Big Players Research Articles

Access to Justice and Routine Legal Services: New Technologies Meet Bar Regulators

We are in the early stages of a technological revolution in legal services. Technology is displacing lawyers in a wide array of tasks such as document drafting, review, and assembly, and is also reshaping the way that lawyers find clients and deliver assistance. For most consumers, these are welcome developments. Such innovations generally reduce costs and increase both accessibility and efficiency. The potential gains are particularly great for low- and middle-income consumers, who lack access for a vast array of basic, often urgent, legal needs. Yet for lawyers, the consequences of technology have been more mixed. Many feel that their professional independence and livelihoods are threatened by the growth of online forms, computerized algorithms, and price competition with internet providers. Responding to these concerns, bar regulators have often fought back through ethics rulings that attempt to rein in organizations such as LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer, and Avvo Legal Services. This article explores the contested technological terrain of legal services for low- and middle-income Americans and uses the battles brewing over Avvo Legal Services as a case study of how bar regulators are, and should be, responding to innovations in the legal market for consumers of limited means. We cover the rise of the online provision of legal services, with a special focus on the three big players in consumer-oriented internet legal services, Avvo, LegalZoom, and Rocket Lawyer. We then assess the recent objections of bar regulators to the latest entry into this market – Avvo Legal Services. We argue that these concerns are largely incorrect. The argument relies partially on the controlling law and partially on business and common sense. As a business matter, small firm and solo practitioners are trying to survive in a brutally competitive market for consumer legal services. Avvo Legal Services attempts to connect these lawyers to clients directly, albeit with inexpensive, fixed-fee legal services. But LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer are already driving the prices for these services down. Avvo Legal Services just allows regular lawyers to try to compete. The business case is also the public interest case: Avvo Legal Services can help lower the barriers to hiring a lawyer and the cost. This will, in turn, increase access to justice in a country that was recently ranked sixty-seventh (tied with Uganda) of ninety-seven countries in the accessibility and affordability of civil justice. We can and must do better and technological innovations such as those pioneered by Avvo are part of the way forward. Our central argument is that lawyers should embrace the inevitable. Technological innovations are here to stay, and the organized bar should be looking for ways to harness their potential to help underserved constituencies, and the legal profession itself, not try to hold back the inexorable.

It’s cold and there’s something to do: The changing geography of Canadian National Hockey League players’ hometowns

Set within the framework of the birthplace effect literature and the seminal work of Curtis and Birch, this paper draws information from the publicly available database www.hockeydb.com and from the Census to examine the hometowns of Canadian National Hockey League (NHL) players from 1970 to 2015. It found that from a regional perspective, the distribution of players’ hometowns remained fairly stable over the 46-year period with Ontario and the three Prairie provinces being prominent. Players from small centres have been well represented in the NHL. While larger urban areas have historically produced the most players, there has been a marked increase in ‘big city’ players while the odds of making it are low. However, when the analysis is adjusted according to the population aged 10-19, boys growing up in small and mid-sized centres were at advantage in reaching the NHL until 2009. Finally, we discuss whether the growing presence of big city players in the NHL will affect the image of hockey as a national sport, as for many, small-town hockey remains at the heart of Canadian sporting culture.

Which Part of a Shrimp Has More Economic Value, the Shell or the Meat?

Using locally available resources to sustain the local economy has been (and in some parts of the world still is) looked at as a valuable survival skill. The rising cost of finite petroleum resources have increased the demand for manufacture of products from abundant natural resources (such as agricultural or forest-based feedstock) and new resource-based economic development. The environmental consciousness resulted in pursuing more sustainable alternatives to conventional plastics, and from this viewpoint, many attractive properties of biopolymers inspired multiple big industry players in using them for the development of the materials of the future. One such example is the broad applications opportunities for chitin derivatives. Although chitin and chitin derivatives worth $63B worldwide there is not (yet) a single chitin production plant in North America. Another reason for the current limitations in utilizing chitin to its full potential is the process that is required to extract the chitin from raw biomass. The current process employs harsh conditions (acidic and alkaline treatment at elevated pressure and temperatures) which result in the degradation of the chitin structure, thus changing the properties of the biopolymer. Due to the aforementioned limitations, there is no surprise that chitin materials have not been previously produced and marketed. It is well known that ionic liquids (ILs) are great solvents when it comes to biomass processing, from lignocellulosic biomass to crustacean waste, with the vision that one day the ILs will replace the current chemical-, waste-, and energy-intensive processes. The annual available chitin in freshwater and marine ecosystems is roughly 600 and 1,600 million tons, respectively. Even though the United States is among the three largest seafood markets in the world, 85% of US seafood consumption depends on importation and only 5% is from US aquaculture production. Taking shrimp aquaculture for example; shrimp meat is pealed for food consumption, currently the main profit source, and the large amounts of shrimp shells are treated as waste and thrown away (at a cost), leading to environmental pollution. What if the shrimp shell waste is turned into valuable products and becomes the main source of profit? Chitin and its deacetylated derivative, chitosan can be manufactured into many forms (fibers, films, high surface area nanomats, beads, hydrogels) and can be used in different industrial sectors such as water treatment, food processing, agriculture, nutrition, cosmetics, and medical applications. Due to chitin’s non-toxicity, non-allergenicity, biocompatibility, biodegradability, and bioactivity, diverse medicinal applications of chitin include both pharmacological and biotechnological materials and products. Emerging end-use biomedical applications include organ dressings, vascular implants, burn dressings, structural surgical implants, bio-textiles, and bone growth scaffolds, among others. Chitin can provide millions of dollars in revenues and have a significant impact on the economy if it is effectively isolated and used in high value products. This presentation will discuss this one example that illustrates the importance of the IL research in shell waste biomass processing and ultimately in delivering materials suitable for a myriad of applications that are still to be discovered. Development of such technologies requires creative thinking, changing the way we look at existing technologies, and push society away from a dependence on oil that grows steadily. Figure 1

The Vanca Case Analysis. On the Importance of Holistic Approach to Digital Marketing in Medium-Size Business

The Vanca case demonstrates an important dilemma of small and medium businesses in highly competitive market segments: their limited resources call for very precise decisions on marketing spending priorities; these decisions should come as a result of deep analysis linking consumer behavior to company economics; yet the companies do not have the necessary analytical skills within them. As a result they get immersed in technicalities of marketing campaigns, instead of building an integrated marketing vision, this puts them in disadvantageous position against the bigger players in the segment. Building a holistic framework of effective marketing for the brand before the development of technicalities of approach to online marketing campaign may be a good way for the new Digital Media Manager to start his new job. The suggested framework builds on some research findings on the specific of consumer behavior in fashion industry, the typical strategies followed by the market player, the specifics of the Indian online fashion market and the position of The Vanca company relative to the competition. The analysis suggests two strategic dilemmas for the company, solving them requires more data on company economics than provided within the case. The first dilemma is whether the company should follow the “brand builder” of “fast mover” strategy, the second dilemma is should the company insist on turning its own site into a major sales channel or use it more as an image-driving vehicle, relying on the third-party sites for sales. Within any strategy the company should base its approach to marketing, including the structuring and presentation of information on its own site, on the data-driven segmentation of customers. The point of departure should be differentiation between the “aspirational” and “situational” customers, with the aim of introducing more segmentation through data analysis within the Customer Relationship Management system. A roadmap of six steps is suggested, with the aim of installing the process of constant improvement of the company’s online performance, ultimately moving into the model of “data-driven” company with most of key business decisions made on the basis of “hard” analysis of consumer behavior and the company’s economics. Communicating this plan to the management of the company could be a personal challenge to the new Digital Marketing Manager, as it would significantly depart from the initial brief he received. Yet the roadmap is based on analysis of the key marketing factors and allows building a strategy for consistent improvement of the company’s operational results. The fact that the company took in May 2 the pains to completely renovate its web site shutting it down for at least 10 days probably indicates that it finally saw the need of fresh strategic approach to the whole of its marketing.

Trump's tariff impact on Africa and the ambiguous role of African agency

SUMMARYThe current debate on Trump’s tariffs focuses on the big global players and competitors of the USA. Africa plays virtually no role in international scholarly perceptions of the impact of US protective tariffs on imported steel, aluminium and cars. Nevertheless, there are such effects and these are more than peanuts, as will be shown in this Briefing.

Analisis Perbandingan Pengaruh Endorser terhadap Sikap pada Merek Shampo Sunsilk dan Shampo Pantene

Two big player that PT. Unilever Indonesia Tbk with the mainstay Sunsilk product and PT. Procter & Gamble that sells Pantene product stringent to supply the indonesian needs of shampoo. One of that with appearing of endorser in advertising to influence positif attitude of consumer to shampoo brand. This study used to analyzed the comparing endorser effect influence towards brand attitude (attitude toward brand) shampoo Sunsilk and shampoo Pantene in university student of Management of Economic Faculty of State University of Surabaya with 19-24 years old and 62 respondent for shampoo Sunsilk brand and 62 respondent for shampoo Pantene brand. Data were analyzed with simple linear regression.The result of research show, there are positif endorser effect toward brand attitude in both of shampoo brand whereas endorser effect toward brand attitude shampoo Sunsilk higher than endorser effect toward brand attitude shampoo Pantene

Are key market players in currency derivatives markets affected by financial conditions?

This study investigates if the biggest players in major foreign currencies futures markets are affected by current and previous financial conditions. Using root mean squared errors (RMSE), normalized RMSE, and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency, this study compares the impact of current, 1 and 2 week lags of financial conditions onto foreign currency futures players’ net positions. The financial conditions indices used are UFCI, STLFSI, NFCI and ANFCI with weekly data set from January 2007 till December 2018. The US dollar index futures is included as a benchmark, since the financial conditions are based on US data and the most actively traded foreign currencies are paired against the USD. While RMSE and NRMSE gave mixed results into how current, 1 week and 2 weeks lagged Financial Conditions Indices (FCIs) values are related to speculators and hedgers’ net positions, lagged NFCI captured the highest correlation with both players’ net positions in Japanese Yen. 95% prediction levels encompassed the actual net positions held, including the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Forecasts were lower (higher) for hedgers (speculators) than actual net positions held during the same period. Comparatively, in the period 2016-2017, hedgers (speculators) net positions forecasts were higher (lower) than actual positions. The latter could be explained by FCIs not being affected during this period’s event, compared to net positions. While net positions data were stationary, excess kurtosis was present pointing to non-normal and autocorrelated series. This suggests the need to look into other components like non-reportable long or short positions in future analysis.

Digital food: from paddock to platform

ABSTRACTThis article examines the growing entanglements between the digital and the world of food while suggesting that food is a particularly generative space through which to understand the evolving but often hidden role of the digital in our everyday lives. The article starts by examining food photography on social media before discussing the role of ordinary people as participants in online food culture via video-sharing platforms such as YouTube. Mapping the shift from web 2.0’s dreams of creativity and sharing to the monetisation of digital food communities, section 3 focuses on food politics, and ‘the antinomies of connectivity’. The final section discusses big food players and their use of social media in an era of dataveillance and big data. It argues that ‘food citizens’ need to have an awareness of the commercial logics that support the communicative ecologies in which we increasingly engage with food and lifestyle practices.

Canada’s Inevitable Evolution Towards Bilateral Spending

The federal government should be allowed to provide condition free funding within the provincial jurisdiction. Canada is naturally evolving towards intrastate federalism and a more collaborative government and this evolution has been apparent since the BNA act was formulated.In the BNA act the Canadian provinces were promised ongoing grants/subsidies and we have also seen in Quebec’s case, they opted for a more collaborative form of government for wanting to be represented more at the federal level. It has also been demonstrated that each level of government in Canada’s federal system must be autonomous in its own right or else the system will collapse. Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau views have also been presented to illustrate this. The cases of the United States and Germany have also been brought up to show that not only Canada, but other federal states are redefining what federalism means and re-interpreting their own respective constitutions to bring this new definition into action. The case of Quebec has also been brought up to demonstrate how the biggest players in the Canadian system, how Canadian policy can be updated to limit the amount of critics towards how the federal power is spending its money. 
 
 
 
 

Challenges in Spinal Care in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)

Spinal conditions are commonplace in the developing world, and Sub-saharan Africa (SSA) is no exception. Traumatic conditions of the spine occur regularly, and when they do, they usually demand a level of urgency in diagnosis and treatment, not to mention skill on the part of the treating doctors. Tuberculosis of the spine as well as tumours and degenerative conditions are also big players in this arena. Spine care is complicated by fact that spine instrumentation is technology and cost intensive, which does not sit well with many third world countries. All these factors taken together create a hostile environment which leads to outcomes far from ideal for the spinal patient. OBJECTIVES: To describe the presentation and management of four patients from SSA countries presenting with spinal problems whose management illustrates some of the problems referenced above. METHODS: Discussion of four cases and review of the literature.

Trump's Protective Tariffs and Their Impact on Africa

The international discussion of Trump's dispute over import tariffs for steel, aluminum and even cars is so far focused on the big global players. However, African countries in particular could suffer from the planned punitive tariffs, analogous to the famous African proverb, When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. Egypt and South Africa for example, the potentially most affected countries in Africa, face massive job losses and earning opportunities, with all the consequences that this entails for their already fragile economy and their population in dire poverty.

Lidar landscape shifts as big players join forces with new entrants

The emergence of lidar as a key technology for future autonomous vehicles ratcheted up throughout 2017, with major players including Ford, Airbus, and Osram backing a raft of startups with their own particular takes on the photonics hardware.

Major Foreign Currency Futuress Hedgers and Speculators and Financial Stability

This study investigates if the biggest players in major foreign currencies futures markets are affected by current and previous financial conditions. Using root mean squared errors (RMSE), normalized RMSE, and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency, this study compares the impact of current, 1 and 2 week lags of financial conditions onto foreign currency futures players’ net positions. The financial conditions indices used are UFCI, STLFSI, NFCI and ANFCI with weekly data set from January 2007 till December 2018. The US dollar index futures is included as a benchmark, since the financial conditions are based on US data and the most actively traded foreign currencies are paired against the USD. While RMSE and NRMSE gave mixed results into how current, 1 week and 2 weeks lagged Financial Conditions Indices (FCIs) values are related to speculators and hedgers’ net positions, lagged NFCI captured the highest correlation with both players’ net positions in Japanese Yen. 95% prediction levels encompassed the actual net positions held, including the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Forecasts were lower (higher) for hedgers (speculators) than actual net positions held during the same period. Comparatively, in the period 2016-2017, hedgers (speculators) net positions forecasts were higher (lower) than actual positions. The latter could be explained by FCIs not being affected during this period’s event, compared to net positions. While net positions data were stationary, excess kurtosis was present pointing to non-normal and autocorrelated series. This suggests the need to look into other components like non-reportable long or short positions in future analysis.

Advanced Interaction and Virtual\/Augmented Reality: Making Interaction with Machines More Natural and Effective

The level of complexity that has been reached by modern consumer electronics (CE) devices is driving both industry and academia to improve existing interface technology by developing innovative solutions that are capable of making interaction with machines ever more natural and effective. Many approaches have been pursued already, e.g., relying on tangible, visual, aural, and physiologic interfaces. For instance, considering input technology, a number of products have been released for the home automation and automotive sectors supporting touch and voice commands, whereas hand and body gestures are being increasingly exploited in entertainment, e.g., to control smart TVs and gaming consoles. Similarly, output methods to make the user experience ever more engaging combine solutions that are currently developed by most of the big information-technology players for virtual and augmented reality based on mobile, wearable, and projection technologies.

Text analytics APIs, Part 1: The bigger players

AbstractIf you’re in the market for an off-the-shelf text analytics API, you have a lot of options. You can choose to go with a major player in the software world, for whom each AI-related service is just another entry in their vast catalogues of tools, or you can go for a smaller provider that focusses on text analytics as their core business. In this first of two related posts, we look at what the most prominent software giants have to offer today.

‘Rigid demand’: Economic imagination and practice in China’s urban housing market

China’s socialist market economy is predominated by strong state-owned sectors. In the real estate market, the government further controls land and regulates social services based on property ownership. But how do ordinary market actors perceive this configuration and strategise their economic practice accordingly? Based on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores buyers’ and estate agents’ imagination of and practice in the housing market with a focus on the folk concept of rigid demand. Rigid demand (gangxu) refers to the belief that people have to buy a home regardless of price. Presenting how people invoke a range of referents and contexts when talking about rigid demand, I show that common Chinese market actors understand and approach the housing market not as an end in itself but as a mechanism devised and maneuvered by big market players such as the government and developers. Furthermore, actors believe that the market has a social purpose and is susceptible to agentive interventions. Ultimately, I argue that the social representation of the socialist housing market constructs and contests the legitimacy of certain economic practices and influences market performance accordingly.

Platforms and the Sharing Economy: An Analysis EU H2020 Research Project Ps2Share: Participation, Privacy, and Power in the Sharing Economy, 2017

This paper gives an in-depth overview of design guidelines for sharing platforms. It forms one part of a European Union Horizon 2020 Research Project on the sharing economy: Ps2Share: Participation, Privacy, and Power in the Sharing Economy. To develop a first version of design guidelines, three complementary analyses were conducted: An in-depth literature analysis, a user expectation analysis with focus groups, and an in-depth analysis of a diverse sample of 124 sharing economy platforms (SEP) and 130 sharing Facebook groups operating in Europe. The literature analysis considered the themes sharing, sharing economy, and platforms in the sharing economy and resulted in a first version of design guidelines for sharing economy platforms. The first version of design guidelines for SEP consists of five design areas: Business models, market transaction, governance structure, and culture of SEP, which are all impacted by the fifth design area of SEP, the regulatory environment in which a SEP operates. The analysis of user attitudes, experiences, and expectations towards SEP was analysed during several focus groups. This analysis revealed that participants make a clear distinction between “community-oriented sharing” and “commercial sharing” and therefore have elevated expectations about the safety and quality of service towards SEP. Furthermore, the insights from user experiences and their expectations towards SEP confirmed the core design aspects of the first version of SEP design principles developed based on literature. The identified SEP design aspects were applied for a broad analysis of a sample of 124 SEP operating in Europe and 130 Facebook groups. The analysis revealed that there are 12 global SEP platforms active in Europe that, in many industries, dominate the market. The European platforms are smaller and try to position themselves in market niches around the big players. The platform analysis revealed that the identified design principles can be applied for analysis of SEP and for identification of improvement potential.

Retail Ecosystem in India—An Overview of the Regulatory Framework and the Emerging Paradigm

Indian retail sector has been a strong area of interest and discussion both within and outside India for a number of reasons. India has the highest retail density in the world dominated by small retail outlets, which many call as “mom & pop” stores. But the sector of late has been undergoing a major transformation in terms of its structure and scale. Slowly and steadily, the big players have been entering in this field and the sector is evolving into organized shape and structure. The Indian retail sector has been categorized as the top player among the developing country markets in terms of future growth potential. This has created strong interest among big retail players of the world in the Indian retail sector but at the same time has created anxieties and fears in the minds of small Indian retailers. In this context, the regulatory environment for this sector is evolving and has a lot of challenges in hand in terms of how to balance the interests of both small and large players as well as organized and un-organized players. The study is based on an extensive survey of literature, industry reports, and field survey of small retailers. Drawing upon the analysis of primary and secondary data, the study highlights the issues facing the sector and comes out with some pertinent policy recommendations.

Getting the Measure of Money: A Critical Assessment of UK Monetary Indicators

The Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England’s reliance on faulty indicators has led to suboptimal policy decisions and masked what is actually happening in the economy. The introduction of quantitative easing (QE) in 2009 has made the money supply relevant again and made a discussion about alternative money supply measures of direct policy significance. Unfortunately, Bank of England figures have proved misleading and subject to major alterations. This book argues in favour of measures such as MZM and Divisia money, which attempt to find a middle ground between narrow and broad measures. It introduces a new and publicly available measure, MA, based on an a priori approach to defining money as the generally accepted medium of exchange. Central bankers are right to alter monetary policy in light of changes in the demand for money (i.e. velocity shocks), but they also need to recognise the potential for their own actions to be the cause of such shocks. In particular, central banks are ‘big players’ who can weaken confidence by generating regime uncertainty, and this played a major role in the 2008 financial crisis. While increased attention to uncertainty by economists should be welcomed, we should also be wary of attempts to measure it. From 1999 to 2006 the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) systematically underreported the inflationary pressure in the UK. More attention should be given to indices that include asset prices. GDP figures available at the time understated the severity of the 2008 recession, but also understated the strength of the recovery. GDP is flawed as a measure of well-being, of economic growth and even of economic activity. We get a fuller picture if we include intermediate consumption (or business-to-business spending), which is known as ‘Gross Output’ (GO). GO for the UK is typically two times bigger than GDP and more volatile. Unfortunately, official figures are only published on an annual basis and with a significant lag.

Universal Health Coverage: Public Health's Safe Haven or Beautiful Illusion?

In 2005, World Health Organization proposed Universal Health Coverage (UHC) as a powerful tool to achieve “the right to health”. UHC is a prepaid healthcare financing system aiming to provide accessible quality healthcare for all and protect population from economic consequences of illness. Ever since, UHC is a priority for many countries, which lowmiddle income ones are on the run to achieve, big players like America or UK still debate over many unresolved problems. So what can UHC achieve and is it truly the flawless pathway to global health?