Implementation Lags Research Articles

Asian megacity characteristics, problems, and policies.

"Using ten Asian megacities as examples, this article discusses a range of megacity characteristics and problems, including population growth, economic structure, spatial strategies, land policy, urban service provision, institutional development, and managerial problems. In spite of major progress in urban service delivery, ineffective land policies and inadequate cost-recovery systems remain serious obstacles. Megacities need and are promoting policentric spatial structures, but implementation lags in many cases. Institutional reforms are needed to cope with the metropolitan region character of megacity growth."

Technology and students with handicaps

Technological advances have opened the door for numerous educational interventions with handicapped children. These range from simple hand-held calculators for use in arithmetical problem solving to interactive videodisk systems that provide multimodal representations of complex knowledge and skills. As has been the case historically, curricular materials, in this case software, and implementation lag far behind. In a sense this is an enviable position because it provides developers with an opportunity to concentrate on the development of quality software. One component needed for an overall successful technological endeavor is to extend the useful life of the materials so that they can be integrated into long-term programing.

Effects of anticipated central bank actions on Tobin's Q, share prices and exchange rate in a small open economy

Qualitative features of response patterns of domestic share price, the exchange rate and Tobin's Q are analyzed to compare the effects of three types of anticipated central bank policies in a small open economy: exchange of domestic money with domestic shares; exchange of domestic money with foreign bonds; and exchange of domestic shares with foreign bonds, all of equal values in domestic currency. Tobin's Q adjusts monotonically to a new equilibrium in response to all three anticipated actions, aside from the initial discontinuous changes when anticipated actions are first announced. Under a set of plausible assumptions on the model parameters, the exchange rate and the share price are shown to respond non-monotonically to the announced exchange of domestic money with foreign bonds, if the announcement is made sufficiently far in advance. The paper also demonstrates that the exchange of domestic shares with foreign bonds is most effective in moving the terms of trade. The paper establishes conditions for nonmonotone response patterns in terms of real rate of return to the domestic shares, after distinguishing overshooting response pattern from another non-monotone pattern, called misadjusting in this paper, where the initial response of a variable to a shock is a movement away from equilibrium. These response patterns are characterized in terms of two parameters and their relative sizes with respect to the implementation lags of announced actions.

The Regulatory Crisis: Does it Exist and Can it Be Solved? Some Comparative Remarks on the Situation of Social Regulation in the USA and in the European Economic Community

The ‘regulatory crisis’ has become a common paradigm on both sides of the Atlantic. It seems to be corroborated by economists pointing to inefficiencies of regulation. Political scientists have discovered implementation lags, and legal scholars complain about an overburdening of the legal system.By reviewing some witnesses of the US discussion and by comparing this discussion with trends in Europe [European Economic Community (EEC) and member state level] I attempt to reshape the issues. Regulation has to be discussed with reference to perceived market failures and instruments used by the political system to cope with them. Pressure is put upon ‘social regulation’, that is, regulation of market deficiencies affecting ‘diffuse interests’ of consumers, environment, etc. Despite the rhetoric, the welfare state has not regulated too much but too little: It suffered from the reductionism paradox which is seemingly inherent in social regulation and becomes more apparent in federal (USA) or quasi-federal (EEC) vertically integrated political and legal systems. The modern discussion about ‘deregulation’, regulation ‘by incentives’, or regulation ‘by negotiation’ has not been able to overcome the structural deficiencies which limit attempts at social regulation.The regulatory crisis is defined in terms of the dwindling legitimacy of the welfare state to keep markets both running and ‘clean’. The more people perceive this dilemma, the more the crisis will shift from ideology to reality.

Vietnam and the Sino-Soviet conflict

The economic impact of marketing and trade policy research in Viet Nam conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is assessed using a novel benefit–cost framework. It measures the economic value of the time saved in hastening the policy responses of the Government of Vietnam. Extensive interviews with partners and stakeholders in the research clearly indicated that the time saving was a legitimate measure of the influence of IFPRI on decision-making. Linking a spatial equilibrium model with income distribution analysis based on national household surveys, allowed IFPRI to satisfy policymakers that relaxing rice export quotas and internal trade restrictions on rice would not adversely impact on regional disparities and food security, and would have beneficial effects on farm prices and poverty. These were major concerns of policymakers prior to the IFPRI research project. The research on these and other policy options gave a degree of confidence to policymakers that relaxing the controls would be in Viet Nam’s national interest. They made these decisions earlier than would have been the case without the IFPRI research. The policy assessment framework is used to measure the economic impact of the policy changes themselves, and in particular, the contribution of IFPRI’s work with Viet Nam on the policies from 1995 to 1997. The relaxation of rice export quotas and internal restrictions on rice trade made by the Government of Viet Nam in 1995–97 are estimated to have had a present (1995) value to Viet Nam using a 5% discount rate of $222 million by 2000, rising to $966 million by 2020. For an incremental research investment of less than US$1 million, a conservative estimate of the benefit to Viet Nam of the IFPRI contribution to the policy changes effected in Viet Nam from the reduction in the policy implementation lag indicates a present value in 1995 terms of US$45 million. This represents a benefit–cost ratio of 56. A more optimistic assessment is that the present value is US$91 million with a benefit–cost ratio of 114. In addition to the welfare gains to Viet Nam, there were sizeable gains to the rest of the world from IFPRI’s contribution. Inclusion of these benefits increases present value and benefit–cost estimates by 34 to 84%. Around 38% of the contribution of IFPRI is estimated to have accrued to the rest of the world, as Viet Nam is now a major player in world rice trade.

Reading overload and cogency

Reading overload and lack of cogency of technical communication, major causes of cultural lag, can be overcome by existing techniques that are economically attractive if value to organizations is taken into account; and that must not be postponed if value to civilization is considered. These techniques involve the selective dissemination of indexed surrogates that include: data, abstracts, and Terse and Ultraterse Literatures. The user can have within arm's reach an organized, indexed collection of at least 100,000 items (articles, condensed surrogates, data, etc.) in the form of hard copy, Mini-Print, microfiche and ultramicrofiche, all serially numbered and indexed for him in updated indexes. Reasons for the lag in implementation of these techniques are explored by means of an analysis of three models: (1) reference-retrieval systems, (2) question-answering systems, and (3) surrogate-dissemination systems. If cultural lag remains after the elimination of reading overload, then disciplines such as: advertising, salesmanship, persuasion, popularization and suggestion are available to increase the cogency of technical communication.