Building Inclusive Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Institutional Motivations, Adaptive Design, and Partnership Impacts

Computer experiments often are performed to allow modeling of a response surface of a physical experiment that can be too costly or difficult to run except by using a simulator. Running the experiment over a dense grid can be prohibitively expensive, yet running over a sparse design chosen in advance can result in insufficient information in parts of the space, particularly when the surface calls for a nonstationary model. We propose an approach that automatically explores the space while simultaneously fitting the response surface, using predictive uncertainty to guide subsequent experimental runs. We use the newly developed Bayesian treed Gaussian process as the surrogate model; a fully Bayesian approach allows explicit measures of uncertainty. We develop an adaptive sequential design framework to cope with an asynchronous, random, agent–based supercomputing environment by using a hybrid approach that melds optimal strategies from the statistics literature with flexible strategies from the active learning literature. The merits of this approach are borne out in several examples, including the motivating computational fluid dynamics simulation of a rocket booster.

The Effects of Marketing Contracts and Resource-providing Contracts: Comparisons in the Small Farm Sector in Ghana

The U.S. federal government annually awards billions of dollars as contracts to procure different products and services from external businesses. Although the federal government’s immense purchasing power provides a unique opportunity to invest in the nation’s women-owned businesses (WOBs) and minority-owned businesses (MOBs) and advance the entrepreneurial dreams of many more Americans, gender and racial disparities in federal procurement are pervasive. In this study, we undertake a granular examination of these disparities by analyzing the data on 1,551,610 contracts awarded by 58 different federal government agencies. Specifically, we examine the representation of WOBs and MOBs in contracts with varying levels of STEM intensity and across 19 different contract categories, which capture the wide array of products and services purchased by the federal government. We show that contracts with higher levels of STEM intensity are associated with a lower likelihood of being awarded to WOBs and MOBs. Interestingly, the negative association between a contract’s STEM intensity and its likelihood to be awarded to MOBs is particularly salient for Black-, and Hispanic-owned businesses. Among the 19 categories of contracts, Black-owned businesses are more likely to receive contracts that are characterized by lower median pay levels. Collectively, these results provide data-driven evidence demonstrating the need to make a distinction between the different categories of MOBs and consider the type of products and services being procured while carrying out an examination of racial disparities in federal procurement.

These days, microfinance has become an important institution and mechanism of credit delivery, particularly for the poor and the deprived. There have been a number of studies undertaken in India and other developing countries that have brought out the success of various micro finance programmes in alleviating rural poverty, promoting holistic development of individuals, communities and developing small enterprises. The ultimate recognition of the viability, suitability and efficiency of microfinance as an agent and institution of development has recently come about, because of the pioneering work undertaken by Prof. Yunus of Bangaladesh. Microfinance and more specifically the credit element in it, is basically undertaken and promoted by various Microfinance Promoting Institutions (MFPIs). These institutions can be Non Govt organisations (NGOs), Self Help Group (SHGs) and other social groups. The importance of the microfinance programmes and the success of the MFPIs in various developing countries, get prominence, because of persistent market and government failures in the sphere of rural development in general and rural credit in particular. This very success also negates the age-old perception and belief of most of the formal sector financial institutions that the “poor are not bankable.”

Using an adaptive design [1] for a drug’s Phase II trial allows a drug developer to get better value from their asset and have a cost profile more attractive to their investors [2]. Large pharmaceuticals are slowly coming round to realizing this [3], but conservative decision making, the need to align many departments and the cost of retooling clinical operations are still obstacles to adoption [4]. Biotechs and small pharmaceuticals should be able to adopt adaptive designs much more quickly because they have smaller, better interconnected decision groups and the freedom to select the most appropriate outsourcing partners to implement the trial. Not only can smaller companies be quicker to adopt adaptive designs, they should. Why? Because, as I hope to show below, adaptive designs have much to offer to Phase II trials and for small companies looking to license a compound on the basis of the Phase II trial results, the execution of Phase II is critical. A larger company can to an extent ‘leave risk’ to Phase III in order to get there quicker or more cheaply, but when in-licensing a compound large pharma will strongly prefer opportunities where risk of late stage or market failure have been minimized. One way of looking at drug development is that it is all about reducing uncertainty. Not simply ‘is it effective and safe?’ but how best to use it (dose, treatment regime) and who best to treat (population, disease) [5]. Failure to address these uncertainties in early development increases the risks of: failure in Phase III, low valuation of the treatment by payers, reductions in dosing (and hence payment) after registration and even forced withdrawal from the market. A company looking to out-license a treatment after Phase II will have more suitors and command a higher price, the better it has de-risked the asset by reducing these uncertainties. For instance, having a good estimate of the dose response makes it more likely that the dose selected for Phase III maximizes the treatment effect without unnecessary risk of safety or tolerability problems. Identifying a significant subpopulation where the treatment effect is particularly marked, allows a smaller, safer Phase III to be run in that subpopulation, getting to market quicker and with a strong cost justification for payers. Larger Phase III trials in the whole population or a larger subpopulation can be run in parallel or subsequently. But Phase II requires time and money from investors to back an as yet unproven asset. How can these uncertainties be addressed without costing more, taking longer and being less attractive to investors? The answer is a combination of modeling in the trial analysis and adaptation in the trial design [6].

IntroductionWomen-owned businesses represent a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. economy. According to the Small Business Administration (2011), the number of women-owned businesses increased by 44% since 1997 which was double the growth in male-owned firms. In 2011, women-owned businesses accounted for 36% of all firms. While business ownership presents its own set of challenges, it may be particularly challenging for women business owners (e.g., Winn, 2004). Minorities comprise an increasing share of new entrepreneurs, increasing from 23.6% in 1996 to 39.8% in 2011 (Fairlie, 2012). Among women business owners, minority women may experience greater challenges than their non-minority counterparts. Smith-Hunter and Boyd (2004) found that minority women became business owners for different reasons than did non-minority women, and that they faced greater challenges in starting and operating their businesses. Drawing from Aj zen's theory of planned behavior (1991), differences in perceptions of challenges may affect the decisions the business owners make and ultimately the direction and success of the business. The purpose of this study is to examine differences in the perceptions of challenges faced by minority and non-minority women business owners.Literature ReviewPrevious research has focused on differences in the business environment for women- and minority-owned businesses, examining differences in challenges associated with major business functions, accessing financial capital, and developing social capital. Considerable research has been performed on the differences between male and female entrepreneurs as well as between minority and non-minority entrepreneurs; however, due to sample size constraints, few studies have been able to examine the joint effects of gender and minority status simultaneously, particularly for minority women business owners.Harris (2011) examined the differences between small business owners' perceptions of problems presented by major business functional areas by gender and ethnicity. He found few differences between the perceived problems of male and female small business owners (women perceived greater problems in the area of strategic goal development), but found many differences between minority and non-minority business owners of both genders combined. Minority small business owners perceived greater problems in the areas of finance, accounting, personnel management, and purchasing.The challenge of woman- and minority-owned businesses in obtaining financial capital is well documented. Pearson, Fawcett, and Cooper (1993) listed the most significant impediments to successful relationships involving minority businesses from the perspectives of both owners of minority business enterprise (MBEs) and corporate purchasing personnel (CPPs). Undercapitalization was perceived as the first issue for both MBEs and CPPs. Lucas (2006) argued that minority women business owners may have difficulty in obtaining access to capital because of a lack of both business experience and industry-specific experience and because their businesses tend to be smaller and newer. Rosa and Hamilton (1994) examined how gender barriers and stereotypes disadvantage women business owners in acquiring business funding. Christopher (1998) estimated that 46.6% of African American, 38.7% of Hispanic, and 33.4% of Asian business owners utilized commercial bank loans as compared to 55.4% for non-minority business owners. Christopher (1998) also found that a threshold debt to equity ratio of 65% with access to commercial capital increased the likelihood of survival of the enterprise, thus highlighting the importance of access to capital. Coleman (2004) examined the relationship between the business owners' gender, race, level of education and their ability to borrow money. She found that white women were no less likely than white men to apply for loans or to avoid applying because of a fear of being turned down. …

The recent controversy on the intersection of competition law with the protection of privacy, following the emergence of big data and social media is a major challenge for competition authorities worldwide. Recent technological progress in data analytics may greatly facilitate the prediction of personality traits and attributes from even a few digital records of human behaviour. There are different perspectives globally as to the level of personal data protection and the role competition law may play in this context, hence the discussion of integrating such concerns in competition law enforcement may be premature for some jurisdictions. However, a market failure approach may provide common intellectual foundations for the assessment of harms associated to the exploitation of personal data, even when the specific legal system does not formally recognize a fundamental right to privacy. The paper presents a model of market failure based on a requirement provision in the acquisition of personal information from users of other products/services. We establish the economic harm from the market failure and the requirement using the traditional competition law toolbox and focusing more on situations in which the restriction on privacy may be analysed as a form of exploitation. Eliminating the requirement and the market failure by creating a functioning market for the sale of personal information is imperative. This emphasis on exploitation does not mean that restrictions on privacy may not result from exclusionary practices. However, we analyse this issue in a separate study. Besides the traditional analysis of the requirement and market failure, we note that there are typically informational asymmetries between the data controller and the data subject. The latter may not be aware that his data was harvested, in the first place, or that the data will be processed by the data controller for a different purpose or shared and sold to third parties. The exploitation of personal data may also result from economic coercion, on the basis of resource-dependence or lock-in of the user, the latter having no other choice, in order to enjoy the consumption of a specific service provided by the data controller or its ecosystem, in particular in the presence of dominance, than to consent to the harvesting and use of his data. A behavioural approach would also emphasise the possible internalities (demand-side market failures) coming out of the bounded rationality, or the fact that people do not internalise all consequences of their actions and face limits in their cognitive capacities. The paper also addresses the way competition law could engage with exploitative conduct leading to privacy harm, both for ex ante and ex post enforcement. With regard to ex ante enforcement, the paper explores how privacy concerns may be integrated in merger control as part of the definition of product quality, the harm in question being merely exploitative (the possibility the data aggregation provides to the merged entity to exploit (personal) data in ways that harm directly consumers), rather than exclusionary (harming consumers by enabling the merged entity to marginalise a rival with better privacy policies), which is examined in a separate paper. With regard to ex post enforcement, the paper explores different theories of harm that may give rise to competition law concerns and suggest specific tests for their assessment. In particular, we analyse old and new exploitative theories of harm relating to excessive data extraction, personalised pricing, unfair commercial practices and trading conditions, exploitative requirement contracts, behavioural manipulation. We are in favour of collective action to restore the conditions of a well-functioning data market and the paper makes several policy recommendations.

The recent controversy on the intersection of competition law with the protection of privacy, following the emergence of big data and social media is a major challenge for competition authorities worldwide. Recent technological progress in data analytics may greatly facilitate the prediction of personality traits and attributes from even a few digital records of human behaviour. There are different perspectives globally as to the level of personal data protection and the role competition law may play in this context, hence the discussion of integrating such concerns in competition law enforcement may be premature for some jurisdictions. However, a market failure approach may provide common intellectual foundations for the assessment of harms associated to the exploitation of personal data, even when the specific legal system does not formally recognize a fundamental right to privacy. The paper presents a model of market failure based on a requirement provision in the acquisition of personal information from users of other products/services. We establish the economic harm from the market failure and the requirement using the traditional competition law toolbox and focusing more on situations in which the restriction on privacy may be analysed as a form of exploitation. Eliminating the requirement and the market failure by creating a functioning market for the sale of personal information is imperative. This emphasis on exploitation does not mean that restrictions on privacy may not result from exclusionary practices. However, we analyse these in a separate study. Besides the traditional analysis of the requirement and market failure, we note that there are typically informational asymmetries between the data controller and the data subject. The latter may not be aware that his data was harvested, in the first place, or that the data will be processed by the data controller for a different purpose, or shared and sold to third parties. The exploitation of personal data may also result from economic coercion, on the basis of resource-dependence or lock-in of the user, the latter having no other choice, in order to enjoy the consumption of a specific service provided by the data controller or its ecosystem, than to consent to the harvesting and use of his data. A behavioural approach would also emphasise the possible internalities (demand-side market failures) coming out of the bounded rationality, or the fact that people do not internalise all consequences of their actions and face limits in their cognitive capacities. The paper also addresses the way competition law could engage with exploitative conduct leading to privacy harm, both for ex ante and ex post enforcement. With regard to ex ante enforcement, the paper explores how privacy concerns may be integrated in merger control as part of the definition of product quality, the harm in question being merely exploitative (the possibility the data aggregation provides to the merged entity to exploit (personal) data in ways that harm directly consumers), rather than exclusionary (harming consumers by enabling the merged entity to marginalise a rival with better privacy policies), which is examined in a separate paper. With regard to ex post enforcement, the paper explores different theories of harm that may give rise to competition law concerns and suggest specific tests for their assessment. In particular, we analyse old and new exploitative theories of harm relating to excessive data extraction, personalised pricing, unfair commercial practices and trading conditions, exploitative requirement contracts, behavioural manipulation. We are in favour of collective action to restore the conditions of a well-functioning data market and the report makes a number of policy recommendations.

SummaryIn this article, adaptive compensation designs are developed for nonlinear systems with uncertainties from the system functions and persistent actuator failures of characterizations that (i) some unknown system inputs are stuck at some unknown fixed or varying values at unknown time instants and (ii) the failure pattern always switches from one to another and the switching does not stop. Such a controlled plant is described by an uncertain time‐varying nonlinear system, and some robust adaptive feedback linearization based failure compensation results are studied for closed‐loop system stabilization and bounded output tracking for some specific conditions. To improve the tracking performance in the presence of persistent actuator failures, a new adaptive control scheme is developed, using the failure indicator function which contains the failure pattern and failure time in the formulation. Detailed stability and tracking performance are shown. Simulation results are shown to verify the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive actuator failure compensation method.

In this paper, an effective robust adaptive control scheme is developed for possibly nonminimum-phase systems in the presence of uncertainties from the plant and persistent actuator failures. A time-varying system model is used to represent the system with persistent sequential failures, and then a time-varying parameterized model is derived. With a control separation based LQ formulation, the persistent actuator failure compensation problem is solved by using a control separation based LQ control design for time-varying systems. The nominal LQ control design uses a new cost function to derive a two-component control signal as the control input and then the robust adaptive control design is developed for compensation of uncertain persistent actuator failures, through using a stable robust adaptive law for parameter estimation, to guarantee the system stability and output regulation performances in the presence of uncertainties from the plant and persistent actuator failure. Simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

Livestock industries are facing global competition and revolutionary changes. While facing this global competition, the similarities of many animal meat products require that they compete on a cost-of-production basis. Additional issues include the environmental impact of animal agriculture, the role of animal products in human nutrition, food safety and quality, biotechnology, animal welfare, and market access. Progressive producers are becoming more aware of the needs of their customers and are striving to improve product quality. Checkoff funds are used to finance promotion, research, and consumer information programs and are increasingly used to finance producer education. Industrialization trends in the livestock industries are changing the needs of constituencies, delivery mechanisms, and relationships with the people involved. Characteristics of closed operations include high production cost, outdated technology, smaller size, older operators, and lack of management focus. Successful operations tend to be growing in capacity, are system-oriented, maintain high throughput, keep accurate records, use outside consultants, and control production costs. Modern livestock production has lowered the cost of production by integrating new production and management technologies. In order for producers to be successful in the future, access to technology, capital, and timely information will be critical. Animal scientists have many common objectives with livestock industries. Their work in research, teaching, and extension is critical for continued progress. However, people in the industries sometimes have the perception that academic arrogance, discipline myopia, uncoordinated research, slow technology transfer, increasing research costs, and counter-productive tenure systems prevent animal scientists from being as relevant and responsive as they could be. Support from the industries is essential as animal scientists and academic departments seek political and funding support. This support can be attained by including integrated systems research, improving communication skills, achieving more efficient research budgets, rapidly publishing results, reducing the cost of information distribution, developing flexible research agendas, retraining scientists, acquiring modern methods, and emphasizing critical thinking, communication, and teamwork when teaching.

While many would argue that personalised medicine has a long history, the era of modern deployment dates only to hormone-receptor guided tamoxifen therapy and growth-factor receptor guided Herceptin therapy in the 1990s and has been rather sporadic in the intervening years. From this uneven beginning, global adoption remains modest, with wide variations in availability of testing and associated therapy. Indeed, while over 120 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs have pharmacogenomics information in their labelling, most such labelling is informational, and there are today only 6 distinct “companion” markers cleared by FDA as in vitro companion diagnostic tests mandated for the safe and effective use of the corresponding therapy (HER2, CKIT, EGFR, KRAS, BRAF, ALK). Approval and availability of such companion tests with a 1:1 therapeutic relationship is only the beginning, however. “High value” diagnostic tests with indirect relationships to therapeutics and next generation multi-omic tests with higher predictive precision have even lower availability in global markets. Scientific and regulatory hurdles are only part of the underlying challenge. In an increasingly constrained global healthcare environment, heath-technology assessment and deployment models assume equal significance, and various models have emerged across the US and EU to accelerate market access. Some recent trends and best practices include use of adaptive clinical trial designs, pragmatic application of regulations, new Health Technology Assessment and reimbursement models, and emergent quality assurance practices. This article will review some of these prevailing global best practices for the deployment of personalised medicine, extract some general learnings, and draw some inferences for global markets, including emerging regions. Keywords: Companion diagnostics, diagnostics, market access, personalised medicine, reimbursement, sequencing, validation.

Potato market access, marketing efficiency and on-farm value addition in Uganda

A bio-economic analysis of the benefits of conservation agriculture: The case of smallholder farmers in Adami Tulu district, Ethiopia

The objective of this research is to analyse the effects of market liberalization and deregulation in the rice marketing channel on farm households, using information collected from three selected villages with different market access in Jiangxi Province, China. Intermediates are modelled as a state monopsonist, as oligopsonists or assumed to have no market power (perfect competition). Results indicate that rice producers benefit from market liberalization and deregulation. How much rice producers benefit depends on the degree of remaining market imperfections and the degree of market access.