Lebanon's response to the Syrian Refugee crisis – Institutional ambiguity as a governance strategy

Contains fulltext : 215888.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access) Contains fulltext : 215888a.pdf (author's version ) (Open Access)In comparison with other regional host countries Lebanon's response to the Syrian refugee crisis is characterized by a remarkable degree of institutional ambiguity. Government policy has centered on the prohibition of formal refugee camps and adopted regulations with regard to registration, residence, and work which drive refugees into illegality. This is partly the result of the chaotic and overwhelming nature of any refugee crisis, which is only reinforced by the Lebanese government's limited resources and capacities and the country's dysfunctional political system. However, institutional ambiguity in the context of the Lebanese response to the Syrian refugee crisis is not merely contingent. Departing from agnotology theory, this article demonstrates that there is also a strategic component to the institutional ambiguity that now determines the life of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. On the basis of fieldwork among Syrian refugee communities, elaborate policy analysis, and an extensive literature review the article reveals the political utility of maintaining uncertainty and precariousness. These insights have profound implications for the analysis of refugee politics and the formulation of policy recommendations.01 februari 201911 p

The Plight of Small Issuers Under the Securities Act of 1933: Practical Foreclosure From the Capital Market

The thesis of this Article is simple: the Securities Act of 1933 does not work very well for small issuers, a premise which the Securities and Exchange Commission appeared to tacitly recognize in a series of announcements released early this year. Because of a combination of exorbitant costs, unmanageable levels of ambiguity, unworkable resale provisions and contamination caused by prior illegal sales of stock, a small issuer often is unable to comply with the 1933 Act. As a result it may be difficult or even impossible for a small issuer to raise capital by selling stock. There are obvious pernicious effects caused by this inability to exploit one form of financing. One such effect is that both the issuer and society may be denied the benefits of competition if the issuer is unable to secure the funds necessary for expansion. Although it cannot be seriously contended that alterations in the 1933 Act suddenly can turn around a faltering economy or interject meaningful competition in traditionally oligopolistic industries, the 1933 Act does unreasonably impede the capital formation that small businesses require in order to have any chance of competing with larger concerns. It should be made clear at the outset that the thesis of this Article is not that the 1933 Act never works smoothly and rationally for the small issuer. Occasionally a small issuer is able to meet the requirements of the 1933 Act without undue burden and with a reasonable degree of safety. Unfortunately, however, that is the exception and not the rule. More typically a small issuer is confronted with hyper-technical rules and interpretations that seem to have lost all contact with legitimate policy. The small company may also be faced with required procedures to which he simply cannot conform, and with pervasive vagueness that boggles the keenest legal minds

The Internet as a Service Channel in the Public Sector : A substitute or complement of traditional service channels?

The Internet has been used as a channel for public service delivery since the mid 1990’s. During the first years of its existence it was believed to be the service channel of the future, making all other channels obsolete. But until now, the telephone and face-to-face contact remain being used more frequently and are rated higher. By comparing various studies that have recently been conducted in a number of countries, this paper suggests that the characteristics of the channel make it a suitable channel for basic transactions and simple information provision, and that the telephone and face-to-face contact remain prevalent for at least ambiguous and complex tasks. Therefore the Internet might be a complementary channel rather than a substitute of traditional channels. Research findings are interpreted by means of Media Richness Theory, the Social Influence model and Channel Expansion Theory

OSGAR: a scene graph with uncertain transformations

An important problem for augmented reality is registration error. No system can be perfectly tracked, calibrated or modeled. As a result, the overlaid graphics are not aligned perfectly with objects in the physical world. This can be distracting, annoying or confusing. In this paper, we propose a method for mitigating the effects of registration errors that enables application developers to build dynamically adaptive AR displays. Our solution is implemented in a programming toolkit called OSGAR. Built upon OpenSceneGraph (OSG), OSGAR statistically characterizes registration errors, monitors those errors and, when a set of criteria are met, dynamically adapts the display to mitigate the effects of the errors. Because the architecture is based on a scene graph, it provides a simple, familiar and intuitive environment for application developers. We describe the components of OSGAR, discuss how several proposed methods for error registration can be implemented, and illustrate its use through a set of examples

DEA-Based Incentive Regimes in Health-Care Provision

A major challenge to legislators, insurance providers and municipalities will be how to manage the reimbursement of health-care on partially open markets under increasing fiscal pressure and an aging population. Although efficiency theoretically can be obtained by private solutions using fixed-payment schemes, the informational rents and production distortions may limit their implementation. The healthcare agency problem is characterized by (i) a complex multi-input multi-output technology, (ii) information uncertainty and asymmetry, and (iii) fuzzy social preferences. First, the technology, inherently nonlinear and with externalities between factors, yield parametric estimation difficult. However, the flexible production structure in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) offers a solution that allows for the gradual and successive refinement of potentially nonconvex technologies. Second, the information structure of healthcare suggests a context of considerable asymmetric information and considerable uncertainty about the underlying technology, but limited uncertainty or noise in the registration of the outcome. Again, we shall argue that the DEA dynamic yardsticks (Bogetoft, 1994, 1997, Agrell and Bogetoft, 2001) are suitable for such contexts. A third important characteristic of the health sector is the somewhat fuzzy social priorities and the numerous potential conflicts between the stakeholders in the health system. Social preferences are likely dynamic and contingent on the disclosed information. Similarly, there are several potential hidden action (moral hazard) and hidden information (adverse selection) conflicts between the different agents in the health system. The flexible and transparent response to preferential ambiguity is one of the strongest justifications for a DEA-approach. DEA yardstick regimes have been successfully implemented in other sectors (electricity distribution) and we present an operalization of the power-parameter p in an pseudo-competitive setting that both limits the informational rents and incites the truthful revelation of information. Recent work (Agrell and Bogetoft, 2002) on strategic implementation of DEA yardsticks is commented in the healthcare context, where social priorities change the tradeoff between the motivation and coordination functions of the yardstick. The paper is closed with policy recommendations and some areas of further work.Data Envelopment Analysis, regulation, health care systems, efficiency, Health Economics and Policy,