Scopic valuations: how digital tracking technologies shape economic value

How do market actors in the contemporary economy make decisions when they are uncertain of the value of what is being traded? To answer this question, this paper analyses the changing temporal and spatial orientation of economic valuations in increasingly digitalized economies, in which markets can no longer be understood as locally bound and closed sites of valuation and exchange. Drawing on ethnographic material from the fishing industry, the paper shows how digital tracking technologies link and synchronize auction markets with real-time information on fishing activities. Hence, ‘scopic media’ such as chart plotters and computer screens are not only deployed by skippers to monitor one another, but are also used as valuation devices that recontextualize local knowledge for the purpose of coping with economic uncertainty. As a consequence of this panoptic valuation regime, fishermen control their virtual identities by disciplining harvesting practices according to their buyers’ expectations.     

International Patent Strategies of Small and Large Firms: An Empirical Study of Nanotechnology

The aim of this article is to investigate to what extent small‐firm foreign patents differ from those of their larger counterparts. The research setting consists of the population of U.S.‐owned small and large businesses with patent applications at the World International Patent Organization during 1996–2006 in the emerging field of nanotechnology. Findings reveal a significant and growing contribution of small firms to the globalization of patents. The analysis also suggests that small‐firm patents tend to be more novel and embedded in domestic innovation networks than large‐firm patents. Policy implications are multiple, including putting international patenting on the policy agenda and helping highly innovative small companies to explore foreign commercial opportunities in new markets of capital and technology.     

Putting a price on drugs: An economic sociological study of price formation in illegal drug markets

Prices in illegal drug markets are difficult to predict. Based on qualitative interviews with 68 incarcerated drug dealers in Norway, we explore dealers’ perspectives on fair prices and the processes that influence their pricing decisions. Synthesized through economic sociology, we draw on perspectives from traditions as different as behavioral economics and cultural analysis to demonstrate how participants in illicit drug distribution base their pricing decisions on institutional context, social networks, and drug market cultures. We find that dealers take institutional constraints into consideration and search for niches with high earnings and low risks. The use of transactions embedded in social networks promotes a trusting form of governance, which enables strategic network management and expedient distribution but also uncompetitive pricing. Finally, dealers’ pricing decisions are embedded in three different cultures narratives: business, friendship, and street cultural stories, with widely varying implications for prices. Our findings demonstrate how an economic sociology of illicit drug distribution can extend insights from behavioral economics and cultural studies into a coherent criminology of illegal drug markets.     

From fragile to smart consumers: Shifting paradigm for the digital era

The use of digital technologies, functioning thanks to data processing, has been conquering many sectors of the world economy and it is possible that, in the near future, only a few markets will still be excluded from this industrial revolution. Therefore, even if one chose unreasonably to disregard the many innovations that the digital economy has brought about, its development seems quite inexorable, although it is true that this new stage in human progress raises some concerns. In particular, many worry about the millions of passive and powerless digital consumers who, facing a few huge and influential companies without any education or awareness, could succumb and find themselves poorer, victimized, and manipulated. The paper proposes to react to this state of affairs without further fueling the fear of the digital revolution and without the thought that regulation can be used only as a shield to protect fragile digital consumers. Rather, by taking inspiration from some regulatory actions undertaken by the European Union, the paper bears in mind that regulation can be used as a sword in the hands of consumers to finally assign them a lead role in digital markets. New rules to empower consumers and to make them take autonomous and independent decisions as to the management of their personal data as well as to the merits of digital firms can be envisaged. After all, one of the cultural roots of Western societies is that every individual should be enabled to be faber ipsius fortunae.     

Online platforms and pricing: Adapting abuse of dominance assessments to the economic reality of free products

Online platforms, which are at the forefront of today's economy, are subject to intensive competition law enforcement. However, the platform business model presents challenges for the application of competition law. Most notably, they appear to offer consumers a great number of their products for free. The explanation for most of these supposedly free products is offered by two-sided market theory: consumers may not be paying, but the ‘other’ side of the market is. This other side of the market often consists of advertisers, which pay the platform for access to the consumers’ information (to target advertisements) and attention (to show the advertisements). As many of these platforms are now potentially dominant, they come within the scope of competition law's abuse of dominance provision, including the doctrines of predatory and excessive pricing. These price-based theories need to adapt to the often price-less platform business model in order to prevent competition authorities from making both type I and type II enforcement errors. At the same time, competition law enforcement needs to consider—and at times give priority to—other branches of law that address abusive behaviour concerning free products. Through the use of case studies, this article therefore suggests ways in which abuse of dominance assessments can take into account the economic reality of free products.     

A multivariate statistical approach to for the evaluation of the biogeographical ancestry information from traditional STRs

The capability to achieve biogeographic ancestry (BGA) information from DNA profiles have been largely explored in forensic genetics because of its potential usefulness in providing investigative clues. For law enforcement and security purposes, when genetic data have been obtained from unknown evidence, but no reference samples are available and no hints come out from DNA databases, it would be extremely useful at least to infer the ethno-geographic origin of the stain donor by just examining traditional STRs DNA profiles.Current protocols for ethnic origin estimation using STRs profiles are usually based on Principal Component Analysis approaches and Bayesian methods. The present study provides an alternative approach that involves the use of target multivariate data analysis strategies for estimation of the BGA information from unknown biological traces. A powerful multivariate technique such as Partial Least Squares-Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) has been applied on NIST U.S. population datasets containing, for instance, the allele frequencies of African-American, Asian, Caucasian and Hispanic individuals. PLS-DA approach provided robust classifications, yielding high sensitivity and specificity models capable of discriminating the populations on ethnic basis. Finally, a real casework has been examined by extending the developed model to smaller and more geographically-restricted populations involving, for instance, Albanian, Italian and Montenegrian individuals.     

Breaching the levee,waiting for the flood. Testing beliefs about the internationalization of securities markets

Abstract

In the 1970s and 1980s, the three major securities markets in New York, London, and Tokyo underwent significant regulatory shifts that lowered national barriers to entry and liberalized the markets. Popular explanations point toward technologies, economic efficiencies, foreign policy pressures, the removal of controls on international capital flows, or international competition as unleashing forces promoting liberalization and breaching the regulatory levees. Such explanations generate expectations about behavior once the international pressures are unleashed. Significant changes in overseas participants' market behavior should be observable. International competitive pressures should produce convergence in regulatory and transaction costs across markets upon one of two equilibriums—one by competitive deregulations or another by harmonization through agreement. Empirical tests produce results inconsistent with such expectations. Foreign participation does increase following the breach in the regulatory levees, but the unleashed demand cannot be described as a flood. Observable measures of market dynamics and transaction costs remain distinctive. The inconsistencies between results and expectations raise questions about explanations that emphasize increasing interdependence and international pressures as driving domestic political and economic changes.     

Focused Deterrence Strategies and Crime Control

Research Summary

Focused deterrence strategies are increasingly being applied to prevent and control gang and group‐involved violence, overt drug markets, and individual repeat offenders. Our updated examination of the effects of focused deterrence strategies on crime followed the systematic review protocols and conventions of the Campbell Collaboration. Twenty‐four quasi‐experimental evaluations were identified in this systematic review. The results of our meta‐analysis demonstrate that focused deterrence strategies are associated with an overall statistically significant, moderate crime reduction effect. Nevertheless, program effect sizes varied by program type and were smaller for evaluations with more rigorous research designs.

Policy Implications

The available empirical evidence suggests these strategies generate noteworthy crime reduction impacts and should be part of a broader portfolio of crime reduction strategies available to policy makers and practitioners. Investments still need to be made, however, to strengthen the overall rigor of program evaluations and improve our understanding of key program activities associated with observed crime reduction impacts.     

Predictors of criminal recidivism among male batterers

The present study examined recidivism risk factors in a sample of 320 male batterers attending community treatment. Recidivism was assessed by new charges for violence or for any offence during a 5-year follow-up period. The variables associated with recidivism among male batterers were similar to those found for other criminal populations (e.g. young, unstable lifestyle, substance abuse, criminal history). There was no evidence that potential offenders were deterred by expectations of negative consequences, either social (e.g. friends would disapprove) or official (e.g. being arrested, losing job). Maintaining positive relationships with treatment providers was associated with reduced recidivism.     

On the Resilience of Illegal Drug Markets

This paper argues that the concept of resilience is a fruitful way of understanding the impact of repressive policies on illegal drug markets. For the purpose of this article, resilience is defined as the ability of market participants to preserve the existing levels of exchanges between buyers and sellers, despite external pressure aimed at disrupting the trade. The first part of the paper highlights how some of the core features of illegal drug markets, a decentralized structure and high prices, contribute to increasing their resilience to attacks. The second part develops a framework that can be used to compare markets on the basis of their resilient properties. Some of the empirical and policy implications of the framework are discussed in the conclusion.