Corporate political activity and firm outcomes: A meta-analysis

Using meta-analytic methods on a sample of 74 studies, we explore the links between CPA and public policy outcomes, and between CPA and firm outcomes. We find that CPA has at best a weak effect and that it appears to be better at maintaining public policy than changing them.

Asset freezing, corporate political resources and the Tullock paradox

In 1967, Gordon Tullock asked why firms do not spend more on campaign contributions, despite the large rents that could be generated from political activities. We suggest in this paper that part of the puzzle could come from the fact that one important type of political activity has been neglected by the literature which focuses on campaign contributions or political connections. We call this neglected activity "asset freezing": situations in which firms delay lay-offs or invest in specific technologies to support local politicians' re-election objectives. In doing so, firms bear a potentially significant cost as they do not use a portion of their economic assets in the most efficient or productive way. The purpose of this paper is to provide a first theoretical exploration of this phenomenon. Building on the literature on corporate political resources, we argue that a firm's economic assets can be evaluated based on their degree of "political freezability," which depends on the flexibility of their use and on their value for policy-makers. We then develop a simple model in which financial contributions and freezing assets are alternative options for a firm willing to lawfully influence public policy-making, and derive some of our initial hypotheses more formally.

The political economy of international regulatory convergence in public utilities

To what extent should public utilities regulation be expected to converge across countries? When it occurs, will it generate good outcomes? Building on the core proposition of the New Institutional Economics that similar regulations generate different outcomes depending on their fit with the underlying domestic institutions, we develop a simple model and explore its implications by examining the diffusion of local loop unbundling (LLU) regulations. We argue that: one should expect some convergence in public utility regulation but with still a significant degree of local experimentation; this process will have very different impacts of regulation.

Political market and regulatory uncertainty: Insights and implications for integrated strategy

Managers can craft effective integrated strategy by properly assessing regulatory uncertainty. Leveraging the existing political markets literature, we predict regulatory uncertainty from the novel interaction of demand and supply side rivalries across a range of political markets. We argue for two primary drivers of regulatory uncertainty: ideology-motivated interests opposed to the firm and a lack of competition for power among political actors supplying public policy. We align three, previously disparate dimensions of nonmarket strategy - profile level, coalition breadth, and pivotal target - to levels of regulatory uncertainty. Through this framework, we demonstrate how and when firms employ different nonmarket strategies. To illustrate variation in nonmarket strategy across levels of regulatory uncertainty, we analyze several market entry decisions of foreign firms operating in the global telecommunications sector.

Cost Models for Routing and Wavelength Assignment in Wavelength-Division Multiplexing Optical Net

WDM (Wavelength-Division Multiplexing) optiset verkot on tällä hetkellä suosituin tapa isojen määrän tietojen siirtämiseen. Jokaiselle liittymälle määrätään reitin ja aallonpituus joka linkin varten. Tarvittavan reitin ja aallon pituuden löytäminen kutsutaan RWA-ongelmaksi. Tämän työn kuvaa mahdollisia kustannuksen mallein ratkaisuja RWA-ongelmaan. Olemassa on paljon erilaisia optimoinnin tavoitteita. Edellä mainittuja kustannuksen malleja perustuu näillä tavoitteilla. Kustannuksen malleja antavat tehokkaita ratkaisuja ja algoritmeja. The multicommodity malli on käsitelty tässä työssä perusteena RV/A-kustannuksen mallille. Myöskin OB käsitelty heuristisia menetelmiä RWA-ongelman ratkaisuun. Työn loppuosassa käsitellään toteutuksia muutamalle mallille ja erilaisia mahdollisuuksia kustannuksen mallein parantamiseen.

Randomization tests for ABAB designs: Comparing-data-division-specific and common distributions

Monte Carlo simulations were used to generate data for ABAB designs of different lengths. The points of change in phase are randomly determined before gathering behaviour measurements, which allows the use of a randomization test as an analytic technique. Data simulation and analysis can be based either on data-division-specific or on common distributions. Following one method or another affects the results obtained after the randomization test has been applied. Therefore, the goal of the study was to examine these effects in more detail. The discrepancies in these approaches are obvious when data with zero treatment effect are considered and such approaches have implications for statistical power studies. Data-division-specific distributions provide more detailed information about the performance of the statistical technique.

The political ecology of weeds : a scalar approach to landscape transformations

How do plants that move and spread across landscapes become branded as weeds and thereby objects of contention and control? We outline a political ecology approach that builds on a Lefebvrian understanding of the production of space, identifying three scalar moments that make plants into 'weeds' in different spatial contexts and landscapes. The three moments are: the operational scale, which relates to empirical phenomena in nature and society; the observational scale, which defines formal concepts of these phenomena and their implicit or explicit 'biopower' across institutional and spatial categories; and the interpretive scale, which is communicated through stories and actions expressing human feelings or concerns regarding the phenomena and processes of socio-spatial change. Together, these three scalar moments interact to produce a political ecology of landscape transformation, where biophysical and socio-cultural processes of daily life encounter formal categories and modes of control as well as emotive and normative expectations in shaping landscapes. Using three exemplar 'weeds' - acacia, lantana and ambrosia - our political ecology approach to landscape transformations shows that weeds do not act alone and that invasives are not inherently bad organisms. Humans and weeds go together; plants take advantage of spaces and opportunities that we create. Human desires for preserving certain social values in landscapes in contradiction to actual transformations is often at the heart of definitions of and conflicts over weeds or invasives.

Cell wall precursors are required to organize the chlamydial division septum.

Members of the Chlamydiales order are major bacterial pathogens that divide at mid-cell, without a sequence homologue of the FtsZ cytokinetic tubulin and without a classical peptidoglycan cell wall. Moreover, the spatiotemporal mechanisms directing constriction in Chlamydia are not known. Here we show that the MreB actin homologue and its conserved regulator RodZ localize to the division furrow in Waddlia chondrophila, a member of the Chlamydiales order implicated in human miscarriage. RodZ is recruited to the septal site earlier than MreB and in a manner that depends on biosynthesis of the peptidoglycan precursor lipid II by the MurA enzyme. By contrast, crosslinking of lipid II peptides by the Pbp3 transpeptidase disperses RodZ from the septum. Altogether, these findings provide a cytological framework for understanding chlamydial cytokinesis driven by septal cell wall synthesis.