Manfredi La Manna - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Manfredi La Manna

Retrieved June, Feb 1, 2002

Research Papers in Economics, Sep 15, 2006

optimal organization, parallel multi-tasking, majorization.

The UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is assessed as an incentive scheme affecting the alloca... more The UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is assessed as an incentive scheme affecting the allocation of research talent of varying ‘quality’ across departments. The ‘centres of excellence’ policy implicitly pursued through the RAE is an optimal allocation strategy only if all departments in all disciplines are of the generalist variety, i.e. each pursues a research path through all its stages. Conversely, the RAE-induced research allocation minimizes efficiency if applied to specialist departments, when resources are concentrated on one specific research obstacle. It is argued that the RAE should not take the organization of University research as exogenous, but rather should encourage specialization. All results are obtained by applying to University research concepts and solutions borrowed from the mathematical theory of systems reliability.

This modern up-to-date text presents for the first time an integrated account of industrial econo... more This modern up-to-date text presents for the first time an integrated account of industrial economics, oligopoly and game theory. The New Industrial Economics focuses on key issues including entry deterrence, product differentiation, pricing policy, strategic behaviour, research and development which are examined in the light of the most recent developments in game theory. Each chapter is designed to present the results of frontier research in a relatively non-technical manner suitable for intermediate level undergraduate students.

We analyze a mixed oligopoly with free entry by private firms. It is assumed that a state-owned e... more We analyze a mixed oligopoly with free entry by private firms. It is assumed that a state-owned enterprise (SOE) maximizes an increasing function of output, subject to a break-even constraint. We first show that, because of instability, the industry cannot contain more than one SOE. Then we establish an irrelevance result: if the SOE's cost disadvantage relative to private firms is not too large, then aggregate output, aggreagte costs and welfare are the same with and without the SOE. However, for this range of cost disadvantage an SOE monopoly yields higher welfare. Implications for privatization policy are suggested.

The Manchester School, 1986

European Economic Review, 1989

Whatever its shortcomings in practice, until very recently patent law has sought to embody the wi... more Whatever its shortcomings in practice, until very recently patent law has sought to embody the winner-takes-all principle. This paper argues that it is both feasible and desirable lo allow multiple prizes. Indeed, it is possible that complete abolition of the patent system, by raising the returns to late finishers, would yield an improvement on the current situation. 'A British court has just decreed that Genentech, a biotechnology company in California, cannot retain exclusive marketing rights in Britain for its heart product, TPA. The judge ruled that the terms of the patent were too broad (.. .) To stop others working (.. .) would stifle research and not be in the public interest. Genentech plans to appeal against the decision. If its patent were to stick, 19 companies would have to abandon their work on their TPAs.' [The Economist, July 18, 19871 *We are grateful to Peter Geraighty, Daniel Seidmann, and two referees for their perceptive comments. 'Well known examples are Dasgupta and Stiglitz (1980), Loury (1979), Lee and Wilde (1980).

Economics Letters, 1986

In a free-entry non-cooper&x oligopoly a correlation between profitability and concentration aris... more In a free-entry non-cooper&x oligopoly a correlation between profitability and concentration arises from the indivisibility of firms, Although a 'perverse' negative correlation is possible, most distributions of entry fees across industries yield a positrue correlation.

Canadian Journal of Political Science, 1996

The authors present a new game-theoretic interpretation of Hobbes's state of nature that, unl... more The authors present a new game-theoretic interpretation of Hobbes's state of nature that, unlike existing rational-choice models, questions the possibility of individually rational decision making. They provide a general formulation of the two-player two-strategy game applied to the state of nature and derive existing models as special cases. A nonstandard version of Chicken under incomplete information, that interprets “death” as infinitely bad, provides an explanation for important and hitherto unaccounted for claims by Hobbes. The authors suggest that rational choice in Hobbesian political philosophy ought to examine not so much the mechanics of rational action in natural conditions, but rather the means whereby citizens already living in civil associations can be persuaded of the irrationality of civil war.

Canadian Journal of Political Science, 1997

We thank Alexander Coram for his comment and for the opportunity he gives us to clarify some impo... more We thank Alexander Coram for his comment and for the opportunity he gives us to clarify some important issues that we were able only to hint at in our 1996 article. The main point raised by Alexander Coram is that the cost of (uncertain) death cannot be infinite. So, either we were incorrect in ascribing to Hobbes such a preposterous claim or, if Hobbes did make such a claim, so much the worse for him, for the notion of an infinitely bad payoff being attached to death is just nonsensical and counterfactual. Related to this substantive issue is the less interesting observation that infinity is not a real number and cannot be treated as such in calculating probabilities at a mixed-strategy equilibrium. It is our contention that Hobbes's political theory is indeed predicated on one particular type of death being infinitely evil (not just really, really bad) and that our attempt to formalize his construct is as consistent as the rational-actor approach permits. The context in which we introduced the assumption that "violent death at the hands of others" is infinitely evil (assumption S°°^ is of paramount importance to understand why death being infinitely bad not only is not "meaningless," but is indeed a cornerstone of Hobbes's political theory. The examples cited by Coram as instances of people taking

Bulletin of Economic Research, 1987

Faced with the integer constraint brought about by qualityrelated fixed costs, a socially-managed... more Faced with the integer constraint brought about by qualityrelated fixed costs, a socially-managed industry is more flexible than a free-entry oligopoly, for it can adjust the integer-constrained number of firms either upwards or downwards. As a result, and contrary to conventional wisdom, product quality may be identical under the two regimes. * I wish to thank David de Meza, Stanislaw Gomulka and the Editors for their comments on previous drafts. The usual disclaimer applies. Financial help from the Italian National Research Council (C.N.R.) is gratefully acknowledged.

... in the other are a vivid example of the perils encountered in trying to test empirically a ..... more ... in the other are a vivid example of the perils encountered in trying to test empirically a ... by examining models of the labour market (where employees may be of varying" quality"), of the capital market (where some borrowers may be more likely to default), of the product market. ...

Academics, librarians, university administrators, research funders all agree that having aggregat... more Academics, librarians, university administrators, research funders all agree that having aggregated, worldwide, reliable, and validated data on online usage of scientific, scholarly, and medical peer-reviewed outputs would be highly desirable. Current initiatives to collate views data across publishers and institutional repositories, validating the data using the COUNTER protocol, are unlike to succeed because they are predicated on the concept of central clearing-house which is expensive to maintain and not scalable. The BitViews project uses open-source blockchain technology (a distributed publicly-accessible ledger protecting the privacy of viewing data) and thus provides a low-cost solution which bypasses the need for a central clearing house. As soon as online usage data are aggregated on a worldwide basis, they provide the raw material for devising discipline-specific non-citation impact metrics. Authors of scientific, scholarly, and medical peer-reviewed outputs will have a s...

Maturity and Innovation in Digital Libraries, 2018

We suggest that blockchain technology could be used to underpin a validated, reliable, and transp... more We suggest that blockchain technology could be used to underpin a validated, reliable, and transparent usage metric for research outputs. Previous attempts to create online usage metrics have been unsuccessful largely because it has been difficult to coordinate agreement between all parties on the rules of data collection and the distribution of the workload of data synthesis and dissemination. Blockchain technology can be utilized to bypass this coordination problem. We propose the creation of a bibliometric blockchain (called BitView) which forms a decentralized ledger of the online usage of scholarly research outputs. By means of a worked example, we demonstrate how this blockchain could ensure that all parties adhere to the same rules of data collection, and that the workload of data synthesis is distributed equitably. Moreover, we outline how public-private key cryptography could ensure that users' data remains private while librarians, academics, publishers, and research funders retain open access to all the data they require. It is concluded that a usage metric underpinned by blockchain technology may lead to a richer and healthier ecosystem in which publishers and academics are incentivized to widen access to their research.

Game theory and industrial economics - an introduction, Francoise Forges and Jacques-Francois Thi... more Game theory and industrial economics - an introduction, Francoise Forges and Jacques-Francois Thisse strategic behaviour and collusion, Margaret Slade and Alexis Jacquemin entry deterrence, Roger Ware product differentiation and quality, Norman Ireland price discrimination, George Norman towards a theory of horizontal mergers, Gerard Gaudet and Stephen Salant new dimensions of the patent system, Manfredi La Manna entrepreneurship - a model of risky innovation under capital constraints, Mark Casson oligopoly pricing - time-varying conduct and the influence of product durability as an element of market structure, Ian Domowitz.

ITM Web of Conferences

BitViews is a blockchain application that collects, validates, and aggregates worldwide online us... more BitViews is a blockchain application that collects, validates, and aggregates worldwide online usage data of author’s approved manuscripts (AAMs) deposited in Open Access Institutional Repositories. It creates a free public ledger of usage events that allows anyone to see which research outputs have been accessed, where, and when, thus providing the raw material to construct discipline- and region-specific non-citation based measures of research impact. BitViews’ short-term implications include: 1.The re-alignment of journal impact measures (from citations to usage); 2.Changed patterns in the production of research articles (towards high- usage topics); 3.Creation of new networks of research collaboration; 4.Enhanced opportunity for open data sharing. BitViews’ long-term effects are transformative. Because BitViews promotes the “unbundling” of AAMs from published articles, it endows AAMs with independent value. Two disruptive consequences follow: the very concept of APCs is undermin...

24th International Conference on Electronic Publishing

Insights the UKSG journal

In our view the fundamental obstacle to open access (OA) is the lack of any incentive-based mecha... more In our view the fundamental obstacle to open access (OA) is the lack of any incentive-based mechanism that unbundles authors' accepted manuscripts (AMs) from articles (VoRs). The former can be seen as the public good that ought to be openly accessible, whereas the latter is owned by publishers and rightly paywall-restricted. We propose one such mechanism to overcome this obstacle: BitViews. BitViews is a blockchain-based application that aims to revolutionize the OA publishing ecosystem. Currently, the main academic currency of value is the citation. There have been attempts in the past to create a second currency whose measure is the online usage of research materials (e.g. PIRUS). However, these have failed due to two problems. Firstly, it has been impossible to find a single agency willing to coordinate and fund the validation and collation of global online usage data. Secondly, online usage metrics have lacked transparency in how they filter non-human online activity. BitViews is a novel solution which uses blockchain technology to bypass both problems: online AMS usage will be recorded on a public, distributed ledger, obviating the need for a central responsible agency, and the rules governing activity-filtering will be part of the open-source BitViews blockchain application, creating complete transparency. Once online AMS usage has measurable value, researchers will be incentivized to promote and disseminate AMs. This will fundamentally reorient the academic publishing ecosystem. A key feature of BitViews is that its success (or failure) is wholly and exclusively in the hands of the worldwide community of university and research libraries, as we suggest that it ought to be financed by conditional crowdfunding, whereby the actual financial commitment of each contributing library depends on the total amount raised. If the financing target is not reached, then all contributions are returned in full and if the target is over-fulfilled, then the surplus is returned pro rata.

ABSTRACT Incluye bibliografía e índice