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Consumer financial data and non-horizontal mergers
No full textThis article explores the potential competitive implications of non-horizontal mergers where they involve extensive consumer data, including consumer financial data. As data become increasingly central to firm strategy, mergers between data-rich firms, while potentially leading to positive outcomes, can also create market power in ways not entirely accounted for by traditional antitrust theory. The article considers some of these implications. It introduces new metrics for valuing data sets held by merging firms that could help competition authorities evaluate market impacts more effectively. The article then suggests potential tools to mitigate anti-competitive effects of data-rich mergers. It advocates for further research to adapt competition policy to data-centric mergers, all with a view to maintaining open, innovative and competitive markets in the digital and data economy
Who's governing the market? Bringing the individual back into the study of the developmental state
No full textResearch on the Northeast Asian economic miracle has focused on structural explanations, using institutional, geopolitical, and cultural variables. Much less focus has been on the role of the individuals (or “actors” or “agents”) responsible for leading the developmental states. This article contributes by using homophily theory to add a novel explanation for the origins of the success of the East Asian developmental states. Homophily refers to the tendency for people who recognize distinct common attributes to bond, to “stick together”. To study homophily, the article analyzes a dataset consisting of the 1,110 individuals who held one of the two most senior positions in the innovation policymaking organizations of the archetypal developmental states (Japan, Korea, and Taiwan) and the region's large, late developer (China), from 1945 to 2021. The article reveals national homophily around educational and occupational dimensions, especially the location of education and professional trajectories. Japan emerges as an outlier with the strongest homophily pattern; with its policy leaders being 6 times more likely than in the other cases to have the same educational and professional background, in terms of degree subject and university, and organizational path. This is surprising given that Japan is the quintessential developmental state; and raises questions about why the other developmental states, which in many respects emulated the Japanese model, did not replicate this aspect. Overall, the evidence suggests nationally distinct patterns of similar elite recruitment to the top of the developmental state resulted in positive developmental outcomes. These patterns were aligned with structural factors in a way that allowed these individuals to formulate and carry through successful policies
Forms of capital, social change and the weight of the past: the effective agents of the Swiss field of power 1910-2015
No full textIn this article we delve into the elites’ evolving forms of power to study the relationship between social change and capital accumulation. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the field of power and relying on the identification of the field’s effective agents in Switzerland, we investigate the changing relations among the most important forms of capital. We use prosopographical data spanning six historical periods from 1910 to 2015 and thanks to multiple correspondence analysis we uncover the changing structure of the field of power. We show the dominance of economic and organisational network powers throughout history. While both forms of power opposed before the Second World War, they could be accumulated together between the 1950s and the 1980s but opposed again in the recent period. The article contributes to ‘big picture’ sociology, offering historical accounts of broad social trends and provides evidence of a recent return to past inequality logics
Connecting risk, management and organisational goals: integrating risk with organisations’ systems to enhance performance and competitive advantage
No full textRisk influences organisational structures and processes in ways that have consequences for performance and competitive advantage. Prior research suggests actors engage in strategic risk positioning that orients organisations in relation to uncertainty to create beneficial outcomes, including firm survival. Although strategic risk positioning takes place within the social and structural contexts that are established elements of organisations’ systems, the theorising is not integrated. Rather, theorising about organisations’ systems characterises them as comprising strategy, structure, culture, leadership, and high-performance work practices, with different models explaining different elements and their connections with risk. By connecting studies of risk positioning and organisations’ systems, I develop the concept of a risk position that is a consequence of managers’ agentic choices and actions arising from combinations of risk appetite and risk management that create exposure to risk in relation to goals. My analysis shows how the risk position concept provides managers with language and meaning to enable risk positioning that involves intentional shifts in system elements. These shifts create orientations to both risk and goals in ways that enhance performance and competitive advantage. Thus, my modelling contributes to studies of organisational risk and organisations’ systems
Machine learning analysis of cardiovascular risk factors and their associations with hearing loss
No full textHearing loss poses immense burden worldwide and early detection is crucial. The accurate models identify high-risk groups, enabling timely intervention to improve quality of life. The subtle changes in hearing often go unnoticed, presenting a challenge for early hearing loss detection. While machine learning shows promise, prior studies have not leveraged cardiovascular risk factors known to impact hearing. As hearing outcomes remain challenging to characterize associations, we evaluated a new approach to predict current hearing outcomes through machine learning models using cardiovascular risk factors. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2012–2018 data comprising audiometric tests and cardiovascular risk factors was utilized. Machine learning algorithms were trained to classify hearing impairment thresholds and predict pure tone average values. Key results showed light gradient boosted machine performing best in classifying mild or greater impairment (> 25 dB HL) with 80.1% accuracy. It also classified > 16 dB HL and > 40 dB HL thresholds, with accuracies exceeding 77% and 86% respectively. The study also found that CatBoost and Gradient Boosting performed well in classifying hearing loss thresholds, with test set accuracies around 0.79 and F1-scores around 0.79–0.80. A multi-layer neural network emerged as the top predictor of pure tone averages, achieving a mean absolute error of just 3.05 dB. Feature analysis identified age, gender, blood pressure and waist circumference as key associated factors. Findings offer a promising direction for a clinically applicable tool, personalized prevention strategies, and calls for prospective validation
Mobile phone restrictions in UK schools, one year on
No full textMiriam Rahali, Beeban Kidron and Sonia Livingstone revisit their Digital Futures for Children report to ask whether the government guidance on smartphones at school has brought significant benefits
The legal framework for the right to access information and digital transformation in Kuwait: a qualitative study
No full textCurrently, almost 99% of Kuwait’s population are active internet users. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that their rights are protected in this area. Kuwait adopted Law No. 12 of 2020 to regulate citizen’s right to access to information. The purpose of this research is to assess the effectiveness of this legislation and draw specific attention to its barriers and recommendations on how these issues can be overcome. Fifteen experts (five per profession) were asked to participate in semi-structured interviews. A comprehensive thematic analysis was then conducted to delve deeper into their answers and get insights from this qualitative data. In total, 74 codes, three themes, ten specific sub-themes were identified. Among the main findings of this study is that the law implementation is compromised due to its poor articulation, which allows administrative authorities to make arbitrary decisions. Citizens’ lack of awareness of the law and their rights is another challenge to the efficient implementation of the law. The experts offer three suggestions on how Kuwait can improve the law. Finally, the study concludes that further research is required to expand on the findings. Comprehensive educational programmes are also needed for citizens and the administrative staff
Effectiveness of L1 and pictures in multimedia conditions on learning second-language vocabulary: a meta-analysis
No full textMultimedia inputs have been often used in second language (L2) vocabulary learning; however, the effective elements in multimedia inputs for L2 vocabulary learning have hardly been established. This study aims to identify the effective element(s) and further clarifies the meaning of different “domains” in multimedia L2 vocabulary learning. Considering that the learning target (L2 vocabulary) belongs to the verbal domain, the meaningful inputs are then constructed as within-domain (i.e. L1-based), cross-domain (i.e. Picture-based), and mixed-domain (i.e. L1+picture-based) learning conditions. The present study firstly conducted an omnibus analysis and then three meta-analyses: (a) within-domain vs. cross-domain (20 studies, 51 effect sizes), (b) within-domain vs. mixed-domain (21 studies, 55 effect sizes), and (c) cross-domain vs. mixed-domain (9 studies, 27 effect sizes), for a total of 2056 participants. Both immediate and available delayed tests were used as dependent variables. Four moderators were used to identify potential predictors. The results indicate that, at the immediate tests, the mixed-domain condition consistently outperforms the within-domain condition (g = 0.334, p < 0.001) and cross-domain condition (g = 0.350, p = 0.001) in facilitating L2 vocabulary learning. However, at the delayed tests, the advantageous effect of the mixed-domain condition only marginally outperformed the cross-domain condition (g = 0.271, p = 0.067). No significant difference was found between the within-domain and cross-domain conditions in L2 vocabulary learning. No significant moderator was detected at either the immediate tests or the delayed tests. These findings highlight the benefit of incorporating both L1 words and pictures into L2 vocabulary learning
Competitive capture of public opinion
No full textTwo opposed interested parties (IPs) compete to influence citizens with heterogeneous priors which receive news items produced by a variety of sources. The IPs fight to capture the coverage conveyed in these items. We characterize the equilibrium level of capture of item as well as the equilibrium level of information transmission. Capture increases the prevalence of the ex ante most informative messages and can explain the empirical distribution of slant at the news‐item level. Opposite capturing efforts do not cancel each other and instead undermine social learning as rational citizens discount informative messages. Citizen skepticism makes efforts to capture the news strategic substitutes. Because of strategic substitution, competition for influence is compatible with horizontal differentiation between successful media. In equilibrium, rational citizens choose to consume messages from aligned sources despite knowledge of the bias in a manner consistent with recent empirical evidence