The quest for food

The Quest for Food is an educational project written and planned by Kenneth P. Wilkinson, a professor of rural sociology at The Pennsylvania State University. The project is offered as a one credit college course and consists of both a written and television component. The television part of the course includes interviews with Sterling Wortman, the Vice President of The Rockefeller Foundation in New York; Frances Moore Lappé, the Director of the Institute of Food and Development Policy in San Francisco; and, Rustom Roy, the Director of the Materials Research Laboratory, and Science, Technology, and Society Program (STS), both located at The Pennsylvania State University.     

International price comparisons: An area of further research

The keen interest by politicians, regulators, and competition authorities in international price rankings has sparked a series of management consultancies to produce regularly studies that purport to compare and rank prices for mobile wireless services across the world. These rankings, so they claim, are the Swiss Army knife of competition analysis. A country that ranks lower on a list is declared a laggard or noncompetitive and thus supposedly is in need of regulatory intervention. Such claims require scrutiny and further analysis. An accurate price comparison should follow the scientific method and include a testable hypothesis, a properly designed study methodology, and accurate data collection and interpretation. One such ranking exercise is produced biannually by Finnish management consultancy Rewheel. The present review fills a void with its analysis of the Rewheel study and suggests that it is a highly simplistic international price comparison exercise. The methodology of Rewheel assumes an unrealistic world where consumers only care about how much data they can get for a certain budget (i.e., price), and all other competitive differentiators (i.e., plan and quality differences) and costs differences (e.g., size of network built) are irrelevant.     

2002年国内外石油经济形势展望--国际篇

2002年即将到来。这是充满未知数的一年,也是中国石油工业迎接新考验的一年。 “9·11”事件改变了世界——国际关系特别是大国关系发生微妙变化;美、日、欧三大经济体同时步入“冷冬”;受世界经济衰退的影响,国际石油需求不振;欧佩克与非欧佩克携手维护国际石油价格遇到障碍;“长期的反恐战争”所造成的不确定因素可能给国际石油市场乃至中亚、里海及中东地区未来的石     

The quest for expansive intellectual property rights and the failure to disclose known relevant prior art

Expansive patent portfolios may be used by firms to fence off technological space for commercialization, impede the commercialization efforts of competitors, and enhance bargaining power in cross‐licensing negotiations. Low quality patents with claims that overlap those of other patents contribute to these portfolios and patent strategies. By failing to disclose known relevant prior art during the patenting process, inventors and their firms may be granted low quality patents with intellectual property claims which would not otherwise have been granted. We find that the failure of inventors to disclose known relevant prior art increases as they gain experience with the patenting process. Such failure is also greater among inventors employed by relatively small, poorly performing firms that rely on outsourced legal counsel during the application process. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The determinants of office cap rates: The international evidence

We examine commercial office cap rates in 89 large cities in 33 developed and developing countries in the 2000–2019 period. We find that cap rates decline throughout the world over this period, reflecting a corresponding decline in the real rate of interest. In the cross-city analysis our most robust findings are that office cap rates are lower in wealthier cities, especially those that are either considered gateway cities or financial centers. In addition, cap rates tend to be higher in countries with lower credit ratings and higher inflation rates. We find that cap rates in suburban office markets are higher than in central business districts, and for a given metropolis, suburban cap rates are lower in suburbs with better public transport connections to the central business district. Finally, evidence from regressions with city fixed effects reveal that cap rates rise as the discount rate and vacancy rates increase and fall as cities get wealthier.     

The technical basis for spectrum rights: Policies to enhance market efficiency

This paper describes a conceptual framework to articulate clear rights of access to radio spectrum in a way that would foster an efficient market-based allocation of the resource. In this approach, regulators partition spectrum rights across the dimensions of space, time, frequency, and direction of propagation. They devolve each partition, called a licensed electrospace region (LER), to licensees who may buy, sell, aggregate, and subdivide their LERs at will. All signals outside an LER must have a power level of less than a regulated limit with de minimis exceptions. In addition, even within an LER, transmitter power or field strength must fall below a separate regulator-set level for the band. Licensees may deploy any devices and provide any services that do not violate these rules.     

The implications of economic efficiency for US telecommunications policy

Subsidizing local residence telecommunications service from toll services has produced large distortions in US state and interstate toll markets. While both the business and residence groups as a whole would benefit from lower toll prices and higher residence prices, the fact that toll usage is concentrated means that most residence subscribers would be made worse off. It is therefore politically difficult to implement efficient telecommunications pricing. However, this same concentration of toll usage makes it advantageous for large toll users to bypass the local network to escape the subsidy-laden carrier access charges. Such a bifurcation of the telecommunications network has the potential for making most residence subscribers even worse off than they would be under an efficiency- enhancing reduction in toll prices.     

Regulation and efficiency in transition: The case of telecommunications in Italy

In regulating the telecommunications industry, the separation between network and retail functions, which is designed to countervail the market power of incumbent operators, is a relevant issue. Despite its importance, little empirical research has addressed the effects of such a separation. Accordingly, this paper provides insights into the consequences of the Italian communications regulatory authority's (AgCom) decision to impose this type of separation on the incumbent telecommunications operator, Telecom Italia. In particular, the studied separation is between the firm's network-related functions, and those used for provision of its communication services. The present research finds that the type of separation implemented by AgCom allows a provider to maintain the advantages of operational scale in its network structure without dampening competition in the existing market for communications services. The study also offers further empirical evidence on the advantages of a composite vs. translog function in analyzing the multiproduct cost structure of a telecommunications operator.     

The Demand for International Message Telephone Services: A Two-Stage Budgeting Model

This paper examines demand for international telephone services. Using panel data covering 57 routes over 6 years, a model featuring a two-stage budgeting process and product differentiation is implemented for empirical estimation. A range of economic, social, cultural and technological variables are included in the aggregate-level model to study overall demand. The unique and rich data offers an opportunity to examine the impact of new technology innovations such as Internet on traditional telephone services. The company-level model incorporates product differentiation and uses the Almost Ideal Demand System to simultaneously estimate demands for and competition between carriers.     

2003年上半年国际石油市场回顾与展望

2003年上半年油价走势主要分为三个阶段：1月至3月上旬原油价格屡创新高，3月下旬原油价格大幅下挫；5月初至6月底原油价格总体处于上扬走势，油价总体水平大大高于去年同期。美伊关系日趋紧张并最终导致战争爆发。是促使1～3月油价攀升的主要因素。原油和油品库存较代，及委内瑞拉等产油国政局不稳也是造成油价波动的重要因素，此外，北美经济的低速增长造成全球经济增长缓慢；“非典”疫情爆发，造成全球航空燃料油需求较去年同期大幅下降，欧佩克及时调整产量政策，防止了油价大幅下跃，战后伊拉克的局势与产量恢复情况及欧佩克的产量政策等是2003年下半年影响石油市场的关键因素，预计今年三四季度国际原油价格将围绕25美元/桶波动，全年平均价格为24～26美元/桶。     

From collaborative community to competitive market: the quest to build a crowdsourcing platform for social innovation

Crowdsourcing presents new opportunities to generate social innovation. However, many crowdsourcing social innovation initiatives struggle with turning their promising projects into sustaining platforms. We studied how to design crowdsourcing platforms for social innovation by building and examining a platform called travel2change. We illustrate a framework of crowdsourcing platform building blocks based on the evolution of our case study from a collaborative community to a competitive market. Thriving platforms have a clear purpose, they facilitate value‐creating interactions for well‐understood actors and build a valid business model. The insights reveal design principles to guide organizations that seek to leverage crowdsourcing for social impact.     

Performance feedback and middle managers’ divergent strategic behavior: The roles of social comparisons and organizational identification

Research Summary: What drives middle managers to search for new strategic initiatives and champion them to top management? This behavior—labeled divergent strategic behavior—spawns emergent strategies and thereby provides one of the essential ingredients of strategic renewal. We conceptualize divergent strategic behavior as a response to performance feedback. Data from 123 senior middle managers overseeing 21 multi‐country organizations (MCOs) of a Fortune 500 firm point to social performance comparisons rather than historical comparisons in driving divergent strategic behavior. Moreover, managers’ organizational identification affects whether they attend to organizational‐ or individual‐level feedback. These results contribute to research on performance aspirations and strategy process by providing a multilevel, multidimensional framework of performance aspirations in middle management driven strategic renewal. Managerial Summary: Middle managers are essential actors in strategic renewal. Their unique positions offer insights into operations alongside knowledge of strategy. In contrast to typical assessments of managerial performance with reference to a prior year, this research shows that performance comparisons relative to peers and other organizational units better motivate managers’ divergent strategic behavior. Our results also show that managers who identify with the firm are more attentive to organizational rather than individual performance discrepancies. Thus, our study unveils an important approach for organizations aiming to spark strategic renewal.     

The Liquidity of Property Shares: An International Comparison

This article investigates the magnitude and determinates of share liquidity over the 1990–2007 period in the world's four largest securitized real estate markets: the United States, the United Kingdom, Continental Europe and Australia. We document a significant and consistent role for market capitalization, nonretail share ownership and dividend yield as drivers of liquidity across markets. We also document significant differences in liquidity across countries and between property and nonproperty companies. Also striking is the lack of correlation among our three measures of liquidity across property firms and time. This supports the notion that share price liquidity is multifaceted and therefore reliance on any one measure of liquidity in empirical work may produce misleading conclusions. Although we find some evidence of a connection between liquidity and firm value, it is less conclusive than prior studies.     

Spectrum use and carrier costs: a critical trade-off

In making spectrum allocation and assignment decisions, national officials may wish to consider how these decisions will affect the costs experienced by licensees and the prices ultimately paid by customers. With low tier wireless systems as an illustration, this paper uses an engineering-economic model to describe the relationship between the amount of spectrum allocated and the per subscriber investment required of carriers/licensees. This relationship is explored under a variety of assumptions relating to service provision. The paper concludes with the public policy implications of the work and recommendations for policymakers and regulators involved with spectrum allocation. The analysis presented here seems particularly appropriate for extending service to unserved areas.     

Technology development and adoption rates: Systems approach for agricultural research and extension

Adoption of new technology in peasant agriculture remains lower than expected. Failure to achieve expected returns is associated more with insufficiencies in the conduct of research than with external and economic factors such as price structure or lack of agricultural support services. This article sets out the case for national agricultural research and extension structures that emphasize on-farm research with a systems approach.