2,277 research outputs found
Pelle sub agnina latitat mens saepe lupina. Copyright in the marketplace
No full textThis paper focus on the relationship between the right's aims of providing an incentive for creative activities, and the overall efficiency. It can in fact be shown that, even if the commodification of intellectual works by means of copyright does provide some incentive for creative activities, this benefit is offset by certain ‘side effects’ on the diversity and quality of the ideas produced, and interference with access to information and the incremental process of creation. All of which, if duly taken into account, can seriously call into question the overall balance of efficiency. In the present-day debate, the justifications given for copyright and author's rights invoke both considerations of economic efficiency, as well as ethics and rhetoric. However such arguments neglect to factor in the social costs, thus portraying in false light an institution that has, in practice, often served private interests very distant from its purported aims, injecting a significant amount of inefficiency into the economic system. This state of affairs can therefore be aptly summed up by the Latin adage of the title: "A wolf often lies concealed in the skin of a lamb". Nevertheless, the objections raised thus far, in the literature on the economic analysis of intellectual property rights, have inevitably resorted to the contra position of extra-economic values, such as equity and justice, against those of economic efficiency. In the present discussion we shall seek to reconcile these two sides, showing how, under an expanded analytical perspective with respect to costs and benefits, and taking into consideration additional elements, copyright proves to be fundamentally inefficient even from a strictly economic standpoint, and that this will only be aggravated by technological progress. We will therefore demonstrate that an examination of the dynamics of the right within the market and society can seriously call into question, or even entirely overturn, the traditional economic arguments in favour of copyright.
Copyright and endogenous market structure: a glimpse from the journal-publishing market
No full textThis article explores the journal publishing industry in order to shed light on the overall economic consequences of copyright in markets. Since the rationale for copyright is among others to promise some market power to the holder of the successful copyrighted item, it also provides incentives to preserve and extend market power. A regular trait of copyright industries is high concentration and the creation of large catalogues of copyrights in the hands of incumbents. This outcome can be observed as the aggregation of rights and is one of the pivotal strategies for obtaining or extending market power, consistently with findings in other cases. Journal publishing is no different in this respect from other copyright industries, and in the last decade has experienced a similar trajectory, leading to a highly concentrated industry in which a handful of large firms increasingly control a substantial part of the market. It also provides a clear example of the effect of copyright dynamics on market structure, suggesting that a different attitude should be taken in lawmaking and law enforcement.copyright and market power, endogenous market structure, journal-publishing industry
A Digital X-ray Imaging System based on Silicon Strip Detectors working in Edge-on Configuration
No full textALICE results on heavy-ion physics at the LHC
No full textALICE is a multipurpose detector for high-energy nucleus-nucleus physics at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. In November 2010, ALICE took its first Pb-Pb data at the center-of-mass energy of 2.76TeV per nucleon pair; reference
data in proton-proton collisions at the same energy were collected in 2011. This paper gives an overview of the main physics results obtained with these data. In particular, I will present results on identified charged and strange particle transverse momentum spectra, on anisotropic flow of charged particles, on open heavy flavour and quarkonia production in Pb-Pb collisions, compared to pp collisions. These first Pb-Pb results from ALICE at LHC are broadly consistent with expectations based on lower energy RHIC and SPS data. They indicate that matter created in these
collisions, while initially much larger and hotter, still behaves like a very strongly interacting, almost perfect liquid. A brief outlook on the expected results from the
second, higher statistics Pb-Pb run of Fall 2011 will be given as well
Appropriating signs and meaning: The elusive economics of trademark
No full textThis paper deals with economic analysis of trademark. Its presence in markets is originally connected with the problem of information asymmetries and the need to provide information for assisting exchanges, so as to avert the market failure brought about by adverse selection. However this information-conveying function is also accompanied by a differentiation effect, arising from the power of persuasion that signs can exert on individuals. The exploitation of differentiation has given rise to the practice of branding, which ties markets and consumption to the realms of meaning and experience. Branding is so all-pervasive in today's economy as to have somehow transfigured it, so that the role of persuasion is now pre-eminent. Nonetheless, the mainstream economic theory tends to resist acknowledging this change, which would to a large extent call into question well-established hypotheses and theoretical tools. The general response has therefore been to assume that the informational role of trademark predominates, and to use this hypothesis to construct models, welfare evaluations and policy prescriptions that bear little or no relation to the actual markets. The opposing approach - in the shadow of the Nelson's and Arrow's seminal papers on economics of information - is recognising the idiosyncratic character of information, and therefore drawing conclusions and devising solutions that, while still based upon the welfare criterion, also incorporate a wider awareness and a deeper representation of the scenario under study. The present work attempts to move in this direction, showing how different disciplines can provide some key epistemological tools for enabling economists to effectively evaluate the welfare outcomes of the introduction and progressive alteration of a particular intellectual property right within the realm of signs and meanings.trademark, brand, intellectual property, economics of information, signs,economic welfare
Heavy-ion physics at LHC: Present and future
No full textI will review the main results on heavy ion physics obtained by LHC experiments ALICE, ATLAS and CMS with the 2010 and 2011 Pb-Pb runs and discuss the physics potential for the next few years, including the p-Pb run and the experimental upgrades aimed at exploiting an order of magnitude increase in the machine luminosity
Charmonium production in Pb-Pb interactions at 158 GeV/c per nucleon
No full textThe NA50 collaboration has measured J/psi, psi' and Drell-Yan pair production in Pb-Pb interactions at 158 GeV/c per nucleon at the CERN SPS. Final results from the 1995 run and preliminary ones from the higher statistics 1996 run are presented. An anomalous J/psi suppression (relative to the Drell-Yan process) has been observed with respect to the suppression pattern established in experiments NA38 and NA51 with proton, oxygen and sulfur beams. The 1996 data allow a detailed study of the suppression pattern in the Pb-Pb sample itself, showing a discontinuity around an E-T value (the neutral transverse electromagnetic energy) of 50 GeV. The psi' is also suppressed relative to Drell-Yan, with a pattern very similar to the one observed in S-U collisions. Finally, the pr distributions of dimuons are presented. The average p(T)(2) of the J/psi in Pb-Pb collisions does not increase any more with E-T above 100 GeV
Publishing an E-journal on a shoe string: Is it a sustainaible project?.
No full textThe aim of this article is to report on an experiment in publishing an open access journal and learn from it about the larger field of open access publishing. The experiment is the launch of the European Journal of Comparative Economics (EJCE), an on-line refereed and open access journal, founded in 2004 by the European Association for Comparative Economic Studies and LIUC University in Italy. They embarked upon this project in part to respond to the rising concentration in the market for scientific publishing and the resulting use of market power to raise subscription prices and restrict access to scientific output. We had hoped that open access journals could provide some countervailing power and increase competition in the field. Our experience running a poorly endowed journal has shown that entry to the field may be easy, yet that making it a sustainable enterprise is not straightforward.Open-access publishing, online journals, scientific publication
I Ludi Sancti Nicholai in francoprovenzale. Inizio xv secolo
No full textLaura Ramello nous offre le fruit d’un labeur dont lui sauront gré les amateurs de langue franco-provençale, non seulement parce qu’il ajoute une petite pierre à un édifice encore lacunaire, mais aussi parce qu’il le fait fort bien. Il s’agit d’une édition de huit courts textes en vers octosyllabes de lecture très plaisante (p. 35-88), mettant en scène saint Nicolas, à partir des traits les plus connus de sa légende : (I) saint Nicolas est élu, suite à une intervention divine, à la tête de l’..
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