Big Government Research Articles

Critical Solution to Power Grid Problems Using Smart Grid –A Case Study on Karnataka Power Transmission Control Limited (KPTCL)

Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL) is a power distribution and transportation company in Karnataka state established in the year of 1999 under the company act 1956. Now it is one of the big government sector company owned by government of Karnataka with 1000 cores of share capital. Karnataka Electric Board (KEB) is the parent body of KPTCL, until 2002 KEB did all the functions such as distribution and transmission of electric power throughout the state. After that it was divided in to distribution and Transmission Company called KPTCL and power generating company known as Karnataka Power Corporation Limited (KPCL). The ultimate goal of KPTCL is to provide uninterrupted power supply to all customers in state of Karnataka with minimum distribution and transmission cost and lowest unit price. KPTCL purchases power from KPCL for fixed rate under the Karnataka regulation act. KPCL contains several power generation projects which include different types such as hydraulic power, thermal power, wind power, etc. KPTCL also purchases power from power stations such as National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) and Atomic power stations like Kalpakkam and Kaiga which is owned by central government. Power generation is not a big deal for any state government but real challenge is to transmission of uninterrupted power and distribution of power to different parts of the state using power grid. So there should be proper data analysis in the entire grid and all transmission station throughout the state in order to identify the loop holes, actual capacity, requirement, request from consumers, and also to identify any damages. The ultimate solution for all this is introduction of smart grid concept in power grid. In this paper I reviewed about operational and technical structure of the KPTCL and factors to be considered while performing data analytics in power grid and adoption of smart grid concept over traditional grid using SCADA technology to perform data analytics and finally listed out some improvements in overall functioning of KPTCL after implementation of smart grid.

Web-Based Smart Market Applications as a Preference Transition during COVID-19 Pandemic

The Smart Market application is a web application that useful for making easier of traders and consumers to carry out buying and selling activities in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In advances technology, it is very relevant to implement website-based buying and selling which is quite easy to reach. Hence these activities become more practical and efficient by online without leave the house and it can be seen by the wider community. Another advantage is that the public can see product price updates so that they can find out the price and prevent the market price of raw materials which tends to fluctuate and become a big government homework that never ends. With the increasingly competitive market competition, the Smart Market system was built to maintain the existence of traditional markets and retain customers who tend to like to shop online. The system has been built by proposing research methodologies including, analysis, design, implementation, and testing. The system has been tested to see the ability using black box techniques and it is found that all features have been running well in accordance with the expected results.

Information Exchange among Firms: The Coherence of Justice Brandeis’ Regulated Competition Approach

During the 1920s, two different proposals of a regulated competition competed in the US. The first, inspired by trade associations, was advocated by Herbert Hoover. This approach echoes a managerialist view of a coordinated competition under state support. The second - promoted by Louis Brandeis - provides an alternative view of what a regulated competition should be: avoiding a ruinous competition through information exchange among small firms. From his involvement in the Wilson’s campaign team in 1912, to his dissent in the American Colum ruling of the US Supreme Court in 1923 and his position against the National Industrial Recovery Act in Schechter Poultry in 1935, we argue that Louis Brandeis was constant in his opposition to such a convergence between Big Business and Big Government. His intemporal coherence relies in his Jeffersonian approach advocating for a dispersion of economic powers for both efficiency and political purposes. At the opposite, both the trade associations’ movement and the NIRA experience pertain to a Hamiltonian perspective that is based on an equilibrium between the economic gains resulting from concentration or coordination and a strong political control. Available at: http://www.gredeg.cnrs.fr/working-papers/GREDEG-WP-2020-56.pdf

Government size and speculative attacks on public debt

In this paper I set up a primary surplus target zone model—differently from some previous papers that used instead an interest rate target zone model— both to interpret the public debt euro area crisis and, more importantly, to draw some more general conclusions as to the role of the primary surplus in preventing speculative attacks against public debt. This primary surplus target zone model also allows considering the effects resulting from either a small or a big government. If a small government determines a higher GDP growth than a big one, then a higher steady state public debt-to-GDP level can be obtained in the first case. However, this paper shows that in the case of a credible fiscal upper target it also turns out that such a difference does not affect the size of the expectation effect determining the ‘honeymoon’. Moreover, when the primary surplus reaches its upper boundary—something that will occur inevitably, irrespective of the size of the government determining the primary surplus— monetary policy and the presence of a lender of last resort remain essential to stabilize the public debt and avoid speculative attacks.

Free Market Revolution: Partial or Complete?

Abstract This review of Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, lauds its virtues, while criticizing its tendencies toward a partial and one-sided understanding of the nature of the revolution it extols. In bracketing out a deeper analysis of the role of business in the creation of modern corporatist political economy and the debilitating effects of war and the national security state on markets at home and abroad, the authors ultimately fail to provide the more robust defense of freedom that Rand’s project implies.

The Urban Dimension of the Albanian Transition Cities Was Damaged as a Result of the ‘Big Government’ and Not Its Absence: An Assessment in Relation to the Planning Instruments!

Albanian inhabited cities and centres have undergone chaotic developments in the years of transition, and this has come as a result of development not based on previous territorial and urban planning. Thus, construction, urban and territorial development in the transition years has not been the result of the implementation of previously approved territorial and urban planning instruments. This has come as a result of the lack of territorial and urban plans (local or national), which would precede construction and urban development with the aim of making this development smart, sustainable and comprehensive. In this context, we have made an observation in attempt to find the reasons for the lack of territorial and urban planning instruments in relation to governance. Our concern is focused on the question: has the scope of governance been so narrow that it has left out the task of drafting and approving territorial planning instruments; or was their absence for other reasons? As will be presented in this paper, transitional governments have not lacked: neither sectoral legislation that obliges the implementation of planning instruments; nor public institutions charged by law specified by duties in this field; nor public budget funding and foreign donors for their design. In contrast, it has been the characteristics of the left ‘big government’ and the public irresponsibility that characterize what have hindered the drafting and adoption of territorial and urban planning instruments.

Analysis of the Actors, Patterns and Issues of School Closure Policy According to the Public Opinion on Corona-19 : Focusing on Newspapers Big Data and Government’s Press Releases

Analysis of the Actors, Patterns and Issues of School Closure Policy According to the Public Opinion on Corona-19 : Focusing on Newspapers Big Data and Government’s Press Releases

Social Policy Responses to the Covid-19 Crisis in China in 2020.

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic has catapulted China into a serious social and political crisis. This article focuses upon how Chinese social policy has responded to the Covid-19 crisis. It reveals that the Chinese welfare state has woven a comprehensive social safety net to mitigate the social suffering of Chinese society in the mid- and post-crisis periods. Different types of social policy programs have been combined and synthesized, including social insurance, social assistance, and social welfare arrangements. Facing the challenges of the new risks caused by the pandemic, the collaboration of the Chinese state and intermediary social welfare organizations has played a crucial role in providing both cash benefits and social services (benefits in kind). For the first time, social policy in China has acted as a major player for coping with the negative outcomes of a pandemic. This article concludes that the pandemic-related crisis has justified an interventionist approach and logic, driven by the state’s welfare system, which favors a model of “big government”. However, this model also requires justification and legitimation.

Towards a framework for facilitating the implementation of Tactical Urbanism Practices: Assessment Criteria in the Place-making Approach in Iran

One of the significant issues in developing countries like Iran is the decreased feasibility of place-making projects in urban development because the majority of urban design projects are top-down, high-cost, and long-term, thereby taking them years to be implemented. Even when implemented after a long time, these projects usually do not meet the users' demands of urban space as a result of the passage of time. Tactical urbanism (TU) has been recently proposed as a possible solution to facilitate place-making and promote “right to the city” in cities. This study aims to develop a framework for facilitating the implementation of TU projects in the Iranian context in the shadow of big government power. For fast and easy implementation of TU practices, a set of criteria was extracted from the literature and TU practices. All these criteria were validated with a panel of 20 experts of urban planning and design as well as local authorities using the Delphi technique to determine the most suitable ones for the proposed framework. The findings suggest that the TU facilitated criteria in the framework can be classified into six broad dimensions, namely, functional, experimental-aesthetic, environmental, social, governance and monitoring, and economic criteria. This framework has the potential to provide guidelines for TU practices on small-scale and informal place-making interventions based on citizens' needs in developing countries.

Artificial Intelligence Will Merely Kill Us, Not Take Our Jobs

A prominent recent development in governance of artificial intelligence is the White House Office of Management and Budget’s 2020 Guidance for Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Applications (Federal Register Doc. 2020–00261, Filed 1–10–20), directed at heads of federal executive branch agencies, in fulfillment of Trump E.O. 13859 and building upon it. While the directive strikes the right tone in some instances, it opens the door to federal agencies too widely for oversight. Top-down federal funding and governance of scientific and technology research will be increasingly incompatible with a future of lightly regulated science and technology specifically, and with limited government generally. First is the the lack of concern that a key driver of investment and in turn trajectory of the sector is military and intelligence-based. Not to be flip about it, but when it comes to robotics and military, the concern is that Isaac Asimov’s widely famous but fictional Laws of Robotics (devised to forbid the harm of humans) are programmed out, not in. This is a part of what makes fusion of big government and private AI deployment problematic at the outset. Second is the insufficient appreciation of the extent to which the broader progressive regulatory bureaucracy at which the guidance is aimed holds a vision of “rule of law” entirely at odds from a more classical liberal frame of reference. Today’s administrative state has its own set of value pursuits and visions, of what are costs and what are benefits, and the sources of each. Make no mistake, the new AI guidance constitutes a set of regulatory principles rather than laissez-faire, property rights based principles, especially as they will be interpreted by less market-oriented administrations that later assume the helm and the agencies they direct. The White House guidance invites agencies to “consider whether a change in regulatory policy is needed due to the adoption of AI applications in an already regulated industry, or due to the development of substantially new industries facilitated by AI.” Unless externally restrained, a regulatory bureaucracy’s inclination is to answer the question, “Is there call for regulation?” in the affirmative, and this guidance does not restrain that impulse but adds to it. For example: Agencies are instructed to produce “Statutory Authorities Directing or Authorizing Agency Regulation of AI Applications” and to “List and describe any statutes that direct or authorize your agency to issue regulations specifically on the development and use of AI applications.” But no statutory definition of AI even existed at the time any such supposed predicates came to be. The guidance is favorable toward antitrust regulation. The guidance invites social policy regulatory experimentation. The guidance may undermine simultaneous reforms from the Trump administration to restrain the overuse of these very sort of sub-regulatory guidance measures to influence the private sector. Given public policy fears, real and imagined, over artificial intelligence, it is an area ripe for political predation. While big science need not entail big government; the alignment of forces in play at the moment implies that it likely will.

Challenges and Changes for Competition Authorities During and Post Covid-19

The COVID-19 has threatened almost every sector with unwanted challenges and risks. Competition policies are no exception. Under pandemic situations, competition authorities should expedite antitrust procedures, monitor unfair practices exploiting emergency situations, allocate resources efficiently, and share their experiences through the international network of competition enforcers. However, given that the pandemic could make long term effects on our economy, more fundamental measures should be taken because we might not return to the pre COVID-19. Among others, the currently ongoing digitalization would be anticipated to accelerate and demand towards big governments strengthened while globalization more retreated to localization post pandemic. Responding to each of these challenges, competition authorities have to prepare and change in the new normal. They should exploit this crisis as an opportunity to preemp-tively upgrade their competition policies. To this end, more comprehensive but rigorous R&D on digital economy policies covering innovation-led economic growth as well as competition policy should be conducted. Competition authorities, when considering innovation factors in competition tests, should balance between ‘false positive’ (convicting the innocent) and ‘false negative’ (acquitting the guilty) to avoid chocking innovation and falling out of the digital competition. Plus, competition authorities should take more interests in researching and be prepared for examining the impacts of digitalization and the pandemic on labor markets, especially regarding the prevalence of ‘gig economy’ or platform labor. De-globalization post pandemic could reduce inward competition pressures from international markets and then urge competition authorities to engage in more highly concentrated domestic markets. However, active enforcement does not always mean aggressive intervention in the market, especially in the absence of evident anti-competitive effects proved. When a competition authority assesses anti-competition effects of a violation and/or formulates new regulations, the authority should be mindful and armed with antitrust toolkit boxes based on the market- and effect-based approach. Big government could be effective and helpful in saving a vulnerable group from the pandemic. Even so, big government should not justify excessive intervention at the expense of market competition and consumer welfare. A competition authority in charge of market competition should play a role of critical advisor to other government branches in the intra-governmental relationship on behalf of competitive private sectors for preserving competition and innovation in the market. To do so, the authority should monitor and refrain public sectors from excessively stepping in the market against market principles, particularly when the intervention is anti-competitive and harmful to consumers by suffocating innovation.

Hyman Minsky: An Advocate of Big Government

In The End of Laissez Faire (1926) and in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), Keynes advocated a new model of the State which put an end to the laissez faire and leave to the Government the task of reaching macroeconomic stability through monetary, fiscal and even demographic control of investment. One of the most original and modern thinkers within this Keynesian tradition in defense of “Big Government” was the post-keynesian economist Hyman Minsky. The Great Recession has revived and reinvigorated the minskyian positions up to the point of becoming a “required reading” especially for central bankers (Yellen (2009)). In this paper I critically review the minskyian defense of Big Government as a mechanism to achieve macroeconomic stability.

Donald Trump Is Redefining the Role of 'Big Government' in America

Donald Trump’s government is largely streaming billions of dollars to the private sector, to be distributed by businesses, rather than forming new government agencies or programs, or safety nets.

The portal is the plan: governing US oceans in regional assemblages

We apply theories of environmental governance, assemblage, and geo-epistemology to critically reflect on ocean planning in federal waters of the USA. US ocean planning was initiated in July 2010 when President Obama issued Executive Order 13547; this set in motion what was then called coastal and marine spatial planning, but without a congressional legislative mandate or budgetary appropriation. There are many reasons we might expect ocean planning to be centered in the US federal government, but ocean planning is transpiring in a neoliberal era in which there is little enthusiasm for “big government” and its projects. Thus, the project has been one of governance, with federal and state agencies participating along with non-government actors. What does a public planning process of this scope and geographic extent look like as a project of environmental governance? We focus on governance actors and the scale at which they operate, as well as the data infrastructure to support ocean planning, to analyze how US ocean planning is both illustrative of and contributes to our understanding of contemporary environmental governance. We have argued elsewhere that ocean planning in the USA has the potential to deliver outcomes alternative to marginalization of communities and enclosure of environments for capital accumulation, but this potential is fragile. In an era of unstable government when executive orders can be issued and revoked at the whim of the White House, questions about who/how ocean planning is carried in real space/time become even more important.

Should We Defend the Administrative State?

AbstractTroubled by actions of the Donald Trump administration, some academics have defended the administrative state. This may be a mistake. The scholarly definition of the administrative state has shifted over decades, and today scholarly usage of the term often diverges substantially from popular usage. When academics invoke the concept, they may unwittingly trigger negative associations in the minds of nonacademics and defeat their own cause. This mistake is easily avoided, because academics often do not need to talk about the administrative state at all. Research would be improved by using different terms to describe three distinct ideas: the state, administrative systems within the state, and the administrative state, which is best understood as a type of state that emerged at a specific moment in American history. If academics want to defend the public service in the realm of politics, it would be better to do so in those terms, rather than using a phrase that often triggers fears about big and irresponsible government.

Detecting Indicators of Horizontal Collusion in Public Procurement with Machine Learning Methods

Improvement of procurement procedures and their digitization help prevent and identify cartels, but at the same time lead to the emergence of new anticompetitive schemes. In this paper we focus on electronic auctions, which have become the main method of public procurement in Russia in recent years. As e-auctions provide access to many big government orders; the incentives for bidders to join anti-competitive agreements are increased. Therefore, the development of methods to detect bid rigging at electronic auctions is of high practical importance. The aim of this work was to develop a method for detecting signs of horizontal collusion at an auction. We use machine learning methods to train classifiers that predict the presence or absence of cartel in electronic auctions, depending on the distribution of bidders, the time of submission of applications, the duration of the auction and the number of participants. Variables for the model were selected on the basis of distribution plots built for sample of cartels and random sample. The study is based on data from public procurement Web portal and the information about bid rigging from cases of the Federal Antimonopoly Service. The results showed that the Random forest model most accurately predicts the detection of the cartels on electronic auctions. The accuracy of the prediction is 84%, and the recall and precision of the model are 83 and 87%, respectively. The most significant variables for the classification are the level of price reduction, the difference in the time of application filing of participants and the value of the maximum starting price of contract.

DOES BIG GOVERNMENT HURT GROWTH LESS IN HIGH‐TRUST COUNTRIES?

Social trust is linked to both public sector size and to economic growth, thereby helping to explain how some countries combine high taxes with high levels of economic growth. This paper examines if social trust insulates countries against the negative effects of public sector size on growth, documented in several studies. We note that the effect is theoretically ambiguous. In panel data from 66 countries across 40 years, we find no robust evidence of insulation effects: when excluding countries with uncertain trust scores, our results suggest that big government hurts growth also in high‐trust countries, and that the mechanism is by lowering private investments. (JEL H10, O11, P16, Z10)

Big government: The fight against the African Swine Fever in China

The African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreak in China triggered a series of issues such as false drug and vaccine sales, insufficient pork supply, and panic among pig farmers. As the largest pig breeder in the world, China suffered and continues to endure the damages and other impacts brought by this fatal porcine disease. However, the country performed well in the process of preventing and controlling the spread of the ASF, which was confirmed and appraised by the Director-General of the World Organisation for Animal Health. To hold the epidemic under control, China needs to focus on three key factors: the powerful government with the sole leadership of CPC to allocate all the resources available, referred to hereby as big government; comprehensive measures to effectively prevent disease propagation; and recover pig production capacity with firm and resolute determination to eliminate the disease. These elements have contributed to China’s success in overcoming many difficulties in the past and worked well so far for preventing ASF. However, shortcomings, such as untimely responses, low tolerance for mistakes, surrender of local responsibility, lack of shared value focus, etc., should be overcome in the big government mode, which may serve as a non-negligible part of the whole reference for other countries.

Of Markets and Subsidies: Counterintuitive Policy Trends for Clean Energy in the European Union and the United States

The United States is commonly characterized as a nation with a deep distrust of big government and a strong commitment to markets and competition. In contrast, the prevailing image of the European Union is that of a highly bureaucratized polity favoring interventionist economic governance over free-market capitalism. In the context of clean energy, however, these roles appear to be somewhat reversed. A top-level survey of the U.S. clean energy policy landscape reveals a surprisingly pervasive reliance on government subsidies with few, if any, competitive elements. E.U. clean energy policy, meanwhile, reflects an unexpected commitment to market-based instruments and competition. This essay suggests that these counter-intuitive policy trends can be explained by critical differences in the black-letter law of both jurisdictions and its enforcement in the courts, among other factors. Unlike their American counterparts, E.U. judges prioritize the timely transition to a low-carbon energy economy over unrestricted competition among member states. As the European Union pushes for greater intrastate competition in clean energy policy, the United States focuses instead on defending the Founding Fathers’ ideal of unfettered interstate competition.

Forensic Analysis of a Ransomware

In the present digital world malware is the most potent weapon. Malware, especially ransomware, is used in security breaches on a large scale which leads to huge losses in terms of money and critical information for big firms and government organisations. In order to counter the future ransomware attacks it is necessary to carry out a forensic analysis of the malware. This experiment proposes a manual method for dynamic malware analysis so that security researchers or malware analyst can easily understand the behaviour of the ransomware and implement a better solution for reducing the risk of malware attack in future. For doing this experiment Volatility, Regshot and FTK Imager Lite Forensics toolkit were used in a virtual and safe environment. The forensic analysis of a Ransomware is done in a virtual setup to prevent any infection to the base machine and carry out detailed analysis of the behaviour of the malware under different conditions. Malware analysis is important because the behavioral analysis helps in developing better mitigation techniques thereby reducing infection risks. The research can prove effective in development of a ransomware decryptor which can be used to recover data after an attack has encrypted the files.