Data Mining in Electronic Commerce

Modern business is rushing toward e-commerce. If the transition is done properly, it enables better management, new services, lower transaction costs and better customer relations. Success depends on skilled information technologists, among whom are statisticians. This paper focuses on some of the contributions that statisticians are making to help change the business world, especially through the development and application of data mining methods. This is a very large area, and the topics we cover are chosen to avoid overlap with other papers in this special issue, as well as to respect the limitations of our expertise. Inevitably, electronic commerce has raised and is raising fresh research problems in a very wide range of statistical areas, and we try to emphasize those challenges.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000204 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

The Contribution of Ethiopia Commodity Exchange for Promoting Exports of Agricultural Products

Commodity exchange can play a major role for agricultural development as an instrument to bring efficient agricultural market by providing lower transaction cost, efficient and transparent means for price discovery, managing risks related with prices volatility and provide a forum for exchanging information about supply and demand condition. The objectives of the present study are to examine the contributions of ECX for exports, to identify the respective gainers and losers in using ECX for exporting agricultural products, to assess the effect of ECX for generating foreign exchange and to address the feeling of exporters towards the contribution of ECX. The primary data were collected through distributing questionnaire for exporters and interview with executive officer of the company, while secondary data collected from journals, market bulletin, articles and company website. In order to achieve the stated objectives, the focus of the study was on the contribution of ECX in providing market information, grade and standard, contract enforcement, storage, ordering the market, and price discovery. The study employed cross sectional survey design. Even though 148 structured questionnaires distributed to the exporters, only 84.5% of the questionnaires are returned. The sampling design of the study was census survey. Moreover, semi-structured interview conducted with executive officer of the company. Data collected through questionnaire were analyzed quantitatively using descriptive statistics with the help of SPSS version 16; whereas data collected through interview were analyzed qualitatively. The research result indicated that the grading and sampling system of the company has a problem of bias, lack of knowledge and equipment; there is distrust between the seller, buyer and the exchange; there is high penalty cost imposed by ECX for delaying of withdrawing the commodities on time; problem of intolerable fee for membership seat and also there is a problem of dispute resolution mechanism. Finally, to enhance complete contribution to the exporters the researcher recommended to make grading free from corruption and bias by avoiding the problematic behavior through training and behavioral change of its employees, providing fair  membership seat price, avoidance of  imposing exaggerated penalty cost and creating acceptable dispute resolution mechanism to the exporters. Keywords: Exchange (ECX), contribution, Agricultural Products, Promoting, export

Domestic Outsourcing in the United States: A Research Agenda to Assess Trends and Effects on Job Quality

The goal of this paper is to develop a comprehensive research agenda to analyze trends in domestic outsourcing in the U.S. -- firms' use of contractors and independent contractors -- and its effects on job quality and inequality. In the process, we review definitions of outsourcing, the available scant empirical research, and limitations of existing data sources. We also summarize theories that attempt to explain why firms contract out for certain functions and assess their predictions about likely impacts on job quality. We then lay out in detail a major research initiative on domestic outsourcing, discussing the questions it should answer and providing a menu of research methodologies and potential data sources. Such a research investment will be a critical resource for policymakers and other stakeholders as they seek solutions to problems arising from the changing nature of work

Logistical constraints on international trade in the Maghreb

Without a competitive transport industry, the Maghreb countries will not truly benefit from reform aimed at increasing the region's share of international trade. A study of barriers to the region's trade, especially with countries of the European Union, identified more than 30 barriers, in four categories: barriers to imports, to exports, of infrastructure and equipment, and of intra-Maghreb trade. These include: 1) direct barriers including: (a) from traditional distortions (price, discriminatory access to markets); (b) nontariff barriers (administrative, regulatory and tax-related restrictions); (c) traffic agreements (protecting national flags); and (d) lack of infrastructure and equipment; and 2) indirect barriers deriving from: (a) trade harmonization (simplified customs procedures and tariffs structures, elimination of quotas, reduction of customs tariffs on transport equipment); and (b) technology lags (telecommunications and handling). The authors quantify barriers in terms of"tariff equivalents,"expressed as a nominal rate of protection based on the freeon board value of the merchandise. But the nominal rate of protection measures only the direct costs of distortions. The effective rate of protection measures both direct and indirect effects, and effective rates are generally twice as high as nominal rates. To reconcile macroeconomic and microeconomic approaches to measuring effective rates, the authors use a partial equilibrium model (SMART model) to estimate the impact on the balance of payments of eliminating excess costs. Most of the corrective policies they recommend concern multimodal transport in the trade between Europe and the Arab Maghreb Union. The challenges are considerable: not only does such a system pave the way for cost and time savings ("just-in-time"transport), but it also adopts the logistics management that the most advanced European enterprises use to orchestrate their raw material purchasing, production and marketing functions. A multimodal transport system allow them to reduce inventories significantly and to respond better to volatile demand. Essential for just-in-time multimodal transport and logistics management include efficient modern transport techniques, efficient communications systems, efficient modern merchandise handling, and appropriate regulations. These conditions are still not fully in place in the Maghreb countries, except partially in some parts of the clothing and textile industry.Economic Theory&Research,Transport and Trade Logistics,Common Carriers Industry,Environmental Economics&Policies,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Transport and Trade Logistics,Common Carriers Industry,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Environmental Economics&Policies

Relatório de Estágio - Solução de BI Roaming Data Science (RoaDS) em ambiente Vodafone

A telecom company (Vodafone), had the need to implement a Business Intelligence solution for Roaming data across a wide set of different data sources. Based on the data visualization of this solution, its key users with decision power, can make a business analysis and needs of infrastructure and software expansion. This document aims to expose the scientific papers produced with the various stages of production of the solution (state of the art, architecture design and implementation results), this Business Intelligence solution was designed and implemented with OLAP methodologies and technologies in a Data Warehouse composed of Data Marts arranged in constellation, the visualization layer was custom made in JavaScript (VueJS). As a base for the results a questionnaire was created to be filled in by the key users of the solution. Based on this questionnaire it was possible to ascertain that user acceptance was satisfactory. The proposed objectives for the implementation of the BI solution with all the requirements was achieved with the infrastructure itself created from scratch in Kubernetes. This BI platform can be expanded using column storage databases created specifically with OLAP workloads in mind, removing the need for an OLAP cube layer. Based on Machine Learning algorithms, the platform will be able to perform the predictions needed to make decisions about Vodafone's Roaming infrastructure

THE NEW ECONOMICS OF DISTANCE: LONG-TERM TRENDS IN INDEXES OF SPATIAL FRICTION

Distance-related costs have changed at different rates across categories of resource flows and across modes and media between 1960 and 1998. The cost of moving knowledge/information has dropped much faster than the costs of moving people or materials. The costs of processing and moving information have dropped by 98% and 92% respectively, in real terms since 1960. In addition, there are big differences in the rates of change within the real costs of moving people using different travel modes--just as big differences exist within the real costs of moving materials using different modes. For example, the real costs of moving materials by domestic rail and inland waterway have decreased by 58% and 42% in real terms, respectively, while inter-city trucking costs have not changed significantly in real terms since 1960. Thus, this paper suggests that the 'new economics of distance' is not about the disappearance of distance nor the demise of borders as factors in economics. Rather, 'the new economics of distance' is about the increasing role played by logistics management and the adjustment processes that are occurring as firms creatively seek to substitute between types of resources and between the modes and media for moving those resources.Industrial Organization,

Services trade and growth

The competitiveness of firms in open economies is increasingly determined by access to low-cost and high-quality producer services - telecommunications, transport and distribution services, financial intermediation, etc. This paper discusses the role of services in economic growth, focusing in particular on channels through which openness to trade in services may increase productivity at the level of the economy as a whole, industries and the firm. The authors explore what recent empirical work suggests could be done to enhance comparative advantage in the production and export of services and how to design policy reforms to open services markets to greater foreign participation in a way that ensures not just greater efficiency but also greater equity in terms of access to services.Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Transport Economics Policy&Planning,ICT Policy and Strategies,Emerging Markets

A scoping study on the functioning of commodity markets

Commodity production, whether for export or for domestic and subsistence consumption, plays a dominant role in sustaining the livelihoods of many millions of small producers throughout the developing world, as well as greatly influencing the incomes received by intermediaries, processors and governments. Over the past fifteen years, the liberalisation of commodity markets in many countries has had a major impact on smallholder operations and created many new challenges. While market liberalisation and the associated new international policy environment has created many opportunities for commodity sector participants, the price and financial risks have increased and new systems are needed to reduce the severe constraints to smallholder development and improve their livelihoods. Extensive research has shown that in many countries there is still relatively little understanding of the new marketing conditions and problems faced by smallholder commodity producers and intermediaries. The major objectives of this scoping study are: a) to identify the opportunities and constraints created by the liberalisation and globalisation of commodity markets, particularly for the smallholder sector (Part 1 ); (b) to provide an initial assessment of possible options and solutions to overcome these marketing constraints within the current international policy environment and thus improve the functioning of markets (Part 2); (c) to outline areas and strategies for possible future work aimed at improving the functioning of markets in favour of smallholders and, thus, improving their livelihoods