Evaluating the effectiveness of explanations for recommender systems : Methodological issues and empirical studies on the impact of personalization

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Scribd case study : commercial viability of the e-book subscription business model

Modeled after media subscription giants Netflix and Spotify, Scribd is a subscription e-book service based in San Francisco, United States. Despite the highly evaluated potential of the business model, Scribd came across significant problems due to a combination of a pay-per-read payout model and all-you-can-read pricing model; these issues led to a few unpopular decisions such as reducing content selection and eventually changing the subscription terms. In presence of a powerful and prosperous competitor such as Amazon that has a direct analogue to Scribd, Amazon Kindle Unlimited, Scribd has to choose growth strategies that will allow it to add value to the product for current and potential customers. The two possible strategies discussed in this case study are an international expansion to Germany and a domestic market expansion through the premium segment. The case study provides relevant data to assess each strategy and gives background information about the company and the industry in order for students to analyze the case and decide on the most attractive strategy to follow.Modelado como os gigantes de serviço de assinatura de média como Netflix e Spotify, Scribd é um serviço de assinatura de e-book baseado em São Francisco, Estados Unidos. Apesar de o modelo de negócio ter grande potencial, Scribd encontrou problemas significativos devido a uma combinação do seu modelo de pagamento "pago por leitura" e modelo de precário "tudo o que consegue ler". Estes problemas resultaram em decisões pouco populares, como a redução do conteúdo disponível, e a eventual mudança dos termos de assinatura. Na presença de competição potente e próspera como a da Amazon, que tem um serviço equivalente em Amazon Kindle Umlimited, Scribd tem que escolher uma estratégia de crescimento que o vai possibilitar de adicionar valor ao produto para clientes existentes e potenciais. As duas estratégias possíveis que são discutidas neste caso de estudo são uma expansão international para o mercado alemão, e uma expansão no mercado doméstico através de um segmento "premium". Este caso de estudo disponibiliza dados relevantes para avaliar cada estratégia, e fornece informação de fundo a cerca da empresa e a indústria, para que os alunos possam analisar o caso e decidir qual estratégia será a mais atrativa para seguir

Lawmakers as Job Buyers

In 2013, Washington State authorized the largest state tax incentive for private industry in U.S. history. It is not remarkable for a state legislature to use tax benefits to retain a major employer—in this case, the global aerospace manufacturer Boeing. Laws across all states and thousands of cities routinely incentivize companies such as Amazon to relocate or remain in particular areas. Notably, however, Washington did not recover any of the subsidies it authorized despite Boeing’s significant post-incentive workforce reductions. This story leads to several important questions: (1) How effective are state and local legislatures at influencing business-location decisions?; (2) Do such incentive programs actually achieve their goals of increasing and maintaining jobs?; (3) Is the public protected from imprudent spending? This Article looks specifically at the role of state and local governments in encouraging businesses to locate in their jurisdictions. In such cases, state and local lawmakers act as buyers of jobs. This Article argues for a two-step proposal to limit subnational government actions to incentivize business-location decisions. The first step involves a bidding process where companies are awarded incentives based on the lowest subsidy dollar amount required to create or retain a job of a certain quality or pay rate. The second step involves defining job metrics based on certain preconditions and recapturing incentives should a company fail to maintain or achieve a defined number of job and qualities inherent in each job. This two-step proposal has regulatory benefits and it mollifies the political concern for jurisdictions to appear competitive and the need for public financial protection

New Economic Analysis of Law: Beyond Technocracy and Market Design

This special issue on New Economic Analysis of Law features illuminating syntheses of social science and law. What would law and economics look like if macroeconomics were a concern of scholars now focused entirely on microeconomics? Do emerging online phenomena, such as algorithmic pricing and platform capitalism, promise to perfect economic theories of market equilibrium, or challenge their foundations? How did simplified economic models gain ideological power in policy circles, and how can they be improved or replaced? This issue highlights scholars whose work has made the legal academy more than an “importer” of ideas from other disciplines—and who have, instead, shown that rigorous legal analysis is fundamental to understanding economic affairs.The essays in this issue should help ensure that policymakers’ turn to new economic thinking promotes inclusive prosperity. Listokin, Bayern, and Kwak have identified major aporias in popular applications of law and economics methods. Ranchordás, Stucke, and Ezrachi have demonstrated that technological fixes, ranging from digital ranking and rating systems to artificial intelligence-driven personal assistants, are unlikely to improve matters unless they are wisely regulated. McCluskey and Rahman offer a blueprint for democratic regulation, which shapes the economy in productive ways and alleviates structural inequalities. Taken as a whole, this issue of Critical Analysis of Law shows that legal thinkers are not merely importers of ideas and models from economics, but also active participants, with a great deal to contribute to social science research

The valuation of unprotected works: a case study of public domain photographs on Wikipedia

What is the value of works in the public domain? We study the biographical Wikipedia pages of a large data set of authors, composers, and lyricists to determine whether the public domain status of available images leads to a higher rate of inclusion of illustrated supplementary material and whether such inclusion increases visitorship to individual pages. We attempt to objectively place a value on the body of public domain photographs and illustrations which are used in this global resource. We find that the most historically remote subjects are more likely to have images on their web pages because their biographical life-spans pre-date the existence of in-copyright imagery. We find that the large majority of photos and illustrations used on subject pages were obtained from the public domain, and we estimate their value in terms of costs saved to Wikipedia page builders and in terms of increased traffic corresponding to the inclusion of an image. Then, extrapolating from the characteristics of a random sample of a further 300 Wikipedia pages, we estimate a total value of public domain photographs on Wikipedia of between $246 to$270 million dollars per year

Case study : the acquisition of Whole Foods Market, Inc. by Amazon.com, Inc.

Atualmente, é necessário que uma empresa se adapte rapidamente às mudanças do meio em que ela se insere. Neste sentido, fusões e aquisições podem funcionar como um instrumento chave para permitir que uma empresa atinja os seus objetivos estratégicos. Aplicando a metodologia de estudo de caso, iremos analisar a aquisição da Whole Foods Market pela Amazon (completada a 28 de Agosto de 2017). Com um valor total de aproximadamente $13,57 mil milhões ($42,00 por ação da Whole Foods Market), este negócio destaca‐se como um dos maiores eventos de reestruturação empresarial desse ano, assim como a maior aquisição de um retalhista até à data. No presente estudo, pretendemos esclarecer os seguintes tópicos: (1) analise detalhada dos aspetos essenciais da aquisição; (2) quais os sinais que a aquisição nos transmite (tendo em consideração as mudanças nas preferências dos consumidores), e o que sinaliza em relação a futuros investimentos da Amazon. Resumidamente, concluímos que a aquisição da Whole Foods Market se adequa perfeitamente na estratégia da Amazon, permitindo‐lhe não apenas expandir as suas capacidades, mas também alargar o seu ecossistema. Por último, também defendemos que esta aquisição pode ser apenas o primeiro passo de um processo longo e d spendioso para a Amazon que, em caso de sucesso, pode suscitar ganhos significativos para a empresa.Today’s environment requires that a company moves faster and responds quickly to its changes. In this sense, mergers and acquisitions can function as a powerful tool that allows a company to achieve its strategic goals. Here, applying a case study methodology, we will analyze Amazon.com’s acquisition of Whole Foods Market (completed on August 28th, 2017). With an estimated total consideration of approximately $13.57 billion ($42.00 per Whole Foods Market’s share), this deal positions itself as one of the biggest corporate restructuring events of that year, and as the largest acquisition of a brick‐to‐mortar retailer until the date. In this study, we hope to shed light on the following topics: (1) analyze the acquisition’s key aspects; (2) what signals does the acquisition sends to the market (taking into consideration the changes in the consumers’ preferences), and about Amazon’s future moves. In short, we concluded that the acquisition of Whole Foods Market perfectly fits in Amazon’s strategy, allowing it not only to empower its capabilities, but also to expand its ecosystem. On top of that, we also defend that this deal could be just the first step of a long and costly process to Amazon which, in case of success, can trigger substantial wealth‐increases to the company

Platforms, Power, and the Antitrust Challenge: A Modest Proposal to Narrow the U.S.-Europe Divide

Big platforms dominate the new economy landscape. Colloquially known as GAFA [Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple] or FAANG [Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google], the high tech big data companies are charged with using the power of their platforms to squelch start-ups, appropriate rivals’ ideas, and take and commercialize the personal data of their users. Are the platforms violating the antitrust laws? Should they be broken up? Or are they the agents of progress in the new economy? On these points, the United States antitrust law and the European Union competition law may diverge. The Competition Directorate-General of the European Commission has brought proceedings against or is investigating Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. Germany, under its own competition law, has condemned Facebook’s conduct. Meanwhile, in the United States, authorities are skeptical, but they have commenced investigations. This Article is a comparative analysis of U.S. and EU law regarding monopolization/abuse of dominance as background to understanding why EU law is aggressive and U.S. law may be meek in the treatment of the big tech platforms. First, it examines the factors that underlie the two perspectives. Second, it considers three cases or problems—Google/Comparative Shopping (EU), Facebook-Personal Data (Germany), and dominant platforms’ acquisitions of start-ups that are inchoate competitive threats, such as Facebook’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. The Article considers what lessons the latest Supreme Court antitrust decision, Ohio v. American Express (AmEx), holds for the analysis of the big data antitrust issues. Third, it asks what U.S. antitrust law and enforcement should do. It concludes that U.S. antitrust law should reclaim its role as watchdog to stop abuses of economic power, and makes suggestions for U.S. antitrust law to meet the big-platform challenge in a modest but meaningful and practicable way. I. Introduction II. A Brief Comparison of U.S. and EU Law of Monopolization/Abuse of Dominance ... A. The United States ... B. Europe ... C. Presumptions and Divergences III. Implications for High Tech, Big Data IV. Three Examples of Alleged Platform Abuse ... A. Google/Comparative Shopping ... 1. EU Law ... 2. U.S. Law ... B. Facebook—Abuse of Data ... 1. German Law ... 2. U.S. Law ... C. Start-Ups: Nipping Competition in the Bud V. Proposals VI. Conclusio

SDG16: peace, justice and strong institutions - a political ecology perspective

This chapter assesses the implications of UN SDG 16: ‘Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions’ for both forests and people. Particular focus is placed on three thematic areas: 1) peace and the reduction of armed conflict, 2) the rule of law, accountability, transparency, and access to justice and 3) inclusiveness and participation. Conflict is widely variable in its effects, and may either prevent agricultural expansion or drive illicit crop production, and foster migration in or out of forested areas; while peace is often accompanied by state-supported mining and expansion of commercial crops. Regarding rule of law, forest policy in many countries favours political elite, large-scale industry actors and international trade. Hence, if SDG implementation strengthens state institutions, the ‘rule of law’ and transparency linked with international trade, it is likely to reinforce existing inequalities, unless it is counter-balanced with legal reforms that strengthen local rights to land and resources. While there has been much recent progress in promoting ‘participatory’ forest management, this is often tightly controlled by the state, contributing to local administrative burdens without redistributing power and benefits. In sum, the impacts of SDG 16 on forests and people depend on how it shapes power and resource distribution