Openclusters

William Pentland, Forbes - 03.10.08

[...] The cities on this list aren’t the places you’d expect to be up-and-coming centers for the next generation of technologies,” said Auerswald, “But 30 years ago, few would have imagined Las Vegas as the center of a real estate boom.”

Auerswald surveyed specific pockets of science–including advanced materials, nano-crystals and quantum dots, polymers and plastics, micro-systems and cell microbiology–that most experts consider today’s most promising frontiers of innovation.

Borrowing a method devised by Anthony Breitzman, a researcher at 1790 Analytics, an intellectual-property valuation firm, Auerswald then looked for important relationships among patents within each general technical area. The most important patents are generally referenced by other inventors in the field when they file for their own patents; lesser patents garner fewer citations. The greater the increase in the number of important patents in a given city, the higher it ranked on Auerswald’s list. [...] more

The corporate giants of Europe are aging elders. This column suggests financial reforms to encourage the growth of emerging
enterprises.

The recent financial turmoil will certainly lead policy-makers to reconsider existing regulations of financial markets and institutions. It would be misguided to focus exclusively on stability, however. What the European financial system lacks above all is the ability to foster the growth of emerging companies. According to Aghion, Fally and Scarpetta (2007), among others, financial development is particularly important for the entry and expansion of new businesses, possibly more so than labour market flexibility. We take this logic one step further and argue that some types of financial developments are more needed than others at this stage in the economic history of Europe.

The lack of emerging firms in Europe

Entry, exit, and the reallocation of resources among firms play a crucial role in the process of economic growth.¹Europe’s corporate landscape, however, is dominated by old, established companies. A look at the age distribution of the world’s 500 largest listed companies shows that European ‘champions’ are generally much older than American ones, let alone those from emerging markets, as illustrated by Figure 1. Europe’s corporate giants include only 12 companies born in the second half of the 20th century, against 51 in the US and 46 in emerging countries.

More from VoxEU

“In Boston, Michael Brennan, property manager for the private company
that operates the South Station bus terminal, said total passenger
traffic has risen about 2,000 people a day in recent years to 12,000 on
average, driven by lower fares and the ease of use compared to flying.
Business travelers and students alike take advantage of the low fares.”

“Buses aren’t alone in seeing traffic spikes to New York. Amtrak reports
it carried 613,000 people between its three Boston-area stops last year
and New York’s Penn Station, up from 460,800 in 2006. At the same time,
air travel seems to be under pressure: Farecompare.com
shows 624,679 passengers flying from Boston’s Logan airport to New
York’s LaGuardia airport for the first 11 months of 2007, the latest
data available. That’s about 10,000 fewer people than in the same
period in 2006. Rick Seaney, the firm’s chief executive, said the
difference likely reflects fewer seats on the route and rising costs
pressuring people to take the train or bus.”

More from Boston Globe

321 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 868-2866

First thing first. Miracle is still one of my favourites for an afterwork beer that can lead to another one before dinner. Also a nice place for a burger… with a beer. Nice music, cheerful atmosphere. As a coincidence I used to spent most of my stays in Cambridge at Hotel@MIT (Now Le Meridien), accross the street. I’m a few blocks away now, but still a good neighbor.