21,306 research outputs found
Pro-poor water service strategies in developing countries: promoting justice in Uganda’s urban project
Water service to the urban poor presents challenges to political leaders, regulators and managers. We identify technology mixes of yard taps, public water points (with and without pre-paid meters) to meet alternative constraints, and reflecting populations served and investment requirements. Three investment scenarios have different implications for improving water access to over 400,000 citizens in Kampala. One component, pre-paid water meters, can promote social equity and institutional sustainability. If procedural justice is given as much weight as distributive justice in the selection of pro-poor programs, pre-paid meters (the ultimate cost recovery tool) can have a place in the investment plan. The study examines how public stand pipes (and a combination of other options) can meet both financial constraints and social objectives. Financial considerations cannot be wished away when seeking effective strategies for achieving the Millennium Development Goals.Water utility optimization; pro-poor connections; pre-paid meters; cost recovery; Africa; Uganda
Revisiting the strengths and limitations of regulatory contracts in infrastructure industries
This paper evaluates regulation by contract in public-private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure services. Although the benefits of competition for the market and of regulatory contracts are widely acknowledged, the literature indentifies several failures in their design. These ‘flaws’ are present in both developed and developing countries and arise in all types of contracts. This study analyses both short and long term contracts, focusing on purely contractual PPPs and institutionalized PPPs (mixed companies). The evidence suggests that for all kinds of contracts, the major problems tend to arise in the preparation of public tender documents: the ‘best’ bidder is not often the winner. The likely results include redistribution in favor of the private partner, weak incentives for high performance, and renegotiation of contracts. Moreover, risks are not allocated correctly nor is effective monitoring ensured. This review of contract procedures and design allows us to draw several implications for policy-makers and to present suggestions and recommendations for improving regulatory contracts.regulation by contract; bidding documents; contract design; risk; monitoring
Quantitative studies of water and sanitation utilities: a literature survey
This paper performs a literature update of quantitative studies of water and sanitation services (WSS). There are 190 studies which use cost or production functions to evaluate the performance of WSS utilities. The studies examine (1) the scale, scope or density economies of utilities in a particular country or region, (2) the influence of ownership on efficiency, (3) the existence and power of incentives associated with different governance systems (including external regulation), and (4) performance assessment (benchmarking). In addition, this paper presents some patterns regarding quantitative methods adopted over time and major trends in results.benchmarking; water and sanitation utilities; literature survey
Non-Extensive Bose-Einstein Condensation Model
The imperfect Boson gas supplemented with a gentle repulsive interaction is
completely solved. In particular it is proved that it has non-extensive
Bose-Einstein condensation, i.e., there is condensation without macroscopic
occupation of the ground state (k=0) level
Commodity and Financial Networks in Regional Economics
The article discusses the relationship between commodity-production and financial network structures in the regional economy as dual conjugate systems. Material flows (raw materials, goods and so on) circulate in the commodity network as shown by Leontiev’s input-output balance model. Nonmaterial flows of property rights, money, and so on circulate in the financial network and reflect the movement of material objects in commodity networks. A network structure comprises closed and open circuits, which have fundamentally different characteristics: locally closed circuits meet local demand by supplying locally produced goods, thus ensuring self-reproduction of the local economy; open (or transit) circuits provide export-import flows. The article describes the mechanism of ‘internal’ money generation in closed circuits of commodity-production networks. The results of the theoretical study are illustrated by the calculations of closed and open circuit flows in the municipal economy model. Mutual settlements between the population and manufacturing enterprises are given in matrix form. It was found that the volume of the turnover in closed circuits of the municipal economic network model is about 28.5 % of the total turnover and can be provided by ‘internal’ non-inflationary money. The remaining 71.5 % of the total turnover correspond to the flows in the network’s open circuits providing export and import. The conclusion is made that in the innovation-driven economy, main attention should be given to the projects oriented towards domestic consumption rather than export supplies. The economy is based on internal production cycles in closed circuits. Thus, it is necessary to find the chains in the inter-industrial and inter-production relations which could become the basis of the production cycle. Money investments will complete such commodity chains and ‘launch’ the production cycle.The work has been prepared with the supprot of the Ural Federal University within the UrFU Program for the winners of the competition “Young Scientists of UrFU” No. 2.1.1.1-14/43
The Canonical Perfect Bose Gas in Casimir Boxes
We study the problem of Bose-Einstein condensation in the perfect Bose gas in
the canonical ensemble, in anisotropically dilated rectangular parallelpipeds
(Casimir boxes). We prove that in the canonical ensemble for these anisotropic
boxes there is the same type of generalized Bose-Einstein condensation as in
the grand-canonical ensemble for the equivalent geometry. However the amount of
condensate in the individual states is different in some cases and so are the
fluctuations.Comment: 23 page
Regulation and corporate corruption: new evidence from the telecom sector
This paper examines how government regulation in developing countries affects the form of corruption between business customers and service providers in the telecom sector. We match the World Bank enterprise-level data on bribes with a unique cross-country telecom regulation dataset collected by Wallsten et al. (2004), finding that 1) strong regulatory substance (the content of regulation) and regulatory governance reduce corruption; 2) competition and privatization reduces corruption; 3) the effects of regulatory substance on corruption control are stronger in countries with state-owned or partially state-owned telecoms, greater competition, and higher telecommunication fees; and 4) bureaucratic quality exert substitution effects to regulatory substance in deterring corruption. Overall, our results suggest that regulatory strategies that reduce information asymmetry and increase accountability tend to reduce illegal side-payments for connections.Telecommunications; Regulation; Corruption
On a P\'olya functional for rhombi, isosceles triangles, and thinning convex sets
Let be an open convex set in with finite width, and
let be the torsion function for , i.e. the solution of
. An upper bound is obtained for the product
of , where
is the bottom of the spectrum of the Dirichlet Laplacian
acting in . The upper bound is sharp in the limit of a thinning
sequence of convex sets. For planar rhombi and isosceles triangles with area
, it is shown that , and that this bound is sharp.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
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