Unsettled questions in the political economy of the arts

Reprinted fromThe Three Banks Review September 1971 pp. 3–19, by kind permission of the Royal Bank of Scotland plc. Lionel (Lord) Robbins (1898–1984) was Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics from 1929–1961 and Emeritus Professor unit 1980. He was actively involved in the arts, higher education and journalism, holding a number of prestigious posts.     

Stem-and-Leaf Plots in the Primary Grades

At first glance, the thought of primary children working with stem-and-leaf plots might seem a radical idea, since such representations are often associated with secondary school. The purpose of this paper is to show how young children can use such representations as a major tool in their educational development. However, before discussing this particular statistical technique, an overview of the role of statistics in the primary programme is included.     

University patenting and its effects on academic research: The emerging European evidence

This paper surveys the existing fragmentary data on the growth of university-owned patents and university-invented patents in Europe. We find evidence that university patenting is growing, but this phenomenon remains heterogeneous across countries and disciplines. We found some evidence that university licensing is not profitable for most universities, although some do succeed in attracting substantial additional revenues. This might be due to the fact that patents and publications tend to go hand in hand. In a dynamic setting however, we fear that the increase in university patenting exacerbates differences across universities in terms of financial resources and research outcome.