Regulatory Reform and the Promise of New Telecommunications Infrastructure in New Jersey

The information superhighway is depicted as important to maintaining national competitiveness in a global economy. The concept is particularly evident in the state of New Jersey and its legislatively supported plan, Opportunity New Jersey, to deploy advanced telecommunications technologies to all homes and businesses in just 20 yr. This case study of the decision-making process behind the passage of the New Jersey legislation illustrates how telecommunications companies have worked to couple their desire for less regulation with the desire of state officials for economic development, by promising to upgrade the infrastructure of the public network. With the upgrade promise comes a hoped-for economic development payoff in education, through distance learning, in health care, through telemedicine, and especially in new jobs, by attracting information-intensive businesses, like finance and insurance, to relocate in their service areas. The lack of clear connection between infrastructure investments and economic development means that the twenty-first century will come before strategies such as this are proven.     

How Institutional Incentives and Constraints Affect the Progress of Science 1

Much electronic commerce literature addresses the potential existence of digital divides between different classes of users. While many studies document users reported perceptions of disadvantage or cite infrastructure availability benchmarks, few studies quantify the extent of such divides in actual uptake and usage of electronic communications tools. This study seeks to quantify the extent of perceived rural-urban digital divides among businesses in New Zealand. Yellow Pages business register data are analysed to determine business uptake of e-mail and websites by location. The results challenge conventional perceptions of disadvantage on the basis of geography alone. Indeed, some provincial areas demonstrate higher uptake of business e-mail than their urban counterparts. Smaller and more remote provincial centre businesses are more likely to be using e-mail than their counterparts closer to the metropolitan centres. Those centres most remote from New Zealand's traditional commercial centre demonstrate higher uptake than those closer. Explanations based upon disadvantages such as poor telephony infrastructure appear inadequate in accounting for these observations. Rather, we contend that while infrastructure may play some part in the explanation for low rural hinterland uptake, the results of this study are consistent with economic determinations of the optimal time to invest in new technologies. Specifically, higher provincial and rural communication costs are a significant factor in encouraging higher and earlier levels of provincial and rural e-mail adoption, and the optimal time to invest in website adoption depends more upon firm size, local economic conditions and product than infrastructure quality and business location.     

环境规制是否倒逼了创新驱动的地区产业转型升级？

   本文借助于“两控区”政策冲击,选取1994—2010年中国地级市面板数据和国家专利数据,运用倍差法,研究了环境规制对地区产业转型升级的影响及其机制。研究发现：环境规制显著地促进了地区产业转型升级,且在长期内其政策效应呈现出逐渐减弱的趋势。使用不同的产业转型升级指标等稳健性检验表明,我们的结论基本不变。同时,政策效应存在地区异质性,即它只是显著地促进了中部地区的产业转型升级。进一步机制研究发现：环境规制并不是通过资本深化渠道和外资溢出效应渠道,而是通过技术创新渠道倒逼了地区产业转型升级。     

县域科技信息工作新论

县域科技信息工作,是我国科技信息事业发展大系统中的基础要素。社会主义市场经济体制的运行、世界经济国际化的大趋势,赋予了县域科技信息工作以全新的内涵和外延。县域科技信息工作出现了新的特点(用户组成的社会性、需求内容的多元性、需求产品或服务的优质性、供需关系的矛盾性),应通过实施新的策略(系统发展策略、强基固本策略、价值增殖策略),使全部业务转入以信息资源为基础、信息需求为导向、开发利用为主体的新轨迹。     

国家级新区带动欠发达地区“弯道超车”研究

兰州新区被赋予了“西北地区重要经济增长极”的战略使命，然而这种旧有的政策“创新”还能够发挥政策效应，实现欠发达地区发展的“弯道超车”吗？为了廓清此问题，本文通过合成控制法，收集了2005-2019年15个省会城市的面板数据，以2012年兰州新区的设立为准自然实验，检验了设立兰州新区的经济增长政策效应。实证结果表明：兰州新区的设立确实带动了地区经济的增长，且这一结论具有稳健性，说明设置国家级新区的老政策“创新”依然可以作为欠发达地区“弯道超车”的工具带动地区经济增长，但兰州新区与其他国家级新区的发展仍存在一定的差距，表明政策创新需要与之匹配的政策基础设施，未来需要建设、完善它们。     

光纤物理网的规划与建设策略研究

随着网络通信技术的日益发展和宽带通信业务的普遍展开,建立、发展宽带化、智能化、个人化及适应多媒体通信赖以支撑的高速光纤物理网,已成为当前通信发展的重点。建设光纤物理网是电信运营商全面提升网络技术层次,优化网络结构和实现宽带通信的必要条件。本文分析了光纤物理网的规划与建设策略。     

数字城乡融合发展的逻辑基础、实践道路与推动策略*

本文围绕数字城乡融合发展这一前沿议题,立足唯物史观的辩证视角分析其逻辑基础,并考察中国特色的实践进程,旨在提出数字赋能城乡发展的新思路。研究认为,数字城乡融合发展表现为统筹新型智慧城市与数字乡村建设的过程,是辩证逻辑、演化逻辑与价值逻辑的统一。当前实践主要聚焦于基础设施协同,产业融合互促,公共服务普惠和治理手段升级等,要加快以人民为中心的城乡数字化转型,通过打造特色模式、转换增长动力、营造服务空间和提升居民福祉等,形成技术进步与人文智慧结合的解决方案,让新型智慧城市和数字乡村能够在数字赋能空间中彼此交融,服务于人的自由而全面发展。     

Turning loose the invisible hand: New Zealand's information technology policy

Abstract

Information technology (IT) policy in New Zealand has closely paralleled the broader economic policies that have prevailed in the country. Until the mid‐1980s, economic policy was inwardly oriented, marked by high trade barriers and heavy government regulation. In 1984, the Labor government responded to a balance of payments crisis with a radical program of economic liberalization. By the end of the decade, this process had fundamentally altered the New Zealand economy through deregulation, privatization, and public sector reform.

IT policy likewise moved from protectionism and centralized control to almost pure laissez faire. Tariffs on computer hardware were lowered from 40% to 10%. Government computing was moved from a central data processing bureau and placed under the control of individual departments. In terms of IT production, the government has refused to provide any significant incentives or subsidies to the fledgling software industry, feeling the industry should succeed or fail on its own.

Under laissez faire policies, New Zealand has become a heavy user of IT, ranking behind only Japan in the Asia‐Pacific region for IT spending as a percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). It has also had some success as a producer and exporter of software. However, the hands‐off approach to the industry is likely to prove problematic in an international environment in which many countries have explicit strategies to improve their infrastructure for IT production and/or directly subsidize the industry. New Zealand is unlikely to become a hardware producer, but it has a number of endowments favoring software production, particularly its well‐educated, English‐speaking workforce. However, it faces obstacles, such as a small domestic market, distance from international markets, and a shortage of venture capital. Although software may be a potential growth industry in the ailing New Zealand economy, it is unclear whether the industry can thrive without at least some government support. Even the government now seems to be considering this possibility, and is considering the creation of an IT unit within the Ministry of Commerce.     

Telecommunications and Transnationalism: The Polarization of Social Space

This article critically assesses the policy orientation, social impacts, and linkages of telecommunications in the United States within a government deregulated policy environment and an increasingly globalized economy. Deregulation has been driven by both ideological and technological demands, stemming from several political and economic transformations in the world economy, the collapse of state socialism in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and greater oligopolistic competition among transnational corporations. An expanded infrastructure of new digital information and communications technology (ICT) is the foundation of a worldwide political economic regime of accumulation. ICT increases command and control capabilities of large corporations, together with the mobility and liquidity of capital, making it essential to the restructuring of the world economy, the new international division of labor, and the creation of global "information city" networks. At the same time, government deregulation and rapid technological change are associated with a number of spatial, economic, and social dualisms.     

New Evidence on the Common Ancestry of Tetrapods and Lungfish

As reported in a recent issue of Nature (Aug. 15, 2002),two Chinese scientists pinpoint their newly discovered fossil fish as the most direct piece of evi dence on the common ancestry shared by tetrapods (all land verte brates including human beings) and lungfish. This latest advance in studying the origin and evolution of early fishes was jointly made by Professor Zhu Min from the CAS Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology and his colleague Yu Xiaobo, now a Professor at the Biology Department of Kean University (New Jersey, USA).     

The Internet Backbone and the American Metropolis

Despite the rapid growth of advanced telecommunications services, there is a lack of knowledge about the geographic diffusion of these new technologies. The Internet presents an important challenge to communications researchers, as it threatens to redefine the production and delivery of vital services including finance, retailing, and education. This article seeks to address the gap in the current literature by analyzing the development of Internet backbone networks in the United States between 1997 and 1999. We focus upon the intermetropolitan links that have provided transcontinental data transport services since the demise of the federally subsidized networks deployed in the 1970s and 1980s. We find that a select group of seven highly interconnected metropolitan areas consistently dominated the geography of national data networks, despite massive investment in this infrastructure over the study period. Furthermore, while prosperous and internationally oriented American cities lead the nation in adopting and deploying Internet technologies, interior regions and economically distressed cities have failed to keep up. As information-based industries and services account for an increasing share of economic activity, this evidence suggests that the Internet may aggravate the economic disparities among regions, rather than level them. Although the capacity of the backbone system has slowly diffused throughout the metropolitan system, the geographic structure of interconnecting links has changed little. Finally, the continued persistence of the metropolis as the center for telecommunications networks illustrates the need for a more sophisticated understanding of the interaction between societies and technological innovations.     

新工科背景下土木工程专业人才培养模式改革探索

新工科建设成为我国高等院校发展的热点问题,该文解析了新工科建设的基本要义、新特点、人才培养目标。作者结合石河子大学的教学实践,提出了新工科建设的路径与方法:将课程思政融入新工科专业教育;完善新工科人才培养体系;推动学生创新多元协同模式的发展;为学生创业营造孵化环境。     

经济增长:技术创新与产业结构升级的协同效应

在经济全球化背景下,技术创新是推动中国稳定跨过“结构性减速”阶段的重要动力。基于中国2009-2018年的省级面板数据,构建三种空间权重矩阵,运用空间计量模型实证分析了不同技术创新模式对区域经济发展的影响作用,探讨了“技术创新-产业结构升级”对经济发展的协同效应,并进一步分阶段对比分析了技术创新、产业结构升级与区域经济发展的内在关系。实证结果表明：（1）技术创新与区域经济发展具有显著的空间相关性;且技术引进、模仿创新及自主创新对区域经济发展具有正向促进作用,其中自主创新最为显著。（2）三种技术创新是否可以提速经济发展取决于产业结构高级化程度。随着产业结构的升级,技术引进和模仿创新对经济发展的增速作用逐渐减缓。（3）产业结构升级对经济增速的作用受技术创新投入的影响。在产业结构既定的前提下,技术创新投入越多,产业结构升级的边际经济效应越小。（4）我国在产业结构不断升级的过程中,各产业通过逐步提高其对技术创新投入的承载吸收能力,实现产业技术水平的全面提升,进而保证区域经济的持续发展。     

基于网络图形分析的ICT技术收敛实证研究

技术收敛表现为技术的逆-多样化发展,本文在分析技术收敛与技术多样化的创新效应及其与经济增长关系的基础上,利用Shannon-Wiener指数和网络图形分析法分别对我国ICT领域的技术多样化与技术收敛进行了实证分析。结论表明,总体而言ICT领域中电信和其他ICT领域的技术多样化程度最高,但从动态角度看,计算机、办公器械领域的技术多样化最高且波动性较大;在技术收敛方面,H04L、G06F、H04B、H04M、H04Q、H04N、G01S、G08C和H01L在ICT领域出现了产业内的技术收敛,而H05K在ICT领域出现了产业间的技术收敛。实证结果也表明了电信领域是最易产生技术收敛的领域,因此电信领域的技术研发对其他领域的发展具有巨大的促进作用,企业应尽可能地关注电信领域的技术研发动向,寻找技术的契合点。     

知识积累、经济增长与产业结构演进

本文在新增长理论框架内通过一简单动态模型证明了经济系统在农业社会的增长停滞以及工业化之后的自我增长。理论证实一国均衡产业结构发展将依次循序演进。上述论点可为后起国发展政策提供理论指导。     

滨海新区发展循环经济的目标模式与实现模式

滨海新区循环经济发展的目标模式是在区域生态循环系统和基础设施系统支撑下的循环型经济系统和社会系统的有机组合与共生。其实现模式可分解为循环型生产系统、流通服务系统、消费系统、社会系统、区域生态循环系统以及区域基础设施系统等子系统的发展模式。     

国外电信业公私合作的做法及启示

在建设信息化社会的过程中,国外一些国家或地区电信业出现了政府部门重掌其发展规划、投资建议、并与私营部门合作经营的新趋势。本文介绍了荷兰、意大利、澳大利亚和新西兰电信业采用公私合作的做法,总结了国外电信业公私合作的特征,并结合中国电信业的现状,分析了国外电信业公私合作做法对中国电信业的启示,以期对中国的信息化建设提供借鉴。     

交通基础设施投资与经济增长的动态效应分析——基于VAR模型的实证研究

从多因素共生角度出发,将Solow模型中的资本进行分解,即交通基础设施资本投入、其他基础设施资本投入、非基础设施资本投入。利用1978—2009年的各种资本投入与经济增长情况的年度数据,构建反映交通基础设施投资与经济增长的动态关系VAR(向量自回归)模型,并把其他基础设施资本投入、非基础设施资本投入纳入研究框架与模型中,运用脉冲响应函数和方差分解分析交通基础设施投资与经济增长的动态效应。结果表明,交通基础设施投资与经济增长之间保持着长期稳定的均衡关系,交通基础设施投资的变动趋势比经济增长更加敏感,并受经济增长的影响远远大于交通基础设施投资对经济增长的影响。与其他基础设施资本投入和非基础设施资本投入相比,交通基础设施投资对经济增长的贡献度逐年增加并持久。因此,交通基础设施投资相对中国经济增长乃至整个经济系统来讲应视为内生变量。     

滨海新区区域科技创新平台网络化发展研究

站在区域政府的立场,强化区域的整体创新优势是其最重要的课题之一.滨海新区作为中国经济增长的新引擎,其经济竞争力必然要依靠科技创新.而其科技创新首先要解决的关键问题就是区域整体创新和共性技术研发的问题.结合滨海新区发展实际,分析了滨海新区科技创新平台网络化发展亟需解决的关键问题,从构建原则、网络结构、运行机制等方面对滨海新区科技创新平台的网络化发展提出了建议.     

Telecommunications technologies: New approaches to consumer information dissemination

Abstract

Since access to knowledge is a critical source of political and economic power, the new telecommunications technologies pose a challenge to business, government, and the academic community as well as private persons. The individual and social uses of the most recent technological applications in this field are explored in this paper; problems related to the harnessing of these advances to individual information needs and some of the policy issues generated by the new technologies are also discussed.