Minimising emergency response time of ambulances through pre-positioning in Dhaka city,Bangladesh

This study conducted a large-scale survey in Dhaka, Bangladesh; the survey involved 95 major hospitals, more than 3000 emergency room patients, and 2 of the largest ambulance operators. Currently, most ambulances are parked within the vicinity of hospitals and are either dispatched or fetched by the acquaintances of the patient on demand, resulting in lengthy round trips. Reducing the response time of ambulances would certainly improve the emergency service, and pre-positioning of the ambulances could be a solution to reducing the response time. This study used two approaches to address the problem. First, the location-allocation problem was solved to find the optimal number of ambulance locations by maximising the demand coverage. Second, separate location-allocation for the peak and off-peaks, using K-means clustering, was applied to systematically optimise the ambulance positioning in small clusters near demand points. These approaches could substantially improve the existing emergency response time. Distributing ambulances near demand points yielded greater improvements in response time than when the ambulances are stationed near hospitals.     

Impact of spectrum management policy on the penetration of 3G technology

Diffusion of 3G cellular technology varies widely across countries and regions. Past studies have shown that lower levels of diffusion of previous technologies and higher levels of income are significant factors in accelerating the take up of 1st and 2nd generation of mobile telephony. In addition, spectrum management policy plays a significant role in shaping 3G diffusion. Regulatory policies regarding spectrum management include mandating band and technology and decisions to hold spectrum auctions. An econometric analysis over a multi-country panel dataset shows that these spectrum management policies do have significant influence on the take-up of 3G. Findings suggest that the presence of multiple technologies for the previous generation is associated with rollout delay. The estimations indicate that countries that mandated a specific frequency band for 3G saw faster roll out, but in the long run those countries experienced a slower growth rate. Also estimations find that 3G diffusion is not significantly affected by the choice of auctions vs. alternative license award processes. Insights gained from this study of the 2G to 3G transition can provide guidance to regulators now contemplating the transition to newer generations.     

Market power and price discrimination in the US market for higher education

We estimate an equilibrium model of private and state college competition that generates realistic pricing patterns for private colleges using a large national data set from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). Our analysis distinguishes between tuition variation that reflects efficient pricing to students who generate beneficial peer externalities and variation that reflects arguably inefficient exercise of market power. Our findings indicate substantial exercise of market power and, importantly, sizable variation in this power along the college quality hierarchy and among students with different characteristics. Finally, we conduct policy analysis to examine the consequences of increased availability of quality public colleges in a state.