Easing the assessment of emerging technologies in technology observatories. Findings about patterns of dissemination of emerging technologies on the internet

This paper considers the Web as a big data container that can be used by Technology Observatories and administrations to track emerging issues and more specifically emerging technologies. It considers information that is available on the Internet for free from different sources, and proposes a framework that can be useful to characterise them and to detect patterns of dissemination. This framework is made up of 30 metrics obtained from different kinds of sources (general web, patents, scholars?…). Some of them are obtained directly as the number of hits retrieved by queries on a search engine, and other ones calculated by means of ratios. This paper contains the development of a complete case that utilises this framework to characterise emerging technologies included in the well-known Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, in this case the 2015 release¹ and to analyze patterns of dissemination of these technologies on the Internet.     

Agglomeration effects in Europe

The paper estimates agglomeration effects for France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. Estimation takes into account endogeneity of the spatial distribution of employment and spatial fixed effects. Empirical results suggest that agglomeration effects in these European countries are only slightly smaller than agglomeration effects in the US: the estimated elasticity of (average) labor productivity with respect to employment density is 4.5 percent compared to 5 percent in the US.     

JOINT BIDDING,GOVERNANCE AND PUBLIC PROCUREMENT COSTS:A CASE OF ROAD PROJECTS*

ABSTRACT *** : To utilize public resources efficiently, it is important to take advantage of competition in public procurement auctions to the maximum extent. Joint bidding is a common practice that potentially facilitates competition. By pooling financial and experiential resources, more firms are expected to enter the market, but it will also directly reduce competition if more than one bidder who is solely qualified makes a coalition. In theory joint bidding may or may not be beneficial to auctioneers, depending on the model. The paper empirically examines the impacts of joint bidding on firms' entry as well as bidding behaviour, using data on public road projects in developing countries. It shows that coalitional bids, in particular by local firms, would be competitive, but foreign joint ventures would undermine competition. It is also found that good governance can encourage firms' entry into the tendering and facilitate joint bidding practices.     

WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR THE DECLINE IN CRIME?*

In this article we analyze recent trends in aggregate property crime rates in the United States. We propose a dynamic equilibrium model that guides our quantitative investigation of the major determinants of observed patterns of crime. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: First, the model is capable of reproducing the drop in crime between 1980 and 1996. Second, the most important factors that account for the observed decline in property crime are the higher apprehension probability, the stronger economy, and the aging of the population. Third, the effect of unemployment on crime is negligible. Fourth, the increased inequality prevented an even larger decline in crime. Overall, our analysis can account for the behavior of the time series of property crime rates over the past quarter century.     

Cardinal Bayesian allocation mechanisms without transfers

In allocating goods with no use of monetary transfers, random allocation mechanisms can be designed in order to elicit information on preference intensities. I study the nontransfer allocation of two ex-ante identical objects under Bayesian incentive compatibility, with symmetric agents and independent private valuations. I find the ex-ante utilitarian-optimal mechanism, in which the probability of receiving a specified object is used as “numeraire” to purchase probability units of the other object. I characterize this mechanism as an appropriate combination of lotteries, auctions and insurance. The latter element ensures that efficient auctions are feasible. If the problem is constrained to guarantee exactly one object per agent, then the optimal mechanism uses no information other than the agents? ordinal preferences.     

Pricing of a structured product on the SX5E when the uncertainty of returns is modeled as a log-stable process

This work presents the participation factor and the valuation of a first-generation structured product with European call options on the Eurostoxx, when the uncertainty of the yields is modeled through log-stable processes. The basic statistics of the index yields are also exposed, the α-stable parameters are estimated, and the valuation of the of the structured models is compared through the log-stable and log-Gaussian models using inputs from the bond markets; concluding that investors obtain higher yields than those of the bond market through both models, and that the differences of the yields depend on the participation factor and on the value of the index at the time of liquidation.     

EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION IN POLLUTION REDUCTION: A SOCIO-TECHNICAL PERSPECTIVE

Is industrial pollution reduction solely a matter of applying technical solutions to technical problems, or do organizational strategies and human factors also play an important part? In 1991 the US Environmental Protection Agency began collecting data on organizational strategies in pollution control as part of its Toxic Release Inventory database. An exploratory analysis of the 1991–1992 Toxic Release Inventory data revealed evidence that internally based, socially driven organizational strategies such as employee participation can have a dramatic impact on pollution reduction. The results are reported here of the second phase of this research: the approach is broadened to define general ‘internal’ versus ‘external’ strategies, and ‘social’ versus ‘technical’ approaches. There is strong evidence that the combination of internal and external strategies is superior to either alone; there is even stronger evidence that a socio-technical approach is better than either alone, and still stronger support for a combination of all of these criteria.