Intellectual Property Protection and Innovation

Well-designed and enforceable intellectual property rights (IPRs) provide economic incentives for research and development (R&D). Despite the apparent benefits to the existence of strong IPRs, many countries have a poor record in IPR protection. This paper develops a game-theoretic model of heterogeneous producers and endogenous innovators to analyze the causes and consequences of IPR infringement. Analytical results show that IPR infringement affects pricing and welfare in the market. The optimal IPR protection for the government depends not only on the pricing decision of the innovator, but also on its country size and its conjecture about the policy of other governments. A government can only use IPR protection as a strategic trade policy tool if the innovator can price discriminate.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Secret message capacity of a line network

We investigate the problem of information theoretically secure communication in a line network with erasure channels and state feedback. We consider a spectrum of cases for the private randomness that intermediate nodes can generate, ranging from having intermediate nodes generate unlimited private randomness, to having intermediate nodes generate no private randomness, and all cases in between. We characterize the secret message capacity when either only one of the channels is eavesdropped or all of the channels are eavesdropped, and we develop polynomial time algorithms that achieve these capacities. We also give an outer bound for the case where an arbitrary number of channels is eavesdropped. Our work is the first to characterize the secrecy capacity of a network of arbitrary size, with imperfect channels and feedback. As a side result, we derive the secret key and secret message capacity of an one-hop network, when the source has limited randomness

Corruption: Democracy, Autocracy, and Political Stability

The recent empirical literature on corruption has identified a long list of variables that correlate significantly with corruption but only five were distinguished by Leamer’s Extreme Bounds Analysis as robust to various samples, measures of corruption, and regression specifications. Among these five factors that were found to reduce corruption are decades-long tradition of democracy and political stability. In today’s world, however, there are many countries that combine one of these two robust determinants of corruption with the opposite of the other: politically stable autocracies or newly formed and unstable democracies. The central question raised in this paper is: Is it worth, in terms of corruption, for a country to trade stability with autocratic rule for political freedoms but with transitional instability? We find that the answer to this question is in the affirmative - the level of corruption is indeed lower in unstable democracies than in stable dictatorships. Our results are robust to various measures of corruption, alternative regressor indices, and regression specifications.corruption, democracy, autocracy, dictatorship, political stability

FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF CUTTING RESISTANCE IN FOUNDATION DESIGN

Cutting resistance values suggested by Jáky and Kézdi for determining load capacities of spread and deep footings have been compared to computer outputs. In conformity with analytic and numerical analysis resuits, FEM is suggested for compiling tables or diagrams for designing concrete strip and pier footings. The required material characteristics of concrete are defined and the possible procedure of computations outlined

Caroline Czap\u27s Portfolio

This portfolio consists of works that I have completed during my time in the School of Business at Duquesne University. Consisting of marketing campaigns, blog post drafts and templates, a digital marketing analysis, and multiple honors college projects this portfolio showcases what I have learned not only in my marketing major in the business school, but in my digital media arts minor in the liberal arts school as well. Each element of this portfolio demonstrates my knowledge and passion for the digital marketing industry. Each element of this portfolio exposed me to different elements that go into the digital marketing strategy of a company. I have been able to learn and develop drafts for digital campaigns such as creative briefs, blog posts, and social media advertisements. As well as learning how to create these elements of digital marketing, I have also learned how to analyze digital mediums, like landing and home pages on websites, as well as applying ethical principles to work that I have produced, and have seen already displayed in the digital world. These different types of projects have allowed me to gain a well-rounded knowledge of the digital marketing world, and the ability to not only create digital work, but to be able to explain all the elements, and why it will be successful for different audiences. Overall, this portfolio showcases not only my knowledge, but also my passion for the field of digital marketing and media. It demonstrates my ability to not only create different plans and campaigns for a variety of organizations, but also to analyze the effects different digital elements can have on audiences, and why they are successful.https://dsc.duq.edu/portfolios/1009/thumbnail.jp

Minimizing the Cost of Guessing Games

Then, the second participant, the “Questioner,” asks only yes-or-no questions in order to guess the number. In this paper, we study guessing games with lies and costs. In particular, the Responder is allowed to lie in one answer, and the Questioner is charged a cost based on the content of each question. Guessing games with lies are closely linked to error correcting codes, which are mathematical objects that allow us to detect an error in received information and correct these errors. We will give basic definitions in coding theory and show how error correcting codes allow us to still guess the correct number even if one lie is involved. We will additionally seek to minimize the total cost of our games. We will provide explicit constructions, for any cost function, for games with the minimum possible cost and an unlimited number of questions. We also find minimum cost games for games with a restricted number of questions and a constant cost function