Digital TV policies in the UK, US, Australia and Italy.

Many countries are in the process of converting their terrestrial television services from analog to digital transmission. Several different approaches have been adopted for the switchover with different apparent results. Spectrum is a scarce resource and delays in the switch off can have major effects on economic welfare as the spectrum tied up in analog transmission cannot be released for other uses. In this paper we examine the digital TV conversion policies and progress in the UK, USA, Australia and Italy, which have adopted different processes to achieve the desired switch-off. Each of the four countries decided to mandate the conversion of terrestrial television services from analog to digital transmission late in the last decade adopting policies with similar planned periods of transition and similar targets to complete the process. We look at the policies of each and the progress achieved to date to see what features appear to be enhancing or slowing down the achievement of the switch-over target

Dynamics and Motivations of Media Marketing: The Role of Globalization and Empowerment

Audience fragmentation, convergence, and technology development have changed consumption patterns and brand communication. Media companies should consider TV series and movies as brands to be exploiting at national/international level. Using a dynamic diffusion model, we analyze the evolution of popularity in a specific country under different hypotheses. Then we propose an optimal decision model which describes the decision maker’s point of view in a two-sided market

The hidden costs of going global: insights from firms' entry into foreign markets

Recent literature on strategic decision-making highlights the role of hidden costs, i.e. costs that firms are not able to predict ex-ante (Larsen et al., 2012). This paper analyses the hidden costs of going global, i.e. unanticipated costs that emerge in the implementation of market entry strategies. Foreign market entry requires firms to assess the potential attractiveness of different locations, select an appropriate entry mode, and organize their international value chain. When taking such decisions, firms can make evaluation mistakes. We propose that cultural distance is one factor that generates “blind spots” in a firm’s strategic analysis, thus affecting its ability to evaluate the actual challenges of entering foreign markets. Firms can offset distance-driven hidden costs by building international experience and relational capability

How the innovation diffusion models from the past can help us to explain marketing in the new media era

Even if the rhetoric of the Internet and the new digital media seems to have radically changed our technological environment, historical recurrences are relevant tools in order to analyze the future marketing. We propose a new multi-stage model able to bridge two different approaches, namely the adoption models à la Bass and the recent line of research concerning agent-based innovation diffusion models. Our technology allows us to find a closed form equation for awareness and adoption, taking into account heterogeneous population

A two-stage model for diffusion of innovations

The objective of this paper is to provide an analytical framework to study the whole process of diffusion of innovations, new products or ideas: we take into account knowledge transfer in a complex society, decisional process for adoption and key features in the spread of new technologies. For this purpose, we propose a probabilistic model based on an interacting population connected through new communication channels (such as social media) where potential adopters are linked with each other at different connection degrees. Our diffusion curve is the result of an emotion driven decision process following the awareness phase. Finally, we are able to recover stylized facts highlighted by the extant literature in the field

Travelling waves in Lotka-Volterra competition models

In this thesis, we study a class of multi-stable reaction-diffusion systems used to model competing species. Systems in this class possess uniform stable steady states representing semi-trivial solutions. We start by considering a bistable, interaction, where the interactions are of classic “Lotka-Volterra” type and we consider a particular problem with relevance to applications in population dynamics: essentially, we study under what conditions the interplay of relative motility (diffusion) and competitive strength can cause waves of invasion to be halted and reversed. By establishing rigorous results concerning related degenerate and near-degenerate systems,we build a picture of the dependence of the wave speed on system parameters. Our results lead us to conjecture that this class of competition model has three “zones of response” in which the wave direction is left-moving, reversible and right-moving, respectively and indeed that in all three zones, the wave speed is an increasing function of the relative motility. Moreover, we study the effects of domain size on planar and non-planar interfaces and show that curvature plays an important role in determining competitive outcomes. Finally, we study a 3-species Lotka-Volterra model, where the third species is treated as a bio-control agent or a bio-buffer and investigate under what conditions the third species can alter the existing competition interaction.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceSaudi Arabian Cultural BureauGBUnited Kingdo

On human capital and economic growth with random technology shocks

We embed the Uzawa-Lucas human capital accumulation technology into the Mankiw-Romer-Weil exogenous growth model. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part we assume that the rate of technological progress is exogenous and deterministic and study the local dynamics of the model around its steady-state equilibrium. The first order conditions lead to a system of four nonlinear differential equations. By reducing the dimension of the system to three, we find that the equilibrium is a saddle point. If the equations system is attacked in its original dimension, and by making use of an arbitrage condition, we prove that the equilibrium is unstable. In the second part of the paper technology is assumed to be subject to random shocks driven by a geometric Brownian motion. Using the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation, and through numerical simulations, we discuss the effects of technology shocks on the optimal policies of consumption and the allocation of human capital across sector

Clinical relevance of gene mutations and rearrangements in advanced differentiated thyroid cancer

Background: Tumor genotyping is becoming crucial to optimize the clinical management of patients with advanced differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC); however, its implementation in clinical practice remains undefined. We herein report our single-center experience on molecular advanced DTC testing by next-generation sequencing approach, to better define how and when tumor genotyping can assist clinical decision making. Materials and methods: We retrospectively collected data on all adult patients with advanced DTC who received molecular profiling at the IRCSS Sant'Orsola-Malpighi Hospital from 2008 to 2022. The genetic alterations were correlated with radioactive iodide refractory (RAI-R), RAI uptake/disease status, and time to RAI resistance (TTRR) development. Results: A significant correlation was found between RAI-R development and genetic alterations (P = 0.0001). About 48.7% of RAI-R cases were positive for TERT/TP53 mutations (as both a single event and comutations with other driver gene alterations, such as BRAF mutations, RAS mutations, or gene fusions), while the great majority of RAI-sensitive cases carried gene fusions (41.9%) or were wild type (WT; 41.9%). RAI uptake/disease status and time to TTRR were significantly associated with genetic alterations (P = 0.0001). In particular, DTC with TERT/TP53 mutations as a single event or as comutations displayed a shorter median TTRR of 35.4 months (range 15.0-55.8 months), in comparison to the other molecular subgroups. TERT/TP53 mutations as a single event or as comutations remained independently associated with RAI-R after Cox multivariate analysis (hazard ratio 4.14, 95% CI 1.51-11.32; P = 0.006). Conclusions: Routine testing for genetic alterations should be included as part of the clinical workup, for identifying both the subset of more aggressive tumors and the subset of tumors harboring actionable gene fusions, thus ensuring the appropriate management for all patients with advanced DTC

Innovation in Creative Industries: From the Quadruple Helix Model to the Systems Theory

Knowledge and creativity have always played a key role in the economy. Since the 2000s, the relevance of the creative industries, a high growth sector, has been pointed out as long as its strong and positive effects on jobs and economic growth. In the current context of rapid globalization and technological development, the innovation system is getting even more complex because it implies a shift in research focus from the supply to the demand side environment (consumption-driven economy). The authors focus on theoretical approaches coming from management and media studies able to explain the current paradigm shift in innovation and knowledge production and use: the Triple Helix model (and its developments) and Systems Theory. As an interesting case study, the Creative Enterprise Australia (CEA) is analyzed according the theoretical approaches shown. The paper tries to shed new light on the evolving role of knowledge pointing out the overlapping relationships between all the actors involved and the interpenetration of systems, and the prominent appointment of the media as an interpretative framework of the convergence of the depicted theories