The capability of the activated sludge process to operate with sea water included in the influent substrate. Sea water was added at various percentages from 5-40. The study concluded that from a biological standpoint the activated sludge process could operate successfully. However, rapid settling problems because of a build up of total solids became the limiting factor. / Master of Science

Economia / MASTERS IN ECONOMICS / The relationship between patents and R&D involves different levels besides the ones most obvious to us. Throughout the history of economics, patents have arisen as the core of a system of incentives to private pursue of R&D investments, providing the mechanism that guaranteed the appropriability of the output of the knowledge produced. The seminal work of Romer (1990) demonstrated the need to develop a system to assure the necessary return on innovative efforts and thus privately sustain a model of continuous technological improvement and economic growth. Patenting would result in imperfect competition and legally establish the monopoly over the use of the knowledge produced. This led to patents being perceived as an intermediate output of R&D efforts. Though this relationship has been subject of intensive study by economists, the reverse causality issue remains to be thoroughly analyzed, particularly in a negative sense. Can more patents have a negative effect on R&D investment? In the present thesis we address this question, synthesizing the theoretical and empirical studies concerning both the conventional R&D-patents relationship and the reverse causality, in particular, the potential for a negative impact of patents over R&D. The theoretical survey on this issue uncovered several gaps in the literature, specifically in terms of availability of empirical analysis at the country level. Despite the literature on reverse causality direction being scarce; the macroeconomic perspective on this issue is even more unexplored. In fact, there is no evidence that ruled out the possibility of asymmetric effects of patents on R&D in accordance to the level of GDP and technology in general, and to `convergence clubs in particular. Using panel data econometric estimation methods on a sample of 88 countries, over a eight-year period (1996-2003), and controlling for clubs of convergence to account for differences among countries in stages of economic development, we found mix support to the negativity of patent on R&D investment. Stratifying the sample by convergence clubs we obtain that accumulated patents positively impact on R&D intensity for the set of less developed countries whereas no statistically significant effect emerges in the case of higher developed converge clubs. Interestingly, when we restrict the highest developed convergence club down to countries with a R&D intensity above 3%, the negativity reverse causality arises, corroborating the asymmetric impact of patents on R&D investment depending on countries development and technological stage. Finally, we demonstrate that albeit causality appears to be stronger in the most intuitive appealing traditional direction, there is evidence supporting the theoretical conveyed double causality between R&D and Patent. JEL-codes: O31, O34

Large multinational companies are regularly suspected of using transfer pricing of intangibles to shift profits from high- to low-tax jurisdictions. We study the optimal transfer prices while endogenizing the location choice of intangibles and considering spillovers. In line with the initial intuition, we find that multinationals locate their intangibles in low-tax jurisdictions and deploy royalty flows to minimize tax payments. However, if multinationals face a trade-off between tax minimization and efficient spillover internalization, the so-called "home bias" might occur. Then, for a large spillover, the intangible is optimally located in the high-tax domestic country. This leads to less severe investment distortions because the spillover is internalized. In addition, the model predicts that curtailing profit shifting possibilities can either harm or facilitate multinationals' overall investments. This depends heavily on unobservable factors such as the underlying accounting system. Therefore, our analysis highlights challenges for the anti-avoidance legislation of governments. / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series