Does History Matter Only When it Matters Little? The Case of City-Indu try Location

When will an industry subject to agglomeration economies move from an old, high-cost site to a new, low-cost site? It is argued that history, in the form of sunk costs resulting from the operation of many firms at a site, creates a first-mover disadvantage that can prevent relocation. It is demonstrated that developers of industrial parks can partly overcome this inertia through discriminatory pricing of land over time, and empirical evidence is provided that they actually engage in such behavior. It is also shown that other aspects of developer land-sale strategy can be a source of information on the nature of interfirm externalities.

Critical Success Factors to Improve the Game Development Process from a Developer\u27s Perspective

The growth of the software game development industry is enormous and is gaining importance day by day. This growth imposes severe pressure and a number of issues and challenges on the game development community. Game development is a complex process, and one important game development choice is to consider the developer’s perspective to produce good-quality software games by improving the game development process. The objective of this study is to provide a better understanding of the developer’s dimension as a factor in software game success. It focuses mainly on an empirical investigation of the effect of key developer’s factors on the software game development process and eventually on the quality of the resulting game. A quantitative survey was developed and conducted to identify key developer’s factors for an enhanced game development process. For this study, the developed survey was used to test the research model and hypotheses. The results provide evidence that game development organizations must deal with multiple key factors to remain competitive and to handle high pressure in the software game industry. The main contribution of this paper is to investigate empirically the influence of key developer’s factors on the game development process

Factors Affecting the Success of Open Source Software

With the rapid rise in the use of Open Source Software (OSS) in all types of applications, it is important to know which factors can lead to OSS success. OSS projects evolve and transform over time; therefore success must be examined longitudinally over a period of time. In this research, we examine two measures of project success: project popularity and developer activity, of 283 OSS projects over a span of 3 years, in order to observe changes over time. A comprehensive research model of OSS success is developed which includes both extrinsic and intrinsic attributes. Results show that while many of the hypothesized relationships are supported, there were marked differences in some of the relationships at different points in time lending support to the notion that different factors need to be emphasized as the OSS project unfolds over time

Search Tool Implementation for Historical Archive

Dr. Linda Arnold's archival project "Mexican-American War and the Media" is an underutilized resource. Providing contrasting primary sources on the War, it is the only archive of its kind. In order to make the archive's massive amount of information more accessible to researchers and students, I added search functionality to the site. Several tools were implemented and tested. Perlfect, a Perl-based open-source approach, was determined to be the best option. This report includes an outline of the steps taken to implement the search tool, a user's manual, a developer's manual, and options for future work. The archive may be accessed at http://www.majbill.vt.edu/history/mxamwar/index.htm

Usability and open source software.

Open source communities have successfully developed many pieces of software although most computer users only use proprietary applications. The usability of open source software is often regarded as one reason for this limited distribution. In this paper we review the existing evidence of the usability of open source software and discuss how the characteristics of open-source development influence usability. We describe how existing human-computer interaction techniques can be used to leverage distributed networked communities, of developers and users, to address issues of usability

Mitigating Bias in Organizational Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence

We theorize why some artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms unexpectedly treat protected classes unfairly. We hypothesize that mechanisms by which AI assumes agencies, rights, and responsibilities of its stakeholders can affect AI bias by increasing complexity and irreducible uncertainties: e.g., AI’s learning method, anthropomorphism level, stakeholder utility optimization approach, and acquisition mode (make, buy, collaborate). In a sample of 726 agentic AI, we find that unsupervised and hybrid learning methods increase the likelihood of AI bias, whereas “strict” supervised learning reduces it. Highly anthropomorphic AI increases the likelihood of AI bias. Using AI to optimize one stakeholder’s utility increases AI bias risk, whereas jointly optimizing the utilities of multiple stakeholders reduces it. User organizations that co-create AI with developer organizations instead of developing it in-house or acquiring it off-the-shelf reduce AI bias risk. The proposed theory and the findings advance our understanding of responsible development and use of agentic AI

A new financial architecture for developing mixed-income housing in Massachusetts

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-130).The need for affordable housing is as critical now as it has ever been. Mixed-income housing has been adopted by federal policymakers and many state housing agencies as a means to address this pressing issue. Two mixed-income programs with contrasting results are examined and the strengths and weaknesses of each discussed. Based upon the lessons learned, the authors use a variety of financing mechanisms to create a new financial architecture for the development of mixed-income housing in Massachusetts. The thesis begins with a general overview of the history of U.S. housing policy and the current need for affordable housing. It follows with a detailed description of the various mechanisms used to finance and promote the supply of low-income housing. Two mixed-income housing programs, the SHARP Program and the 80/20 Program, are examined. Using a variety of financing mechanisms, a new financial architecture is advanced based upon a new public/private partnership. Current construction and operating costs from the greater Boston area are used to simulate the development and operation costs of an 80/20 project. Growth rates extracted from a portfolio of 23 mixed-income properties financed by the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency (MHFA) under the SHARP Program are superimposed on a baseline scenario to subject it to the same financial stresses that the SHARP properties experienced during the recession of the early 1990s. The risks and potential returns to the public/private partnership are analyzed and recommendations made so the returns to each party are commensurate with the risks that party bears when investing in mixed-income projects. The Model is run through a variety of sensitivity analyses to measure the impact of changes in key variables on the resulting returns of principle partners. The conclusion drawn is that the long-term viability of mixed-income projects can be tenuous, but with the proper alignment of interests and through the use of carefully interwoven finance mechanisms and public policies, mixed-income projects can help address the affordable housing crisis while successfully meeting the goals of each party to the partnership.by Mecky Adnani and Peter D. Crabtree.Ph.D

Incentives for Developers’ Contributions and Product Performance Metrics in Open Source Development: An Empirical Exploration

In open source software development, users rather than paid developers engage in innovation and development without the direct involvement of manufacturers. This paradigm cannot be explained by the two traditional models of innovation, the private investment model and the collective action model. Neither model in itself can explain the phenomenon of the open source model or its success. In order to bridge the gap between existing models and the open source phenomenon, we analyze data from a web survey of 160 open source developers. First, we investigate the motives affecting the individual developer’s contributions by comparing and contrasting the incentives from both the traditional private investment and collective action models. Second, we demonstrate that there is a common ground between the private and collective models where private returns and social considerations can coexist. Third, we explore the effect of incentives on the output of innovation—final product performance. The results show that the motivations for individual developer’s contributions are quite different from the incentives that affect product performance.