Dynamic spectrum access based on cognitive radio has been regarded as a prospective solution to improve spectrum utilization for wireless communications. By considering the allocation efficiency, fairness, and economic incentives, spectrum marketing has been attracting more and more attentions in recent years. In this thesis, we focus on one of the most effective spectrum marketing methods, i.e., auction approach, in multi-channel cognitive radio networks. After presenting some fundamentals and related works, we begin our discussion in a recall-based auction system where buyers have various service requirements and the seller could recall some sold items after the auction to deal with a sudden increase of its own demand. Both single-winner and multi-winner auctions are designed and analyzed. In addition, we also consider the heterogeneity of radio resource sellers and formulate a framework of combinatorial spectrum auction. With theoretical analyses and simulation results, we show that our proposed algorithms can improve spectrum utilization while satisfy the heterogeneous requirements of different wireless users.

The American Royalties Too (ART) Act of 2014 is the most recent attempt to create a resale royalty, or droit de suite, for visual artists in America. This would entitle visual artists to collect a royalty payment for sales of their work in the secondary market, specifically sales occurring at public auctions. The droit de suite was created in France in 1920, and is now part of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which protects copyrights internationally. The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of droit de suite rights in the United States and abroad, and to analyze the currently proposed ART Act, its limitations, and its potential to create financial benefits for artists.

Reverse Auction Bidding is a recently developed auction method. In this form of bidding process, the roles of the bidders and the owner are interchanged in terms of the form of the economic transaction. The owner's objective is to drive the unit rates down and the bidder's objective is to maintain an acceptable profit level. A study into Reverse Auction Bidding commenced at Texas A&M University in 2004 and continues to this time, with this the eighteenth study in the series. This study is the second multi-group study in the research. In this study, a multiple group comparison was made between different numbers of bidders, with Games One, Two and Three having three, four and ten bidders respectively. All participants were faculty and students from the Department of Construction Science. The critical requirement for the participants is that they should have no prior experience using the Reverse Auction Bidding system. The eighteen studies have concentrated on new players, with future studies planned for repeat participants. A number of the recent case studies have shown personality has an impact on the performance of the bidders. However, this work was not controlled for personality, as the research objective was to determine the impact of a different number of bidders in a game. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter test was completed by all participants so that the results could be understood in terms of personality impact on the level of return to each participant. The results showed the number of bidders has a significant impact on the individual returns confirming the earlier work on varying the number of bidders. An increase in the number of bidders was shown to lead to a more competitive economic environment, which given usual economic circumstances lead to a reduction in the number of firms interested in bidding, for the self-evident economic reasons. This work points to the need to investigate a bidding group size of five or six, which is likely to be the self-constrained upper limit in a real economic system. Some interesting observations on the personality types suggest that further work is required in this area.

A falta de qualidade das obras públicas no Brasil povoa os noticiários diários. Os exemplos são abundantes, atribuídos a contratos mal elaborados, falhas graves nos projetos ou mesmo à ausência desses, licitações frustradas, obras interrompidas e superfaturadas, desvios de recursos e corrupção. Tentar compreender melhor essa situação é a motivação desta dissertação, que discorre sobre a contratação pública de projetos de edificações e, para isso, estuda o projeto e sua encomenda. A licitação é um procedimento obrigatório para a celebração de qualquer contrato público. Entre outros requisitos, a lei de licitações exige que a proposta seja a “mais vantajosa” para a administração, algo que tem levado à adoção indiscriminada do critério do “menor preço”, sendo incoerente com a doutrina jurídica e contrariando as pesquisas científicas, que consideram o projeto relevante para a qualidade final da obra. O problema de pesquisa questiona exatamente por que a Administração Pública tem contratado por menor preço um serviço que deveria ser contratado por critérios técnicos e de qualidade? O objetivo da dissertação é propor uma explicação para essa situação a partir de revisão bibliográfica, análise da legislação, realização de pesquisa documental com editais de licitação, aplicação de questionários de opinião com arquitetos e outros atores, além de entrevista direta com o autor da lei de licitações. Finalmente, o trabalho comprova a relevância do projeto, mas também desvenda sua irrelevância identificando que o menor preço não é o único problema e, mesmo que “todos” afirmem ser contra o menor preço, o povo segue pagando caro por projetos baratos. / The qualityless of public works in Brazil is currently in the daily news. Examples of it are plentiful, attributed to poorly drafted contracts, serious failures or even absence of projects, frustrated bids, discontinued and overpriced works, waste of resources and corruption. The motivation of this dissertation is trying to better understand this situation, which focuses on the public contracting of building projects and, for this, studies the project itself and its order. Bidding is a mandatory procedure for obtaining any public contract. Among other requirements, the bidding law requires that the proposal be the "most advantageous" for the administration, which ledded to the indiscriminate adoption of the "lowest price" criteria, incoerent with the juridical doctrine and opposite to scientific research, which consider the project relevant to the final quality of the building work. The research problem questions why the Public Administration has contracted for a lower price a service that should be contracted by technical and quality criteria? The objective of the dissertation is to propose an explanation for this situation from a bibliographical review, an analysis of the legislation, a documental research on bid’s documents, an opinion questionaries applying to architects and other actors, as well as direct interview with the author of the bidding law. Finally, the research proves the relevance of the project, but also reveals its irrelevance by identifying that the lowest price is not the only problem, and even if "everyone" claims to be against the lowest price, people continue to pay expensive for cheap projects.

A falta de qualidade das obras públicas no Brasil povoa os noticiários diários. Os exemplos são abundantes, atribuídos a contratos mal elaborados, falhas graves nos projetos ou mesmo à ausência desses, licitações frustradas, obras interrompidas e superfaturadas, desvios de recursos e corrupção. Tentar compreender melhor essa situação é a motivação desta dissertação, que discorre sobre a contratação pública de projetos de edificações e, para isso, estuda o projeto e sua encomenda. A licitação é um procedimento obrigatório para a celebração de qualquer contrato público. Entre outros requisitos, a lei de licitações exige que a proposta seja a “mais vantajosa” para a administração, algo que tem levado à adoção indiscriminada do critério do “menor preço”, sendo incoerente com a doutrina jurídica e contrariando as pesquisas científicas, que consideram o projeto relevante para a qualidade final da obra. O problema de pesquisa questiona exatamente por que a Administração Pública tem contratado por menor preço um serviço que deveria ser contratado por critérios técnicos e de qualidade? O objetivo da dissertação é propor uma explicação para essa situação a partir de revisão bibliográfica, análise da legislação, realização de pesquisa documental com editais de licitação, aplicação de questionários de opinião com arquitetos e outros atores, além de entrevista direta com o autor da lei de licitações. Finalmente, o trabalho comprova a relevância do projeto, mas também desvenda sua irrelevância identificando que o menor preço não é o único problema e, mesmo que “todos” afirmem ser contra o menor preço, o povo segue pagando caro por projetos baratos. / The qualityless of public works in Brazil is currently in the daily news. Examples of it are plentiful, attributed to poorly drafted contracts, serious failures or even absence of projects, frustrated bids, discontinued and overpriced works, waste of resources and corruption. The motivation of this dissertation is trying to better understand this situation, which focuses on the public contracting of building projects and, for this, studies the project itself and its order. Bidding is a mandatory procedure for obtaining any public contract. Among other requirements, the bidding law requires that the proposal be the "most advantageous" for the administration, which ledded to the indiscriminate adoption of the "lowest price" criteria, incoerent with the juridical doctrine and opposite to scientific research, which consider the project relevant to the final quality of the building work. The research problem questions why the Public Administration has contracted for a lower price a service that should be contracted by technical and quality criteria? The objective of the dissertation is to propose an explanation for this situation from a bibliographical review, an analysis of the legislation, a documental research on bid’s documents, an opinion questionaries applying to architects and other actors, as well as direct interview with the author of the bidding law. Finally, the research proves the relevance of the project, but also reveals its irrelevance by identifying that the lowest price is not the only problem, and even if "everyone" claims to be against the lowest price, people continue to pay expensive for cheap projects.

The Becker-DeGroot-Marschak method (BDM) is an auction-like mechanism widely used in behavioural economics, marketing research, and, more recently, in neuroimaging studies of human decision making. The BDM has never been used with animal subjects before, yet its application in monkeys would allow for comparison of studies across species while providing a direct measure of what a reward is worth to a monkey in a single experimental trial. In the BDM, a subject is given a budget with which they can place a bid for some reward, and a computer then randomly selects a competing bid. If the subject’s bid is higher than the computer’s bid then the subject pays an amount equal to the computer’s bid, receives the reward object, and gets to keep the remaining budget. If the subject’s bid is lower than the computer’s bid, the subject does not gain the reward object but retains the entire budget. To adapt the task for monkeys, two rhesus macaques were taught to use water as a budget, and to use a joystick to place a bid in terms of this budget for different volumes of fruit-juice reward. The BDM ensures that the subject’s optimal action is to place a bid equal to their value for the reward-object. This property of truthful value revelation is the BDM’s most important feature in the context of value-based decision making. Currently, the only method of eliciting a monkey’s value for one reward in terms of another depends upon inference of the magnitudes at which the two rewards are chosen with equal probability. Using this ‘binary-choice’ method, many trials are needed to infer a single value: pairwise comparisons of many different magnitudes must be made and choices of each pair must be repeated so that the probability of choosing a reward can be estimated. In contrast, the BDM provides a direct measure of the monkey’s value for the reward as they explicitly state this value on each trial by selecting an equivalent bid. Therefore, the BDM more efficiently utilises the limited time in which a monkey’s behaviour can be assessed in each experimental session, as animals lose the motivation to participate when they become sated. The thesis summarised here describes the training and performance of two rhesus macaques on a novel version of the BDM, specifically designed for a subject that cannot be instructed on the optimal strategy. The technical steps and intermediate tasks that are needed to train a monkey to flexibly place bids by operating a joystick are also detailed, as well as the development of different versions of the task over three years of testing. The results of the final version of the BDM are then presented for both monkeys, showing rational bidding behaviour consistent with an understanding of the method’s contingencies. Theoretical concerns and limitations of the BDM in such a setting are also discussed and the thesis outlines how future experiments can make use of and adapt this version of the BDM for neuronal recording experiments.

Alongside the ever increasing traffic demand, the fifth generation (5G) cellular network architecture is being proposed to provide better quality of service, increased data rate, decreased latency, and increased capacity. Without any doubt, the 5G cellular network will comprise of ultra-dense networks and multiple input multiple output technologies. This will make the current centralised solutions impractical due to increased complexity. Moreover, the amount of coordination information that needs to be transported over the backhaul links will be increased. Distributed or decentralised solutions are promising to provide better alternatives. This thesis proposes new distributed algorithms for wireless networks which aim to reduce the amount of system overheads in the backhaul links and the system complexity. The analysis of conflicts amongst transmitters, and resource allocation are conducted via the use of game theory, convex optimisation, and auction theory. Firstly, game-theoretic model is used to analyse a mixed quality of service (QoS) strategic non-cooperative game (SNG), for a two-user multiple-input single-output (MISO) interference channel. The players are considered to have different objectives. Following this, the mixed QoS SNG is extended to a multicell multiuser network in terms of signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) requirement. In the multicell multiuser setting, each transmitter is assumed to be serving real time users (RTUs) and non-real time users (NRTUs), simultaneously. A novel mixed QoS SNG algorithm is proposed, with its operating point identified as the Nash equilibrium-mixed QoS (NE-mixed QoS). Nash, Kalai-Smorodinsky, and Egalitarian bargain solutions are then proposed to improve the performance of the NE-mixed QoS. The performance of the bargain solutions are observed to be comparable to the centralised solutions. Secondly, user offloading and user association problems are addressed for small cells using auction theory. The main base station wishes to offload some of its users to privately owned small cell access points. A novel bid-wait-auction (BWA) algorithm, which allows single-item bidding at each auction round, is designed to decompose the combinatorial mathematical nature of the problem. An analysis on the existence and uniqueness of the dominant strategy equilibrium is conducted. The BWA is then used to form the forward BWA (FBWA) and the backward BWA (BBWA). It is observed that the BBWA allows more users to be admitted as compared to the FBWA. Finally, simultaneous multiple-round ascending auction (SMRA), altered SMRA (ASMRA), sequential combinatorial auction with item bidding (SCAIB), and repetitive combinatorial auction with item bidding (RCAIB) algorithms are proposed to perform user offloading and user association for small cells. These algorithms are able to allow bundle bidding. It is then proven that, truthful bidding is individually rational and leads to Walrasian equilibrium. The performance of the proposed auction based algorithms is evaluated. It is observed that the proposed algorithms match the performance of the centralised solutions when the guest users have low target rates. The SCAIB algorithm is shown to be the most preferred as it provides high admission rate and competitive revenue to the bidders.

The objective of my diploma thesis was to find out the right mixture and usage of realized and planned marketing methods and their expected impact on company business. The diploma thesis resulted in a compact summary of the company marketing effort as well as offered suggestions how to improve imperfections in given areas. For the particular analysis of the market competition I have created an overview of procedures and a selection of techniques usable for information aggregation necessary for current situation analyses of the project marketing. Diploma theses results in a compact summary of corporate situation from the marketing point of view in the chosen Salon Umeni project.

abstract: While network problems have been addressed using a central administrative domain with a single objective, the devices in most networks are actually not owned by a single entity but by many individual entities. These entities make their decisions independently and selfishly, and maybe cooperate with a small group of other entities only when this form of coalition yields a better return. The interaction among multiple independent decision-makers necessitates the use of game theory, including economic notions related to markets and incentives. In this dissertation, we are interested in modeling, analyzing, addressing network problems caused by the selfish behavior of network entities. First, we study how the selfish behavior of network entities affects the system performance while users are competing for limited resource. For this resource allocation domain, we aim to study the selfish routing problem in networks with fair queuing on links, the relay assignment problem in cooperative networks, and the channel allocation problem in wireless networks. Another important aspect of this dissertation is the study of designing efficient mechanisms to incentivize network entities to achieve certain system objective. For this incentive mechanism domain, we aim to motivate wireless devices to serve as relays for cooperative communication, and to recruit smartphones for crowdsourcing. In addition, we apply different game theoretic approaches to problems in security and privacy domain. For this domain, we aim to analyze how a user could defend against a smart jammer, who can quickly learn about the user's transmission power. We also design mechanisms to encourage mobile phone users to participate in location privacy protection, in order to achieve k-anonymity. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Computer Science 2013

O objetivo do presente estudo é identificar as possíveis dimensões que formam a atitude do internauta em relação aos sites de leilão on-line, por meio da aplicação de um instrumento de coleta de dados e posterior avaliação da atitude global. Inicialmente são apresentados os conceitos referentes a atitude sobre uma perspectiva histórica e, os modelos estruturais mais conhecidos e as formas mais utilizadas para se avaliar as atitudes. São apresentados também os conceitos referentes ao comércio eletrônico com foco no modelo de leilões on-line. É desenvolvida uma escala para se medir atitudes, com base tanto na literatura encontrada como por meio de entrevistas com usuários do site. Para se analisar e validar a escala, é feita uma pesquisa exploratória com mais de quinhentos internautas onde por meio do uso de análise fatorial, chega-se a um modelo onde à atitude global foi avaliada. / The aim of this research paper is to identify the dimension of internauts? attitudes towards online auctions? websites through a questionnaire application for data collecting and posterior evaluation of global attitude. This paper presents at first some attitude concepts from a historical perspective, the most known structural models and the most used ways for attitude evaluating. Some concepts about eletronic commerce, focusing on online actions are also discussed. Then a scale was developed based on the literature review and in interviews made with the website?s users, in order to measure attitudes. With the purpose of analyzing and validating the scale an exploratory research was done with more than five hundred internauts and using factorial analysis a model where the global attitude was evaluated has been constructed.