I study the implications of exclusive contracts for smartphones. Theory models indicate that lower demand elasticities for handsets relative to wireless networks could lead to exclusive contracts maximizing joint profits of the contracting parties. I estimate smartphone and carrier demand on a detailed monthly market-level dataset of US consumer decisions over 2008-2010. Counterfactual simulati...

Much like tort reform, the debate over recently enacted legislation on biotech drugs—and particularly regulatory supplements to patent protection— has taken on a significance that dwarfs its impact on prescription drug expenditures. Under the Health Care Reform legislation, Congress enacted two major reforms: First, creation of an abbreviated Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval process ...

In the recently discovered sound-induced illusory flash phenomenon, a single flash accompanied with two auditory beeps is perceived as two flashes in a majority of trials. Here we asked what the neural substrates distinguishing illusion and no-illusion (i.e. perception of single flash) percepts are under identical stimulus configuration. Wavelet based method was used to analyze gamma band (> 30...

for some 3 million years, the archaeological record is characterized by stone tools undergoing incremental changes. then around 40,000 years ago, the monotony of lithics is terminated by a profusion of visual representations, generally considered to be the world’s first objets d’art. this collection include a series of portable objects, especially figurines and, later on, the famous cave painti...

Visua l illusion is the fallacious percep ti on of rea lity or some ac t ua lly existi ng object. In t his paper , we imit at e the mechanism of Ehrenst ein illusion, neon color sp readi ng illnsion , wa te r­ color illusion, Kanizsa illusion, shifted edg es illusion , and hybrid image illusion using t he O pen Source Comput er Vision Library (OpenCV). We also im itate th ese illusions using Ce...

Visual perception can be modulated by sounds. A drastic example of this is the sound-induced flash illusion: when a single flash is accompanied by two bleeps, it is sometimes perceived in an illusory fashion as two consecutive flashes. However, there are strong individual differences in proneness to this illusion. Some participants experience the illusion on almost every trial, whereas others a...

Ever since the emergence of the relational database model, the problem of incompleteness has been studied extensively. Declarative semantics for disjunctive databases widely adopt two methodologies representing opposite ends of the spectrum Minker’s GCWA interprets disjunctions exclusively while Ross and Topor’s DDR interprets them inclusively. We argue that the use of either one as the semanti...

The scintillating grid illusion refers to an illusory perception of black spots on the luminance increments at the intersections of gray grids on a black background. In this study, we examined how the shape of luminance increments modulated the strength of the illusion. In Experiment 1, we concurrently controlled the size and shape of luminance increments, and found significant reduction of the...

The hollow-face illusion, in which a mask appears as a convex face, is a powerful example of binocular depth inversion occurring with a real object under a wide range of viewing conditions. Explanations of the illusion are reviewed and six experiments reported. In experiment 1 the detrimental effect of figural inversion, evidence for the importance of familiarity, was found for other oriented o...