This thesis proves that intangible assets are impossible to accurately value because of their inherently complex attributes. Intangibles have always existed in the market, but their presence has nearly quadrupled in the last few decades due to the Information Revolution. This technological breakthrough was characterized by the globalization of knowledge, communication, and trade. This dissemination of knowledge due to the infrastructural changes of both the telecommunication and transportation industries transformed the economy from a ‘product-driven’ market to a ‘knowledge-driven’ market. This surge in intangible assets is significant because it proves that “knowledge-driven” elements are now material to company value. As such, accurate measurement of intangible assets is essential to preserving the reliability of financial statements. Current accounting practices largely ignore the value created by intangible asset and this has serious consequences for investors, firms, and the economy as a whole. Insufficient accounting of intangible assets distorts company value, increases the cost of capital, and compromises the reliability of financial statements. While it is utterly impossible to create accounting standards that will, without fail, accurately measure all intangible assets as well as take into account their lifespans, volatility, increasing economies of scale, partial excludability, and lack of tradability, this thesis proposes a way to help mitigate the disparity between what financial statements recognize and what companies actually generate.

Intellectual property rights (IPR) have become a major problem in the relationship between the industrialized West and the developing South, primarily because the West demands that developing countries adopt and enforce Western IPR. Since the relationship between US corporations and Chinese businesses is among the most successful and at the center of the current process of globalization, IPR have been a major cause of conflict and controversy between them and serve as an exemplar for this thesis. I argue, first, that the reason that a large number of Chinese businesses, especially privately-owned small and medium-sized enterprises, infringe foreign IPR lies in the nature of the difference between what have been mostly low-tech traditional Chinese businesses and high-tech industrial economies, to which intellectual property laws belong. Second, I demonstrate that the steady improvement of intellectual property protection in the more successful areas of development in the Chinese economy suggests that the solution for improved IPR protection in China and perhaps other emerging nations will follow, not precede, the development and transformation of a low-tech pre-industrial economy into an industrial high-tech economy.

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This dissertation will take a theoretical approach to analyzing certain challenges in the design of intellectual property rights (`IPR') policy. The first essay looks the advisability of introducing IPR into a market which is currently only very lightly protected - the US fashion industry. The proposed Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act is intended to introduce EU standards into the US. Using a sequential, 2-firm, vertical differentiation framework, I analyze the effects of protection on investment in innovative designs by high-quality (`designer') and lower-quality (`mass-market') firms when the mass-marketer may opt to imitate, consumers prefer trendsetting designs and firms compete in prices. I show that design protection, by transforming mass-marketers from imitators to innovators, may reduce both designer pro ts and welfare. The model provides possible explanations for the dearth of EU case law and the increase in designer/mass-marketer collaborations. The second essay contributes to the literature on patent design and fee shifting, contrasting the effects of the American (or `each party pays') rule and English (or `losing party pays') rule of legal cost allocation on optimal patent breadth when innovation is sequential and firms are differentiated duopolists. I show that if litigation spending is endogenous, the American rule may induce broader patents and a higher probability of infringement than the English rule if R&D costs are sufficiently low. If, however, R&D costs are moderate, the ranking is reversed and it is the English rule that leads to broader patents. Neither rule supports lower patent breadth than the other over the entire parameter space. As such, any attempts to reform the US patent system by narrowing patents must carefully weigh the impact on firms' legal spending decisions if policymakers do not wish to adversely affect investment incentives. The third and final essay analyzes the effects of corporate structure on licensing behaviour. Policymakers and legal scholars are concerned about the potential for an Anticommons, an underuse of early stage research tools to produce complex final products, typically arising from either blocking or stacking. I use a simple, one-period differentiated duopoly model to show that if patentees have flexibility in corporate structure, Anticommons problems are greatly reduced. The model suggests that if the patentee owns the single (or single set) of essential IPR and goods are of symmetric quality, Anticommons issues may be entirely eliminated, as the patentee will always license, simply shifting its corporate structure depending on the identity of the downstream competitor. If the rival produces a more valuable good, Anticommons problems are reduced. Further, if the patentee holds 1 of 2 essential patents, the ability to shift its corporate structure may reduce total licensing costs to rival firms. However the analysis offers a cautionary note: while spin-offs by the patentee help to sustain downstream competition, they may restrict market output, and therefore welfare. Thus the inefficiency in the patent system may be in the opposite direction than is currently thought - there may be too much technology transfer, rather than too little.

The thesis explores the history of the Scottish Enlightenment in its transatlantic context and, in particular, the diffusion of Scottish Enlightenment moral philosophy in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Scotland and the United States. This project is the first full-scale attempt to examine the tensions between late eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment intellectual culture and counter-Enlightenment interests in the Atlantic World. My comparative study focuses on two of the most influential university educators in Scotland and the newly-founded United States. These are Dugald Stewart at the University of Edinburgh and Samuel Stanhope Smith at the College of New Jersey (which later became Princeton University). Stewart and Smith are ideal for a transatlantic comparative project of this kind, because of their close parallels as moral philosophy professors at the University of Edinburgh (1785-1810) and the College of New Jersey (1779-1812) respectively; their conflicts with ecclesiastical factions and counter-Enlightenment policies in the first decade of the nineteenth century; and finally their uses and adaptations of Scottish Enlightenment moral philosophy. The broader question I address is how the diffusion and fate of Scottish Enlightenment moral thought was affected by the different institutional and, above all, religious contexts in which it was taught. Dugald Stewart’s and Stanhope Smith’s interpretations of central philosophical themes reflected their desire to improve the state of society by educating enlightened and virtuous young men who would later enter careers in public life. In doing so, their teaching of natural religion and metaphysics brought them into conflict with religious factions, namely American religious revivalists on Princeton’s Board of Trustees and members of the Scottish ecclesiastical Moderate party, who believed that revealed religion should provide the foundation of education. The controversies that emerged from these tensions did not develop in an intellectual vacuum. My research illustrates how the American and Scottish reception of the French Revolution; the 1793-1802 Scottish Sedition Trials; Scottish and American ‘polite’ culture; Scottish secular and ecclesiastical politics; American Federalist and Republican political debates; American student riots between 1800 and 1807; and American religious revivalism affected Smith’s and Stewart’s programmes of moral education. While I identify this project as an example of cultural and intellectual history, it also advances interests in the history of education, ecclesiastical history, transnational history, and comparative history. The thesis has two main parts. The first consists of three chapters on Dugald Stewart’s system of moral education: the circumstances in which Stewart developed his moral education as a modern version of Thomas Reid’s so-called Common Sense philosophy, Stewart’s applied ethics, and finally, his defence of the Scottish Enlightenment in the context of the 1805 John Leslie case. Complementing the chronology and themes in part one, the second part consists of three chapters on Smith’s programme of moral education: the circumstances that gave rise to Smith’s creation of the Princeton Enlightenment, Smith’s applied ethics, and finally, Smith’s defence of his system of moral education in the contexts of what he saw as two converging counter- Enlightenment factions (religious revivalists and rebellious students) at Princeton. In examining these areas, I argue that Dugald Stewart and Samuel Stanhope Smith attempted to systematically sustain Scottish Enlightenment ideas (namely Scottish philosophy) and values (‘Moderatism’) against counter-Enlightenment movements in higher education.

There has been little research on intellectual capital (IC) reporting practices of UK firms or on the incentives/disincentives that motivate them to disclose information about their value drivers. Therefore, this study explores annual report disclosures and seeks to explain why managers choose to disclose. The sample consists of 100 London Stock Exchange firms from nine knowledge-based sectors. Whilst adopting a primarily positive accounting theory explanation of disclosure, a new combination of theories (capital market transactions theory, proprietary costs theory and corporate governance theory) is used to generate explanatory variables. The results show that there is a skewing toward relational capital. However, there were large differences in the amount of information disclosed, both across sectors and, in many cases, inside sectors, suggesting that different sectors, or even different companies, may have quite different value drivers. Initial analysis of possible motives was conducted using an OLS regression including all possible explanatory independent variables. However, neither corporate governance nor proprietary costs are well-theorised, and several different variables were used to proxy each of these. Therefore, reduced regression models were also employed. Principal component analysis was used to generate one composite measure of corporate governance and proprietary costs. The results showed that reporting IC is negatively associated with the extent of external financing, while firms with high market-to-book values also disclose less IC information. However, contrary to expectations, the acquisition variable was insignificant although as expected, the relation between human capital disclosure and foreign operations was found to be positive and significant. For proprietary costs variables, there was a significantly positive relation between entry barriers and IC disclosure, and a negative relationship between IC and the intensity of industry competition. Finally, there was a significant, positive relationship between corporate governance and the disclosure of all types of IC.

The competitive environment in the banking industry globally and in South Africa is putting immense pressure on companies to keep track of changes in technology, customer demands, and market trends. Responses to the above will allow a company in South Africa to improve customer service and thus remain competitive and relevant. This dissertation is to determine the status and interpretation of intellectual capital (intangible assets) within a South African banking and service company. This study explores the way in which intellectual capital characteristics contribute towards a competitive advantage. A case study method was applied and interviews were conducted to capture responses. The questions were structured, but the discussions allowed for additional questions to be asked during the interviews.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is the relationship of social class to intellectual attitudes and behavior. It ascertains attitudes toward and use of the public library.

This is a sociological essay made by Johanna Friman. ”When it comes to sex” purpose is to understand the relation between individuals with intellectual disabilities sexuality (IID) and the  role adaption of staff members at group homes. The purpose is also to understand the meaning of attitudes in relation to role adaption and how staff members cooperation affect these roles. For the current essay I have used the dramaturgy perspective as a tool for the understanding of staff members role adoption. To understand the meaning of the sexuality amongst IID and as a completion to the dramaturgy perspective I have used the theory of sexual script as an implement. These theories has allowed me to understand role adaption in relation to sex and intimacy. The method that’s been used to gather information for the empirical material is mainly interviews. Observations has also been made mainly in purpose to get a deeper knowledge for the interpretation of the material from the interviews. The results of the study shows that staff members take on three different kinds of roles. The supportive role rises when the purpose is to support the sexuality of IID. The protective role rises when the purpose is to reduce sexual behaviour amongst IID to protect them. The last and third role is taken on by staff members when the purpose is to teach IID about acceptable sexual behavior.

M.Comm. / Intangible assets are increasingly becoming the critical determinant of value creation and future profitability of most businesses. There is a clear distinction between the accounting treatment of physical assets and are reported on the firm’s balance sheets, but intangible assets are by large written off in the income statement, along with regular expenses such as wages, rents and interest. This distorted treatment of intangibles in an accounting sense, has dire consequences for managers, investors and policymakers relying on financial information, thus giving an extremely limited view of a company’s potential for value creation and are virtually worthless as a basis for assessing the value of intangible assets as a whole. This paper is limited to the valuation of intellectual property and intangible assets not reflected on the balance sheet and is primarily aimed at researching, exploring and identifying various intangible asset valuation techniques used to make investment decisions; the advantages and disadvantages of each valuation method so identified; identifying which one or more of the valuation methods identified is the most appropriate measure to valuate intangible assets; identifying the accuracy of the most appropriate valuation method selected as compared with the other methods. The problems posed by intangible assets appear to be based on two levels. The first is the difficulty to identify, collect and analyse data regarding intangible assets. The second overlapping level is the lack of external financial reporting on intangibles. The problem herein manifests itself in the lack of recognition of the current accounting principles, thus resulting in intangible assets not being systematically reported in financial statements leading to a lopsided view of the assets employed by a company to generate revenues.