Search results

This paper considers the experimental results for tracking behaviors of human operators in preview control systems and, on the basis of the experimental results, proposes a model which can be viewed as the cascade connection of the convolution integral that processes the future input and the closed‐loop system modelled by the crossover model. The measured closed‐loop frequency characteristics and the analytical model demonstrate the following facts. 1) The human operator mainly improves the closed‐loop phase characteristics by using preview input information, while the closed‐loop amplitude characteristics are hardly improved. 2) The preview weighting function in processing the future input has a peak near 0.25 sec ahead and comes to very small values in the range beyond 0.5 sec ahead. 3) The future value beyond 0.5 sec ahead is of little value for improving the tracking characteristics when the controlled elements are K and Kc/s. But when the controlled element is Kc/s2, the required preview time is 0.75 sec.

Making monetary policy decisions is a fine line to tread, always seeking to balance the needs of the domestic economic conditions with the need to keep events in the outside world under check. It is impossible to overstate the significance of monetary Trilemma in this context. This study aims to test the presence of monetary Trilemma and the contrasting dilemma hypothesis in India. The study is conducted over a considerable long span of time (1996–2022) to understand the evolution and changes in the management of Trilemma. In order to ascertain the changes in the existence of dilemma in India, this study analyses pre- and post-global financial crisis time periods. The relevance of exchange rate regimes in transforming Trilemma into a dilemma in the Indian context is assessed by providing for capital account restrictions. This evaluation helps to comprehend the impact of spillovers caused by monetary policy shocks in the United States and the resulting global financial cycle in India. The study provides evidence in favor of Trilemma and the relevance of exchange rate regimes as well as capital controls in determining monetary policy independence. The prevalence of more flexible exchange rate regimes favors a gradual shift toward dilemma, in situation of low capital controls.

In recent times the relationship between social stratification and internet use has become more complex. In order to understand the new configuration of the digital divide, this paper examines the relationship between socioeconomic background and digital engagement among youths.

This study explores digital inequalities among Italian teenagers from a holistic perspective. It draws on primary data obtained with a triangulation of methods: a survey on a representative sample of 2,025 high school students and 56 semi-structured interviews with teenagers from different social classes.

The statistical models indicate that cultural capital and parents’ occupational status do not associate with broader social media use but are positively related with online information-seeking. The interpretative analysis suggests that teenagers from the upper-middle class make sense of the internet “vertically,” in affiliation with parental socialization, and are more concerned with capital enhancing activities. Instead, teenagers from less advantageous social contexts appropriate the internet “horizontally,” jointly with peers, and are mostly interested in social-networking and UGC production.

School track, along with parents’ socioeconomic status and cultural capital, influences teenagers’ internet use. Further studies could explore whether school tracking contributes to digital inequalities.

The study extends Annette Lareau’s theory of parenting styles and social reproduction, but also obtains innovative results related to digital inequalities among youth. Contrary to expectations, teenagers from less advantageous social backgrounds enrolled in vocational schools have better chances to actively participate in social media than teens from the upper-middle class in academic-oriented high schools.

Since its launch in 2005, YouTube has provided a unique platform for users worldwide to share and engage with content, leading to a rise in user-generated content (UGC), especially among youth. One of the most prevalent, yet under-explored, subgenres of UGC is the user-generated music video, where users integrate music and images with an element of performance or narrative; the current research deploys longitudinal analysis to describe the trends in youth-created music videos and how these trends have evolved in the early years of YouTube. Using a sample of 100 youth-created user-generated music videos uploaded to YouTube in 2007 and 2013, the authors investigate trends in production strategies, narrative content, and demographics. Compared to videos posted in 2007, youth-created music videos posted in 2013 featured more complicated editing techniques, less linear narratives, younger actors, more women, and were more likely to celebrate the self, mimicking the recent emergence of “selfie culture.” These findings are discussed with respect to YouTube’s role in reducing barriers to entry and providing a virtual space for youth-oriented content communities that thrive on engagement and social networking as strategies of identity development.

Technology has always inspired social change, but its scale and complexity have begun to bewilder even the politicians and policymakers. Several recent national foresight studies point to a need for socio‐organizational or “soft” technologies to help Europe manage change and respond to major new economic opportunities. Research is required in fields such as neuro‐linguistic programming, the psychology of knowledge management and the ergonomics of the man‐machine interface. “Electronic pets” showed that we can learn to love machines – now the challenge is to embed technology in such a way as to marry science with society.

A method for improving the retrieval effectiveness of a search engine by employing a website directory, e.g., Yahoo! Japan directory or Google directory, as a concept dictionary is proposed. A user can examine the results of a search engine from the top rank as usual except that he/she is assisted by a suggestion about which webpages are worthy of examination. To make a suggestion the conceptual closeness of an unexamined webpage to a query or to each of the webpages that a user has been interested in is calculated via a website directory. The proposed method was evaluated on the search results of Japanese Excite.

This chapter investigates the long-run relationship between trade, financial openness, economic growth, and carbon dioxide emissions across 167 countries over the period 1970–2007.

We employ both standard panel least squares and dynamic Generalized Method of Moments approaches to overcome problems of mis-specification inherent in the prior literature.

We find a strong link between economic growth, trade, financial openness, and environment. For the entire sample and industrial countries, our results support the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). Our results also suggest that while economic growth, trade financial, and openness reduce CO₂ emissions for all countries, the countries from the North appear to benefit more from trade and financial openness than the countries from the South in terms of reduction in CO₂ emissions.

The results imply that policy makers should not seek to limit efforts to link trade openness and financial liberalization to environmental quality but to set trade policy-making, economic growth, and financial liberalization in a broader context to take into account environmental concerns as these issues are inextricably linked.

This chapter extends the existing literature by comparing the extent to which trade openness and financial liberalization influence the carbon emissions in the North and South.

This chapter explores the impact of international financial integration on credit markets in Latin America, using a cross-country dataset covering 17 countries between 1996 and 2008. It is found that financial integration amplifies the impact of international financial shocks on aggregate credit and interest rate fluctuations. Nonetheless, the net impact of integration on deepening credit markets dominates for the large majority of states of nature. The chapter also uses a detailed bank-level dataset that covers more than 500 banks for a similar time period to explore the role of financial integration – captured through the participation of foreign banks – in propagating external shocks. It is found that interest rates charged and loans supplied by foreign-owned banks respond more to external financial shocks than those supplied by domestically owned banks. This does not hold for all foreign banks. Spanish banks in the sample behave more like domestic banks and do not amplify the impact of foreign shocks on credit and interest rates.