Researching cognition and technology: how we learn across the lifespan

This article addresses how we learn technology across the lifespan. After outlining findings of research into how children, adolescents, teens and adults learn technology, we address theoretical shifts from sociocultural to technocultural theories of cognition and reorientations from mediated to cyborgenic learning. The balance of the article describes effective methods for researching cognition and technology. In the process of outlining key findings from research, we emphasize the links among methods and theories employed, data produced and conclusions drawn. Our goal is to sketch a lifelong learning context for undertaking studies of cognition and technology, and to provide a methodological and theoretical analysis for researchers venturing into this dynamic and volatile field. In summary, we provide a far-ranging agenda for researching cognition and technology.

Heterogeneity of southern countries and southern intellectual property rights policy

Abstract.  We develop a model with one innovating northern firm and heterogeneous southern firms that compete in a final product market. We assume southern firms differ in their ability to adapt technology and study southern incentives to protect intellectual property rights. We find that, in a non-cooperative equilibrium, governments resist IPR protection, but collectively southern countries benefit from some protection. We show that, in general, countries with more efficient firms prefer higher collective IPR protection than those with less efficient firms. Given the aggregate level of IPR protection, it is more efficient if the more efficient countries have weaker IPR protection.     

Trade-offs in the allocation of prosecution resources: an opportunity cost of overcriminalization

One in every five citizens has a criminal record in Korea. Scarce prosecution resources have been severely skewed toward prosecuting more ‘legislated crime’ than ‘conventional crime’. We estimate the opportunity cost of this prosecutory pattern in terms of spillovers to conventional crimes. The cost was found to be substantial. For example, in 2003, the total spillovers accounted for approximately 25% of the increase in conventional crimes for 3 years from 2000 because of the disproportionate prosecutory focus on legislated crimes compared with that of the 1990s. This article has relevance to those countries with an overcriminalizing trend for legislated crimes.     

Standardization in electronic money

Abstract

Electronic money services are provided by the combination of Integrated Circuit (IC) cards and terminals. The compatibility of different brands of electronic money can be enabled by firms' joint adoption of standard terminals. In this paper, we analyse the effect of achieving compatibility among different brands of electronic money. We show that, if the unit production cost of a standard terminal is not so much different from that of a non-standard one, firms' joint adoption of standard terminals will increase the total sales of IC cards and the network size of terminals, thus raising consumers' surplus and firms' profits. On the other hand, if the unit cost of a standard terminal is so high that firms are discouraged from voluntarily adopting standard ones, the government may employ subsides to enhance efficiency. However, if the duty of implementing standardization is placed solely on the firms without subsidies, all the agents, including consumers and retailers, will be left worse off.     

A Pre-purchase Product Trial of a Monopolist with Multiple Products

For the heterogeneous consumers who do not know their individual utilities from a new product, a pre-purchase product trial would be helpful. We found out that a monopoly firm with two similar products would have a strong incentive not to allow a pre-purchase product trial, even though it is socially optimal to allow it. Furthermore, it is more likely for a monopoly firm with a pre-purchase product trial policy to introduce a new product to the market when introducing a new product is socially optimal.     

The Effects of Tariffs and Export Subsidies on Entry Barriers and Investment

This paper explains the effects of unilateral tariffs and export subsidies on entry decisions in an imperfectly competitive industry, and suggests that carefully targeted trade policies play a strategic role in shifting the industry structure and the terms of subsequent competition. The model provides a new justification for tariffs which is different from the traditional infant industry argument; the tariff affects foreign firms' reactions as well as those of the domestic firms. [410]     

The Permanent Export Hypothesis and Foreign Trade of a Centrally Planned Economy: A Case Study of North Korea

Huge outstanding debts of Third World Centrally Planned Economies(CPEs) notwithstanding, their trades with industrialized countries have been continuing briskly. In order to safeguard against an aggravation of current debts of the CPE, however, an industrialized country determines annually the maximum amount of imports permitted for a CPE on the basis of the CPE's permanent exports. This paper attempts to develop a permanent export model and apply it to the foreign trade of North Korea. [F 14]     

Unions and Gender Pay Equity in Academe: A Study of U.S. Institutions

This paper uses 1994-95 faculty salary data from over 1,100 four-year U.S. academic institutions, about one-fourth of them with collective bargaining agreements, to ask if faculty unions make a difference to gender pay equity. Average gender salary differences are negative at every rank and at every category of U.S. institution with or without collective bargaining agreement. Unions may improve gender salary differentials somewhat, particularly at the assistant professor level. There is no evidence that this gain will be lost at higher levels, and mixed evidence that further gains occur for women at the full professor level. The most pervasive and robust consequence of unions is to increase the positive impact that higher proportions of women at senior faculty ranks make on relative salaries at the assistant professor level. However, the influence of these higher-ranked women on gender salary inequalities at the associate and full levels is lower in union schools than nonunion schools. By reducing the flexibility of existing salary structures, collective bargaining apparently reduces the influence of senior women faculty on the salaries of current women faculty members while increasing their attention and influence at entry levels.     

An alternative semiparametric estimate of the base-independence equivalence scale: an application to US consumer expenditure survey data

The deficit debate is a recurring theme in academic and political circles. The controversy is over the effect of deficits on inflation and interest rates. The existing body of empirical evidence does not resolve the controversy. This paper focuses on the inflationary impact of deficits. The model used is derived from a comprehensive IS-LM analysis which incorporates a foreign trade sector and a general price (adoptive expectation) adjustment mechanism. We test the model using time series data for the United states. From our results we conclude that NIA deficits have no significant bearing on the rate of inflation.     

Estimating the effects of monetary policy shocks: does lag structure matter?

This paper examines the implications of lag structure for estimating the effects of monetary policy shocks in a VAR. A symmetric lag structure in which all variables have the same lag length and an asymmetric lag structure in which the lag length differs across variables but is the same for a particular variable in each equation of the model are examined. This is important in light of the fact that the true lag structure is generally not known. Four commonly used identification schemes are employed to identify monetary policy shocks. Monte Carlo simulations strongly indicate that the lag structure of a VAR model does matter when assessing the quantitative effects of monetary policy shocks. Given the inherent uncertainty about the true lag structure in practice, it is thus important that one compare the impulse response functions from both symmetric lag and asymmetric lag VARs in assessing the effects of monetary policy shocks.