Investigating affordability problems of utility services - a theoretical study on the ratio measure

Unlike in developing countries, there tends to be no problem of access to water, electricity, and heating for private households in transition countries. However, transition countries have a considerable amount of low-income households, and the problem of affordability of these environmental-related utility services remains urgent. Welfare economics literature suggests to neglect affordability aspects by separating allocative from distributive impacts of pricing. In practice, this separation runs the risk of rendering impossible any sustainability-oriented price reform. An Institutional Economics approach takes competing objectives into account. From this viewpoint it appears to be worth investigating the affordability-concept. Although the affordability-related research has escalated remarkably in recent years, the theoretical contributions are still limited. Hence, we focus on the simple ratio measure often used in practice. We analyze the arguments speaking for the 'potential affordability approach'. But we find that - within that approach - adhering formally to the ratio measure is possible only under conditions that make no sense regarding the concern of the measure. Thus for most cases the ratio measure is misleading. Some considerations on practical use for governance conclude the paper. --Affordability,Transition Countries,Utility Services

The price of anarchy in basketball

Optimizing the performance of a basketball offense may be viewed as a network problem, wherein each play represents a "pathway" through which the ball and players may move from origin (the in-bounds pass) to goal (the basket). Effective field goal percentages from the resulting shot attempts can be used to characterize the efficiency of each pathway. Inspired by recent discussions of the "price of anarchy" in traffic networks, this paper makes a formal analogy between a basketball offense and a simplified traffic network. The analysis suggests that there may be a significant difference between taking the highest-percentage shot each time down the court and playing the most efficient possible game. There may also be an analogue of Braess's Paradox in basketball, such that removing a key player from a team can result in the improvement of the team's offensive efficiency.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures; extra example and some discussion added; formatting errors fixed; typo in Sec. IIID fixe

Cooperatives: Issues and trends in developing countries Report of a workshop held in Perth, 24-25 March 2003

Agribusiness,

When geometry emerges: some neglected early contribution to offer-curve analysis

International trade

Trapping of transuranium elements by the earth's magnetic field

The search for a transuranium element component of cosmic radiation has been carried out in high altitude balloon experiments. The trapping of high Z elements on orbits in the Earth's magnetic field may lead to a sufficient enhancement of the intensity of particle flux to make it possible to detect these elements by satellite experiments. Calculations are presented that predict the behavior of trapped particles as a function of the predicted flux and energy distribution of high Z elements incident on the Earth's magnetic field. Techniques are suggested for the detection of such particles. In addition, the possibility of production of transuranium elements in the recently discovered pulsars are discussed

An Introduction to Health Insurance: What Should a Consumer Know?

[Excerpt] Congress has seen a renewed interest in questions related to the market for private health insurance since the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA; P.L. 111- 148, as amended). Recent health insurance marketplace changes include a different way to purchase health insurance (exchanges) and a new system of categorizing the generosity of plans’ health coverage based on the names of various metals (e.g., bronze and silver). Some consumers may face different choices of health insurance plans than in the past. Not all consumers are comfortable with the various concepts governing which health insurance plan might be best for them. This report provides an overview of private-sector (as opposed to government-provided) health insurance. It serves as an introduction to health insurance from the point of view of consumers under the age of 65 who purchase a health insurance plan. No background in health insurance is assumed, and all terms are defined. The report therefore can be viewed as an introduction to the more comprehensive discussion of health insurance found in the Congressional Research Service (CRS) health insurance primer

An optimistic fair e-commerce protocol for large e-goods

Suppose two entities that do not trust each other want to exchange some arbitrary data over a public channel. A fair exchange protocol ensures that both parties get what they want or neither gets anything. In this paper, a fair e-commerce protocol for large e-goods is proposed and implemented. The proposed protocol provides a method for the fair exchange of e-money for e-products, and a method for verifying the contents of the exchanged items. The protocol is optimistic and efficient such that when none of the parties tries to cheat, only three messages are sufficient. In case of disputes, three more messages are needed. Furthermore, the customer remains anonymous after the transaction; thus, no information about the customers' shopping habits can be gathered through the protocol. The implementation results show that the protocol is efficient and secure and that only a small number of cryptographic operations is sufficient

Spartan Daily, September 22, 1980

Volume 75, Issue 15https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/6651/thumbnail.jp

Do Consumers Pay for One-Stop Banking?

The authors use a specialized revenue function to estimate the revenue economies of scope and determine whether banks providing a broad mix of services are able to capitalize on the potential savings in transaction costs afforded their customers. Bank production costs and consumer consumption expenses are thought to be reduced through relationship banking strategies that cultivate one stop shopping for financial services. Much work has been done on estimates of production synergies that correspond to cost economies of scope. The complementarities in the consumption of bank services is potentially as important for bank profitability but it has yet to be examined in detail. Complementarities arise from reductions in user transaction and search costs associated with consuming financial services jointly from the same bank provider, often at the same location, rather than consuming these services separately from different providers at different locations. If benefits from joint consumption are strong, consumers should be willing to pay for them through higher prices at banks that provide services jointly rather than separately. The authors find no evidence of statistically significant revenue complementarities or fixed revenue effects among banks over 1978-1990. Revenues are no larger when deposits and loans are provided jointly rather than separately, and consumers do not pay for one stop banking. This holds for the average small or large bank as well as those on and off the revenue-efficient frontier. Combining revenue scope results with earlier cost scope findings suggests that synergies between bank deposits and loans are small and concentrated in joint production, rather than joint consumption. Consumers may or may not value one stop banking, but they apparently do not have to pay for it.