THE ROLE OF SHARING CREATIVE IDEAS: PROFESSIONAL DESIGNERS ABOUT THEIR WORK

A characteristic feature of the transition from industrial to post-industrial society is basing a significant part of production on the “intangible” value (software production, audiovisual production, advertising, design, cultural activities, etc.). The individual is perceived as the main actor in management processes where professional success depends on readiness for dialogue and exchange of owned capital (not only economically). It means a different definition of work, perceiving it as an element of shaping – understood in many dimensions – social, economic and cultural relations. Dematerialization of work means therefore giving primacy to the handling of information. This phenomenon can also be seen as a manifestation of cognitive capitalism characterized as a different accumulation system which is based on knowledge and creativity, in other words, on forms of intangible investment. Therefore, it seems that it would be particularly valuable to examine the potential of groups that have this knowledge capital as the basis of their activity. The article will discuss the theoretical concept of the exchange and sharing of creative ideas in the design field. It also presents original research devoted to this issue, conducted in the environment of Polish designers.

Private and Social Returns to R&D: Drug Development and Demographics

Investment in intangible capital such as R&D has increased dramatically since the 1990s. However, productivity growth remains sluggish in recent years. One potential reason is that a significant share of the increase in intangible investment is geared toward consumer products such as pharmaceutical drugs with limited spillovers to productivity. We document that a significant share of R&D spending in the United States is done by pharmaceutical firms and geared to developing drugs for older patients. Increased life expectancy and quality of life for the elderly increases welfare but may not be reflected in estimates of total factor productivity.

Intangible Investment and Low Inflation

Intangible investment is growing as a share of economic activity. We present a simple framework incorporating its distinguishing characteristic of generally greater scalability and lower marginal costs than tangible investment. We show evidence that this may have contributed to more elastic aggregate supply in recent years, which is consistent with lower inflation and a flattening of the Phillips curve. This framework also highlights the channels through which technological change, a large constituent of intangible investment, may be leading to wage stagnation and greater market concentration.

Monetary Policy and Intangible Investment

We contrast how monetary policy affects intangible relative to tangible investment. We document that the stock prices of firms with more intangible assets react less to monetary policy shocks, as identified from Fed Funds futures movements around FOMC announcements. Consistent with the stock price results, instrumental variable local projections confirm that the total investment in firms with more intangible assets responds less to monetary policy, and that intangible investment responds less to monetary policy compared to tangible investment. We identify two mechanisms behind these results. First, firms with intangible assets use less collateral, and therefore respond less to the credit channel of monetary policy. Second, intangible assets have higher depreciation rates, so interest rate changes affect their user cost of capital relatively less.

ENGLISH-INTRODUCTION TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF ISLAM (A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ORIENTALIST APPROACH AND WESTERN SUPREMACY)

Orientalism is an idea originated in the west to define east and its forms of arts. It gained its strength from the Industrial west, which provided for necessary tangible and intangible investment necessary in furtherance of the idea from defining Europeans for not only east but also all non-Europeans. The paper elaborates the nature of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI1) in the light of orientalism and explains how the west used it to create western supremacy. The paper also considers different aspects of the EI1 to establish why and how it was an essential book for the western scholarship tilted towards Islam and how and why it was painted with objective and biased approach.