Credibility Assurance Research Articles

CONfidence: Developing an app to promote bladder and bowel health.

The CONfidence app was developed to address an unmet need for access to self-help advice and information for bladder and bowel incontinence. The app was developed by the Bladder and Bowel CONfidence Health Integration Team and Expert Self Care and this paper describes the evolution of this innovation to empower patients and the public with bladder and bowel leakage. The app is intended to provide a proactive approach to continence promotion and not replace formal healthcare. Crucial steps were identified to ensuring this resource was accessible and understandable for the intended audience including: input from national clinical experts and individuals with lived experience to co-produce content, clear definition of scope, technical expertise in app development, clear language avoiding jargon or medical terms, credibility assurance and a strategic plan for dissemination. The app is free to download and will remain so to ensure evidence-based continence advice can be in the palm of all with a smartphone. The CONfidence app has been downloaded approaching 7000 times and is in use in 10 countries. A continual effort is required to share this resource as disclosure of these symptoms is shrouded in secrecy and many people could benefit from its content.

Decentralized Multi-Layered Architecture to Strengthen the Security in the Internet of Things Environment Using Blockchain Technology

Smart devices are connected to IoT networks and the security risks are substantial. Using blockchain technology, which is decentralized and distributed, 5G-enabled IoT networks might be able to tackle security issues. In order to simplify the implementation and security of IoT networks, we propose a multi-level blockchain security model. As part of the multi-level architecture, the communication between levels is facilitated by clustering. IoT networks define unknown clusters with applications that utilize the evolutionary computation method coupled with anatomy simulation and genetic methodologies. Authentication and authorization are performed locally by the super node. The super node and relevant base stations can communicate using local private blockchain implementations. A blockchain improves security and enhances trustworthiness by providing network authentication and credibility assurance. The proposed model is developed using the open-source Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform. Stations communicate securely using a global blockchain. Compared to the earlier reported clustering algorithms, simulations demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm. In comparison with the global blockchain, the lightweight blockchain is more suitable for balancing network throughput and latency.

Changes to the Fund’s Financing Assurances Policy in the Context Of Fund Upper Credit Tranche (UCT) Financing Under Exceptionally High Uncertainty

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved changes to the Fund’s financing assurances policy. The changes apply in situations of exceptionally high uncertainty, involving exogenous shocks that are beyond the control of country authorities and the reach of their economic policies, and which generate larger than usual tail risks. The changes adopted could enable the design of a Fund Upper Credit Tranche (UCT) program in situations of exceptionally high uncertainty, in particular by modifying the Fund’s financing assurances policies in two ways. The first change allows official bilateral creditors to provide an upfront credible assurance about delivering debt relief and/or financing with the delivery of a contingent second-stage element of debt relief and/or financing once the exceptionally high uncertainty has been resolved. This would help establish that medium-term viability is being restored. The second change extends the use of a capacity-to-repay assurances from official bilateral creditors/donors from emergency financing to a UCT arrangement context. This would help establish adequate safeguards. These changes and their application to any specific country case in a situation of exceptionally high uncertainty would require the Fund to weigh whether it is prepared to accept the enterprise risks that such arrangement would entail.

Assurance process for sustainability reporting: Towards a conceptual framework

This paper seeks to provide insights into the sustainability report assurance process by exploring how reporting firms and assurance providers work together to produce high-quality and credible assurance outcomes. In this literature review, the assurance process is conceptualised as a systematic procedure that incorporates the detail of assurance work along with associated barriers and ethical issues. Based on a review of 87 identified papers on this topic covering 2003–2021, this paper develops a conceptual framework of the assurance process by dividing it into five steps—assurance provider selection, identification, screening, validation and evaluation—and then explains the logic underlying these steps by synthesising the findings from the identified papers. Furthermore, barriers that impede the adoption of and issues that constrain the benefits of sustainability assurance are also identified, such as the absence of stakeholder engagement or independence of the assurance provider. Overall, this paper focuses on the assurance process for sustainability reports, contributing to the conceptual development of sustainability reporting and providing a comprehensive framework for future study in this emerging field. In addition, this paper also provides both assurance providers and reporting firms with a detailed roadmap for decision-making regarding sustainability assurance.

Psychosocial factors associated with genetic testing status among African American women with ovarian cancer: Results from the African American Cancer Epidemiology Study.

BackgroundRacial disparities in the uptake of cancer genetic services are well documented among African American (AA) women. Understanding the multiple social and psychological factors that can influence the uptake of genetic testing among AA women is needed.MethodsData came from 270 AA women diagnosed with ovarian cancer and participating in a population‐based, case‐control study of ovarian cancer who were asked about genetic testing. Logistic regression analyses tested the associations of predisposing, enabling, and need factors with reported genetic testing uptake.ResultsOne‐third of the sample (35%) reported having had genetic testing. In the multivariable model, AA women with higher incomes had more than double the odds of being tested than those with the lowest income (odds ratio [OR] for $25,000‐$74,999, 2.04; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.06‐3.99; OR for ≥$75,000, 2.32; 95% CI, 0.92‐5.94). AA women who reported employment discrimination were significantly less likely to report genetic testing than those who did not report job discrimination (OR, 0.39; 95% CI, 0.14‐0.95). Marital status, Medicaid versus other insurance, prayer frequency, and perceived social support were significantly associated with genetic testing uptake in bivariate analyses but were not significant contributors in multivariable analyses.ConclusionsConsistent with other studies of AA women, a minority of African American Cancer Epidemiology Study participants had undergone genetic testing. Having a lower income and experiencing job discrimination decreased the likelihood of testing. These results provide foundational evidence supporting the need for interventions to improve the uptake of genetic testing among AA women by reducing cost barriers and providing credible assurances that genetic results will be kept private and not affect social factors such as employability.

Harmonisation and Emergence Concerning the Performance Audit of the EU Member States’ Public Sector. Romania’s Case

The complexity of the public sector generated by the mobilisation and use of significant financial resources, national cultural factors, the heterogeneity of the provision of public services, the numerous interested parties, the increasing demand for the quality of public services, the information asymmetry, require an actor to provide credible assurance regarding the proper management of public financial resources. In this context, performance audits are the link between public sector entities and stakeholders. The research has two components: the first component analyzes the degree of harmonization of the regulations specific to the performance audit in Romania with the International Standards of Supreme Audit Institutions (ISSAI); the second component analyses the degree of transparency of performance audit information by the SAIs of the EU Member States, through their official websites. In this regard, we have resorted to an in-depth longitudinal study, content analysis and disclosure index. The research results highlighted that the Romanian SAI has adopted in its normative framework the foremost ISSAI provisions on performance audit and the harmonization degree has systematically improved correlative with the regulatory revisions. The degree of disclosure for performance audit-specific information by the EU member state SAIs is high.

Multi-Layer Blockchain-Based Security Architecture for Internet of Things.

The proliferation of smart devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) networks creates significant security challenges for the communications between such devices. Blockchain is a decentralized and distributed technology that can potentially tackle the security problems within the 5G-enabled IoT networks. This paper proposes a Multi layer Blockchain Security model to protect IoT networks while simplifying the implementation. The concept of clustering is utilized in order to facilitate the multi-layer architecture. The K-unknown clusters are defined within the IoT network by applying techniques that utillize a hybrid Evolutionary Computation Algorithm while using Simulated Annealing and Genetic Algorithms. The chosen cluster heads are responsible for local authentication and authorization. Local private blockchain implementation facilitates communications between the cluster heads and relevant base stations. Such a blockchain enhances credibility assurance and security while also providing a network authentication mechanism. The open-source Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain platform is deployed for the proposed model development. Base stations adopt a global blockchain approach to communicate with each other securely. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed clustering algorithm performs well when compared to the earlier reported approaches. The proposed lightweight blockchain model is also shown to be better suited to balance network latency and throughput as compared to a traditional global blockchain.

Coercion and the Credibility of Assurances

What makes coercion succeed? For most international relations scholars, the answer is credible threats. Yet scholars have neglected a second key component of successful coercion: credible assurances. This article makes two contributions to our understanding of coercion and credible assurances. First, we offer a theoretical framework exploring the causes and consequences of assurance credibility. In order to coerce the target, a challenger must issue both credible threats that defiance will be met with punishment, and credible assurances that compliance will be met with restraint. In turn, the credibility of assurances is determined by power and a reputation for restraint. Whereas greater power boosts credible threats, it undermines credible assurances. Therefore, powerful states must cultivate a reputation for restraint in order to issue credible assurances. Second, we provide empirical support for our claims through a nationally representative, scenario-based survey experiment that explores how US citizens respond to a hypothetical coercive dispute with China.

Antecedent of sustainable cooperative within the social capital networks

Sustainable agricultural system contextualizes cooperative practices to reflect competitive economic returns, the continuous supply of essential and life-supporting ecosystem services, and enhanced food security. The study seeks to establish the challenges of small scale farmers in transforming into mainstream sustainable commercial farming and accessing competitive markets through greener economic functionality of the agricultural cooperative. To address these challenging phases and gaps towards growth prospects, this paper provides a comprehensive literature review and phenomenological approach on the underlying paradigm of personal knowledge and subjectivity. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to assess the extent of sustainable socio-economic network influence of Sicabazini farming cooperative on the potential shift in the living standard, and to examine the antecedent economics of environmental farming cooperative challenges to traverse the growth prospects with the context of cooperative social capital networks. The paper adopted the qualitative paradigm using interviews as data collection instrument on fifty participants from Sicabazini farming cooperative. In providing richer understanding and more insightful and inductive discussions on the phenomena, the rigorous application of case study content analysis reveals credibility assurance that the role of the sustainable farming cooperative benefits the economics of dual objectivity (social and economic nature) while simultaneously elevating environment of agricultural prosperity and creating sustainable job opportunities in remote rural areas. Furthermore, to transferability value of this study, the lack of resources and less accessible larger markets coupled by languishing commercial growth prospects influence the progressive phases of environmental cooperative. Keywords: cooperatives, sustainable farming, social capital, stakeholder theory. JEL Classification: Q13, Q56, Q58

Minority Rules: Credible State Ownership and Investment Risk Around the World

Research in management and related fields largely assumes that host-country state (“state”) ownership in investment projects raises risk for private coinvestors. We question that assumption in theorizing that minority state ownership may actually decrease investment risk in host countries where policy stability is low. Noncontrolling but still substantial state ownership signals to private coinvestors that states will maintain initial investment project terms yet limit interference in project management under those same initial terms. Analyses of 1,373 investment projects announced in 95 host countries from 1990 to 2012 support this proposition: (1) low policy stability in the host country increases investment risk, measured as the percentage of equity comprising all project capital funding on the announcement date, but (2) minority state ownership diminishes the risk-increasing impact of low policy stability, and (3) the risk-diminishing effect is greatest when policy stability is low and the state holds from 21% to 40% of investment project equity. Where permitted, private investors can use state ownership as a risk-reducing strategy in response to low policy stability. Our study highlights where these “minority rules” hold and state ownership signals credible assurance to private coinvestors in less stable policy environments.

Minority Rules: Credible State Ownership and Investment Risk Around the World

Research in management and related fields largely assumes that state ownership in firms raises risk for private co-investors. We question that assumption in theorizing that minority state ownership may actually decrease investment risk in countries where state policy stability is low. Non-controlling but still substantial equity holdings signal to private investors that states will maintain initial investment project terms, yet limit state interference in project management under the same initial terms. Analyses of 1373 investment projects announced in 95 countries from 1990-2012 support this proposition: 1) lower state policy stability in a country increases investment risk measured as percentage of equity comprising all capital funding for an investment project on announcement date; but 2) minority state ownership diminishes the risk-increasing impact of low policy stability; and 3) the risk-decreasing effect of minority state ownership is greatest when policy stability is low when the state holds from 21-30% of investment project equity. Private investors can use state equity partnership as a risk-reducing strategy in response to low policy stability. Our study highlights where these “minority rules” hold and state ownership signals credible assurance to private co-investors in less stable countries.

Competitive Gains in the Local Productive Arrangement Saffron Mara Rosa

This work deals with the resulting cooperation of the Local Productive Arrangement gains (LPA) Saffron Mara Rosa. This research aims to identify the competitive gains of the LPA Saffron Mara Rosa. The methodology of the proposed study is theoretical, / literature, practical / case study and qualitative exploratory. As a result the Mara Rosa Saffron LPA has submitted the following competitive gains: economies of scale and market power (market forces and trade relations); Provisions solutions (shared marketing, training and credibility assurance); learning and innovation (collectively and industry spread); the reduction of costs and risks (productivity and shared activities); social relationships (family ties). It was concluded that the LPA researched shows satisfactory results despite the distance between the entities involved and accompanying policies.

Minority Rules: Credible State Ownership and Investment Project Risk Around the World

Research in management and related fields largely assumes that state ownership in firms raises risk for private co-investors. We question that assumption in theorizing that minority state ownership may actually decrease investment risk in countries where state investment policy stability is low. Non-controlling but still substantial equity holdings prompt states to maintain initial investment project terms favorable to private co-investors, yet limit the state’s ability to interfere in project management under the same initial terms. Analyses of more than 900 investment projects announced in 56 countries from 1990-2006 support this contrarian proposition: 1) lower state investment policy stability in a country increases investment risk measured as percentage of equity comprising all capital funding for an investment project on announcement date; but 2) minority state ownership diminishes the risk-increasing impact of low state investment policy stability; and 3) the risk-decreasing effect of minority state ownership is greatest when the state holds from 21-40% of investment project equity. Private investors treat state investment policy stability and equity partnership as risk-reducing substitutes. Our study articulates that substitution process, noting where “minority rules” hold and state ownership provides credible assurance to private co-investors in less stable countries.

The continuing role of item-specific agreements in the IAEA safeguards system

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) safeguards serves as the foundation of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime, under which the IAEA acts as an auditor, monitor and inspector of state-administered nuclear energy programmes. The system consists of agreements and practices that enable the IAEA to gain a clear picture of a state’s nuclear activities in order to provide credible assurances that nuclear energy is used for exclusively peaceful purposes.

Jamaica Debt Exchange

The sovereign debt restructuring operation in Jamaica undertaken in early-2010 was a unique experiment that perhaps offered less by way of upside, if compared to the conventional sovereign debt exchanges, but provided credible assurances against further downfall and financial sector distress. A case study of a highly indebted country with domestically held debt, the paper discusses the conditions leading to the exchange, the rationale behind it, as well as its operational aspects. Achievements of the exchange, too, are discussed in detail. The paper also outlines the risks stemming from the high levels of debt—which continue to remain high—requiring prompt and coordinated action by policymakers if the legacy of the debt exchange is to be preserved.

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Universalization of the Additional Protocol

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has been under serious strain for nearly two decades since the ‘discovery’ after the 1991 Gulf War of the clandestine development of nuclear weapons in Iraq. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors responded to the revelation by adopting the Model Additional Protocol in 1997, which would give the IAEA a much broader power than the comprehensive safeguards agreements (CSA) and would provide credible assurance of the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities on the territories of its parties. However, the universalization of the Additional Protocol is still a distant goal. This article first considers whether one can argue that the conclusion and bringing into force of an additional protocol is an obligation under the NPT. It then discusses the ways and means to make the Additional Protocol universal. Such ways and means may take the form of a direct call for the conclusion of an additional protocol. Its universalization may also be pursued indirectly by requiring a State to conclude an additional protocol as a condition for benefiting in nuclear cooperation. Legal possibilities and limitations are explored for both of these (direct and indirect) approaches. In doing so, an analysis of the relevant discussions at the 2010 NPT Review Conference held in May 2010 in New York is also provided.

The Costly Illusion of Regulating Unknowable Risks

Uncommon but alarming man-made toxic episodes have occasioned regulation to ensure the safety of novel and commonly used substances and foremost to control agents that may cause cancer. However, the safety or harm of novel entities has no durable record of human use, and hence is virtually unknown. Compelled to act, regulators have chosen animal tests to forecast human cancer risks. To this end, animal data are filtered through a series of preconceived assumptions that are presumed to overcome a host of human/animal differences of biology, exposure, and statistics—differences that in reality are insurmountable. Asked for authoritative opinion, the National Academy of Sciences repeatedly found this regulatory approach without factual or scientific justification and, by implication, arbitrary and irrational. On these grounds, such a regulatory process appears vulnerable to scientific, legal, and constitutional challenges. Although it cannot provide credible assurance that an agent may be safe or harmful, the process has been a prime reason for an annual regulatory burden that exceeds the combined after-tax profits of all U.S. industrial activity. It is argued here that better use of national resources would come from a rational approach based on trade-off considerations, where a substance would be regulated depending on its socio-economic utility and on scientific evidence of proved relevance to human safety.

Reinterpreting western use of coercion in Bosnia‐Herzegovina: Assurances and carrots were crucial

This article demonstrates that assurances and carrots accompanied credible threats every time Western coercion succeeded in Bosnia. This finding is hardly surprising as it merely confirms earlier research on coercive diplomacy, but it is nevertheless important because the crucial role played by assurances and carrots has been completely ignored in most analyses to date. It also has important policy implications at a time when Western, and particularly American, policy‐makers tend to ignore this fact at their peril. US policy towards Iraq and Western policy towards Yugoslavia have been based almost exclusively on the stick in recent years, and its lack of success is therefore not surprising. If Western policy‐makers had learned the right lessons from Bosnia, they would have known that strategies coupling credible threats with credible assurances and carrots would have been more likely to succeed.

Credible commitments, contract enforcement problems and banks: Intermediation as credibility assurance

We consider contract enforceability problems in credit transactions and justify a bank as an organizational solution to market breakdown due to unenforceable contracts. Specifically, we explain: (i) why loan commitments exist, and (ii) why banks exist to sell such commitments. A loan commitment resolves moral hazard more efficiently than any combination of inside equity and spot credit. However, the market breaks down if commitment sellers are individuals, because their promises to honor contracts are not credible. With a large bank, a perfect sequential equilibrium is obtained in which credibility is restored.