Rational Legal Decision-Making, Value Judgment and Efficient Precaution in Tort law

By reinterpreting Savage axioms as axioms of the social rationality over resource allocations, we derive a social welfare function encompassing individual social values and a social attitude towards distributional inequality. Wealth maximization becomes the purpose of law only if individuals have equal social values and the society does not care about distributional inequality. In tort law, when the injurer is less socially valued than the victim, the society imposes a stricter due precaution level, and punitive damages will be awarded. Tort law also implicitly transfers wealth from the less socially valued party to the more socially valued party.rationality; value judgement; tort law; punitive damage

Exogenous Shocks and Exchange Rate Management in Developing Countries

Even though globalization benefits less developed countries (LDCs), it also makes them more vulnerable to the exogenous shocks to the economies. Many LDCs rely on imported technologies and intermediate inputs to compete in the international export markets with better quality and cost efficient products. In this regard, exchange rate policies in respective countries have a direct bearing on the cost of production. This paper examines alternative exchange rate regimes to suggest an appropriate exchange rate policy in the context of developing countries. The paper utilizes a small open economy model involving direct supply-side effects of exchange rate and expectations of key economic variables and considers four possible exchange rate policies, e.g., fixed exchange rate, perfectly flexible exchange rate, leaning against the wind, and leaning with the wind. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the paper finds that in the event of a shock, leaning against the wind is likely to be the most appropriate exchange rate policy. Moreover, in the event of rigid wages, a fixed exchange rate policy is advisable.globalization, exchange rate regimes, exchange rate policy

Information technology in India

Includes bibliographical references.It was in my knowledge that India always possessed a large pool of technical talent within itself, which was comparable to world standards. A question that I always dwelled over was that, even though India was one of the giants in Software development, what were the underlying reasons for not implementing Software technology within it's own business settings? The engine behind the growth of the IT industry in India has been software exports. This industry has been growing at an annual rate of30% since 1988. There are no signs of abatement in that growth rate. There are an abundance of software programmers and skilled management personnel in India and this would attract more international companies to form tie-ups. Computers in India have a longer life period compared to developed countries. Due to the low cost of maintenance and high cost of new hardware, Indians tend to use computers for many years. The crucial advantage for India will be ability to leap frog over many intermediate technologies and use the latest. The high cost of hardware forces programmers to develop cost-effective and efficient programs that get the best out of the machines. Adaptability is an essential part of Indian culture; hence, there should not be any cultural factors that could inhibit the growth of information technology. Companies have been reluctant to pursue the massive domestic market, choosing instead to pursue established international markets for Information Technology. Another potential problem within the Indian software sector is the shift from an emphasis on programmers to a need for higher-level skilled personnel. There is a need for quality analysts able to understand and decide what a business is all about and how to best represent it in computing terms. Furthermore, it can be said that programming is incidental and routine and will soon be performed by computers using programming generators. Lastly, there seems to be an overemphasis on software product and an under-emphasis on the software development process, where primitive design and old production techniques are still being used. The current growth patterns of the industry are truly remarkable, and the industry's strengths by far outweigh its weaknesses. As long as software companies manage their growth effectively and apply their resources to further develop and nurture the developing domestic market, they may be poised to claim first place in the global software industry.B.S. (Bachelor of Science

Bidding Behavior in Competing Auctions: Evidence from eBay

Much of the existing auction literature treats auctions as running independently of one another, with each bidder choosing to participate in only one auction. However, in many online auctions, a number of substitutable goods are auctioned concurrently and bidders can bid on several auctions at the same time. Recent theoretical research shows how bidders can gain from the existence of competing auctions, the current paper providing the first empirical evidence in support of competing auctions theory using online auctions data from eBay. Our results indicate that a significant proportion of bidders do bid across competing auctions and that bidders tend to submit bids on auctions with the lowest standing bid, as the theory predicts. The paper also shows that winning bidders who cross-bid pay lower prices on average than winning bidders who do not.Competing Auction, Cross-Bidding, Auction Empirics

The Effective Use of Information Technology and Interactive Activities to Improve Learner Engagement

Student engagement in the learning process is the key to successful delivery of teaching and learning. Teachers face several challenges to engage learners in different disciplines, including computer science. This research conducts a review of BSc (Computer Science) programmes and introduces interactive activities to enhance learner engagement. The study was conducted using a repeated measure design involving 24 participants. The findings revealed that the use of technology, and collaborative and interactive activities in groups may positively influence learner engagement. The participants’ feedback before and after introduction of group tasks and interactive activities showed a significant (p < 0.001) and increasing trend in response to questions-related learner engagement. The participants agreed that their learning experience and engagement enhanced with the use of technology and interactive and collaborative activities

Foreign direct investment and product quality in host economies

We examine, both theoretically and empirically, how the presence of FDI affects product quality of domestic firms through worker mobility. Mobility of more productive workers from foreign-invested to domestic firms lowers the cost of production and contributes to improvement in the quality of goods produced by domestic firms. Profit maximisation by firms yields a structural relationship between unobserved product quality and observed revenue, which allows us to identify the impact of FDI on product quality. We use the theoretical model to frame empirical estimation, where we propose a novel approach to correct for sample selection bias. Under some mild assumptions, a set of population moments are derived and estimated using firm-level data from China's beverage manufacturing industry. We find that, on average, (i) working for foreign-invested firms boosts the skill level of workers by 11.12 per cent and (ii) the probability that an FDI-trained worker will move to a domestic firm is approximately 0.3. Estimation of the structural parameters shows that a one per cent increase in FDI leads to approximately 1.4 per cent improvement in product quality of domestic firms in China's beverage manufacturing industry

Foreign direct investment and export quality upgrading in China's manufacturing sector

Using a Melitz-type theoretical model of firm heterogeneity, we show that (i) the presence of foreign firms within an industry affects the industry export quality and (ii) the industry export quality is directly related to the industry export price. As the industry export price can be approximated by the industry export unit value, our work provides a rigorous theoretical justification for several empirical studies that use export unit value as a proxy for export quality. We then convert our theoretical model-based structural relationships into a system of equations. Using industry level panel data from China's manufacturing sector, and measuring the industry export quality by the industry export unit value, we find that an increase in foreign presence in China's manufacturing sector contributes to a significant increase in China's export quality. We also distinguish between foreign presence in China originating from the Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan (HMT) and non-HMT regions. We find that foreign presence in China's manufacturing sector that originates from the HMT region leads to a much larger increase in China's export quality. The main empirical result is found to be robust with respect to alternative measures of foreign presence and aggregate demand

Private Sector Corporate Governance and Singaporean Government Linked Corporations

This article examines aspects of corporate governance in Singaporean public sector. Most government linked corporation in Singapore have performed well. In addition these corporations have been largely successful in combating corruption. Corruption has in recent years resulted in the collapse of some large private sector corporations such as Enron Energy and HIH Insurance. This paper suggests that large multinationals can benefit from governance strategies employed by the Singaporean public sector corporations. Although the principal-agent problem is often stated in the context of private sector corporate governance, this paper discusses the problem within the public sector

Religious Extremism and the Rise of Talibanaization in Swat

This research has outlook over the extremism ideology that got progressed till the days Taliban and extremist elements were trying to have a rule in Swat while the government trying to counter their narrative of the religious extremism. Now the question to study is that how the religious extremism and rise of militancy in Swat are interlinked. The Swat valley, famous for its rich culture; tourism industry, was severely inflicted by militancy. It remained hub of militancy foralmost two years with irreparable loss/consequences to its infrastructure, industry, agriculture, health and badly marginalized the educational setup of the valley, with deep mental, physical and psychological implications. The questions raised by the scholars worked on this whole dramatic scene are very logical but those scholars didn‟t provide answers for those questions. Once again where the state security agencies was and what they were doing, from where did these militants have heavy weapons and guns. From where did they have modern technologies like radio station setup and communication devices? They captured and controlled the villages and towns of Swat slowly and gradually, from Shangle to Buner and other neighbor regions

Consumer Attitude towards TV Advertising Based Upon Consumer Age & Gender

Mass media has always been a useful way for marketers to attract consumers towards their products. But since the market is highly differentiated today the term “target market” is used widely. TV being the highly used media for advertisements even in the 21st century is part of this research showing how the consumers in Pakistan show their attitude towards TV advertisement, Consumers of old age group and young age group are both equally important as both are increasing in number today worldwide and that has made many researchers to focus their studies on different age groups and their attitudes to evaluate the importance each group gives to how they perceive the advertising. Also the result is tested if the gender of the consumer changes the attitude. The findings indicate old age group of consumers are relatively more interested in TV ads as compared to the young generation and gender has little significance in one’s attitude towards advertising. Keywords: Consumer Attitude, TV Advertising, Consumer Age Groups, Consumer Genders, Pakista