License Price Paths: I. Theory II. Evidence from Hong Kong

In the first of the two companion papers, we show that the dynamic aspects of the license utilization decision in an uncertain environment, together with the usual policy of rewarding high license utilization with future license allocations. creates four components of the license price. These are the scarcity, asset, option, and renewal value components. Each of these components are identified and explored in the context of the existing literature. The effect of imperfections in the license market on license price paths is also explored. In the second paper, we use monthly data on license prices and utilization to test for the presence of imperfect competition in the market for apparel quota licenses in Hong Kong. A competitive structural model which respects the dynamic aspects of the problem is developed and estimated. We argue that concentration could affect the supply side as well as the demand side by affecting the cost associated with the search. The regressions indicate that concentration of license holdings affect the supply of licenses as predicted by models of imperfect competition. Since the implementation scheme encourages full utilization, imperfect competition affects the supply path of licenses rather than total supply. Concentration does not affect the demand side. which means that search costs are not an important consideration.

A Dynamic Policy License for Wireless Spectrum Management

Electromagnetic spectrum for wireless communications is fully allocated by regulatory authorities, but this does not mean that it is fully utilized. Demand for greater capacity and new services requires new regulatory and technical models for spectrum sharing. This thesis develops a regulatory model denoted the dynamic policy license. The dynamic policy license combines the assurances to licensees that come from holding a fixed license while maintaining regulatory flexibility. A dynamic policy license is similar to a traditional spectrum license that specifies a bandwidth, power, center frequency, location, and other parameters. However, one or more of these parameters is subject to change by the regulator over time. The allowed changes are restricted by the license to provide assurances and predictability to the licensee. The opportunities and challenges that this presents to both regulators and licensees is described.We examine, retrospectively, the application of the dynamic policy license to the case of Nextel Communications interfering with public safety communications. The resolution required several proposals by the FCC and others and over 2,200 filings by interested parties. Our license proposal is intended to provide flexibility and certainty to a variety of situations, including (1) changes in technology, demand, or use; (2) coexistence between multiple services; and (3) efficient use of spectrum over time.Spectrum issues such as allocation and allotment, assignment, service rules, and compliance and enforcement continue as contentious management issues. We suggest that existing fixed licensing models are sub-optimal, and in some cases are themselves the source of inflexibility and artificial scarcity. We contribute development of a license model that augments existing approaches across a wide range of governance models and assignment strategies.Increasing pressure on spectrum resources has prompted new approaches to spectrum sharing and coexistence. A blockchain-based smart contract in conjunction with the dynamic policy license is one approach to managing radio operations and spectrum needs. Smart contracts enable spectrum policies to move beyond static documents to become autonomous, dynamic, self-enforcing, secure, transparent, and auditable code that runs on the blockchain

The Software Licensing Dilemma

This Article makes two arguments. First, the dilemma posed by software transactions-sales or licenses?-should be answered by dynamic contract law. Dynamic contract law has as its objective effectuating the intent of the parties but weighs that objective against policy considerations. Second, the validity of a license grant should not be inextricably tied to the validity of the contract as a whole. The problem with relying on contract doctrine in the context of software licensing is that, too often, the application of that doctrine is static and formalistic. A new doctrine is not necessary to address software licensing issues; rather, the old doctrine needs to be reinvigorated to address changes in the marketplace. A license grant is not solely and exclusively a contractual term, the validity of which depends on the validity of the contract in its entirety; rather, in the event that a software license fails as a contract, the license grant may be considered-separate from the contract as a whole-as a promise made by the licensor that is contingent on the licensee\u27s performance and adherence to its terms. Part II discusses the implications of the licensing dilemma and the ramifications that flow from a determination of the transaction as either a license or a sale. Part III summarizes existing approaches to the software licensing dilemma and proposes a dynamic contracts approach to examining software transactions. A dynamic contracts approach identifies the nature of the transaction as relevant to determining the intent of the parties. Part III also proposes several criteria for distinguishing a sales transaction from a licensing transaction and acknowledges that most software transactions contain aspects of both. In addition, Part III discusses the effect of written terms that accompany a product in both a licensing and a sales transaction. Because software license agreements are contracts, their validity and enforceability should depend first and foremost on their validity and enforceability as contracts; however, rather than examining the written agreement in order to characterize the transaction, we should look to the transaction to determine how to interpret the written terms. In a sales transaction, the license grant is effective as a promise independent from the other terms contained in the contract. Recognizing the independence of license grant provisions exposes the binary proposition of license versus sale as a false dichotomy. Part IV examines two common license restrictions and discusses how each should be interpreted using a dynamic contracts approach. Part V discusses and responds to anticipated objections to this approach. This Article concludes that the software licensing dilemma is a red herring. Technology has created challenges for software producers, but those challenges are not unique to the software industry. Before we distort existing legal doctrine in an effort to accommodate the perceived needs of a specific market segment, we should carefully consider the impact of doing so on other market segments. It would be much wiser to take the long view to address technological changes than to create exceptions that morph into rules with regrettable implications

The Software Licensing Dilemma

This Article makes two arguments. First, the dilemma posed by software transactions-sales or licenses?-should be answered by dynamic contract law. Dynamic contract law has as its objective effectuating the intent of the parties but weighs that objective against policy considerations. Second, the validity of a license grant should not be inextricably tied to the validity of the contract as a whole. The problem with relying on contract doctrine in the context of software licensing is that, too often, the application of that doctrine is static and formalistic. A new doctrine is not necessary to address software licensing issues; rather, the old doctrine needs to be reinvigorated to address changes in the marketplace. A license grant is not solely and exclusively a contractual term, the validity of which depends on the validity of the contract in its entirety; rather, in the event that a software license fails as a contract, the license grant may be considered-separate from the contract as a whole-as a promise made by the licensor that is contingent on the licensee\u27s performance and adherence to its terms. Part II discusses the implications of the licensing dilemma and the ramifications that flow from a determination of the transaction as either a license or a sale. Part III summarizes existing approaches to the software licensing dilemma and proposes a dynamic contracts approach to examining software transactions. A dynamic contracts approach identifies the nature of the transaction as relevant to determining the intent of the parties. Part III also proposes several criteria for distinguishing a sales transaction from a licensing transaction and acknowledges that most software transactions contain aspects of both. In addition, Part III discusses the effect of written terms that accompany a product in both a licensing and a sales transaction. Because software license agreements are contracts, their validity and enforceability should depend first and foremost on their validity and enforceability as contracts; however, rather than examining the written agreement in order to characterize the transaction, we should look to the transaction to determine how to interpret the written terms. In a sales transaction, the license grant is effective as a promise independent from the other terms contained in the contract. Recognizing the independence of license grant provisions exposes the binary proposition of license versus sale as a false dichotomy. Part IV examines two common license restrictions and discusses how each should be interpreted using a dynamic contracts approach. Part V discusses and responds to anticipated objections to this approach. This Article concludes that the software licensing dilemma is a red herring. Technology has created challenges for software producers, but those challenges are not unique to the software industry. Before we distort existing legal doctrine in an effort to accommodate the perceived needs of a specific market segment, we should carefully consider the impact of doing so on other market segments. It would be much wiser to take the long view to address technological changes than to create exceptions that morph into rules with regrettable implications

Dynamic congestion management system for cloud service broker

This is an open access article licenced under a CC-BY-SA license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/The cloud computing model offers a shared pool of resources and services with diverse models presented to the clients through the internet by an on-demand scalable and dynamic pay-per-use model. The developers have identified the need for an automated system (cloud service broker (CSB)) that can contribute to exploiting the cloud capability, enhancing its functionality, and improving its performance. This research presents a dynamic congestion management (DCM) system which can manage the massive amount of cloud requests while considering the required quality for the clients’ requirements as regulated by the service-level policy. In addition, this research introduces a forwarding policy that can be utilized to choose high-priority calls coming from the cloud service requesters and passes them by the broker to the suitable cloud resources. The policy has made use of one of the mechanisms that are used by Cisco to assist the administration of the congestion that might take place at the broker side. Furthermore, the DCM system is used to help in provisioning and monitoring the works of the cloud providers through the job operation. The proposed DCM system was implemented and evaluated by using the CloudSim tool.Peer reviewe

Regulation and welfare efficiency: evidence from China

Along with rapid economic growth, China has started to face the challenge of environment degradation. And, the integration of the Chinese economy into global markets has put pressure on the government to address the issue of intellectual property infringement. The government has begun to enforce copyright protection and address environmental issues by imposing regulatory policies on related markets. In this dissertation, I focus on two policies: the anti-piracy campaign enforcing music copyright protection in 2015 and the vehicle license lottery policy started in 2011 in Beijing. I empirically assess the impact of those regulations on market competition, allocative efficiency and consumer welfare. Copyright enforcement in China since 2015 has heightened competition among music streaming services for obtaining exclusive licenses. The competition is driven by the existence of multi-homing and switching costs for consumers in choosing among services. I specify and estimate a structural model that allows consumers to tradeoff between multi-homing and switching. I use estimates to simulate market outcomes had a compulsory licensing provision been enforced. I find that with compulsory licensing, the market will evolve to a ``tipping'' equilibrium in which all users choose to exclusively subscribe to a same service that is of better quality. Although providing more music content, smaller services would lose significant market shares. This is because multi-homing users of smaller services would switch away from their services when the music content were less differentiated from others. The result suggests that a compulsory provision does not benefit the smaller services and may lead to a higher market concentration. In the next chapter, I study a vehicle license lottery in Beijing. Although the static inefficiency from misallocation under a lottery is well-known, I introduce the concept of a dynamic inefficiency due to agents’ suboptimal timing of entering the lottery. Using a structural empirical model, I find that households on average participate in the lottery system at least four years earlier than they would in a counterfactual environment with no quantity constraint. Dynamic inefficiency accounts for the majority of the welfare loss from using the lottery policy. In the last chapter, I formalize the concept of dynamic inefficiency via a simple theoretical model. I show that, with reasonable assumptions, an equilibrium with dynamic misallocation always exits. Consumers with lower willingness to pay for the resource will enter the lottery early in order to increase the chance of winning, although they may receive a negative utility if they win the lottery before their valuation for the resource increases

The role of the license plate lottery policy in the adoption of Electric Vehicles: A case study of Beijing

Policy is an influential factor to the purchase and usage of Electric Vehicles (EVs). This paper is focused on the license plate lottery policy, a typical vehicle purchase restriction in Beijing, China. An agent-based spatial integrated urban model, SelfSim-EV, is employed to investigate how the policy may influence the uptake of EVs over time at the individual level. Two types of “what-if” scenario were set up to explore how the methods to allocate the vehicle purchase permits and the number of permits might influence the EV market expansion from 2016 to 2020. The results suggested that 1) both the allocation methods and the number of purchase permits could heavily influence the uptake of EVs and further its impacts on vehicular emissions, energy consumption and urban infrastructures; 2) compared to the baseline, both scenarios got significantly different spatial distributions of vehicle owners, transport facilities, vehicular emissions and charging demand at the multiple resolutions; 3) SelfSim-EV was found as a useful tool to quantify the nonlinear relationships between the increase of EV purchasers and the demand for transport facilities and electricity, and also to capture some unexpected results coming out from the interactions in the complex dynamic urban system

Essays In Industrial Organization And Applied Microeconomics

This dissertation consists of three essays in the areas of Industrial Organization and Applied Microeconomics. The first essay studies high-tech firms\u27 product portfolio choices under competition. I develop a model of dynamic portfolio adjustments in the context of the Chinese smartphone market, using the product life cycle as an empirically tractable heuristic to capture firms\u27 dynamic incentives in new product introductions. I first show that product life cycles endogenously arise in markets with rapid technological innovations, are heterogeneous across products, and are affected by the level of market competition. I then estimate smartphone demand and manufacturers\u27 variable, maintenance and sunk introduction costs on a detailed monthly market-level dataset of Chinese smartphones between 2009 and 2014. Finally, I use a 2012 large-scale pro-competitive policy introduced by the Chinese government as an experiment to decompose the handset manufacturers\u27 incentives to introduce new products and show that the increased competition reduces the average product\u27s short-run profits by 5% but its lifetime profits by 41% by shrinking its product life cycle. These dynamic incentives have large implications for both consumer welfare gains from product variety and the speed of technology adoption in this market. In the second essay, my co-authors and I explore the sensitivity of the U.S. government\u27s ongoing incentive auction to multi-license ownership by broadcasters. We document significant broadcast TV license purchases by private equity firms prior to the auction and perform a prospective analysis of the effect of ownership concentration on auction outcomes. We find that multi-license holders are able to raise spectrum acquisition costs by 22% by strategically withholding some of their licenses to increase the price for their remaining licenses. We analyze a potential rule change that reduces the distortion in payouts to license holders by up to 80%, but find that lower participation could greatly increase payouts and exacerbate strategic effects. The third essay studies whether liberalizations of gun permits in the U.S. deterred violent crimes. Setting off an ongoing controversy, Lott and Mustard (1997) famously contended that so-called shall-issue laws (SILs) deterred violent crime. In this controversy the weapon of choice has been the differences-in-differences (DD) estimator applied to state and county panel data spanning various intervals of time. By treating violent crime as a career choice, this essay brings to bear a more general method, a cohort panel data model (CPDM) that incorporates the fundamental dynamic insights regarding entering and exiting a career. Our model distinguishes among three key parameters that jointly determine the effect of SILs on crime, (i) a direct effect on entry decisions, (ii) a surprise effect on exit decisions by individuals who entered criminal careers prior to the passage of SILs, and (iii) a selection effect on exit decisions by those who entered in the presence of SILs. We find significant and time-invariant results that reject the deterrence hypothesis as well as the DD model specification. Our results suggest that passages of SILs contribute to about one third of total violent crimes in 2011, particularly through higher turnover of violent criminals

Spectrum Trading: An Abstracted Bibliography

This document contains a bibliographic list of major papers on spectrum trading and their abstracts. The aim of the list is to offer researchers entering this field a fast panorama of the current literature. The list is continually updated on the webpage \url{http://www.disp.uniroma2.it/users/naldi/Ricspt.html}. Omissions and papers suggested for inclusion may be pointed out to the authors through e-mail (\textit{[email protected]})

Market Based Approaches for Dynamic Spectrum Assignment

Abstract—Much of the technical literature on spectrum sharing has been on developing technologies and systems for non-cooperative) opportunistic use. In this paper, we situate this approach to secondary spectrum use in a broader context, one that includes cooperative approaches to Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA). In this paper, we introduce readers to this broader approach to DSA by contrasting it with non-cooperative sharing (opportunistic use), surveying relevant literature, and suggesting future directions for researc