Spilling Over and Crowding Out: The Effects of Public Sector/Private Sector Convergence and Competition, in the Provision of Public Goods

This paper develops an original model of product differentiation, to contribute to the debate about theregulation and finance of public television. It goes beyond the conventional analysis in this topic, byshowing the spill-over effects that a public broadcaster can have upon commercial broadcasters. It showshow the existence of a publicly-financed, free-to-air channel (such as the BBC) can affect the behaviour ofadvertiser-financed, free-to-air channels (such as the ITV). In particular, it shows what happens if theoutput of the public channel converges with that offered by private firms, so that it becomes lessdistinctive; and or it introduces advertising.These are timely issues, given the extent to which public broadcasters are increasingly criticised forseeking popularity, losing distinctiveness, and in many cases, introducing advertising. These tensions arebeing felt in the television sectors of virtually every country of the world. To illustrate these and otherquestions of this nature, we develop a model that clarifies the interplay of the key issues. Moreover, themodel has wider parallels to other sectors where services are also offered free at the point of access, butfinanced by advertising. The most obvious example is the internet.The following pages therefore develop an original model of product differentiation in two dimensions,following the tradition of Hotelling and Cournot competition. The horizontal product attribute is programmequality or type, and the vertical attribute is level of advertising. Broadcasters compete for viewers byaltering their levels of advertising. The second novelty of this model is its pricing scheme, which capturesthe unusual nature of television advertising markets. Channels sell quantities of airtime to advertisers, theunit price of which is determined by the number of viewers. Relative demand therefore plays the role ofprice in a Cournot model, except there can be different prices for diffspatial competition, product differentiation, television, advertising.

The impact of beliefs about mental health problems and coping on outcome in schizophrenia.

Background. Using the theoretical framework of the Self Regulation Model (SRM), many studies have demonstrated that beliefs individuals hold about their physical health problems are important in predicting health outcomes. This study tested the SRM in the context of a mental health problem, schizophrenia. Method. One hundred and twenty-four people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia were assessed on measures of symptom severity, beliefs about their mental health problems, coping and appraisal of outcome at two time points, 6 months apart. Results. Using multivariate analyses and controlling for severity of symptoms, beliefs about mental health were found to be significant predictors of outcome. Beliefs about greater negative consequences were the strongest and most consistent predictors of a poorer outcome in both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. Conclusions. These results suggest that the SRM is a promising model for mental health problems and may highlight important areas for development in clinical, and especially psychosocial interventions

Spilling Over and Crowding Out: The Effects of Public Sector/Private Sector Convergence and Competition, in the Provision of Public Goods

This paper develops an original model of product differentiation, to contribute to the debate about theregulation and finance of public television. It goes beyond the conventional analysis in this topic, byshowing the spill-over effects that a public broadcaster can have upon commercial broadcasters. It showshow the existence of a publicly-financed, free-to-air channel (such as the BBC) can affect the behaviour ofadvertiser-financed, free-to-air channels (such as the ITV). In particular, it shows what happens if theoutput of the public channel converges with that offered by private firms, so that it becomes lessdistinctive; and or it introduces advertising.These are timely issues, given the extent to which public broadcasters are increasingly criticised forseeking popularity, losing distinctiveness, and in many cases, introducing advertising. These tensions arebeing felt in the television sectors of virtually every country of the world. To illustrate these and otherquestions of this nature, we develop a model that clarifies the interplay of the key issues. Moreover, themodel has wider parallels to other sectors where services are also offered free at the point of access, butfinanced by advertising. The most obvious example is the internet.The following pages therefore develop an original model of product differentiation in two dimensions,following the tradition of Hotelling and Cournot competition. The horizontal product attribute is programmequality or type, and the vertical attribute is level of advertising. Broadcasters compete for viewers byaltering their levels of advertising. The second novelty of this model is its pricing scheme, which capturesthe unusual nature of television advertising markets. Channels sell quantities of airtime to advertisers, theunit price of which is determined by the number of viewers. Relative demand therefore plays the role ofprice in a Cournot model, except there can be different prices for dif

Reverse engineering of CAD models via clustering and approximate implicitization

In applications like computer aided design, geometric models are often represented numerically as polynomial splines or NURBS, even when they originate from primitive geometry. For purposes such as redesign and isogeometric analysis, it is of interest to extract information about the underlying geometry through reverse engineering. In this work we develop a novel method to determine these primitive shapes by combining clustering analysis with approximate implicitization. The proposed method is automatic and can recover algebraic hypersurfaces of any degree in any dimension. In exact arithmetic, the algorithm returns exact results. All the required parameters, such as the implicit degree of the patches and the number of clusters of the model, are inferred using numerical approaches in order to obtain an algorithm that requires as little manual input as possible. The effectiveness, efficiency and robustness of the method are shown both in a theoretical analysis and in numerical examples implemented in Python

BMP Adoption in Two East Tennessee Watersheds

Voluntary adoption of Best Management Practices (BMPs) has been the foundation among many environmental conservation programs geared towards non-point source pollution. While farmers view BMPs as being both appropriate and problematic, there remain many constraints to BMP adoption on the farm. The objective of this research was to determine the criteria beef and dairy producers used in their decision making process on whether or not to adopt a given BMP or set of BMPs in the Pond Creek and Oostanaula Creek watersheds located in East Tennessee. Results are presented of exploratory sociological research designed to better understand how farmers select agricultural practices with the potential to effect water quality and soil erosion. Data establishes that a variety of economic, institutional, organizational and social factors interact in dynamic ways to influence farmer resource management decisions and that the resulting agricultural practices have the potential for subtle and dramatic effects on water quality in Pond Creek, Oostanaula Creek, and surrounding water bodies