an indicator of expected profitability and growth. The empirical results show a positive, statistically significant relationship between R&D spending and market value. The magnitudes of estimated coefficients are consistent with those reported in several published US studies. These results suggest that investment in R&D is a rational allocation of resources, contrary to the undervaluation hypothesis.
After almost two decades of compulsory licensing of prescription drugs, Canada restored full patent protection in two legislative steps taken in 1987 and 1992. The paper investigates the impact of the strengthening of intellectual property rights on corporate R&D spending in the Canadian pharmaceutical industry. Interindustry comparisons of R&D spending trends within Canada, intercountry comparisons of R&D spending trends within the pharmaceutical industry, as well as trends in Canada's share of foreign R&D spending of US-owned multinationals suggest a statistically significant increase in Canadian pharmaceutical R&D spending after 1987.