Do entry barriers, perceived by SMEs, affect real antry? Some evidence from the Netherlands

The objective of this paper is to analyse the relationship between perceived entry barriers and real entry. Real entry rates are interpreted as an indicator for the dynamics in an industry. The major hypothesis of this paper is that important entry barriers restrict new entry. Real entry rates are provided by a starter ratio for different industrial sectors and provinces in the Netherlands.

Accelerator-Based Vocal Tract Measurements

Clinical research seeks a voice monitoring device for everyday situations. This thesis in- vestigates the extraction of vocal tract information (VTI) from a portable, lightweight, and wireless voice accelerometer (ACC). An experiment recorded participants’ speech using two ACCs placed on the neck and cheek, comparing them to an acoustic microphone. The analysis focused on formant frequencies (FFs), inter-annotator agreement (IAA) for voice onset time (VOT), resistance to environmental noise, and accuracy of transcriptions using automatic speech recognition (ASR). FF extraction yielded unreliable and non-canonical vowel distributions. IAA showed agreement in voice onset between ACC and acoustic signal, but less for VOT start time and duration. Both placements resisted noise up to 85 dBA. However, ACC signals had a high Word error rate (WER), indicating poor recogni- tion. These findings suggest limited VTI extraction from ACC signals, requiring further improvements before reliable VTI recording devices can be developed

Rice market integration in the Mekong river delta : the successful liberalisation of the domestic food market in Vietnam

This article analyses the spatial price differences in the rice market of the Mekong River Delta to assess the impact of the liberalisation policies on its functioning. The results of these policies carried out during the last two decades are impressive. The rice market system in the Delta is competitive. Price patterns strongly cohere and are integrated with the regulated export prices. However, price patterns in other regions and in particular in the North, are only weakly integrated with price patterns in the South. Private traders in the South satisfy local demand and deal with State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) involved in exports and transactions with the North. In the framework of the national food security policy, the state owned food companies subsidise transactions between the South and the North. Therefore, no profitable long distance trade can be established. Moreover, the state owned food companies acquire nearly all licences to export (quota). We conclude that, despite all the dramatic changes, the liberalisation process still faces major challenges.