Municipal support of wireless access network rollout: A game theoretic approach

Next generation access networks are expected to bring ubiquitous broadband access and have attracted interest of municipal governments. This paper investigates the support by municipal authorities for the rollout of such a city-wide wireless broadband access network. Different business cases for 3G and WiFi operators are developed and it is indicated how to model the specificities for commercial versus public players. Furthermore, a game theoretic approach is used to investigate the investment options of the municipal player. It is shown that a partnership between a commercial and public player is the most likely investment strategy. However, bringing more players into the competitive environment reduces the intention of the commercial partner to engage in the public–private partnership (PPP).     

Young Adolescents and Advertising on Social Network Games: A Structural Equation Model of Perceived Parental Media Mediation,Advertising Literacy,and Behavioral Intention

This study tested a model in which perceived parental media mediation in social network games (SNGs) was related to adolescents' conceptual and attitudinal advertising literacies, both of which were in turn related to purchase request intention. The 780 participants, aged between 10 and 14 years, watched a video clip of SNG Habbo that included a commercial message and then completed a questionnaire. Perceived autonomy-supportive restrictive media mediation was found to be positively associated with understanding selling intention. Perceived autonomy-supportive active media mediation was positively related to understanding persuasive intention. Understanding persuasive intention was positively related to purchase request intention.     

Travelling risks: How did nanotechnology become a risk in India and South Africa?

India and South Africa have invested in nanotechnology since the early 2000s and have identified risks to human health and the environment as an important issue for governance. This is exemplary for a wider trend in which ‘developing countries’ play an increasingly prominent role in the development, production and use of emerging technologies. This validates the claim of the world risk society thesis that countries around the world are now confronted with the risks of emerging technologies. Little is known, however, about the way developing countries deal with the potential risks of emerging technologies. Starting from the observation that the risk colonization of nanotechnology in developing countries cannot be taken for granted, this article draws upon the relational theory of risk in order to investigate how nanotechnology became understood as an object of risk in South Africa and India. The article shows that nanotechnology was constituted as an object of risk in rather different ways in India and South Africa, demonstrating that the spread of risk discourses – and the emergence of a world risk society – cannot be understood without attending to the local context. The article shows that way risk is understood and dealt with changes as risk discourses travel around the world, giving many different faces to the world risk society.     

Spatial clustering of events on a network

In this paper a methodology is proposed to compute spatial concentrations of point-based events on a network. The distance along the network is used as a measure of the spatial closeness of events. The network is divided into statistical units, based on a random distribution of points of measurement and corresponding network segments, which are the statistical units of reference. For each segment a dangerousness index is computed which indicates the distance-weighted number of traffic accidents in the neighbourhood. The statistical significance of clusters of accidents is tested using a Monte Carlo simulation. The methodology is applied to traffic accidents to detect dangerous locations on the road network of the city of Brussels in Belgium.     

A variety of criteria for setting test limits

In the inspection of manufactured parts, measurements of the characteristic of interest are subject to, typically small, measurement errors. Hence, there is need for a test limit which is typically more strict than the specification limit. In this paper we will discuss various criteria on which such test limits can be based.     

Testing for correlation in error-component models

This paper concerns linear models for grouped data with group-specific effects. We construct a portmanteau test for the null of no within-group correlation beyond that induced by the group-specific effect. The approach allows for heteroskedasticity and is applicable to models with exogenous, predetermined, or endogenous regressors. The test can be implemented as soon as three observations per group are available and is applicable to unbalanced data. A test with such general applicability is not available elsewhere. We provide theoretical results on size and power under asymptotics where the number of groups grows but their size is held fixed. Extensive power comparisons with other tests available in the literature for special cases of our setup reveal that our test compares favorably. In a simulation study we find that, under heteroskedasticity, only our procedure yields a test that is both size correct and powerful. In a large data set on mothers with multiple births we find that infant birthweight is correlated across children even after controlling for mother fixed effects and a variety of prenatal care factors. This suggests that such a strategy may be inadequate to take care of all confounding factors that correlate with the mother's decision to engage in activities that are detrimental to the infant's health, such as smoking.     

Export variety and the economic performance of countries

We explore the relationship between export variety and economic development, using data on OECD countries between 1964 and 2003. We show that structural change in the world economy has a particular arrow of time leading to a growing variety of exports. Distinguishing between related variety (within sectors) and unrelated variety (variety between sectors), we also show that related variety stimulates growth instantaneously, while unrelated variety only promotes growth with a considerable time lag. This finding is in line with the evolutionary notions that economic development and international trade patterns are path dependent.

The credit squeeze during Russia's early transition: A bank-based view

This paper asks whether Russia's protracted inflation stabilization might have caused a credit squeeze and hence might have contributed to the output collapse in the first three years of the Russian transition. Russian monetary policy was not restrictive as a whole. Still, the occurrence of a credit crunch is not excluded, because of the Russian central bank's heavy reliance on required reserves to curb the inflationary effects of monetized budget deficits. Due to methodological limitations, we are forced to concentrate on a cross-sectional analysis of bank liquidity in 1994, in order to find possible indications about Russia's monetary stance from the point of view of the lending channel. We cannot reject that the huge excess reserves of Russian banks in 1994 were at least partially due to excess liquidity. This suggests that there is no direct relation between the monetary policy of high required reserves and the observed credit crunch. The question of why banks preferred to hold excess liquidity deserves further attention. This question is still relevant, because Russian commercial banks have again accumulated excess reserves in 1999, in the aftermath of the banking crisis, triggered by the August-1998 crisis.