Time Zone Differences Research Articles

The International Transmission of Arbitrage Information Across Futures Markets

Abstract: This paper examines whether deviations from a domestic spot‐futures relation, as identified through mispricing series in stock index futures, spillover international boundaries. Such spillovers suggest that information from a mispricing series in one market conveys a signal of similar mispricing in another market. In the presence of arbitrage traders and in the absence of market frictions, mispricing series should be independent across international boundaries. The study employs a VAR analysis of stock index futures mispricing across three large futures markets – Australia, the UK and the USA. Using time zone differences, tests are conducted for the daily transmission of arbitrage information. The results reveal the relationship between mispricing series is bi‐directional. Based on this finding, a trading strategy is employed to examine the economic significance of apparent profits. The results show that some profits are possible after transaction costs but that a long horizon, probably beyond the scope of most traders, is required to exploit the spillover information.

Chasing the Sun: a virtual reference service between SAHSLC (SA) and SWICE (UK)

In 2002, a discussion in the United Kingdom (UK) between South-west Information for Clinical Effectiveness (SWICE) librarians and a member of the South Australian Department of Human Services Libraries' Consortium (SAHSLC) raised the possibility of developing an after-hours virtual reference service between the two consortium groups. The aim of the service is to put medical practitioners in contact with a librarian when urgent help is required in finding clinical medical information after hours. A trial project has begun and has been given the name 'Chasing the Sun'. The service will make use of time-zone differences between the UK and Australia, so that librarians at work in another country will be able to answer urgent patient-related queries that cannot wait until normal office hours. This paper looks at the development of 'Chasing the Sun' from initial concept, funding proposal and trial project stage to implementation. It includes details of the groundwork, software evaluation, trials, outcomes, cost and benefits, future directions and potential problems yet to be experienced or overcome. This service is the first of its kind between health libraries in the world and offers potential for future worldwide expansion.

Looking Beyond India: Factors that Shape the Global Outsourcing Decisions of Small and Medium Sized Companies in America

AbstractA number of developing countries are attempting to capture a piece of the rapidly growing offshore software development market, yet little is known concerning why an American firm may elect to work with a provider in one of these aspiring countries rather than in an offshore IT superpower such as India. This article examines the global outsourcing decisions of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), a sector that is increasingly looking offshore to fulfill its software development needs. The article is based on a study conduced between November 2001 and February 2002 involving structured interviews with eighteen companies and experts that have outsourced software development work to countries other than India. The responses were compared to the existing literature on the decision processes of large firms and the outsourcing experiences of firms that choose providers in India. The study revealed fourteen factors that influenced the decisions of these SMEs: cost savings, personal connection, US presence, critical mass of skilled technical professionals, project management skills and quality certification, language and culture, western business savvy and practices, intellectual property rights protection, regulatory environment, telecommunications infrastructure, physical infrastructure, time zone difference, political stability and diversification, and country image.Price savings is the primary catalyst driving the outsourcing decisions of these SMEs, just as it is with large firms. However, because the software development process of these SMEs is typically not as sophisticated, they rely more heavily on a wide range of non‐technical, or human, factors to achieve their outsourcing objectives. Most notably, these SMEs typically found their outsourcing providers through foreign nationals employed in their firms, and instead of CMM, required the sort of close cooperation that can only be sustained when client and provider can communicate frequently and resolve problems as they arise without interference from language barriers or cultural incompatibilities. US‐based intermediaries representing one or more offshore providers have proliferated to cater to these firms. Time zone differences are more of an obstacle than an advantage. Countries that can tap their overseas populations for their personal connections and expertise in western business practices should have a competitive advantage in building successful offshore software development industries. This is especially relevant as client companies in America seek to diversify their outsourcing relationships in order to reduce their dependency on any single country.

Mitigating the effects of distance on collaborative intellectual work

This paper reviews systematic research on collaborative work involving synchronous, or same-time, interactions, which comprise a major challenge for projects in which a distance of 30 metres or more separates participants. It identifies the specific advantages of close proximity, or 'radical co-location', in which participants share a common room or workspace. Reference to these advantages is used to assess the shortcomings of co-operative work support techniques including software and video conferencing. A variety of contexts in which distant collaboration is undertaken are examined in order to identify instances of success, as well as a range of specific problems related to cultural and time zone differences and the limitations of available of information and communication technologies for interpersonal communication. Prospects for future technologies to transcend these limitations are discussed.

Managing across nations. Technology-based projects in multinational environments

Organizations that manage projects across international borders often find it frustratingly difficult to implement their well thought-out plans. For these multinational projects also need to be unified among different business processes, management styles, operational support systems and organizational cultures. Such cross-cultural management practices are quite common in today's global business environment with multinational outsourcing, joint ventures and alliances. While unified project direction toward technology transfer, integration, and business objectives usually comes from one central location, they need to be effectively communicated and "managed" across international lines and organizational cultures. Managers have to deal with differences in languages, time zones, organizational and personal cultures, policies, regulations, business processes and political climates. Yet another managerial challenge is the complexity of today's projects and their support environments. Technology has become a significant factor for almost every business. Information technology provides a powerful set of tools and techniques in support of multinational project operations. Multimedia conference calls, e-mail, fax, groupware and Internet web sites are just a few examples. These tools have the ability to link organizations across geographic regions and time zones. They also help to partially neutralize cultural differences.

Media Production: Towards Creative Collaboration Using Communication Networks

To examine the diffusion of remote collaboration technologies within the media production industries, a series of case studies was recently conducted with early adopters of advanced electronic networks in Sydney, Los Angeles and London. The studies assessed: 1) user reactions to these collaboration technologies and types of activities being supported and 2) factors influencing their adoption decisions. Interviews conducted also provided early indications of the conditions likely to facilitate remote collaboration and the likely impacts on work practices in media production organizations. It was established that electronic delivery, remote access to resources and materials, and remote creative collaboration were all being carried out, even internationally. Although most network applications were routine substitutions for non-electronic equivalents (e.g. couriers or catalogue browsing), some did involve shared creative activities, thus confirming that remote creative collaboration is a viable option. Key factors influencing network adoption were cost considerations and regulatory issues, time savings and productivity, and security concerns. Certain industry segments -- animation, post-production, and advertising -- were more likely to be early adopters, as were companies who found innovative ways to achieve greater benefits. Conditions likely to facilitate remote collaboration include more sophisticated change-agent strategies, increasing the perceived control of creative outputs, developing and maintaining trust, providing more auxiliary support for coordination needs, and making more effective use of timing and time-zone differences. Likely impacts of remote collaboration in media production are: more overlap between pre-production, production, and post-production activities; faster work pace; enhanced creativity; and improved quality of work life.

Standards and Testing: Another View

A scholar opposed to standards in education is difficult to imagine. Favoring standards in education, however, is not synonymous with advocating compulsory, centralized national testing. The case for reforming U.S. precollege education based on test scores is not as compelling as advocates such as John Bishop (1998) want us to believe. Bishop does not address the cost of developing, administering, and scoring tests. As the Educational Testing Service learned with its Advanced Placement exams, moving beyond multiple-choice or fixed-response questions, which are machine scored, to free or essay response questions greatly increases the cost of marking; yet, the latter is advocated by Bishop. He mentions the wonderful experience Alberta teachers report when brought to centralized locations to grade the extended-answer portions of the exams(p. 174). He never mentions the cost or the validity and reliability of the process by which teachers doing the reading and marking of written answers came to agree on what constituted an excellent, good, adequate, poor, or failing response to essay questions(p. 174). Given the added recognition and prospects for additional pay for the participating teachers, it is not surprising that they report a positive experience. It is like asking the latest lottery winners if their methods of picking numbers are worthwhile. To appreciate the problems in wide-scale administration of exams, one need only look at Rene Sanchez's (1997) report on the organized criminal activity of test takers who, in addition to other means of cheating, have repeatedly exploited time-zone differences in the administration of the nation's most important college admission exams. Even at the state level, centralized testing is difficult to control. After the Kentucky Supreme Court in 1989 declared inequities in school district spending, legislators passed a sweeping school reform agenda that includes an annual test heavy on essay questions. Steve Stecklow (1997) cites Doug Terry, a legislative analyst at Kentucky's Office of Education Accountability, as saying that many schools have engaged in unethical behavior while overseeing student writing on test material, including teachers' typing and editing student work. Since 1993, over 60 Kentucky schools have been investigated for allegations of cheating by teachers and administrators. The notion that universal standards and compulsory exams developed at the national level will not fall to the lowest common denominator is wishful thinking. In the case of the voluntary standards developed by the National Council on Economic Education, the ink was no more than dry before economist Karen Pen-

Fax Etiquette for Nurse Authors and Editors

Is the facsimile (fax) machine really as great as it seems? Yes, but there is a potential for its misuse. Like all equipment, the fax machine is a tool that needs to be used wisely. This article describes the Do's and Don'ts of using the fax machine to communicate between authors and editors. Tips in this article will help authors and editors to correspond smoothly by fax and use new fax equipment options.

Volatility Spillovers Across the Tasman

The study of volatility inter-dependence provides useful insights into how information is transmitted and disseminated across markets. Research results in this area have implications for international diversification and market efficiency. This paper explores volatility spillovers between the Australian and New Zealand stock markets. The objective of the paper is to determine if volatility surprises in one market influence the volatility of returns in the other market. The existing literature in this area has typically focused on the US market's influence and employed standard ARCH class models to account for the time-variation in volatility. This paper focuses on the trans-Tasman markets and utilises more complex models which allow for an asymmetric response of volatility to past innovations. Time-zone differences in trading hours between Australia and New Zealand are analysed and four models are developed to test for spillover effects. The overnight return (& volatility) from the US market is used to account for the impact of international news. The results indicate that volatility surprises in the larger Australian market influence the subsequent conditional volatility of the smaller New Zealand market. Similarly, the Australian market also appears to be influenced by volatility surprises from the New Zealand market. However, this latter finding is also consistent with contemporaneous market reactions to international news which the daily data set used in this study is unable to isolate.

The International Internet - Global Connectivity

Research Article| January 01, 1996 The International Internet - Global Connectivity Steve Malone Steve Malone Search for other works by this author on: GSW Google Scholar Seismological Research Letters (1996) 67 (1): 28–29. https://doi.org/10.1785/gssrl.67.1.28 Article history first online: 09 Mar 2017 Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Search Site Citation Steve Malone; The International Internet - Global Connectivity. Seismological Research Letters 1996;; 67 (1): 28–29. doi: https://doi.org/10.1785/gssrl.67.1.28 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Refmanager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentBy SocietySeismological Research Letters Search Advanced Search This content is PDF only. Please click on the PDF icon to access. First Page Preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this article.

Designing at a distance via real-time designer-to-designer interaction

This paper describes an experiment in which teams of two designers used a shared computer ‘sketchpad’ to generate design concepts for products while geographically separated by a distance of over 16 300km. The aim of the large separation, which included a large time-zone difference, was to examine critically the capability of the sketchpad to provide useful support for real design work. It was also used to examine potential problems due to the extreme geographic separation of team members and to uncover others which may not have been apparent from localized laboratory studies. The results indicate that the tool is usable and useful for design work at a distance. The paper concludes by pointing to issues that will need to be addressed in developing computer supported co-operative design (CSCD) systems for the whole design process.

The DTX‐240D digital circuit multiplication system

AbstractThis paper describes the DTX‐240D digital circuit multiplication system (DCMS) offered by ECI Telecom. It will accept up to 240 × 64 kb/s trunks carrying either 64 kb/s voice, voice band analogue non‐speech signals, or digital data for transmission over a 2·048 Mb/s digital link. Over 1000 are currently ‘on‐line’ and carrying traffic.The system comprises a pair of terminals, one on each side of the interterminal digital link (bearer). It will normally operate in the network at a concentration ratio of 5:1, in which case 150 × 64 kb/s trunks, carrying voice, voice band data or digital data can be concentrated into one 2·048 Mb/s bearer. The users are able to increase the number of trunks up to 240 per 2·048 Mb/s bearer, when time zone differences cause a spread of busy‐hour traffic carried on a single system. Each terminal will normally be located at an international switching centre (ISC) but may also be located at an earth‐station.The system uses a DSI (digital speech interpolation) stage providing a 2·5:1 multiplication, followed by an additional 2:1 multiplication by means of ADPCM (adaptive differential pulse code modulation). In addition, the VBR (variable bit rate) technique is used to prevent clipping, due to overload congestion.The system can also be used with 1·544 Mb/s digital bit streams (trunk side or bearer).

Stock Return Seasonalities in Asia Pacific Markets*

AbstractThis study documents the existence of strong day‐of‐the‐week effects for most of the Asia Pacific markets. There are also more day‐of‐the‐week variations in the non‐January months than in January and there is also a ‘Rogalski’ effect for returns on Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Moreover, some turn‐of‐the‐lunar‐year effects are found for some markets. Unlike the industrialized markets, month‐of‐the‐year variations are not consistent with the tax‐loss selling hypothesis in most of the Asia Pacific markets. This study also finds it hard to reject the hypothesis that day‐of‐the‐week variations of Asia Pacific markets are similar to that of the U.S. market after adjustments for time zone differences, especially for smaller markets.

A practical example of a multi-attribute decision aiding technique

The marketing and business development representatives of major construction firms operating abroad experience difficulties from being remote from their decision-making executives. Even with modern communications the physical distances involved, with their attendant time zone differences, present many problems for decision-making. One objective of these representatives is to identify construction business opportunities and pursue these through all phases including tendering competitively. A typical policy is for a major decision to be referred to ‘head-office’ which introduces delays often unacceptable to the clients and which may reduce the competitive advantage of the tendering firm. A study was undertaken in conjunction with a major contracting firm who wishes to remain anonymous. This was to derive a decision-making process for its overseas representatives which would help on-the-spot decisions to comply with corporate policies whilst a bid is being presented to the client by the due date. The firm is divisionalised and operates in overseas territories as one single division using sub-contractors, or with co-operating divisions, or at group level. As the tendering personnel are one of the firm's scarce resources and also a most valuable resource, it is clear that they should be ‘used’ to the best advantage. This paper presents the decision aiding technique proposed by Keeney and Raiffa, in a restricted format, to illustrate how firms may better utilise their scarce marketing and business development resources and in doing so boost their chances of success in a competitive situation.

Weekly phase shifts of rhythms self-reported by almost feral human students in the USA and Spain

Eleven students in the USA and fifteen students in Spain wrote their wake-up and to-sleep times on forms for a month. The subjects reported large day-to-day phase shifts of magnitude comparable to those of travelers and shiftworkers. All individuals exhibited some large phase shifts of their day-to-day wake-up and to-sleep times (largest shift average, 4.54 hours; range, −12.7 to +13.9 hours). The students had daily cycles and weekly cycles in their wake-up and to-sleep times. Synchrony (entrainment) with the 24-hour environment was achieved by large weekly phase advances (individual averages ranged 1.2–4.8 hours) rather than by small daily adjustments. There was considerable variation in awake time: there were 2–3 hour differences between individuals, and there were 3.2 hour differences depending on day of the week. Alarm use appeared to be the Zeitgeber, in contrast to laboratory studies which show light and social Zeitgebers for humans. There was a 4 hour difference between the Spanish and USA students which was attributed to the 5 hour difference in time zones. Wake-up time and prior to-sleep time were interdependent.

More Than Learning: The Diffusion of News on the Assassination of Olof Palme in England, Germany, Italy and Hungary

In a study of diffusion of news about the Palme assassination, rate and amount of diffusion was investigated in four European countries (England, Germany, Hungary and Italy). First source of learning, as well as subsequent reactions and communication activities were also studied. In all four countries, knowledge about the murder was widespread, and the electronic media dominated the diffusion pattern. Diffusion was very rapid. The results are discussed and interpreted in terms of time zone differences, sociocultural differences, differential media structures, etc.

The Economics of the North Atlantic Air Traffic System

1. INTRODUCTION. The North Atlantic air traffic system is the busiest and most important long-range system in operation today with a current total of 127 000 flights“annum. The combined effects of the total flight time and the difference in time zones on either side of the Atlantic makes it desirable for most passengers to fly westward in the day-time. Conversely, it is most convenient (or least inconvenient!) to fly eastbound during the hours of darkness. Thus the Atlantic traffic system is strongly tidal with the flow predominantly (though not entirely) westbound during the day and eastbound overnight. Currently the central core of the traffic in the busiest hours is organised into a parallel track structure – the Organized Track Structure (OTS), though nearly half the aircraft operate so-called random routes clear of the OTS.

Imaginative Learning: A Journey through the White Pages of the Telephone Directory

Emergency Telephone Numbers. These numbers usually include community service personnel such as police, ambulance drivers, firemen, suicide prevention centers, and rescue squads. Use of Telephone Book Index. This item describes the proper use of the directory index and thus assists those attempting to locate a specific bit of information. Time Zones Information. Differences in time zones are explained, and a map often shows the location of each time zone in the United States-information especially important to those making long distance calls. Calendar. Often overlooked, this common reference can be helpful when talking over the telephone. Savings Tips When Using the Telephone. The telephone industry is honest about ways the public can maximize savings when using its service. For example, rates are lower for evenings, weekends, and holidays,

Just for fun: from arc to time and time to arc

Some units in the arithmetic, social studies, and science curriculum areas present concepts of meridians and parallels, rotation and revolution, and differences in time zones around the globe. Learning about time zones can be a frustrating experience both for teachers and children unless concepts of arc and time are thoroughly understood.

The Structure of Simple General Equilibrium Models

The following sections are included:IntroductionThe ModelThe Equations of ChangeThe Magnification EffectThe Extended Model: Demand EndogenousThe Aggregate Elasticity of SubstitutionConvergence to Balanced GrowthSavings BehaviorThe Analysis of Technological ChangeReferences