What leads people to keep on e-learning? An empirical analysis of users' experiences and their effects on continuance intention

User retention is a major goal for higher education institutions running their teaching and learning programmes online. This is the first investigation into how the senses of presence and flow, together with perceptions about two central elements of the virtual education environment (didactic resource quality and instructor attitude), facilitate the user¿s intention to continue e-learning. We use data collected from a large sample survey of current users in a pure e-learning environment along with objective data about their performance. The results provide support to the theoretical model. The paper further offers practical suggestions for institutions and instructors who aim to provide effective e-learning experiences.

Empirical analysis of solid management waste costs: Some evidence from Galicia, Spain

This paper analyses the factors that determine solid waste service costs. The empirical analysis is based on information derived from a survey conducted in a sample of Galician municipalities. The results reveal economies of scale in municipalities of fewer than 50,000 inhabitants, such that cooperation between these municipalities could lead to cost savings. It also appears that private delivery is not cheaper than public delivery. Finally, designating a larger proportion of the total waste volume to recycling does not imply greater costs.

Driver costs in small firms: Empirical analysis for farms

The agricultural sector has always been characterized by a predominance of small firms. International competition and the consequent need for restraining costs are permanent challenges for farms. This paper performs an empirical investigation of cost behavior in agriculture using panel data analysis. Our results show that transactions caused by complexity influence farm costs with opposite effects for specific and indirect costs. While transactions allow economies of scale in specific costs, they significantly increase indirect costs. However, the main driver for farm costs is volume. In addition, important differences exist for small and big farms, since transactional variables significantly influence the former but not the latter. While sophisticated management tools, such ABC, could provide only limited complementary useful information but no essential allocation bases for farms, they seem inappropriate for small farms

Driver costs in small firms: Empirical analysis for farms

The agricultural sector has always been characterized by a predominance of small firms. International competition and the consequent need for restraining costs are permanent challenges for farms. This paper performs an empirical investigation of cost behavior in agriculture using panel data analysis. Our results show that transactions caused by complexity influence farm costs with opposite effects for specific and indirect costs. While transactions allow economies of scale in specific costs, they significantly increase indirect costs. However, the main driver for farm costs is volume. In addition, important differences exist for small and big farms, since transactional variables significantly influence the former but not the latter. While sophisticated management tools, such ABC, could provide only limited complementary useful information but no essential allocation bases for farms, they seem inappropriate for small farms

An empirical study on faculty perceptions and teaching practices of Wikipedia

Peer-reviewed

Wikipedia in Higher Education: An Empirical Study on Faculty Perceptions and Practices

Peer-reviewed

Job losses, outsourcing and relocation: empirical evidence using microdata

Using microdata, we analyse the determinants of firm relocation and conventional outsourcing decisions as a way to reduce employment. The results for a sample of 32 countries show the relevance of factors not considered previously in the literature. Firms that are below average in quality or innovation have a higher propensity to externalise part of their production through outsourcing, while lower relative profitability and longer time to market for new products each imply a higher probability of relocation.

Regulating Concessions of Toll Motorways, An Empirical Study on Fixed vs. Variable Term Contracts

Recent theoretical developments on concession contracts for long term infrastructure projects under uncertain demand show the benefits of allowing for flexible term contracts rather than fixing a rigid term. This study presents a simulation to compare both alternatives by using real data from the oldest Spanish toll motorway. For this purpose, we analyze how well the flexible term would have performed instead of the fixed length actually established. Our results show a huge reduction of the term of concession that would have dramatically decreased the firm’s benefits and the user’s overpayment due to the internalization of an unexpected traffic increase.

Choosing hybrid organizations for local services delivery : An empirical analysis of partial privatization

The empirical literature about factors explaining local government delivery choices has traditionally focused the attention on the public or private production dilemma. However, hybrid organizational forms such as mixed public-private firms are increasingly used in several European countries. This paper makes use of survey data from Spanish municipalities to examine motivations of local governments for engaging in hybrid organizational forms. Data refer to two very relevant local services: water distribution and solid waste collection. The empirical analysis indicates that the use of mixed firms emerge as a type of pragmatically based ‘third way’ between pure public and pure private production. Indeed, local governments make use of mixed firms when cost considerations (scale economies, transaction costs and soon), financial constraints and private interests exert contradictory pressures. On the contrary, political and ideological factors do not play any significant role on the local government decision of engaging or not in joint ventures with private partners.

Energy efficiency determinants: An empirical analysis of Spanish innovative firms

This paper examines the extent to which innovative Spanish firms pursue improvements in energy efficiency (EE) as an objective of innovation. The increase in energy consumption and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions justifies the greater attention being paid to energy efficiency and especially to industrial EE. The ability of manufacturing companies to innovate and improve their EE has a substantial influence on attaining objectives regarding climate change mitigation. Despite the effort to design more efficient energy policies, the EE determinants in manufacturing firms have been little studied in the empirical literature. From an exhaustive sample of Spanish manufacturing firms and using a logit model, we examine the energy efficiency determinants for those firms that have innovated. To carry out the econometric analysis, we use panel data from the Community Innovation Survey for the period 2008‐2011. Our empirical results underline the role of size among the characteristics of firms that facilitate energy efficiency innovation. Regarding company behaviour, firms that consider the reduction of environmental impacts to be an important objective of innovation and that have introduced organisational innovations are more likely to innovate with the objective of increasing energy efficiency. Keywords: energy efficiency, corporate targets, innovation, Community Innovation Survey. JEL Classification: Q40, Q55, O31

Selecting Scientific Papers for Publication via Citation Auctions

The scientific community has been suffering from peer review for decades. This process (also called refereeing) subjects an author's scientific work or ideas to the scrutiny of one or more experts in the field. Publishers use it to select and screen manuscript submissions, and funding agencies use it to award research funds. The goal is to get authors to meet their discipline's standards and thus achieve scientific objectivity. Publications and awards that haven't undergone peer review are often regarded with suspicion by scholars and professionals in many fields. However, peer review, although universally used, has many drawbacks. We propose replacing peer review with an auction-based approach: the better the submitted paper, the more scientific currency the author likely bid to have it published. If the bid correctly reflects the paper's quality, the author is rewarded in this new scientific currency; otherwise, the author loses this currency. We argue that citations are an appropriate currency for all scientists. We believe that citation auctions encourage scientists to better control their submissions' quality. It also inspire them to prepare more exciting talks for accepted papers and to invite discussion of their results at congresses and conferences and among their colleagues. In the long run, citation auctions could have the power to greatly improve scientific research

Citation auctions as a method to improve selection of scientific papers

This paper describes the basis of citation auctions as a new approach to selecting scientific papers for publication. Our main idea is to use an auction for selecting papers for publication through - differently from the state of the art - bids that consist of the number of citations that a scientist expects to receive if the paper is published. Hence, a citation auction is the selection process itself, and no reviewers are involved. The benefits of the proposed approach are two-fold. First, the cost of refereeing will be either totally eliminated or significantly reduced, because the process of citation auction does not need prior understanding of the paper's content to judge the quality of its contribution. Additionally, the method will not prejudge the content of the paper, so it will increase the openness of publications to new ideas. Second, scientists will be much more committed to the quality of their papers, paying close attention to distributing and explaining their papers in detail to maximize the number of citations that the paper receives. Sample analyses of the number of citations collected in papers published in years 1999-2004 for one journal, and in years 2003-2005 for a series of conferences (in a totally different discipline), via Google scholar, are provided. Finally, a simple simulation of an auction is given to outline the behaviour of the citation auction approach

Empirical welfare analysis: when preferences matter

Fleurbaey and Maniquet have proposed the criteria of conditional equality and of egalitarian equivalence to assess the equity among individuals in an ordinal setting. Empirical applications are rare and only partially consistent with their framework. We propose a new empirical approach that relies on individual preferences, is consistent with the ordinal criteria and enables to compare them with the cardinal criteria. We estimate a utility function that incorporates individual heterogeneous preferences, obtain ordinal measures of well-being and apply conditional equality and egalitarian equivalence. We then propose two cardinal measures of well-being, that are comparable with the ordinal model, to compute Roemer’s and Van de gaer’s criteria. Finally we compare the characteristics of the worst-off displayed by each criterion. We apply this model to a sample of US micro data and obtain that about 18% of the worst-off are not common to all criteria.

The use of mixed methods research in the behavioral sciences field

Mixed methods research involves the combined use of quantitative and qualitative methods in the same research study, and it is becoming increasingly important in several scientific areas. The aim of this paper is to review and compare through a mixed methods multiple-case study the application of this methodology in three reputable behavioural science journals: the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Addictive Behaviors and Psicothema. A quantitative analysis was carried out to review all the papers published in these journals during the period 2003-2008 and classify them into two blocks: theoretical and empirical, with the latter being further subdivided into three subtypes (quantitative, qualitative and mixed). A qualitative analysis determined the main characteristics of the mixed methods studies identified, in order to describe in more detail the ways in which the two methods are combined based on their purpose, priority, implementation and research design. From the journals selected, a total of 1.958 articles were analysed, the majority of which corresponded to empirical studies, with only a small number referring to research that used mixed methods. Nonetheless, mixed methods research does appear in all the behavioural science journals studied within the period selected, showing a range of designs, where the sequential equal weight mixed methods research design seems to stand out.

Eliminació d'artefactes en EGG mitjançant l'ús de la Multivariate Empirical Mode Decomposition

La tècnica de l’electroencefalograma (EEG) és una de les tècniques més utilitzades per estudiar el cervell. En aquesta tècnica s’enregistren els senyals elèctrics que es produeixen en el còrtex humà a través d’elèctrodes col•locats al cap. Aquesta tècnica, però, presenta algunes limitacions a l’hora de realitzar els enregistraments, la principal limitació es coneix com a artefactes, que són senyals indesitjats que es mesclen amb els senyals EEG. L’objectiu d’aquest treball de final de màster és presentar tres nous mètodes de neteja d’artefactes que poden ser aplicats en EEG. Aquests estan basats en l’aplicació de la Multivariate Empirical Mode Decomposition, que és una nova tècnica utilitzada per al processament de senyal. Els mètodes de neteja proposats s’apliquen a dades EEG simulades que contenen artefactes (pestanyeigs), i un cop s’han aplicat els procediments de neteja es comparen amb dades EEG que no tenen pestanyeigs, per comprovar quina millora presenten. Posteriorment, dos dels tres mètodes de neteja proposats s’apliquen sobre dades EEG reals. Les conclusions que s’han extret del treball són que dos dels nous procediments de neteja proposats es poden utilitzar per realitzar el preprocessament de dades reals per eliminar pestanyeigs.