Do special issues offer something special? An overview of research trends in Telecommunications Policy special issues

This study explores the value of special issues by analyzing the characteristics of special issues of Telecommunications Policy (TP). Specifically, this study examines the status of special issue publications, the characteristics of their articles compared with those of general issues, and the factors affecting article citations. For the analysis, all information on TP articles published from 1976 to 2018 was collected from the Scopus database. A comparative analysis as well as a negative binomial regression were conducted on papers published after 1994, when the first special issue was published. The results show that special issues are distinguished from general issues by various characteristics, such as multinational author collaboration, number of references, keywords, and funding. While general issue papers are more frequently cited in academia, special issue papers show better performance in terms of online captures and social media sharing. Moreover, the smaller number of variables affects the frequency of citations in the case of special issues, revealing that content and format are more influential than author factors.     

Monetary policy and food inflation in South Africa: A quantile regression analysis

Although optimal monetary policy stabilizes food inflation theoretically, empirical studies remain limited not only in the context of volumes and the estimation approaches, but are focused on selected advanced and emerging countries to the neglect of Africa where poverty and dominance of food in the consumption basket are more pronounced. We provide empirical evidence in the context of South Africa using quantile regressions. Rising food prices are destabilized even further by restrictive monetary policy; a finding that has ramifications for inflation targeting, especially given that a quarter of the country’s population is food poor.     

Reconciling Alternative Theories for the Safety of Owner–Operators

Motor carrier safety is an important concern of shippers, carriers, policy makers, consignees, insurance providers, and the motoring public. One aspect of carrier safety that has garnered substantial attention is whether carriers making greater use of owner–operators are more or less safe vis‐à‐vis carriers making greater use of employee drivers. Currently, conflicting theoretical predictions exist regarding the direction of this relationship. In this article, we offer a reconciliation of the alternative theoretical predictions by developing a coherent theory that merges sociological rational choice theory and theory regarding motor carrier safety. We subject our theory to empirical testing by fitting a series of seemingly unrelated regression models to a vector of safety measures tracked as part of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Compliance, Safety, and Accountability program. Our results are consistent with our proposed theory of owner—operator safety and provide meaningful theoretical and managerial implications and directions for future research.     

Labor market analysis through transformations and robust multivariate models

The work presents a robust approach to labor share analysis. The estimate of labor share presents various complexities related to the nature of the data sets to be analyzed. Typically, labor share is evaluated by using discriminant analysis and linear or generalized linear models, that do not take into account the presence of possible outliers. Moreover, the variables to be considered are often characterized by a high dimensional structure. The proposed approach has the objective of improving the estimation of the model using robust multivariate regression techniques and data transformation.     

复杂土坝的渗流安全分析评价

根据福华山土坝的渗流观测资料,建立了测压管水位的回归统计模型,定量分析了各影响量(水位分量、时效分量)对测压管水位的影响效应。在此基础上,结合观测资料,采用有限元法反演了大坝各填筑区的渗透系数,并综合评价了大坝的渗流性态。     

充分灌与调亏灌溉条件下桃树滴灌的耗水量研究

本文研究了充分灌与调亏灌溉条件下桃树滴灌的耗水量。在田间设置有两个处理，其一是在整个生育期以蒸发量的80%进行充分灌溉；其二是在果实生长缓慢期以蒸发量的20%进行亏缺灌溉，而在其它季节以蒸发量的80%进行充分灌溉。利用石膏块土壤水分传感器和中子仪分别测量了根区土壤水势和土壤含水量的变化，并实测了果实生长量、枝条生长量和产量。利用水量平衡法得出了在上述两种滴灌条件下桃树不同生育期的日均耗水量与蒸发皿系数。与充分灌比较，调亏灌溉对产量没有影响，灌水量减少了32%，并有效抑制了枝条生长。     

Cost monotonicity, consistency and minimum cost spanning tree games

We propose a new cost allocation rule for minimum cost spanning tree games. The new rule is a core selection and also satisfies cost monotonicity. We also give characterisation theorems for the new rule as well as the much-studied Bird allocation. We show that the principal difference between these two rules is in terms of their consistency properties.     

Estimating the Size of a Criminal Population from Police Records Using the Truncated Poisson Regression Model

The truncated Poisson regression model is used to arrive at point and interval estimates of the size of two offender populations, i.e. drunk drivers and persons who illegally possess firearms. The dependent capture–recapture variables are constructed from Dutch police records and are counts of individual arrests for both violations. The population size estimates are derived assuming that each count is a realization of a Poisson distribution, and that the Poisson parameters are related to covariates through the truncated Poisson regression model. These assumptions are discussed in detail, and the tenability of the second assumption is assessed by evaluating the marginal residuals and performing tests on overdispersion. For the firearms example, the second assumption seems to hold well, but for the drunk drivers example there is some overdispersion. It is concluded that the method is useful, provided it is used with care.