Events Archive

The SIRE Launch Event

The SIRE launch event was held in the Playfair Library, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh on Monday 19th November 2007 and provided an opportunity to meet with new and established SIRE researchers, and see them in action.

Three research seminars were given by leading researchers from each of SIRE’s thematic research programmes.

Seminar 1:

Professor Guido Cozzi (University of Glasgow)

Privatization of knowledge: did the US get it right?

Brilliant ideas, about new products and processes, are key to economic growth and international competitiveness. Such ideas often emerge from scientific discoveries which themselves have no immediate commercial value – so rewards may not be aligned to effort.  Should basic research be publicly or privately funded?  And, to foster innovation and growth, what kinds of discovery should be protected by intellectual property rights? Post 1980, the US intellectual protection regime has parted substantially from the European. Has the US chosen the better path?

Click here to download the presentation

Seminar 2:

Professors Maia Guell and Jose V. Rodriguez Mora (University of Edinburgh)

The names in Spain are mainly not in vain: inter-generational mobility and the information content of surnames

Economic mobility, between generations, is notoriously difficult to measure. Although there are many cross-sectional data sets, there are few long panels.  We propose an innovative solution, based on the idea that surnames act as a longitudinal marker. We measure the information content of surnames in a census of the Spanish population (of more than 40 million). We find that not only does family background matter, but it is mattering more – economic mobility, between generations, is decreasing . This trend is explained by an increase in assortative mating: like is pairing more with like.  The hope is that our new method will be of use to non-economists too; e.g. in determining the importance of heredity for a medical condition.

Click here to download the presentation

Seminar 3:

Professor Martin Chalkley (University of Dundee)

Economics in tooth and jaw: extracting performance from dentists

The performance of the NHS dental service has been a source of much public debate, and some discomfort for policy makers (not to mention patients). Changes to dentists’ pay structures have been tried across the UK. Such policy shifts enable us to test our models of economic incentives, given that there is a huge and seldom-exploited data bank recording dentists’ activity in minute detail. We have a number of findings. (1) Remuneration matters – dentists paid differently perform differently. (2) It matters whether patients have to co-pay – dentists do more for patients who co-pay less. What can this tell us about how health care should be delivered?

Click here to download the presentation

Keynote address by Professor Tim Besley (LSE and member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee)

Economics for Public Service Reform

Reform of public services is a pressing issue in the UK and elsewhere. This lecture will review what the economics of incentives and organizations offers to this debate.  In trying to understand what makes public services different, it will develop a framework focusing on 3 M’s: missions, motivation and matching.  It will argue that these offer a novel take on how competition and incentives work in public service provision.  It will also discuss some issues surrounding public versus private provision of public services and governance of service provision.

We now have the audio recordings available of the afternoon keynote introductions and the presentation by Prof. Tim Besley.

• Click here for introductions
• Click here for part 1 - Tim Besley
• Click here for part 2 - Tim Besley

The image gallery below shows guests and delegates enjoying discussions and networking. The photos give a flavour of the stimulating atmosphere experienced throughout the day.