Abstract The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the valuation of intangible assets in different financial environments. Value relevance of intangible investments has been largely recognized by indicating their close relatedness on future operating performance and valuation of firms. The financial environment of the country (market- or bank-based) is also found to be an important determinant of the economic performance of the firm. This thesis combines these two important issues by examining how a country's financial system affect the firm's investments and valuation of intangible assets. The study consists of four essays and an introductory section. Essay I investigates the firm's investments in human capital in different legal- and financial environments. The results of this study indicate that human capital asset constitutes an essential part of the market value of firms in all our sample countries. The results also suggest that firms make investments in human capital to increase their innovation capabilities and to improve their future benefits. Essay II investigates the firm's investments in R&D capital in different financial systems. The common result concerning both financial system is that the estimated R&D capital constitutes a great part of the firm's unrecorded goodwill. The main finding of the study is that the effects of the firm's past profitability and growth on its estimated R&D capital are stronger in bank-based than market-based financial systems. This result emphasizes the role of bank-based financing over market-based financing in the efficiency of resource allocation to R&D investments. Essay III investigates the stock market's response to the firm's R&D investments in different financial systems by taking account of lead-lag structure between the firm's R&D investments and its market value. The main result of the study is that the stock markets' response to current R&D investments varies between different financial systems with regards to the point in time against which the stock market response is examined. This study suggests that information disclosure policies, level of stock-market expectations and attitude towards risk are the most important potential factors that explain the valuation differences of R&D between market- and bank-based financial systems. Essay IV investigates the effect's of a country's financial system on current R&D investments and the future profitability of the firm. The main results of this study can be summarized as follows: the firm's current R&D investments are more strongly associated with the level of future firm profitability in bank-based than market-based financial system whereas current R&D investments are more strongly associated with the uncertainty of future firm profitability in market-based than bank-based financial system. The findings of this study suggest that differences in the valuation of R&D between market-based and bank-based financial systems mainly depends on the information asymmetry between the firm and its investors.

Abstract The main difficulty in the usability evaluation of a product concept or a prototype is that it is very difficult to take reliably into account many different characteristics or attributes, which cannot be measured with the same unit, scale or instrument. Secondly, evaluation always involves some uncertainty. One can never be really sure that all the essential aspects that affect the final user emphasis are taken into consideration. This uncertainty can be decreased by involving diverse people in the evaluation process during R&D or, before the final decision, by elaborating the best ideas to a level at which they can be really used on a pilot scale in the field. Most often, though, the latter takes too much time and would result in many other problems. Evaluation can possibly be best enhanced by using enough involved people, i.e. various experts and especially end-users, who need or use the product in question. A key ingredient to the success of product development, in addition to ergonomic knowledge, is often thought to be active involvement of the intended product users by (1) measuring user-product interaction and (2) participation in design decisions. When a potential end-user experiments with the product, both quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods can be used. This thesis shows some methodological possibilities of evaluation, especially through simulation. It also describes in detail the practical phases of the experiments. For example, a lot of development was needed to find out how to communicate product alternatives and their concepts to (elderly) users. And most importantly, this thesis aims to give evidence of how the procedure called experimental ergonomic evaluation (EEE) should be feasibly implemented and statistically confirmed for significance and consistency. A special focus in the experiments was placed on elderly end-users. Since the number of elderly citizens is increasing, there is a need for products to help the elderly live independently at their homes. Studying and understanding how users accomplish their tasks helps to identify their needs and to formulate implications for the design of technology to satisfy those needs. Thus, user studies conducted before beginning to design a new technology provide a proactive way of involving users in the design process. The first prototypes then enable usability studies, such as user trials. With an emphasis on usability engineering, trials can be developed into more feasible EEE procedures for industrial companies. All the developed and applied EEE procedures were based on a user-centred approach with different user trial types (N = 15). The users as subjects (N = 264) performed as real tasks as possible and, based on their perceptions during the trials, gave their preferences or scored certain variables. The subjects were also observed and measured by the researcher. The products or other technologies in the trials comprised a total of 9 cases, ranging from "low-tech" steps and chairs to "high-tech" information and communication technology (ICT) applications. The perceived preference and observed performance measures were then combined. Different methods are needed simultaneously to make the results more accurate. The present EEE procedures proved to be cost-effective, efficient and sufficiently valid at least in a research context. The EEE procedures ranged from subjective estimations, such as rating and ranking, to more complex multi-criteria methods that can be used to facilitate decision-making, such as conjoint analysis, Mitchell's paired comparison and use-value analysis. Objective evaluation was also used, including measurement of products and users as well various observations. Both experts and end-users (subjects) had their own important roles in the experiment. Based on this study, EEE procedures are easy to implement in industry for routine usability testing in the course of product development. EEE with its wide coverage yields more universal and absolute usability values, not only ones based on direct benchmarking.

The main aim of this dissertation is to evaluate Turkish science and technology policy documents, namely &ldquo / Turkish Science Policy: 1983-2003&rdquo / , &ldquo / Turkish Science and Technology Policy: 1993-2003&rdquo / , &ldquo / National Science and Technology Policy: 2003-2023 Strategy Document&rdquo / , and Turkish ever-first foresight study &ldquo / Vision 2023&rdquo / to discuss the impacts of those documents to Turkish science and technology and make some further policy recommendations for the future. For this reason, first, the history of Turkish science and technology policy making processes is summarized and the targets of the documents are examined. Second, the outcomes and the realization of the goals are discussed in terms of science and technology indicators and R&amp / D intensification among some leading industrial sectors of the country such as automotive, textile, clothing and information and communication technologies. In addition, the R&amp / D intensification of Turkish total manufacturing is analyzed via using Sanjaya Lall&rsquo / s industry categorization method. Turkey intensely exports resource based and low technology goods while importing medium and high technology ones. The scarce of demand for technology and R&amp / D which is the main reason behind the malfunction of technology policies, is basically depended on the mentioned structure of Turkish industry. Finally, it is concluded that in spite of some achievements, the implementation of Turkish science and technology policy documents are of insufficieny depended on the lack of political authority and responsibility and of the coordination among industry, institutions and society as a whole.

This dissertation consists of three papers revolving around economics of R&amp / D. The first paper analyzes the determinants of R&amp / D expenditures with specific focus on foreign ownership and spillovers / the second paper studies the impact of R&amp / D on productivity and the third paper analyzes whether conducting R&amp / D enables Turkish manufacturing firms to catch up with sector leaders as far as their productivity levels are concerned. The first contribution of the thesis is the use of newly available data from Turkish Institute of Statistics (Turkstat). Two different surveys are matched at the firm level for the years 2003-2007. The second contribution is the employment of a new methodology: Heckman two-stage procedure with instrumental variables for panel data. The third contribution is collection of qualitative data via interviews with R&amp / D performing firms. Foreign ownership has no statistically significant effect on R&amp / D intensity. Foreign knowledge spillovers exert a negative effect on R&amp / D, but in time their effect becomes positive. R&amp / D subsidies and skill affect R&amp / D intensity positively while size influences it negatively. The effect of R&amp / D and skill on productivity is positive and significant. The effect of R&amp / D on technical efficiency is negative but knowledge spillovers exert a positive effect on technical efficiency.

The aim of this thesis is to identify and to study the micro and macro determinants of export performance. The results of micro determinants suggest that there is no significant relationship between export performance and R&amp / D intensity, which could be a result of underreport of R&amp / D expenditures in income statements of firms and the realization of its effects in the long-term. The results for marketing intensity, ratio of foreign exchange profits in total sales, fixed investment intensity and capital intensity are in the same way. On the other hand, bank loans and previous year&amp / #8217 / s export performance is strongly related with export performance. Moreover, it is found that there is no significant difference between low technology industries&amp / #8217 / and medium and high technology industries&amp / #8217 / export behavior. On the other hand, from the macro-economic determinants perspective, the implementation of flexible exchange rate policy has favorable effects on the volume of exports. While export intensity is positively affected by the major devaluations experienced in 1994 and 2001.

The changes in the behaviour of the innovating firm that would not have been the case in the absence of the public support, behavioural additionality, is investigated in this thesis. The theoretical foundations of the concept along with the existing evaluation attempts worldwide are analysed. The need for evaluation in Turkey is established. The design of the T&Uuml / BiTAK-TEYDEB programme in question along with the related policy context is described to form a basis for the evaluation of the behavioural additionality. It is revealed that the need for an evaluation of behavioural additionality for the legitimacy of the programme from the data analysis. Finally, given such inputs, the thesis develops a methodological proposal for a framework to evaluate the behavioural additionality of the public support to private R&amp / D in Turkey.

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) assigns efficiency values to decision making units (DMU) in a given period by comparing the outputs with the inputs. In many applications, inputs and outputs of DMUs are monitored over time. There might be a time lag between the consumption of inputs and production of outputs. We develop approaches that aim to capture the time lag between the outputs and the inputs in assigning the efficiency values to DMUs. We present computational results on randomly generated problems as well as on an application to R&amp / D institutes of the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (T&Uuml / BiTAK).

Abstract Research on interorganisational relationships is highly fragmented. It can be found in, for example, sociology, economics, anthropology, psychology, marketing, organisational behaviour, strategic management, and entrepreneurship. It is unsurprising that the terminology and units of analysis vary notably, as does the theoretical basis of the research. The forms of interorganisational relationships researched also vary, including among others networking, outsourcing, strategic alliances, joint ventures, and partnering. The focus of this research is on outsourcing partnerships – what is the process involved in the formation and management of a software research and development (R&D) outsourcing partnership and what are the factors that affect the successful outcome of the said relationship. Understanding of how the relationship works, how it grows and develops is crucial for getting the best out of the collaboration and for avoiding possible difficulties. Outsourcing and partnering have been researched from many different viewpoints, depending on the domain. Some common topics of interest can still be found and they are presented in this study. However, a complete picture of an outsourcing partnership life cycle cannot be found in the literature. Because of that a synthesis outsourcing partnership life cycle model has been created based on the models found in other studies. In the second part of the study, empirical data from a software R&D outsourcing partnership case is analysed based on the synthesis model, and a new, improved model is created. The new model gives a more in-depth insight into the formation and management of an outsourcing partnership. Also, the success factors collected from the case are compared to the ones found in the literature. Even though the model is created and presented mainly from the customer company viewpoint, it has been affected by the partner company viewpoint as well, as the case data was collected from both companies.

This thesis aims to measure additionality effect of T&Uuml / BiTAK&rsquo / s Industrial R&amp / D Projects Funding Programme and try to reveal input, output and behavioral additionality effect of it. A pilot evaluation study is conducted on firms from Ankara operating on software development sector where firms who have received T&Uuml / BiTAK funding are subject to the analysis. In order to comprehend results of the analysis, first theoretical background on emergence of industrial R&amp / D funding is explained and the need for evaluation of industrial R&amp / D funding instruments is discussed. Then, focus is turned to major changes in industrial R&amp / D policies in Turkey by taking into account of resolutions of Supreme Council of Science and Technology. After summarizing available industrial R&amp / D funding instruments in Turkey, attention is turned to T&Uuml / BiTAK&rsquo / s Industrial R&amp / D Projects Funding Programme and evaluation of the programme is explained in detail. The impact of T&Uuml / BiTAK funding on firms R&amp / D expenditures, commercial successes and behavioral changes are discussed and finally the thesis ends with a discussion on the organization of this evaluation practice as well as suggestions for further evaluation studies.

This thesis aims to assess impacts of European Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP) on Turkish participants, focusing on Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) Information Society Technologies (IST) priority. A two-sided approach was employed while assessing impacts. First, DELPHI method was used to quantify and prioritise expectations of the decision makers in key stakeholders / second, a survey was designed to measure additionalities and the level of achievements of program participants. Scientific and technological impacts, economic impacts, institutional impacts and impacts on collaboration and sectoral knowledge were questioned as four main impact criteria. It is demonstrated in survey results that, significantly high levels of impacts were achieved in scientific and technological impacts and impacts on collaborations and development of sectoral knowledge. Nonetheless, economic impacts were noted to be lowest among all impact factors. Level of impacts were tested for different control factors including project instrument, organization type, project activity, project role and received grant. Project role was proved to be the most important control factor affecting the level of impact. It is presented in comparison of decision makers&rsquo / expectations and participants&rsquo / achievements that, decision makers&rsquo / expectations were mostly satisfied by participants except for economic impacts. Turkish participants in FP6 IST field had significant impacts in three out of four main impact factors. Moreover, decision makers expectations were highly satisfied except for economic impact factors. The results of this study, relying on the assessed impacts of FP6 IST field, support Turkey&rsquo / s participation in forthcoming FPs.