Book Review: Regulating Code : Good Governance and Better Regulation in the Information Age

Digital technologies have profoundly changed not only the ways we create, distribute, access, use and re-use information but also many of the governance structures we had in place. Overall, "older" institutions at all governance levels have grappled and often failed to master the multi-faceted and multi-directional issues of the Internet. Regulatory entrepreneurs have yet to discover and fully mobilize the potential of digital technologies as an influential factor impacting upon the regulability of the environment and as a potential regulatory tool in themselves. At the same time, we have seen a deterioration of some public spaces and lower prioritization of public objectives, when strong private commercial interests are at play, such as most tellingly in the field of copyright. Less tangibly, private ordering has taken hold and captured through contracts spaces, previously regulated by public law. Code embedded in technology often replaces law. Non-state action has in general proliferated and put serious pressure upon conventional state-centered, command-and-control models. Under the conditions of this "messy" governance, the provision of key public goods, such as freedom of information, has been made difficult or is indeed jeopardized.The grand question is how can we navigate this complex multi-actor, multi-issue space and secure the attainment of fundamental public interest objectives. This is also the question that Ian Brown and Chris Marsden seek to answer with their book, Regulating Code, as recently published under the "Information Revolution and Global Politics" series of MIT Press. This book review critically assesses the bold effort by Brown and Marsden.

Regional differences of physical activity and sedentary behaviour in Swiss children are not explained by socio-demographics or the built environment

Objective We evaluated whether regional differences in physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour (SB) existed along language boundaries within Switzerland and whether potential differences would be explained by socio-demographics or environmental characteristics. Methods We combined data of 611 children aged 4 to 7 years from four regional studies. PA and SB were assessed by accelerometers. Information about the socio-demographic background was obtained by questionnaires. Objective neighbourhood attributes could be linked to home addresses. Multivariate regression models were used to test associations between PA and SB and socio-demographic characteristics and neighbourhood attributes. Results Children from the German compared to the French-speaking region were more physically active and less sedentary (by 10–15 %, p < 0.01). Although German-speaking children lived in a more favourable environment and a higher socioeconomic neighbourhood (differences p < 0.001), these characteristics did not explain the differences in PA behaviour between French and German speaking. Conclusions Factors related to the language region, which might be culturally rooted were among the strongest correlates of PA and SB among Swiss children, independent of individual, social and environmental factors.

Building up and sharing knowledge for better decision making on soil and water conservation in a changing mountain environment - the WOCAT experience

For successful implementation of any soil and water conservation (SWC) or sustainable land management practice, it is essential to have a proper understanding of the natural and human environment in which these practices are applied. This understanding should be based on comprehensive information concerning the application of the technologies and not solely on the technological details. The World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) is documenting and evaluating SWC practices worldwide, following a standardised methodology that facilitates exchange and comparison of experiences. Notwithstanding this standardisation, WOCAT allows flexible use of its outputs, adapted to different users and different environments. WOCAT offers a valuable tool for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of SWC practices and their potential for application in other areas. Besides collecting a wealth of information, gaps in available information are also exposed, showing the need for more research in those fields. Several key issues for development- oriented research have been identified and are being addressed in collaboration with a research programme for mitigating syndromes of global change.

Outils d'information et de communication pour le développement rural à Daraina: Rapport de la mission du 7 au 19 février 2005

Mission report (February 7 to 19, 2005), includes methodological sheets for a "communication assessment".

Baseline Information for Morogoro, Dodoma, Singida, Tabora, Shinyango (Tanzania)

Maps (elevation, slope, land cover/land use and density) and tables about Morogoro, Dodoma, Singida, Tabora and Shinyango regions, Tanzania.

Fine-grained Indoor Tracking by Fusing Inertial Sensor and Physical Layer Information in WLANs

Indoor positioning has become an emerging research area because of huge commercial demands for location-based services in indoor environments. Channel State Information (CSI) as a fine-grained physical layer information has been recently proposed to achieve high positioning accuracy by using range-based methods, e.g., trilateration. In this work, we propose to fuse the CSI-based ranges and velocity estimated from inertial sensors by an enhanced particle filter to achieve highly accurate tracking. The algorithm relies on some enhanced ranging methods and further mitigates the remaining ranging errors by a weighting technique. Additionally, we provide an efficient method to estimate the velocity based on inertial sensors. The algorithms are designed in a network-based system, which uses rather cheap commercial devices as anchor nodes. We evaluate our system in a complex environment along three different moving paths. Our proposed tracking method can achieve 1:3m for mean accuracy and 2:2m for 90% accuracy, which is more accurate and stable than pedestrian dead reckoning and range-based positioning.

Independent at heart: persistent association of altitude with ischaemic heart disease mortality after consideration of climate, topography and built environment.

BACKGROUND Living at higher altitude was dose-dependently associated with lower risk of ischaemic heart disease (IHD). Higher altitudes have different climatic, topographic and built environment properties than lowland regions. It is unclear whether these environmental factors mediate/confound the association between altitude and IHD. We examined how much of the altitude-IHD association is explained by variations in exposure at place of residence to sunshine, temperature, precipitation, aspect, slope and distance to main road. METHODS We included 4.2 million individuals aged 40-84 at baseline living in Switzerland at altitudes 195-2971 m above sea level (ie, full range of residence), providing 77 127 IHD deaths. Mortality data 2000-2008, sociodemographic/economic information and coordinates of residence were obtained from the Swiss National Cohort, a longitudinal, census-based record linkage study. Environment information was modelled to residence level using Weibull regression models. RESULTS In the model not adjusted for other environmental factors, IHD mortality linearly decreased with increasing altitude resulting in a lower risk (HR, 95% CI 0.67, 0.60 to 0.74) for those living >1500 m (vs<600 m). This association remained after adjustment for all other environmental factors 0.74 (0.66 to 0.82). CONCLUSIONS The benefit of living at higher altitude was only partially confounded by variations in climate, topography and built environment. Rather, physical environment factors appear to have an independent effect and may impact on cardiovascular health in a cumulative way. Inclusion of additional modifiable factors as well as individual information on traditional IHD risk factors in our combined environmental model could help to identify strategies for the reduction of inequalities in IHD mortality.

Bargaining for power and information : an experimental and theoretical analysis of the interaction between institutions, externalities and adverse selection

Bargaining is the building block of many economic interactions, ranging from bilateral to multilateral encounters and from situations in which the actors are individuals to negotiations between firms or countries. In all these settings, economists have been intrigued for a long time by the fact that some projects, trades or agreements are not realized even though they are mutually beneficial. On the one hand, this has been explained by incomplete information. A firm may not be willing to offer a wage that is acceptable to a qualified worker, because it knows that there are also unqualified workers and cannot distinguish between the two types. This phenomenon is known as adverse selection. On the other hand, it has been argued that even with complete information, the presence of externalities may impede efficient outcomes. To see this, consider the example of climate change. If a subset of countries agrees to curb emissions, non-participant regions benefit from the signatories’ efforts without incurring costs. These free riding opportunities give rise to incentives to strategically improve ones bargaining power that work against the formation of a global agreement. This thesis is concerned with extending our understanding of both factors, adverse selection and externalities. The findings are based on empirical evidence from original laboratory experiments as well as game theoretic modeling. On a very general note, it is demonstrated that the institutions through which agents interact matter to a large extent. Insights are provided about which institutions we should expect to perform better than others, at least in terms of aggregate welfare. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the problem of adverse selection. Effective operation of markets and other institutions often depends on good information transmission properties. In terms of the example introduced above, a firm is only willing to offer high wages if it receives enough positive signals about the worker’s quality during the application and wage bargaining process. In Chapter 1, it will be shown that repeated interaction coupled with time costs facilitates information transmission. By making the wage bargaining process costly for the worker, the firm is able to obtain more accurate information about the worker’s type. The cost could be pure time cost from delaying agreement or cost of effort arising from a multi-step interviewing process. In Chapter 2, I abstract from time cost and show that communication can play a similar role. The simple fact that a worker states to be of high quality may be informative. In Chapter 3, the focus is on a different source of inefficiency. Agents strive for bargaining power and thus may be motivated by incentives that are at odds with the socially efficient outcome. I have already mentioned the example of climate change. Other examples are coalitions within committees that are formed to secure voting power to block outcomes or groups that commit to different technological standards although a single standard would be optimal (e.g. the format war between HD and BlueRay). It will be shown that such inefficiencies are directly linked to the presence of externalities and a certain degree of irreversibility in actions. I now discuss the three articles in more detail. In Chapter 1, Olivier Bochet and I study a simple bilateral bargaining institution that eliminates trade failures arising from incomplete information. In this setting, a buyer makes offers to a seller in order to acquire a good. Whenever an offer is rejected by the seller, the buyer may submit a further offer. Bargaining is costly, because both parties suffer a (small) time cost after any rejection. The difficulties arise, because the good can be of low or high quality and the quality of the good is only known to the seller. Indeed, without the possibility to make repeated offers, it is too risky for the buyer to offer prices that allow for trade of high quality goods. When allowing for repeated offers, however, at equilibrium both types of goods trade with probability one. We provide an experimental test of these predictions. Buyers gather information about sellers using specific price offers and rates of trade are high, much as the model’s qualitative predictions. We also observe a persistent over-delay before trade occurs, and this mitigates efficiency substantially. Possible channels for over-delay are identified in the form of two behavioral assumptions missing from the standard model, loss aversion (buyers) and haggling (sellers), which reconcile the data with the theoretical predictions. Chapter 2 also studies adverse selection, but interaction between buyers and sellers now takes place within a market rather than isolated pairs. Remarkably, in a market it suffices to let agents communicate in a very simple manner to mitigate trade failures. The key insight is that better informed agents (sellers) are willing to truthfully reveal their private information, because by doing so they are able to reduce search frictions and attract more buyers. Behavior observed in the experimental sessions closely follows the theoretical predictions. As a consequence, costless and non-binding communication (cheap talk) significantly raises rates of trade and welfare. Previous experiments have documented that cheap talk alleviates inefficiencies due to asymmetric information. These findings are explained by pro-social preferences and lie aversion. I use appropriate control treatments to show that such consideration play only a minor role in our market. Instead, the experiment highlights the ability to organize markets as a new channel through which communication can facilitate trade in the presence of private information. In Chapter 3, I theoretically explore coalition formation via multilateral bargaining under complete information. The environment studied is extremely rich in the sense that the model allows for all kinds of externalities. This is achieved by using so-called partition functions, which pin down a coalitional worth for each possible coalition in each possible coalition structure. It is found that although binding agreements can be written, efficiency is not guaranteed, because the negotiation process is inherently non-cooperative. The prospects of cooperation are shown to crucially depend on i) the degree to which players can renegotiate and gradually build up agreements and ii) the absence of a certain type of externalities that can loosely be described as incentives to free ride. Moreover, the willingness to concede bargaining power is identified as a novel reason for gradualism. Another key contribution of the study is that it identifies a strong connection between the Core, one of the most important concepts in cooperative game theory, and the set of environments for which efficiency is attained even without renegotiation.

Development of a Novel Rabies Simulation Model for Application in a Non-endemic Environment.

Domestic dog rabies is an endemic disease in large parts of the developing world and also epidemic in previously free regions. For example, it continues to spread in eastern Indonesia and currently threatens adjacent rabies-free regions with high densities of free-roaming dogs, including remote northern Australia. Mathematical and simulation disease models are useful tools to provide insights on the most effective control strategies and to inform policy decisions. Existing rabies models typically focus on long-term control programs in endemic countries. However, simulation models describing the dog rabies incursion scenario in regions where rabies is still exotic are lacking. We here describe such a stochastic, spatially explicit rabies simulation model that is based on individual dog information collected in two remote regions in northern Australia. Illustrative simulations produced plausible results with epidemic characteristics expected for rabies outbreaks in disease free regions (mean R0 1.7, epidemic peak 97 days post-incursion, vaccination as the most effective response strategy). Systematic sensitivity analysis identified that model outcomes were most sensitive to seven of the 30 model parameters tested. This model is suitable for exploring rabies spread and control before an incursion in populations of largely free-roaming dogs that live close together with their owners. It can be used for ad-hoc contingency or response planning prior to and shortly after incursion of dog rabies in previously free regions. One challenge that remains is model parameterisation, particularly how dogs' roaming and contacts and biting behaviours change following a rabies incursion in a previously rabies free population.

Fine-grained Indoor Tracking by Fusing Inertial Sensor and Physical Layer Information in WLANs

Indoor positioning has become an emerging research area because of huge commercial demands for location-based services in indoor environments. Channel State Information (CSI) as fine-grained physical layer information has been recently proposed to achieve high positioning accuracy by using range based methods, e.g., trilateration. In this work, we propose to fuse the CSI-based ranging and velocity estimated from inertial sensors by an enhanced particle filter to achieve highly accurate tracking. The algorithm relies on some enhanced ranging methods and further mitigates the remaining ranging errors by a weighting technique. Additionally, we provide an efficient method to estimate the velocity based on inertial sensors. The algorithms are designed in a network-based system, which uses rather cheap commercial devices as anchor nodes. We evaluate our system in a complex environment along three different moving paths. Our proposed tracking method can achieve 1.3m for mean accuracy and 2.2m for 90% accuracy, which is more accurate and stable than pedestrian dead reckoning and range-based positioning.

Changing ecology of Lake Victoria cichlids and their environment: evidence from C13 and N15 analyses

Eutrophication is an increasing global threat to freshwater ecosystems. East Africa’s Lake Victoria has suffered from severe eutrophication in the past decades which is partly responsible for the dramatic decline in haplochromine cichlid species diversity. However, some zooplanktivorous and detritivorous haplochromine species recovered and shifted their diet towards macro invertebrates and fish. We used four formalin preserved cichlid species caught over the past 35 years to investigate whether stable isotopes of these fish are reflecting the dietary changes, habitat differences and if these isotopes can be used as indicators of eutrophication. We found that d15N signatures mainly reflected dietary shifts to larger prey in all four haplochromine species. Shifts in d13C signatures likely represented habitat differences and dietary changes. In addition, a shift to remarkably heavy d13C signatures in 2011 was found for all four species which might infer increased primary production and thus eutrophication although more research is needed to confirm this hypothesis. The observed temporal changes confirm previous findings that preserved specimens can be used to trace historical changes in fish ecology and the aquatic environment. This highlights the need for continued sampling as this information could be of essence for reconstructing and predicting the effects of environmental changes.