352 research outputs found
Efficacy of Telephone Information and Advice on Welfare: the Need for Realist Evaluation
In the context of increased marketisation in welfare provision, formal information and advice (I&A) is widely assumed to enable users, as consumers, to make informed choices about services, support and care. There is emerging evidence that telephone I&A services represent important ways of providing such services. This article proposes a framework that identifies key areas of focus delineating the efficacy of I&A, which is then used in a comprehensive literature review to critique existing research on outcomes and/or impact of telephone I&A. Existing, predominately quantitative, research has critical weaknesses. There is a lack of adequate contextual focus, understanding agency, and how I&A is used in different contexts to influence causal processes. The article contends that the efficacy of I&A is not adequately reported and provides much needed theoretical clarity in key areas, including the desirability of further realist evaluation approaches
License prices for financially constrained firms
It is often alleged that high auction prices inhibit service deployment. We investigate this claim under the extreme case of financially constrained bidders. If demand is just slightly elastic, auctions maximize consumer surplus if consumer surplus is a convex function of quantity (a common assumption), or if consumer surplus is concave and the proportion of expenditure spent on deployment is greater than one over the elasticity of demand. The latter condition appears to be true for most of the large telecom auctions in the US and Europe. Thus, even if high auction prices inhibit service deployment, auctions appear to be optimal from the consumers’ point of view
The Price of Land and the Process of Expropriation
This paper applies a game theoretic model to situations in which the Dutch government expropriates land from some farmers in order to create a new public project. The model is a version of a finite period bargaining model with asymmetric information and one-sided offers. It is shown that the model can explain some casual observations as the fact that usually, but not always, the government and the farmers settle by agreement
The role of a matchmaker in buyer-vendor interactions
We consider a simple market where a vendor offers multiple variants of a
certain product and preferences of both the vendor and potential buyers are
heterogeneous and possibly even antagonistic. Optimization of the joint benefit
of the vendor and the buyers turns the toy market into a combinatorial matching
problem. We compare the optimal solutions found with and without a matchmaker,
examine the resulting inequality between the market participants, and study the
impact of correlations on the system.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, minor modification
Public ICT Innovations: A Strategic Ambiguity Perspective
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in the Journal of Information Technology . The definitive publisher-authenticated version, RAVISHANKAR, M.N., 2013. Public ICT innovations: a strategic ambiguity perspective. Journal of Information Technology, 28 (4), pp. 316 - 332, is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/jit.2013.18Public Information and Communications Technology (ICT) innovations are seen as having
the potential to usher in a new era of technology-enabled models of governance in emerging
economies. While it may be desirable for the implementation of such innovations to be
underpinned by precise planning, structure and clarity, policy implementers in emerging
economies are confronted instead by situations where ambiguous goals and means are
standard. This paper considers high levels of ambiguity as a relatively enduring and intrinsic
aspect of public ICT innovations in emerging economies. Drawing on an ethnographic study
of Bangalore one, an innovative public ICT project implemented in Bangalore, India, the
paper examines how strategic ambiguity is deployed by key public actors to chart the
course of the implementation process and to steer it towards reasonable outcomes.
Theoretically, the paper suggests that although strategic ambiguity is a precarious and
unsettling condition in general, it can work effectively in contexts that are reasonably tolerant
of ambiguous norms. The findings of the study also present arguments for why evaluation
mechanisms need to be fundamentally reframed in order to assess the extent of
implementation success of public ICT innovations in emerging economies
Hedonism and the experience machine
Money isn’t everything, so what is? Many government leaders, social policy theorists, and members of the general public have a ready answer: happiness. This paper examines an opposing view due to Robert Nozick, which centres on his experience-machine thought experiment. Despite the example's influence among philosophers, the argument behind it is riddled with difficulties. Dropping the example allows us to re-version Nozick's argument in a way that makes it far more forceful - and less dependent on people's often divergent intutions about the experience machine
Banking in the shadows: a comparative study of China and India
YesRecent years have seen the increasing concern for the flourish of shadow banking in China and India. In this paper, we aim to get a better understanding of the differences in trends and investigate the factors leading to the rise of shadow banking in these two major emerging economies. We find that financial exclusion is a common factor leading to the rise of shadow banking in China and India. While financial reform has taken place in India, financial repressive policies still prevail in China. Although several regulatory measures have been adopted in India and China, the size of the shadow banking in these two countries remains underestimated. Thus, streamlining and enhancing data collection is a key priority for both India and China. We also argue that the regulation in both countries should be more activity focused rather than sector or entity based, and it should be at par with banks. As shadow banks provide last mile connectivity and enhance financial inclusion, a balanced approach is required keeping in view both benefits and costs of the shadow banking system
Mystify me: Coke, terror and the symbolic immortality boost
A panel on “Marketing as Mystification” convened at the 2011 Academy of Marketing conference in Liverpool. Ideas from the Liverpool event were supplemented by commentaries from selected other authors. Each commentary explores the aspects of “mystification” observable in marketing discourses and practices. In what follows, Laufer interprets marketing mystification as modern form of sophism, Dholakia and Firat discuss mystifying ways that inequality is marketed, Varman analyzes the perversion and mystification of “development” via neoliberal marketing of “social entrepreneurship,” Mikkonen explores mystifying marketing representations of gays and lesbians, and Freund and Jacobi present a fascinating interpretation of how Coca-Cola advertising mystically reassures us that our difficult, dangerous lifeworld is actually quite hunky-dory. </jats:p
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