Credibility Problem Research Articles

A game theoretic decision model for organic food supplier evaluation in the global supply chains

Abstract Sourcing organic food products from global green supply chains (GGSCs) spreads across country borders and interacting among a wide spectrum of intermediary stakeholders, which adds complexity and incentivises profit-seeking stakeholders to engage in food adulteration. This phenomenon is frequently observed among green and organic products with credence attributes that are difficult to authenticate in both the prior- and post-purchase stages in both developed and developing countries. The case study that we investigate is a small-sized supermarket chain operator in Hong Kong, with an increasingly expanding range of organic food products. Whilst there is a proven set of hybrid multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) methods and model that have been implemented successfully in Australia, unfortunately, unable to assure total success in optimizing the selection of organic food suppliers when applying to this supermarket chain in Hong Kong. Even the obvious solution of certification and product labeling is not sufficient to solve this organic food credibility problem. Our study proposes a newly discovered criterion as postulated by the game theoretic framework, offering a more optimal and authentic solution to the organic food authentication problem. Apart from adopting the mixed strategy of random monitoring, fines should be imposed to penalise dishonest suppliers, instead of awarding bonuses to suppliers operating with integrity. An even better solution is to institutionalise these control mechanisms by the governing authorities with continuous monitoring and imposition of penalties.

Could requiring a presentation of the paper and adding a formalized contributor list solve academia’s credibility problem?

In this short note, we offer a suggestion that we believe may be ethically sound for research. Requiring co-authors to be able to deliver a reasonable presentation of a paper may lead to co-authors being fewer in number and more representative in nature. A research market involving research papers with hundreds of authors, single authors who have been credited with several hundred articles, or strict definitions of who has done what can be troublesome for public faith in research. To some extent, the public view of research as very trustworthy has changed and academic society should consider radical propositions to regain its position as solid and credible.

The problem of credibility in early modern travel

AbstractThe problem of establishing and evaluating the credibility of travel narratives remained endemic in the early modern period, both for authors of accounts and their readers. Writers of ‘authentic’ reports needed to secure and defend their reliability in the face of doubts that they enjoyed a license to ‘lie by authority’ as a familiar proverb held. This essay investigates the strategies they employed for doing so, and the position of readers relying on a form grounded in ostensible eyewitness that they could not verify for themselves. However tempting it might have been to respond with scepticism and to consign this source of testimony to the farther removes of respectability, it constituted vital source material for cosmographers, historians, and anyone concerned to know the world and its diversity. Natural historians formed part of this constituency, and in the Royal Society figures like Robert Boyle and Henry Oldenburg developed protocols and practices for improving the accuracy of observation. The risk of error did not disappear, but it could at least be managed.

The Price of Regulatory Risk: Evidence From Private Solar Power Generation in India

We know from literature that governments have credibility problems; they tend to change policies ex-post, to achieve political gains. We argue that political actors signal credibility by delegating...

Binding Leviathan: Credible Commitment in an Authoritarian Regime

The problem of credible commitment dogs every government, whether democratic or authoritarian. Governments that have sufficient power to begin a project can often change their minds. Paradoxically, such omnipotence can be crippling. If lenders cannot be assured that a current mayor’s successors will repay loans, then they may charge him or her extortionate interest rates. If homebuyers suspect that a mayor’s touted plans to improve the schools, police, the environment, or any other long-term project, will be abandoned by his or her successor, then they will discount their bids on the city’s land, reducing the capitalization of good government and discouraging the current mayor from even attempting such long-term improvements in the first place. Authoritarian bureaucracies face special credible commitment problems. Fear that local officials will build up a local power base has historically induced the leadership of China, imperial and Communist alike, to transfer local officials among subnational jurisdictions frequently. Such frequent transfers undermine those officials’ capacity to make the credible commitments that officials with more stable tenure can make with ease. Moreover, authoritarian regimes discourage the development of independent institutions like investor-owned banks or locally elected legislatures that are independent from local executive officials and that might otherwise act as monitors and enforcers of long-term commitments. We describe how these problems of credible commitment posed by China’s cadre transfer policy and, more generally, the CCP’s distrust of divided power lead to excessive municipal debt in China. We also propose three new institutional solutions for resolving the credible commitment problem of China’s authoritarian regime. In the end, we conclude that there is no magical solution that can reassure stakeholders such as lenders or home-buyers that an autocratic mayor will follow through on his or her promises. All of our proposed solutions, however, trade on the intuition that even modest institutional limits on power, compatible with China’s one-party system, of democratic centralism, can mitigate the problem of powerlessness ironically created by authoritarian power.

EHAPAC: A Privacy-Supported Access Control Model for IP-Enabled Wireless Sensor Networks.

The implementation of IP technology in wireless sensor networks has promoted the development of many smart scenarios. To enhance secure access in IP-enabled wireless sensor networks, access control to sensor nodes is a necessary process. However, access control currently faces two challenges, feasibility and preservation of user access privacy. In this paper, we propose eHAPAC, a novel privacy-preserving access control model for IP-enabled wireless sensor networks. The contributions of our paper include three parts. First, this paper integrates the Hidra access control protocol and APAC privacy-preserving model, addressing the issue of privacy-preserving access control in resource-constrained devices. Second, this paper proposes an enhanced Hidra protocol to implement the unlinkability of protocol message exchanges. Third, to solve the problem of third party credibility, this paper improves the group signature-based APAC model and utilizes blockchain technology to manage the storage and publication of public group signature keys. Security analysis and performance evaluation prove that our protocol is secure and effective.

CSR as hypocrisy avoidance: a conceptual framework

PurposeThe theoretical understanding of CSR is caught on the horns of the dilemma between the ethical and instrumental approaches. The strategic turn in CSR has brought the dilemma to a new head. The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel argumentative strategy to address the dilemma.Design/methodology/approachThe paper weaves together the insights from the literatures on sociological institutionalism, organization theory, business ethics and institutional economics to elaborate the distinction between CSR communication and CSR action that is actually undertaken and visible to stakeholders. This distinction is at the core of the “hypocrisy avoidance” approach which puts the above dilemma in a new light.FindingsAccording to the “hypocrisy avoidance” approach, the CSR communication constitutes a competitive arena where corporations are looking for reputational gains. Competitive pressures give rise to an inflationary dynamics of the CSR communication which consequently runs up against credibility problems. These problems are addressed by the real CSR policies which legitimate the corporate employment of the CSR communication as an instrument of competition.Practical implicationsThe theoretical dilemma between the ethical and instrumental approaches manifests itself in the justification of skepticism toward CSR communication. This skepticism, which may be to the detriment of a corporation’s license to operate, may turn out to be a driving force of CSR action.Social implicationsDespite the charges of corporate hypocrisy, CSR communication may play a role in the alleviation of business-society tensions. This role is however subject to two limitations. First, if CSR communication is used as instrument of competition, it is unlikely to translate into CSR action perfectly. Second, corporations would likely prioritize more visible CSR actions over less visible ones.Originality/valueThe novel implication of the “hypocrisy avoidance” approach is that CSR actions present credible commitments or “hostages” enabling the productive interaction between corporations and their stakeholders. This implication integrates some of the components of the ethical and instrumental approaches, while drawing inspiration from the institutional economics and institutional ethics literatures.

Does a Change of Government Influence Compliance with International Agreements? Empirical Evidence for the NATO Two Percent Target

ABSTRACT We examine whether changes of government influence compliance with international agreements. We investigate compliance with the NATO two percent target to which all NATO countries committed themselves during the NATO summit in Wales in 2014. The dataset includes the military expenditure by NATO countries over the period 2010–2018. The results suggest that countries that do not (yet) comply with the two percent target have smaller growth rates in military expenditure relative to GDP when they experienced a large change of government, e.g. a change from a rightwing to a leftwing government, than countries that did not experience such a large change of government since the NATO summit in 2014. Countries that experienced a large change of government are, thus, less likely to comply with the two percent target. Future research should examine the credibility problem of national governments in other international agreements too.

Low institutional trust in health insurers in Dutch health care

A central element of the 2006 health insurance reform in the Netherlands is strategic purchasing by health insurers. After a brief elaboration of the concept of trust this article discusses the trust of insured in the new purchasing role of health insurers. There are various indications of a trust problem or credible commitment problem in Dutch health care. Insured say to trust their own health insurer (specific trust) but also say to have little trust in the behaviour of health insurers in general(institutional trust). The article briefly explores four models to explain the trust problem: the lack-of information model, the anticompetition model, the pro-profession model and the political communication model. A critical analysis demonstrates that the 'objective ground' for low institutional trust is rather questionable. Low trust seems to be based more on perceptions than on the insurers' objective purchasing behaviour. The article ends with a discussion on some potential strategies to address the trust problem. Low institutional trust may be something insurers have to live with.

Efficiency Optimization for Communication Service Based on QoS Technology

The Internet of Things technology has gradually become a research hotspot. Communication service enterprises are the basic enterprises for social network communication. Only by improving the quality and efficiency of communication service enterprises can we bring more reliable communication guarantees to the whole society, and more and more people can enjoy the convenience brought by high technology. Due to the dynamic changes of the environment and the complex demand problems faced by the Internet of Things technology, the integration of information services is very demanding, which in turn affects the efficiency of communication services. As a typical technical architecture for improving the efficiency of communication services, the integration of Web services and IoT technology has become the key to the integration of IoT information services. The traditional QoS-based Web combination scheme has greatly improved in meeting user requirements, there are still some problems in the security and reliability of communication services, and there are also some defects in meeting the accuracy of user requirements. Therefore, based on the above problems, this paper innovatively proposes an algorithm (QoS) combining security computing and quality of service to improve security credibility and communication service efficiency. In the process, it is mainly based on the optimized cuckoo algorithm. In order to match the accuracy, this paper proposes a multi-strategy semantic matching algorithm, which is mainly based on semantic similarity algorithm for optimization. The experimental results show that the QoS-based Web portfolio optimization algorithm cannot only meet the user's quality requirements but also solve the security and credibility problems.

Does a Change of Government Influence Compliance with International Agreements? Empirical Evidence for the NATO Two Percent Target

We examine whether changes of government influence compliance with international agreements. We investigate compliance with the NATO two percent target to which all NATO countries committed themselves during the NATO summit in Wales in 2014. The dataset includes the military expenditure by NATO countries over the period 2010–2018. The results suggest that countries that do not (yet) comply with the two percent target have smaller growth rates in military expenditure relative to GDP when they experienced a large change of government, e.g. a change from a rightwing to a leftwing government, than countries that did not experience such a large change of government since the NATO summit in 2014. Countries that experienced a large change of government are, thus, less likely to comply with the two percent target. Future research should examine the credibility problem of national governments in other international agreements too.

A Practical Solution to the Small Sample Size Bias and Uncertainty Problems of Model Selection Criteria in Two-Input Process Multiple Response Surface Methodology Datasets

Multiple response surface methodology (MRSM) most often involves the analysis of small sample size datasets which have associated inherent statistical modeling problems. Firstly, classical model selection criteria in use are very inefficient with small sample size datasets. Secondly, classical model selection criteria have an acknowledged selection uncertainty problem. Finally, there is a credibility problem associated with modeling small sample sizes of the order of most MRSM datasets. This work focuses on determination of a solution to these identified problems. The small sample model selection uncertainty problem is analysed using sixteen model selection criteria and a typical two-input MRSM dataset. Selection of candidate models, for the responses in consideration, is done based on response surface conformity to expectation to deliberately avoid selection of models using the problematic classical model selection criteria. A set of permutations of combinations of response models with conforming response surfaces is determined. Each combination is optimised and results are obtained using overlaying of data matrices. The permutation of results is then averaged to obtain credible results. Thus, a transparent multiple model approach is used to obtain the solution which gives some credibility to the small sample size results of the typical MRSM dataset. The conclusion is that, for a two-input process MRSM problem, conformity of response surfaces can be effectively used to select candidate models and thus the use of the problematic model selection criteria is avoidable.

The Reasons of Electoral Stagnation of the CHP in the Light of the 2015 Turkish Parliamentary Elections

It is the intention in this article to explain the electoral stagnation of the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) in the light of the 2015 parliamentary elections in Turkey. Drawing on theories of voting behavior, the article uncovers the organizational shortcomings within the party and the problem of credibility that have emerged as significant impediments to the party in addressing long-term historical-structural issues, mainly the division of Turkish society between the religious periphery and the secular center. Furthermore, the strong identification between the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) and its partisans have made party-switching difficult, having been achieved, above all, through the provision of economic benefits and public services and the consolidation of party identification through growing polarization and division in Turkish politics. Last but not least, the changes to the political environment between the June 7 and November 1, 2015 elections, pushed stability and security to the top of the agenda, as well as AKP’s electoral adjustments in the run-up to the November 1 elections inhibited any possible flow of votes to the CHP.

A Matter of Trust

In December of 2015 two major journalistic scandals hit the Danish news media. The two scandals ran almost concurrently, which increased the media attention and was reflected in the coverage. In a time of diminishing trust in the news media these scandals represented a significant and acute credibility problem for the news media that were affected. Using paradigm repair theory coupled with a theory about transparency, this paper analyses which strategies the affected news media employed to re-instore trust in their journalism, and thus in the traditional news paradigm. Like previous studies, we find that the news media tried to distance themselves from the journalists involved in the scandals and describe them as “bad apples.” In both scandals the news media also went to great lengths to investigate the accusations and publically document the transgressions of the reporters. This effort could be seen as an attempt to increase transparency about the scandals, but the reports focused only on the journalists in focus, and not on the news organization, where they worked. As a consequence, the affected editors and news organizations largely avoided any blame and speculation as to their role in the scandals.

Strategic Reassurance in Institutional Contests: Explaining China’s Creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

ABSTRACTThe Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has been widely conceived as a Chinese effort to promote reforms of global financial governance. While the existing literature of contested multilateralism tends to focus on the problem of threat credibility, this article highlights the necessity of strategic reassurance in institutional contests. To facilitate incremental reforms of the existing order, rising powers like China need not only to pose credible challenge towards established institutions, but also to demonstrate their benign intentions and commitment to future cooperation. Besides revealing strength and resolve, the creation of a new multilateral regime helps rising powers to signal their self-restraints and reassure other powers. Consequently, the institutional configuration of new multilateral organizations involves a trade-off between the dual needs for threats and reassurance. Chinese behaviours in creating the AIIB can be explained through this framework.

Trust in the executive

Why is it so hard to get opposing elites to work together rather than to seek partisan gains and/or political survival? While the credible commitment problem is widely known, there are a number of lesser known obstacles to building trust and trustworthiness between opposing elites. This article presents an account of how some of those obstacles interact through time. Common institutional types, particularly winner-takes-all and power-sharing institutions, force trade-offs between agile responses in the short term and medium-term trust between elites, on the one hand, and between trust among elites in the medium term and the adaptability of agreements in the long term, on the other. We call this the ‘time horizon trilemma’. As an alternative approach, we consider a variant on the two-person consulate used by the Roman Republic for more than 400 years as Rome rose to prominence. In our variant, a ‘turn-taking institution’, opposing executives take short alternating turns as the ultimate decisionmaker within one term. We conduct behavioral games in the experimental lab to provide an initial estimate of the impact of these institutional types – winner-takes-all, requiring consensus only, requiring turn-taking only, or requiring both – on overcoming obstacles to agile responses in the short term, trust among elites in the medium term, and adaptability of agreements in the long term. We find that turn-taking is a promising alternative to solving the time horizon trilemma.

What kind of central bank competence?

How much information should a Central Bank (CB) have about (i) policy objectives and (ii) operational shocks to the effect of monetary policy? We consider a version of the Barro-Gordon credibility problem in which monetary policy signals an inflation-biased CB's private information on both these dimensions. We find that greater CB competence---more private information---about policy objectives is desirable while greater competence about operational shocks need not be. When the CB has less private information about operational shocks, the public infers that monetary policy depends more on the CB's information about objectives. Inflation expectations become more responsive to monetary policy, which mitigates the CB's temptation to produce surprise inflation.

The consequences of the use of online sources of information and mobile devices in university classes

This article presents the observation results of the use of different media by students during university computer lab courses. The observation results were supplemented with survey results on general preferences of the students regarding the forms of access to information. This study showed that students prefer to use electronic resources over traditional printed ones, as well as their clear commitment to the use of mobile devices. The students also preferred graphic forms of presentation over in-depth textual analyzes. The observation proved that many students have a problem with assessing the quality of information available on the Internet. Thus, it is proposed to use terms with alternative knowledge or post-truth knowledge to emphasize the importance of the problem of information source credibility.

The Domestic Politics of International Cooperation: Germany and the European Debt Crisis

AbstractInternational cooperation can fail even though governments have no distributional conflicts or incentives to free-ride, face no informational or credibility problems, and even agree on the policies that need to be implemented. Germany's refusal to cooperate with the Eurogroup members on the Greek bailout in 2010 until the crisis threatened to derail the entire Eurozone is puzzling in that regard especially because Germany is the main beneficiary of the euro. It was alleged at the time that this was a dilatory tactic designed to postpone a domestically unpopular decision until after crucial regional elections. But why would voters allow themselves to be misled like that? And why did Merkel agree to the bailout before the elections took place? To analyze how citizen preferences affect international cooperation, we develop a game-theoretic model of the four-way interaction between two governments that must coordinate a response to a crisis affecting both countries but who also must face the polls domestically with an electorate that might be uncertain whether a response is necessary. We find that, paradoxically, governments that stand to receive the greatest benefits from international cooperation face the greatest obstacles to implementing the required policies even when voters would want them to. We show how the model can rationalize Merkel's electoral strategy and why her party suffered at the polls when the strategy went off the rails.

Changing horses in midstream: Leadership changes and the civil war peace process

We examine the impact of governmental leadership changes on the civil war peace process. In line with the literature on leadership changes and interstate war, we argue that transitions can help overcome lags in the rational updating process, leading to negotiations and termination through negotiated settlements. However, while studies of interstate relations emphasize the role of “outsider” changes that produce new winning coalitions, we argue that owing to the critical nature of credible commitment problems within the civil war peace process, only “insider” changes can generate the benefits of leadership change while mitigating uncertainty generated by leadership turnover. Using existing and original data on changes in governmental leadership, we find support for our expectations. Leadership changes can produce conditions favorable to negotiations and settlements, but only changes from inside the existing regime should be encouraged to avoid prolonging the conflict.