Link State Contract Routing

The Internet's simple design resulted in huge success in basic telecommunicationservices. However, the current Internet architecture has failed in terms of introducingmany innovative technologies as end-to-end (E2E) services such as multicasting,guaranteed quality of services (QoS) and many others. We argue that contractingover static service level agreements (SLA) and point-to-anywhere service definitionsare the main reasons behind this failure. In that sense, the Internet architecture needsmajor shifts since it neither allows (i) users to indicate their value choices at sufficientgranularity nor (ii) providers to manage risks involved in investment for new innovativeQoS technologies and business relationships with other providers as well as users.To allow these much needed economic flexibilities, we introduce contract-switching asa new paradigm for the design of future Internet architecture. In this work, we implementcontract-routing framework with specific focus on long-term contracted servicesin Link State Contract Routing scheme. Our work shows that E2e guaranteed QoSservices can be achieved in routing over contracted edge-to-edge service abstractionswhich are built on today's popular protocols with reasonable protocol overhead

The effects of qos level degradation cost on provider selection and task allocation model in telecommunication networks

Firms acquire network capacity from multiple suppliers which offer different Quality of Service (QoS) levels. After acquisition, day-to-day operations such as video conferencing, voice over IP and data applications are allocated between these acquired capacities by considering QoS requirement of each operation. In optimal allocation scheme, it is generally assumed each operation has to be placed into resource that provides equal or higher QoS Level. Conversely, in this study it is showed that former allocation strategy may lead to suboptimal solutions depending upon penalty cost policy to charge degradation in QoS requirements. We model a cost minimization problem which includes three cost components namely capacity acquisition, opportunity and penalty due to loss in QoS

Network neutrality and the evolution of the internet

In order to create incentives for Internet traffic providers not to discriminate with respect to certain applications on the basis of network capacity require-ments, the concept of market driven network neutrality is introduced. Its basic characteristics are that all applications are bearing the opportunity costs of the required traffic capacities. An economic framework for market driven network neutrality in broadband Internet is provided, consisting of congestion pricing and quality of service differentiation. However, network neutrality regulation with its reference point of the traditional TCP would result in regulatory micro-management of traffic network management. --

The Economics of Books

The tensions between books and book markets as expressions of culture and books as products in profit-making businesses are analysed and insights from the theory of industrial organisation are given. Governments intervene in the market for books through laws concerning prices of books, grants for authors and publishers, a lower value-added tax, public libraries and education in order to stimulate the diversity of books on offer, increase the density of retail outlets and to promote reading. An overview of the different ways by which countries differ in terms of market structures and government policies is given. Particular attention is paid to retail price maintenance. Due to differences between European countries it is not a good idea to harmonise European book policies. Our analysis suggests that the book market seems quite able to invent solutions to specific problems of the book trade and that, apart from promoting reading, there is little need for government intervention.books, publishers, authors, diversity, monopolistic competition, retail price maintenance, subsidies, libraries, internet

The Economics of Books

The tensions between books and book markets as expressions of culture and books as products in profit-making businesses are analysed and insights from the theory of industrial organisation are given.Governments intervene in the market for books through laws concerning prices of books, grants for authors and publishers, a lower value-added tax, public libraries and education in order to stimulate the diversity of books on offer, increase the density of retail outlets and to promote reading.An overview of the different ways by which countries differ in terms of market structures and government policies is given. Particular attention is paid to retail price maintenance.Due to differences between European countries it is not a good idea to harmonise European book policies.Our analysis suggests that the book market seems quite able to invent solutions to specific problems of the book trade and that, apart from promoting reading, there is little need for government intervention.books;publishers;authors;diversity;monopolistic competition;retail price maintenance;subsidies;libraries;Internet

The role of trust in financial sector development

In any economic environment where decisions are decentralized, agents consider the risk that others might unfairly exploit informational asymmetries to their own disadvantage. Incomplete results, especially, lies at the heart of financial transactions in which agents trade real claims for promises of future real claims. Agents thus need to invest considerable resources to assess the trustworthiness of others with whom they know they can interact only under conditions of limited and asymmetrically distributed information. Thinking of finance as the complex of institutions and instruments needed to reduce the cost of trading promises among anonymous individuals who do not fully trust each other, the author analyzes how incomplete trust shapes the transaction costs in trading assets, and how it affects resource allocation and pricing decisions from rational, forward-looking agents. His analysis leads to core propositions about the role of finance and financial efficiency in economic development. He recommends areas of financial sector reform in emerging economies aimed at improving the financial system's efficiency in dealing with incomplete trust. Among other things, the public sector can improve trust in finance by improving financial infrastructure, including legal systems, financial regulation, and security in payment and trading systems. But fundamental improvements in financial efficiency may best be gained by eliciting good conduct through market forces.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Decentralization,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Banks&Banking Reform,Insurance&Risk Mitigation

Inter-industry contagion and the competitive effects of financial distress announcements: evidence from commercial banks and life insurance companies

Contagion usually refers to the spillover of the effects of shocks from one or more firms to other firms. Most studies of contagion limit their analysis to how shock affect firms in the same industry, or "intra-industry" contagion. The purpose of this paper is to explore and document the likely magnitude of "inter-industry" contagion. In their comprehensive study of intra-industry contagion using many individual industries Lang and Stulz (1992) argue that if contagion is not simply an informational effect it will impose a social cost on our economic system. If this is true for intra-industry contagion, then the same argument must hold for inter-industry contagion as well. We focus on inter-industry contagion effects in this paper because the vast majority of the extant literature about contagion has neglected its important potential cost to shareholders. Most of the studies on contagion attempts to differentiate between a "pure" contagion effect and a signaling or information-based contagion effect. An example of a pure contagion effect would be the negative effects of a bank failure spilling over to other banks regardless of the cause of the bank failure. And, an example of a signaling contagion effect would be if a bank failure is caused by problems whose revelation is correlated across banks, and the correlated banks are impacted negatively. We conduct our investigation of contagion by examining three separate announcements involving adverse information about commercial real estate portfolios. The first announcement is by a large commercial bank (the Bank of New England), the second announcement consists of a series of events--from several large banking organizations and a regulatory agency (the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency), and the third announcement is by a large life insurance company (Travelers). There are two reasons we chose these particular events. First, the events seemed to be very unusual and very significant indicators of future (and present) financial distress. Second, the events shared a common theme of financial distress caused by problems with commercial real estate portfolios. We first establish that the commercial bank announcements negatively impact the equity values of life insurance companies (and vice versa). Next, we demonstrate that the bank regulatory agency announcement negatively impacts the equity values of life insurance companies as well as commercial banks. We then explicitly test if the shareholder wealth effects are linked to a set of specific firm characteristics. Consistent with previous contagion studies, our results provide strong evidence of "intra-industry" contagion related wealth effects. We also find that these contagion effects, to a significant degree, can be explained by firm specific variables. This implies that the intra-industry spillover effects associated with our three events are not of the totally "pure" contagion variety, but have an informational component as well. We also find very strong evidence of significant "inter-industry" contagion-based shareholder wealth effects. Again, these contagion-based wealth effects do not appear to be purely contagion-based. Wealth effects can also be explained by such factors as geographic proximity, asset composition, liability composition, leverage, size, and regulatory expectations.Insurance ; Bank failures ; Stocks

Inefficiencies in Digital Advertising Markets

Digital advertising markets are growing and attracting increased scrutiny. This article explores four market inefficiencies that remain poorly understood: ad effect measurement, frictions between and within advertising channel members, ad blocking, and ad fraud. Although these topics are not unique to digital advertising, each manifests in unique ways in markets for digital ads. The authors identify relevant findings in the academic literature, recent developments in practice, and promising topics for future research