Analysis of UK Parliament Web Sites for Disability Accessibility

The growth of the Internet has led to an increase in the number of public services offered by U.K. government entities on their Web sites. A variety of consumers use e-government sites, and those individuals with disabilities are guaranteed the same access government sites under the U.K.’s Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) of 1995. This law provides equality in access, and implements penalties for non-adherence to the law. Industry standards also exist which helps site developers to create better site accessibility. However, despite both standards and legal regulations, total openness of sites for people with disabilities is still not widespread. The purpose of this study is to examine the level of accessibility of a randomly selected sample of 130 members of the U.K. House of Commons. Each site was analyzed using an online software tool –Truwex - to determine if they met industry Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) levels 1.0 and 2.0 standards and DDA law. The results showed that the majority of the sites did not meet either guidelines or legal mandates. Many of the sites displayed similar precedents when it came to the types of non-compliance, and could easily improve compliance with minor changes

Academic Affairs Happenings, Volume 1, Issue 1

The Newsletter is an ongoing publication that highlights the wide range of work in which RWU faculty and students are engaged

Technical Efficiency Evaluation: Naturally Dual!

We provide a dual perspective on technical efficiency evaluation, in two respects. First, we build on the price assumptions implicitly associated with the notion of technical efficiency in a general equilibrium framework to characterize a set of appropriate references to be used in the technical efficiency evaluation of an input-output vector. Some existing evaluation methods always select an element of this set, but other methods fail to do so. Second, the above framework leads us to assert that a well-grounded measure of technical efficiency is naturally decomposable. One part refers to technical efficiency as captured by the classical Debreu-Farrell measure. The other part refers to technical efficiency resulting from the “implicit allocative efficiency” or “mix efficiency” of the evaluated vector. We present both a quantity-based distance measure and its price-based equivalent to evaluate this complementary dimension of technical efficiency. This generalized perspective encompasses the standard Debreu-Farrell framework for technical efficiency evaluation, and makes it fully consistent with the well-established Koopmans efficiency notion.

Dictatorship in a single export crop economy

Is it a matter of pure altruism or short-sightedness when a dictator spends an increasing amount of his revenues for the population, while cutting on own consumption? In order to be able to consume, the dictator first has to stay in power. We present a formal model of a power maximizing dictator. His revenues depend on the exports of a single crop. With the export earnings the dictator buys loyalty from the producers of the export crop by setting the domestic producer price. Revenues resulting from the difference between the international and the domestic price of the crop are used to finance a repressive apparatus. We characterize the optimal trade-off between buying more loyalty and adapting the level of repression. The model is illustrated with a case study of Rwanda under president Habyarimana (1973-94).dictatorship, political economy, coffee, Rwanda.

On the reconciliation of efficiency and inequality aversion with heterogeneous populations: characterization results

We characterize a family of r-extended generalized Lorenz dominance quasi-orderings and a family of r-Gini welfare orderings, on the basis of two allegedly "incompatible" axioms for heterogeneous welfare comparisons (Ebert, 1997, Ebert and Moyes, 2003, Shorrocks, 1995), but at the cost of either completeness or separability.heterogeneous welfare comparisons, equivalent income functions.

A collective model for female labour supply with nonparticipation and taxation

In this paper, a collective discrete choice model is presented for female labour supply. Both preferences of females and the intrahousehold decision process are econometrically identifiable. The model incorporates nonparticipation and nonlinear taxation. It is applied to Belgian microdata and is used to evaluate the 2001 Tax Reform Act. We find moderate negative behavioural responses to the reform. The tax reform further implies a Pareto improvement for most of the households in the sample.collective household models; intrahousehold allocation; labour supply; tax reform; identification

And the winner is... An empirical evaluation of two competing approaches to household labour supply

In this paper, an empirical evaluation is presented of two competing flexible labour supply models. The first is a standard unitary model, while the second is based on the collective approach to household behaviour. The evaluation focuses on the testing of the models' theoretical implications, on their ability to identify structural information, like preferences and on their empirical performance. Models are estimated on Belgian microdata from 1992 and 1997. The unitary model cannot be rejected for single person households, while it is rejected for a sample of two person households. The alternative collective model cannot be rejected for the same sample. However, since the crucial assumption of egoistic or Beckerian caring individual preferences is rejected, the comparative advantage of the collective model as basis for intrahousehold welfare evaluations cannot be fully exploited. Finally, the collective model has the best empirical fit.collective household models; household bargaining; intrahousehold allocation; labour supply

Globalisation and Social Spending

We provide evidence indicating that countries with well-developed social security systems do not necessarily face a trade-off between social spending and competitiveness. On average, countries that spend a lot on social needs score well in the competitiveness league. We investigate the importance of a reverse causality from competitiveness to social spending, and find that this is weak. We also present some possible explanations for our empirical finding. Finally, we interpret our findings in the framework of a theoretical model in which risk affects the size of the social sector and in which social spending affects the production function of the private sector.economic integration, globalisation, terms-of-trade variability, international trade