scholarly journals Economics of digital mergers

Pravovedenie ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 573-597
Author(s):  
Pierre Regibeau ◽  
◽  
Ioannis Lianos ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Consumer Information ◽  
Market Definition ◽  
Tacit Collusion ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Traditional Assessment ◽  
Specific Increase

The article reveals the main problems of antitrust law caused by the widespread use of digital technologies. The greatest challenge brought by the proliferation of digital technology and data is the emergence of new forms of pricing, which do not fit well with our traditional approach to the market definition or with our traditional assessment of the likely effect of mergers on prices. Digital sellers have the ability not only to recognize previous buyers more effectively but also to collect, store and exploit information about this buyer’s past behaviour in order to display products and prices aimed at maximising the seller’s profits given the available buyer profile. Individualised pricing enabled by digitalisation raises issues relative to market definition. In a world where digital sales enable customised pricing, the market is much more liable to segmentation. As a result, one must pay close attention to whether the merging parties are or not “especially close competitors” not only in terms of products but also in terms of consumer information. The authors conclude that AI-based algorithms could be used to facilitate tacit collusion between rivals. Coordination between independent parties is easier to achieve and maintain if the parties can agree on a common price, can detect any deviation from this agreement quickly and precisely and can react to such deviations quickly. Establishing this type of infringement would likely require expertise not currently available to most competition authorities. The article identifies several mechanisms through which the emergence of digital conglomerates, and hence the approval of digital conglomerate mergers, can affect competition adversely. The platform’s “market power” now depends on its ability to retain users within its own ecology and to use this to restrict the supply of advertising, leading to higher prices for both advertising and the corresponding products. This ability is increased by any acquisition which helps populate this ecology. Traditional measures of concentration can therefore easily understate, or even miss entirely, this type of merger-specific increase in market power.

scholarly journals The Leading Digital Technology Companies and Their Approach to Sustainable Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6612
Author(s):  
Peter Jones ◽  
Martin Wynn
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Circular Economy ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Digital Transformation ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Sustainable Future

The increasingly stellar attraction of the digital technologies and the growing, though not universal, consensus of the need to build a sustainable future, are two powerful trends within society. The aim of this article is to offer an exploratory review of how the leading companies within the digital transformation market have addressed sustainable development. As such, the article’s originality and value lie in offering a review of current corporate thinking within that market. The study adopts an inductive, qualitative approach based on an examination of published company reports, and identifies six major sustainability themes being actively promoted and supported. The article concludes that the current sustainability objectives of the technology companies are driven as much by commercial reality as any altruistic motives, and that support and promotion of the circular economy may offer the best opportunity for digital technologies to meaningfully impact sustainable development.

scholarly journals Scanner Data: New Opportunities for Demand and Competitive Strategy Analysis

1994 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald W. Cotterill
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Price Competition ◽  
Tacit Collusion ◽  
Scanner Data ◽  
Strategy Analysis ◽  
Price Response ◽  
Oligopoly Model ◽  
Sufficient Detail ◽  
Bertrand Price Competition ◽  
Reaction Equations

This paper reviews prior research by agricultural economists on the demand for food products using scanner data. Thereafter, a differentiated product's oligopoly model with Bertrand price competition is developed and used to specify brand level demand and oligopoly price reaction equations. The model has sufficient detail to estimate brand level price elasticities and price response elasticities which in turn can be used to estimate three indices of market power. The first index estimated is the familiar Rothschild Index. The paper develops estimates two new indexes, the observed index and the Chamberlin quotient for tacit collusion. It concludes with comments on how the proposed method for the measurement of market power in a differentiated oligopoly can be improved.

scholarly journals Applications of Robotics, AI, and Digital Technologies During COVID-19: A Review

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Zhuo Zhao ◽  
Yangmyung Ma ◽  
Adeel Mushtaq ◽  
Abdul M. Azam Rajper ◽  
Mahmoud Shehab ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Technology Adoption ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Rapid Diagnosis ◽  
Quick Response ◽  
Virus Spread ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Public Areas ◽  
Potential Impact

Abstract Many countries have enacted a quick response to the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic by utilizing existing technologies. For example, robotics, artificial intelligence, and digital technology have been deployed in hospitals and public areas for maintaining social distancing, reducing person-to-person contact, enabling rapid diagnosis, tracking virus spread, and providing sanitation. In this paper, 163 news articles and scientific reports on COVID-19-related technology adoption were screened, shortlisted, categorized by application scenario, and reviewed for functionality. Technologies related to robots, artificial intelligence, and digital technology were selected from the pool of candidates, yielding a total of 50 applications for review. Each case was analyzed for its engineering characteristics and potential impact on the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, challenges and future directions regarding the response to this pandemic and future pandemics were summarized and discussed.

How Digital Transformation Improves Perceptions of Oil and Gas Industry

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (12) ◽  
pp. 33-33
Author(s):  
Chris Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Production Optimization ◽  
Petroleum Engineering ◽  
Co2 Injection ◽  
The Impact

The final afternoon of the 2020 ATCE saw a wide-ranging virtual special session that covered an important but often overlooked facet of the unfolding digitalization revolution. While the rising wave of digital technology usually has been associated with production optimization and cost savings, panelists emphasized that it can also positively influence the global perception of the industry and enhance the lives of its employees. Chaired by Weatherford’s Dimitrios Pirovolou and moderated by John Clegg, J.M. Clegg Ltd., the session, “The Impact of Digital Technologies on Upstream Operations To Improve Stakeholder Perception, Business Models, and Work-Life Balance,” highlighted expertise taken from professionals across the industry. Panelists included petroleum engineering professor Linda Battalora and graduate research assistant Kirt McKenna, both from the Colorado School of Mines; former SPE President Darcy Spady of Carbon Connect International; and Dirk McDermott of Altira Group, an industry-centered venture-capital company. Battalora described the complex ways in which digital technology and the goal of sustainability might interact, highlighting recent SPE and other industry initiatives such as the GAIA Sustainability Program and reviewing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). McKenna, representing the perspective of the Millennial generation, described the importance of “agile development,” in which the industry uses new techniques not only to improve production but also to manage its employees in a way that heightens engagement while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Addressing the fact that greater commitment will be required to remove the “tougher two-thirds” of the world’s hydrocarbons that remain unexploited, Spady explained that digital sophistication will allow heightened productivity for professionals without a sacrifice in quality of life. Finally, McDermott stressed the importance of acknowledging that the industry often has not rewarded shareholders adequately, but pointed to growing digital components of oil and gas portfolios as an encouraging sign. After the initial presentations, Clegg moderated a discussion of questions sourced from the virtual audience. While the questions spanned a range of concerns, three central themes included the pursuit of sustainability, with an emphasis on carbon capture; the shape that future work environments might take; and how digital technologies power industry innovation and thus affect public perception. In addressing the first of these, Battalora identified major projects involving society-wide stakeholder involvement in pursuit of a regenerative “circular economy” model, such as Scotland’s Zero Waste Plan, while McKenna cited the positives of CO2-injection approaches, which he said would involve “partnering with the world” to achieve both economic and sustainability goals. While recognizing the importance of the UN SDGs in providing a global template for sustainability, McDermott said that the industry must address the fact that many investors fear rigid guidelines, which to them can represent limitations for growth or worse.

Digital technologies and the violent surveillance of nonbinary gender

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jama Shelton ◽  
Kel Kroehle ◽  
Emilie K. Clark ◽  
Kristie Seelman ◽  
SJ Dodd
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Predictive Policing ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
Trans People ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Control

The enforcement of the gender binary is a root cause of gender-based violence (GBV) for trans people. Disrupting GBV requires that we ensure that ‘gender’ is not presumed synonymous with White cisgender womanhood. Transfeminists suggest that attaining gender equity requires confronting all forms of oppression that police people and their bodies, including White supremacy, colonialism and capitalism (Silva and Ornat, 2016; Simpkins, 2016). Part of this project, we argue, includes confronting the structures of GBV embedded within digital technologies that are increasingly part of our everyday lives. Informed by transfeminist theory (Koyama, 2003; Stryker and Bettcher, 2016; Simpkins, 2016; Weerawardhana, 2018), we interrogate the ways in which digital technologies naturalise and reinforce GBV against bodies marked as divergent. We examine the subtler ways that digital technology can fortify binary gender as a mechanism of power and control. We highlight how gendered forms of data violence cannot be disentangled from digital technologies that surveil, police or punish on the basis of race, nationhood and citizenship, particularly in relation to predictive policing practices. We conclude with recommendations to guide technological development to reduce the violence enacted upon trans people and those whose gender presentations transgress society’s normative criteria for what constitutes a compliant (read: appropriately gendered) citizen.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>Violence against trans people is inherently gender-based.</li><br /><li>A root cause of gender-based violence against trans people is the strict reinforcement of the gender binary.</li><br /><li>Digital technology and predictive policing can fortify binary gender as a mechanism of power and control.</li><br /><li>Designers of digital technologies and the policymakers regulating surveillance capitalism must interrogate the ways in which their work upholds the gender binary and gender-based violence against trans people.</li></ul>

Music and Architecture: Bonds, Interrelations, Transductions

2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-569
Author(s):  
Miriam Bessone ◽  
Ricardo Pérez Miró
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Knowledge Integration ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Software Tools ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Visual Form ◽  
Music And Architecture

Digital technology and knowledge integration between musicians and architects enable us to explore and redefine links between music and architecture. This paper describes the experience and results of the creative processes undertaken by music and architecture students and academics to achieve a hyper-medial composition. The processes embrace the simultaneous construction from music to visual form and vice-versa. This exploration is originated from electro-acoustic music works, written ad-hoc, and based on specific assignments especially designed and framed within two types of situations and links with digital technologies: independent actions and interrelated actions. The intention of this work is to obtain constants and/or variables capable of allowing a certain type of graphic conventionalization that will make possible the mathematic representation previously necessary to create specific software tools.

scholarly journals Digital technologies for optimization of moisture parameters of calculated soil’s layer

2021 ◽  
pp. 86-89
Author(s):  
Dmitry Aleksandrovich Solovyev ◽  
Viktor Vladislavovich Korsak ◽  
Galina Nikolaevna Kamyshova ◽  
Olga Nikolaevna Mityureva ◽  
Pavel Olegovich Terekhov
Keyword(s):  
Programming Languages ◽  
Control Systems ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Soil Layer ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Irrigated Crops ◽  
Irrigation Control ◽  
Irrigation Technologies ◽  
High Level ◽  
Precision Irrigation

The article presents the results of the development of a digital technology for optimizing the parameters of moisture in the calculated soil layer. The introduction of precision irrigation technologies requires the development of new approaches to the development of decision support systems for their technical implementation in modern high-level programming languages. The developed computer program for determining the optimal moisture parameters of the calculated soil layer for the main irrigated crops of the Saratov region is easy to use and easily integrated into digital automated irrigation control systems.

scholarly journals DIGITAL LITERACY AMONG CHILDREN IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-170
Author(s):  
Hario Bismo Kuntarto ◽  
Amit Prakash
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Elementary Schools ◽  
School Children ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Elementary School Children ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Internet Service ◽  
Digital Devices

The use of digital devices by children is on the rise and a better understanding of their usage behaviour can be helpful in designing better ways of imparting education. As per data from the Indonesia Internet Service Provider Association (APJII), in 2018, almost 50% of elementary school children were using the internet. However, an introduction to digital technologies is not included under the topics covered in state elementary schools in Indonesia. Field work involving teachers and children in state and non-state elementary schools, officials in ministries, ICT vendors, parents were conducted through interviews, observations and workshops related to the use of digital technology to better understand the digital behaviour of children. It was found that elementary school children get exposed to digital technology at a very early age and while the duration of use varies according to parental involvement and awareness, the content consumed by children is, in most cases, not appropriate for their age. This study illustrates that monitoring digital use among children is currently a challenge for parents, and digital literacy, which includes introduction to both positive and negative effects of digital devices as well as appropriate digital use behaviour, should become an important part of the theme of learning in elementary schools in Indonesia to ensure digital technologies help in the shaping of children's attitudes and character, in a manner that is valued and beneficial to the society. Kata Kunci: literasi digital, pemanfaatan digital oleh anak sekolah dasar, pengenalan digital pada anak   Abstract – Use of digital devices by children is on the rise and a better understanding of their usage behaviour can be helpful in designing better ways of imparting education. As per data from the Indonesia Internet Service Provider Association (APJII), in 2018, almost 50% of elementary school children were using the internet. However, an introduction to digital technologies is not included under the topics covered in state elementary schools in Indonesia. Field work involving teachers and children in state and non-state elementary schools, officials in ministries, ICT vendors, parents were conducted over a six-month study period to better understand the digital behaviour of children. It was found that elementary school children get exposed to digital technology at a very early age and while the duration of use varies according to parental involvement and awareness, the content consumed by children is, in most cases, not appropriate for their age. This study illustrates that monitoring digital use among children is currently a challenge for parents, and digital literacy, which includes introduction to both positive and negative effects of digital devices as well as appropriate digital use behaviour, should become an important part of the theme of learning in elementary schools in Indonesia to ensure digital technologies help in the shaping of children's attitudes and character, in a manner that is valued and beneficial to the society.

scholarly journals Nonwearable Sensor-Based In-Home Assessment of Subtle Daily Behavioral Changes as a Candidate Biomarker for Mild Cognitive Impairment

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Takao Yamasaki ◽  
Shuzo Kumagai
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Assessment Methods ◽  
Behavioral Changes ◽  
Behavioral Patterns ◽  
Traditional Assessment ◽  
Traditional Performance ◽  
Traditional Assessments

Patients show subtle changes in daily behavioral patterns, revealed by traditional assessments (e.g., performance- or questionnaire-based assessments) even in the early stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD; i.e., the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) stage). An increase in studies on the assessment of daily behavioral changes in patients with MCI and AD using digital technologies (e.g., wearable and nonwearable sensor-based assessment) has been noted in recent years. In addition, more objective, quantitative, and realistic evidence of altered daily behavioral patterns in patients with MCI and AD has been provided by digital technologies rather than traditional assessments. Therefore, this study hypothesized that the assessment of daily behavioral changes with digital technologies can replace or assist traditional assessment methods for early MCI and AD detection. In this review, we focused on research using nonwearable sensor-based in-home assessment. Previous studies on the assessment of behavioral changes in MCI and AD using traditional performance- or questionnaire-based assessments are first described. Next, an overview of previous studies on the assessment of behavioral changes in MCI and AD using nonwearable sensor-based in-home assessment is provided. Finally, the usefulness and problems of nonwearable sensor-based in-home assessment for early MCI and AD detection are discussed. In conclusion, this review stresses that subtle changes in daily behavioral patterns detected by nonwearable sensor-based in-home assessment can be early MCI and AD biomarkers.

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