Cooperatives for demand side management

We propose a new scheme for efficient demand side management for the Smart Grid. Specifically, we envisage and promote the formation of cooperatives of medium-large consumers and equip them (via our proposed mechanisms) with the capability of regularly participating in the existing electricity markets by providing electricity demand reduction services to the Grid. Based on mechanism design principles, we develop a model for such cooperatives by designing methods for estimating suitable reduction amounts, placing bids in the market and redistributing the obtained revenue amongst the member agents. Our mechanism is such that the member agents have no incentive to show artificial reductions with the aim of increasing their revenue

A prototype mobile money implementation in Nigeria

Researchers have shown that majority of the populace in the developing nations are rural dwellers that do not have access to basic financial services and are poor. This class of people are peasant farmers and petty traders who rely mostly on remittances from their wards and relations in major cities and abroad to meet their financial obligations at home. The methods of remittances are encumbered with challenges. Mobile money is a tool that allows individuals to make financial transactions using mobile cell phones. Nigeria is one of the fastest growing telecoms nations of the world and the adoption of mobile money will help a great deal to solve the problems associated with remittances. In this paper, we present a short messages services (SMS) and unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) implementation of mobile money implementation in Nigeria modelled using Django and Python as the programming language, MySQL as the data store and Apache hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) as the Web server. The system made comparative analysis with M-PESA implementation in Kenya: the first mobile money implantation in Africa. Furthermore, the system was tested among a selected few of the populace to evaluate the usability of the design. Findings revealed that the prototype implementation is user-friendly and can be used by all without many problems except for the illiterate populace; hence, the need to have a combined bank and agent-based implementation. This approach will help with time to reduce the number of unbanked populace, which is currently at 80%

Environmental analysis for application layer networks

Die zunehmende Vernetzung von Rechnern über das Internet lies die Vision von Application Layer Netzwerken aufkommen. Sie umfassen Overlay Netzwerke wie beispielsweise Peer-to-Peer Netzwerke und Grid Infrastrukturen unter Verwendung des TCP/IP Protokolls. Ihre gemeinsame Eigenschaft ist die redundante, verteilte Bereitstellung und der Zugang zu Daten-, Rechen- und Anwendungsdiensten, während sie die Heterogenität der Infrastruktur vor dem Nutzer verbergen. In dieser Arbeit werden die Anforderungen, die diese Netzwerke an ökonomische Allokationsmechanismen stellen, untersucht. Die Analyse erfolgt anhand eines Marktanalyseprozesses für einen zentralen Auktionsmechanismus und einen katallaktischen Markt. --Grid Computing

Fighting Poverty, Profitably: Transforming the Economics of Payments to Build Sustainable, Inclusive Financial Systems

The Gates Foundation's Financial Services for the Poor program (FSP) believes that effective financial services are paramount in the fight against poverty. Nonetheless, today more than 2 billion people live outside the formal financial sector. Increasing their access to high quality, affordable financial services will accelerate the well-being of households, communities, and economies in the developing world. One of the most promising ways to deliver these financial services to the poor -- profitably and at scale -- is by using digital payment platforms.These are the conclusions we have reached as the result of extensive research in pursuit of one of the Foundation's primary missions: to give the world's poorest people the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty.FSP conducted this research because we believe that there is a gap in the fact base and understanding of how payment systems can extend digital services to low income consumers in developing markets. This is a complex topic, with fragmented information and a high degree of country-by-country variability. A complete view across the entire payment system has been missing, limiting how system providers, policy makers, and regulators (groups we refer to collectively as financial inclusion stakeholders) evaluate decisions and take actions. With a holistic view of the payment system, we believe that interventions can have higher impact, and stakeholders can better understand and address the ripple effects that changes to one part of the system can have. In this report, we focus on the economics of payment systems to understand how they can be transformed to serve poor people in a way that is profitable and sustainable in aggregate

Telecommunications 2004: Strategy, HR Practices & Performance - Cornell-Rutgers Telecommunications Project

This national benchmarking report of the U.S. telecommunications services industry traces the tumultuous changes in management and workforce practices and performance in the sector over the last 5 years. This is a follow-up report to our 1998 study. At that time, when the industry was booming, we conducted a national survey of establishments in the industry. In 2003, we returned to do a second national survey of the industry, this time in a sector that was recovering from one of the worst recessions in its history

Telecommunications 2004: Business Strategy, HR Practices, and Performance

This national benchmarking report of the U.S. telecommunications services industry traces the tumultuous changes in management and workforce practices and performance in the sector over the last 5 years. This is a follow-up report to our 1998 study. At that time, when the industry was booming, we conducted a national survey of establishments in the industry. In 2003, we returned to do a second national survey of the industry, this time in a sector that was recovering from one of the worst recessions in its history

Market Competition and Lower Tier Incentives

The relationship between competition and performance-related pay has been analyzed in single-principal-single-agent models. While this approach yields good predictions for managerial pay schemes, the predictions fail to apply for employees at lower tiers of a firm’s hierarchy. In this paper, a principal-multi-agent model of incentive pay is developed which makes it possible to analyze the effect of changes in the competitiveness of markets on lower tier incentive payment schemes. The results explain why the payment schemes of agentslocated at low and mid tiers are less sensitive to changes in competition when aggregated firm data is used.Cournot competition, contract delegation, moral hazard, entry, market size, wage cost