Economics at the FTC: Deceptive Claims,Market Definition,and Patent Assertion Entities

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed common carriage regulation—so-called Title II requirements—on previously unregulated broadband Internet service providers. The regime shift was premised on the FCC’s findings that such rules had demonstrably yielded economic gains. This paper evaluates the FCC’s empirical arguments and finds them uncompelling. Adjustments for inflation or general economic trends eliminate the effects cited by the FCC. Moreover, contrary to the Commission’s assessment, mobile services and broadband markets have shown notable growth in response to deregulatory events that reduce Title II requirements.     

Environmental scanning the future of event design

This paper used multiple sources of information in order to identify the forces likely to impact event design. Content analysis of key informant interviews and selected trade publication articles identified key forces impacting event design. Technology, the environment and green issues, security and safety, and globalization were forces identified by both the key informants and the trade literature. Neither of the sources gave much attention to political forces. This article contributes to our understanding of the forces impacting event design and suggests some environmental scanning methodologies that can be used with both key informants and the trade publication literature.     

Investigation of damage and repair of a 1000 MTD horizontal ammonia converter

An operational upset caused by a diapharagm failure in the high pressure casting of the synthesis gas compressor resulted in major pressure/flow surges in the synthesis loop.     

Predicting Corporate Bankruptcy: An Evaluation of Alternative Statistical Frameworks

Corporate bankruptcy prediction has attracted significant research attention from business academics, regulators and financial economists over the past five decades. However, much of this literature has relied on quite simplistic classifiers such as logistic regression and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Based on a large sample of US corporate bankruptcies, we examine the predictive performance of 16 classifiers, ranging from the most restrictive classifiers (such as logit, probit and linear discriminant analysis) to more advanced techniques such as neural networks, support vector machines (SVMs) and “new age” statistical learning models including generalised boosting, AdaBoost and random forests. Consistent with the findings of Jones et al. ( 2015 ), we show that quite simple classifiers such as logit and LDA perform reasonably well in bankruptcy prediction. However, we recommend the use of “new age” classifiers in corporate bankruptcy modelling because: (1) they predict significantly better than all other classifiers on both the cross‐sectional and longitudinal test samples; (2) the models may have considerable practical appeal because they are relatively easy to estimate and implement (for instance, they require minimal researcher intervention for data preparation, variable selection and model architecture specification); and (3) while the underlying model structures can be very complex, we demonstrate that “new age” classifiers have a reasonably good level of interpretability through such metrics as relative variable importances (RVIs).     

Financial competence,overconfidence, and trusting investments: Results from an experiment

Financial transactions sometimes occur in an environment where third-party enforcement is lacking. Behavioral explanations typically allude to the social preferences, where an individual’s utility is directly affected by another’s outcome, as the driver of the trusting investments and reciprocal returns. We hypothesize that, in part, these decisions are determined by an individual’s financial literacy and overconfidence in one’s knowledge. Experimental evidence is coupled with an innovative financial literacy assessment, which measures general competence, numeracy skills, and overconfidence in one’s knowledge. Results indicate that overconfidence is a significant determinant of behavior. Specifically, overconfident individuals make larger contributions in the investment game. We also document that there is an escalated effect in overconfident individuals who are also exhibit risk loving preferences.     

Olympians or lemmings? the postmodernist fun run

The phenomenon of mass fun running in Britain dates from the early 1980s and displays much of the ideology of the ‘Sport For All’ campaign. While running as an activity can be viewed as a natural pastime, the notion of mass jogging, as exemplified by the Great North Run and the London Marathon, is more difficult to comprehend and requires further analysis. This paper argues that the mass fun run is an example of the ‘Society of Spectacle’: a commercial creature which is heavily reliant on media coverage and sponsorship and which serves as an endorsement and symbol of postmodern society. The media stresses the ‘tradition’ of such events and uses them as images of human decency and national unity. Yet the relationship between audience, participant and spectacle remains fragile and dependent upon commercial considerations.     

Anti-leisure in dystopian fiction: the literature of leisure in the worst of all possible worlds

Literary utopias, i.e. designs for the theoretically perfect society, have been common in Western literature since Plato's The Republic . A variation on this genre which emerged in the nineteenth century is the anti-utopia, or dystopia, in which an author depicts the worst of all possible societies. Dystopias usually exaggerate contemporary social trends and in doing so, offer serious social criticism. This essay examines the treatment of leisure in four widely-read dystopian novels. The leisure described in these novels we call anti-leisure. It is not leisure's opposite, work, but leisure perverted to achieve the perpetuation of tyranny. Such leisure regulates identity, prevents individual thought, impedes self-sufficiency, encourages immoderation, and distracts citizens from social injustice through various compulsory activities. Such novels encourage the re-examination of theories of leisure from a humanistic standpoint.