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on Information and Communication Technologies |
| By: | Hamel, Jean-Yves |
| Abstract: | Surveying existing literature, this paper starts by identifying links between attainments in human development and the presence of ICTs. The research then looks at instances where ICTs affect the opportunity for migration and how they affect its outcomes. We will see how migrants are making use of ICTs and the importance that these technologies have come to occupy in their life. Attempting to illustrate both positive and negative implications of the roles of ICTs in human mobility, this paper surveys research that demonstrates how ICTs are used in both regular and irregular migration, in maintaining family relations, in sustaining cultural identities, and in supporting a family from abroad. We will see that ICTs have not replaced older forms of communication but that they have greatly increased the range of available options for communications. Throughout the text, this paper also includes the roles of governments and civil society in working to increase access and use of ICTs while also making mention of instances where they actively pursue the opposite. As we will see, the skills necessary for use of ICTs and the infrastructure necessary for their access can be found in all countries of the world, albeit in unequal distribution. |
| Keywords: | information and communication technologies; diaspora; migration |
| JEL: | F22 J6 O15 D8 |
| Date: | 2009–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:19175&r=ict |
| By: | Kalvet, Tarmo |
| Abstract: | Innovation policy forms a foundation, and probably the most important one, of economic development in any society, especially in today’s society driven by information and communication technologies (ICT). The Schumpeterian processes of creative destruction need stewardship – creative destruction management – and this paper aims to explore some key aspects of innovation policies from the perspective of the current ICT paradigm. The basic feature of the latter is the trend towards globalisation, towards facilitation of heterogeneity, diversity, and adaptability, which leads to market segmentation and niche proliferation as well as to production disaggregation and segment relocation. Analysis of innovation policies of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries shows that their current national innovation system based innovation policies are lacking several crucial features. First, one of the central arguments of creative-destruction management is paradigm-based, activity-specific priority-setting, but such wide-scale selection mechanisms have been and are still missing, and currently innovation policies by themselves can not lead to economic restructuring. Second, the whole concept of innovation systems has to a large extent focused on activities related to the production and use of codified scientific and technical knowledge leading to the situation where existing policies have essentially nothing to do with the average companies. Third, the current paradigm is characterised by globalised and open financial markets which, in case of the CEE countries, have enforced speculative economic growth, fuelled by domestic consumption and based on foreign borrowing. Finally, while the state is generally considered an important factor influencing how concrete innovation systems develop, linkages to policymaking itself and administrative capacities are quite missing and need to be revived, including the reconsideration of governance. |
| Keywords: | innovation; economic development; innovation policy; ICT Paradigm; open innovation; governance; dissertations; |
| JEL: | O38 O30 B52 O20 B15 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:19387&r=ict |
| By: | K. W. DE BOCK; D. VAN DEN POEL; |
| Abstract: | Several recent studies have explored the virtues of behavioral targeting and personalization for online advertising. In this paper, we add to this literature by proposing a cost-effective methodology for the prediction of demographic web site visitor profiles that can be used for web advertising targeting purposes. The methodology involves the transformation of web site visitors’ clickstream patterns to a set of features and the training of Random Forest classifiers that generate predictions for gender, age, educational level and occupation category. These demographic predictions can support online advertisement targeting (i) as an additional input in personalized advertising or behavioral targeting, in order to restrict ad targeting to demographically defined target groups, or (ii) as an input for aggregated demographic web site visitor profiles that support marketing managers in selecting web sites and achieving an optimal correspondence between target groups and web site audience composition. The proposed methodology is validated using data from a Belgian web metrics company. The results demonstrate that Random Forests demonstrate superior classification performance over a set of benchmark algorithms. Further, the ability of the model set to generate representative demographic web site audience profiles is assessed. The stability of the models over time is demonstrated using out-of-period data. |
| Keywords: | demography prediction, demographic targeting, web advertising, Random Forests, web user profiling, clickstream analysis |
| Date: | 2009–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rug:rugwps:09/618&r=ict |