Friday, March 14, 2008

Back Again

I started working on a second ASP working paper which due to time constraints will be shorter and probably more theoretical. The point would be to criticize & improve the existing weighting schemes used in the literature, and empirically, to explore direct technology diffusion via patenting. However, the patenting data is quite bad thus, I am a bit dissapointed since I will have to put in about 50 hrs of work just for the data. And that's not nice if nothing worthwhile comes out, especially since it is not one's fault.

Friday, March 07, 2008

First time - always special

I finally made today the big step of sending a paper for publication. Indeed, it is a big step, especially if one finds him/herself alone in this process, which is highly bureaucratic (at least from all the guidelines et al. - we still have to check that in practice -) and demanding. After revising your paper for a couple of good times and presenting it in various conferences, there is no way back. At least for me. I felt like I need to do it now. Especially, if one thinks about the lag between submission and actual publication. We are young...but maybe not that eager to wait. March the 7th, hopefully under a good sign. And a good journal (Research Policy) which has drawn me from the start and is exactly representative for this field.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

There is nothing like a bit of spam

Today I had to clean this blog of all comments, since I guess they were all spam. Anyways, it would be nice to have a tool that doesn't allow people to leave links in the comments section.
Revision for Submission

I started today to revise my first thesis essay. It is time for it to fly somewhere more official that on my hard drive. Moreover, I think I have reached the limits of the tiny dataset and problems associated with transitional countries. Finally, I opted for a FGLS estimator and included the 2007 patent data as well. With this occasion I have noticed two things: 1)how fast I have adapted and improved my writing style (I think my second paper is far better written and structured than the 1st) 2)how fast we forget things we've worked for ages.(it is really hard to get back into it and do it again, and do it better). However, somebody has to do it. Also it would be nice as an outcome a publication in a good journal over the next year. howgh!
Robustness is the buzzword

This last weekend I have spended all my time and energy to perform one more robustness check..the ultimate one that is. It just consists of re-doing all the spillover variables using a different weighting scheme. Initially, I have used the original Coe and Helpman (1995) ones. This time around the Lichtenberg and Van Pottelsberghe (1998) weights were applied to the international R&D stocks in order to tease out the spillovers arising via trade and FDI. With relief and pleasure one finds out that the results hold and are very similar. Triple stars around your estimates are always welcomed.