4G FDD License Grants to Increased Competition

On February 27,China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology(MIIT)granted China Telecom(CT,unrated)and China Unicom(unrated)nationwide permits to provide LTE/4G FDD service.The approvals were widely expected and the credit impact to China Mobile Limited(Aa3 stable),while negative,should be modest.The increased competition is unlikely to upend China Mobile’s dominant position in Chinas growing telecommunications industry,esp,ecially     

Un modello matriciale per la dominanza stocastica e stocastico-temporale

In questa nota si estendono alcuni precedenti risultati dovuti a Beccacece-Castagnoli [1]–[2] e Levi [7], sulla dominanza temporale, stocastica e stocastico-temporale tra flussi finanziari, certi o aleatori, nel caso discreto e finito. Largo spazio viene anche dato ad esempi critici e controesempi.

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Summary This paper extends previous results by Beccacece-Castagnoli [1]–[2] and Levi [7] on time dominance, stochastic dominance, time-stochastic dominance for discrete, finite, deterministic or stochastic, cashflows. Last sections are devoted to critical examples and counterexamples.

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Ricerca parzialmente finanziata dal M.U.R.S.T. e dall'Università Bocconi.     

Diversity and Communication in Teams: Improving Problem-Solving or Creating Confusion?

Despite the rich and interdisciplinary debate on the role of diversity and communication in group problem-solving, as well as recognition of the interactions between the two topics, they have rarely been treated as a joint research issue. In this paper, we develop a computational approach aimed at modeling problem-solving agents and assess the influence of various levels of diversity and communication in teams on agents’ performance in problem-solving. By communication, we intend a conversation on the persuasiveness of the features characterizing problem-setting. By diversity, we mean differences in how agents build problem representations which allow them to access various solutions. We deploy the concept of diversity along two dimensions: knowledge amplitude, which accounts for the level of available knowledge allowing access to poorer or richer problem representations (compared with complete problem representations), and knowledge variety, which pertains to the differences in the constituents of agents’ representations. We define performance as the frequency with which diverse agents choose the same alternative representation of an agent displaying complete representations of the problem. Our results indicate that communication is more effective when agents elaborate from relatively richer problem representations, as this provides a basis for integrating the variously diverse beliefs of their teammates. Conversely, poorer diverse representations may lead to worse performance when knowledge variety also applies. Lastly, we show that the influence of communication is not monotonically positive, as increasing communication intensity performance may worsen at any level of knowledge availability and knowledge variety.     

Communicating about Ethics with Small Firms: Experiences from the U.K. and Spain

This article introduces the important issue of communicating with small firms about ethical issues. Evidence from two research projects from the U.K. and Spain are used to indicate some of the important issues and how small firms may differ from large firms in this area. The importance of informal mechanisms such as the influence of friends, family and employees are highlighted, and the likely ineffectiveness of formal tools such as Codes and Social and Ethical Standards suggested. Further resarch in the area of small firms and ethics is essential.     

Sony Online Entertainment: EverQuest® or EverCrack? Oxford Style Debate Presented at Tenth Annual International Conference Promoting Business Ethics

Part C of this three part series is the presentation from the Oxford style debate held at the Tenth Annual International Conference Promoting Business Ethics between Laura Hartman, J.D., and Dr. Moses Pava on topics related to the EverQuest^? v. EverCrack case (Part B). In a traditional Oxford style debate, two debaters take opposing viewpoints and the third debater argues the neutral position. At the Conference, the modified format featured the two debaters presenting diametrically opposing views – corporate responsibility versus personal responsibility. This modified format was also used during the Ethics Awareness Week (Part A), with University professors presenting the debate before the student body. Ms. Hartman’s position focused on the personal responsibility by Mr Woolley while Dr. Pava opined that Sony Online Entertainment had corporate responsibility toward Mr. Woolley and all other individuals similarly situated.     

Social Constructivism,Mental Models,and Problems of Obedience

There are important synergies for the next generation of ethical leaders based on the alignment of modified or adjusted mental models. This entails a synergistic application of moral imagination through collaborative input and critique, rather than “me too” obedience. In this article, we will analyze the Milgram results using frameworks relating to mental models (Werhane et al., Profitable partnerships for poverty alleviation, 2009), as well as work by Moberg on “ethics blind spots” (Organizational Studies 27(3):413–428, 2006), and by Bazerman and Chugh on “bounded awareness” (Harvard Business Review, 2006; Mind &; Society 6:1–18, 2007) Using these constructs to examine the Milgram experiment, we will argue that the ways in which the experiments are framed, the presence of an authority figure, the appeal to the authority of science, and the situation in which the naïve participant finds herself or himself, all create a bounded awareness, a narrow blind spot that encourages a climate for obedience, brackets out the opportunity to ask the moral question: “Am I hurting another fellow human being?” and may preclude the subject from utilizing moral imagination to opt out of the experiment. We will conclude that these forms of almost blind obedience to authority are correctable, but with difficulty. We will argue that linking the modification of mental models to an unbinding of awareness represents an important synergistic relationship and one that can build effectively on the lessons learned from our experience with moral imagination.     

Measuring pesticide overuse and its determinants: Evidence from Vietnamese rice and fruit farms

Pesticides have long been important for the development of agricultural production. However, improper use of pesticides may result in inefficiency with respect to farm profitability, in addition to external effects of pesticide use on environmental and human health. This paper employs a production function that explicitly accounts for the role of damage abatement inputs (i.e. pesticides) in the production process, to examine the optimal use of pesticides. It then investigates determinants of pesticide overuse versus underuse and the intensity of overuse. The empirical application uses data on Vietnamese rice and fruit farms drawn from the 2016 Vietnamese Household Living Standards Survey. Results show about 95% of farmers overused pesticides for both rice and fruit farming systems. The Mekong Delta, also known as the ‘Rice Bowl’ of Vietnam, has higher levels of overuse on rice farms than two other regions. Overuse intensity is lower for female and poorer rice farmers while intensity is higher for those with more income and more family members. For fruit farms, younger farmers or those with more family members were more likely to overuse versus underuse pesticides.     

Insiemi invarianti globalmente attrattivi nell'interazione fra il “mercato dei beni” ed il “mercato della moneta”

Si studia il comportamento dinamico locale e globale di un modello macroeconomico che si rappresenta con un sistema nonlineare di due equazioni alle differenze (sistema dinamico discreto, o mappa). Si mostra come l'uso di un nuovo strumento di analisi, le linee critiche, consenta di studiare molte delle proprietà globali (quali i bacini di attrazione di insiemi invarianti) e delle biforcazioni globali, che si verificano in mappe del piano con inversa non unica. Si prova che il punto fisso localmente attrattivo è anche globalmente attrattivo, mentre in regimi di instabilità del punto fisso esistono curve chiuse, o altri insiemi invarianti (regolari o caotici) di attrazione, in aree assorbenti globalmente attrattive.

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Summary The local and global dynamical behaviour of a macroeconomic model, represented by a nonlinear system of two difference equations (discrete dynamical system or map), is studied. It is shown how several properties (as basins of attraction of invariant sets) and global bifurcations occurring in two-dimensional maps with a non-unique inverse can be studied by use of a new analytical tool, the critical curves. It is proven that the locally attractive fixed point is globally attractive, while closed invariant curves or other attractive invariant sets (regular or chaotic) exist in globally attractive absorbing areas, when the fixed point is repulsive.