The thesis presents an empirical study of the telecommunications reform experience of Thailand between the mid 1980s and 2000s in an attempt to explain the effect of national institutional arrangements upon the reform process. This time period permits an exploration of the development of the reform as well as its major impediments in relation to three different political settings. The progress of reform on the three basic reform issues (privatisation, liberalisation, and regulation) is thoroughly examined to understand the consequences produced by different industry environments. An historical institutionalist study of the Thai experience identifies the political tensions among the reform's interested parties as well as the unwieldy political settings that were the dominant features that heavily influenced the reform story. The thesis places a special emphasis on the latest political regime (the hegemonic era) since it provided a different industry outlook compared to the previous two regimes (the bureaucratic and pluralistic eras), allowing substantial progress towards reform to be made. The telecommunications reform in Thailand is not complete. Thus, it may be too early to confirm the advantage of the strong politics on the reform in the long run, especially considering the possibilities of rent-seeking or the overuse of political power of the hegemonic govenunent. In any case, the Thai reform experience confirms that an institutionalist framework is helpful, and that institutional arrangements really matter in the policy-formation, policy-implementation and policy-outcome of a particular country.

The Transport Board’s very significant and effective role in the preparation of all the major military expeditions and in the ultimate defeat of Bonaparte has been largely ignored by historians. The Board has hitherto been perceived as a subsidiary board of the Admiralty. However it was responsible to the Treasury and its main task was to transport and support the army overseas, on the instructions of the Secretary of State for War. The government depended upon the availability of merchant ships for this purpose. Yet less than 10 per cent of the registered merchant ships were suitable to be used as troop ships. At peaks of demand, in 1805, 1808 and 1814, the Transport Board chartered 30 to 39 per cent of this shipping. This had a significant impact international trade, on freight rates and the domestic price of commodities, particularly coal. There is strong evidence that between 1793 and 1805 government contracts sustained the British merchant shipping fleet by replacing the trade, previously conducted with European ports that were then controlled by the enemy. Without this support those ships would have been laid up. The government’s requirement to reduce the costs of war generally encouraged early termination of transports’ contracts, rather than retaining them for the next big expedition. This occurred particularly between 1807 and 1809. That and the restricted use of naval vessels to convey troops hindered the speedy preparation of exceptionally large expeditions. The study suggests that some of the proposed expeditions were just too big to be managed effectively. Despite the Transport Board’s direct communications with the Secretary of State it was not consulted for advice during the planning of expeditions and consequently the impact of seasonality was ignored and preparation times underestimated. There were inevitably delays in the preparations of expeditions but this thesis demonstrates that the times taken to prepare for major expeditions was between 10 to 16 weeks, not excessive even by today’s standards.

In broad terms, this work aims to gain a greater understanding of the particular features introduced in the regulatory set-up by competitive issues and vertically related markets. Specifically, we explore their impact on the profitability of the market and the p~ssibility for the incumbent to maintain monopoly profits under different regulatory regimes. There was a time when utilities industries and in particular telecoms each seemed to be a natural monopoly. Most governments liked it that way because they owned the monopoly and siphoned off some of the profits. Nowadays, competition is spreading in most utilities market and it becomes imperative to assess its impact on the tariffs and in general on social welfare. We deal with a second degree price discrimination model allowing the players -namely, an incumbent, who has a natural monopoly on the network, and a rival- to make use of non-linear pricing in intermediate and final goods. In this framework the entrant's choice of the customer types is endogenised in a sequential multistage game, where the incumbent, who is undoubtedly the most powerful player, acts as a first mover. We also show that cream skimming, contrary to the general wisdom, can be welfare enhancing. Particular attention is devoted to the access pricing problem which is becoming the key issue to the regulators, examining the relevance of simple pricing rules, such as the Baumol-Willig rule. Despite the presence of a growing literature in these areas, other models fail to incorporate the use of non-linear access pricing. Since price discrimination is common in practice this omission can lead to misleading results. Our analysis shows that the regulator should not allow competition for the low-demand consumers' types or by a less efficient entrant and should impose the adoption of socially optimal non-linear access tariffs. Therefore the general conclusion is that competition will not obviate the need of regulation.

No description available.

M.Com. (Transport Economics) / This study attempts to determine the role of transport in the socio-economic development in South West Africa/Namibia. By analysing the effect of transport policy on transport supply and demand an attempt is made to determine the amount of transport capacity required for continued socio-economic development. Some economic, demographic, physical and political aspects of South West Africa/Namibia are covered as a background to the study. Current international opinion on the role of transport in development is analysed and it is pointed out that although transport is an essential requirement for growth it is not a sufficient means in itself to bring about development ...

D.Com. (Transport Economics) / Countries throughout the world suffer from uneven regional economic growth which can be caused by social, political, economic or geographical problems. The promotion of economic growth on a broad national basis is the method adopted by most countries to lift the standard of living of their people and to eventually eliminate poverty ...

<p> Research with human participants involves a complex combination of procedural elements in order to establish internal, external and measurement validity. Examining the accuracy of research equipment and methods that elicit similar behaviors as the general public is difficult. This research used driving as a model to address elements in the procedures that participants experience to elicit realistic behaviors. </p><p> An instrumented vehicle (IV) and driving simulator (SIM) measured experimental behaviors for average approach speed (in the 20m before the legal stop line); lateral distance from curb at 20m; lateral distance from curb at legal stop line (0m) and the stopping location (distance before or after 0m); and, compared with measured general driving public behaviors at stop-controlled intersections. The linear mixed effect analyses combined two experiments. In both, surveys were administered to gather driver&rsquo;s trait anxiety, driving anxiety and social desirability scores. Experiment One drivers (36% female) were grouped as Novice (5, 16-17 year olds who just obtained driving license), Young (4, 16-17 year olds who obtained license over a year ago) and Adult (5, 30-55 year olds licensed near age 16). Experiment Two drivers (47 SIM, 44 IV; 35% female) were College age (18-21 year olds licensed near age 16) and exposed to 1 of 16 different combinations (one of those treatments matched Experiment One&rsquo;s procedure) of procedural changes for: researcher attire (casual or formal), researcher proximity (control room, front or rear passenger seat), mode of instruction delivery (spoken, read or video) and hypothesis statement (none or explicit). At the end of Experiment Two, participants&rsquo; understanding of the experiment was coded into three debriefing variables. </p><p> Absolute behavioral validity of the IV to public behavior was achieved in one treatment (formal, front seat, spoken and no hypothesis) and including the debriefing variables in the model; no SIM combination achieved this. Trait anxiety scores appeared to explain behaviors in the IV or SIM and improved result interpretation as interactions with other independent variables. For improved research methods, it is recommended that coded debriefing variables, specific procedural elements, and trait anxiety scores be included and used to explain interactions or differences in participant behaviors. </p>

Dynamical network systems are complex interconnected systems useful to describe many real world problems. The advances in information technology has led the current trend towards connecting more and more systems, creating "intelligent" systems, where the intelligence originates in the scale and complexity of the network. With the growing scale of networked systems comes also higher demands on performance and continuous availability and this creates the need for optimization and control of network systems. This thesis makes four important contributions in this area. In the first contribution, we consider a collaborative road freight transportation system. An efficiency measure for the road utilization in collaborative transportation scenarios is introduced, which evaluates the performance of collaboration strategies in comparison to an optimal central planner. The efficiency measure is used to study a freight transport simulation in Germany and taxi trips using real data from New York City. This is followed by a study of the optimal idling locations for trucks, and the optimal locations for distribution centers. These locations are then exploited in a simulation of a realistic collaborative freight transport system. The second contribution studies the important problem of gathering data that are distributed among the nodes in an anonymous network, i.e., a network where the nodes are not endowed with unique identifies. Two specific tasks are considered: to estimate the size of the network, and to aggregate the distribution of local measurements generated by the nodes. We consider a framework where the nodes require anonymity and have restricted computational resources. We propose probabilistic algorithms with low resource requirements, that quickly generate arbitrarily accurate estimates. For dynamical networks, we improve the accuracy through a regularization term which captures the trade-off between the reliability of the gathered data and a-priori assumptions for the dynamics. In the third contribution, a peer-to-peer network is utilized to improve a live-streaming media application. In particular, we study how an overlay network, constructed from simple preference functions, can be used to build efficient topologies that reduce both network latency and interruptions. We present necessary and sufficient convergence conditions, as well as convergence rate estimates, and demonstrate the improvements for a real peer-to-peer video streaming application. The final contribution is a distributed optimization algorithm. We consider a distributed multi-agent optimization problem of minimizing the sum of convex objective functions. A decentralized optimization algorithm is introduced, based on dual decomposition, together with the subgradient method for finding the optimal solution. The convergence rate is analyzed for different step size rules, constant and time-varying communication delays, and noisy communication channels. / Dynamiska nätverkssystem är komplexa sammankopplade system med många praktiska tillämpningar. Den snabba utvecklingen inom informationsteknologin har drivit trenden att sammankoppla större och större system till nätverk av "intelligenta" system, där intelligensen kommer från komplexiteten av nätverken. Med den ökande storleken på nätverkssystemen kommer också ökade krav på dess prestanda och tillgänglighet, vilket är drivkraften bakom utvecklingen av optimering och styrning av nätverkssystem. Den här avhandlingen presenterar fyra viktiga bidrag inom detta område. Det första bidraget handlar om kooperativ lastbilstransport. Först introduceras ett mått som mäter effektiviteten i systemet jämfört med en central planerare. Detta mått används sedan för att utvärdera vinsterna med kooperativa transporter, men används också för att utvärdera taxiförarnas vägval med verkliga data från New York City. Detta följs av en studie av de optimala vänteplatserna för lastbilar och de optimal placeringarna av distributionscentraler. Dessa positioner används sedan för att förbättra transportprestandan i ett kooperativt transportsystem. I det andra bidraget studeras informationsaggregering i anonyma nätverkssystem, det vill säga nätverk där noderna saknar unika identiteter. Två specifika problem hanteras: att estimera storleken på nätverket, och att sammanställa fördelningen av lokala mätvärden i nätverket. Noderna i detta nätverk kräver anonymitet, men antas också ha strikt begränsad beräkningskapacitet. Vi presenterar stokastiska algoritmer med låga beräkningskrav, som dessutom har snabb konvergens och som kan justeras till att ge godtycklig precision. För dynamiska nätverk förbättras prestandan genom att en regulariseringsterm används för att väga observerad data mot förväntat beteende hos systemet. I tredje bidraget analyseras ett peer-to-peer nätverk för direktsänd videodistribution. Speciellt studeras konvergensen av nätverkstopologin som genereras från lokala preferensfunktioner, och hur resultaten kan används för att minska fördröjningarna och avbrotten under videouppspelning. Vi ger nödvändiga och tillräckliga villkor för konvergens, samt karakteriserar gränsvärden för hur snabbt användare kan ansluta eller lämna nätverket utan att påverka prestandan. Det sista bidraget är en distribuerad optimeringsalgoritm. Problemet består i att minimera summan av konvexa funktioner för varje nod i ett nätverk. En decentraliserad optimeringsalgoritm presenteras som baseras på det duala optimeringsproblemet tillsammans med subgradient-metoden. Konvergenshastigheten analyseras för olika val av steglängder, konstanta samt tidsberoende kommunikationsfördröjningar och brusiga kommunikationskanaler. / <p>QC 20161020</p>

No description available.

A significant responsibility of officials involved in transportation planning is ensuring people's accessibility to critical facilities such as multi-modal terminals and emergency shelters. This challenging task depends on the available transportation infrastructure as well as the overall population, traffic, roadway and regional characteristics. Such planning takes on additional complexity when aging populations are considered because any extra time they incur reaching these facilities can be especially confounding in light of their potential health and other safety concerns. As such, there is a need for state/federal transportation plans to have a transportation assessment component that specifically focuses on the accessibility of aging people ('the aging population' can be thought of as those people aged 65+ in this study) to critical facilities. To accomplish this goal, this study first describes a Geographical Information Systems (GIS)-based methodology for measuring the aging population-focused accessibility to multi-modal facilities in Florida. Spatially detailed population block- and county-based accessibility scores are calculated with respect to key intermodal facility types (airports, bus stations, and railway and ferry stations), and visually assessed via GIS maps. Second, a spatial optimization model is presented which focuses on maximizing the accessibility of aging populations to the emergency shelters. For this purpose, a p-median optimization model is proposed in order to minimize the transportation cost (travel time or roadway network distance costs between the origins –centroids of population blocks- and destinations –emergency shelters) in the transportation network, and therefore providing maximum accessibility for aging adults to the emergency shelters. In this context, different transportation costs are used: (a) roadway network distance, (b) free flow travel time, and (c) congested travel time. This model is also extended towards a capacitated p-median model with hubs, which makes it possible to conduct an extensive evaluation of possible intermediate hub locations that can have a significant effect on the accessibility of those shelters. The knowledge obtained from this accessibility analysis can successfully contribute to the development of more reliable aging population-focused transportation plans, as the analysis points to specific areas where accessibility could be improved as well as those candidate locations that can be serve as additional emergency shelters and intermediate hubs. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Fall Semester 2015. / November 6, 2015. / Accessibility, Aging, GIS, Optimization, p-median, Spatial Optimization / Includes bibliographical references. / Eren Erman Ozguven, Professor Directing Thesis; Ren Moses, Committee Member; John O. Sobanjo, Committee Member.