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.     

Towards an operations strategy model of servitization: the role of sustainability pressure

Servitization requires an important strategic shift to drive changes in the operations of manufacturing firms. Using a large-scale survey, the purpose of this paper is (1) to build and validate an operations strategy model of servitization confirming previous case study findings on servitization as a strategic action and (2) to explore the role of sustainability pressures in, and the sustainability performance effects of, pursuing service-based operations strategies. To reach these objectives, a dataset including the responses of 735 manufacturing plants from 21 different countries is analyzed using the PLS-SEM method. The results indicate that the sustainability pressures of stakeholders can push manufacturers to adopt a service-based operations strategy, materializing in the provision of both basic (product-oriented) and advanced (customer-oriented) services (BAS and ADS). Our analysis further indicates that while offering BAS is a precondition for ADS provision, only ADS can offer a competitive edge for manufacturers, both in terms of service and sustainability-related operational performance.     

The Effect of Endogenous Regulation on Telecommunications Expansion and Efficiency in Latin America

I examine the effect of reform on telecom performance using a second-generation regulatory framework index and panel data techniques to test how regulatory governance affected sector performance in 22 Latin American countries during the period 1980–1997. Sound regulatory governance in telecommunications has a positive impact on network expansion and efficiency, in both the static and dynamic specifications. Openness of markets to competition and divestment of former state-owned telco operators also contributed positively to better sector performance. The dynamic specification shows that past performance has its own strong effect on present (and perhaps future) performance.     

Neutrality in arrow and other impossibility theorems

Summary. Although not assumed explicitly, we show that neutrality plays an important role in Arrow and other impossibility theorems. Applying it to pivotal voters we produce direct proofs of classical impossibility theorems, including Arrow's, as well as extend some of these theorems. We further explore the role of neutrality showing that it is equivalent to Pareto or reverse Pareto, and to effective dictatorship for non-null social welfare functions satisfying the principle of independence of irrelevant alternatives. It is also equivalent to Wilson's Citizens' Sovereignty--which is related to the intuition that symmetry over alternatives makes social preference depend only on citizens' preferences. We show that some of these results are more fundamental than others in that they extend both to infinite societies and to considerably smaller domains of preferences. Finally, as an application of Arrow's theorem, we provide a simple proof of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem.Received: 13 April 2000, Revised: 6 December 2002, JEL Classification Numbers: D71, C70.I thank Salvador Barberá, Luis Corchón, Cesar Martinelli, Eric Maskin, Tomas Sjöström, Ricard Torres, José Pedro Ubeda, and an anonymous referee for feedback. The proofs of Arrow's theorem and two Wilson's theorems come from a note I wrote in 1987 at Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (Ubeda [16]). In 1996 Geanakoplos [7] wrote a proof of Arrow's theorem similar but not identical to mine. All work in this paper is independent of his.     

New methods of evaluating physical demand at work areas

The manufacturer's requirement of increasing productivity results in the need to design work stations that are increasingly more effective and specialized. However, this procedure can bring about an overloading of the worker, a lack of motivation, and, consequently, a reduction in productivity.Ergonomics adapts the work station to the worker with the object of improving his welfare and satisfaction at his post. One aspect that this science concerns itself with is the evaluation of physical demands connected to productive tasks. Mechanical movements are also studied in order to perform tasks efficiently.We here propose a new method of physical demand analysis that determines the risk factor for muscular skeletal lesion. This method uses, as a base, the system of predetermined times, MTM-UAS. It includes a computer system that allows us to easily analyse the operations at a work station and generates charts similar to those of UAS, but, instead of times, it measures the quantity of mechanical work necessary for each movement.The information that the method provides can be used by different divisions within companies in making decisions about improvements at work stations.     

Playing for Your Own Audience: Extremism in Two‐Party Elections

This paper considers a two‐party election with a single‐dimensional policy space. We assume that each voter has a higher probability of observing the position of the party he is affiliated with than the position of the other party, an assumption that is consistent with the National Election Studies (NES) electoral data set. In equilibrium, the two parties locate away from the median, because the voters who dislike a party's platform observe its policy choice with a lower probability, and its own audience like policy choices that cater to its taste. As the asymmetry in voter information or the cost of voting increases, the parties adopt more extreme platforms, while if there are fewer extreme voters the opposite effect occurs. Making voters more symmetrically informed about the two parties' platforms increases the welfare of society, while asymmetric information acquisition by the voters is worse than no information acquisition at all.     

Analysing the factors influencing clean technology adoption: a study of the Spanish pulp and paper industry

Technological change has a relevant role to play in the transition towards a sustainable industry. However, slow diffusion of clean technologies can be observed in OECD countries. The analysis of the determinants and barriers to clean technology adoption should be a main goal of economists and social scientists. This paper shows that three sets of interrelated factors prevent but also stimulate the widespread adoption and diffusion of clean technology: these are factors external and internal to the firm, conditions of the potential adopters and characteristics of the environmental technology. These factors are included in the so‐called ‘triangular model’, which is further applied to the analysis of clean technology adoption in the pulp and paper industry in Spain. The empirical study shows that clean technology adoption decisions are the result of an interaction between these factors, often involving contradictory signals for the potential adopter. The paper closes with some public policy recommendations for the effective and efficient promotion of clean technology diffusion. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Testing for Unit Roots with Breaks: Evidence on the Great Crash and the Unit Root Hypothesis Reconsidered

Nelson and Plosser (1982), in a classic paper, failed to find strong evidence against the null hypothesis of a generating process with a unit autoregressive root for thirteen US macroeconomic time series. Perron (1989) claimed that such evidence was available for a majority of these series if the alternative hypothesis was of trend stationarity with a break in 1929. Zivot and Andrews (1992) treated the break date as endogenous, then finding strong evidence agcainst the null for a minority of these series. Our own analysis extends theirs by permitting a break under the null as well as the alternative hypothesis, and allowing for the sequential nature of the testing. Our empirical findings complete the circle. We find no strong evidence against the unit root hypothesis for any of the thirteen Nelson–Plosser series.     

Regional innovation and small high technology firms in peripheral regions

This paper highlights the difficulty of developing HT firms in a peripheral region of Spain. Although the endogenous development of HT firms in these regions is possible, their evolution depends on more central regions. The firm's geographical location and the type of HT production are the most important endogenous factors governing the firm's success.