7,445 research outputs found
LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume
LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum
Spectrum auctions: designing markets to benefit the public, industry and the economy
Access to the radio spectrum is vital for modern digital communication. It is an essential component for smartphone capabilities, the Cloud, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, and multiple other new technologies. Governments use spectrum auctions to decide which companies should use what parts of the radio spectrum. Successful auctions can fuel rapid innovation in products and services, unlock substantial economic benefits, build comparative advantage across all regions, and create billions of dollars of government revenues. Poor auction strategies can leave bandwidth unsold and delay innovation, sell national assets to firms too cheaply, or create uncompetitive markets with high mobile prices and patchy coverage that stifles economic growth. Corporate bidders regularly complain that auctions raise their costs, while government critics argue that insufficient revenues are raised. The cross-national record shows many examples of both highly successful auctions and miserable failures. Drawing on experience from the UK and other countries, senior regulator Geoffrey Myers explains how to optimise the regulatory design of auctions, from initial planning to final implementation. Spectrum Auctions offers unrivalled expertise for regulators and economists engaged in practical auction design or company executives planning bidding strategies. For applied economists, teachers, and advanced students this book provides unrivalled insights in market design and public management. Providing clear analytical frameworks, case studies of auctions, and stage-by-stage advice, it is essential reading for anyone interested in designing public-interested and successful spectrum auctions
Chinese Knitwear Brands: The need for creative design to result in global business success
Chinese cashmere knitwear companies have become suppliers of international fashion brands because of their technological excellence, advantages of raw materials and competitive prices. However, their in-house brands are steadily declining. In the past 15 years, Chinese cashmere brands have progressively lost their market share to Chinese and Western fashion brands, with a few notable exceptions. Their brands lack differentiation from other Chinese competitors, causing low price competition, which contributes to sustainability issues such as unsold stock and material/manpower waste. The decline is likely to continue as the brands serve only an ageing market, rather than attracting younger generations to their products. Chinese cashmere companies invest little in design, which is a significant limitation for improving the brands’ opportunity to become successful and sustainable businesses.
This study looks for solutions from the design perspective. The research aimed to investigate what design can do to help deal with the current problems of the Chinese knitwear brands to improve their prospects for future business success. The objectives of the study were to enquire into the challenges and opportunities facing the Chinese knitwear sector, to evaluate current design practice in knitwear brands, to understand how design and brand management can be integrated to generate a sustainable brand.
Research questions were developed to explore the brand and design problems, the role of design and organisational structure, what the barriers and enablers for a thriving design culture were alongside possible solutions for design improvement. A pragmatic philosophy underpinned research design, guiding the adoption of methods in response to research questions. Interviews with stakeholders from both the knitwear industry and design education were undertaken. In addition, a case study using design action research with immersive field research was developed for investigating the knitwear brand issues; furthermore, a knitwear collection was created using western design approaches to demonstrate an exemplar design process for the sector and to illustrate the differences to current Chinese design
methods.
The study argues the obstacles to design culture enrichment in Chinese knitwear brands was caused by their design context, lack of brand positioning, limited understanding of their consumers and business models that are not fit for purpose. An absence of experienced leadership creates unclear design direction, instead of collections centred around a theme; Chinese brands sell unconnected designs. Brands lack the distinct brand characteristics that distinguish them from their competitors.
The contribution to knowledge made by this study includes the identification of the reasons for the decline in Chinese cashmere brands, an understanding of their barriers to design culture to developing good designs and it also highlights the lack of awareness of sustainability issues in the sector. The study sheds new light on the rarely acknowledged issue of how to upgrade these brands as modern business for younger consumers, and how to enrich the design culture for brand business growth within sustainable contexts. The thesis analyses in depth the causes for the decline in these brands and makes recommendations for how design can make a contribution to reversing the brands’ decline and increasing their sustainability
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Production networks in the cultural and creative sector: case studies from the publishing industry
The CICERONE project investigates cultural and creative industries through case study research, with a focus on production networks. This report, part of WP2, examines the publishing industry within this framework. It aims to understand the industry’s hidden aspects, address statistical issues in measurement, and explore the industry’s transformation and integration of cultural and economic values. The report provides an overview of the production network, explores statistical challenges, and presents qualitative analyses of two case studies. It concludes by highlighting the potential of the Global Production Network (GPN) approach for analyzing, researching, policymaking, and intervening in the European publishing network.
The CICERONE project’s case study research delves into the publishing industry, investigating its production networks and examining key aspects often unseen by the public. The report addresses statistical challenges in measuring the industry and sheds light on its ongoing transformations and integration of cultural and economic values. It presents an overview of the production network, explores statistical issues, and provides qualitative analyses of two case studies. The report emphasizes the potential of the GPN approach for analyzing and intervening in the European publishing network, ultimately contributing to research, policymaking, and understanding within the industry
International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022
This conference proceedings gathers work and research presented at the International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022 (IASSC2022) held on July 3, 2022, in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia. The conference was jointly organized by the Faculty of Information Management of Universiti Teknologi MARA Kelantan Branch, Malaysia; University of Malaya, Malaysia; Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jakarta, Indonesia; Universitas Ngudi Waluyo, Indonesia; Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges, Philippines; and UCSI University, Malaysia. Featuring experienced keynote speakers from Malaysia, Australia, and England, this proceeding provides an opportunity for researchers, postgraduate students, and industry practitioners to gain knowledge and understanding of advanced topics concerning digital transformations in the perspective of the social sciences and information systems, focusing on issues, challenges, impacts, and theoretical foundations. This conference proceedings will assist in shaping the future of the academy and industry by compiling state-of-the-art works and future trends in the digital transformation of the social sciences and the field of information systems. It is also considered an interactive platform that enables academicians, practitioners and students from various institutions and industries to collaborate
International Investment Law Protection of Foreign Portfolio Investments: ‘To be, or not to be’?
The view that foreign portfolio investments (FPI) are investments within the contemplation of the international investment law regime led to a foreign ETF holder bringing an investment arbitration claim challenging Malaysia’s foreign exchange policy to deal with the Asian Financial Crisis. This same belief led to tens of thousands of foreign holders of Argentine sovereign bond security interests bringing various investment arbitration claims against Argentina’s public expenditure policy decision to restructure its public debt during the Argentine economic crisis. Thus, the sustenance of this belief can lead foreign holders of emerging/frontier economies’ FPIs to challenge their macroeconomic measures for dealing with economic distress or full-blown economic crisis. Hence the relevance of this thesis.
This thesis argues against the extension of international investment law recognition and protection of FPIs in emerging and frontier economies for policy and legal reasons. Firstly, though quite arguable, unrestricted FPI movement seems to be correlated with economic distress or crisis. Bolstering this narrative is the IMF’s recognition of the necessity for imposing some controls, even pre-emptive controls on FPI movement. Secondly, the international investment law regime is infamous for its effect of constraining regulatory autonomy. Extending investment law protection will only serve to constrain macroeconomic independence and flexibility with severe consequences during economic distress and crisis. Thirdly, FPIs are not investments within the contemplation of the ICSID Convention and ought not to be accorded jurisdictional recognition. The potential for investment law protected FPI to constrain macroeconomic policymaking can detract from economic development contrary to the objectives of ICSID. Finally, even if jurisdiction is found the substantive protection standards considered are likely to fall short. Also, a balancing of the competing rights between host States and FPI will tilt in favour of the host States, owing to the greater costs that would be incurred if it tilts otherwise
The Private Cost of Behavioral Interventions
The increasing popularity of behavioral interventions—also known as nudges—is largely due to their perceived potential to promote public and private welfare at dramatically lower costs than those of traditional regulatory instruments, such as mandates or taxes. Yet, though nudges typically involve low implementation costs, scholars and policymakers alike tend to underestimate their often-substantial private costs. Once these costs are accounted for, most nudges turn out to generate significantly lower net benefits than assumed, and some prove less efficient or less cost-effective than traditional instruments. At other times, the private costs of behavioral interventions are sufficiently large to render them socially costly and undesirable even in the absence of superior traditional instruments. Policymakers who implement nudges without considering their private costs therefore risk doing harm rather than good
Post-Growth Geographies: Spatial Relations of Diverse and Alternative Economies
Post-Growth Geographies examines the spatial relations of diverse and alternative economies between growth-oriented institutions and multiple socio-ecological crises. The book brings together conceptual and empirical contributions from geography and its neighbouring disciplines and offers different perspectives on the possibilities, demands and critiques of post-growth transformation. Through case studies and interviews, the contributions combine voices from activism, civil society, planning and politics with current theoretical debates on socio-ecological transformation
SoK: Bitcoin, Energy Consumption and Environmental Impact
Despite their potential in many respects, blockchain and distributed ledger
technology (DLT) technology have been the target of criticism for the energy
intensity of the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm in general and of
Bitcoin mining in particular. However, mining is also believed to have the
potential to drive net decarbonization and renewable penetration in the energy
grid by providing ancillary and other services. In this paper, we systematize
the state of the art in this regard. Although not completely absent from the
literature, the extent to which flexible load response through PoW mining may
support grid decarbonization remains insufficiently studied and hence
contested. We approach this research gap by systematizing both the strengths
and the limitations of mining to provide flexible load response services for
energy grids. We find that a net-decarbonizing effect led by renewable-based
mining is indeed plausible
No-Regret Learning in Dynamic Competition with Reference Effects Under Logit Demand
This work is dedicated to the algorithm design in a competitive framework,
with the primary goal of learning a stable equilibrium. We consider the dynamic
price competition between two firms operating within an opaque marketplace,
where each firm lacks information about its competitor. The demand follows the
multinomial logit (MNL) choice model, which depends on the consumers' observed
price and their reference price, and consecutive periods in the repeated games
are connected by reference price updates. We use the notion of stationary Nash
equilibrium (SNE), defined as the fixed point of the equilibrium pricing policy
for the single-period game, to simultaneously capture the long-run market
equilibrium and stability. We propose the online projected gradient ascent
algorithm (OPGA), where the firms adjust prices using the first-order
derivatives of their log-revenues that can be obtained from the market feedback
mechanism. Despite the absence of typical properties required for the
convergence of online games, such as strong monotonicity and variational
stability, we demonstrate that under diminishing step-sizes, the price and
reference price paths generated by OPGA converge to the unique SNE, thereby
achieving the no-regret learning and a stable market. Moreover, with
appropriate step-sizes, we prove that this convergence exhibits a rate of
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