Regulating privatized rail transport

Traditionally, transport regulation has been viewed as an exercise in second-best optimization, acknowledging the existence of huge information problems. Then the rail industry was deeply restructured worldwide to halt erosion of the sector's share of transportation markets. Restructuring took different forms in different countries, ranging from simple reorganization measures to extreme restructuring -with the private sector increasingly participating in the sector and with the provision of infrastructure separated from the provision of services. The authors argue that regulation of the rail industry cannot remain unaffected by these changes. New regulatory scenarios and issues have emerged. For example, contracts have to be defined for private participation and quality surveillance instruments must be defined. Traditional price controls have to be adapted to, and mechanisms designed to manage and plan infrastructure investments in, the new environment. Restructuring has brought new problems, too. Where licenses have been used, for example, several concessionaires have been unable to meet the objectives spelled out in the concession contract. Contracts should be flexible enough to take account of novel situations that may affect company performance. And yet, for the system to be credible, there cannot be systematic, unjustified deviations from the franchise objectives. Regulation of the sector should be simple and flexible, with license contracts designed to include the private sector and with industry organization adapted to local circumstances. Regulation should be governed by principles that foster competition and market mechanisms, wherever possible. At the same time, it should provide a stable legal and institutional framework for economic activity. Otherwise, regulators should refrain from intervening in the market-unless the goal of economic efficiency (subject to the socially demanded levelof equity) is in jeopardy.Municipal Financial Management,Banks&Banking Reform,Decentralization,Enterprise Development&Reform,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Railways Transport,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Water and Industry,Public Sector Economics&Finance

Computational Results on Membership in R&D Cooperation Networks: To Be or Not To Be in a Research Joint Venture

In this study, we analyze firms’ membership in R&D (Research and Development) cooperation networks. Our main research hypothesis is that the membership in cooperation networks is related to the degree of the knowledge spillover. The approach focus on both cost symmetry and cost asymmetry. For that purpose, our work is developed in two tasks: we first develop an analytical model with three stages: in the first, firms decide whether to participate in a cooperative research network; in the second they simultaneously choose the level of R&D output, and finally firms choose the level of output through Cournot competition under both cost symmetry and cost asymmetry. Then we proceed with computational simulations in order to verify our hypothesis. From our results, we were able to conclude that cooperation leads to an improvement on RJV firms’ position in the market as it allows them to produce more than others with the same production conditions. Additionally, cooperating firms have to spend fewer resources on research, which turns the network a tremendous success on the productive efficiency level.R&D, networks, spillover, simulation, RJV

Promoting innovation in agile methods: two case studies in interactive installation's development

Software design and development has evolved significantly since the era of waterfall cycles. The agile movement gained momentum and is now one of the most popular ways of creating and delivery software. We argue that agile methods can be particularly effective when designing and developing interactive installations, as long as the agile methods are correctly tailored to this application domain. Based on significant experience, which was built upon ethnographic observation and participation in about a dozen industrial projects related to interactive installations’ design and development, we present agile strategies which proved effective when dealing with the industry’s typical tight production schedules, and we also provide the data from two case studies, discussions and conclusions. Using real world case studies such as these, researchers can obtain more insight into best practices that could be useful for promoting innovation during the agile process.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Impact of airport infrastructure investment on the growth of the Angolan economy: An auto-regressive distributed lag analysis

Purpose: The airport infrastructure plays capital importance in the development of national trade. It facilitates the flow of people, goods, and services more quickly. Thus, given its importance, this study seeks to analyze the impact of the Angolan investment in airport infrastructure between 2000 – 2020. Design/methodology: This article presents the results of quantitative and qualitative research, based on narrative review and output of the Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique, which aimed to analyze the impact of investment in airport infrastructure on the growth of Angola GDP per capita. Findings: The results of the stationarity tests performed shows mixed integration in both I(0) and I(1), which justifies the used ARDL. Similarly, the bounds test showed that there is a very strong relationship between airport infrastructure investment and GDP per capita growth in the short and long run. However, in the Angola case study, the impact that exists is negative, meaning that airport infrastructure negatively impacts per capita GDP growth in both the short run and in the long run. Research limitations/implications: This research has been among the first to analyze the impact of investment in airport infrastructure on the growth of Angola GDP per capita. Besides the contribution of this research, some limitations are the difficulty to find data of investment and the literature about transportation infrastructure in Angola. Originality/value: The analysis of the impact of investment in airport infrastructure in the growth of Angola GDP per capita is a fundamental step that can help public and private entities in making decisions that aim to improve the management of the Angola transport infrastructure.Peer Reviewe

User-Centered CASE Tools for User-Centered Information Systems

The goal of this research is to design and evaluate a new generation of CASE tools, capable of clearly supporting all the styles of work adopted by teams of developers and capable of promoting Usability concerns to Informa tion Systems building. Our research approach is based on (a) creating usable and effective models of the developers behavior, and (b) building innovative, unconstrained collaborative prototypes that allow co-authoring of models by all stakeholders involved (programmers, marketers and interaction designers).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Reseñas

Esteban RODRÍGUEZ-OCAÑA, Salud pública en España. Ciencia, profesión y política, siglos XVIII-X

The Pull of Beauty The Storefront for Art and Architecture

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

How high can expectations go? Practitioner issues and risks of interactive installations

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Striving Intentionalities: Vision and Practice in Cloughjordan Eco-village

Eco-villages are intentional communities whose ultimate purpose is to provide alternative ways of living that are locally rooted, self-reliant, socially supportive, and ecologically sustainable. The issues that hinder these communities from realizing their vision and aspirations are the main draw of this study. Grounded in a six-month fieldwork, the present inquiry focuses on a particular intentional community project which is still at an early stage of implementation—Cloughjordan Eco-village (CEV). Accordingly, the forthcoming analysis and discussion endeavours, on the one, to grasp and interpret CEV’s vision in the light of the intentional communalism canon and different currents of green thinking and, on the other, to identify and comprehend some of the issues that have been challenging the translation of the enterprise’s aspirations into practice